Dwarf Death knight or Dwism

For anything interesting go to my new site

2011-05-09T05:41:00.000-07:00

www.dwism.com

Big changes, new site Dwism.com

2010-04-15T04:43:00.002-07:00

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

2010-04-13T01:57:00.000-07:00

...

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

2010-04-08T23:50:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-07T09:29:00.000-07:00

...

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?

2010-04-06T01:38:00.000-07:00

...
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.....

Be vewy vewy quiet

2010-04-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

I am hunting for Dwagons.

In this glorious easter holiday, where I got to spend all my overtime hours on a holiday, so i ended up with 10 days of it (holiday that is).
I did what any normal sane person would do: I got me some flu!!
Oh yes I did. So my planned "me-cation" (that is what we married men, call a vacation where the missus have no control over what we do with our time), that I had so carefully planned around leveling and gaming and doing other things to make sure this world is a better place, got very very much fekked up.

So what could I do that required very little brain-activety and did not involve reading (since that made the world spin in a very wrong way)? Watch tv? Well that got boring after two hours, watch dvds? I re-saw all of the matrix (there are 3 great movies there, you know), all of the harry potter movies and all Star Wars (jar jar, you lovable little sidekick you). And then I was ready to kill someone.
So I stopped doing that.

Luckily my brain had cleared up enough to get me creative, so I did as the title says: I went hunting for dragons.

The time-lost-variety, mind you. And let me spare you the anxiety: no I did not get it.... yet.

16 hours of playtime (at least) did I manage to sink into this eh time-sink.
I also managed to wrap up 20 baron kills in Stratholm, 3 kills in Zul Gurub and 2 kills in Karazhan... all for the various mounts. (oh and I had to get that key for Kara first too...Sigh)
You see, even though my raid-group has managed to get every single mount (10 manned) the game has to offer so far (well, okay, not all of them, but we are very close to the icc one too), I, however, have not gotten a single one.
Im one light in the darkness
Im the chosen few
and I am Jacks raging bile duct (in case you cannot find that last achievement, go read a bit here)
Also I never was the one in ToC to have the most dkp for that mount... Hey, do you think that is another sign that blizz did not give a craps-arse about the colliseum, since it really didn't have a real mount to be won?

Aaanyway. Here I stand, lots of titles but no cool mounts in sight (pun intended since I never even saw that time-lost-c"#k tease of a dragon), and in Cata you get to fly everywhere.
Damn Pappa needs him some mounts!!

Also; Stratholme, is the coolest new form of frogger ever created! So that is a bit of meta-gaming right there... Even if I never did get that reward.

I don't really like raiding

2010-03-31T23:16:00.000-07:00

After leveling my warrior for a while I've decided to stop raiding alltogether.

I guess I've finally outgrown the need to have better gear than everyone else. Because honestly, that is why anyone raids. The need for gear. The need to go "omg this pug to VoA just asked for 5600 GS -and I was the only one who actually had it!!!".
I've had enough of taking orders from some pimplefaced teen with too much time on his hands to read boss guides.
I've had enough of people only doing half the stuff I do, get all the gear I need.
I'm sick and tired of intros and cutscenes.
Now I'm going to spend my time leveling every class to 80 and then I'm going to sell my account. Because then I'll be done with the game. And that will be the most liberating feeling in the world. No more nights spend pretending that im going anything other than a virtual masturbation. Spending my time fluffing myself trying to make sure everyone knows that im better than everyone else I'm playing with.
Time to stop being a closet geek, time to get out in the light, time to get a life!!!

I've read up on it, and 200 euroes are what I can expect for my 10x level 80 account!!
hot damn.

Men, are stupid puny pathetic tiny creatures that have cash

2010-03-25T03:51:00.000-07:00

So all over the game-sites I follow this new site where you don't buy naked women, but you buy naked women that will be your playdate, is all the rage at the moment.
So much so, that their site is down.

This is how any industry view male costumers:

You like boobies right? Here is Illidan and Arthas with boobies!!!

How fucked up is that?

Seriously.

And we have Women talking about how they are being discriminated? Have they ever stopped and thought about who this is targeted at? This is how little a game like WoW thinks of its users.

(I was going to write "Think about the men here, we will go out into life and find women the way they *really* look, and that aint like the picture above, have you ever thought about how hard that is on us??" -But I'm afraid that might be misunderstood... because I used the term 'hard')

And this is WoW we are talking about. This sort of discrimination of men is everywhere. Serious analysts say that the Ipad will not be a success, unless apple allows porn on it.
because otherwise none will buy it.

Can we just take a moment here? There are times for looking at bewbies and there are times for relaxing with your favorite pastime... and there are times for gaming (im willing to bet I made half of you follow that link expecting nudity).
Why this need to muddle everything up? Do any product seller in this world not have any faith in their fellow human beings to know that if their product is sound they don't need to use such a demeaning way of luring in men.
Am I the only person who know that there are plenty of free sites where you can get those needs attended?

Seems so. Look at my "fellow" bloggers. A high latency life has random unrelated pictures of scarecly dressed women in his posts (goldsellers needs a spanking so here is a pic of slutty guuurls getting a spanking), and spooooooooncraft has a "fabb away" section. -seriously he does.

How pathetic is that? Do you not have a shred of confidence in what you write? Allow me to introduce you to Tobold.
"oh, but i am not as good as him at writing, how do you expect me to make a living then?" I don't, go find something you are good at instead, and if its pictures of naked women, then make your frikking site about that.
STOP MAKING EVERYONE THINK THAT I AM AS PATHETIC AS YOU, JUST BECAUSE YOU CLAIM YOU PLAY AND LIKE THE SAME GAME I DO.

Seriously. Fuck off, so the rest of us can enjoy our game in peace.

(oh and im totally goin to label this post "boobies in wow", and "wow nude patch" and see how many viewers that gets me)

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder

2010-03-24T01:53:00.000-07:00

...

And so is dickheaddery.

This rant is brought to you by a very happy post by Tam of Rightious orbs. In a very happy post, he talks about finding the right guild for him (or so it seems, dum dum DUUUUUUM - he is very aware that he has said this before).
Anyway apart from making the best ever analogy over what raiding is, he in a bynote talks about two types of players.

Person A: I want to raid, therefore I will put with a degree of shit.
Person B: I would rather not raid than put up with a degree of shit.

(himself being person B).
I myself - and this should not come as a shock, is very much a person A.
I have, and I will put up with sh*t to raid. Because, unlike one of his commenters, I know myself and the world around me, well enough to realise that in any team sport, there will be people you have a lot in common with, and some who does weird things, that you do not consider being "super kewl".

For example, I tend to overfocus on one aspect on any given encounter, and mess something up. That is not a great quality in a tank. One of our dps likes to sleep in, that is not a very good quality when you raid in the weekend mornings.
And one of our healers does like to... Well I've got no idea what she does tbh. She does like to get summoned, thats for sure. I remember one time, when she, didn't come back after a raidbreak (lunch). and we found out the next day that she had decided to take 5 mins of nap-time on the couch and had fallen asleep.
I know this is in the tiny-non-existent-part of complaining. But when you are pumped up about a new boss, this can really be annoying. Or when one of our trials hunters didn't turn up for a raid AND STILL HAS NOT SAID ANY FUCKING THING ABOUT WHY NOT - you do feel like this person is shitting all over the rest of your raidgroup.
But you deal with it. You get over peoples little quirks and move on. This is some little innocent things that some would consider shit you deal with in order to raid.

If someone in guild-chat had made some inappropriate comments about his girlfriend. I would tell him off, but I wouldn't leave guild. If someone made an gay joke, I would report him, and tell him i've done so (I did that once). But I wouldn't leave my guild over it. Or make an issue over it demanding him kicked or I would go.
The two day ban, was punishment enough, at least in my book, and he never did make another joke like that.

The point is, when you have a large group of people connected by a similar goal of wanting to raid in a certain pase (and not even that common a goal, some just do it for the social parts, some for gear, some for progression, and some for something to do with their evenings), you have to expect that people will not be able to be bf4evar!! -till the end of the universe.
It just is not how people work. Healers will have their own sub-group where they discuss stuff. So will tanks. So will -some- ranged, and so will the dutch people (or in Ensidias case their infamous "danish mafia").
You do not have to loooooove every single person you raid with, but liking them all sure does help.
At the moment, I do not have anyone in my guild that is /sigh at when I see them online. That, for me, equals happy times.
I mean, in any group of people thrown together by semi-accident, you will find someone you do not click with. School class, sport club, the stamp-collectors union, your workplace. If you expect to go through life only dealing with people you love all the time, anytime. You are going to find yourself pretty lonely sooner or later. That is just how people work. Or rather, unless you live in "the great order of the amazing moongoddess Phils movementarians group". THEN you will love everyone, all the time.

What I'm getting at, is that just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is Dickeadery. What you might consider being unacceptable behavior in a guild-setting, i'll bet you that many others will consider cool. Spending all day in /g telling "yo mama" jokes? I'd leave, but I'm pretty sure plenty would
find that to be a guild where "we have lots of fun in an relaxed atmosphere". So unnammed commenter on Tams blog: you are either dumb or very naive, when you claim that is it the person A, that is the problem.

If we all had the "person B" personality and would kick every single dickhead in guild. We would run out of guild members. Because we are all different and unique snowflakes (we *are*), we will not always agree on what is fun and great behaviour. So deal with Dickhead behaviour in your guild. Let them bow off steam. And if the generel vibe of the guild and most people there are cool, behold: you will be very happy in your guild.

Because small or big, we do have to deal with degrees of shit in order to be in a team, doing team-stuff. Deal with it.
And no, you do not have to deal with any more or any less sh*t the higher up the progression ladder you are. There are cool guilds and there are complete sh*t guilds at all levels of this game. Some guilds the atmosphere is to beat on your fellow guildie in order to build yourself up.
- For example if you build a guild around pvp, where you gank low levels of the opposite faction. And THEN after having your guildies beat you up when you log into your scam horde auctioneer alt, only to belittle said guildies (that only did what they where told), on your blog. - That would be an unpleasent atmosphere, and the tell tell signs of a sucky guild with a horrible guild leader.

A whole new Cataclysm

2010-03-23T02:48:00.000-07:00

That may be the best title I have ever had made.
Its a Mash-up (or as we call it where I come from; Bastard-pop) of the two blogposts that inspired me for todays post.
Pinkpigtailinn and Righteous orbs.
You see. I have been wondering what to do with my time lately. I cannot be arsed to gear up my level 80's. Because I've caught the early "gear will become pointless soon" -bug.

I can't see the point of leveling my alts because... Whats the point? I already have a ranged dps, a melee dps two tanks and a healer. I got my bases covered.
I sold some lucky stuff, so I have almost 10k gold. And for me, thats a fortune.
I turned up to a daily heroic for my emblem on Redux, and the only thing the healer said (and the only thing anyone said) was

"lol, you have too much health"

To which I replied that I could change that, if needed.

And on we went. It was a weird group. They all seemed to know what they where doing, but noone said anything, but everyone seemed to know what they where doing. It was Utgarde Pinacle, so on a whim i pulled the add for the HULK achievement. I didn't say anything. I just pulled him and placed him. The mage got aggro so i taunted and hurt him a bit, so he would stay in place. And then everyone backed off. Nothing was said. He was left alone. and we got the achievement.
(there is a point here, don't worry, I'm getting there).

The one thing that stuck with me from that run. Apart from the weird mind-wave-share-non-communication we had going, was the warrior. The dualweilding fury dwarf spawned from the depths of hell.
Damn duelweilding is awsome sauce.
And dwarfs are awsomemerere. more awsome. Awsome on awsome.

But there is one thing that is even more awsome. And that is big green Orcs. And roleplaying.
So I did what tam has experienced, and what Larisa encourages us all to do.

I switched sides. I rolled an Orc warrior, who is going to tonk and be fury. And who is going to get all my leftover heirloom gear leftover from my paladin.
And he is a roleplaying Orc. His name is Growhl, and I have made a back story for him.
And he is big, and likes to growl at people. And he just *adores* making little jewelery trinkets. I even have kept a grey robe in his inventory for when he will walk around Org: Jedi-style!!!

So he will be my whole new Cataclysm world. And I just cannot wait to get him up to the higher levels. In beta I tried a premade level 80 dwarf fury warrior, and i had sooo much fun.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh and a little PRO-TIP for roleplaying!!
It is fine and dandy to have an elaborate backstory, that you are an secret princess in hiding, or the lovechild of Thrall and the blood-queen. Go knock yourself out. Make it elaborate. Make your flagrpg info 5 pages long. But chances are, that noone will read it, and your time roleplaying will be spend yelling: I HAVE A DIRTY SHOCKING SECRET, WONT SOMEBODY PLEASE TRY AND FIGURE IT OUT???? and standing alone.

Don't.

If you want to have fun. Be a simple servant or farmer that one day woke up to find that lightning came out of your hands and went to train as a shaman, to deal with it. Or a simple soldier forced out of retirement to keep your lands safe from the Lich king. Or an accountant. Something simple. That way you are not too busy dealing with your own storyline, but instead you can meet other people and play and have fun with them. Roleplaying in an mmo is like sex, It really is a lot more fun if you aren't alone... all the time.

Taking death Knights seriously

2010-03-22T06:50:00.000-07:00

... (and you thought whine-day was over)

Yea thats not going to happen anytime soon.
Unlike days of old with huntards, everybody knew that really good hunters where amazing but most of them where morons, today the low-social-they-are-all-dumb-class of WoW is the Death knight. The Tard knight, the Death tards, dick knights, dumb knights, the dkfromdk's everybody knows that they are all played by little kids or terribad players.

Of course, not you, you don't count - but everybody else.

And all of a sudden I'm one of those guys back in the 30's that... That is a horrible connection, i'm not going to go there. Suffice to say, that the "they breed like rats, except you, your cool" type of replies given to me are abundant.

Hell, I've walked into PuGs with 55k health on said "hi" hear someone say "who's the tank", and polity replied with "Well, I am", and see 2-3 people insta-quit. Repeatedly.

It is so absurd that you aren't sure whether or not to laugh or cry.

He is not going to be happy about this, but I gave him a beta-invite for SCII, so we'll call it even. I'm going to use my guildie Calli of PewPewlazors as an example.
In his brilliant review of raid-anatomy I'll quote him on priests first:

The Holy Priest has been playing a priest since Molten Core and will waste no time telling everyone in the raid his stories about killing Baron Geddon when half the raid was in blues and “stuff was so much harder back in The Good Old Days lol”. He still loves to equip his full Tier 1 and Benediction and pose around the mailboxes in Dalaran. He hates the Resto Shaman because he’s carried a grudge about Chain Heal since Black Temple. He’s actually a pretty good healer but like all Holy Priests, he dies a lot because he suffers from an advanced case of Chronic Martyr Syndrome. This will manifest itself in various ways, but the most common is death by Standing In The Fire because he was “too busy saving the dumbass dps to notice”.

And then on DK's

The Deathknight.

/sigh. Just read this or this

Where he links dumb pug DKs.
Let me make something very clear, Calli is on the cool side of DKs, I do believe he still loves playing his DK ( i see him online all the time on sith) And he is sooooooo not the worst of the haters. And that is my point.

These classhaters are so overly everywhere, that you can't even be bothered to make fun of them. And you just need to say "DK's, know what I mean?" and everyone will nod.

Just scroll back up to the two quotes above. What else needs to be said right? We all know how daft DKs are: 'They are sooo sucky. And they where supposed to be a HERO-class, and they cannot even outdps my rogue/hunter/mage/lock/retardin. And they cannot even tank anymore.
I remember when Wrath hit, and every DKs I ever met, where sooo imba, they could kill everything, they could tank it all at the same time, but not anymore because they suck now.'
- Right?

Like the goblin, when he wants his reader numbers up, but can't be bothered to write anything? he links to class:DK name: Arthas, on the armory with the words "knock yourself out". (Even though half of them had better raid-achieves than him... but thats not important, right?).

I dunno, I'm just getting so fed up being treat like a tard over the class I chose, and anyone other than Chas, can you yourself defend the DK posts you've written? yes? Because they are all so terribad right?

And let me tell you why? Any talented DKs have either: stopped playing that class, due to the annoying class-nerfs OR they only PuG on their alts and leave the DK for playing with people they know. - I know I do.

/sigh indeed.

What on earth, I want to help the Gnomes?

2010-03-18T00:46:00.000-07:00

Look at these adorable little fellas!!

Aww. *AND* they think they are bad-arse

Look at me, I am bad... Even though I can only barely lift a wrench

And now I get to help save them against their own little cuteypie irradation!

Blue link: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/3p9/gnomeregan.xml

And best of all, It will happen before Cataclysm!

Whiny post day: When you run out of fun

2010-03-17T00:48:00.000-07:00

You all know The troll shaman. He be cool. I'll be trying to be as cool. I ain't so cool, so this post won't be well thought through, it will just be a lot of whine about lots of disconnected stuff.

In this day an age, where even Mr Cash himself had made tribute songs to Death Knights, there should be nothing but sunshine and lollipops for all of us.
Hell, a DK even got the world first orange that matters. yay us. Only. Not so much.
After Blizzard completly failed to make sure that the playing community understood what a "hero-class" even meant (DKS ARE SUPPOSED TO BETTER THAN EVERYONE AT EVERYTHING CUZ DEY BE HERO_CLSAAAAA- these people still exists, funny how it's never DKs who claim this.) And after they failed to communicate that, in order to assure that new players would get a raid-spot and would bother leveling through the empty outlands, they would make us.... slightly overpowered. Just for a little while, untill we had caught up. -was that so unfair?

YES, yes it was. So now you will find DKs at the bottom of the cess-pool for pretty much everything. PVP? Oh please. Even mages feel sorry for us.

So you figure out, that since you are the only person in your raid that is not very active in 25 mans, (im sure that helps in filling that gap too *sigh*), you one night decide to roll a mage on horde and on AD. And for one frikking night you sit yourself in front of your pc, with a new album in your itunes, listening to how 'there ain't no grave that can hold his body down', and you play. You have a bit of fun. You think back to when you first started playing the game.

Then you look to your left side. Because when you first started playing this game, you had your (then) wife-to-be sitting next to you on her laptop playing along side you.
You remember the long-forgotten duo of barbiedoll and kendoll the lock n rogue that would run through the starting zones. And you would miss it.

Then you look at the clock. It's almost nine. And in the other room, in front of the tv she sits. Alone. Watching "16 and pregnant" on MTV.
She looks up at you "have the computer broken down again?"
"no" you reply.
she smiles, "what are you doing here then?"
You know she is joking, you know that she really does like watching her shows by herself, because (lets be honest here) you can't STFU when you watch crappy reality-tv.
You know she is very happy to have these nights alone. but you also know that soon these 3 nights, will (again) turn into 5 nights a week. Those two raid-nights a week, would turn back into 7 (again- hell last week, you raided 4 nights). Because you love playing with the people in your guild. And she won't complain. Not untill it will be too late.
One night you will be sleeping on the couch in the other room, because it will be easier to just drop over after raid before work. you know this, because once, you almost did just that.
so you look at your wife, and ask "do you want some company, I was just leveling an alt, and got bored".
She shakes her head, "not really, I was about to go to bed, want the tv so you can play xbox?".

You shake your head, no, this is not at all what you wanted. You wanted to talk to her.... But then again. There is still that final chapter in gears of war 2, that you rented, that needs finishing.

So you sit there in your couch. The missus is fast asleep, and you have just killed "the biggest goddammned fish I've ever seen", with an old friend who happened to be logged on aswell.
And you think to yourself, "tomorrow, tomorrow I'll make it better. I just need to get to the Lich king on heroic, and I'll be done with this game".
And you aren't really sure if that means more free-time, or just time for more games.

Also; when are the desperatly needed tanking buffs for DKs comming allready??

Fuck it, i'm getting myself a kitty

2010-03-15T08:41:00.000-07:00

...

There is nothing in this world that a little pressure and flattery cannot get you. Take me.

In a moments weekness i apllied all of my combined skills over at TishToshTesh, and got myself this:

Grrrr
Look at that DK kitty. Blizz, make me one!

So for all my readers. Go praise TishToshTesh.
Mostly for having a great blog, and for being a really cool artist (really cool. Look at that kitty!!!)

But mostly because he takes emotional bribes! ;-)

EDIT: Crap crap link!! http://tishtoshtesh.wordpress.com

Cheating on my guild

2010-03-15T06:14:00.000-07:00

It's a weird thing.

Guild loyalty.

For some people it entails that they defend and fight for what they believe their guild represent. For others, a guild tag is just a roof over their head. For others again a guild is nothing more than whatever players are in it at a given point in time. Personally I am somewhere between the first and the last option.

To me, my guild means a lot. I am proud of what "we" have done. being in the top two alliance on our server, pretty much ever since the game launched. I have been at the cutting edge with them, and not I am at the cutting edge of their 10 manned progression. (or rather, I am being semi-carried by the players who also have the time for 25 manned... I hate and envy you all).

This is a guild that where starting out in Naxx (40 manned btw), and yet took a blue-geared dwarf priest within their ranks. And even had me healing in naxx before I had even cleared BWL. Talk about recognizing talent!!
No - seriously, they saw... something in me, back then and I would have never enjoyed the game half as much (or half as long) if they had not taken that chance with me.
Fast forwarda year and a half and me burning very much out in the burning crusade. I stopped. I got a lot of new job functions and joined up with some real life friends on a horrible horrible rp-pvp server. (sporeggar). The same server where half the population seemed to think that RP stood for rapid progression "that means you level faster, dumbass". When that made me almost loose my mind, and had me return to Hellscream, what did my old guild do? They stopped progression in the Black temple so that me (and two others, as I recall it) could get dragged through serpenshrine Cavern and Mount Hyjal, for the attunements.
For a guy like me, that sure as hell gives a lot of bonus points on the loyalty score.

This is also why I feel extra bad, when I am having a good time in "that noun" guild. Especcially now, that I've done and went and rolled an Undead mage. And scrapping my mage on hellscream. Chalmers, is his name. And he was a simple servant. That drowned (his hair is wet and everything), then he awokened to find himself able to cast huge frikking fireballs out of his fingers.
That changes a man, that does.

Anyway, I am very much enjoying maging it up on him. And really, I am a melee type of player. So here I am, having fun. On another realm, on the other side of the fence. Whatever I do on this toon will never ever be to the benefit of my guild. And I am ashamed of enjoying that. Aint that weeeeeiiiiird?

I know, that many will say, that I don't own my guild anything. That every item I won, was made from the DKP I had earned.
Those people have clearly never lead a raid, or managed a guild. As a matter of fact, I would dare say that people who claim this, are not even in a guild, let alone a guild that are progressing in any way, shape or form.
And if they are, then they are just full of sh*t. Or very dumb.

I have gotten a little peak throughout time, at what it takes to lead anything. let alone a guild. And it is -mostly- problems and grief and not a whole lot of actual fun. But it is addictive as hell - but thats besides the point.

What i'm getting at, is that it is a weird feeling to ehh feel. That I am betraying my guild in any way, shape or form. I am still one of the most prepared people at our 10 manned raids (I dare say this, because the others worry more about 25), and I truly feel that I am giving my all there. Hell I am even running the daily heroic for that emblem as much as I can, even though I do not enjoy it very much.

Having said all of this, just how overpowered are mages?
No seriously, what is wrong with this game, since mages can be so incredibly overpowered???
Look at their glyphs for example: Glyph of frostbolt, just how overpowered are you, that your glyphs need to take away abilities? Look at poor Death Knights and glyph of Icy touch same type of power (an early spell, used by all builds -at least at the lower levels) yet, frostbolt is a 5% increase and removes the snare part of the spell, where Icy touch, just gets a 20% increase to the frost fever part of the damage.
NERF OP MAGES. Seriously. Then maybe you can get a glyph at lower levels that would be... you know... desirable.

Chalmers calmy and politely demands it.

The ICC buff and you

2010-03-11T05:27:00.000-08:00

Tobold talks about the ICC buff.
And how it makes raiding easier. Not wanting to derail his topic about why you should/should not use the buff, I thought I would add an interesting point to this.

There are plenty plenty of fights in ICC where the buff completely screws up the encounter. As a matter of fact for lot's of the fight we had to completely relearn them. Completely.

Okay maybe not totally relearn them. But any sort of timing went all the way out the window and down the drain.

Take the Lich king fight (no, take her).

I've talked earlier about how such a long fight that you wipe a gazillion times on. Turns into a tightly maneuvered modern dance. *spin twirl sidestep taunt, dnd, spread disease, grab shambling, jazzhands*.
But when you have to get the disease on the ghouls and the shamblings before you take the Lich king to whatever % that gets him started on transistion phase. (oh, if you don't know the fight, go read here. It is NOT NOT NOT the end all guide to the lich king fight that some delerious bloggers seems to think -hello pwnwear- but it is very good).
That timing goes straight out the window. And we would most likely have killed him so much more faster the second time around if we had removed the buff, rather than to rethink how we excecuted phase 1.

So for plenty of figths, this buff will ADD to the content of ICC since you will have to relearn many of the fights.

