Way too Serious

Raiding and Guild Wars 2

2011-07-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

I participated in a heavy discussion earlier today concerning ‘end games’ and ‘raiding’ and theories on how or if ArenaNet would deal with them in Guild Wars 2. Perhaps I’ve been a little tainted by my years in world of warcraft and in having run a raiding guild for a couple years there, but I’d personally come to believe that raiding or something similar is a deciding factor to me about a game.

I really enjoy large group activities in a game. I like getting a group organized and coordinating battle plans to take down large bosses. And I would assume that in GW2, we’re going to at least be fighting one giant, cranky lizard who just woke up.

Friend “B” believes that GW2 will not have any sort of raid content and that the world events are going to be what we look towards for our ‘end game’ activities once we’re 80. He also suggested that personal stories would be a big part of your ‘end game’ activities.

My issues with this is that these settings are either very small groups or solo play. Which perhaps is aimed more for casual players. And the big group feel comes from the random group play that occurs when players all show up to deal with the events in the area.

And I do think the world events are going to be fantastic! It’s the sort of activity that has become something I look for in games now thanks to enjoying it in my Rift play right now. However, if that is part of a majority of what I’ll have to do at 80 then I feel I would quickly grow bored of it. Just as I would grow bored of the dungeons (especially when the gear incentives will not last as long with gear dropping for me every single time I go in) or perhaps get tired of working through my personal storyline (which I don’t know much about yet).

I just know from my Rifting that to me personally, doing those events are going to only be fun when you have a group of folks doing them with you. And at certain times of day or sometimes not at all, you may find yourself with just you or a handful of you. And that event isn’t going to always be that new and interesting and shiny. And you’ll have played through the scenario a few times. Perhaps how the scenario came about may be slightly different, but overall, it will be the same idea behind it.

Perhaps some sort of loot will come from doing them that will give incentive to participating. But then you either have a grind or something so easy to get that it devalues what you got. –[[ A.D.D. moment: They’ve said that each time your group clears a dungeon that everyone would get one piece of loot. I feel this not only devalues the items, but runs the risk of people getting geared so quickly that once the novelty of a dungeon passes on, finding people willing to join up for it will be very difficult. While loot for everyone is a nice idea, I don’t feel it will pay off in the long-run.]]

PvP was another option brought up. For Guild Wars, player vs player is a huge part of the game. However, for folks like myself who kind of knee jerk away from it, it’s not really something we want to do. Though granted I love the entire world vs world vs world idea. And I keep picturing these epic Lord of the Rings movie clashes. However, again, I’m not that big in pvp and while I may do it a few times for the novelty I don’t picture myself really doing it.

I know ArenaNet is trying to break the MMO standards that have been established. However, if they were to not include some sort of ‘raid’ type activity would they provide something else that could be as organized and fun feeling to me? Will I be able to have an enemy to overcome with a team of friends in some sort of epic, end-all, feeling battle?

Too I wonder if perhaps I have simply gotten so used to the ‘end game’ model that I am unable to really enjoy activities I may not perceive to be what I may feel is the ‘end game?’

There is still so much more information to be released yet and it’s an interesting discussion to me. So I guess, what do you guys think about ‘raid content’ and GW2? If it wasn’t really included, how would you feel about it? Would it perhaps leave you feeling less or more likely to play GW2 (and why)? If some sort of raid content was included, what would you hope to get out of it? Do you have other thoughts on this topic that perhaps I didn’t mention?

Thanks for reading!

PS: I will be representing GuildWars2Live at Pax Prime this August. I shall be at the ArenaNet booth with my fancy new video camera attempting to film everything in HD! Be sure to visit their site or follow them on twitter for upcoming news!

Engineering Like TF2 Babeh!

2011-05-19T21:27:00.000-07:00

I’m a fairly recovered WoW addict now. Both my accounts have been canceled and any desire to go back has truly dissolved. Though I am still keeping in touch with less than a handful of folks from the guild.

Right now I’ve joined a community for the upcoming MMO – Guild Wars 2! Since Pax East I’ve been increasingly involved with a friend’s website http://www.guildwars2live.com as a trial streamer. Though I will be representing and filming for them at the upcoming Pax Prime this coming August. I’m very excited about everything I hear about the game. And I’m leaning towards playing an Sylvari Elementalist or the newest introduced class: Engineer!

And when I say Engineer is their newest, I mean the folks at ArenaNet announced it today! And when I saw the announcement and watched the videos I initially felt confused. As at the time, I felt that perhaps the videos were not as well made as previous class preview videos had been made. However, after rewatching them a few times, that confusion was left by the wayside and I instead found myself growing increasingly interested! And I decided that Engineer looked like it could be a really fun class to try to play!

And one of the reasons I feel this way is because of an association my mind brought up and then had encouraged through discussion with a friend in the guildwars2live.com community concerning how the Engineer of GW2 was kinda like Team Fortress 2!!! And this was so much impressed upon me that I ended up editing together this fan video as well:

Elements that stood out to me that I liked…

Outside of loving the turrets, I also am incredibly fond of the “Jump Shot” ((video can be found here: http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/engineer/)) which reminds me quite a bit of the TF2’s Soldier’s Rocket Jump. And while they didn’t really explain it much, the video leads me to believe that it will be a sort of propulsion move very similar to - if not mirroring - the ability!

Also, I love how the mine, grenade and bombs are working out. Judging by the preview videos, it seems like you can get super creative with their placement if you think ahead on things. Much like the Demo from TF2, I could see one finding a good defensive position and fencing oneself in and then going to town on anything/anyone in one’s field of vision (or letting your turret take care of them hehe)!

Also, before I move on, I wanted to say how much I love the animations for firing the guns! From the two one-handed guns, to the two-handed rifle; I love the movement they’ve got going for both firing and bringing them about. It feels very gunslinger-like to me and gives off a good vibe!

Further thoughts…

I was a little surprised by a few other folks reactions in the community concerning how it felt ‘off’ to them to have this sort of class in the GW2 universe. While perhaps it could be odd seeing the Sylvari wielding metal weapons when they’re a people born from plants, I couldn’t really picture how this couldn’t work out.

Granted I’ve not played Guild Wars nearly as much or as long as some of those who are feeling a bit unhappy about the class, but it seems to me from some of the environments, mobs and existing creations in Guild Wars that the ability to create and be this sort of class was inevitable. Izari covered further thoughts on this at her blog over at Talk Tyria! ((See her post here: http://www.talktyria.net/2011/05/19/guild-wars-2-profession-engeineer/)) Personally, I kind of wonder if it’s just the stigma of the name too. You think of fantasy as being encompassed by mages, warriors, thieves, and the like -- but engineers? While perhaps it’s not quite traditional, I think as the class sits and folks stop balking and start watching, that the class will be as impressive to the nay-sayers as to the ones who like it regardless of preconceived ideas. ^^

In closing…

I’m really looking forward to seeing some sort of game play video in the coming weeks and/or months. I think that would be very telling on how complicated I might expect the class to really be. Already it does seem pretty involved with the possible plotting, the dodging and rolling, combined with trap placement, turret placement, etc etc. Also, it seems like a light armored class - so it will likely be taking some pretty big hits if enemies manage to get too close ((but that was the case with TF2’s Engineer too hehe)).

I’m definitely looking forward to getting more information on this class. (Not to mention hoping for news on the Sylvari!!) Unfortunately though, there is this rumor that we may not even see a beta out until Fall! This means waiting till probably 2012 for this game. THOOOOOOUGH, it can be said that something this epic should be released in the year when the world is doomed to end! Bwahaha

See you guys in another month or so! haha Have a good one!

Anime Recommendation: Bakuman

2011-02-13T05:26:00.000-08:00

So a few nights back I was browsing through some anime fansub websites and came across an anime that I had remembered seeing come out a couple months ago but had sort of passed by for ones that had seemed more attractive to me at the time. The anime is called Bakuman, and the brief synopsis seemed interesting enough. High school boy wants to get into the manga drawing business. And I figured it was similar to many other occupational animes.

However, as I started to watch it I nearly turned it off as the opening few minutes nearly drove me off. I had to double check I was watching the right anime! hah But then the 'real' opening song began and I relaxed a bit. Certainly the anime had gotten my attention.

As the anime continued forward, I found myself being drawn into the story a bit. A shy boy with no aspirations named Mashiro has a crush on a shy girl named Azuki. Rather than really pay much attention in class during school he spends time drawing - mostly Azuki from behind. And you get a little bit of foreshadowing as to where his drawing may take him with some slight backstory about his Uncle, who had been a manga artist.

Mashiro watching Azuki from his seat at school...

During the episode Mashiro is distracted and leaves his books at school (the ones he'd had drawings of Azuki in) and has to return to school for it. However, a fellow classmate is there waiting. Takagi is one of the best students in the class and sits in teh back and has been watching Mashiro as he draws. And he blackmails Mashiro a bit into considering drawing manga with him.

And in a fun turn of events, manages to trick Mashiro into going to Azuki's house. I'm not going to spoil what comes next - I want you to find and watch the anime. But a promise gets made and a very endearing romance begins that isn't blatant but is a wonderful undertone to the series.

The main characters are constantly growing as well and gives a real 'slice of life' feel to the anime as well. You get to see Mashiro 'becoming more like a man' as he comes to realize some fairly adult concepts of not giving up, of applying one's self to something even when the first time didn't work out. And too, I've really liked that when failures come, we don't spend episodes wallowing in pity and emoness. Rather, we walk through thoughts with Mashiro and seemingly grow with him.

Overall, by episode 10 I have been completely drawn into the story and am enjoying it greatly. If you are looking for something uplifting and enjoyable, this is probably a very nice anime for you. I give it a big thumbs up myself! =D

Still Alive!

2011-02-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

Yo blog! What’s up! I’ve been so wrapped up in drama elsewhere and other things that I’ve failed to really put much into trying to post here. Not to mention trying to establish a real sleeping habit! … but that of course failed. Hah. As it is, I’ve been up since yesterday and its noon now. And if I seem a bit ADD it is likely because of the sever lack of sleep recently.

First off, I am no longer the guild master in the guild I’d been leading for the last two years in World of Warcraft. It was probably one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to decide and actually do. I take things so serious all the time and the game really had become a full time job and an environment where I spent more time as Kaae the Paladin and less time as Dara the Office Peon.

So how this came about… Back in September, shortly after Pax Prime, I talked to my two officers and asked one of them if they’d be willing to be the new GM if I stepped down in a month. I offered to stick around and help out where I could and explained that I wanted to be sure he would have a smooth transition should he accept the roll – something I felt the guild and I hadn’t had when the GMs before me left.

He agreed and I made an official announcement to the guild. And when November came, we officially made the change. There were of course hiccups but they eventually worked out. Only once did I really come out swinging at some folks who were being critical of the new leadership. But I realized that I couldn’t keep doing that because they had to get themselves established. And even now I still struggle with not throwing out my voice to give out some sort of command or two or posting huge ‘walls of text’ that the guild still teases me about – when I think I’m sensing disturbances in the guild force.

But overall, the new leadership is doing what I trusted they would be able to do. And they picked some very excellent additionally officers as well. And all of them have been incredibly nice when I’ve stepped out of line a bit and been a bit of a momma bird.

The only thing still troubling me is that I continue to raid with them. Mostly because I really want to be sure they can raid with more guild members. Fortunately, they’re still attracting people and I have faith that soon they won’t need my holy paladin to heal their raids anymore. And then I can truly be just a social member in the game who can come online and have some fun without worrying about too many ‘responsibilities.’