Mastery stat and you

2010-03-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

So Blizz has leaked a preview of what Mastery stats will be like in Cata.
All of it right here http://blue.mmo-champion.com/1/23614404862-mastery-system-preview.html

For the short short version (who likes short shorts? We like short shorts) this is what the mastery stat will give you:

Nerdgasms

For a slightly longer version: Mastery stat will change depending on what specc you are. How so? well, let's say that you are a priest. You want to spend points in Disc. You spend points in disc. The more points you spend in Disc, the more you will get the following 3 stats as a passive bonus: Healing slight boost to healing powa and Meditation -same as the talent with the same name. Both of these are similar to holy and disc priests (and im pretty sure they will be very similar to every healer in game. But the third. Oh the third. The third passive bonus you will get as a Disc priest is

Absorption – Improves the amount of damage absorbed by spells such as Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis.

Let the drooling commence. But it gets better. The more Mastery points you have on gear and other stuff, the better this 3rd ability gets. So Disc will absorb. Holy will add a HoT to all direct heals, that will grow even more powerful over time and Frost Death knights (how great is this, the preview was for DKs and Priests. Blizz lubs me!!) will get

Runic Power Improves the rate of runic power generated by abilities

Because: "While all death knights want runic power, Frost death knights would generally have more runic power than Blood or Unholy death knights (who would receive a different benefit from their respective trees). An Unholy death knight who sub-specs into Frost would still be able to benefit from this bonus, though because they’re investing fewer talent points, they’d benefit to a smaller degree. Mastery on gear would boost this bonus, and no other talent tree would grant it."

Suweet!

Good part over.
Now this is all fine and dandy, if not for the fact that this will very much ruin whatever there was left of creativity in class-speccing. No more, will smart and creative players invent dualwilding DKs with diseaseless speccs that will work. Because mastery-stats will very very much pigeon-hole classes into what is expected from them.
So wave goodbye to the LOL-smite Disc priest.

I know most people laugh at most of these inventions. But the fact is, that most of the classes where never intended to be what they ended up being. They only got build up around these things because crative players used the system to invent new ways of using their class. Disc priest is a fine example of just that. Disc was once a pvp specc for priest. Only not a very good one, since Shadowpriests where way better at melting faces. This was not the intent of the shadow-specc but they where just so gawd-dammed good at it, and fun to play in pvp, that players went shadow. And disc got stuck with nothing. Then Blizz changed Disc around to the damage preventing specc it is today and everyone was happy. I am not 100% sure that this is the established canon on WoW-history. But that was how I experienced the game.
There are a lot of good things to be said about knowing what this and that class and specc can and cannot do, but most of these good things lie in the genre of "comfort". And comfort ends up being staleness which ends up being dying.
But let's hope that the classes will still be able to evolve. Maybe there is a lot to be gained from cross-speccing so that the masteries will have a split bonus? They don't really talk about what happens if you are half n half. Or the longforgotten tri-specc.

Whatever it ends up with, this does spell excitement for Cataclysm. At least for me.

I know you, I read your blog

2010-03-08T23:47:00.000-08:00

From the grumpy old gamer aka Sourpuss:

Allow me to elaborate, on this. I have always been the guy my friends would go to, when they needed a different opinion. In my college year-book my quote was "I'm not sure I agree with that you see..." (roughly translated). So personally I am not really all that surprised that I would be the first to blog "against" what every other blog I read is up in arms over. Remember the first law if Dwisms

What did surprise me was the reactions my post got. Every person commenting on it was mildly offended (i say that with love) that I would think that they would not cheer for me on a boss-kill. And I think that was me not explaining what disturbed me so deeply about SAN. What freaked the hell out of me, was the fact that people where all so mellow and nice. Not a single hot-shot or loudmouth or even a slightly annoying person online.
I'm sorry, but with 80 accounts that shit is just not possible. It was a twilight zone (not the frekkin vampires. Go watch some tv you book-readers) of epic proportions for me. And the reason I did not want to boast about a kill, was that I didn't want to be that guy. The guy who ruins it all, by being that guy that ruins it all.

Then -of course- I wrote a blog post and became that guy.

But everything was still okay. I mean, anyone who has ever read my blog wouldn't be surprised [im going to go on a total derail here, I can never ever spell to surprised. I always write "suprice" and have to depend on my spelling corrector to save my honor. Maybe I should stop being ehm, surprised] that I would be the first to yell C**kMoneky and run out of the room giggling.

Where was I going with this. Oh yea, embracing you inner gaming geek. As Calli of pew pew once wrote (dude), gamers are people... Okay gamers that I know (and gamers, it seems, that Calli knows) are people who like to take measure of whom they are talking to, when meeting new people. 'So you claim that you are a gamer too eh? does that mean that you have seen an nintendo 8bit once at your cousins house or does it mean that you can -in alphabetical order- name every single supermario game ever released?'.
Stuff like that matters to gamers, you need to know who you are talking to, when talking games. And -especcially with insecure male gamers- this will most of the time devolve into a penis-measuring contest.

And this SAN guild had none of that. That is weeeeird.

It is.

It IS too.

Shut it, it is.

Well luckly before I had a complete meltdown, there finally was a bit of what I consider "hello nice to meet you, how long is you penis?" talk. Last night. (and damn me, click this link, that one sketch made me love little britain).
Oh I gotta say, I'm neer going to get to level anything unless I turn of guild-chat. We sure are a chatty bunch. I tried to pug some forrest type of horde dungeon. Screaming cave or something. And I could hardly keep up with my group cuz I had to stop to read chat. And i was tonking.
So last night, people started (finally) talking bout "on my server we..." And I could breathe a sigh of relief. then I may of may not have been quite the little RP hater.

/g So what you should do, is say in /1 or /2 that you want to roleplay a Vampire, and which class and race would be the best suited for it, and if the name Bella was already taken

Or something along those lines. Someone told me to not to baitthe RP'ers. And as a long time real life roleplayer (table-top NOT liveaction, thank you very much) nothing could be further from what I wanted to do. But damn it was funny, when I did that on my first RP realm. Sporregar. i'll tell you horror-stories about that realm another time. Let's just leave it at the 50 times (honest to God) that I was lectured about what an RP-PVP realm meant. And every single one was over the same theme:

What is wrong with you, everyone knows that RP-PVP stands for Rapid progression- player versus player. We level fast here and then we pvp. So my name is pwnsfacezor

I mentioned that I was damaged goods from said realm. And someone piped in that they stemmed from Sporregar and if I had ever heard of [guild name that made me see red right there]. I might have said something very offensie about said guild. But was comforted that he had never been a member.

And, I dunno, I felt like everything was right again. Even if I 3 days ago had had a in-game BURN from Tobold, and was now happily chatting away with the ONLY FRIKKING PERSON whom I had ever posted a reply to their post saying nothing but: "i totally agree with everything you said" (hai Chas). Lemme tell you, if Mrs dwism ever heard that I had said something like that. she would faint.

This guild must be healthy for me :)

Single Abstract Noun (Original, I know)

2010-03-08T03:38:00.000-08:00

Let me start by apologizing, I am in a weird mood today, and thusly this post that was supposed to be a all positive post about all the great things I got to be a part of this weekend, seems to have turned a bit sour.

Dwism: Thats for amateurs, I tank with mah belly!

Tobold: You sure have plenty of that

Two things struck me when this occurred in guild-chat. First thought was: "Did I just get burned by Tobold"
Secondly, did I just get a little bit starstruck?

Yes I did, and that is a bit silly. But hey, I'm a bit silly. But so is my brand new guild "Single abstract noun"
and lots of posts have allready been written about this guild.
lots and lots and lots and lots. And all of them better than mine (screw dem holes).

If you have only been reading my blog (hi mom) you may be a little confused about what Single Abstract Noun, is. It is a new guild on Argent Dawn EU (and some american sisterserver too) where bloggers and blog readers, are all invited to join in mutual back-padding and selfpromoting cheering of how great players bloggers really are.

... That sounded harsh. But it is true. If you care enough about WoW to be reading blogs about it, you are mature and reflective enough in game to beat the wast majority of gamers, who turn on wow to turn their brains of and look at the big numbers they can produce or belittle other people.
(there do exist two bloggers that I can think of that are the exception to this rule. One is green and only blog to stroke his own ego by proving that he is not a social by playing a social game and running a social guild. And the other doesnt even blog about wow, but blogs to get people to play darkfall)
Anyway. So the IT-crowd (not to be confused with the IT-crowd) have now joined up in one guild. Single Abstract Noun. And in this community within the community we can cheer for ourselves and eachoher, for not only are we gamers. We are gamers that are bloggers (or read blogs). It is like the people who like punk-music have gathered in a sub-forum for punks who like Bad brains only.
Sure we all like punk, but we like punk even more than the fakers who claim to like punk, but only like sh*t like blink and Sex Pistols (damn wannabees).
And it's weird that I can get all sorts of pantytwisty over this. Because I had one of the best couple of WoW-hours in a long time in this guild.
I got to talk to a bunch of people I don't see very often (hello Kurnak and Calli) anymore. And some of my favorite bloggers as well.
These are people that either think like I do (and usually writes better) or people whom I very much look up to, bloggingwise. And they where all there. Tam, Tobold, Larisa and Tessy. To name a few.

and don't get me wrong. I had a fantastic time there. Chatting and reading and leveling. Oh leveling.

I rerolled a DK again, to test out some new things. Frost to be specific. And also trying to remember how leveling and Dk was like these days.
Plus, I got alts on everything else that needs leveling or gear or stuff back on Hellscream. So I knew that if I rolled a mage, I'd end up going back to Hellscream to level my mage there. So I took a Dk to make sure i'd return there. And I will return. It was such a pleasurable experience. And everyone was so nice.

but I was taken back to my highschool years, only in a bit of reverse or bizarro world. Because suddenly all the cool wow-people was there in this one guild. And there was a vibe of entitlement. If I was to abuse some quotes from Calli

We ran Ragefire Chasm and Shadowfang Keep with guild groups, mostly well under the level requirements, so low that we couldn’t use the summoning stones and had to, you know… walk to the dungeon entrances. Uphill both ways in the snow etc. Funnily enough, despite Shadowfang Keep in particular being one of the more bastard-hard of the low level instances, not a single guild group failed to clear. Of course we all have level 80 mains on our “home” servers and as bloggers tend to have an active interest in “how shit works” so it shouldn’t really be surprising.

And suddenly I'm bashing my own guildie for being an elitist prick. That is really not what I'm trying to do here (although it sure looks like it, doesn't it?). What I meant was, that there is this very nice feeling in the guild that we all know what we are doing (because we all know what we are doing), but it stems not from experience or knowledge. I've never raided with anyone in SAN (apart from Kur and Calli), so I could in no way know that Chas is a greatly skilled player.
But I do know it. Because he blogs about it. scratch that, I know because he blogs. Period.
And that is a very very weird way to start an guild experience. By knowing that everyone knows what the hell they are doing. And they know it really really well. Only you believe that they know, because you don't know. You know?
And i'm back in highschool bizarro world. Where im in the hipster crowd. And we all know that we are all cool, because we all know that we are cool.

I dunno, It just freaks me out.
A bit. Maybe its because *I* don't have to prove that I know how to play. Because they all know that I know. Its this weird moonie-like experience where WoW-cocks are hidden away. Like real gangsters never show their guns, because they don't have to. Only the drugged up wannabe-gangsters always show their pieces everywhere. And I've never had to, because I was comfortable that when I was on my Dk i knew my Sh*t.
And all of a sudden, there are these new people and they don't know me, but they know I know my sh*t. for no other reason than the fact that I am in this guild.
Im going around in circles here, I know. Let me just finish this by saying that when I logged on on sunday afternoon after just having killed the Lich king (again) in 10 man. I was afraid to talk about it. Because i didn't want to sound like I was bringing my wow-cock out in the open.
I dunno maybe that is what I wanted to do. To brag. To say "hey losers look at me, I rule". But it didn't feel like that. It felt like "whoooo I feel great, just had an amazing raid and we managed to do this and this". But I was afraid to break that taboo or me sawinging my big fluffy pink ego around. Because real cool people don't need to know that. We allready think you are cool. And by saying you did something you thought was cool, makes you uncool. you know. Bizarro

Edit:
Remember the first LAW of Dwisms: http://dwarfdk.blogspot.com/2010/02/dwism-1.html

It aint easy being a hunter

2010-02-26T05:00:00.000-08:00

Leveling my rogue (obviously before my computer chrashed) I was reminded of an old'ish post by the always brilliantly overpowered Troll shaman

The easier it is to level a class, the worse they will end up. Take hunters for example. Ignore all the crap about noobs being attracted to the cute pets or pretending to be Legolas. Overall I doubt the average hunter is significantly stupider than the other classes, or at least not enough to account for impressions of them. The problem is that hunters are absurdly easy to level and offer little challenge to the player, so they never learn. It isn't that the player is stupid, it's that he's uneducated.

When leveling a rogue (at least soloing), you learn all the tricks of the class. You have to, or you will be spending all your time eating. Rogues are slow soloers. They might -in fact- be the hardest class to solo-level today.
back when I first leveled a rogue they where one of the easiest. Back then being able to do damage was enough to be an "lol-solo-class".

What im getting at, (when doing dailies on my hunter) is that players playing hunters are in fact *punished* for playing their class well. Or at least playing their class in the most damage-dealing way possible (which for pve purposes is what they should). If a hunter even tries to push his rotation anywhere other than autoshot with a sting and maybe a single steady shot, his pet will loose aggro and the mobs will turn to him.

I'm sure that some hunters will and can explain to me how you to use MD and fade and other nifty tricks in order to maximise your output w/o getting aggro.
But that really doesn't change the fact that soloing as a hunter is either very easy (and you won't learn adamned thing) or very very hard (for very little damage per minute gain).

Things I wised I'd done before my computer crashed

2010-02-24T23:34:00.000-08:00

Ah Saturday. I remember Saturday.
Saturday was one of the highlights for me in my WoW career. I became a Kingslayer (not to be mistaken by a kings layer btw).
But it was also one of those days where I (unjustly) cursed Blizz to the deppest darkest corners of Dantes Hell.

You see, after having strutted around in Dal with my new title for an amount of time that can only be discribed as "tasteless", I decided that it was time to celebrate by joining the StarCraft 2 beta (which my trip to Blizzards worldwide invitational has provided me). I upgraded my account, I downloaded the game file. I booted up the game, I chose Dwism as my callsig and was about to choose my second name when my screen turned... weird.

Then in a brief second my computer made this "chrrrroollll" sound and it shut down.

Panic.

I booted the computer again and it seemed that by doing weird and unhealthy things to it, i got it working.
That was untill the following morning, when I - before raid- decided to do my dailies, grind some flasks and prepare for our alt run.
Ill save you the play by play, and just say that much cursing was involved, plenty of things may or may not have gotten hurled through my room. But in the end there was nothing to do. It was deadded. I knew from a while back that it was old and bruised. It had done something similar in January so I knew that my time left on this planet with my beloved pc was short. I did not know just how short.

Well, I've ordered a new one. My bank loves me. Just whenever I seem to get in the blacks, something like this always pops up (okay that one time it may have been me seeing my statement in "plusses" and running out getting an Xbox), that draws me back into the reds.

Getting to the point
Oh how I wised I'd: logged my leveling rogue out in an inn instead of thinking that the two hours out before I returned would not gain any significant rested XP -before my computer crashed
Oh how I wised I'd: Used my Alch cooldown to create one more red gem to cut -before my computer
Oh how I wised I'd: Cut my stack of gems and send to my AH'ing alt -before my computer crashedcrashed
Oh how I wised I'd: Put up my Auctions on my alt -before my computer crashed
Oh how I wised I'd: Stayed online in Dal showing off my new title a little longer -before my computer crashed
Oh how I wised I'd: Found a backup raider for our raid to be ready -before my computer crashed

Oh well, next week my new pc will come. Until then, don't leave all those tasks up till later, you will never know when you will be able to log back in.

Oh wait, yes I am

2010-02-21T00:15:00.000-08:00

Somebody once wrote a long post about blogging etiquette and how you should not post about what bosses you killed, because it didn't make for very interesting reading, and nobody cared very much about stuff like that.

I could not be bothered to go back and try and find out who.

You see I AM a Kingslayer now, and we don't bother with little details like that!

Don't I look pretty? (the others in the back helped too)

The way we ended up succeeding, was with an sort of alternative strategy in p3

Mah big Belly stops them!

And even though he looked awfully mighty as we came in

He soon kneeled over

(Action packed!!)

And there was much joy.

Back in the day

What a long strange trip it has been. (yes old Screens incomming)

My very first SS

Mah Twin

Some emo dude, and my peanut

Before the emo dude, there was MC

If you can't read the text on the left side, this is just a screen from Kara
(ehm moving on)

Look, it's Calli.. Don't read the whispers...

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The Day I was Born

So tell me, Pappa, why am I calling you Pappa?

You see son, I gave birth to you, I took you from the cold ground, and raised you as my own to one day, become like me.

But I'll never be like you. I remember my Dwarven ancestry, also the people I'm hanging out with says that you are really bad.... and drop epic loot.

Don't listen to them, they just remember the lore. Just ask Blizzard, its not really my fault, I am really a very good guy. I am an innocent victim. There has to be a Lich King. And one day, that will be you will be that King. Come sit here on my lap and let me explain it to you....

"I see", I said, "Jealousy" I said," Has got the whole world mad at you" I said.

And so it was, that one day, Redux and his kin took on his Pappa. They had managed to corrupt both Bolvar and The former king

And the Masquarade began. The warriors danced their little dance, the Lich King fell. After his companions had left, the tiny dorf Climbed on top of his fathers throne, and took his place.

His ruling would remain a secret, until he was ready. Until his new army was ready. Bolvar would be his first in command, and Jingles would be his right hand.

The salt mines where waiting for them all. And the new Lich King had a list of names of whom would get 2 servings of gruel per day.

Klepsacovic likes accessibility

2010-02-19T00:21:00.000-08:00

This is a long ranting reply to the blank statement at the end of this very fine post from The very overpowered Troll-shaman

Just for fun, I'm going to end this with a question and blanket statement which ignores individual differences or other perspectives. WoW is split between those who benefit from accessibility and get a much greater value from their $15 than before, and those who whine that noobs get to play the same game as them. Which are you?

Neither. But thank you for asking.

Allow me to elaborate,
I've cleared my way through everything in vanilla (except the last half of naxx - and I was never along for the C'thun kills). In BC I cleared every boss out (admittedly the last two bosses in Sunwell was after the HP nerf). And in Wrath I've done all dungeons and most hardmodes (in 10s). I am not what you would call a hardcore raider, but I was a very dedicated raider and still am, only on slightly lesser time.
I've seen a lot of posts from people who have done less content than me, complain about how unfair it is, that 1-button spam morons and riff raff from all sorts of walks of life get to see the same content as they do. 'They' being all the talented supercool-part-people-who-bid-you-super-cool-adieu (God, that series was amazing at its hight).
Ehm, watching that clip I forgot where I was going with this.
Right noobs.

On the other hand I also see posts from people like this: Which is basically saying: "I have a *real* life and I'm way better than the people who wants to be number one, and spend time in this game. How come they get better gear than me?".

And let me say: Both of these types of people are idiots. Bit guzzling ranting morons. I don't know how a ranting moron can be guzzling too, that is totally besides the point.

The reason *why* both are idiots, is because all they care about is "why am I not given any special status over everybody else who plays this game in the way they chose to?".

Players should be allowed to see all content in the pace they have chosen. And yes, chosen to work and have kids is a choice. Just like chosing a job where you can flex hours so you can raid new content (Like Ensidia does) is also a choice.
Where the problems is (or rather what the solutions should be) that Blizzard knows that people are drooling morons.
You are. I am.
When there is new content we want to experience it "now"!!!. Just like Klep said (can I call you Klep?)

After 3.0 I also killed a handful in BT, which doesn't count in my book

It doesn't count in anyones book. People do not want to clear last months content, just to see how it looks. They want to clear this seasons hardmodes, like all the cool people do. Only, you are not a good enough player to do that.

Sorry, but you are not. Fekk, I am not. It's not like it's a big secret, that me having a job, is the *only* reason I am not Ensidias maindwarf-tank. (They would roll alliance for me). It's not like, if I decided to dedicate my time to raid hard content, Paragon would all start speaking English or Learn danish just to have me on board.

I know we all like to think it is so, but it is not.

Where am I getting with this? Im getting here - Blizzard knows that us morons wants to *pretend* our sh*t don't stink. I mean, there must be a reason why the office-cubicle-mmo was not a huge sucess, but the "play and orc, elf or a Big Cow"- mmo is.
This is a game for people who likes to pretend. And in this aspect, we like to pretend that we are just as good as STARS.

What would you do as a designer to make sure that people aren't feeling left behind? Would you make sure that everyone would know how to play, or just make content easier, and make a gating system, so that everyone could catch up?
They took door number two there. Its the easiest door. It may just be the only door. So that is what they chose. They chose to pamper to the casual morons that overwhelm this game. And any game. They made sure that for 6 weeks I was just as far into ICC as any other guild in the world. I cleared out all the content (apart from that one guy) So I felt cool.

To get back to Kleps original question: which one am I? I am neither. I think that people who are good at a game should be rewarded higher than those who *think* that time is the only boundary between them and the top 10. i also think that all players should be given access to the coolest parts of this game. And dungeons are the coolest part. I think that the Emblem system is helping with that.
But I think that the forced easy modes in ICC did not.
Why not have a 3 step ladder: one for the hardcore, so we have something to strive towards. One for the semi-great raiders, and one for the "time-pressed" raiders.
For the hardcores: Here you go, hard-mode straight of the bat, if you want to start there.
For the semi: Here you go, normal mode
For the "time-pressed": here you go, have a buff.

However
Hardmode loot is better, than semi-great loot, which is better than the "time-pressed" options loot. Both in looks and in stats. You should be able to look at a guy and go "Ooooh, that is a cool hat he is wearing, I better keep on playing this game, because I want to look like that".
I know it won't happen, because it would break the fantasy, that we are all great players with great talent. Maybe its just me, but I don't mind someone else getting better gear than me, if they cleared harder content. Just like I don't mind my classmates at school getting better grades because they did their homework. But sadly too many people cannot live with the choices they make.
So they keep hitting auto-save in games about living with your choices (hello there Dragons age). And they will stop playing a game, if it makes it clear to them, that they are not unique little snow-flakes, or their mothers favorite. (yes, I did pull the "fight club" card)

Kingslayer, I am not

2010-02-17T08:19:00.000-08:00

....

...Yet.

But it sure as fekk was not due to lack of trying.
Last week (when the limited attempts where still in effect) we reached him with... I can't remember anymore, 7 attempts left, maybe.
Enough to get a feeling of the fight, but hardly anywhere near to make a dint in his Fugly helmet.
This week, was going to be different. This week, the little Dwarf, that was brutally slain, and raised as a mindless Death Knight, only to regain his mind and control, to combat the man who did it to him. It was time to get my revenge. And it was long long overdue.
We reached him on saturday, but decided to take an early rest. (for newcommers: I raid 10 manns on saturday and sunday mornings/afternoons)
So we would be well psycked and pumped and preparred to kill the big bad bugger.

Ah Sunday. Sunday was a day where the sun shinned from a cloud-free sky. Where the earliest of spring birds sang their first songs this year. And my 3 year old niece finally learned to pronounce my name properly. - Or so I was told.
Sunday for me consisted of hearing the sentence:

Hope wanes!

Over and over and friking over.
Let me save you a google, thats the words you hear when you wipe. Also, some pure frikking genious at Blizz decided that the figth needed to be epic! (nothing wrong with that part), so he added a 1 minute long intro, that starts at every pull on him.

But hey!
Its not like players will tire of it, they only get 20 attempts on all the bosses, so that would leave them hearing that, what, 10 times a week, maybe? No problem.
Only. Ehm....
They then removed the attempts for those *casuals* that couldn't kill him the first week he was up.

---Editors note---
As I've understood it -according to the forum posts- the new instance is too easy, because the world top guilds managed to *reach* him in hardmode on the first week. That must must must mean what we are a scrub nab guild for not having even downed him yet. FU forum trolls, go play the game instead of whinging over it.
---

What that means is, that I got to spend 50 million times listening to him being *ironic* as only an entire country of people, who do not know what Irony means, can be. Strike that, Continent, right Canadian Ironic singer Alanis morisette? All my gold to anyone who can find one ironic thing, in her song "ironic"

The Lich King yells: So...the Light's vaunted justice has finally arrived. Shall I lay down Frostmourne and throw myself at your mercy, Fordring?

Uuuh sassy.

Damn I lost track again.
Throughout this Sunday of attempts. I was happy. For the first time since Naxx 40 manned in Vanilla, I was happy playing the game. Apart from the question of what the hell have I been doing playing the game ever since, if it doesn't give me the same high [foodnote1], it also rose the question: what the hell have Blizzard done to not be able to keep up with the way players play?
Fekk it, at least they hit the hammer on the nail with this guy. Boy is it a great fight. Its just...well.. too good.
I'm getting ahead of myself now. We got the first two phases *Down*, i mean we owned them at the end of it.
We where so cool, we could do it blindfolded on one leg while kicking around a guy in a wheelchair. It wasn't easy, but after a long day of raiding we got that part pegged. It felt good. Considering the fact that the figth consists of 3 phases, and the hardest phase was now over, it felt really really good. So good, that we extended the raid for another hour, to get that golden attempt that would nail it all.
Sadly it did not come.
So we where left with the option of: extending the raid next week to get him over and done with and getting to the promised land of hard-modes. Or ending it there and starting from fresh next week.

We chose door number 3. Adding an extra raid night. So last night (tuesday) the battlehardned heroes returned to the frozen throne..... (to be continued)

So the other day, I was stumbling around the interweb, and I heard some orc linking to a site that lets you see ya own face in an armory, with ideas on where to improve gear. Naturally I looked up my own dwarven self, only to find out, that the damned armory was bugged. The blasted thing kept telling me that my legs where not enchanted. Stupid computers, I thought to myself. Then I looked at my wardrobe when i awoke. And whadda-ya know.
Ehm, I must have been drunk when i bought those, because my legs where not patched up with the leather. And leather inside plate-mail, sure makes for more comfort. I don't mind beeing hit in the head as much, and I can move way more flexible. Having run around two weeks without this leather, and *not noticing* should mean that the thought of little dwarven deathknights running around, anytime soon, would surely be a dream only. Oh well, not like there are any dwarven women around anyway.

(cont.) on tuesday evening. We felt frikking ready (me more than the rest because my pants where comfortable). Only... Well the troubles do never end. We where missing a kitty (That is "Alamo" -go read his guides). So we waited. And various kitty hate slogans was invented.
I drew the winning "obscure reference" -card, when I pulled this gem out of my sleeves: "ill kill that cat, ms sophie [drinks the flower-pot]. 10 gold to whoever rolls a toon on Hellscream with the name of where its from!!. (or forum love to anyone who posts the answer in the comment section).

Anyway, after an hour of grumbling and looking for unlocked candidates, we found a hunter, and not just any hunter, our groups very own hunter, who was on holiday on the weekend attempts. So with high spirits we went in. Fully expecting to get a new title.

As the title of the post might suggest, it would not turn out that way. And the worst part is, no, the *best* part is, that it was not anyones fault. the transistion from phase 2 to phase 3 just never got so much under control that we could get more than three attempts at learning the tricks of phase 3.
And it is super extra annoying that phase 3 holds one of those elements that a random player gets, and that you sort of have to have tried in order to succeed. (no spoilers, but it has something to do with frostmourne).

In the end, after so many attempts on the same boss. I can't say anything other than: I can't wait till we go again.
Although the first two phases have now started to feel more than a quick-time event, than a fight (go to that point click theese abilities, go there, blow cooldowns, taunt this, stand there, yell at the paladin, pick up adds, dream of chocolate and a very special toast, reach learning part... then wipe.)
But it is usually like that with every great long fight. So it is hard to complain. But i'll give it a go: in a fight that lasts well over 15 minutes, it is a pretty dammned shitty thing to add a mechanic that consists of three options: wipe the raid, have tried it before and now know what to do, or watch youtube strats about that one special thing that you will have to pull of at random in order to not wipe the raid. If it had been a special buff, that would be fine. If failing would mean that the remainder would be harder, that is fine too, but an event that demands you have experience at it prior or you will wipe the group, should not be 15 minutes into a fight.

That is just plain evul. Yes it is.

Apart from that, I can't wait for next weekend!

[foodnote1]
To understand why an addict like me kept playing a game like wow looking for that original high again, one only needs to ask a meth addict why he keeps taking drugs even though he will never ever ever ever reach the feelings of that fight high again - or see an earlier post of mine "chasing the dragon"

"Want to buy Tiger protection too? I have a lovely Rock for sale

2010-02-15T09:56:00.000-08:00

...It doesn't do anything, but do you see any Tigers around here?"
"Lisa I wish to buy your rock".

Ahh feeling safe. Or rather the need to feel safe. And to sell anything based on other peoples fears (be it a pet rock that keeps tigers away, or the thought of just how many breadcrumbs you leave out on the internet), you need to become that evil you warn about. I did that, I didn't like doing that. And since i only do this, because it's fun.
I'm not going to do that anymore.

I became that salesman that turns up at peoples homes and tells them that eastern European gangs (or if you live in America its either dem blackies or mexicans or canadians) to gain entry to your house and vandalise your children and rape you tv... Or something.
They have litterally sold their self and their souls to sell a home alarm system. I did it to prove a point on what i felt -and still feel- was important. I've made my point now, so I will stop.

It is really weird to write silly posts about fail-pugs that litterally was nothing than "look what I've read lately" post, and get a huge flux in readers.
And then I go through this little series, and (although it might not seem so to others reading) go through hours of guilt and heartache and internal debate over if I should post it or not. And I get my reader amounts cut in half.

The positives of this little story seems to be, that im lucky that I only write for myself, and it seems that the people want funny stories, and not these stories of evil.
The negative grumpy old man side of me, wonders why I bother :)

Next post: How did a DDK get to sit on the Lic kings lap? Why Ulduar is Uldubore, and why ICC *IS* the place to be.
Best frikking instance EVER!!!

High Morals (thank you Armory)

2010-02-15T04:12:00.000-08:00

I have a cousin. He plays WoW. He does not play WoW well. He does not speak English (much) and he does not read English (at all), so when he showed me his level 76 warlock (still in outland btw, That part will make sense in a minute) he said to me: "cousin, wanna try a warlock, i need to kill those big one-eyed things there". So i sat down. Summoned a blue-bear (his words) and started dotting the first orge up.
"What are you doing?" He cried.
"you need to cast that one, it has big numbers" As he pointed me to shadowbolt.
"Yes it might," I told him, " but all these little dots adds to a lot of damage combined, it is also what you are specced to do"
"Oh" he said As the first Orgre went down "Thats why its so hard". And I suggested that he might enjoy warriors or mages more, as they where all about big numbers.
He was not the only one on this account. It was owned by his big sisters ex-boyfriend. But my cousin and a couple of friends had gotten the password and took turns leveling toons for the guy. I was pissed on his behalf -since he was a chineese leveling farmer for an older boy, only he was doing it for free. But he loved it, so who am I to judge? So he would keep playing the warlock, and he would love it.
I considered linking to that lock and possibly even report it to Blizz, but that would just ruin the fun for my little Cousin. Besides he ain't playing in my battlegroup. (phew).

But someone who is playing in my battlegroup is this little genious. Remember him?

Let me refresh your memory: Pew pew wrote about him first, and I dug him out later.

Things have been okay for Plader. He has gotten a title. "The patient" and a new axe. His talents and Glyph choices are still piss poor (keep another window open with his profile, we are going to dig really hard into a lot in there next).
Looking at his activity feed (you know the one you cannot turn off), you will notice that Plader has been spending a lot of time in Heroics. How he manages to be allowed to stay till the end, is a mystery to all of us. But there you have it.
He still have an odd mix of tank, pvp and dps gear and trinkets. But it seems he has been spending a bit of time doing actual pvp, there is some achievements in WG. But it seems a long while ago since he ever did some eral pvp. No arena here ofc, but some wsg is in there a few months back. He probably got trolled so hard it scared him off that. Or maybe the dumb twat just forgot how to sign up for battlegrounds.

Today the little moron seems to have forgotten to go to work, as he spent his morning doing seasonal achievements. Wonder if they even have work, in the "special guild".
This guy is a clear cut case of a social (if you can call him that) just waiting to get scammed. Did I say scammed? I meant, get a great offer of the AH from me. It's his own fault if he cannot see that there are only 100 arrows in that pack. LOL. M&S social morons shouldn't be allowed to play with the rest of us. They are counterproductive.
How about we find out where they live and make sure they don't play with the rest....

Hey, come back, where are you going?

At what point did you decide this was not a nice rant? I know when I started feeling sick about this. It was when I planned writing it. More specifically when I wrote the previous post.
I think there is a fine line between telling stories about fail-pugs and the people you meet in game, and looking people up on what (and EPSECIALLY) when they play and how they play. Legally, I haven't done anything wrong, because Blizz has made it perfectly easy for me to prey on gamers who play for fun, but don't know or don't care to spend hours learning how to play.
My cousin is a prime example. If any of you had grouped with him on his warlock, I am sure that he would have gotten abuse and been kicked (or made it into a failblog post). Is it fair?
I think it is, don't get me wrong, if you decide to go play heroics with other people, you should at least have a clue what you are doing, and if not be preparred to annoy those that do. I would not ever group up with him, and expect to go anywhere or do anything for myself. And don't worry, he won't join heroics anytime soon :)

But what has Plader done? He joined a heroic with a guildie of mine. And I used him as an example since he was out there, and I knew him. But I could have just as easily have found someone who played the game for fun, and didn't care about speccs, talents, gear. But just wanted to get lost in the great world of Azeroth.

Like I did when I first got the game. I have more newbie stories than I care to think about. And I was well into my twenties when I started playing.

i could have picked on Legolass who is wearing spellpower legs, and is playing horribly in WSG atm. I could even have hooked up to his activity feed and see when he was online. Then I could go online on his realm and mock him. because I'd know when he would be playing.

THANK YOU BLIZZ.
you have given us little green a**holes greedy go.. Orges a great opportunity to forget that it is other people playing the game, but instead allow us to mock them on every step along the way to learning to master this game. Thank you for letting me stalk any player that has ever bugged me. Thank you for letting me make sure that everyone else can follow anytime they play and everything they do. Short of installing webcams in their houses, so I can watch them play, I dunno what more you can offer in the stalking apartment. This is just frikking super. I love the armory activity feed.

What really scares me, is that there are people out there who actively supports this. They mostly write for WoW.com
And they won't waste any opportunity to tell you that it is perfectly legal for Blizz to stalk you like this, it is in the Eula (didnt you read that? Then it is your own fault!! LOL) or the ancient of Republican speech of "HEY, I have nothing to hide". Good with some unbiased topics there... - fingers crossed you'll get that beta-invite guys!! go team fanboys!!

Now i've gotten myself derailed. Oh well.

Completly off topic, I want to say sorry and my email adress is nogetsjovt£gmail[dot]com and I live in Denmark and i'm 28

(internet privacy) I'm going to do something horrible

2010-02-12T07:31:00.000-08:00

.
I've complained, about those changes to the armory that lets you stalk players, before.

This time I've found a way that to drive my point home. Only, I'm really feeling bad about what I am going to do. And I'm having doubts as to whether or not I should even post it.
It is no secret that outside of this blog, and WoW, i am a librarian. And as one I know a few tricks about information seeking.
Just like anything else, it is an ability that can be used for good and (like it will in my next post) it can be used for evil.
(this part is to be read as if an eastern european magician is speaking) And using only public information, I have found these things. There is no secret databases used.

What inspired this post, was me crossing a boundry I did not knew I had. Contemplating rerolling to an RP server (for the billionth time), but knowing it would fail, because I had noone to talk to. "but wait" A voice inside my head said "You are a very close and personal friends with Tam from Righteous orbs - he even comments on your blog once in a while. AND *aaaaand* he even once -very politly- answered and email you sent him. He is like family!!"
So ofc I went to business. And in 5 minutes I was typing in an app at his guilds website.

Dear GM, healbot, tinker, sailor, forum admin and tailor of Tams guild. I see that you are recruiting Druids...

I didn't post it, I was just proving a point.

And for my next trick I won't even stop at that. I'll be stalking someone who didn't even decide to post anything about himself on the net. All thanks to Blizzard, the kings of stalking.

Because that is kindda funny

2010-02-08T03:29:00.000-08:00

World 7 of the Lich king 25 manned kill, was Ensidia.
Before their bann ended.
How?
Got alts?

Aint that funny?

If it wasen't for us I doubt the dev team would even have found the bug... We started on LK with 17 attempts left and had 13 on the counter when he died, in the alt raid that is.

With the danger of turning this into a fan-blog. Ill just say that If they could do this bug-free on alts. There really exists no reson to belive that they couldn't do it on mains too on wedensday.
Tough luck to them. At least it means that they are not a week behind everyone else in the hardmode race.

(where Stars from China seems to be in trouble, since it crashes with their big annual holiday over there.)

I think that Blizzard missed out on a huge opportunity to make WoW into a spectator sport, by trying to make the game into an e-sport.
If they had not (overly)focused on arena, and diminishing the PVE aspect of the game. The contest for world firsts could have given them the greatest spectator sport in e-games.
Dispite Blizzards attempts to ruin (yes forced easymodes and drop dead easy bosses is ruining the competetive PVE-scene) the "race to world first", that is still the most read about and most writting about and most popular aspect of WoW (and pretty much most of gaming).
Let me ask you in another way: What guild has the best pvp players? Personally I cannot name any pvp guilds at all. Except a ganker guild on my old server. And the only team I know was the Chinese RPM team I saw win at the World blizz thing in paris a years time back.
And I cannot remember their names.
I can however name at least 10 competing pve guilds. Sure my interest is focused on PVE so i notice that more. But there aren't really any sites that follow pvp (except that one site). Hell, tournaments on arena, are being cancelled because they cannot get anyone to watch em.

What if, there where a special tournament realm for pve? Where guilds would compete for world first of dungeons? What if that realm would get access to bosses a week before everyone else? So dungeons would get hyped. And you could participate by watching in GM God-mode?
And bosses would be tested by last years winners, to make sure they where as bug-free as possible?
There are so many ways of doing this. And since WoW's pvp scene has gotten so much trashing for their unbalanced gameplay.
And seing as wow is the best PVE mmo there excists. By a long shot. Why not play on your strenghts?

And if anyone says that pvp is an important factor, I'll ask you this: name me a successfull MMO that had only pvp in endgame.
Go on.
No?
Then name me one that had its primary focus on pvp but, has some elements of pve.
This time there are a few, but as soon as people hit end-level and see nothing but pvp, they leave again for.. WoW.

PVE is where its happening, and Blizz does it best. Why not play on those strenghts?

Also Blizz remember, nobody does it better!!

All hail The king is dead zed, baby.

2010-02-05T01:41:00.000-08:00

And with that smooth blending of popular culture references (can you find em all theres five in there)!! I'll start todays post with an admittance:

I've still not been able to get myself to watch that damned kill-movie of the 10 manned kill of The King.
Dunno when i'll get around to it. I just can't. And it's stupid, since I've forced myself into a position in my guild where I write the guides to kill bosses. Or rather, I start them up, find the links, give a short recap, do a funsie add an anecdote etc.
I'ts something i really like doing still. It makes me feel like i'm still a little bit part of the team. The others play along, nicely. When the 25 manned raid was short i got to tag along and see the blood-queen for 4 attempts. They where nice, let me believe I was still a part of it, our raid-leader even made funny about how i'd mentioned that the Dreamwalker was in one guide named "Dreamweaver" as a tribute to me. So all in all it was great. I stayed in the back and took the last round of bites and did poor dps.
But I feel like I still contribute something to the guild, by writing these guides. So I should not shy away from reading the guide and seeing the fight. But I do.
I just can't bare to have it spoiled.
BTW can I just send a big thanks to Chas of Righteous orbs? Thank you for trying to drag me down with you with that super post that i cannot read because you are spoiling everything!!!! Damn you!

In other news. Blizz fucked up.
They banned Ensidia for playing the game normally.
If you have read about rogues ( i have a fair bit) you would know that they like using saronite bombs on fights to add their dps. In fact its starting to look like a favorite profession for rogues these days. The only ones who did not know this where troll-morons and Blizz's fight designers.
Yes, I am biased, it's a blog. Who gives a fekk about objectivity?

Kungen made an excellent blog post about this. (I like Kungen, whenever he writes, I always think: If someone who is pure heart and zero writing skills can make a blog, so can I.)
Where one of his main arguments is this: "We knew there was a bug, we didn't know what caused it. So we went with it, and got the kill. There has been major bugs on every single end boss fight since the game was released, so nothing new there. So why Blizzard decided to ban us this time i do not understand." (this is my interpretation of it)
So they got set back a whole week on hard modes, compared to the other guilds in the world. For getting there first.
Nice one.
the race to the hard mode version of the Lich king will be fun to watch indeed. Just a shame that one team has been forced to go back to the finish line, while the other runners got a headstart.

And then Muqq of Ensidia did something that was pure genius. I have loved his attitude for a long time. And this time, he blew the scale.
He wrote this post -At first glance it seems like an angry little spoiled brat that whinges about not getting his way. That is, until you remember your gaming history. I had forgotten this, but luckily Wow.com reminded me (well, thats not true, one of their reads did, wow.com are not leaning the same way i am on this, and they are pretending to be biased. Be upfront you cowards.).

Gaming history.
Once upon a time, before this was naught but pixels, there was a game called EverQuest. and one of the loudest gamers there was named Tigole. Tigole was the gm of Legacy of steel, one of the leading guilds in that game. And almost word for word, Muqqs posts copies Tigoles old rant about EQ, (at the bottom) and later on how he will make WoW so much better because he knows the other side of the fence.
Tigole did some amazing stuff with WoW, but it seems that Muqq is saying that they have forgotten where they came from (but not their old guild-mates, they still get special treatment.. old news is old).
So with humor, knowledge of history and just a spice of self-irony Muqq delivered. a subtle and brilliant comeback to Blizzards banning them.
Well played.

Let me just finish this by saying that beating the Lich king on a bug that you know is happening, but don't know how to prevent, is very different from bugging out Yogg-saron on purpose to get a kill. Stating that they knew how to bug it out, and specifically went with it to get a world first, and just seeing that the encounter bugged and not knowing what caused it, are two very different things. In one of them, you are beating the encounter presented to you, in the other, you are looking for ways to circumvent the encounter in order to beat it.

If i am driving my car and my seat-warmers malfunction so that they catch fire, and i in that confusion spinout of control and hit someone on the sidewalk. I would hope that my punishment would not be the same as that dude that drove onto the sidewalk to chase pedestrians, and see how many he could hit. In the end we might both have hit someone, but how and why we did it, well, that should matter. Shouldn't it?

Killing the Lich king

2010-02-04T05:28:00.000-08:00

While I am ploughing my way through the CMS jungle (look at me with the lingo!!) trying to figure out my next step, something else happened, and it happened in wow.
The final part of Icecrown Citadel was released. And A certain someone got killed world first.

Two things are horrible about this. no wait 3.
1. I wasn't one of them who got to kill him (yet)
2. There is a video out allready
3. The final cutscene has been hacked

If we look at why these things are horrible, i think that the first one is a given. The 2 others are related: You see, i am one of those weird raiders, who likes to discover things for themselves. I really don't want a how-to guide explaining to me, what I should do and when.
I love nothing more than wiping and learning a fight.
"Wait, you LIKE wiping?? wtf is wrong with you?" Okay, let me elaborate then. I hate wiping, but i love wiping and learning a fight. There is no greater fun (some might call i a barrel of monkeys... but those guys who do that are weird Brits who think that "whinge" and "whine" is the same thing!! - Freaks).
Where was I? I like raiding. I do not like "following the 12 steps to loot".
So it bothers me, that 5 days before the encounter is released, the ending is revealed and spoiled. And it bothers me even more, that within 12 hours of killing Arthas, the "how-to-kill-him" video is out there.

I should just not watch them right?
Well, the ending movie, I have not seen. But thanks to my guildies (they are so nice) -after I had explained that the end should not be spoiled for those of us who likes to earn the right to see those kinds of vids - I now know that Hogger will be the new Lich king and that Arthas was Thralls evil twin. THANKS A BUNCH GUYS, YOU SUCK!
(sorry if I spoiled it for anyone else, but if I have to suffer, so do you!)
But apart from these things being spoiled, I have not seen or heard anything about that. And I like it that way.

The strategy to the fight, is another matter entirely. You see, not only do I like raiding (monkeys... not so much), but to me, raiding isn't all that much fun unless you like the people i raid with. And I like my guild. Furthermore there are only 3 sorts of guilds that raid blindly:
a) Progression high end guilds - top 50 in the world
b) fucktards who think that 0/0/71 is a great tanking/healing/massive pew specc.
c) guilds who may not be cutting edge, but who has chosen to learn the fights by themselves

the last types of guilds are also known as the DoDo guilds, because they are approximately just as rare (and recruitment for one is even more rare), the second type of guilds would demand that I gave myself a home lobotomy, and i've not yet quite reach the state where I am preparred to do that. And the first would demand a couple of things: I win the lottery, I quit my job, I get divorced and get zero lat on my pc... oh and a truckload of extra skill, im sure) of those things only the latency, the lottery and the skill part, are things I even want to happen. Also I highly doubt that cutting edge guilds really go in blindly.

So I am "stuck". And honestly, I could do a lot worse. i like being stuck here, I really feel at home in my guild, and me liking to try things untried, really isn't strong enough for me to risk a new guild. So here I stay, content...enough.
But don't you dare spoil anymore of the ending to me!

Failed... And breaking the fourth wall

2010-02-03T09:30:00.000-08:00

.

FUCK

Google fucking sucks.
Cock bullocks. and Orange wee.

I have failed. Or rather sites.google.com has failed me.
In case you did not know, google owns blogger.com
Google owns a lot of stuff.
One of their (to me) newest features is google.sites.
Its great. It's easy. It's my very own website.
Oh the dreams we shared, my website and me. Oh the posts I wrote. The guides. The forum. The images. the fun.

But alas it was not to be. You see, google. They sucketh.
They do not like me posting or doing anything on my sites.google.com - Or rather, they don't like DW-redux to post on that site. They do like ME posting. Under my real name.
And I do not want to do that. I really really do not want to do that.
At first I tried to be cool with it: "Come on old man, you do not have that many readers, what does it matter?"
But i am not all that great at fooling myself.
It does matter, I do not want my personal life or my work life to be associated with my WoW life. I do not want my wife to be either. And its not like my name is John Doe. There is only one of me, and google wants the world to know everything I do.

I wanted DW-redux to post stuff about wow (or rather my new mmo-name dwism), not the Librarian. I don't think that is an unfair thing to ask for.
But the only help google gave me was: "Hey guy why are you ashamed of what you create" F@#k you, im not, I just want to be able to post under my most famous blogging name. "well guy, then you can just create a new google account and write under that" Yes, i could. BUT i am not allowed to set google accounts up to forward to other google accounts. I am NOT allowed to have two google accounts open at the same time, and that is something i really want to do.

So my dream died. 40 hours of working on it, learning how sites work, thinking about posts, writing posts, making long notes on how i wanted the website hierarchy to be ect ect. Down the frikking drain.
Craptastic.

So here i am back at this blog. I feel so very very sad. Anyone know another free and easy to use website I could get into? please?
Gotta admit that a blog seems a little tiny bit restrictive now that i've toiled with a fully fledged website. I had dreams there.
Dreams of different topics order under what they where about. (and a tiny little bit about making Larisas facelifts of the year list.. i am so envious of all the winners ;)

To the very end, i had hoped i'd find a loop-hole. That was why i started with all the teasers. Sorry to dissapoint. If its any comfort, you are not half as dissapointed as i am right now.

In other news: I've effectively missed out on two weeks of raiding, and going on my third now, because of crap stuff colliding with my raid-days. Work mostly, and pc crashing. So my mood is just GREAT.
I've not even seen the blood-wing in 10 manned. And if my group are supercool (and they usually are) ill be missing out on the lich king himself. WOOP.

DW'ism #1

2010-02-02T02:27:00.000-08:00

I may have been over-thinking this unimportant part. But hey, at least I missed all the vital stuff

What is DWism?
(obviously this is to be read with an "what is the Matrix" -type of voice)

Also: "Gah, even something as simple as this is hard when you don't know HTML"

Let's go down to the lobby, and get ourselves a treat

2010-02-01T06:44:00.000-08:00

People of earth (if you don't get that one, know that i'm with Coco)

There will be a short intermission before this blog continues. As a matter of fact, this blog will NOT continue.

Its over. Im done. Screw you Hippies!!!

(but be sure to check back when i announce something truly amazing.)

NOTE:

"something truly amazing" would ofc not mean something as silly and stupid as me stopping to blog in order to create a brand new website, where I am in way more control over how I want things to look. I would never ever try and sell something as little as that as "something truly amazing". I would never ever ever ever do that.

[this part may be editted out when I announce the "truly amazing" part - that is not quite ready yet).

Hang in there fans!!

Play blindfolded if you like a challenge

2010-01-28T03:15:00.000-08:00

This is my little elaboration on the topic posted by larisa, who again elaborates on a long series of posts by Tobold (here here and here)
The series -so far- culminated in this quote:

Isn't it somewhat embarrassing if you are loudly shouting how easy it is to ride a bike, and then somebody points out that you still have the training wheels on?

And oh boy.
To me that statement screams: "I am not as smart as DW-redux always thought I was" (no, it doesn't, im just thinking that if I throw a little badmouthing his way, he will post here and possibly link to me in his own blog. Hell, It worked for he who must not be named and Syncaine).

Maybe it's just me, but good game design -to me- is all about giving the players a challenge. And a challenge will and should never ever consists of stopping the players from doing what they want to do.

Let me elaborate: If making a game hard for you means that a boss will perma-kill you, if he succees at killing you. Or if you think that a game is hard because a boss will turn your keyboard off, or if a hard game to you means that you need to turn off your UI so that you will have to hope that your heals will find the target you are looking for. Well, then I hope you never get to design games.
Hard bosses should test your skill and knowledge (and sometimes your reactions-skills) to the brink. It would be nice if it also makes teamwork a central theme.