Oh, and might I add that even with raiding, the stress in my ‘wow life’ has dropped almost completely. I still fuss a bit when folks challenge the leadership decisions and offer lots of ‘perhaps they are thinking this way…” discussions – but I am not going to bed at night wondering if something is going to happen that week that I’m going to have to deal with for the sake of guild peace.

As for other plans… I’ve successfully pulled a ton of time away from wow and put it towards other things. Work of course has picked up more of my time. Though I am still a peon for the office. Photocopying bliss, stuffing a couple hundred envelopes and licking the nasty glue seal closed, and other fun tasks that take many hours to do but cannot always get done by the secretary. It has given me a lot of time to listen to Pandora internet radio or consider the other games I play now in addition to wow.

Minecraft, Chime, DC Universe Online, a little Rift Beta, and a ton of other indie games that I picked up off of steam during their Christmas sales.

Minecraft is probably my favorite right now. I’ve heard it described as a giant sandbox game. It’s like this awesome building block game were you can really create anything out of squares. If you ever go to youtube, just look it up and you’ll see some crazy things folks have made! However, not only do you have this absolutely amazing creative game, but then you have survival modes that mix it up a bit. And you’ll face down spiders, arrow shooting skeletons, zombies, and the most feared mobs: creepers. I may sit down one night and put together a heavier review on this – but as it stands, even in beta – the game sucks away the hours of the day and is fun!

Chime is an indie game that is shared on a few gaming platforms. And to me is this Tetris like, puzzle game. And I kid you not; I can sit there for hours playing it. Basically you are given a ‘map’ that you have to fill with pieces given to you at random. They are different shapes. And you want to put those pieces together in neat big shapes called “quads” for tons of points. Meanwhile you have music playing and pulsing and you will get additionally points depending on how many quads in a run you make. To ‘win’ a round you want to fill up every inch of the ‘map’ – which can be done by creating quads. Then when the music finishes its pass, the solid quad becomes translucent/transparent and you can use the old space to either make a new quad or use the space to complete other quads. GAH I should make a video and post it so you can see it blog!

Next is DC Universe, which I actually picked up on a whim after watching an internet blogger RPing a bit while he played the game. I played City of Heroes/Villains for a few months back in the day and I always enjoyed being a super powered being and this just added the bonus of possibly working along side heroes I recognized and grew up with. Being original, I went with the name “kaae” and created a hero. She’s got plant powers like Poison Ivy and uses some badass dual weapons like Nightwing. The game really reminds me of something like a console game with how you kinda play it. And the way your abilities are set off with the weapons reminds me a lot of the patterned button mashing you did with the old Mortal Combat arcade machines where you’d push like, red button 4 times and then the red button once. However, in this case those buttons are your mouse buttons and you’re clicking them like mad.

The DC stories are also pretty fun to live through as well and if you follow the quests a bit, its surprising how much ‘lore’ they’ve put into the game. More than once I’ve stopped to look at the wiki pages on various archs to see what the comics were like. DC isn’t a game I play a whole ton but it is a fun ‘vacation’ sort of game and being a hero once in a while with a mentor like Wonder Woman is fun. =p

And finally in these last few weeks I’ve gotten involved in the Beta that has been running for Rift. Only the ones for the stress testing they’ve been doing though. I feel I really appreciate this beta actually, compared to what I was seeing with some others not too long ago. The game feels a lot more fleshed out then I was expected after the last one I was in and there seems to be a good balance between those who like and don’t like the game. And of course, the pvp crowds are looking at it and wondering if its something that can turn into an esport.

The game SEEMS a lot like World of Warcaft in many ways. They take a lot of the terminology made familiar by WoW and apply it to pretty much the same things in their own game. But Rift is very fancy looking graphically speaking and they’ve got the RIFT system which still needs some tweaks, but has folks pretty excited as well. I don’t know that I will try to get in with the next beta batch or hold off. Because this is a game I’d be very tempted to simply ‘play’ during beta rather than look for bugs. My impression is definitely positive and I think that while the game likely won’t replace a very established WoW for its millions of players – I think that it could easily take a lot of folks away from the game who really wanted something new and felt they didn’t get that with Cataclysm.

I think perhaps I’ll write some more in depth things further down the road on these games and maybe get some slight movies going to show what they look like. But there you have it blog! Have a good one and let’s keep our fingers crossed that another four months or so don’t pass before I write on you again.

Final Fantasy XIV - Thoughts and Impressions

2010-09-28T11:42:00.001-07:00

So I purchased Final Fantasy XIV the collector’s edition and it came in the mail a few days ago. I’ve had plenty of time to explore it a bit more beyond the few hours on the open beta.

Combat

Don’t get me wrong, I really love the way the battle system has been set up to work. Unfortunately, the servers are taking a beating and things just feel super laggy. From initiating attacks, to healing, to special moves, everything feels sluggish. But dang it is awesome to look at when you’re using everything. From the movement of the character to the attacks – I really am just in love with the graphic feel of the fighting.

It took a bit of getting used to, but its not too bad once I got the hang of how it should work. In order to attack or defend against something, you need to put yourself in fighting stance. This is done by hitting “f.” then you target the mob you want to attack and after gauging its strength compared to you (via a colored dot on its name plate), you want to hit “enter” or one of the attack buttons to bring up your bar with your abilities on it. You then approach the monster and just spam the heck out of your abilities. You can maneuver around it sometimes to get crit hits in, or you can continue standing in front of it. However, make sure you hit “c” to lock onto your target or be sure you’re good about not clicking around the screen or hope you don’t lag yourself and end up on the wrong side of the mob.

Initially, I had a lot of trouble with locking targets. You can’t move with your mouse like you can in WoW and your strafe keys don’t act like they do in WoW either. It all feels like some weird keyboard turning. Though strafing is more keyboard turning on a dime while its normal turning is like, they hit forward while they tried to turn. So my issue with lock was, I’d try to shift about and move with my mouse, only to accidently lose target and target something else while trying to move. And then I’d have to try to retarget the mob while taking damage. It led to some frustrating moments. Blarg. (Lock = “c”) Then sometimes I would realize I couldn’t win the fight I’d picked and I’d try to run. Only I had used “c” and it wouldn’t allow me to run off until I’d released it. I’ve not been killed yet forgetting this, but I’ve had some pretty fantastic close calls.

Other frustrations, is I pictured things would be a bit more solo friendly. And I suppose it has been up to 11 which I currently am on my main specialization. If you could call it that. But I’m already barely handling ‘decent challenge’ monsters and ‘easy’ monsters take a while to kill. It has left me with the impression that this will be much like 11 where you can solo those mobs, but you’ll be grinding them a very long while before you make much headway. Whereas with the group, you’ll be able to pull more, faster, once again. But we’ll see how it goes further into game play.

I am also frustrated that the color system doesn’t really tell you what the real level of the mobs are. I made the mistake of attacking a red “incredibly tough” raptor that was near the starting area and across a bridge. There had been some tiny “easy” monsters a few steps away from it and so I had thought perhaps it would hit a bit harder or be harder to hit, but that I could perhaps handle it. However, the thing one shot me for 4k with a non-special attack (I don’t have 1k health yet).

Death is also kind of a bugger if you’re not planning ahead. They have a system set where you stop at a camp for your guildlevels (daily quests) and check in with this crystal. This crystal has been made your ‘home’ in a sense. So when you die, and if you have no one who can resurrect you, you use ‘return’ and it will put you back at that camp with about 3 min of 50% HP and all sorts of other negatives that will have you huddling by the crystal till you’re ok again. So if you forgot to set it, you were in for a long run back to where you needed to be.

But things I found as I played that I liked was how they have their stamina system with the battles. As a pugilist, I do a lot of fist fighting. Each move will have its own guage that will appear when I mouse over an ability. And part of that bar will have a grayed area representing how much ‘stamina’ that ability will need to be set off. Similar to a rogue in wow really. You don’t have enough stamina, you won’t set off the ability.

Also, I like they kept TP. Like most FF games, you get points for successful attacks that build up throughout the fight that can be spent on special attacks. And what I’ve found fun about some of the attacks that they didn’t have in FF11 is a sort of proc attack that I learned. Where if I evade an enemy attack, and have a certain amount of TP, I can use this particular ability. I don’t dodge nearly as much as I’d like, but when I do, its pretty cool to shoot it off! I’ve also got an attack now that uses both TP and mana! Which I thought was unique.

So its been nice to see them breaking off into some different types of attacks and adding a bit more to the system at this point. From what I understand, as I develop other jobs, I’ll possibly be able to use some of those abilities in whatever class I’m playing. So I’m curious to see how that will work out as I begin to branch into those.

Level System

FF14 has a really interesting leveling system. To take from one of their promo vids: you can level horizontally and vertically. And this is facilitated by leveling through weapon skills. Howso?

SE really doesn’t want folks to reach the end game too quickly. They want the game to last longer. And they’ve developed a brilliant time sink that is interesting. Anyone who has played MMOs is probably familiar with THATGUY who can play pretty much all day and reach max level about a month before the rest of the player base.

To this end, SE created a slope system that causes a player’s experience gain to go through ‘fatigue’ that slows the gain the more they get throughout the week. The more hours they put it in on that one job, the less experience they will be gaining – despite the level of monster they may be fighting. The casual player will probably never see this ‘cap’ and fatigue and shall continue his vertical leveling without much notice of anything different. But THATGUY will see a slow halt to his vertical. However, SE doesn’t want to see him run off. So they dangle a carrot.

You cannot keep leveling vertically… but how about horizontally. With each rank of physical level you gain, you get points you can distribute amidst some stats. Also, you can blend together skills from other classes that you’ve been ranking up. So you could… say have a lancer who has the pugilist ability to heal themselves for a couple hundred health every min or so. So ultimately, while you are not growing vertically, your character’s skills are expanding and you are still becoming more powerful.

They try to encourage using this system as well with the easy access to all the rank 1 weapons and tools that you need. Vendors selling them or guilds are all in your starting cities. And once you’ve completed your first guildlevel quests and the first storyline quest from the adventurer’s guild, you’ll probably find yourself with the funds to buy your first couple weapons to test out the other classes. Typically, weapons will go for between 800-1.2k gil depending on the item. With your gathering and crafting tools though, expect to fork out about 2k-2.5k for the two tools you’ll need.

Crafting and Gathering

Again, FF14 takes an interesting approach to these fields of play. And really, that is what you are doing while leveling them. Many games will require to just push a button and wait while the game levels up your professions. In this case, you have to be paying attention and active while you craft. There is some unfortunately RNG involved in some of them. And the learning curve can feel steep for some as well.

In the world of FF14, you collect items from creatures or from gathering, and then you melt them together using elemental crystals you collect from all living things in the world. Crafters have to learn to bend these elemental crystals to their wishes to properly “synthesize” the item they desire. And as a crafter, you are taking up this task.

With crafting, you face a few difficulties. One is just getting the items you need. At this point, the economies of the servers are all getting laid out. So buying from other players is going to be hit and miss with what you want, and then the prices could be way over the top as well. Or you may buy from the vendors, and those are certainly not cheap either.

Your best bet will then be to pick up gathering classes. Now here is some of the interesting side effects of crafting and gathering. For each success you gain a large amount of experience for both your skill rank and your physical rank! And you stand to profit. While you may not participate necessarily in some of the fighting scenarios, you can see the highest levels in the game simply by gathering and crafting!

Something else that makes all of this interesting is, you don’t simply get what you need, sit down, push a button and watch yourself gain skill. No. You have to pay attention and actually interact with what you’re doing. And if you don’t, you may fail your activity and lose all your materials. You’ll still get a small amount of experience, but you’ll get less than a fraction of what you could have had.

In most cases, you can pick up on how the activies are supposed to work pretty quickly. I personally didn’t have too many issues… with the exception of fishing which I think is stupid and not very clear. And the many youtube videos I’ve gone through have just been rambles while people try to do it and who don’t see much success themselves. But someone must get it because I’ve seen some people getting rank 17s recently. Gar!!!