To quote one commenter, who summs it up splendidly, Hirvox:

It's as embarrassing as using two hands to steer. Perhaps a more apt metaphor would be rally. Rally drivers use custom tires, better engines, weight-reduced chassis, more reliable gearboxes, improved suspension, more sturdy shock absorbers and so on. Sure, all of those make it easier to reach faster checkpoint times, but they also shift the challenge from fighting the car to negotiating the route itself.

There needs to be an understanding that there is a huge difference between games that are hard, and games that are *hard to play*.

So yes, I will still stand by that WoW is too easy as it is now. There are a couple of hard-mode bosses that fall out of this catagory - But I don't want to get into why its such a terrible idea to have easy mode again before hard-modes become available. Okay I will, and better still I'll qouote myself completly out of context, to get you to reread that old thread:

In the end, all you have done is beating a cripple. No matter how you might justify it, in the end, it's you pointing and lauhing at a cripple, going "AHAHAHA you are pathetic!! I was blindfolded and jumping on ONE LEG, and I still beat the crap out of you!

Addicted to WoW.

2010-01-25T09:01:00.000-08:00

Yes i am.

Unlike what some other bloggers will have you believe, WoW is not healthy for you. Well, thats not true either. WoW is not healthy for me.
You see, there are some of us, who like to play games. The reasons for these can be many, for me, its the thrill of being in control over a story where I am making the progress.
*I* am the one who choses to sacrifice the Arls frikkingly stupid wife (and I am still extremely happy about that), to save her son - not some storyteller. I am the one who gains progress. I am the one who was prepared!

But I am also the same person who likes to compare me raiding to when I used to play basketball. "We practice 3 times a week". I am also the one who -because of games like Warcraft- cannot sit still while watching tv. I cannot spend 5 hours over at a friends house, nor can I survive an afternoon with my in-laws (well okay, thats not *only* because of that). I get edgy, i get impatient. I get bored.
Why? Because nothing happens. There is no simple goal to move towards. There is no progress to be made.

Why should i sit here with a bunch of people i deep down do not have anything in common with, and talk about the weather, when I could be spending this time leveling, grinding, reading guides or prepare for raids.
When you have as limited free time to play, that I sometimes feel i do, and wants to keep up with the raiders *And* at the same time have a deeper addiction to leveling alts (I blame Kurnak and Calli), there just are not enough hours in a day to keep up.
So I get grumpy whenever I am forced to do other stuff. This includes hanging out with friends. Good friends. People I like. Because when you 'hang out' or go to a party or watch a movie.. nothing happens. I mean.. no that is what I mean. Nothing. frikking. happens.
I know this is an addiction, because i feel it in my bones. I know i needs my fix.
In game it is no different. i am *not* one of those players who likes to hang around in Dalaran and spend my nights in /2 chatting away. I cannot stand it. I won't waste my time with idle chat. I can easily spam my guild-chat with plenty of sillyness while im grinding/leveling. And maybe thats the point of it all, wasting my time.

I think there is a reason why (at least in my guild) people would comment that they would spend their evening "grinding some wife rep" when they didn't feel like playing. Because then there was a reason to go offline. There was a reason to spend your time starring silently into a television screen. Because it gave you a -if not exalted- then at least a non-hated rep with the wife-unit.
Think I am kidding or being ironic to prove a point? I am not. I have really did decide to cut down on my game for two reasons: having free time to follow my local baskeball team win another championship and because I realised that even though there is not gain from doing nothing, it is still a healthy thing to do. My hope for 2010 is that i'll find an online game that both me and my significant other will enjoy together, like we used to in wow. But the things she spends her free time doing when im playing....
If only there would be a soduko styled mmo with a storyline and persona from Gilmore Girls - But that is another post for another time. For now, I'll log off more often and try to enjoy the grass growing or something....
Hmm I wonder: If i measure the grass growth, I can track a couple of straws each week and see which one gets the longst stop it!

Emotional about a game, how quaint.

2010-01-21T07:30:00.000-08:00

As i mentioned in one of my first posts ever, I have a very special account.
On my account, there are only 9 character slots for the realm of Hellscream.
Where normal players have a tenth slot, I have a mage. We will get to that mage, and why it Blocks my tenth character slot, in a second.
First some history. Once upon a time, not too long ago, a friend of mine got me to try out this game he had gotten bored with (after two whole long weeks), it was called WoW. It was one of those moneysink multiplayer gankfests where you had to play for BOTH the actual game, AND a monthly fee.
What is this, a magazine subscription?

Anyway, I was playing a table-top game with some friends at that time, and wanted some ideas of how a dwarf with two axes could look and work. And, well, I got it for free.
I logged on. And never looked back.
There was of course a problem with this game. I had just moved in with my wife-to-be. And I am a very competitive person. And I was behind everyone else on my randomly chosen server. The people I got in guild with (shout out to all the lovely danes in Mean drunks, a guild that sadly has all but ebbed out.) always seemed to be miles ahead of me, so hours upon hours was poured into this game to catch up. My warrior soon got retired for a paladin. He had a name I will not mention here. Suffice to say that I wanted to name him Foo - so I could say "foo is fighting" or "his foes are named foo fighters", and Blizz would not allow that. So I got.. creative.
It was a horrible name, and on top of that i made him very hastily.
The process was thusly: "cool hair, cool bear (red ofc both) and cool looking face, okay that about does it" Then I clicked skin color "Ohh I can be black, cool".

So yes, he was redhaired with a big full read beard, and very very black. It was horrible. And that name. But I cared not, i was happily autoattacking everything i met. That was untill I joined my first dungeon. I got invited because they where lacking a healer. I was not informed of this, so I melee'ed. And got yelled at. In caps. Left, logged out, read my manual, and logged back in as a dwarf priest named Dreamweaver. A name I was very proud of for a whole year, untill someone called me property of Macromedia, and I googled my damned name... Sigh.
So I was spending much time on my computer, and any normal person living with an obsessed crazed person, would probably have left and found her own place again. Sad part is, im not married to a normal person. One day, I got a little tap on my shoulder "what are you doing" "playing wow" "can I try?" "now?" "yea" "no"
(then my brain started working) "no, i mean... ehh sure you can, but not on my frikking toon. make your own".
And so the mage was born.
Narratively speaking, it would have been much easier to just have given the mage a name from the start, but there is a point to calling her, "the mage". You see, Mrs DWredux is a shy person, and she doesn't like me mentioning her too much here.
And she has never ever had anything to do with fantasy - before she met me. So her character creation process was thusly: "I dont like fighting" "then you can be a warlock or a hunter or a mage" "warlocks sound evil, and i dont like guns" "mage it is". And she spend two hours clicking human female mages, untill she had created one that looked JUST. LIKE. HER. and she named it....
She gave the mage her own name. Inventive.
But who am I to judge, my toon was named after a web-design programme.
Anyways she levelled the toon, and got very much into the game. So much so, that I got her her own copy of the game. It was not an act of charity, mind you, no, it was an act of selfishness. Her character got to a higher level than mine, and her playing meant that I could not play!
We couldn't have that.
So she got her own copy and the prot paladin Emmerdale was born. (after 3 months of playing, and her making a ton of British friends, we found out that *that* was a name of a television show... she got many a weird friend /w "oooh i love that name" - it scared her a lot).

Attached
Spending hours, and days of played time on a toon (and later months), looking at it's back. sharing adventure, having laughs and meeting friends. Can scar you. In a good way. I could never delete my priest. Even at a time when I hated priests and how they worked. He and I, have been through too much. And seen to many wonderfull things, to just let it slip out into that void called "delete". There is no love, like your first love. And he was my first WoW love.
The same for my wifes mage.
She stopped playing the game over a year ago, almost straight after Wrath hit. The game just didn't have that same lure to her anymore. And the luvely people in mean drunks, we used to play with, ahd all stopped. Some of us to join 'teh hardcore' raids. Others to have kids and silly stuff.
But her very first toon. That one lingered on. And so I was left with nine slots on my homerealm to toy with. Not that I was holding that against her. I got it. I asked her once if I could delete it, and she looked at me, as if I had proposed to defile Bambi or something. That was a no.

The problem for me, is that I am a compulsive alter. I see or read something about a new class, think 'nifty' and roll it. Or go back to leveling it. That has cost me many a lost hour on some forsaken toon in the middle of nowhere.
Then I would delete it, for another class. For years I have had a constant rerolling of the following: shaman, mage, warlock and warrior.
Eventually I got my shammie beyond that invincible line of "he is high enough" level, that I do not want to delete that toon.
So then there is the matter of 3 classes for 2 slots. The old musical chairs of rerolling. litterally over 200 levels have been poured into these classes. Then I started my Project Dreamreaper (that i started up again, in secret and got to the low fifties, where she is rotting atm). And there where two characters left for that one last spot.

Well, that was when I broke down. I begged Mrs DWredux, and payed 20 euroes. And now that mage is enjoying her retirement in an unnamed roleplaying server. Saved from the evils of this world. Most likely never to be played again. And I have my ten toons set up. The name for my mage has been placehold for Cataclysm and a wolfmage. And I have a warrior alt that i am having a blast with (again).

So what is the point? Well I think, the fact that we can get so attached to an inanimate object, might be silly to most people. Im sure there are some green folks out there, that would call it non-cost beneficial, and lol'ing at me for not spending all my waking hours thinking of ways to scam my fellow players out of their gold, and their enjoyment of the game. Instead I chose to spend 20 euros to realm-transfer a toon that I do not play. Hell, a toon that I am not *allowed* to play and a toon that noone would EVER find out, if I had just deleted.
But I didn't delete it. I spend a truckload of real money on it instead. But why?
For the memories. If it had not been for that mage, I would most likely have been not married. Not that the games addiction would have killed us off, but rather, for the fact that, had she not taken the time to understand why I game. Why I enjoy many games, she would have never understood a huge part of who I am, and that would have killed us.
Instead that mage, means that she smiles politly when I throw my keyboard across the room and yell because I DC'ed when we had that one boss at 5% on our first kill.
Hell, she even -sometimes- lets me use the tv to play dragon's age on my xbox on nights when theres new episodes of Greys anatomy.... sometimes.
That mage holds so many fond memories for me -and her. About great adventures we shared. And will share.
She might have stopped with WoW, but there is still LEGO indiana jones II out there.

The many goals of blogging.

2010-01-19T00:56:00.000-08:00

Why does a person chose to blog? I've set up 3 parameters earlier - and I think i've found some prime examples of them. Also there is a bitter-sweet story to be told.

My 3 archetypes for writing blogs are:
- 1) If you just cannot shut up about something, and want to get it out there.
- 2) Fame. You are not writing this for your own benefit, but in order to reach as many readers as possible - hopefully in the end to land you a writing gig. (or in the case of wow-blogging, a job at Blizz)
- 3) The sad fucks who need a reason to live, and for them its writing a blog where they over and over again prove that they are smarter, cleverer, prettier, wealthier and their gf (in real life) has big boobs.

Prime example time!
Let me just add, that I honestly do think that we all have the need for all three things in order to keep on blogging. Whether we admit to it or not. It's a matter of % to each of the three.

Getting rid of the third reason first. You know the type, loud as a motorbike, But wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight. The obnoxious know it all who constantly belittles people that chooses not to play the game as he plays it. Think green, greedy and moronic, and I think we all know who im talking bout. In the old days I used to think it was a joke site, where the ideas of capatalism and greedyness got so twisted and out of hand that everyone would see the stupidity of ripping people off in a game. Sadly that blog was not about that. (no, I won't link to it).
Allright, the second one, is less easy to spot. And let me just say that Tobold is a blogger i respect a lot, but his priorities are a lot different from mine.
In a (long) series of posts he talks about his blog commenting policies. I guess you made it big, once you have to delete blog comments that cannot stick to the subject and has to be personal. I cannot see myself ever doing that. Then again, I hadly believe there is a great big audience for my ramblings, so i guess that all works out.
Anyway, in this series, Tobold made a post saying: Do you want me to stop allowing comments AT ALL, or do you want me to continue deleting inapropriate comments? -Isn't that nice, blackmailing your readers like that?
It must really mean that he is near the breaking point. Now I cannot see the comments he has deleted, but they must be pretty bad, for a blogger to need to take his whole blog and put a gun to its head (metaphorically). Anyways the important bit is the followup post. In there he answers someone who wrote: "It is your blog after all" with the sentence

Not 100%. Without readers this blog would be nothing.

To me, that is a very weird thing to say. I see no adds on his blog. And he repeatedly states that he is not getting payed by any company to write his blog. So I'm left to conclude, that the prime reason he writes is the fame. If there where no readers, he would not blog anymore.
Which in my book is weird, considering the origins of web-logs. But I am not one to judge (yea right you aren't), and whatever motivates Tobold, it always makes for an interesting read.

Now the first reason to write blogs, that is the most interesting one. And imo it has two sub-genres. There is the catagory I myself fall under (although fame would be nice... and did I mention Im married to a gurl in real life, who has boobies and used to model?), the sub-catagory of "cannot shut the fuck up". In my guilds website i am labeled as 'mini-troll' and I do believe I have the highest comment count in there. It's sad, in a way. But I have yet to find a subject that I do not have an opinion on.

Now he gets to the point
But that is just how I work. I like to comment on things, and I love to argue.
Now, the spark that started this little post was a sad story, and one that needs to be told. You see, the other sub-catagory of this type of blogger, is the ones who generelly feels that what they have to say, makes a difference. Their unique view on the world, will make the rest of us stop and listen and make *our* world, just a little bigger. -Some of theese types of bloggers are wholly misguided people. Some of them post stuff like "have you ever noticed how shadowpriests/warlocks have a lot of dots and druid-trees have a lot of hots? Well I have, so I called my blog 'plenty of hots n dots' isn't that unique? How come noone else saw that???" Or they will write crap like "notice how cool game WoW has a littly tiny mechanic that is similar to hot game Guitar hero? Isn't that weird how I am the only one who noticed that?" erhm...
Other of course *do* do that.
Take the little Gnome that could Larissa of the pink-pigtail inn. That is one great example. (although I heard she works in sweden for some hospital in Public relations, and is using her blog as a testing board for PR ideas...So I've heard).
But my story isn't about her, its about another blogger who falls into this catagory. The one and only Matt 'Matticus' Low, from world of Matticus. He is a great blogger, and a gifted writer. And from what I've had to do with him, he is also an all around good guy (and Canadian!!!). I once wrote an not so nice post about him, and instead of giving me, what I had a comming he nicely posted "im canadian" [if you follow the link, you will see that I stereotyped him with americans, and how they are somehow sometimes very different than us]. I thought that was the coolest way of telling me to f*ck off. I really do. I loved it.
Also, he read my blog!!
Anyway, a couple of days ago, he wrote a post about how he had gotten the chance to write for Blizz indirectly via their WoW-mag. But there is a twist to the story. He did not get any credit for it, which in itself sucks donkey balls, but to top it off he came out of the whole experience with the feeling that

Its just crushing when you find out that the gaming company who you’re most loyal and passionate about has heard of you and doesn’t really like you

(my emphasis'ses)
He vaguely explains that it is about politics, and doesn't really wants to go into details (God I wish you would Matt). Now, the thing that really gets to me, is his comments in said blog post, and that is the thing that earns Matt the spot in this setup. When commenters demands satisfaction and Blizz head on stakes and asks him to demand getting by-lines and a throphy in Blizz HQ, Matt says:

At least SOMEBODY out there is (hopefully) going to benefit from the articles I wrote. If I don’t get credit, I’m gonna be hurt, yeah, but I’ll live. As long as someone finds use out of it, I will live. Its also why I don’t go hard after RSS scrapers or whatever. 1: I’m too lazy 2: More people are receiving the message and can benefit from the experience I’m sharing.

isn't that sweet? That dear little gullible idiot. If only there where more of people like him in this world instead of Goblins telling you to screw over everyone else before they screw you over.
I mean what sort of degenerate world are you trying to create here? Fu**ing kill your neighbor before he kills you? Do unto others before they get to you? I mean what the f**k is wrong with you? I've read both bibles (the Holy one and Satans bible) And I can clearly tell, which version you are trying to spew over the world, you selfish selfrighteous pretendcious little sad excuse for a human be......

[the rest of this blog post has been cut off, since even the grumpy side of The Dwarf Death Knight, could no longer stand this negativity. Please dear readers, do not read that goblin blog, it will only hurt the inside of your soul.]

Playing Shadowpriest pt2 (and other raiding rants)

2010-01-18T05:58:00.000-08:00

First off, Im very flattered that Tam over at Righteous Orbs linked my first part of this adventure in his, sort of titled: "other cool blog posts you should read". He and Chastity are in my top 5 of favorite people who blog. And on top of that, they always write such cool posts (and I think, THINK, they studied some sort of writing thing, so their word setting up with words next to eachother always make reading funsies!).
It makes for some sort of perverted pleasure to see other people linking to your posts - especcially a post you are proud of yourself. So thanks.
Well there I went again ranting bout stuff that wasn't even on the focus of this post. My focus was Playing a shadowpriest. Something I got to do once again this weekend. And something... erhm.

Promise not to tell anyone?

Cross your heart?
Okay: Its something that im really loving. Thats right, im one of *those* people. You know the type, the "I play a healer, i really do. But secretly I am a closet Shadowlazorrrr pew pew."
Because, I will never ever admit to loving my shadow specc. Never. I am a healer, and i like it much more. It is only when Im forced -Forced I tell you!! - that I reluctantly turn on the shadow-powers.
Also, if I went all out dps-main, there would be expectations.
People would expect me to actually do dps. And that is something, I simply cannot do. Much.

Getting to the point
So we had our second week of ICC 10 manned fun. And by the numbers it was a huge success. We cleared the place. twice. Both on mains, and then on alts. So yea on our big hard glistening purple epee... epics.
But, alas, it was not all glitter, there was doom too.
First of (I know, this has been covered before, but i like to make new readers feel welcome. Don't you just hate blogs that start of with "so me and shadowflex still had the same issues, yet Tyrut explained that if we both just swtiched the 3 troublesome stats around Negirr would never ever end up in that situation. LOL, it was so easy!!" Argh)
Where was I? Oh yea, first off, I've stopped playing the big boy raid game somewhere around Coliseum. I did not have the time, nor the patience to clear a raid 5 times a week. So now I raid in 10 mans only. The problem, however, is that the rest of my 10 manned group, did not stop raiding 25s with me. They are fully decked in "look at what you are missing" equipment, and lemme tell ya, a Ret paladin with his t10 2 set bonus on trash decked in 25 manned raid gear, is not an easy guy to keep aggro off, least of all if you are in 10 manned gear, and a 232 aggro weapon (since drops have been shit).
But there is never a dull moment.
Now, what I mean with "problem", is the fact, that sometimes, I do feel like I am being carried by the rest of the groups gear. It does not help that the other tank has a full 10k health more than me (no, neither of us are druids). I am squishy. I know I am, because my raidleader told me so.
Was he mean? Did I not know it myself? Was I not aware of this? No he was not, yes I was aware. But having to go splat a couple of times, and wiping the group on weird stuff due to no heals, and *then* having a little chat with the brains of the operation about hints on how to gear - since I had made some -wrong- choices, did not do anything for my tanking-self-confidence.

Don't get me wrong, it was a good talk. And it was needed. I was about to spend my hard earned frost emblems on items that would not give me enough benefit in the long run, for their price. You see, some of us, are not running the raiding weekly every week, and are not running 25 icc and do not have the free time to run the daily heroic every day.
[Please please Blizzard, let us save up a weeks worth of daily quests, for those of us who work and have families. thank you]
So Emblems are a scarce commodity, for me. So spending them right, is very important. That was downer 1

Downer 2 came sunday, when the alts reached Festergut. I was on my priest -forced into- shadow, and had voulenteered to dispell and shield the people with blobs on them. Let me tell you, that did *WONDERS* for my allready lacking dps. So much so, that we decided to put me back into disc and just heal the ot and the dudes running in and out. And we oneshotted him after that. Yaaa raiding confidence! Let me tell you, I was through the roof. There may have been critters in some starting zone somewhere, that I may have felt I could take on. Sigh.

Luckly I did get to stay as pew on the big bad proffesor and we got him down. And THAT sure was a confidence booster. Especcially with the comments in guild-chat:
"Yea Grats"
"nice"
"wait.. those names, they look like alt names to me"
"wtf"
"go sleep"

:D

Playing shadowpriest (how playing guitar hero helps)

2010-01-14T03:03:00.000-08:00

And so it was, that one night (well morning) my alt-raid 10 manned group turned to my priest and asked: "What is you secondary specc?"
And I told them: "It is the specc of Holy"
Then they asked me: "But, pray tell, what is your primary specc?"
And I answered them: "It is the specc of Disc"

And then there was silence. And I saw that silence was not good.

And then it was, that the Paladin turned towards the group and said: "But i am only specced for the holy persuasion", and the tree said: "I have a kitty, but my gear is crappeth".
And the raid leader looked down upon his group, and saw that this was bad. Twis was the dps that was needed on the mighty foe named Rotface, and there where no other alts to choose from, since they where all fast asleep, and all the mains where locked on the groups first clear-eth.
But lo! In the horizon, it was the lunchbreak and and there was time for respeccing.

And so it was, on this Sunday morning, of rest, that the Priest took it upon himself to venture to the Forge of Iron, and unlearn his holy specc and take up the arts of shadow.

So it was written, so it was true.
---------

Yep, its all true, I am now shadow. And I suck.
Well hopefully I won't suck as much next weekend, now that I have read a little up on it. And had some time to test and try. On that sunday morning, all i had time for was respecc, gem and get my glyphs in order. I have not played shadow for... well forever.
I have never been interested in looking at that side of the road.... Okay there was that one time in TBC, But everyone experiments a little when and expansion comes out and..... DONT JUDGE ME!!

Erhm. So yea I knew nothing about shadow. So i armoried our two coolest shadowpriests and copied their specc and glyphs. Luckily they where both on alts in the same raid as me, and one of them, wagga, I had known for a long time (and we are from the same country). so the 20 minutes lunchbreak was for me, spend on some frantic Danish /w about "is this basically it?" "yea pretty much" and me running around reglyphing.

And boy did I suck. 2.3 k dps. on my best pull.
Oh my. (and yes, I was hit-capped, I was just that bad.)
Now a lot of the problems stemmed from the fact that this was a relative new boss, and a totally new function for me, and a hellyva lot of my problems was due to me not knowing diddly about shadow. For the longest time i thought it was my crits that made my SW:p refresh. (cut me some slack here, I had 20 minutes to respec and 30 sec to read anything).

Things are about to change
Well I am ignorant no more! I've found out the secret of playing shadow priests. The secret is this: Close your eyes and think of England.. . ehh no, think of guitar hero!

This is a shadowpriest, this was not a aprils fool

Think I'm kidding?
Shadowpriest.com linked this vid as the best description on how to figure out your cast rotation

Does this not loot a bit like this????

I rest my case

Friends and family testing of Cataclysm right around the corner

2010-01-12T22:56:00.000-08:00

So I work late shifts on Wedensdays. That usually sucks when you want a little bit out of WoW before you have to go to work.
Today was no different, although it did give me this screenie

Exciting!!

The Porn Star and the PUG

2010-01-07T02:41:00.000-08:00

Go read the post titled: The Porn Star and the PUG over at pink pigtail inn, you will not regret this.

Best. post. ever.

I will not post what i had planned for this week, this post needs whatever small attention i can give it. (yes, that means that the two readers i have that does not read ppi regularly, now will. But its still two people!!)

oh right, Link

http://www.pinkpigtailinn.com/2010/01/porn-star-and-pug.html

Edit: might as well rant over why I think this is such a great post. For years and years I have been raiding with the same guild. My guild (im not an officer of GM, but its my guild, cuz im in it).
I have played with the same core of people for most of that time. Sure some come, and new people enter, but at the most basic level, these are good friends.
I love chatting, raiding, questing and everything in-between, with them. Lately, things have changed. Not so much of an Cataclysmic change, but a more subtle one. I do not think that this change is neither good or bad. Its just there. And I, for one, needs to be aware of it, in order to enjoy my game. The thing that has changed is the instance Tool.

Not such a huge change there, i mean, we all know about it, and most of us love it. I do too.
But the mentality of players, when in it, has changed. I think the best way to exemplify this, is with this example:
yesterday, I ran a couple of dungeons on my DK, 4 of us in the group where guildies. We did the daily and then moved on to do the first of the new instances.. ehh the Forge of souls.
I've known 2 of the 3 other guildies for a long time now. And especcially one of them. in whispers and in raids we talk a lot. But that day, things where different. (note, this is not a slur at my lovely guildie friend. She is great, this was not her being a bad friend, player or guildie DAMMIT. This just shows the big change IMO)
We all greeted the 5th player that none of us knew and i started pulling. At the 4th pull i stopped up to make a smart little banter at said guildie. With me stopping to type [for the love of god, if there is anyone who knows how to tank and talk at the same time, when not on TS, please please tell me], the group almost wiped because... well... the others just pulled themselves without seeing that I was behind a corner.
At the first boss, I asked if everyone was ready and got "dont ask" "just gogogo". And on it went. "stop typing, just tank" I got told, when I explained that I couldn't tank and type at the same time.