But returning. If you’re going to be a crafter --- save everything and be prepared to drop some money. And be aware too, that as you progress, you’re going to have to branch into other ‘professions’ as well to make the materials you need for crafts of interest to you. Its all no less of a time sink in the end than the leveling. But it is still very entertaining and not as mind numbing as crafting and gathering might be in other games in my experience.

Item Storage and Item Sales

In other games you may see an Auction system that might be put in place where people can deposit their items for a small fee and have them sell and get the money. In this case, I’ve not actually found such a place. However, the Bazaar system is up and running. Unfortunately, you are currently limited to 10 items that you can sell at a time (when your bags can hold up to 80 things).

Gone also is the personal housing as it existed in FF11. In 11, you had a house minded by a moogle. Now, the Adventurers guild hooks you up with a paid servant (that you never actually pay that I’ve seen…) that you can somewhat handpick and even give a nick name too. Then you can place them in town or in the designated bazaar area they have set up in your city. They will not only hold 80 items for you, but they will also hold 10 items in auction for you while you’re out leveling.

They do seem to have a limited number of times they can be summoned in a certain time period however, so you have to be careful about where you call them. But they are now your mobile home bank and bazaar. I do miss the idea of having my own house with fun decorations. But with the amount of running around I’ve been doing in game at this point, the absence isn’t as noticed at this point.

Chat and other things

The game is really lacking in shortcuts I’ve found. And there isn’t really many options to create them from what I’ve seen so far. And many of the official online help has been anything but with figuring out some elements of the game. Such as chat, or emotes. A lot of things I’ve found simply by trial and error or by some heavy google browsing.

Such as… If I’m low on health but am not a healer, do I just stand here and wait for it to slowly regenerate? In 11, you could /rest and you would kneel and regen very quickly. Through a google search, I found that /sit was the new command. And when you sit, you really sit and cannot move. Even if you’re under attack. Instead you must open your command window and use the prompt to stand.

Actually most of your in game interactions with bazaars, npcs, crystals and commands for gathering will be done thanks to prompts that will open the command window on the side of the screen. It’s a bit tedious and I’m not too thrilled with constantly going back and forth with it.

I’m half hoping there is a macro you’ll be able to write out for some of this, though I’ve not yet found it.

As for chat… I picked a server where I knew I had a friend playing and he created a linkshell there. Now, in 11, inviting people could be done simply by trading them a ‘pearl’ to their shell. However, they’ve changed up the system a bit, so you don’t have to trade them to get them in. But you have to be next to them in game and have them targeted in order to invite.

In order to see who is online in the linkshell, I have to open the command window, go down to the linkshell option and then click a button in that window in order to see who is online. It is the same way for any friend or ignor list person I may wish to see and add to. Something I found that also was not covered in any official instruction was how to respond to someone who sends you a private message in game. For a while I was having to “ /t “ in order to talk to friends privately. And sometimes I would mess up and it would come out in an embarrassing emote. But thanks to google, I did find the solution to responding to someone without typing out their entire name over and over.

Conclusion… for now

I’ve still not decided how I feel about the game entirely. There are of course some aggravations. But I’m very fond of other elements. And it is very different than other mmo’s I’ve played, but similar enough to my first to be something I find myself feeling fond about. I shall probably continue playing this casually for a while. Everything is still very interesting and new for me there and I’m really enjoying its change of pace, despite its huge time sink dangers.

I’m sure I’ve missed some points that I meant to cover on this subject, but its early morning now and I mostly couldn’t sleep and needed to tire myself a bit. Thanks for reading!

Concerning Betas

2010-09-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

My friend Izziebot on her blog wrote a pretty interesting article on Betas and those who get into them... which I'll reiterate here really quickly:

1. Gamers don’t respect NDAs
2. Gamers prematurely base their opinions on betas.
3. Gamers don’t test in beta testing.

[[See "The Legend of Beta Part I" ]]

She was concerned for the "Beta" because it felt so many people were getting into them and not contributing information. No feedback on bugs, no feedback on graphical issues, no feedback on random glitches in quests or perhaps cut-scene issues, no feedback on typos.... just plain there to play and have fun. And she felt that perhaps in a few years, companies would stop beta testing because it was more detrimental to their games, rather than helping them. Because those who were unhappy with how the game was would jump to blogs and put out scathing reviews and/or create videos featuring what they felt were terrible issues... And therefore the concern that people were taking what was said and being turned off to the game.

I agree there are folks who will read someone's opinion and jump on their bandwagon without much thought of their own. Unfortunately, there will be people out there who just don't question what they read and take everything as fact. Laziness is laziness.

However, I think that there is a larger crowd out there beyond this more vocal bunch.

Note, I am no number-cruncher. I write based on observation, personal theory and opinion. Do not take my words as fact. Think for yourself!!!

People

In my time in games, I've always found this freaking parallel between games and the real world. So I look to things like the political situation in the US and some of my experiences there first. I recently participated in Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally on 8/28 at the Lincoln Memorial. Before the event, people felt it was going to be incredibly political. That there would be Obama-bashing, democrat slandering, etc etc. Unfortunately there was a very vocal minority of people within the group going that was like that.

They blogged hatefully, spoke in social websites, and posted videos about how it would be the day to send a political message. It was assumed by probably a huge number of people that it would be a sign waving, anti-political frenzy. But what showed up were normal people with their entire families. Next to no signs anywhere, and a very polite group of folks who showed up to actually honor our service men and women and our nation.

The reaction from the outside was one of surprise. Where was all that hate and slander associated with the group of people? Because the vocal minority was out there all the time, it had seemed that was the type of people we were. But once revealed, it was shown we were a far larger mass of respectful, quiet people.

So my analogy's purpose...

I consider those who blog and create videos that are against a game (that they have been a beta tester for) to be a vocal minority. They seem to be everywhere, constantly ripping on the game, threatening and complaining about what they play through, and just seem totally miserable with what they're seeing. Some of those people honestly believe what they are saying. Some are there because they like the attention they've gotten from being the first to break that NDA or expose that terrible aspect of the game. For some, it is also a question of age. I point to the World of Warcraft beta right now. They don't take in applications for their betas. Rather they randomly select to keep the process "fair." So you will likely get a lot of younger players who are a bit more... socially challenged.

However, from social interactions in beta forums, chat channels and from my own personal experience, I feel I am safe in saying that a majority of those who do get in take what they're doing to a certain extent of seriousness. I look to the Cataclysm beta which a few weeks ago had a broken Feedback button. No one could report in-game about things they were finding. However, what happened was interesting to see. People were taking the time to go to the beta forums for cataclysm and write out bug reports there.

Additionally, you see some fantastic data sharing that goes on there between people who perhaps get stuck where others weren't. Yeah, sometimes you'll find that one kid who sits there crying about something and threatening canceling a preorder and/or their live version of the game they currently play -- but a majority of folks don't go that route and patiently play through and report what they find.

Right now in the live beta version, they have raised the damage modifier of the enemy mobs. It scales pretty high per level they are... especially 83-85 mobs. In some cases, one might argue that you have no choice but to group to do your quests with any sort of speed. There are some folks throwing down their gloves and refusing to keep testing, but there are some who have kept going (like myself) who have tried to adapt to different play styles and kept leveling. From the handful of people on the forum complaining, you'd think there was barely anyone able to get to level 85 with the damage output from the mobs. But I see a lot of 85s. ((And premade 85 characters aren't available to play yet.))

As a side note... I'm not particularly happy with the damage output myself. And I wrote a longish post about it with examples of my gear, the situation I was in, the types of mobs I was struggling to live against, and suggesting rolling down the damage a bit on the feedback thread they told us to visit. To anyone who beta tests, don't withhold your opinion, but be polite with how you give it. Be detailed as to why you feel it is an issue. Don't just sit there and be all "it hits too hard. this sucks. change it or i'm gone." Be constructive and polite with any feedback and suggestion you give and remember if it was you who created it and there was an issue, would you want to have a ton of people verbally ripping on you? No one responds well to threats. Regardless of their position or the assumption they should. "A kind word turns away anger."

Games and Companies

I'm no gaming world expert. My education was in "Graphic Design for Computer Art" and "Animation and Visual Effects." My only qualification could possibly be 'people skills' thanks to leading a guild for a year and a half and being an officer in games spanning from 2003 to now. I do have a few friends who work for game companies, who sometimes drop lines. And I have my Advertising and Copyright classes from my days studying Graphic Design.

One thing that was always stressed to me in my last school was the importance of taking criticism with a grain of salt. I cannot speak for the smaller companies, but I know from my friends in the larger ones that this is something that rings true when delivering a Beta client of a game to a group of folks. And I feel that a company as a whole needs to keep in mind what is in that client. So when people sit and complain about an element of the game that isn't complete that they (the company) are ready with some answer(s) as to what's going on.

i. Information Flow

Information control is important in any game. I point to a not so far away issue with Cataclysm. Blizzard had been pretty tight lipped about the entire game. Perhaps releasing some weird screenshot but not much information. People were getting bored of the current game and were starting to wander away and grow impatient. This created a breeding ground for trouble. A game of interest with little exposure. Yes, it can create a larger interest, but if your game isn't what people have come to believe it to be, you're going to hit a firestorm.

And then that person got in to the Cataclysm files thanks to the friends and family beta. And suddenly everyone was getting into it. Sandboxes, random screenshots, fake servers, it was an explosion. And the masses descended in a feeding frenzy. Until Blizzard stepped up with the NDA hammer and chased those people down.

ii. Beta Player Selection

Now with the closed beta, Blizzard has a few methods going on. First was to give keys to a few from top successful guilds, trusted blog sites, and those well known in the community. Then they offered keys in contests for things like guild essays. Then they had the random draw betas going on. What they did was grab up three types into their beta and created a sort of balance of players similar to what you might see in the live game now. The super serious, the serious-casual, and the casual with the casual. And they in essence took three possible options for their beta testing group.

I think what possibly puts people into that mindset that Beta is for the elite is because for the longest time, people who got into them were either popular in their community or were paid (professional) testers. And even now, you can find websites dedicated to signing up people interested in testing games who will farm them out to companies. This isn't a bad thing to do if you want to really keep your game information from getting out beyond what you want. Its a very controlled testing environment and many companies will employ this method for the protection of the game while they go through early testing.

The next is the essay group or the application group. Back in the day when Lord of the Rings Beta was coming out, I had to fill one of these out to get into it. The questionnaire was fairly straightforward, but had 'personality' questions and the 'why are you interested' question. While you may get some liars and flatters who fill out an application, you will usually get some pretty honest people. And you can tell who are really interested by how they fill out that application as well. Its a good way to keep more of the public involved, giving the environment a more 'real' feel with the type of folks you may encounter. Though perhaps, more tedious for the company who has to sift through all those applications.

Then there is that random draw beta. Many of the company's big shots likely pick this for cost efficiency. They scan your pc to see what you can handle, get your email address and bam, you have been entered in the raffle for a key. You can get all sorts of players this way. Casuals, hard core, serious-casual. Unfortunately with this method you will some who have just tossed in their name for something new to do. Some put theirs in because they're interested and would like to see what the game will be like. Some genuinely want in because they might like the game concept and would like to play a part in seeing it developed successfully. And in all those groups you will have those who, once they're in take it serious and report-report-report, or gripe and whine-whine-whine, or who just show up and then leave quickly thereafter.

I believe a company needs to be sure they are ready for whatever methods they use for their beta player selection. And they need to understand the people they take in. Especially those smaller companies who are just trying to get their first game out. Basically -- while the players need to be responsible, the company will get what they asked for depending on the course they take in their selection.

iii. Content Released

I'm a personal believer that a "beta" is the unchanging core of the game and which might include the elements such as quests, quest rewards, skills, professions if any, extra actives, and really anything the player might touch. Its meant to stress test your servers with more people playing, interacting and doing crazy things. Its meant to play quest files over and over and over to be sure it lasts multiple plays. Its meant to show where you're going and to give opportunity for others to bring up suggestions that may make things better or even change an entire quest line. Its a place where you open yourself to the ideas of your testers and test the window of acceptance from your players about things you think would be cool.

But really, the key is to have that core established and laid out. If you are going to release a beta to a group when that core is unstable, you will raise questions about your companies sanity and the likeliness that the game will actually be decent. This goes back to an earlier point, but communicate with your testers if you are going to throw them into an environment with known bugs. Make ways to aid them if they get stuck and help them while they help you.

Time is your enemy and your friend with betas. It is your enemy because you are putting money into it. It is your friend because the more you have, the better your product will be. Smaller companies will be hurt more by Time than a large one, and perhaps for them, this is one of the most difficult things to conquer. But the more time you can give to making sure your product is solid, the better it will be. And with a beta... If you put your time and effort into it and release it to beta, and you feel confident in what you've set out and know what's in it, you can discount the complainers who come expecting a demo rather than a beta.

iv. Marketing and the Beta

Many companies today use the Beta as a Demo rather than spending the money to create a playable one. Or after a closed beta, they'll create an Open Beta which is really just like a demo. But the moment you remove that NDA on information, you've begun your marketing via your beta players. As stated earlier, what you have released will affect how that marketing goes out. And your time and effort will affect how its sold by your testers.

I have a friend working over at Bioware on their MMO for Star Wars, and he creates many of the videos we'll see for commercials shown for the product. He told me the ESBR rating keeps a lot of information from being shared. However, I could post something and not be restricted as I'm not affiliated with the company etc.

Once an NDA is lifted, players can create videos and a multitude of images that can stir up and create excitement for a game that perhaps a company will not quite be able to do on their own. Not to mention word of mouth, blog posts, comments on social network sites, and videos can all reach places that a company may not be able to necessarily reach (thanks to things like an ESBR).

It should also be noted that anything on the internet is accessible. And when you release something onto the web for play, NDAs or not, people will capture and expose. And having a plan to counter these things is important. Like earlier, how you handle the flow of information is important. Do not go online with your game until you are ready to face this.

Conclusion

I've spent a lot of time on my thoughts concerning betas. Hopefully I didn't bunny trail off too much which I tend to do. I do not ever see Beta Testing stopping. I do think the way they are handled will eventually shift and as the internet continues to grow in sophistication, we'll see more ways to control some of that information as well, like it or not.

The MMO is still young and growing. Its becoming more commonplace for the average person to play one. I do not see death of the beta. I see a growing and perhaps a change. This post was perhaps way too serious and again, a lot of opinion here. But I thank you for reading.

Question everything! Form your own opinions! And have a good one!

Pax Prime – Day Two ((late post!))

2010-09-08T15:16:00.001-07:00

I'm no walker. I spend 90% of my time these days indoors sitting at a computer working or playing games. By the second day of the convention, my legs were reminding me that while the virtual characters I played never tired of walking, running, jumping, skipping -- that they had no such unlimited supply of strength and energy. And my feet even saw fit to reward my previous day's adventures with a lovely blister.

However, despite these physical obstacles, the excitement of the new surroundings and the pleasure of watching so many high energy people was a most excellent balm to the pains and I found myself really throwing myself into the new day's events. And the kick start was something that may not have even been related to the convention, but still sits in my mind as something that cheered me the most.

Before heading out to the convention, a friend of mine from back when I was going to school in Florida dropped me a line to tell me to meet him the Bioware/Lucas Arts booth before 2:00pm. So I gathered my stuff and headed up the two blocks to the convention center. As I walked up the ramp to the main door, I realized a little older lady was following me up towing luggage. I opened the door for her and offered her the chance to go in first, not really thinking much of it other than being polite to someone else.

But she gave me such a warm smile. As cheesy as I feel saying that. But it was such an honest smile and so direct and she told me that I had given her one of the nicest starts to her day that week. And it was her gratitude and those kind words of thanks, that I think really set the tone of my day. In some ways I wonder, if that memory of that little old lady won't stay with me longer than the actual convention does. haha

Outside my mission to make it to the back of the exhibit hall to see my friend at his booth, my goal for Saturday was to see as much of the hall as possible while still catching a panel or two. I considered stopping by the Square Enix booth to test the game out for myself, especially after the awesome panel the day before, but there were more than 5 people per computer waiting, and with a 30 min per person, I didn't relish waiting that long to try the game.

I did swing by the booth for Cryptazoic - the new partner with Blizzard for their trading card games. The previous day, they had been running a deal, where you bought a starter deck for $5 and then got to go down to the "hidden level" and spin a wheel. The wheel had loot cards on every peg. And whatever it stopped on, you would get that card. The previous day, I managed to get Goblin Gumbo! haha

The next part of the deal was, I could get a second spin if I bought two additional booster sets and showed the barcodes to the guy at the table. So Saturday, I bought two more packs and headed down. While I didn't get the turtle mount like the girl two ahead of me in line - I did get the sandbox tiger! Which I think is pretty adorable.

After picking up my new loot card, I headed upstairs again and to the Bioware/Lucas Arts booth. I couldn't find my friend and no one knew could tell me where he was, so unlike the previous day where I'd passed by waiting in line to try the Star Wars: The Old Republic game, I went ahead and threw myself into line for one of the computers.

Those trying the game were given 15 min each to experience the opening bits of game for whatever class their computer was showing off. When I got to try the game, I found I had been in line for the Sith Warrior. I didn't much mind as watching the fellows in front of me and perked my interest about the capabilities given to the character.

The one ability I came to really enjoy using was the Force Leap. Which allowed me to target an enemy from pretty far back and leap through the air to them, while delivering a bit of damage on the side. I didn't get to experiment with it as much as I may have liked, but in some situations, it seemed I could bypass some mobs to a group without aggro'ing them when I used it. As if it sailing over their heads didn't seem to trigger their notice. Which seemed pretty cool and perhaps may have some interesting later on in other situations.

Outside the game play, I was pleased with the visual appearance of the UI. There was little to guess about when it came to cool downs being over and abilities being free to use again, thanks to a vivid, electric color veritcly lowering down the abilities. The map hud and map overlay were similar - with the lightsaber-like glow over their elements.

Targeting was also fairly easy and I didn't find myself losing targets. In fact, when something died, I found that using an attack ability immeadiately picked the next closest enemy for me, rather than forcing me to or click the mob.

Overall, my experience in those 15 min for a game I didn't know too much about beyond my friends comments on how it looked good, really got me interested. And my excitement grew thanks to my friend, who I found after the demo. He gave me a VIP pass to view the demo later that day at 5:00pm! I was thrilled! He told me with it I would be able to skip the main line at the theater and would be guaranteed a tshirt.

He had to get back to work before I could talk more, but I figured I'd see more of him that night and resumed my spelunking of the exhibits. I actually got caught up for quite a while watching groups dancing to a new Wii game from Ubisoft called "Just Dance 2."

Using popular music such as Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" or Britney's "Toxic," they had four people come up onto their stage and dance. I thought it seemed pretty fun and you got to see some pretty wild cosplay moments up there too. I took a photo of Vanille ((Final Fantasy 13)) and Tifa (Final Fantasy: Advent Children)) dancing at a point. And here is a quick video moment someone else took of BigDaddy ((Bioware's Bioshock)) dancing to "Satisfaction."

I would say a majority of the booths were pretty fantastic to stand around and watch. And it wasn't until 3:00 that I made my way back to the hotel for a quick lunch of leftover chinese from the night before. At which time I took the shoes off and massaged the redness out of the feet. After a short hour break, I headed back out, this time making the long walk out to the operah house where they held the larger panels - the same one from the day before where I had seen the Square Enix Panel.

As I had been told, I showed my VIP pass to the guy at the door and was let right and into the main waiting hall where about 80 other people stood or sat waiting for the panel. I grabbed my shirt and found a nice spot to sit while I waited. And I found out that the passes were from an early morning twitter announcement that the first number to the booth would get a VIP pass, explaining to me how and why so many were around.

Up above us, we could see dozens of people waiting in line to come down and go into the theater. Kids dressed like jedi here and there, and even one guy with a imperial storm trooper helmet on. We all waited patiently until finally they opened the doors and let us in. I was seated in the very front row, right in the middle before the big tv they had set up. I wouldn't be able to necessarily see my friend live while he demo'd the game, but I would definatley see him on the television.
The room was absolutely packed with people. And everyone was absolutely excited. Gamer + Scifi nerds packed into an auditorium. It was smelly, loud and filled with so much excitement that you could only join with them in the anticipation for the demonstrations. And it was a panel that brought you that.

Lucas Arts took the stage first with a dramatic opening movie of their new upcoming game, "Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II" Apparently with the first game, you play Darth Vader's secret apprentice, code named: Starkiller who in the end dies to save the rebels. Or did he? Seeming more powerful than anything, he seems truely unleashed. At least from what they showed on the video moniter.

Game play seems pretty inside with a possible multitude of actions you can use to maim, kill and destroy your enemies. Watching them demonstrate it on the screen, I felt excited but I doubt I will try the game out myself as it seems likely I would end up a mess of nerves from the boss fights which seem to require a lot of instant reaction and plotting. Things I can do with practice, but tend to get very aggressive about while trying to master.

After their ground shaking applause, the Bioware team stepped forward. Far less stiff in presentation and more open and jovial with the crowd, they were, in my opinions the winners of the pressentation. I enjoyed the banter between them both quite a bit. The video for the game played with great enthusiasm and then they brought they began the demo.

Because Star Wars: The Old Republic is a MMO, they had four people demonstrating the game. My friend played a smuggler, and the other three played a jedi knight, a jedi counselor, and the Trooper. The Trooper is a tanking class, the knight a pure dps, the counselor a combative healer, and the smuggler a ranged/rogue-like class.

They placed them in a gauntlet-type situation, where mobs continued to flood in after breaking down a door. And it was interesting watching them play through. I was particularly interested in the Counselor, considering how much of my mmo type has been spent as one. The healer was able to deflect attacks targeted at her with her lightsaber, use a force grip on targets to lift/crush/drop targets, and heal. It was hinted later in the Q/A following the demo that she had other damage abilities as well, but since she was used as the camera, she didn't have many chances to display that.

Moving from gameplay, I was also very excited about the storyline and your/our role in the Old Republic world. Bioware is absolutely fantastic with creating games where your "Choice" influences the outcome of the game. And Old Republic will be the same. Much like Dragon Age, you will be given choices that will affect how attuned to the light/dark your character is and how their world will interact with them.

Much later that night over dinner, I would ask my friend who works for Bioware, for some insight into how that would work in the multiplayer setting. Say you were all on the 'darkside' group and had just finished a quest. In the end you have someone you can either kill, or spare. The group will all see the same options and cast their 'vote' as to what to do. The game will take the vote with the most people in agreement and do what has been dictated. So assume your three team mates voted to kill, but you wanted him to be spared.

What might normally happen is points towards the dark would be applied to all. However, Bioware understands this isn't particularly fair to the fourth who would have voted differently. So while the person will die, you will be given points towards the light.