Stop talking, start tanking
This was a sentence that stayed with me. It wasn't something I thought anything about at the time. I think my reply was "hehe okay boss" and then i chainedpulled like there was no tomorrow. But I did have a sour taste in my mouth when I logged of.
Is this where the new dungeon tool has taken us? Talking is only allowed in your breaks after bosses and when you are off "work" as tanking?
Is this what I've whored myself out to be (btw a whore or a prostitute is really not the same as an adult movie actor Elnia -if you ever read this)?
Have I turned myself into a silent worker-drone who takes a beating for a few measly tokens? (that is a very very specialized type of prostitute, maybe tanks should get 'payed' more.... hmm...)
When did I sell out, talking to friends, for loot? When did WoW, for me, stop being about making online friends and having fun, to collecting loot? When did this happen to everyone?

Well no more. From now on, when i am tanking, it will take my time, and chat. At least when im with guildies. I should probably start the invites by saying that i am not like the other tanks. Maybe there should be an RP addon requirement to run dungeons. Or an extra box to tick "looking for friends" or "willing to chat". I know i am not going through the dungeons as fast as i could, when I have to stop to chat, but i am surely having a lot more fun, and I hope that the people i run with are too. At least if they know, that this is for teh funz and not for the bagdes... and gunz? I dunno, Im looking for a slogan here.
Maybe "running dungeons to chat, not to get badges and thats that"? -suggestions are more than welcome.

Blessed are the ignorant, for they shall inherent the loot

2010-01-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

I have 4 WoW toons at the glorious level of 80.

Two of them raid, do heroics and look hot (and are dwarfs).

One looks hot (and is a dwarf) and spends his days looking at all the greens i mail him to DE.

The 4th is also sort of hot. If you like looking at girls... With tails (she is not a dwarf, so there are limits to how hot she can be, even if she is blond).

Where am I getting with this? Well. The reason only two of my toons raid and do dungeons, is the story of this post.

A little history. I am almost sort of newish at tanking. For years and years i was a healer. I was a priest, and I healed when priests where the only choice for a healer. And I was a priest healing, when priests where the only healer you took with you, because you had real healers cancelled (remember those days? when shamans could raid heal, druids could hot and br and innervate and paladins could MH and priests could do a tiny bit of each?).

Where was I going with this? Oh yea, I can heal. I'm comfortable with healing. I even like healing (at least in wrath) so that is one toon down.

My other raiding and dungeon running toon is my Death knight. We where a lot of people rerolling DKs when wrath came out. Only two of us (in my guild) are left raiding. And only one is doing 25 manned (i, sadly, am not that person no more... Lord, give me more free time). Im pretty cool with the fact that many alt dk's are better geared than me, because they have time to run 25 on alt days. I am also pretty cool with the fact that I've proven myself as a tank by now. I've stood there as the MT in 25 content hard mode, looking at Vezax and taking my fair share of beating and lived through it.

There ain't no raid boss I've faced and not tanked well (okay, so there was that one time... 5 times... 15 times I've screwed up and wiped up. but hey, I've learned!!).

Point is, I am comfortable taking him out for a spin in dungeons.

Then there is the paladin. He is the disenchanter and prot paladin. Prot paladin is *fun*, its great. I love it. I really really do. But I do not raid or run dungeons with him. "But why?" you ask, "Is he not geared, is he not a dwarf, is he not hot?" Yes he is. He is def capped and in 50% purples. And a lot of ilvl 200 blues, and one green I think. He is perfectly capable of doing dungeons. So why don't I?

Because I think to much.

Same problem I have with my 4th toon. The nealry as hot hunter (with her pet 'raindog'). She has spend all of her career leveling up as BM, and cooking and herbing and fishing for me. I didn't roll her to be a girl and do girly stereotypical things and be a male chauvinistic pig, that just sort of happenede....

Ehh the cooking part, not me being... I'm not a chauvinist!!

Dammit, I lost my point. Oh yea, apart from some Karazhan back in the day, she has done no raiding either. Because I think too much.

I think too much, and worry too much. I care that my paladin doesn't have 30k health yet. It matters to me that -without thinking- I cannot just flip on all of my cooldowns and use every trick in the book, yet, to survive if pooh hits fans.

I worry, that I cannot follow the best rotations on my hunter in my sleep, while keeping an eye out for loose mobs that needs to be MD or trapped. Because, I can do these type of things with my DK and with my priests, without thinking about it. I know when to pop trinkets, when to flash and when to penance. I know when its time for Icebound fortitude, and when its enough to use bone shield. And when I do not feel 100% comfortable about going in, i just won't.

I know its just a matter of sucking it up, going in and doing it. But I'm not having fun when 4 strangers ridicule my gear and ask if im sure im wearing all my tank gear, and I know that I cannot make up for the fact, that I have lousy gear, with my experience and my mad paladin tanking skills. It is a vicious circle.

I know it is wrong. I know I should just do it, but I can't.

Its a weakness of mine, and it becomes more apparent when i do not have time to invest. If I had 4-5 hours everyday of free time to play wow, I would end up going into dungeons with some other toons, simply out of boredom.

But as it is, I spend all the time I have in WoW with 2 dungeon runs, herbing and doing my cooldowns (alchemy, inscription, smelting ect) to make a little gold.

And when the choice stands between a fun succesfull run on priest or DK, or possibly a lot of time spend on a lot of hard work for possibly nothing more but ridicule, so far, I've taken the easy way out.

I am not proud of it.

But luckily things are about to change!

4 seperate things has happened that has pushed me to this change.

1. I've realised that I've been a coward and denied myself and opportunity to grow as a person (and as a player)

2. I've rekinddled my love for one of my all time favorite poems (this isn't really a good poem in any other way than its meaning - but its a great meaning And its the only frikking poem you know in english -yea, and that)

3. I read this post about the worst dps Dk in da wurld!!

and finally 4. I read this post by one of my favorite bloggers

How does this all add up to change? Well. you see, the first two are about me not being afraid no more. The 3rd is more of an "if that ignorant can go in and get "the patient" title, I sure as fuck can". And the 4th is my excuse!

You see, what Klepsacovic is saying, is that if a system of stats should work, it should also make sense. So my excuse is Science. (or quasi-semi-science)

In the glorius name of science i will use my hunter offspecc of Survival (i think it is) that I've copied from Ensidias guide to hunters. I've read nothing else.

So based on my own knowledge of hunters in TBC (and that was not a lot) and logic and my old-skool D&D experience, i will try and deduce how to best to do dmg as a hunter. I will not use guides or any wisdom other people might bestow upon me.

Strength, can't be good, doesn't take much muscle to pull the trigger of a gun. Agility.. well hmm, I dunno maybe, it was the only stat you needed once. Armor piercing! Yes that ought to be good, get them armor piercing bullets, they ought to hurt ect ect ect that will be my thinking, as for abilities to use, ill try my luck and see what I'll end up with.

So far I know i won't be a burden. Raindog and me pulled 2k on dummies a while back, when i tried the specc out, and we have gotten better gear (and icecrown bullets) since.

It is going to be fun, its going to be scientific and best of all, it will (hopefully) get me to get my pally in gear once again!!

And lastly, we ALL know that the moronic idiot in the run, is always the one to get all the cool drops! So Blessed are the ignorant, for they shall inherent the loot!!

for the curious here is the armory

The love of fail-pugs (pt 3) - the final chapter

2010-01-04T05:41:00.000-08:00

Whoever said that I had high morals?

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Hellscream&n=Plader

"Who is this guy?" You may wonder.

He is this guy.

Go enjoy the many other aspects Calli did not mention. Like the fact that his professions are 1/enchanting and 428/tailoring.

I like that.

Anyways, stay tuned for serious topic about serious things. I swear. I have one planned and everything.

Almost pushed "publish" -then I got scared. I suddenly remembered how Matt (himself) gave me a not so subtle reminder, that sometimes words can be mean, and I can piss people off.

Well, plader, if you somehow miraculously is reading this. Post a comment here, and i will take you through your 50 (and counting) mistakes in playing a DK.

The love of fail-pugs (pt 2)

2009-12-29T04:10:00.000-08:00

This post will disrupt my planned blog-theme setup, but to hell with that!!

These stories needs to be told (also at the end, more fail PuG stories)

There was the story of the imbahunter, who used MD on himself on mobs that I had not picked up, then adding "i will try and dps less on the next pack so you can get aggro". How about you just frikking shoot at the right adds? And a little extra tip from me to you: when you fight General Bjarngrim it really helps if you gun down the adds first... you know, like the tank tanking them told you to.
It was the same hunter who -or so he told- had a healing alt "so i know how to heal", so he didn't need a healer and a tank telling him when the healer needed mana, before he was allowed to pull the next mobs... or bosses. 15% mana is plenty for a Disc priest it seems.

Then there was the glorious paladin. I loved this guy. I really truly did. He was the 5th dps in our otherwise guild-dungeon run. He turned up in tanking trinkets, +spellpower shoulders and a magnificent weapon to boot: Cleaver of Diligence (I believe it was, it was green and no higher ilvl than 170). Now that was all fine and dandy. (well not really, he was clearly using his trinkets and shoulder items to boost his ilvl stat and get in a better group). The best part of this group was a number of little things that added up to great comedic heights.

- He was not very old, or not very good at english. Or both.

- our tank was played by an alt of our perfectionist raid leader (lets call that alt "britney")

- He was a horrible player.

First off, he never typed anything when we started the run. And we tried. We tried greeting, making some jabs at eachother to lighten the mood (imo running with 4 guys who clearly know eachother can be quite intimidating, so we tried to make him feel welcome), but he wasn't biting. He just spend 5 seconds looking at a fight, then running in and hitting some mobs as they where about to die. This happened for 3 pulls. Then I tried to get him to a) change aura to something other than the "pala-travel-fast" one. He did not.

Then I tried to get him to buff people. He did not, well, not until our forementioned raidleader tanking alt told him to buff, then *he* got might. Nothing for the rest of us.

At this time /g chat was filled with "look at this item" "now whats he doing". But we carried on. then he started pulling more mob-packs. At this time 'Britney' had had enough.

"why did you pull that pack mr ret?" He asked.

*silence*

"why are you not buffing the rest" He asked again

"Hello, are you able to speak at all" At this time i was still lost in his gemming choices.

Then an answer came.

"Hello! gogog" Was all he said, as he went for the next pack.

I think something inside Britney broke then. A quick vote-to-kick was insued, and a deathknight guildie alt took his place, and the rest was history.

I still smile whenever I think of his response. Especcially considering the first of my link list to other fail-pug stories.

http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/12/28/you-people-make-me-bugnuts/

http://darraxusthewarrior.blogspot.com/2009/12/warrior-tanking-101-halls-of-reflection.html

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/12/most-embarrassing-pug-ever.html

http://www.worldofmatticus.com/2009/12/22/i-can-carry-you/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+WorldOfMatticus+(World+of+Matticus)

ideas for Cataclysm (Thanks Matt)

2009-12-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago I did a little moaning and bitching about a certain blogger, well allow me to do my own little ying yang thing, and give props when props are due!
This little gem of a post, gave me a much needed happy-warm-fuzzy-feeling and about Cataclysm of all things. Sure its just a thought, sure Blizz will not make this so. But the idea is so refreshing and great that I just have to jump on the wagon and rant on about this!

Also this is a very nice setup for a little series of posts i've been working on for a little while.

"so what was the damned post about, you dwarf of a blogger?" you may cry. Well, it starts of with a gentle reminder to me about the greatest quest Blizz ever made. And it was a class only quest. It was a Priest only quest. It was called "The balance of light and shadow" And just like Matt says, it taught me how to heal. But more importantly, it taught me how to love (...wow).

This single little quest gave me a start and an end on how to heal. It made me understand my class in ways that I still use today -some odd 4 years later.
(god, right now im just repeating his post it seems, ill get to my part shortly, i need to set this up, dammit).
So here I am, bitching about people not being able to play *their* class, and the answer is right there in front of me. Make the little ignorant buggers learn!

Learning by playing.

Its all the rage for the mangement type of people I read, so why not use it in a place where you play all the frikking time. Make them little bugger love tanking, that would mean shorter queues for my hunter! Make em understand how to dps -that would relieve my Dwarf DK of a few grey hairs. Make em.. fuck it, FORCE them to try healing a mass group of headless chicken dps'ers with little to no health left. That will teach em... To play conservatively and smarter.
Larning by playing. Teaching players how other parts of the trinity (thats the healer, tank and dps trinity im talking bout) works, can only improve on the game alltogether. Heck, some might find that they really like this playstyle, and that will increase their enjoyment of the game aswell.

Everyone wins.

Here is how I think it could work out. Have 4 vehicle sorts of quests. You need to complete all 4 of them in order to gain access to any instances at level 85.
Quest one: heal stuff
Quest two: Tank stuff
Quest three: melee stuff
Quest four: Range pew stuff

You will take control over an Glyphmaster, strongman, armsman, and conjuror respectively, and through their trials and tribulations you will earn yourself a nice little title (maybe on all of your toons) called "plays well" and access to enter dungeons.
It will be glorious. Maybe a little elitist, but teaching the masses will have to be. Some may cry and whine: "why are you forcing me to heal stuf, im not a chick in a sissy robe" -but noone is forcing them. Just like noone is forcing you to grind battlegrounds for resilience gear, but if you want to arena you still do this. Same with instances.
I know, that I'll like it :)

Im sure that Blizz still has enough talent working for them to make these quests doable and workable and fun. if not...

Well, drop me a mail on nogetsjovt [at] googles email and give me an offer!! Im not very expensive.
(too much, right?)

Champion of the Frozen Wastes

2009-12-28T06:45:00.000-08:00

Thats right beeatches!!

Due to the fantastic new dungeon finder group thing, the lure of the frost emblems and my need to everyday punish myself with tanking all walks of life. I've earned the achievement to end all achievements.
It was glorious. I had even forgotten that The Prophet Tharon'ja, had bugged out on me the last time that I was there.
So when I went to Drak'Tharon Keep to tank for some guildies to get the daily random dungeon. I was as supriced as the rest of (the alts that all had that achievements on both alts and mains... whatever, i earned it more :) them that I got a double ding in guildchat
and a brandspanking new title to boot.
It was glorious. Im a real champion!

Also, happy new years!

And running dungeons with strangers is still a solo experience. There is NO chatting whatsoever. No matter what i do, no matter how many puns i throw out there. And im giving it my all!!
The only thing pug instance people seems to care about is this: "merry christmas all" That usually gets me a "you too" or "yea m xms" and then they pull the next group and i run to taunt off the little morons that couldn't

The love of fail-pugs

2009-12-22T02:34:00.000-08:00

"Lol, just had a lock pull 800 dps in halls of reflection, and the tank could only singletarget tank"
"that is nothing, my groups hunter bitched and moaned about the tanks gear and health (40k health is bad, mmmkay??) then proceeded to pull 832dps in the instance, and wipe us"
"how did he manage that?"
"he Md'ed on his pet and started throwing distracting shot at the untanked mobs -it was glorious"

It was glorious indeed. Both are my own stories from PuGs in the last couple of days. How I love fail-pugs.
I love everything about them. The grinding of teeth -when you are in them, the bonding of guildies over fail-pug players. and the fire-side tales in blogs and other places -when they are over with.
This morning, I even found myself browsing the mmo-champion forum, looking for fail-pug stories. (I think this equates reading the grey pages on a lonely sunday night while wearing nothing but a bottle of Jack Daniels and a phone - So no, this was not a highpoint in my life).

But there you have it, I am a fail-PuG-aholic. and I am not ashamed. The best ones however are the ones written by talented Blog-posters (two spring to mind: My very own guildie Mr pew pew and both tam and Chas over at the orbs) When it is well-written, and the fail is big in said pug... Well its like a drug to me. I think its the whole "oh my, at least I would never do that, so maybe im a great player".

Like one of my eastern european guildies said to me (.. there was an inside joke there, just skip that and read on unless you are Cloud) when discussing the lack of DK threat when tanking "I would just prefer to think of us as imba and the class as having a problem" - This was after me doubting myself and saying maybe I just sucked at tanking as a dk...
And he was right!! It does feel much better to think of yourself as being right, and there is no better way of doing just that than to look down on others!

Isn't that why people are so cheritable around x-mas? So they can feel better about themselves by taking pitty on the weak and poor?
"LOL at you mr homeless-toothless-drug-addict, here have a drumstick"

So in the spirit of x-mas: please link and share with me all your best fail-pug stories!!!

Dungeon finder - I got tricked!

2009-12-19T22:52:00.000-08:00

So imma back. And a little late to the party this time around.
Many more talented bloggers have allready posted what there is to say about 3.3's newest gimmick: the dungeon finder (im talking about mr pew pew and the orbs that are righteous)
But i felt compelled to post something that shocked me: The dungeon finder (however great it is) is the complete opposite of multiplayer and social gaming that I had hoped it to be.
There is hardly any interaction, and you will be hard pressed to find anyone willing to bond with someone cross-server who they will never ever meet again (let alone say "its a better item for you ill pass" -lemme tell ya, i got me some weird looks doing that).

But hey, its a great way to run dungons (which i like the most about this game), and it is also a super way to gear alts (my priest is now more experienced than my main... the dwarf death knight), due to the new raid beeing so utterly uselessly boringly easy.
Either my raiding team has gone from great raiders to 1337 wurld bestsest players, or its just mindnumbingly easy.
On a 50% main 50% alt run (we split it up for more runs through) we managed to clear the whole place without any wipes (well there was one trash pull where our tank dc'ed). And, yes, the lore is great, the setting is stunning, and im sure we will struggle a bit more with me as the mt - but still they question nags me:

Why are we beeing forced to run through dull-easy street and wait for the hard modes? Why can't we chose to get challenged? Why? The hardmodes are going to be available, why not now? why do I have to spend my raids stealing candy from crippled raidbosses while I wait for a challenge? Why am i beeing forced to see all the content before I get to try it in a challenging way? why o' why?

Also Tam and Chastity, if you are out there: the "Authenticate this comment using OpenID. " option is really not working very well on your site. (and also the shrivelled heart DOES look like a Maraca!

Responsible for [the creation of] Snottydin

2009-12-09T03:57:00.001-08:00

Yes that is right. All your props are belong to me!

...since he was responsible for Snottydin in the first place

WOOP Woop!!

And other slangs.

"But DDK, now that you got this mad props, whatever will you do now?"

Im going to Kyoto!!
Thats right, tomorrow morning im going to Japan to visit my little brother, and make sure he is doing all his homework. So Don't count on me posting nothing new for a while.
And now the grumpy old man has a few words to add to all of this:

So what did Blizzard decide to do? Wait untill I was going away before they launched new content?
Frikking thats what they did. And also. a 4 week cycle before next part of the instance? Im sorry that is just shitty. So I'll miss the bosses when everything is new and exciting *and* we will get to have alts in the 3rd degree killing everything in IC before they release the next part of this saga. So in april, the Lich King will die for the first time ON NORMAL, and then people will get to try the hard modes. So the first Legendary will be out when? November? Fuck that. Seriously fuck that, right in the eye.

Why healing in Cataclysm suddenly got very very interesting

2009-12-07T01:41:00.000-08:00

Meh.

I had this whole post set up about how healing was going to change dramatically in Cataclysm.

Then over the weekend tobold posts about it, much cleaner and better than I ever could

Link to great post

Go read it, i got time, come on back and ill tell you a story.

Welcome back. Doesn't that sound great?

in short: healing will not be a whack-a-mole game, but a slower more mana conservative thinking game (did I hear some vanilla people yell: "again"?).

That is something that might get me worked up about healing again. Remember I did use to love it once :)

So now bosses won't hit so hard, tanks will have more stam and will take more than 3-4 hits to die. So combat might... well not combat, the important part of combat (tank-healer part of combat) that might become a little slower and more of a thinking players game. A question of decisions rather than quick reactions and rotations-spamming. YES old people get to play too :D

Honestly, personally I very much welcome this. Healing imo has become way too much spam-dont-think, and that is not what I like about healing. Starring at meters waiting for one of them to drop an inch and then compete with the other healers to get it back up the fastest. That really is not me.

I'd much rather go OOM really fast, and have to think about what I cast and when.

Then again, I do have a grumpy old man part of me, and this is also what they promised at the launch of TBC *and* wrath, so it remains to be seen. But teh dorf priest is not going to be retired as I might initially have thought.

YES this also means that I am officially getting Cataclysm. I really thought I was out once the Lich king keeled over, but I guess im not :)

The fall of the Greedy Goblin

2009-12-03T23:43:00.000-08:00

"So now its a theme eh? you pick on other blogs?"

Well it wasn't planned. But then the Greedy Goblin did something completly shitty.

He sold out.

He fell for his greed and took into his arms a person he had once asociated with the scum of the earth (and rightly so). He wrote this post.

And what a douchebag.

For those of you who do not regularly read the greedy goblin. Here is some explaining.

Once upon a time There was a gamer who where probably the best moneymaker in wow. He decided to share his wisdom with the world. Very noble of him.

He even got my favorite inn-keeper to praise him.

Then he started getting a lot of readers ( and rightly so, he is the best at what he does).

But with a lot of readers comes a lot of slimeballs, and he explained to us all how "No means NO!!"

Then he did something even cooler, he said that moneymaking bored him now, so he would write about other things.

Then... Well then something happend. My guess is as good as yours, but the end result was the same.

He took that slimeball up on his offer, and started to direct all of his traffic to the horrible goldselling site.

Ofc he did not do it plainly, he just wrote the above post saying: Look at how this guy makes his gold, can you belive what he writes? (go look at his site where there is goldselling guides and there is even possibly some account phishing)

Isn't that nice of him? To make some real life cash on preying on his readers? Yea and scamming and exploiting them a little along the way too.

How pathetic is this? writing a post about how he would never directly or indirectly sell out to the scammers, and then 2 weeks later doing just that?

And if I read one commenter saying that he isn't getting payed for that link on that post? Let me ask you this: Do you think the greedy Goblin would link to this sort of site, if he didn't? Do you think he is a 'social' that would just link to this guy out of the goodness of his heart? I don't think so either.

(Ill just add in the end, that when he posted his link to the mans guide, i wrote a post on his blog saying pretty much the above so he could get a chance to prove me wrong. Look at how that post did not make it onto his blog. Sad)

Edit:

So this is what happens when you rant, you go out of a train of thought thinking that everyone is on board. Ill try and make myself clearer. In the "No means NO!" post Gevlon shoved us, that all the Slimy goldspammer wanted Gevlon to do, what write a post saying "look how this guy makes gold" and then say his Gods honest opinion about it.

That would lead all of the goblins readers to follow said link, and The Goblin would profit from the traffic directed from his site.

Gevlon said "I will do none such thing" and then two weeks later wrote the post that pissed me of ever so much.

Because in that post he writes: Look how this goldspamming/account phissing/lowlife is making money, go on, go follow the link and go to his blog [my words, not entirely what he wrote]. So he was doing just what he so high and mightily and full of integrity claimed that he would never ever ever do - and he did so, just two weeks later.

Edit on edit:

Like the Goblin said before making a post that did just that:

PS: if anyone would think it's some kind of shady advertisement, notice, that I haven't mentioned the site. You only know which site sent me these letters because you know the WoW goldmaking blogs.

Then he went and did a direct link to the site, and even encouraged readers to go there and even admits that "Markco can make gold eternally" (but adds that you can do better following the goblins more tricky ways of doing things). So he basically posted to the lazyer amongst his readers: go there do that, its an easy way of making gold - for the more complex way to make a little more gold, stay here.

US gamers (vs EU gamers)

2009-12-02T08:08:00.001-08:00

(yes, i am very proud of this little wordplay –thank you)

Reading Matts guest post on The pink pigtail inn’s blog, I couldn’t help but think –well, a lot of things. First: “So?”

Then “Really, was that it?” and then “I see! You are American.”

…And all of a sudden, the Death knight has ‘beef’ with the coolest Priest blogger out there (and he is even a Dwarf too!!).

So what am I saying? That I hated the post? That I think that American gamers are weird aliens that post boring stuff (unlike myself) and that Matt in particular live up to these prejudices?

Hardly.

First off, I’m fairly positive half my own posts are very boring to anyone other than me, secondly I think I would have noticed Matt being not European a lot earlier (seeing as I am a vivid reader), if he was indeed a weird American that was weird. And I think that I would probably not read his blog if I did find it boring.

I do not find his blog boring. I love it.

There, niceties over.

So why was I so stunned over the post at the pigtail inn? Because it was boring. Boring, dull and not interesting. And I didn’t get the pictures either. Sure pretty pictures help a blog post look nice, and if the mean something then they aren’t in the way.

They didn’t mean diddly. For example:

To illustrate that he has alts in other guilds.

Imma like gonna go wuuuh? Or in something resembling English: I am confused. What are we trying to communicate here?

But then again, maybe there is a point to the use of this picture, and the rest of the post.

We will get to that after my next rant about why I found his post boring.