During discussion during the panel I was stuck by an answer to a similar question. You could be a Sith Warrior who ends up good. He used the situation with Hans Solo as an example. Solo was definately not a light-guy when he originally meets up. But he gets outvoted in a way by the good guys and ends up sticking with them because of convenience and money. He wasn't necessarily 'light.' I'm very tickled by this notion and I certain find myself intrigued by the idea of being a Sith who may be closer towards the light. Though to go back to the panel -- the playing of a 'good' Sith will be far harder than a 'dark' Sith. haha

Another interesting element of the game, is that this will not only be a choice based mmo - but a fully voiced mmo. Every character -- even yourself -- will interact with voiced dialogue in the game. This idea already has me looking at other MMOs and thinking about how odd it IS to have the NPCs holding conversations with a very mute you.

The panel overall was a massive success. Certainly, if it took me, who knew little about the game and probably won't have paused to look at it at Best Buy at release -- to someone who would probably buy it to play when it comes out with some anticipation -- means they are succeeding in selling the game very well.

After the panel, I made the long walk back and enjoyed another hour walking around the convention center before going out to grab some dinner at the chinese place around the corner from the hotel. Might I put a word in now, that "Dragonfish" in Seattle is fantastic with their food -- but avoid their booze. Nasty. bleh.

Then I got a call from my friend and met him for some drinks and enjoyed seeming him grow shy with everyone singing happy birthday to him. It was a good end to a night and I returned to my room buzzed and happy from a really full and good day. I passed out pretty quickly - i was so tired I didn't rouse with my roommates tried to wake me to enjoy some pizza.

Day 2 of Pax Prime was definately a successful one. Peace!

Pax Prime – Day One!

2010-09-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

So in march I journeyed to Boston for the Pax East convention. And I remember being impressed by the size and enjoying things. Though being somewhat frustrated because the amount of people we had overwhelmed the building we were all trying to exist in together. Pax Prime has already outshined Pax East on its first day.

Crowd control is far better here. Lines are pretty clearly marked and they are sending out people with random quizzes to entertain the people waiting and giving out awards. People were in general good moods and cutting was pretty close to nill and folks were pretty well mannered and more tolerant.

Panels were fairly entertaining and when I wasn’t waiting and sitting in on one , I found plenty to do outside them. Such as the exhibit hall! The exhibit hall in East was pretty underwhelming. Not many game companies had been out to represent and swag/handouts were pretty scarce.

Prime is probably 4 times the size of East, which handouts at all most every other booth. Strong representation is being shown by most of the game companies (most excluding Blizzard, who had a scant 4 pcs at the radeon card booth) I am probably going to spend most of the convention day tomorrow really exploring – though I am told that it is going to be far busier on Saturday compared to today… so I might have to stick to panels.

Lucas Arts booth was pretty amazing looking. And I found my friend Brian from school working on the side for the Star Wars Republic. He was enjoying himself quite a bit and even shared some hush hush info with me! Unfortunately the lines for the games there were too long for me to really want to sit and wait, so I decided to head over to the Square Enix booth!

Might I say again, Final Fantasy XIV is looking absolutely stunning. And I cannot wait until the end of the month when my preordered copy arrives. The character customization options are absolutely stunning. And the graphics are splendid and delicious. Tonight there was a panel for Square at the theater a few blocks from the convention center and they showed us some new footage not yet seen in the US. And I was absolutely awed. To repeate what I told my friend, “I was doing my imitation of a fish. I realized my mouth was hanging open for quite a while during it.”

The demo that they showed for the individual openings for new characters was interesting as well. And I’m wondering how well it will work into things though. They have broken up the cut scenes with fighting that you will actually interact with yourself. And it looked kind of akward on the screen. But to be fair, ideally you’re new and complicated fighting might be weird. I am hoping to pick up some more information tomorrow from the booth if I can get close to it.

My only complaint I think about the panel for the entire thing was having to walk all the blocks to get there. I think I’ve not walked quite this much in a few months at best. I am definitely going to be sleeping well tonight!!!

The area around the convention is adding quite a bit to this experience as well. Its so lively and full of things to look at. There are a ton of Chinese places as well, and I’ve been stuffing myself unashamedly on them. And there are plenty of bars to enjoy with the friends as well of course.

Overall, my first day at this convention has been a blast and I’m looking forward to more! Peace my friends!

Pax and MMOs

2010-09-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

PAX PRIME!

I cannot tell you how excited I am to be finally headed there tomorrow! Not just to hang out with my homegirl Izzie, but the chance to really get away and into an environment filled with geeks like me! I am already packed and iching to get on the plane tomorrow!

I'm pretty excited as well about seeing some old school friends of mine who are actually working in the industry out there! I'm arranging to meet up with a friend working on the new Star Wars MMO at the Lucas Arts booth. And I may meet up with some old guild members while out there as well!

Personally too, I'm hoping to snag some swag and perhaps see demos of some of the new games coming out - which I am sure there will be plenty of. And unlike Pax East, I've packed my WoW clothing in case anyone is sneaking around with pet cards again!

I'm going to do my best to see so much more this time too! I have so many plans for panels!!! Yes, I am very excited!

WOW: CATACLYSM

So for about a month now, I've had access through a friend to the world of warcraft beta. And might I say outright that I am deeply and madly in love with the quest and leveling experience designers. I've already leveled one toon from 1-82 from scratch. The zones have been resculped masterfully. Where I really didn't get into enjoying leveling during wrath until the BC zones, I found I actually liked 1-58 FAR MORE than the BC/WRATH experience.

And now I will be attempting a new project. I am going to fraps and do a walk through of leveling as a human mage from 1-58!! Granted I have pax this week to get in my way... but I do have 1-5 done! Recording myself talking was the most difficult part of this venture and I keep laughing at myself and feeling silly! But I wanted to give this a try!!!

Final Fantasy XIV: Online

For those who know me, my MMO experiences began in 2003 with Final Fantasy XI: Online. So it shouldn't be super surprising to some of you that I've been keeping my eye on this MMO since its announcement. I've got the game on pre-order and am looking forward to its arrival on the 30th of this month!

I'm pretty interested in their Armory system they've established and I'm curious about how well it is going to work out. And its a constant chuckling to look over all the similarities between 11 and 14. I am planning to go back to my 'roots' and play a melee class in 14. In 11, I played a Monk/Ninja - a class that relied on hand to hand combat. In 14, the Pugilist is the hand to hand combatant. But rather than just being a martial artist as the monk was, in this case they seem to be an immeadiate blend the rogue, monk and ninja. I'm very excited to try it out!!!

Additionally, I really love the character customization they've added to the game and the way you can pick between sects of your race. In my case, I will be playing the Miqo'te - the cat girl race - and I'll be picking between the group that worships the sun, or the group that worships the moon. Really, overall 14 just seems like a fantastic remake of 11... the 'what we would have done if we'd been thinking or had the ability to do it' version.

There is a live beta ongoing right now, but I'm looking forward to being surprised with this one!

I hope to post more on these subjects in the days ahead! Keep you posted!!! Peace!

Ramblings

2010-06-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

Toy Story 3

After some gentle ribbing to do something with the blog I find myself sitting before the good old laptop with my bottle of water and some old anime soundtracks playing in the background. So what shall I write about?

Right now my folks are out of town and I’ve been left to my own devises here at the house. So yesterday I decided to do a me-day and I went out to the library and then to the mall. I ended up coughing up the $9 to see Toy Story 3 at the 3D Imax.

Since hearing about the movie last year, I was feeling pretty negative about it. After all, how many times can you recycle the plot of toys separated and somehow making their way back to their owner? However, I was very surprised and pleased with the movie overall. The detail was of course, pixar fantastic. Their texture artists really took things a step beyond and gave some real nit-and-grit to the characters.

The story line was pretty touching as well. And the gags were not overly used. And I was also pretty happy with the opening where Andy is playing with the toys and you really do find yourself thinking that this was truly something from a young boy’s imagination.

I ended up calling my mom and telling her to go out with my dad to see it that night. Hopefully they did. And I’d really recommend it to anyone else out there. I think they put a good cap onto the series and I even cried a bit. Definately a movie worth the 9 bucks.

In-Game Relations

I've been rather uncertain about what to do recently. Over the past month its been a growing issue where more comments are made about other people or guilds who don't match the expectations of people within the guild. And generally, when comments are made to those within the guild, it comes back to bite me (instead of them) in the ass. Even when I'm not even aware of the issues, I'm held accountable for what they've said.

I take my word and reputation very seriously. Possibly its something I picked up from my dad. But I feel that how I am perceived by others is very important when it comes to being a leader.
Last night I had a fairly heavy discussion with my priest officer about things and even passed him GM when it felt like he wasn’t really listening to what I was trying to say. He doesn’t view things like I do and its frusterating to try to get him to see what I’m getting at.

So what brought me to that point? One of the things I spend a lot of time doing is talking to members and assuring them of other’s intentions and beliefs and good natures. However, recently it has felt that after I have these conversations I come back later and find out that those people I spoke so highly of have basically done the opposite. And in a way, I guess I feel betrayed that my higher expectation of them never came through.

Like, I just had a newer member of the guild delete some events on our guild calendar. It has happened before and probably will happen with anyone not used to guilds using the calendar. They think that deleting will just remove their name from the event. But instead they’ve just removed the entire event from the calendar. (( Unfortunately I cannot stop that from happening. In order for guild members to be able to make their own events, I have to let the ranks have guild calendar control. ))

Anyway, a number of people made a pretty big deal over it. The guy apologized and was pretty embarrassed and I assured him that folks would understand and that it was easy enough to put back up. And what happens?

Yesterday morning I went to see a movie. Typical of movies, I left feeling sick and when I got home, I went to bed. When I got online later that night I'm met with an in-game mail from this young man who was pretty angry. About how he'd logged in to a guild message of the day directed at him and an in-game mail calling him an asshole with the implication that what he'd done was deliberate in his box. And then I myself found the person who had facilitated all of this had also posted an additional 'question' to the application for the guild.

Not knowing I had already talked with the new member about how the calendar worked, the officer had gone off the words of his friend who had his events deleted and made the guild message. And it had been the guild member who had written the message to the young man. But in the end I was viewed as the one to blame about the situation. Partially fueled by the recent conversation where I had assured him that the other people would be mature about it. And I guess, partially assumed that as GM i should have been stopping the incident somehow.

But it is situations like this that are really leaving me drained and just feeling sick and tired of guild politics. And unsure really of what road I should be taking. Because the entire thing just makes me so angry and frustrated. And when I approach things under those emotional influences, it just makes things worse. its just ...

It just feels like no matter how nice and police and gracious I try to be with people I will always end up being the one responsible in guild if someone does something to someone else. Because I am the GM and it happens in my guild – obviously it must be something I am alright with doing. And so they come to me angry about things that have been done and demanding change. And outside the guild, they don’t hold the people who wronged them in the FB responsible. Instead they target me.

In conversation with my priest officer last night I told him that I feel there is nothing I can do in the situation. Because he and the other officers and members have shown such vocal resistance to further restraint – I cannot exactly stop them from being what I feel are jerks to other members. And the same time, I cannot convince these people that it isn’t my fault for them being attacked. Because as GM I should be able to hold these people accountable.

My priest officer told me that I should just stop allowing people to get me so upset when it comes to my reputation like this. And that they weren’t people that mattered. And it moved us into an entire conversation. He feels that we should focus on making the raiders happy and appreciate all the things they’ve been doing for us. But I feel that regardless of being a raider or not, they’re still people. And douche or not too, I can’t bring myself to being terrible mean back to them.

Even when I know they’re sitting there spitting at my back. Its just not someone I feel I can be.
Because I have such a huge distaste for the elitist, egotistical person who sits and makes fun and/or belittles others for personal amusement. It takes someone who has slandered me to utterly and terribly to make me feel more vindictive.