“I have “diverse” language” Oh noes call the care-police, because we have a violation here. That is right, I couldn’t care less.

So you swear, and ill bet you kiss your mother with those lips too. I have a feeling I’m caught in mylifeisaverage.com (I kindda fell in love with that, though), I mean for me this is like saying: ‘I woke up this morning and was breathing’, its sort of nice to know, but not news-worthy stuff. (unless you where Sylvanas or Jimmy Hoffa).

And then we get to my 3^rd ‘revelation’ “I see! You are American”

All the time I have been playing WoW, I’ve always had the sense of we all play video-games, we all LOVE playing video games, and we all love the same video game, so we must be sort of very similar Gevlon the greedy goblin, took that piece of my belief and ripped it to shreds. (until I saw through his disguise – that’s for another post) And now I realise that even geography matters when it comes to gamers.

Through the years I’ve made many friends in wow, people who lived all over Europe (even one lost Canadian), and bonded with em all. And now Matt has gone and ruined it. Ruined it all, I tell ya!!

Because I truly believe that posts that say: “Im a guild-leader and im just like you, I get scared doing this –and I USE CUSS WORDS” are only fun and interesting for the US audience. So I guess the big pond does add some barriers.

On the other hand, it did spark me to write this post about it… hmm

Hope I didn’t bore you all too much J

We interrupt the scheduled program to bring you...

2009-11-27T01:32:00.000-08:00

I know this does not really fit into the theme of this blog -then again, maybe it does, i'll get into that in a bit- but there is a new album that came out a couple of days ago, that I want to recommend everyone to give a listen.

Glitter & Doom -By Tom Waits.

And it is just amazing. Anyone who knows a little about this guy won't be surprised at that statement. Anyone who doesn't:

Get this now!

So how do I still think this somehow fits into a blog about dwarf death knights? Well ehh. First off this is MY blog on Dwarf death knights, and this is amazing, so there.

Mostly this is an artist that captures all that I love about Dwarfs.

From the tunnels in the deepest mountains, the songs of the real dwarfs can be heard. There is not comical relief sayings down here. There is no "grab my beard and toss me -just don't tell my male companion elf about it" type of BS.

Down here, you dont see daylight for months, and the only company you have are your homebrewed liquor, your pickaxe, and the songs.

Songs of kingdoms gone, growls of love lost and days that never was. Through the dampness of the deep mines and the harsh alcohol, all apparent beauty of the voices chiming these songs have all withered and died. Only pure will forced any sounds past the scorched vocal cords. The growls that sometimes sounds more like dogs barking or old men dieing, are used as both instruments, choir and lead.

when they sing that there is no devil "only God when he is drunk", you know that they have seen all that life has to offer -and still go on.

This is the voice of Tom, this is the setting of the dwarfs.

These songs are not fragile little flowers that everyone can agree on are pretty. These songs are gravel churned with whiskey into a howl of sadness. These songs, like the dwarfs, are not for everyone. But once you get into their rhythmic chiming and past the smudge and apperant uglyness, you will find the gems. Just like the mountains they work in. And you will find that these gems holds more beauty and meaning than anything.

Now take a listen to "Lucinda" and tell me, that you cannot see hardworking dwarves hammering in the mines (of Moria?) and bemoaning the devil of a woman that has killed their hopes to ever love again.

Now her hair was as black as a bucket of tar
Skin was as white as a cuttlefish bone
I left Dun Morogh to follow Lucinda
Now I'll never see heaven or home

Think this is the best answer i can give to anyone who asks me why I play dwarf.

Editors note: This is a better version of the above link (although there is a mix of another song in it), but i'll leave the above since it has lyrics aswell.

Blizzard is not patronizing you, Little Fella'

2009-11-18T23:39:00.000-08:00

Allright, so everyone has by now (I assume) read about how the Icecrown instance will play out.

And it is great and thrilling!

Okay so after you have proved yourself and your guild to be the champions of the [faction] in the Colliseum, all the combined war effort has been redirected to support a small elite unit (thats your raidgroup) to gain entry to the great stonking home of the big bad baddie.

Millions of troops are set out to create distractions, and you have the whole Ashen Verdict supporting you inside aswell

"The Ashen Verdict provides reinforcements and material for players to assault Icecrown Citadel, but this support is not endless. Raids will have a limited number of attempts total each week [untill they have to pull back]"

So you have the whole war effort depending on you to make that critical strike in the heart of Icecrown. And all of a sudden Colliseum made sense! All of a sudden this whole dammed expansion comes together to make for this thrilling battle, where each week you will conquer a little more of the Lich kings fortress, untill you finally reach the big guy himself! This is so cool! Finally the gating system and the limited amounts of tries makes SENSE!!!

We believe a staggered release of the content will allow players to experience Icecrown Citadel at a sustainable, measured, and ultimately more enjoyable pace.

Wait what???

Stop everything. What? What the what what?

pardon me readers... erhremmm WHAT THE FUCK?

Oh I see, so you believe that the staggered release of content will make us happier? Theres the frikking idiots I've been complaining about this whole expansion.

Hello there.

I mean seriously, are you afraid that if we play your game too much we won't enjoy it? What am i? 5? Are you afraid that if I eat all that candy at once my wittle wummytummy will wurtsie so i cannot weepysleepy? (this is to be pronounced like a certain wabbit chaser would pronounce wuuurds).

Well cudos to you, you managed to sour everything I've been looking forward to in my 4 years of playing this game. Thank you.

No really. Whats next?

Sorry about that Redux, here have a preview of shadowmourne with stats and everything

I ehh. Whoa, thanks!

Thats really... wait a minute. Do I have to be an elitist 4 days a week 25 manned raider to even be allowed to dream about this? (hint at the questline) Well uhmm, maybe Aww maaaaaan.

Fell in love with a... Dwarf

2009-11-18T09:31:00.000-08:00

So following my own rules of only writting happy things has become a whole lot easier. Because I'm really happy with WoW atm.

And the reason why I'm so happy: i've fallen in love.

He has a weird accent, he has a stylish beard and a big axe. Oh and he passes judgement on others. Apart from the Axe, that is me!

He is ofc Duffler, my paladin Dorf!

And im just so happy with the game again. Soloing is fun with him, grouping is fun. Tanking is also fun (although I do think that the DDK will still remain my go-to-tank). its just fun fun fun.

So fun in fact that im using my non-gaming freetime on and new (to me, it is very old i think) site ive stumbled over: maintankadin.

Boy i'd wish a site like that excisted for DKs. I guess that comes with the territory of beeing the new kid in class.

First everyone was jealous of us, now we are almost ignored. Maybe that was a bit harsh.

But the feelings the same. Unless you are Alt-ing or un-guilded, chances are you aren't playing a DK. Where have they all gone? Think that now that the novelty has worn off, a lot of the rerollers have either given up on the game as a whole or rolled back to their old class.

And apart from the Ensidia guides, there aren't that many super quality DK talks going on anywhere. (at least nowhere as near as many as the other classes has). So when I feel a bit alone and on my own, I just log onto my paladin and solo as ret (almost at 80 now!!) with all the other paladins-playing-ret-alts out there. Because O M G there are a lot of them around.

Thats when you remember your movie classics and say:

This is my Pink-a-din. There are many like it but this one is mine.

My Pink-a-din is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

Without me, my Pink-a-din is useless. Without my Pink-a-din I am useless.

I must fire my Pink-a-din true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy, who is trying to kill me.

I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will.

Before God I swear this creed: my Pink-a-din and

myself are defenders of my country, we are the masters of our enemy,

we are the saviors of my life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen.

5 years of WoW

2009-11-16T01:29:00.000-08:00

So yea, Wrath is one year old, but next week marks the 5 year anniversary of The game we know as WoW!

5 years? How time flies when you are having fun.

(Even if "fun" these days constitutes a mixture of 'Torchlight' 'and Borderlands'? -Shut it, old grumpy man!)

In that regard, one of my favorite online magazine The Escapist via their sistersite Wacry, has a lengthy interview with one of the old top dawgs!

Rob Pardo (or as he is rarely known: EnoYls

The Lengthy interview is here, and for someone like me, this is pure solid internet gold. I really really love reading these sort of interviews. Perosnally they give me a behind-the-scenes insight into why and how. Also, it restores a lot of faith into my heart about Blizzard.

For example:

"If I was going to pick on a game design thing that I look back on and think was a mistake? We really never designed WoW to be a competitive e-sports game; it was something that we decided to start tackling because there was such a desire and demand to evolve it in that direction, to introduce competitive arenas. I'm not sure that that was the right thing to do with the game."

It warms my heart to read that.Because, like he goes on to say:

"Right now, WoW has a bit of a schizophrenic philosophy behind it, and we're trying to figure out how to guide it."

And who doesn't agree with that?

But I won't spoil the fun of reading all of this, go on follow the link (here it is again) and spend 5 minutes on something, that should make any wow player happy to read.

Google analytics (meta-blog post)

2009-11-13T04:49:00.000-08:00

If you haven't allready set up google analytics for your blog, you are cheating yourself out of a lot of interesting funsies!

You can track amounts of visitors, and where they are from, you can see how they found your website, and you can track how much impact other blogs have on your blog. (for example i doubled my visitors when Righteous orbs used my snottydin post and linked my blog on the top of one of their posts - as compared to a "normal day" when i don't post anything myself. Likewise did my numbers soar after Larissa linked to me aswell.)

You can also see a little measure of how many visitors you have on a single day (hi mom!!).

But the mostests fun is the little function that tracks where people who visit your blog. For example I can see how many visitors I've had from, say, Uppsala in Sweden. I've learned so many new city names this way :D

But the upper mostests imba amazing fun with this, is the fact that one of the most frequent cities to visit my little blog (besides London) is Irvine, California!

yes, that Irvine in California!!

So without getting too bigheaded: Dwarf designers, and Death knight designers, gimmie a PM and i'll take requests on topics you would like me to cover, seeing as you are such big fans :D

-Too much?

Fighting the grumpy old man

2009-11-10T02:03:00.000-08:00

So recently I had a bit of an eye-opener. As a matter of fact, I've had several. All of them leading to one disturbing fact.

I am becoming an grumpy old man (tm.)

Most of these tell tell signs comes in the great mmo called RL, where Mrs. Dw-redux is quick to point em out to me.

For example when I go to my favorite live sport events, of local Basketball, and even when my team wins a fantastic game against all odds, I'm still able to turn heads when yelling at the ref. (well that is not only me being a grumpy old man, that has a lot to do with me and sports, and a crappy crappy referee. God he was awful) Most recent of these, where my last post right here on this blog. Where I attacked Blizzard for not having the moral spine of an earthworm (are you calling me a spineless worm? Is that supposed to be an insult? We really don't have spines you know).

Since their moral compass seems to work like the "unusual compass" of their own game...

Then a nifty smart little wiseass commenter named *Urnakk pointed something brilliantly out to me. The issue of paying for a pet, isn't really much different than buying a t-shirt at a concert.

And he is right. Even if the so-called charity of it all, is just a frikking lame excuse to pretend you are doing something good, when all you do if try and get as much gold into your own pockets as possible, abusing charities as you go along. I mean how low can someone sink?? Frucking abusing peoples good-heartedness to get some money into your own pockets? How many souls did you give to Satan, to be able to pull that one off with a straight face?

Erhm, where did that come from?

Anyways. I've decided to ditch my inner grumpy old man Yea right and only post positive stories about things that are good. Because I don't want to end up like my grandpa, who hated and feared everything. He was bitter at life, because it kept moving on, and he didn't. I do not want to end up like this. Even if everything in this game was purer and better around the end of vanilla.

Who said that?

So what if the game is not how i'd want it to be, its still the best adventure game out there. So what if I feel that Blizzard has indeed sold out on the very core of their founding principles, all in order to own football teams and get rich quickly. The game is still fun, and the people playing it are still the same. Have you looked at your friend list lately? 40 names and 35 of those have not been online the last 3 months. have you looked at your realm forum? Dead dead dead. Its a dead game filled with dead memories. Crammed tightly with wow-addicts trying to relive their glory days. Like all addicts, searching for that initial rush yet again.

Whoa. Seems like I cannot get rid of that old grumpy man inside me after all. Hopefully I'll be able to keep him at bay for a while.

Remember that in 3 days from now, "Wrath Of The Lich King" will be one year old (No wonder them leeches called it "Lich king") and I was allready the first to review its first year in this old post. Go read it again, and comment on how great i am, err on how you thought the first year of wrath was.

(Because im inventive) Whats thte big deal with purcha-pets?

2009-11-09T01:31:00.000-08:00

This Issue has been up and about a lot in the comics, the forums, the blogs everywhere.

And its the new ability to buy pets with real life money. And it is a horrible idea.

Yet another short post.

Sure, the money goes to a great charity (for now), and well they don't do anything, so whats the harm?

Well, i'll tell ya: the fuzz is two fold (maybe even threefold)

first:

"I has moneys!!! you has not!! I has cool pet because im rich and you are not!!!!" That is not the sort of game i signed up for and spend an enormous amount of time on. Skills, not bills please. Leave those wankers to the wanker games that provides the ability to brag about spending money on e-famed glory.

Secondly:

Why would anyone do this?? I mean, they are immensly cute, so i can see why people would buy em. But why would anyone at Blizzard do this? Does it make the people who buy theese things more happy with the company and the game they play? No. It just raises the question of 'why do i have to pay for this all of a sudden'. What it does do, is make the people who do not want to pay for this pretty damned pissed. So on a game that you are not loosing money on (in fact they are making buttloads) Blizzard actively chooses to ruin (well at least damage) theyr overall market value for a few measily quick bucks. Its a question of long term strategy- Do you want your consumers to spend as many £/$ on you asap or do you want to build up a brand name, that people will see and know that it stands for values they like and will buy. (in blizzards example, its about gamers knowing that this is a game made by gamers, for gamers and made with the highest quality as possible, release dates be damned.) In the last two decades (or there about) Blizzard stood for the ladder. Then Activision happened.

Now they are destroying a brand name, and the market value of this brand name must be dwindling. I know that my preorders of both SC2 and Dialbo 3 have been put on hold. (for starcraft permanently and for diablo im still holding my breath).

So for a short term gain they are gambiling with their long term success. And it wasn't as if WoW was a product that was costing them money.

Thirdly, this is the one I think most people will get behind me on (even if you do disagree with the above), and that is the fact that these new pets can be traded.

Yaaa!!!! Blizz has allowed for gold-selling.

I'll repeat: Blizzard has allowed gold-selling. Great. fan-fucking-tastic.

(How do I redeem a Pet Store pet once it's been purchased from the Blizzard Store?

After you purchase the pet, you'll receive a code that can then be redeemed on any World of Warcraft account via Battle.net Account Management. You don't need to redeem the code on the same Battle.net account that made the initial purchase – feel free to send the code to a "friend" as a gift.)

The one that is not a dwarf

2009-11-03T01:53:00.000-08:00

Meet Flimsy.

She is a pretty Draenei, who came on a spaceship and likes pretty pets to fight for her.

Also She is NOT a dwarf.

This may throw off some of my long time readers (Hi mom), since people who know me, know that I am all about teh dorfs.

Here is her story. Back when TBC launched I hated hunters. I hated playing chick toons, and I loathed guys who played females (well, no, I just didn't respect them) .

And I thought that the Draenei was a silly silly race.

Naturally the only way to combat ones aversions is to embrace them. So i rolled a combo of all that I hated (also once rolled a female gnome lock for the same reasons, that -however- did not turn out as well).

And i played her for a bit. She got a Ravager pet, and she called it 'Fluffykins', and she was... fun. I fell in love. Absolutly completely and wholeheartedly.

Now we fast forward to last week. Race changes came alive. And oh my. All of a sudden I could change her to a dwarf.

But I don't want to.

This is a whole new feeling for me. Both my shaman and my druid (where I dont have a choice) I would turn dwarf in a heartbeat. But not my flimsy. Not my little chef. I've fallen in love with a girl. A blue one at that. And one with a tail. Bronzebeard would be ashamed of me. What am I to do?

Speaking of race changes, Ensidia got back on the top of the raiding ladder this week with an amazing "noone dies when we raid" 25 man achievement. And immediatly got thrown in their face that the only way they could have done that, was to abuse the race change option to get dps benefits.

First off, who in their right mind would ever ever ever change race on something as silly as racial abilities (oh.. erhm, hai Calli... erhm, you aren't included in this ofc :p), and even if someonee would play a race they didn't like for this tiny benefit... so what? They still did something truly amazing. (yes not sucking for a whole raid is hard)

And doing so in 10 manned is almost just as bad-ass!! Oh, yes I did do that, and i'm very proud. It was a fun filled saturday morning getting that achievement.

Restriction mania -rules only stops the fun

2009-10-28T04:58:00.002-07:00

Blizz has started to introduce a lot of rules to the game

-the new loot rules (Need Before Greed will now recognize gear appropriate for a class in three ways: the class must be able to equip the item, pure melee will be unable to roll on spell power items, and classes are limited to their dominant armor type (ex. paladins for plate). All items will still be available via Greed rolls as well as the new Disenchant option should no member be able to use the item)

-level one raid rules

et al.

The common denominator between theese rules are, that they are patch solutions to small problems, they discover. They are creating a rule-manic game, where they are trying to legistrate their way out of every single little issue they are experiencing in game.

Stuck in raid (design problem)

Ninjain (social problem) ect ect ect.

Theese rules have a lot of backlash problems that aren't taken into account.

For example paladins cannot need on mail items, even if noone else wants em, or even if they are a huge upgrade for them.

And the -honestly- epic level 1 raids are now dead.

Reminds me of airports. Im the kind of person who thinks that, when you have to take your shoes off and put them on a seperate x-ray machine, and you aren't allowed to carry more than TWO lighters and no liquids with you aboard an airplane.. then the terrorrists have allready won.

Same thing here. The ability to play and have an easy fun time, is getting ruined by rules and unneccecery laws - just like we willingly destroy our own freedom and democracy in order to protect it (whoa did I just get all serious and real life political in my blog.. dammit!!).

Also, I like this little comic - is that besides the point? I think not.

Wrath: year one

2009-10-27T01:03:00.000-07:00

So Google.

Its great. You type in a word or even a whole phrase, and you stumble over weird things. For example my g-analytics tells me that "Funny dwarf paladin names" should tell you to go visit my blog, and someone did. (and someone googled "warcraft dwarf breasts" and ended up on my blog... Calli, you need help!!!)

Anyways. Someone searched google for something, and ended up on one of my very first blog posts and while I like people who agrees with me. The whole "I see you have a problem, where is what you should do" solution to an 10 month old problem in WoW, is sort of.. well. Not really needed.

[im sure there is some sort of blog guide somewhere that tells me, that it's not nice to poke fun at your readers, since they won't comment... so maybe I shouldn't... well ehh, look at it this way: I love my commenters so MUCH i make a whole post in their honor!! Comment more!!]

Where was I? Oh yea, so reading my old posts back, brought back the nostalgic in me. And playing the "completly overpowered lovechild of blizz" that is the Death knight. (seriously how hard is it to understand "hero class" means we start at level 55, because we have played the first levels allready, and we have an epic storyline, it does *not* mean we are overpowered, and if you are beeing out-dps'ed by one, it just means YOU FRIKKING SUCK... ahhhh, that felt good.)

So I thought id be a little ahead of all the other bloggers (heads up guys, wrath was launched nov 13th so start em "one year of wrath posts" already) and look back at how the first year had been for Death Knights in generel and me in particular.

Launch: Beeing overpowered and in outland.

Having played a couple of hours in the beta, I enjoyed how well-polished the starting zone for the Death Knights had become. I was amazing. It had changed a lot of times, during beta, but the end result was amazing. It was still a gripping story, and northrend seemed like the best zone that blizz had yet to develop. Then level 58 came, and so did outland. Well no, not really. Before I even set foot in outland, i spend an entire weekend leveling blacksmithing and mining in the old world.

All the glory and the excitement of the starting area quickly became a stagnant and boring grind for blacksmithing items and ores. Luckily I had preparred a bit, and had gotten myself most of the materials needed, but it still took forever. And after that... outland.

All alone, while all my guildies where busy killing turkeys and getting chummy with Arthas, I was all alone in outland. Well, not completely alone ofc, there was all the deathtards aswell. Spamming their macroes filling chat with their stupidity. Theese where people who seemed to think that playing as a hunter was too difficult.

I remember a guy who had is deathgrib set to a /y macro "COME OVER HERE" and he spammed that deathgrib a lot. after playing in 10 minutes of the same grindspot as him (and having him pull that thing out at every cooldown, stealing my mobs away 5 times), I politly whispered him, to please please do something about that macro. "what about it?" he replied, "it's funny". No, it was not, not the 50th time in ten minutes its not. But I guess that when you finally has figured out how to copy/paste a macro from the internet to your computer game, it IS an occasion to celebrate, and after all, if *you* think something is funny enough to spam it, then everyone else forcefed with your humor will find it hilarious aswell.

As the French say: Le sigh

But hey, the starter zone gear made the horrible horrible grind that was outland bearable. And you could 4 man blood furnace as 4x blood DKs back then! (not that I ever did, with those morons playing there - a lot of good players did like me and rerolled, unfortunalty they had the sense to shut up and just last it through outland) So once that horribly boring grind that was outland was finally over with (why not make us level 65 so we could skip the 10 levels of horrible grinds??) outland awaited. And the bumrush was over. The two starting areas where pretty much vacant once I got to them, so I could enjoy the quests and the lore and the landscape. And so my lonely leveling grind could continue (at least this time, the slower people leveling could join me for a couple instances.

Eventually I got to 80 and started raiding. And you know what? DKs where vastly overpowered. Both in dps potential and tanking abilities. We had to!

Why?

because, depending on your leveling speed, the rest of your guild where way ahead of you gearwise and the groups had allready been set. You just didnt hear a guild saying "listen guys, our MT is still level 72, so we are just gonna sit back for a couple of weeks and wait for him to ding 80 and gear a little up before we start raiding". So when I was 80 in greens and the ocasional blue item, I was playing with a group of people in full naxx 10/25 gear who had cleared the 10 manned 3 times, and the 25 once or twice.

So we where overpowered, to begin with, it was the only way you could get a raidslot. Unholy aura made the whole raid move 15% faster if you where UH specced. That was a huge buff for learning to dance (hello Tam, sorry you missed those speed up dancing lessons), and surviving overall.

6 months in: Where did all the stuff go?

So through sheer overpoweredness we got ourselves a raidspot. And eventually geared up enough to be deemed the only tanks for two fights in the game (sarth 3d and later General Vesax). Obviously having the new kid on the bloxx beeing the prefferred tank for two fights!!! was just horrible for thewarrior tanks on the forums (allright, so we where just as good as the others on everything else, and those two fights where the toughest in the game at their respective time and we where overdue for a nerf) who had been alone in the sun for 4 years, so they whined up a storm and we got nerfed to the ground (baby).

And all of a sudden, DKs went from being the strongest tanks on some points to being the weakest on all points. Our threat, that had never been good, got nerfed asweel - something i've yet to see any kind of need nor explanation for.

So about the same time as everyone ran out of stuff to do, DKs became useless. -And before people start raising their "but i've got this link where DK dps is insane" shut up. DKs are not overpowered pewpew machines. They can be, if you built everything up around buffing them, and have amazing players, otherwise... Not so much. We aren't the weakest DPS class either, thats not what im saying, im just saying that we aren't even in the top 3 of the hybrid dps.

Overall the game turned out to be a bit of a dud at this point. Sure there was a ton of instances. really really a lot of different instances. Just a shame they where all so useless. Who opts for going into instances like you did in vanilla or tbc, when you can pug-raid Naxx for better bosses and better items? And who wants to go there when you can clear naxx 25 with most of your raid beeing level 78 ? So that leaves the raids. And they where over in 3 days after release (see previous link), and the following didn't last a whole lot longer.. But they *did* take a whole lot longer to be released. And ONLY after they had been tested to bits in test-realms first.

So, if you where on a testrealm with your guild you got to experience new and exciting (bugged) bosses, if not, you got to experience easy bosses a bazillion times and them try and beat em while blindfolded for the bazillionth and one try.

12 months in: Last instance and next release

So now the horrorshow known as the coliseum is almost over and done with. And im starting to look forward to the last raid-instance of wrath. The pretty one, the story-filled one. The big one.

The one that will make or break WoW. Honestly it is.

If this instance starts with one zone opened on easy mode only and you have to wait x amount of time for the next little bit, WoW is dead.

There I said it.

If Blizz cannot be bothered to pend manpower on making a full instance ready for us (again) im out. If they once again prove that instances are nothing but a tease to hold us at bay untill the next expansion, I simply cannot be bothered.

Id rather spend my time and my money on something that at least *tries* to pretend that im nothing but a cashcow to them.

(weird, when I started writing this, I planned on it ending on a happy note- Turns out, im incapable of writing happy things).

In the end

Guess what I'm saying is, that as WoW has progressed, the game has lost the wonder and excitement and turned very much into an obvious game whos main priority is answering the question "How do we keep consumers paying the monthly feed, while using as little manpower as possible on it?"

Granted, most companies in the world thinks along theese lines, but none of the other companies in the world have these core values listed:

Dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences...ever.