In the end the GM was passed back to me. The priest officer insisted that no one could be GM as well as me. And that people responded better to me because when I did put people ‘in place’ people listened because they knew I was always sincere when I did it and respected that – whereas they tended to fall back into things faster when it was him. And he told me that I should try to not let people get to me so much. And I know he’s right on that last point.
But I need to decide on how to approach this growing issue before things have a chance to become worse. I do not want to be like the old big guilds.

Other Relations

I’m also struggling a lot with how some of the guildies are interacting with folks outside the guild. The idea that we’re better than everyone else and should be able to talk however we like towards them is something I trying to push out of guild attitude. I don’t want to see it going on. I remember when the guild was a smaller one struggling through SSC back in BC. And how those bigger guilds would talk down to us and belittle us and how I felt about how their members would troll and trash other people in trade. I didn’t think well of those people. I didn’t admire those people or feel encouraged to be better guild because they seemed cool.

Last week I laid out a challenge to my guild members – go out and do something nice for someone not in the guild. Screen shot it and post it in the forums. Only a handful of people have done this at this point. Ideally, I wanted to fight the people who were saying the alliance was dead etc – and use the guild to encourage those outside it about the alliance. And secondly, I was hoping it would encourage members to be nicer and friendlier to those outside the guild.

And ultimately, I would just like to see some of my members treating the community and one another better. Perhaps I’m taking this all way too serious. But I strongly believe this and try to live by it (though I may not always succeed) : Treat others the way you would like to be treated. If you won’t like something done to you, don’t do it to them.

What Makes a Raid Leader?

2010-06-11T06:49:00.000-07:00

In my time leading a guild I've wondered, what makes a good raid leader? I was never comfortable with the job and did poorly with it. Fortunately for my guild, there was someone who rose up to the challenge and I think perhaps he is someone I would idolize as a good raid leader.

First and perhaps one of the most important qualities of a good raid leader is self confidence. The ability to make and commit to decisions for the raid is important. And not only is it important to the raid lead, it is important to the raid team who will generally look towards the raid leader for assurance that what they are doing is the best and most effective. A raid leader who is strong in self confidence will inspire those who follow and bring the respect of those under his or her authority.

Second is self mastery and is just as important as the first. For if you cannot be your own master, how can you be the master of others? In raiding you must know your class well and be able to do the very things you ask of those around you. You must be able to think for yourself and act on your convictions and plans. And you must be able to control yourself in the face of adversity. If you can do this, you will be able to be assertive - rather than spontaneous and aggressive in your responses. And while sometimes the aggressive leader can get the attention of the team quickly, it is usually the calm one that will keep their respect and ultimately get the better performance in the end.

Thirdly, another important aspect of a good raid leader is their optimism. A leader filled with optimism will be able to convince others they have the ability to achieve levels of performance beyond what they think they can. The optimistic raid leader won't simply give up on something, they'll work around a problem till they find the solution and succeed. They will be willing to take risks and encourage the team to follow with them until a solution to the fight is found and overcome. They will not be afraid of failing a few times because they know in the end they will win out. And it is that positive attitude that will lead to victories for the raid team.

A final thought on what makes a good raid leader is their humility. The understanding that while you are great, you could not get to where you are without the people behind you. A leader who takes all the credit for the team's success causes resentment from the team. No one wishes to play with someone who thinks they are better than themselves. However, the raid leader who shares credit with the team will find the team's confidence higher and their desire to grow stronger as they achieve more.

My friend has been raid leading for my guild for a year now and has displayed these qualities and more. He has the respect of the raid team and his leadership has made it possible for our guild to have gotten as far as it has. Self-confident, a master of himself, optimistic and humble - he is an example of an excellent raid leader.

KickAss, Healing Hands, Paladin Leveling in Cata

2010-04-21T02:33:00.000-07:00

So I’ve given up sleep for the time being. Tuesday just kinda bombed for me on the expectations scale and I need to do something to try to get the mind to slow down.

Part of it might have been seeing “Kick Ass.” I’m not sure if I liked it or not and left the movie feeling pretty unsettled. I think I expected more humor than there was. I mean, if you like a little kid with a crass mouth, yeah, I guess this would be a pretty funny movie for you.

But it rang with some pretty ugly realistic feeling moments. A dad’s vengeance pulling in his young daughter to a world of violence where she thinks its all a game to kill people. And where a young man who wacks off to porn and fantasizes about his teacher gets a reality check about being a ‘super hero’ when he gets stabbed on his first attempt and brutally hit by a car – which gets much of his bones covered in metal to replace the breaks and ruined nerves that allow him to take some incredible beatings.

The reality was, he did it because no one else was doing anything. They were just standing and watching the violence. No one was taking a stand but ‘one naïve kid with dreams’ or something like that. The dirty truth of the reality. Something terrible happens and people just stand and watch the show. And why I continued to watch the movie despite being kinda disturbed by the little kid, Hit-Girl – I was won over by the mentality of why the kid did what he did.

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Paladins – Healing Hands
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Q: Will healing hands be a paladin-centered tranquility, or something we have to run around to keep people in range of?
A: The idea is that it matters where the paladin is, so it won’t be raid-wide like Tranquility will be in Cataclysm. We will make sure the magnitude of the heal is sufficient that it’s a button the paladin wants to use. The cooldown and duration aren’t set in stone either.

Just a few moments on this since it bugs me. The spell is an aoe heal that is a healer centered hot. Possibly, this spell will last for 6 seconds. And possibly, it will only be recastable after 15 seconds. They’ve said the range will be limited. Probably 15 – 20 yards is my guess.

So we’re expected to either (1) have a raid being all nice and stacky-stacky for us or (2) move constantly to a group to heal them. With one, I doubt you’re going to have many raid or instances where you want everyone to stand atop one another. Even now when you try, you are lucky because folks have this dislike for overlapping characters outside the RP taverns bedrooms. And with the movement, you are basically asking the games weakest moving healer to move to heal.

Once more I look to former statements as to why you would want to bring a paladin for raid healing purposes when you have the much more efficient Priest, Shaman and Druid? The mechanics of this spell need some serious tweaking and right now, judging by the responses from GC on the Healer forums about this spell, we’re not going to see them until its running through beta and folks can start showing why its such a bad idea as it is right now.

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Paladins – Leveling made Interesting…again?
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I remember in the beginning of BC when I understood nothing of paladin specs or purpose. All I knew from FFXI:Online was Paladins should be able to tank and heal. And I played off of that mentality. Granted I always had friends with me while I leveled her but I was never ‘bored.’ I had to put up a short duration seal, I had to judge and put one up again, I had to heal myself (I had no idea what bubbles were and leveled up without realizing I had them … yeah… haha) frequently and I was always picking fights with mobs I had no place picking fights with.

Then when I romanced the horde with my horde paladin Kaee, I leveled her up as holy. Because they had since simplified paladin leveling so you only needed to renew your seal every so often, and your judgements blended into specific types (aka: light, wisdom, justice). There was no thrill of danger leveling her. In fact, I leveled very rapidly.

Then Wrath hit and leveling as holy was my only solution to make things interesting. And I was still soloing all the group quests (except for that minatore with the blood worms. I couldn’t dps him down fast enough. But I outlasted and whittled down every other boss there was).

With Cataclysm coming, and some of the changes announced, I laugh because it seems they’re trying to spice it up a bit. Give some extra moves to the new paladin on the street so leveling has a bit more to it then the current “judge and go get a drink” mentality.

Crusader Strike will be a core ability for all paladins, gained at level 1. We think the paladin leveling experience is hurt by not having an instant attack. Retribution will be getting a new talent in its place that either modifies Crusader Strike or replaces it completely.

I kinda disagree on it being hurt. You put a seal up and auto swing and you win pretty easy in those first 10 levels. (Which have been super simplified, holy shit they nerfed the leveling of it so much). But it will make things more interesting certainly to sit there with your two hander again.

Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.

This is kinda neat for this leveling process as well. Especially if they let you get it in the early teens. Dunno if they would or not. But for either self healing or a little spike damage, this could be pretty fun! I might have to level a third paladin just to experience this. Actually I may end up trying it anyway to see the new quest layouts that they spoke about at Blizzcon last year.

With the changes coming from gutted talent trees, I’m absolutely curious about what it would be like LEVELING another paladin. And perhaps when Kaae is 85 I might explore this. If only worgen could be paladins.

‘Aight. I’ll leave off here for now. Its 5:30 am and I think I’ve managed to get myself tired out enough to sleep! Good night blog!

PLD AoE Heals and The Guild

2010-04-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

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Holy Paladin and AoE Healing
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So there were some more conversations on the Holy Paladin changes and issues (via posts made by folks on the Healing forums) and Ghostcrawler addressed some of those.

Healing Hands
Healing Hands is one of the ways we want to let paladins raid heal and it might even be the dominant way. We want to give them a group heal that isn't Circle of Healing or Chain Heal, because we've already done those spells and we want to do something new here.

What we want to avoid: "Well, we don't have our paladin tonight to heal the tank, so let's call the raid."

What we also want to avoid: "Well, we have too many paladins and they can't raid heal, so let's replace one with an undergeared alt."

There are extremes of course. All things being equal, we'd rather you not stack too many of any one spec. We just don't want to make it impossible to heal a raid if your group of friends just happens to have a lot of Holy paladins.

I agree about the current issues where if you're short a holy paladin in the raid, you're likely calling it off because the other classes think they can't heal it. (Which I view as untrue and think a disc priests can probably do. I've seen ours do it when I'm killed by the unexpected.) And I agree with the issues that, if there is more than 1 or 2 holy paladins in a raid, you end up not wanting more because of the lack of efficiency and ability to raise up multiple targets, aka raid healing.

However, that doesn't solve the issue that as the spell stands now (according to revealed information) the Holy Paladin will not be a very strong raid healer. With this being the only real option for us to heal (thanks to the 'nerf' via mana cost to our fastest spell), I see the continued issue of not bringing in additional paladins to heal because they will continue to be inefficient healers for the raid compared to Priests, Shaman, and Druids.

What I see is, with the changes to how much hp everyone will have (blizz has hinted they will be substantially larger), the amount of damage coming in (supposedly much more over time and less spikey), and the smaller mana pools -- I see the Paladin as becoming a weaker healing choice all around based upon the current information revealed. Granted a lot can still and may change, but right now, looking at the changes, I fail to see why you would wish to take paladins over other classes.

I mean, you can argue 'bring the player not the class' to the casual guild. But the guild pushing seriously, they'll take the classes that are certain to be the best for the job they are given. And the current models they're playing with for the Holy spec of Paladin, doesn't make me feel these changes will produce a better healer. A more rounded maybe, but weaker because of what they're planning to do to the class to 'balance' this new aspect.

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Catching up on the guild
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I've tried writing something up about the guild itself a few times in the last two months or so when I realized I just had not been writing anything in my blog. But usually about 2/3s of a written post I would stop and put it away. Most posts ended up ranting and angry about issues with the politics of things and I didn't think it served myself any good outside some possible immediate theory to organize some thoughts on things while writing it out.

Don't worry, the guild itself is going well! Anyone who has seen our website should be able to see we've downed the Lich King in 25man and 10man and are working on heroic modes as of last week. Where I think once we were a bit of a laughing stock as a guild in BC because of our guild name, we've gotten a bit of respect from folks. Yeah, we still get slammed for what the name can seem in today's American society, but overall, I think we're viewed more positively. Which is nice to see.

My goal of seeing the guild live through killing the Lich King has been fulfilled and overall I'm just proud of where the guild was back in the day when I was pushing to just see Karazhan, to how it was when I was made guild leader, to now.

Can I take credit for all of this? I don't think so. I think I may have heavily influenced and talked us into things that I felt we needed as the guild grew in BC and early Wrath. I think I may have cut and slashed things into how I agreed we needed to be mid Wrath. I think that pure stubbornness and passion kept us allive in later Wrath till now.

But I think the guild grew thanks the contributions of alot of the folks who were officers as well. I don't think people would have stayed in the guild had we continued our BC loot practices and the hard work of one of the former gm, Ericks and officer Triune to beat out a DKP system that the guild would appreciate and use helped that. Without the social networking of Cressida I don't think we would have gotten so many folks in early Wrath that helped get our foot in the raiding door and allow us to have full bunny runs.

I think we could have made some serious, harsh judgements at the time with a few people if not for Ghi, who's avoidance of drama and getting angry hadn't had him pushing us so heavily to be cautious. Without Sheika entering the officer core in early wrath, we probably never would have found the ability to push ourselves towards progression as we had. Without Sylvianne, I probably wouldn't have had the willingness to be guild leader when everything crashed in early Ulduar with the leadership then.

Between the officers I had them and myself, if none of us had been willing to pick up and move with things, perhaps the guild would have died. And in October when many of those officers picked up and moved on, I don't think the guild would have lived without the continued support of Sunastus, TheBigK and Streika who stuck with me. And with the return of Sylvianne and the addition of Gorio, we were able to get to the Lich King.

And the people. Where would this guild be without so many people who have been with us for so long. I hear alot of tales about large turnovers of players in other guilds. But by God's grace, I have been blessed with about 20 people who have come to and stayed with this guild for months. And it has allowed us to create a pretty good raiding team and environment. And a lot of these folks are also people who stuck with me and the guild in October when the leadership was shaken so severely. And they are the people who helped farm old content for gearing people, rather than jumping to other guilds where they might have been able to continue progression undisturbed.

You know, it was for these folks that I think I've pushed myself the most for. These people who showed this guild so much loyalty and willingness, that I promised myself back in October that I would stay. That I would keep with them until we downed the Lich King and finished this expansion. And two weeks ago we saw that come to fruition.

Concerning Proposed Paladin Changes for Cataclysm

2010-04-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

So recently I had wrote up some things on my guild's forums about my views on the proposed changes to the Holy Paladin in upcoming Cataclysm in WoW. The first post I wrote, I gave a lot of short, sarcastic comments about the changes and commented on how alot of it was unlikely to keep me playing after I hit 85 in Cata. I got ripped for it pretty bad and ended up taking everything down.

But it didn't stop me from writing a much longer version which i'll post here since I've decided its not worth talking to the folks there about it with the response I got with my first one.

With the considered changes to mana regen, raid damage, tank damage, and upcoming healing philosphies I made the following assumptions based upon the incoming changes....

New Spell #1:

Blinding Shield (level 81): Causes damage and blinds all nearby targets. This effect might end up only damaging those facing the paladin’s shield, in a manner similar to Eadric the Pure's ability Radiance in Trial of the Champion. The Holy tree will have a talent to increase the damage and critical strike chance, while the Protection tree will have a talent to make this spell instant cast. 2-second base cast time. Requires a shield.

I don't PvP a huge amount, but with the experience I have I can say this is a pvp focused spell. I don't see it having many uses in a raiding environment as blinds are easily broken and folks will always aoe. It might be ok for leveling solo, much like Holy Wrath was on undead mobs. Though with a far longer cast time.

My concern with this for PvP is two fold. One: it's two second cast time and Two: its a holy spell.

2 seconds is like casting a holy light in pvp - a bad idea. Why, because of opportunities to be globaled. Because of the power of this 'aoe blind' - they will probably make this a spell that effects those facing the paladin. If they allow this spell to affect people regardless of position facing, then yes, this could be very awesome.

Reality check though: the resulting cries from other classes would lead to this quickly being changed.

Therefore, my statement, this spell will not be very used as it is proposed now. Offensive damage will depend on what the damage they give to it is. I doubt it will be as powerful as Eadric the Pure's which does about 10-12k on some folks.

As a fun thought: I see this more as a 2 second casting Holy Nova with that damages without healing that MIGHT blind should someone be facing while casting. However, most players will see a long cast going, and either interupt the long cast, or turn and be unaffected should they do what I think they will, which is make it so it only hits those facing the caster.

Healing Hands (level 83): Healing Hands is a new healing spell. The paladin radiates heals from him or herself, almost like a Healing Stream Totem. It has a short range, but a long enough duration that the paladin can cast other heals while Healing Hands remains active. 15-second cooldown. 6-second duration.

Ok, i'm not looking for something to make me into a superman for raid heals. My class is being rewritten to be like the other classes in power. Fine. But this spell does not equal the power of the other raid healing spells. Judging by the description chosen to describe the spell:

"almost like a Healing Stream Totem"
"Short range, 6 second duration"

From what I understand of shaman, healing stream totem isn't all that powerful. Probably a little less healing then Judgement of Light's return which is now based off 2% of the attacker's health. It will also only last 6 seconds and have a 15 second cool down. Bigger health pools, smaller mana pools, larger damage over time. I cannot perceive this being a spell on running with the powerhouse aoe heals of the other classes.

Question for it too: does it have a cast time? Is it channeled?

On the information currently shared, this is just not a spell that really will really do much for keeping a raid alive like other better equipped classes will. From teh current peek of the spell, we will be inefficient compared to the power provided by Priests, Druids and Shaman. The spell may change as more info is introduced. Yes, not enough information to make solid declarations. But off the little information given, its a shit spell so far as aoe heals go. That's just my view.

Guardian of Ancient Kings (level 85): Summons a temporary guardian that looks like a winged creature of light armed with a sword. The visual is similar to that of the Resurrection spell used by the paladin in Warcraft III. The guardian has a different effect depending on the talent spec of the paladin. For Holy paladins, the guardian heals the most wounded ally in the area. For Protection paladins, the guardian absorbs some incoming damage. For Retribution paladins, it damages an enemy, similar to the death knight Gargoyle or the Nibelung staff. 3-minute cooldown. 30-second duration (this might vary depending on which guardian appears).

"...As for the Guardian of Ancient Kings. First, it's important to understand that this is not a pet nor does it have a pet bar associated with it. Second, it's also not meant to last for very long. So, it's not a pet in the traditional sense. It's a friend in need when you need it, but not a permanent companion...."

In karazhan there were books for healers that proc'd a 'pet' healer. They stood next to you for a limited time and cast healing spells on the people who were lowest in the raid. I threw out the random number of 100-200 heals, but yeah, they'll probably toss out some medium-ish hold lights. Maybe 2-3. In addition, their heals can easily be wasted and their presence pointless because they'll be healing the person with the most damage. Unless affected by haste, their heal will likely be sniped.

This will be like the Mirror Image 'pets' and Gargoyles. There will not be a pet bar for it according to the current released information. Like you guys said earlier, not a ton is really known about this. But just from the intial information given, cute spell, but just another cool-down and not something I can really utilize other than blindly hitting and hoping they might heal what I want them to heal. Random is random, and as this spell stands now, it leaves little to wow and be excited about. Its kinda crummy really.

Next you will find a list of some of the paladin spell and ability changes, followed by our intentions for improving each talent tree for the release of Cataclysm. There will be further changes, but those revealed below should offer some insight into our goals.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

* Cleanse is being rebalanced to work with the new dispel system. It will dispel defensive magic (debuffs on friendly targets), diseases, and poisons.

This is cool. I like this. I can dispel some of the other classes. No complaining here.

* Blessing of Might will provide the benefit of Wisdom as well. If you have two paladins in your group, one will do Kings on everyone and the other will do Might on everyone. There should be much less need, and ideally no need, to provide specific buffs to specific classes.

This is a personal frustration for me. Yes, I hated hearing the bitching from the masses when they didn't have a buff, but I liked that we could give so many cool unique things out. But the buffs are vanishing into homogenization. In so far as traditions, I will miss knowing we're giving out some cool stuff to the raid. But hey, more to the 'bring the player not the class thing." Question will be how the talents that improved the blessings will work or will they take the blessings and attribute the full 'improved' markings to it. Or will there by a improved blessings general talent in one of the trees?

* Holy Shock will be a core healing spell available to all paladins.

Just frees up another talent for me ideally. Not sure how they'll work with Infusion of Light which makes the flash of light instant. ( If they bother bringing it back at all. )

New Talents and Talent Changes

* We want to ease off the defensive capabilities of Retribution and Holy paladins slightly. We think the powerful paladin defenses have been one of the things holding Retribution paladins back, especially in Arenas. One change we’re considering is lowering Divine Shield’s duration by a couple of seconds. Having said that, Retribution does pretty well in Battlegrounds, and Battlegrounds will be a much bigger focus in Cataclysm since they can provide the best PvP rewards. Furthermore, the healing environment of Cataclysm is going to be different such that a paladin may not be able to fully heal themselves during the duration of Divine Shield to begin with, so this may not be a problem.

I said it earlier, but this is another issue where they're destroying the holy paladin's survival when they don't have a lot of offense to balance it. They said they may not do it because the damage is going to be so big that you may not be able to heal through the duration anyway. But I do not think taking away more of our survival without decent abilities to fight back is cool. I don't care what people think about their perceived OPness in BGs and Arena. That's just my take.

* We want to increase the duration of Sacred Shield to 30 minutes and keep the limit to one target. The intention is that the paladin can use it on their main healing target. That said, we would like to improve the Holy paladin toolbox and niche so that they don’t feel quite like the obvious choice for tank healing while perceived as a weak group healer.

This is a cool change as far as cool down monitoring goes. I would be able to keep it up on a target much easier. Though I'm sure they'll be upping the mana cost to balance the time it lives.

* We want to add to the Holy tree a nice big heal to correspond with Greater Heal. Flash of Light remains the expensive, fast heal and Holy Light is the go-to heal that has average efficiency and throughput. Beacon of Light will be changed to work with Flash of Light. We like the ability, but want paladins to use it intelligently and not be constantly healing for twice as much.

Flash of Light is currently our lowest healing spell with cheap mana.
Holy Light is currently the costly big heal.

They are basically either putting in a third Super holy light to compensate for huge heals for the big health pools, or they're making holy light big and putting in a medium in there somewhere. The issue here is that they're talking about jacking up the flash of light spells to a high mana costs while trying to figure out how to get us into raid healing with the Healing Hands aoe stationary aoe heal.

I suspect the medium Holy Light will be the heal we usually use for regular tank healing still. And that when big stuff is coming we'll start cranking up teh big one. With the raid healing spells looking as they are, we'll still really only be decent at tank healing and still 'spamming holy light.' Unless changes of course.

The beacon change, I listed pretty carefully before. And here is what I don't like about either:

1. Beacon only working with Flash of Light
Con. : Flash of Light is now expensive. Spamming Flash while keeping up an expensive beacon spell and dealing with a smaller mana pool with changed regen mechanics. Tank Health Pools will be larger, but this kind of change is pointless. In the time you might get them up with your flashes you probably could have individually bombed both with a big heal, or had two healers watching over them. Getting rid of the risen cost of the FoL will make this more appealing. They've mentioned removing the cost of beacon... but we'll see.

2. Beacon on a target will cause heals on that target to cost more mana.
For this to work, they'd probably make the duration of Beacon shorter. MUCH shorter. Because a Paladin cannot remove the effect themselves unless they put it on another target. Next is a question of the cost of the new big heal. Because beacon itself is also expensive to cast all the time and you're looking at a possible mana/health bomb that might cost twice the normal mana cost. They've mentioned removing the cost of beacon... but we'll see.

* Holy paladins will use spirit as their mana regeneration stat.

Not terrible. More worried people about paladin's taking their gear when they can't take the paladin's gear. Armor bonus should help that though.