Noone else is like Blizzard. At least not the Blizzard I grew up loving.

Back when I started playing, game companies where like Football teams, you had your favorite, and you bought every title they produced. My Friends where Bullfrog people. I was not.

I was Blizzard North.

And I remember when my team won the world cup of gaming: Diablo. (has it been 12 years allready??) I loved everything that was Blizzard. And Once I went to take my Bachelor degree, they won me back with a game simply known as WoW.

I had stopped gaming for a period of almost 4 years before that, with the only exception beeing grim fandango.

But WoW got me back into gaming, in a big way. And so many years later, I'm still here playing the game. But all the things that got me into that game, is now gone.

There is no mystery, there is no wonder. There is barely a storyline to the things that is happening. (sure there is an overall story arc, but... coliseum, and the tournament.. need I say more?).

So here I am, 13 years old again, rooting one last time, that the company i love so much, can still pull out something great, and prove to me, that they are not to suffer the same fate, as my friends company, bullfrog, did. The death known only as "merger". (hey, at least it wasn't EA that got my company)

You know you are hooked on a game when...

2009-10-14T00:20:00.000-07:00

You swear at God and curse the world when you cannot log into the game.

So yea, I guess WoW has reeled me back in. Not as much as I was in the old days, mind you. Im not Wow'ing it 5-7 raids per week and playing 6 days a week either.

Im happily toying with my hunter and raiding 10 manned with my DK on the weekends.

A big big BIG part of me hates the fact that im no longer on the cutting edge of progression in 25. But I don't miss raiding 25, only the stuff surrounding the big time raids.

I really love that I have days when I can do whatever I please (usually gaming, im still me), so it is a joy when I log on, and not just the "grind/ah for gold so you can raid, and raid" that seemed to be all I did before.

I think most of the reason why I don't miss these things, is that raids just aren't epic anymore. There is no more glorious battles in mount Hyjal, there are no strong heroic feats in Molten Core. There are no more C'thuls in the world (screw you Yogg-Saron you little wannabe). There is still an Epic storyline to follow, but there is no more the feeling that we are in any way participating in it.

Back when I started playing, I used to hate how the mmo games tells us "we are all the chosen hero", because if we are all special, noone is. A smart kid told me that. I used to dream of being the run of he mill soldier, caught in the great conflict doing his little part, and just hoping to make it back home.

Then he started killing Gods. Old Gods, but still Gods.

These days it seems that no matter what you do, it won't make a licking difference. So I've stopped giving a rats arse. Im gonna have fun on the sideline looking at the pretty plot unfold.

And quit after Wrath is over.

So far im having fun looking at the scenary and waiting to follow Mrs Proudmore and Mrs no-legs.. ehh Windrunner around as they kill the bosses for me... *sigh*

On another note. I managed to make a (self)righteous ball feel bad... no wait. Argh sorry, I suck at puns. I love his blog, you should too!! And while I think he was absolutly right in that post of his, it was fun to mess with the little man (yea, you are little Tam. When you are a northender, you sound like a dwarf aka small... no wait DAMMIT dwarfs aren't small, its the rest of you that are so damn tall!!!) Ill stop ranting now, before I get myself into an even thicker mess :D

Allow me to reintroduce myself

2009-10-08T23:05:00.000-07:00

Allow me to re-introduce myself, My name is HOV
H to the O-V, I used to move snowflakes by the O.Z.,I guess even back then you can call me,
C.E.O of the R.O.C HOV

..Sorry.

Anyways. The

whole point of this post was to re-introduce myself into wow.

As I concluded in my last post, the best class in wow, is the Paladin

(yea sorry Druids, but you clearly need to learn to drink), so with that in mind.

Allow me to re-introduce myself: I am Duffler, mr dwRedux' alt numero uno.

I have been given the dubious task of removing his wow-fatigue and somehow prove that wow is more interesting than anything!! (..yea i'm not totally optimistic either, but as long as you have faith, you are never totally lost!)

So reading some of my favorite blog posters (hello thereTam, pew and *urnak) failpug/failraid posts, I really started missing the raiding scene.

However, I'm a flawed human being. I cannot go back to content i've overdone on a toon. So Redux won't be pugging anything. I've found out i need a strong reason to play if im not there for content: and that is either titles, owing friends a favour or (once in a blue moon) loot.

So Ill be leveling (or im in the middle of) this Paladin to tonk/pew in those pretty places like naxx and instances. And my goal is to semi-pug em all!!

So if anyone has any protadin blogs worth readin, please please link me some :)

Fingers crossed that this will get me excited about wow again.

So this is what worries me. Why am I so desperate to rekindle my love of wow? I've talked earlier about how wow works just like a drug, addicting its players, and how I've tried chasing the dragon elsewhere (i love that sentence "to chase the dragon", its a phrase I learned in my teens listening to Suede, and it just fits so well into the fantasy setting of most mmo's), and now I start to wonder if im addicted to wow and since the game is not fun for me anymore, Im now trying desperatly to find an excuse to play again to feed this unhealthy addiction?

Luckily the answer to that is a clear "No... maybe not"

Because I took a step back and looked at what type of game would be my favorite to play. And, well, wow fits the bill perfectly. It did 4 years ago, and to me, it still does today. That is, if im going to enjoy WoW this time around. If not, then.. well lets burn that bridge when we get to it :)

EDIT: So im off to a rocket start. The first fu***ng thing I do when I log back on my paladin, is to disenchant (he is my enchanter toon) all the greens Redux has been sending me. Well that was the plan.

What I end up doing is DE'ing half my dual-spec tonking gear, including my "twink" shield.

Hello there world, im still an idiot! -But at least im having a bit o fun in game again :D

Best multiclass in game

2009-10-05T08:35:00.000-07:00

When it comes right down to it, WoW only has two real mulitclasses (thats the ones who can effectively pew, tonk and banda.. ehh heal), those two are called Durids and pink-a-dins.

They are both good classes, played by good people. So lets call em by their serious names:

Paladin (and how to paladin)

Druid (and how to Durid)

And they are seriously cool people. Everyone. Especcially those that heal me!! Hi Ref, Tinu, Smesh and Cloud !!!

So todays topic is: which one is the better class?
There are many aspects to this, such as: Can they be played as a dwarf? Does each multi-purpose-aspect work (the tonking, the pew'ing and the healing)? and how well? How cool are they? How needed? Will they be able to be played by dwarfs in the future? How fun are the different aspects to play? Which one is best suited for YOU?

So lets have a look shall we?

Lore: Both classes are very strong here. Not as horde... obviously. The true champions of the light, the bringers of justice, the dwarven heroes of the alliance! The paladin. Versus The
"Keepers of the world, who walk the path of nature, following the wisdom of the Ancients and Cenarius, healing and nurturing the world. To a druid, nature is a delicate balance of actions, in which even the smallest imbalance can create storming turmoil from peaceful skies. " Im calling a draw here!

Paladin: 1
Druids: 1

Tonking: Going into game mechanics a bit here, Druids are easy to tank with. At least the last time I did it (tbc), they are also fun, and very rewarding. Paladins are even easier, and nothing beats throwing your shield at an enemy then burning the ground beneath em, or soling a gazillion mobs as prot. Paladins win!

Paladins: 2
Druid: 1

pew'ing: This is a close one. Kitty is very rewarding when done well, but the mechanics of pulling off decent dps is mind boggling. And retardin is fun and action filled (keep your head up for that trinket popping!!).. However Druids also have the spacechicken power! Which I don't know that much about tbh, but hey, its one more pew specc than paladin, so Druids win!!

Paladin: 2
Druid: 2

Healing: Again, druids have a fairly complex healing 'rotation'/options going on. Plus hots are fun! (when you as Disc priest have your second highest healing output through renew, you have to admit you have a problem, and that you love hots). Paladins are easy and boring. Im sorry, but this time easy/= fun. You have the powers of a disc priest w/o the utility or the shielding fun, and no hots!!

Paladin: 2
Druids: 3

Looks: Bear/kitty/boom/seal/tree in different colours or actually being able to show off your gear? Sorry fluffy, but you lost that one!

Paladin: 3
Druids: 3

Feel: This one is a bit more complicated, Im sure this is where ill be getting my mostests enemies. Which class feels the best to play? The shapeshifting ever usefull druid or the stout n proud paladins? Druids win, because soloing (aswell) is never dull, where paladin soloing sometimes is a bit.

Paladin: 3
Druids: 4

Overall: Which class would I choose as the best multiclass in game? Overall, druids have the complexety of each of its sub-classes, while still beeing able to do a great job at them. There are lots of options and styles within the sub-specc. There are lots of buttons on each specc (its like 3 times as many heal buttons as paladins have), so each sub-specc takes skill and work to master. Paladins... not so much. It seems that to Blizzard the blessing and auras "counts" as spells to be used just like "shred" does. And that ends up giving the paladin way less options and buttons than the druid has.

Paladin won, why?
Firstly, you can't play a dwarf druid... Although im sure a future patch will fix that, I mean, we are decendents of a race of stone people, how much more in touch with nature can you get? But thats besides the main point: When I tanked as a druid in TBC, I sorely regretted it, for the silly silly reason of vanity.
When I won gear leading people through Kara, I wanted to show off (this isn't a huge thing to achieve, especially when I did it, which was around the time of sunwell, which meant that it was easier than naxx 10 is today, but dammit, I was proud of it.) I wanted my toon to look different than the cow who had just turned 40! (tauren, im not calling anyone at lvl 40 cows... apart from Tauren ofc).
And due to lazy design from Blizzards part (sorry to be calling a shovel a shovel, but it is) druids doesn't change at all, with gear.
I'm sure that the unselfish not-vain good-hearted people who play druids, doesn't care about anything as shallow as looks. But I do. And dwarf paladins looks cool, plays pretty forgivingly easy and very very fun aswell.

So im choosing Paladin.

---------------
Lemme just add in the end, that this isn't me beeing mean towards paladins, or saying that the are a face-roll-easy class to play. Their challenge in raids lies in timing of use of the limited amount of spells, while druids are more dependent on chosing the right spell at the right time. (any ability is a spell, otherwise it would have been called an "ability book" and not a "spell book" so stop nitpicking!!).
Druids play chess in raids, paladins play Left4dead.
And its the little things, as my vanity that pushed me from chess to fps :)

I am the (K)night

2009-09-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

So what do you do, when AH/grinding/alt-leveing/main-instancing gets boring, and when RL work and social... stuff grabs a hold of you?

You buy an XboX 360, thats what you do. Then you get this game. And you become the (k)night (Guess it works better spoken than in writing).

And its just as great as you could expect, any game Yatzee would recommend, to be.

But it does leave me in a bit of a sticky situation. Not for my guild, mind you, but my own guilt.

I cannot help but to feel very bad about leaving my guild "behind". Not that im the greatest Tonk this game has ever seen, nor that im imba dps. But I like to think, that i'm a smart player that any Raid Leader would like to have in his raid. So it hurts my inner Knight, to read my guilds raid signups lists.

They often have a lot of threads concerning the word "sorry" "transfer" "uni" and "will not". And here I am. If I wanted to, I could raid 2-3 times more a week (as opposed to the 1 raid i do now in our 10 manned group) with our 25 and 10 manned groups. I could squize it in. Stuff would suffer. But I've done it before. Lots.

On the days I work late, I could log on early and farm consumables and prepare for raids. I could do lots of things. Instead, I've signed out of our 25 manned.

And I love it.

I love the free time. I love my Xbox, I love not stressing about shopping, and house chores because I have to game. I really really love it. Apart from when I think about my guildies.

Because when I do, I feel ashame. Its a silly silly feeling.They certainly have given me no reason whatsoever to feel this way. But I do. I feel horribly that I haven't studied all 3 ways of handling a new boss (healing, pewpewing and tonking) beforehand. I feel bad that I haven't gotten my new chestpiece enchanted yet. (Im loosing my 4 set bonus so im still not 100% sure its better). But mostly I feel bad that I'm not there to help out.

But I don't feel bad Enough, If i did I would log in and play. But so far, the thought of logging on to do anything in games, gives me the same feeling that "dull-chore-week" at work gives me.

I still remember having a sense of exitement about logging on. To do dailies, to level alts, to prepare for raids. to RAID.

I still have a lot of fun doing raids. Just not anything outside the instances.

Then I read Righteous Orbs, that they are lacking an OT. And I think "oh yea, ill transfer my druid or paladin and Tonk horde style!! It will be great, and exciting, and ill tag along on those horrible pugs that are ever so much fun to talk about AFTERWARDS.

But I know when I'm lying to myself. The only thing dragging me online are the people in my guild, whom I luuve playing with, and whom I feel very much in-debted to. And still its not enough.

So I'll spend the occasional 2-3 hours of free fun time I have beeing a caped knight of the Night hiding on Gargoyles and trying not to think of that little voice in the back of my mind, poking at my illogical and silly bad conscience.

I've thought about pulling the plug on WoW, all together, but it seems I can't even do that anymore.

I can't even be bothered to log on and play with my RL friends in champions online. Maybe its a generel MMO fatigue im suffering from.

What im getting to, is that, for the time beeing, my posts won't be so much about in-game experiences :)

ps Oh and im on xbox live aswel: DwRedux

I hate the way Women are beeing discriminated in wow, it's SOOO gay

2009-09-24T02:33:00.000-07:00

Can you tell what is wrong with the above sentence?

No?

Let's backtrack a bit. So every once in a while some (wow)post will surface that will inflame angry bloggers everywhere. The most effective of these seems to be the "look how women are beeing put down in wow" or the "im writing a post about something people can interpret as beeing chauvinistic." This usually gets people pretty wound up. Whether or not it was a male chauvanistic pig ruining the reputation of female gamers everywhere, ill leave up to everyone else to decide.

Personally I think not. Its not like he was very kind to healers everywhere on his former piece. Because it's really hard to be nice, when your goal is to showcase the 5 negative stereotypes of an egotistic gamer (or in the old piece on healers).

In the guilds i've been in, I've met more than one of each type, and only two of those where female gamers (funny enough most of them had female toons). And using cultural architypes to exemplify the peronally traits doesnt make the author a sexist. It just underlines that history in generel has always been very sexist. Pertty much ever since that chick who banged Jesus. Who where later labeled a whore ( i guess groupies aren't a new phenomena hurhur... *sigh*) .

Whatever, the point of all this wasn't really how women are treated in game(s). Because blizz has long realised that a huge part of their players are women, and pretty much the rest of their customers like the fact that they are playing with women. (Its like the bars that offers free drinks and entrance to women only... funny how you never hear anyone complaining bout that)

The point of this sentence was in fact that I've read posts where the harassment of women was labeled as beeing "both sad and so gay"(not a direct quote).

OH THE FRIKKING IRONY.

And here is where my panties gets in a twist. Because it is not women who has been dealt with the "ridicule" card in this world of gaming. It's the homosexuals that gets that hand dealt (think i drowned myself in that metaphor). because whenever anything happens in game that could be thought of as sexist, tons or angry blogposts and forum posts spawn. Whenever gamers promote that their guild is gay and lesbian friendly they get banned (yea its an old story).

--------------------------------------------------------------------

And you still have to hear people say "omg that was SOOOO womanlike of you to outbid me on that auction" and "lol your a woman, l2p" "fucking chick l2p" "you play like a woman" and whenever you point out to them, the answer is always always:

"Listen man, i know tons of women, some of my best friends are women, I didn't mean anything by it, its just what people say. To me, im not even talking bout women, its just a word meaning something is negative."

Because we still live in a world where if you go out and are honest with your gender, you will get beaten up. Women in our day an age still have to cut their hair and hide their boobs and put on fake mustaches to avoid ridicule and beatings. Hell, in parts of the western world its still a crime to be a woman. -Or at least considered to be a sickness not unlike insanity. How many dads don't you hear STILL asking their daughters "have you considered not growing boobs, but maybe a penis? Maybe you would like that too".

But I guess we just have to accept that, dont' we?

What to think of the next expansion?

2009-09-03T22:37:00.000-07:00

So i'm standing there in front of the changing room/bathroom/changing room/changing room, holding Mrs DW-redux's Very purple handbag. Waiting. Alone. The "I just have to try one more thing on" still ringing in my ears. So there I was alone. With a big girly handbag, standing very near the female-undergarment department. Alone. Waiting. The other guys walking behind their companions, gave me a sympathetic look. They had also been there. Standing alone with a girly handbag looking like some sort of perv. The women at the store looked at me like i WAS some sort of perv.
And all I could think to myself was: "So beeing married, really hasn't changed much, has it?".

Ah yes, the trip to a foreign country is over and I'm back!

And with perfect timing too. There is a new hardmode instance, that I've not yet tried and the whole wow-blogging world is so over and done with talking bout the expansion. Well SCREW THEM.

Because I have two coppers (is that the same as two policemen?) and I want to throw em in the mix too (if it is, then this sentence has gone from weird to worse).

Cataclysm
Or: All that it could have been, but most likely never will. Let's start on the negative.

- It will be lazily done. Just like the tournament, the dailies and the gate-lock system. It will be done with the "how can we do as little WORK as possible" attitude. How do I know? When a selling point of ONE of the dungeons is this: This is an entirely new dungeon, new art, new creatures, new everything.
UGH.

- The so called dramatic changes to the landscape, Won't be dramatic but rather smallish. Why? See my first point.

- 5 levels of leveling won't be epic, and will be over and done with extremely fast. Also, having max level be 85 seems stupid. 75, I could get, but 85? why not 87.5? Maybe thats just me.

... Thats it. That is all the negative things I can think of. Well. That should be enough to ruin the game for an "I like seeing new bosses and killing em, I don't like killing the same boss 50 times over. And what is the pvp you speak of?" type of person that I am. But It won't.
The fact that I have to spend 60 USD to get my Worgen hunter (like im gonna reroll... Well.. I might) doesnt seem to deter me either. And that HAS to be a plus, for a game that I swore would have to knock me off my feet in order to get me to purchase it.
It hasn't really though. I'm afraid that the not thinking ahead planning that WoW has become (for example the "lets change the hunter ammo" change that didn't even work), combined with the extreme lazyness that is wrath dungeons, just gives me chills about a full fledged expansion in theese capable hands.

...But. You know.... Deathwing. That is pretty much the only argument I needed. Deathwing.
Excuse me, im gonna dig out my old WoW novels and drool some more.

Cataclysm

2009-08-19T10:32:00.000-07:00

Remember when I said that Blizz had to pull out something truly amazing in order to make me consider playing after Arthas was dead?

Well.

Hello there leaked info from mmo. (and if its all fake, im gonna join boub in his nakkid paris run! Unlike Some bloggers. )

-------------------------

Let me just stop myself there.

Tobold is an idiot. That post got me so pissed of. Yea you didnt discover this, no need to be so envious of those that did. So there is no point in you, just go sour and point out what you percieve as flaws and call that a post. Only to have commentators explain to you, how it could work just fine.

THEN you frikking go and say to them that just because they might happen, doesnt mean that it will. that was your WHOLE point.

When you make a post saying that "this is impossible" and someone explain to you that it is - in fact- possible, you can't reply with "that still doesnt make it true"..Well it might not, but it sure as hell made your post invalid didnt it?

And I used to look up to your blog. (Hell does indeed hath no fury, like a blog-fan scorn)

-------------------------

Allright back on track. I love this idea for the expansion.

I didn't want to post a knee-jerk reaction to it when the post first aired. I wanted it to sink in. And it has.

Deathwing is the only villain to compare to Arthas (He doesnt measure up, but he is close)

New races are cool! New class/race comboes are cooler. The redoing of the old continent: Hell, its about time.

If done right, this will be great. If done absolutely brilliantly this will even stop me from rolling lightsabre-tankness (And i didnt think anything could).

So once Blizzard proves that they are still on top of their game (Icecrown instance, im looking at you), and the expansion gets revealed at Blizzcon, im gonna take yet another step back and look at it all.

At the moment, im a very happy gamer and blogger. Because once i get back from my 3 weeks of the interweb, we are gonna have an almost real instance (hard mode colliseum) and we will know a lot more about the expansion (hopefully).

And maybe, just maybe, we will get to hear about the new mmo.

Heres to hoping!!

Onyxia raid

2009-08-13T02:27:00.000-07:00

WOOO

Onyxia. I hardly knew ye.

Yes its frikking true to celebrate WoWs 5th anniversary Blizzard has decided to do something completely new and original.

They are "re"-doing a dungeon for level 80.

I know, it's unheard of. RE-doing or remaking a dungeon. So that those who did not experience it before get a chance to try it again, and those that have will drown in tears of joy, for the nostalgia will be so thick it could... I dunno something with oranges and elephants... It will be thick!

What is this Naxxramas you speak of???

Yea so it's allready been done WAY to much in wrath allready. As if heroic mode wasn't enough lazyness on Blizzards part, they have now decided that they will redo yet another dungeon for the raiders.

For those of you keeping score that is wrath: 2 old dungeons "re-tuned", 1 dungeon that is a circle without any trash and 1 (ONE) new dungeon that was -lets be honest- mostly about rekilling the bosses that where in wheelchairs.

So this expansion has been a complete and utter fail, in regards to creatively. And i feel so sorry for the poor gms on the blizzard forum, who has to try and bend over backwards in order to defend this crap of utterly lack of trying to do anything with this game.

What happened to the Blizzard of yesteryears. The company that broke grounds with everything they did. The guys that woudlnt give a release dato on a game other than "its done when its done". The guys that broke ground on everything they did.

I really do feel like a frikking drug-addict. Clinging desperatly onto the memories of when i would play on a schoolnight (well, i had early classes) to 3 am, not noticing the time passing, because id be healing in mauradon. Where did that game go? The game that had every zone be an adventure in itself?

I know a lot of it is me beeing a long time player, and difficult to impress. But on the other hand I also know that when Kill'jaden popped out of that pit for the first time, I forgot to cast heals for the first 15 seconds, I just sat in my chair with eyes as large as teacups starring at the wonder that was my opposition. So it IS still possible to awe the old time players... If you wherent beeing lazy about it.

But like the good welltaught drug-user i am, ill still stick around. Because, dammit, I want to see icecrown.

I want to battle Arthas.

My deathknight shall have his revenge!!! You made me kill my childhood friend, Arthas, I'll make you pay!!!*

* Donovan Pulfrost:

Come to finish the job, have ye?

Well this son o' Ironforge would like...

Redux?

Redux, I'd recognize that face anywhere... What... What have they done to ye, lad?

Ye don't remember me, do ye? Blasted Scourge... They've tried to drain ye o' everything that made ye a righteous force o' reckoning. Every last ounce o' good... Everything that made you a son of Ironforge!

Think, Redux. Think back. Try and remember the snow capped mountains o' Dun Morogh! Ye were born there, lass. Remember the splendor o' life, Redux! Ye were a champion o' the dwarves once! This isn't ye!

Listen to me, Redux Ye must fight against the Lich King's control. He's a monster that wants to see this world - our world - in ruin. Don't let him use ye to accomplish his goals. Ye were once a hero and ye can be again. Fight, damn ye! Fight his control!

There... There's no more time for me. I'm done for. Finish me off, Redux. Do it or they'll kill us both Redux... For KHAAAAAAAAZZZ MODAAAAAANNNNNN!!!

For Khaz Modan indeed old friend.

Death knight specc funsies.

2009-08-12T01:31:00.000-07:00

So, I thought it might be time that I try and live up to my blog-title, and talk some more about the death knight class. (Its weird, i've been so happy with my last two posts, that the pressure of this next post to follow almost gave me a small blockage. So i played a lot of guitar-hero, and even shrek 3 the game... silly i know.)

How do we fare at tanking past 3.2?
Well I suck.
Don't know how large a percentage of this is due to my lack of gaming abilities. (my n00b factoid). But my health pool is low, my migration is terrible and -as predicted- my threat is horrible. Every single class out-threats me. And I don't mean the other tanks (they do aswell, they always have), but I mean, locks, warriors, mages, shamans even rogues are a 'threat' to me now adays..... Hell i even had problems pulling an add of our resto shaman on Ignis :( (that was the cherry on top of the turd of a raidnight, where "No one spoke English, and everything's was broken, and my Stacys where soaking wet" -If you know what i mean.

So beeing a DK tonk ain't all it's cracked up to be no more. How any tanking class is ever going to break into the "this is the guy we will use untill we know the fight" slot that warriors has always had. I don't know. I know how our guild druid did it in TBC. Two things: He was/is a totally cool player who just knows his class and how to tonk everything he is beeing thrown at. and secondly, druids where OP tanks back then (I'll insist that they still are).

I only had one of those things going for me, in order to get me the tanking experience i need. And that edge is now gone.

Think Blizz effectively told us:

You had your day in the sun, go back into the shades you filthy filthy casuals who think that a class with the name "death" in it is cool. But, hey, thanks for picking up wrath, and for the added subs.

Like i touched on earlier, the Death knight has a fundemental flaw in their tanking design. And as of this patch, the pendulon has swung against us. Sorry.

So I have this to look forward to: Tonk the adds on trash, and dps on bosses, or the tough adds. Not much I can do about it. For several reasons, and not all of them are class-design flaws.

So that is what ill do. But how?

This will be my tanking specc, stolen from 2fps (in fact i stole his SS of his specc, couldnt even be bothered to recreate it!). why? Go read his great DK blog about why (yes! I finally found a dk blog i really like, so WOOO on that too... even if she is playing a Blood elf ).

I really love blood for dps, but on the other hand i really really like to look at a DK dual-wielding. On a dwarf that looks frikking cool. (I spend so much time on the wrath beta forum advokating why it wasnt against lore... so please don't get me riled up about that again -for now, settle with "it looks cool on a dwarf). So ill try and specc Frost DW (where im torn between the pew pew of this specc 3/51/17 and the helpfullness of imp icy talons 0/53/18, that is so nice in the 10 manned grp im in. (although when I was blood tonk/blood dps they didnt miss it... hmmm). For fairness, both speccs are taken from the skeletonjack site.

So this is the DK funsies that awaits me. For more funsies, I have a secret little side-thing going. But im afraid to tell anything about that, for the fear of repeating my complete failure that was the dreamreaper project.

"Are you not entertained?" - The Colliseum

2009-08-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

So. Last night we made our way into the Grand Colliseum to fight... well no. Im not even going to pretend this was anything grand. It was such a letdown.

Just like I wrote in my last post, id rather wipe on hard mode to have it nerf eventually, than I would like to kick a crippled little boss. Well Blizz has clearly proved to me, that my way of thinking is -not only wrong but- sick.

What they decided to do, was to make the easy version of the first boss only. available for the first week.

So we gathered our 25 heroic raiders. World ranked (at our best) 872 guild (now we are more like 1585th) we where preparred for a full on hard day at work with the new bosses.

So our raidleader goes over the basics of the fight:

part one is something like this.. I think.

Part two we do that, or do the twin jormout things do that? I dunno we will have a look

And part 3 we move out of the way, I don't know what else he does

And with the words of "Lets have a pull and see whats it like" We oneshot it.

Bada-fucking-bing.

Apart from one of our rogues who did something bad (stood in fire I think), we had conquered this encounter without a scratch.

"was that it?" One of our trigger happy mages asked

"Yes lioa, that was it"

That was it indeed. So i could spend the next 50 minutes toying with FL4 and looking at my flask time just going away.

I think we would have had a harder time doing naxx. I honestly do. Okay, so our healing team is very well at making up for dps mistakes and they healed their little hearts out. But I don't think they had such a bad day when one of the trees after the fight /w to me the 3 little letters: L o l

And that is what WoW has turned into. LOL. A pathetic attempt to drag out a dungeon that clearly has had little to no time put into developing it. ITS A FORKING ARENA, thats it. there are no trash. There are piss easy bosses and loot. And a gate system designed to drag this horrible little piece of @£$€ instance out as long as possible.

Thats it, im done. Im out of here. Last nights raid made the decicion for me. No more WoW for me. I am NOT entertained.

Why not at least give us the option to start with the hrad mode version we know is there. and ready. I honestly feel like Blizzard is just sitting on the sideline going "how low can we go on the budget before they start to notice?".

Like a week ago (ish) when i tried to get in touch with a GM. Took me almost 48 hours. Seriously. 48 hours.

So for now, i'm playing for my friends in game. This to me is now a very expensive messenger. But i love they people I play with. I adore the friday/saturday raid group i sometimes get to help out, almost as much as mr pew pew does (do follow that link, he writes so well.)

So im going to stick around till I see Arthas dead.*

*Unless at Blizzcon im blown away by their: "there will be a grand instance next month and we have trippled our personell working on WoW."- announcement

Why I'd rather have boss nerfs than hard mode

2009-08-04T05:34:00.000-07:00

(gaming filosophy)

With every patch you get boss fight changes. Some may be to erradicate errors, or bugs and other are made to make the encounter easier.

And with every such "nerf", you hear the unaviodable cries of the raiding crowds two loudest groups: the morons (who complain about change, because they don't understand change and will only listen to the next group) and the wannabe hardcores (argh i've lost the link to a great blogpost about how its not the hardcore raiders that moan, but the wannabehardcores... DAMMIT). EDIT found it... or rather *it* found me :D

Allright before I get into this post about why nerfs are great, and why hardmodes are stupid, lets get some stuff out of the way.

- Im not a casual player, I dont want easy raids and easy loot. Im raiding for the challenge.

- I do however like to have people to play with

- Blizzard has made it very clear that they want the "casual" players, to have access to all the content as soon as possible (well what they said was that their biggest mistake was naxx40, since it was their greatest dungeon, and noone got to see it. )

-Let me repeat, I want nerfs on bosses, not hardmodes, and I like hard raids.

So how does those two things combine. Well, as I stated Blizzard is going to make sure as many people as possible get to raid. That is a given. That is a certain. So there is no way around that.

So let's look at what we can do within this setting: 3 options.

1. easy raids, bosses take little to no preperation and requirements to gear, speccs ect is very low.

2. Bosses are as 1. but has the option of making them harder, or "hardmodes"

3. Bosses are hard at the opening of the dungeon and will slowly get easier, or more acsessible as time goes by.

As I said, I like hard raids, so for me option 1 is out. Its also out for Blizzard, because it drives away those who like to strive for hard stuff (and brag about that too, im sort of that type too).

Option 2 and 3 are best examplefied with to two specific instances: Ulduar and Sunwell.

Ulduar beeing very easy on normal and very very very hard at the hardest hard mode (yogg 0 watchers is THE hardest boss in this game ever, and mimiron hard mode is (to qoute Ensidia) "the best tuned fight Blizzard has ever made" (or something like that).

Sunwell on the other hand was heartbreakingly hard at launch (unless you where a PTR testdummie) and over time got -if not easymode- easier, especcially after the "big nerf". -The nerf was in fact so grand that people talk about whether you downed a boss before or after the nerf. But throughout the lifespan of that instance it constantly got easier and easier (some of the nerfs where in fact just bug fixes).

So we have the settings of Ulduar and Sunwell to choose from. As the title of this post indicates, I prefer Sunwell. Why?

Now don't get me wrong. Ulduar was a great instance. But... Lemme give you a quick analogy:

You play table tennis. You just Luuuuve playing table tennis. One day your game manager B. Lizzard sets you up against yet another opponent. His name is Yoggie bare. (So its a rather thickly layered analogy, but stay with me).

You meet up for game time. And find that Yoggie bare is in a wheelchair. Its a fun fight, it's just that... well, you throw him a curveball, and there is no way he can reach him. As an opponent, he is a pushover.

And you beat him.

After you win Mr Lizzard, graps hold of you and tell you that "I just talked to the sponsors, if you beat him while only standing on one leg, you will get a better bat sponsored. And if you on top of that beat him while blindfolded, you will also get some new shoes! and even the chance of a whole table tennis table!".

That way the game will also be very very challenging for you. But... well... In the end, all you have done is beating a cripple. No matter how you might justify it, in the end it's you pointing and lauhing at a cripple going "AHAHAHA you are pathetic!! I was blindfolded and jumping on ONE LEG, and I still beat the crap out of you!!"

I don't want to be that sort of player. I really really don't. And I KNOW I don't want to be that sort of human beeing either.

Id rather play against the imba chineese player Sun weill, who is just incredible. But after playing her for a while (and loosing a lot) you sort of get how to beat her (the trick is to fake a left short shot, that will force her to play it back to your right corner, setting you up for a smash). It's tricky, and sometimes you pull it off. But not enough times to Kill ('jaden *drumroll*) her.

So week after week you meet up with her and play, and you get closer and closer, untill one day Mr Lizzard tells you that she stubbed her toe, and wont be as fast on the switches, making your little plan all that much easier to execute. And surely, you get her.

So yea, it sort of wasn't a fair fight. She was hurt, but you had figured out *how* to beat her, you just needed that extra little nudge to tip the odds on your side.

Get where im going with this? It just makes for so much greater dungeons and for so much more satisfying kills, once you get the kill. Yes sure, sometimes you will be struggeling at 3% on the night before the next nerf hits, and won't get the kill before the nerf. But it is so much preferable than to go blindfolded into a bossfight, you have allready beaten to laugh and point fingers at poor wheelchair guy.

1 month (non-wow)

2009-07-28T10:12:00.000-07:00

So in one month Mrs dw-Redux, truly in the eyes of everyone will be Mrs dw-redux, ring and all.

Somewhere in my foto-library i have a couple of screens of one of my alts popping the question to one of her alts. (that was done 6 months after the real porposal btw, i did not NOT ask stuff like that in the game... Just so thats clear)

So my mind is pretty pre-occupied at the moment. -oh and who on Gods green earth decided that it was the guys job to pick out the buket?? I dont know jack about flowers, they are like girls when i was in college: they smell pretty and look damn nice, but im really kindda certain that I dont know diddly bout em.

Let alone, what kinds of flowers she wants.. Gah.

A little on gaming though, 3.2 hasn't hit yet, and wont for a little while longer. Would Blizz dare to release it 1-2 weeks before blizzcon? How many "top guilds" attending would scream murder at the thought of them missing out on the server first kills cuz they where in California??

So my money are on Patch breaking straight after Blizzcon.

It would also steal away any momentum AION might get.

Project Dreamreaper status. p 3

2009-07-21T00:44:00.000-07:00

Last post in the series

So saturday night, after a great fun guild raid to Ulduar with the alt/semi-retired/parent raid group (aka team daddy), where I helped out on my priest on their first night at yogg (halfway through p2 AND in 4 pulls had p1 totally under control... amazing). I logged onto my gnome Lock, still at level 22.

I gave a deep /sigh, then mailed her gold and Heirloom shoulders to another alt, logged out and... deleted her.

Many factors played into this. Leffe was one, I won't deny that. The thought of possibly maybe getting to play worgen and needing a free char slot, was another (again, thinking that id need to free a slot up *now* for that, might have something to do with the Leffe aswell ^^) but mostly Dreamreaper had just been a cause for guilt. Whenever I logged onto wow, id see her cheery little face, with a big blue guy behind her, almost begging me to log on and play with her (damn dirty gnomes). And I never did. Leveling in outland on my other toons, grinding on my dk or just attempting to play the AH all seemed much more appealing.

So id see her little face in the character selection window, smiling waiting.. And I knew, I just knew she blamed me. Blamed me for abandoning her, for letting her gather dust.

Sure the smile was the same, the slow shifting of weight from one leg to the other that gnomes always do, was still there. But the sparkle in her eyes where gone. And all that was left was pure hatred. hell does indeed hath no fury like a woman scorn.

So there I was with Tom Waits blasting "dirt in the ground" in my ears, her looking at me, the Leffe in full effect, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I logged in. Typed /played (16 hours and change) mailed the stuff, logged out and clicked DELETE.

Gone where the broken promises, the dreams of glory. Of me and her together, blasting in the back. Dotting our enemies up, while id have time to stay on top of the situation. No more tanking panic, no more healing frenzy. This time It would be different. This time id have control. This time my contribution over Teamspeak would not any longer be just "FFS dont...[] I have him..[]..heal" I would have been in control, able to test my meddle as a group leader (something i've toyed with before, you dont raid as a tank and as a healer and not have dreams of trying to be a party/raid leader). All those promises and dreams she promised and I never fulfilled, all that guilt, ended on that DELETE.

The original premise for creating her, was the question: would anyone roll anything other than DKs in wrath since it took too long to level a toon otherwise? The answer is YES, several guildies have rolled new classes, and a couple of them even switched from their old main to this new one, and is raiding Ulduar with us. For me however it just wasn't meant to be. At least not in this go. I had put too many expectations on this little gnomes shoulders.

I did however actuelly enjoy playing warlock. Although they are far from as easy to solo with as DK's, druids or even Disc priests.

Maybe its my play method, maybe its a matter of learning the tricks, maybe it will get better past level 25+ I dunno, but it was fun. And I also know that monday morning, I was looking at races for another Lock, only this time its going to be different... This time.

Chasing the dragon elsewhere

2009-07-16T06:41:00.001-07:00

Like a drugaddict, chasing the dragon once again looking to recapture that long lost feeling of how WoW was like the first time you played it. Or to steal a qoute from the pinkpigtailed bartenders blog

"New players have one advantage over the grizzled altaholic: the content is fresh and exciting to them. I'd trade away all my heirloom items in an instant for that."

Just spot on!

So like most of the horribly scarred emotionally deprived hardcore mmo-addicts I've dabbled with the enemy. I've bought and played: City of heroes, Warhammer online, Conan, Final fantasy Fuck I even tried out maplestory and Runescape... One time -in sheer desperation- I even rerolled horde on an RP realm, with some friends (stay the hell away from Sporregaaaaarrrr on EU servers, for an RP realm there is little to no intelligence to be found - at all... "NO, it says RP-PVP so i can choose if I want to pvp OR rp.. besides RP stands for rapid progression so it just means i level faster here!!!" ...okay im getting sidetracked.)

Point was, that all of them where a bust eventually.

In the end i logged back on Hellscream to my old friends (yea im a social!!) and had my dose of MMO there.

Come to think of it, me re-rolling to a Death knight, might have been for the same reason as i spend all my money on the other dreadded mmo's, the thrill of something new, undiscovered and exciting. Because WoW has lost that. With the re-shipping of Naxx, and the -seemingly- years of public testing on Ulduar, it was impossible to have any sort of discovery or fun with WoW once you hit level 80.

As i've touched on earlier all the databases and knowledge forums and addons makes for ruining the fun and excitement and discovery of the game for all of us.

"But Redux, you hunk of a man, why don't you just stop using the addons and looking in the knowledgebases and reading patchnotes and boss strats?" Some might ask.

To which I would reply: Because of two important factors: im an idiot, and im competative. So there is no way i would ever not raid in WoW. Ever. And to raid you need to know what the fekk you are doing, and the few rare guilds that raid without the help of bossguides are either competing for world firsts (with the ludicris raidtimes to follow) or arent accepting new applicants (and im almost certain that even if they begged me to follow them, id be hardpressed to leave the friends i have in my guild behind).

So (as the idiot i am) im stuck chasing my dragon in other games. For now i got my drugged up eyes set solely on Aion. Its pretty, you get black wings, and the reviews so far hint that its more *fun* than the clean unbumpy ride that wow leveling has become. So I can't wait to hear how the endgame (abyss) is. incidentally that part is beeing tested this weekend in the beta (That im not -yet- in).

If nothing else, it should keep me occupied untill my big WoW killer comes along. Bioware you naughty tease of a pusher, you finally did it! made me an mmo. Now release it!!! Yes im talking about Star wars: The old republic and my God i hope its release will fit with me not having to buy the next WoW release. Because if its gonna be a waterworld of fun (the wow expansion that is) im jumping ship (pun intended).

Why?

have you ever tried doing any of the below water quests in wow? Have you ever tried fighting under water?

Now imagine a whole expansion of that. 10 levels of that+ a year of dungeons doing that...

Thats why!

In the end, one day, ill have to go cold turkey, at old age in the retirement home when my eyes finally give out, but not before that! :)

Oh and patch 3.2 wont be released before august, ill bet with anyone!

Blizzard does listen... almost sort of

2009-07-14T09:07:00.000-07:00

So in my last post i complained a tiny weensy bit about Blizzards extremely greedy and.. well unsympathetic way of abusing their loving fans. I am of course reffering to them asking an astonishing 29,95 EUR for the fans to watch a livestream of blizzards commercials known as Blizzcon.

Having been to the latest worldwide invitational, i can with comfort say that the event is just that, a long add praising all that is Blizzard. Nothing wrong with that, they are great developers.. Hell I was a huge enough fan to plan my holiday around going there. And I had a blast when they announced Diablo III and overall a great great time. The memory has since soured for me, after hearing that they charged a ridiculos price for just watching it on your pc at home. Sure you get a little code for the coolest pet yet in game with this price, but honestly so what? Why wasn't there an option for us fans who just wanted to see the news live as it happens on stream? Most tv shows has that option for frikking free!! And they arent adverticing a product ( at least not directly).

This whole thing just reeks of greed and of not giving a flying F@%k about the people who play their games. Its truly honestly stuff like this that makes me want to cancel my subscription and boycutt every blizz game ever made. But I won't. Firstly cuz they make such great games, and secondly they couldnt care less what i do... Or could they?

Because now it seems, according to fnatic that you will get the chance to -at least- watch the tournament games going on via live stream for free. WOOOO.

So now it really begs the question: Why does the rest of the event, you know the commercials where they tell us what to buy next, has to cost a flipping 30 euro????

Really Blizzard, why?

*sigh* -Funny thing is, looking at my last posts, i've seemed to have an overall very negative attitude here, and im always told im so positive in everything. I guess this blog is where I went my frustrations :) I'll try and make happier posts soon. Or at least be happier when writing stuff.

Hey look, summer /runs off

Ideas for WoW

2009-07-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

So... im very creative. Bloggers are a whole are extremely creative.

Its true. Im "drawing inspiration" from Pewpewlazers who "drew inspiration" from the egotistical priest for this post. (Aint that creative?)

heres the premise for this post:

If you could sit down with a WoW developer over coffee and bagels for a half hour, what would you ask them to change about the game?
However im not a demanding sort of fella, so ill mostly be asking 'why?'.

Not "change this, make me massily aoe expert nau!!" Or anything silly like that?

Nor will I ask to be made a gnome -Im still sane, thank you very much (/hides from pewpew and Larísa's wrath :p)

1. What do you want on your bagel then? Ill have the same.

2. Honestly truly, just between us.. Ill tell noone i swear: Does woW has a finite storyline? A story arc so to speak, where you will end it, or will you "just" make up new stuff? There seem to be a (albeit very very thin) link between the original game and the two expansions, the meta-story seems to be that war is stupid and the horde and the alliance should stop fighting amongst themselves to stop common enemies. Do you plan on ending it? And if not end the story, do you have a planned ending for WoW, or will you just stop it once the subscription numbers die out?

3. What is so wrong with dwarf Warlocks? -Or even better whats wrong with a dwarf druid... Just for me :D

4. So... the dancing. Have you ever seen the Dwarf dances? Especcially the females? Please, ill pay anything, just let me change that.

5. Get someone who’s actually been to Scotland to do the Dwarf female voices. Please. (totally my own one i swear.. NO dont go reading pewpewlazers blog)

6. The new mmo... just whisper to me what its going to be about [..pause..] oooooooooohh sounds great! I wont tell anyone.

7. Why the fekk are you making people pay to watch your adds for upcomming blizz games?? Honestly does your greed know no limit??? Seriously!
- pet included you say? well, make a special addtion then for the idio... ehh superfans, where they can pay.. But forcing people to pay to watch you advertice for your own products is sickening. It truly is. Its the sort of thing where im torn. Between you great games, and just saying "screw everything blizz ever makes, im boycutting ya!!"

8. Want some more coffee? I could sure wants some.

WoW is fantastic and at its hight right now, in every aspect

2009-07-08T01:44:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Larísa great post about us old timers needing to stop and look around and shut the F@£$k up (my words, not hers -she is an innocent little angel... like all gnomes), ive made this post, celebrating just why WoW has never been as great as it is just now.

First off, one should never read two things: test-realm patch notes and beauty magazines. Both will make you feel horrible for completly different reasons. So don't. And don't listen to the people who do (ofc you *should* still read my brilliant post about the flaws and future of DKs :p), either.

Just wait till a patch goes live, look at what has changed and adjust to it.

Allright: So why is WoW at its prime right now? Why aren't raids back from the days of Naxx40, aq40 and molten core better? Do you remember the raids back then?

"wait for 5 sunders"

"lol wtf you are lowest on the healing meter"

"but I dont have any overhealing done"

"who gives a shit, if you dont get higher on the meter, you won't raid again"

"/pst dude im on AFK-follow"

In 40 manned raid-dungeons only about 10 of the people there knew what was going on. and at a max only 20 more payed attention. on bossfights it wasn't unusual to have people go afk... except on LOOT time. Where everyone would fight, yell and argue over the very very few drops that where.

In pvp, you waited happily for 2-3 hours to get into AV and once you got in, the fight was almost over and people would plea: "lol wtf plz loose some towers so us new guys can get some play"

And if ever you got 10 people from the opposite faction that had end-game gear on, they would plough through everything. The gap between someone with imba-gear and a green/blue rogue (my pvp toon) was silly. Once i met an warrior from ORCA (top horde guild back then) who was /afk in a tower. After spending about 30 seconds on getting him down, he came back and two shotted me.... that was balanced pvp back then.

And this is the stuff we miss??

Today, we all know how to play in raids, we have to, otherwise you will still be stuck in the first wing of naxx. Sure some play better than others in a semi-casual guild, but its way more about teamwork and coordination. You see a lot more of people passing gear to those who need it more, you see a lot more interaction between players. (back then, in raids i never talked to anyone outside of the healing channel) and the raids.

Oh boy, the raids. They are so big, well-designed and jawdroppingly stunningly pwetty!

Bosses are welldesigned and well tested. (if you haven't heard about lady vajsh back in the day, then shhhhush).

They are well balanced aswell - compared to the old days.

And the splitting of raids into 10 and 25 manned was a stroke of genius by Blizzard. never has there been so many people raiding. So the pool of players to choose from, should you need more, is better. Yes the standards has risen, but isnt that a sign of prosperity. Now-a-days, you don't need to be either a) a priest or b) have your entire guild spend weeks to gear you up in old instances in order to get a new recruit usefull in end-game. Badges and PuGs raiding the dungeons made sure of that.

Then there is the new class. Death Knights. How cool are they? If they are Dwarfs: very very cool. If they are human (or a pink gnome, swelt) not so much, but still cool! :D

Death knights filled in a hole in game, and along with further buffing of warior, paladin and druid tanks, they made sure that noone had to spend 3 hours of playing-and-having-fun-time waiting around for a tank in order to hit a dungeon.

They even shortened dungeons so you didnt need to clear an entire night to go have some fun, kill some bosses and get some gear.

Then there was leveling up. 2 starter zones. Enough said? I think so.

Lastly the lore: name the one greatest villain in WoW. ... go on...

If you didnt say Arthas/the lich king, you ehh well.. you better start... well something about monkeys, your uncle, icecream and pooh!!! Or: 'you are wrong'.

Pretty much all of the lore sorrounding warcraft (no, not World of warcraft, just warcraft) centers around the fall of Arthas, and him turning from the greatest hero of the world, into its greatest threat.

And now we get to fight him (eventually). How utterly fantastic is that? Ill tell you how: very!

Fundamental flaw of the Death knight

2009-07-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

In the latest Blizz Q/a Ghostcrawler talks about Death knights, there he touches upon what I feel is the most fundamental flaw blizz has in regards to Death knight (tanks)

Death knights also have a lot of abilities with medium-length cooldowns. This means they can be used multiple times per fight, but aren’t always there exactly when needed. A lot of the skill involved in playing a death knight, whether for PvP, tanking, or doing raid dps, involves using these at the right time.

Sounds good right? It is. Its unique, its fun, its cool! and its different from all the other tanking classes. And thats great!

However, thats also the worst thing that could happen to the development of Death Knigth (tanks). Why?

Well most guild still use primarily Druids and Warriors (and paladins) as their tanks, they did in TBC and they do now. So in order to get a established guild to take on a new class to tank end-game, they had to give us DKs an "in". Cooldowns, armor and health where our ins. Ensidia gladly took a DK to tank, and everyone that was anyone in PvE did the same.

And the floodstreams of bare, tonadin and protwarriors openeed. Im not saying that they where wrong, DKs where overpowered. Very much so. We did and still do have some weaknesses that is not recognized as much since now everyone is on the "DKs are extremely OP" wagon. - Just read the patch notes, the nerfs are a comming.

So thats fine. Personally I feel they are over the top, and I very much fear we will be placed at the bottom of the tanking food chain after patch. next to shamans with shields....

Then we will get buffed again, to make up for overnerfing us, and another cryout will begin. We are a new class, the 3 other tank classes has way better lobyists than we do.

So why do I claim that the above qoute is terrible for us? Why do I think that we will forever be doomed to be either first choice or worst choice for tanking? Our cooldowns.

How are Blizzard planning to make sure our shorter cooldowns won't offset boss abilities? Take Vezax as an example, with a DK tanking you can skip the whole kiting bit and just eat the extra hard hits due to our shorter cooldowns.

So either we are gonna be weaker than all the other tanks, and slightly better when using cooldowns, or we are gonna be the same (or worse which is where we are with theese patches) but with cooldowns that dont really do anything extra. And since Blizz stated that one of our unique skills is that we have theese shorter cooldowns, i just dont see option two happening. Instead we are gonna be the tank where: "just spam him, if you let up for more than one sec in between casts he is dead - except for those few times where you will be overhealing him like crazy". And those few times, healers wont relax and save mana, because healers still dont trust cooldowns.

So we are gonna be the TBC druid: spam heal spam heal spam heal. except! we wont have more HP than the other tanks like the druid did (and still do) so we wont be better at soaking the hard hits, and we wont even have the luxury of then beeing better at threat since Dks overall have the lowest threat output of the tanking as it is, and there is no buff for that anywhere in sight... As a matter of fact our dmg looks to be nerfed (and since we have no single target attack with a modifier our threat is getting nerfed aswell)

Also for some reason I really really dont get our frost strike is beeing made worse... I blame arena.

ps, im setting thisup to be posted when im on my little holiday, hope it works ;)