So overall, I'm pretty unhappy with the current proposed changes to the Holy Paladin coming in Cataclysm. I am well aware there is alot to change and that could change, especially once beta starts. But this all is just showing what they're pushing towards and honestly I'm not sure I will have fun playing this type of healer. From the hints at how limited mana is going to be and how big health pools will be, and how the damage will be going out, I find myself feeling less and less eager to see Cataclysm as a healer at all really. But we'll see what happens. Maybe I can get into the beta.

Concerning Assisms in the LFG

2009-12-25T03:20:00.000-08:00

The mobs kept coming but the warrior was slow to approach. He was steadfast in his resolve to do things his own way and not keep pace with the group. The Draenei Priest watched on, casting holy prayers and hymns as quickly as she could while the rogue, mage and death knight fought the oncoming dragonkin without aid of their tank.

“Why don’t you keep up!” demanded the mage, dumfounded.
“I’ve seen far better tanks then you!” exclaimed the rogue frustrated. He had been somewhat tanking the instance, his agility saving him more often than the tank’s mighty taunts.

The warrior sneered at the group and with a hauty tilt of his head laughed at them. “You’ll do it my way or not at all. Do you really think you’re going to get another tank? I know how hard it is to get us.”

The priest was shocked and angered. How dare this human assume he was irreplaceable. “We can get someone else easily. You’re not hard to replace.”

The warrior scoffed at her but the other three companions in the instance nodded their agreement. With a haunty remark the human left the group, even as the dragonkin, unmindful of the drama, continued to pour from the portals towards the prison doors. However, much to the groups relief a paladin appeared between them. Shield raised high, he lost no time in rounding up the scaled enemies and they were beaten back. The rest of the battle to defend the prison went smooth and as the Priest made her way out of the instance she marked the tank from earlier as someone to avoid.

It’s a bit theatrical, but the frustration and shock is true. I had gotten a group for VH and we had a warrior tank. However, he rarely did anything to pick up adds. He would approach and hit them. A few times mobs would be coming from portals and instead of running to them, he’d turn and run in the opposite direction!! Any threat was usually generated by tricks of the trade from the rogue. Now the warrior wasn’t squishy. He also had the patient title so I know he’s been doing heroics. However, he was simply BAD at tanking. And when members of the group got tired of tanking and nearly dying because I could barely keep up on my priest, he got testy. And he told us how hard it was to get tanks and that we’d have to deal with him or else.

I called him out on this and told him that he was replaceable. I’m not going to be collared by some arrogant tank who cannot do his job. I will not be held ransom. So he leaves the group instantly between trash spawns. The rogue ends up tanking with the death knight. Both of them kind of ping ponging mobs and killing them as they wail on the door to the prison. However, it is maybe only three minutes in when a prot paladin comes in. He not only keeps pace, but he’s on the ball with getting to portal locations and picking up the mobs. The instance finishes without any hitches.

So I look to that first tank and I mock him. He thought he was a diva and could grab the group by the balls and do whatever he wanted because we might be desperate for a group. I know in some times of the day a dps might wait 25 min for a queue to pop. However, our group wasn’t going to be played like some desperate, starving animal to a bowl of food.

I see a lot of tanks complaining about groups running ahead or pulling before they can touch a mob. I know they get frustrated when they don’t quite control the group like they want. And I know as a healer, when things are rushed I get frazzled. I’ve been in groups with guild members obsessed with speed runs and they get a tank and basically don’t let him get a chance to do much of anything unless it’s a boss. I’ve been in groups where one dpsing mage was so good at kiting and cc that he was pulling without issues and ‘tanking’ mobs to the point that TWO tanks left the group. Refusing to cooperate. On one hand, I did think the mage should have calmed down – on the other the tanks should have just kept going and not played diva and kicked a fuss.

I guess from experiences of my own and what I’m used to – I’m used to having to keep pace with the pack. Slow or fast. And I think that anyone should be willing to doing it too. Maybe its not their comfort zone. Maybe they cannot quite do it. But if the group is working and you all want the badges (which is why I’d assume you’d use the LFG over running with friends and guildies) – why not keep with it till the end? If you leave early you’re probably going to (1) Kill the group (2) delay the group (3) just cause issues all together. Well all of those kinda happen.

I laughed about it in a previous post, but what happened in my HoL when the tank hearthed and left group mid fight on Ionar? Again it had been a diva tanking (pld this time). The mage in that group had made some comment and the tank had taken offense. They continued needling each other till the final boss and then I’d noticed he was hearthing and then left. Do you think the group survived? No.

Its not just tanks I’ve seen do this. As dps, I’ve encountered healers doing this too. Leaving group because they don’t get things going the way they like it. The LFG has a G in it. Group. Also known as a team. Everyone needs to work together on it and when you stomp your foot and insist its your way or the high way, you’re going to have trouble. And when it she majority, its better to just go on with it. If you’re uncomfortable with the direction the group is moving, its fine (I think) to voice it. But heavens, please, don’t throw a tantrum when they say no and don’t. If you’re a healer and you’re oom – they’ll find out the hard way. If you’re a tank and you cannot pick up threat, they’ll find out the hard way. If you're dps and you can’t burn it all down fast enough for the healer to keep everyone up – they’ll find out the hard way.

If you’re a mage, for heavens sake, don’t refuse a group a table and say they’re just pugs and not worth a reagent to drop a table on. Don’t try to excuse that you’re not going to give them biscuits because its going to despawn once you leave the instance. Don’t be that ass in the instance who becomes so hated the other dps try to kill you. And refuse to pull or get anything done. You were brought in as part of a team. And you’re ALL working together. Yes, they can buy the water, but your reagents are just as cheap and feed five. Be gracious and don’t be an ass and drop the table and don’t be that guy who the group is spaming “vote to kick” on.

As you see, I’ve had a string of bad groups since my last post. Enough to frustrate me enough to rant on it. PLEASE – if you’re using the LFG – stay in group and don’t be douches. Work with the group, not against it. And be polite.

Some other reading that I found on this:
http://www.wow.com/2009/12/23/in-defense-of-ignorance/
http://thebigbearbutt.com/2009/12/22/the-journey-to-the-dark-side-aint-complete-but-its-slouching-along/

Some Ramblings

2009-12-22T02:38:00.000-08:00

So Patch has been out for a bit now. Most guilds have now taken down the first four accessible bosses of the Lich King’s Citadel and I’m pleased to see that at least three of those are Alliance guilds! I’ve felt kinda like rousing folks a bit on the forums and cheering the guilds along. Its cheesy and I’m sure I get eye rolled, but if horde can have a sense of ‘nationality’ so can Alliance!

SO Icecrown Citadel. With much eagerness and excitement we entered into the Lich King’s domain and with much surprise found at how easily we progressed. By the end of the first week, we had downed all the available new content! Granted it was fun to work around the bugs that were naturally showing their heads but we worked around it without much trouble.

Unfortunately after our fourth boss we realized that we had 28 days till the next ‘gate’ would be opened to us and we could see more. We’re clearing the current content in about an hour! Which is really excellent but leaves me figuring out what we can do. Most of the guild is hating TotGC. But we’re also one shotting all three bosses we have on farm. Its those stinky twins. Well its more, people are struggling with self awareness and playing dodgeball.

We’re trying yet another strategy that hopefully will work for us however, and I’m looking forward to coming back from holiday breaks to see how the guild does with it. The guild itself is doing very well! We have decided to take the step to invite a little beyond our current raid team to avoid the traps we hit before. For me this makes things more difficult because I have to switch people in and out who I like and know what to ALWAYS raid. And making those calls leaves me feeling a little stressed. But so far I’ve been met with nothing but kind understanding and willingness. I am hoping this continues as we continue to delve into the new content.

Something that has really brought a lot of activity to the guild is my much anticipated “Cross server Looking For Group” which I predicted could breath new life into people. Indeed, I’ve seen people flooding back to the Alliance who’d stopped playing. When you have the chance to get full tier nine and see the Lich King content so easily, it’s a great drawer. And if you’re a healer of tank, you are looking at possibly being in full tier 9 in 2-3 days depending on your playtime. DPS could probably be in it in a week.

I point to my own characters as examples. After the first days I had my paladin’s ret set upgraded from t8 to full t9. The following days I’d gotten enough badges to epic gem them and pay for enchants for the gear. I’ve since gotten a full t9 boomkin set for my druid and 4 piece of t9 for my disc priest as well as rings and neck pieces. For my bad fury warrior, its given me a chance to get to work on some new gear for her as well.

My only complaint is how long I’m sometimes waiting as dps. With my paladin it was easy to build the ret set because I was almost instantly in queues when I’d put myself in as a healer. Healers and Tanks in general have almost instant queues and to me kinda points out that truth the Blizz Dev Team has refuted – that one about how there aren’t really less. I think the queues kinda prove there is a great imbalance.

I think in part because players just don’t enjoy it as much. Though I do think it takes special people to play a healer and have the patience and willingness to have that kind of duty on their shoulders. Tanks too can be hard to pick up and play well. I’ve seen all sorts of tanks so far. Some are monsters who run in and take almost nill damage and are of chuck Norris status. Others run in and kinda beat their chest and the mobs laugh and run around them to decimate the poor dps or healers.

But is been entertaining for the most part and even if a group is horrid, sometimes I stay in just for the stories to share with the guildies. Such as the ass who pulled Ionius in HoL and when we had it at 20% health, hearthed and then left group. Or such as the group who pulled the first two mobs in FoS while the healer was drinking and then died when the healer wasn’t with them when they got to the second trash set and began to talk about crystal meth as we flew back.

Also, with the chance to play so many alts and gear them. And all these alts being of different types. (caster dps, melee dps, hots healer, etc) I’ve begun to consider if any of them would be a toon I’d consider making my new main in Cataclysm. Its odd considered it when I think about how long I’ve been a Paladin. I’ve basically been healing since leveling up. Its what I’m most comfortable as and what I know best.

However, the chance to do something different has made the game feel a bit newer. More interesting. Dpsing as a boomkin is fun because I can see how well I chain my eclipses, maintain my dots and meanwhile keep myself alive. And now I’m even working on incorporating mouse-overs into my dpsing to try to heighten reaction times. I am trying to develop better keybinding habits as well and more intelligent rotations. Asking internal questions as to why I’m doing things and not just accepting the status quo’s response on how it should be played.

Overall, I am VERY happy with the LFG-Cross-Server System and Its been great experiencing it.

Avatar - A Review

2009-12-21T03:33:00.000-08:00

So I’ve seen the movie Avatar, twice now. The first showing I saw in packed IMAX 3D sitting and the next was just in 3D. I can easily say that IMAX was the way to go for huge first impressions, but the 3D was definitely still excellent. They did a marvelous job with it. A lot of 3D is filled with cheap gags and flying debris. However, the movie used it wisely and added A LOT of depth to shots which added a lot to the vast lush scenes they created.

I really loved the characters, the idea of the story, the animation, the models, the environment, the lighting, and really just the entire movie itself. However, if you have conservative or religious friends and relatives who might have issues with political views different then their own or perhaps issues with scantily clad beings running around then perhaps this is not a show you want to recommend. I made the mistake of taking three of such people with me and got to list to a 20 min lection on how holywood was brainwashing people and spreading propaganda and how people would watch and accept the themes of the movies as reality and how they should really think about things before seeing such movies etc.

While I do agree with the idea of not forming opinions based on movies, it pretty much ruined the night and left me in a foul mood. Its pointless to get yourself so rialed up over a movie that was made to enjoy and showcase some really wonderful creativity! Instead of sitting there thinking of those few things that bugged you, why not consider the things that were super awesome about it!!!

SO some spoilers and some thoughts on the movie itself in detail.

Don’t read if you don’t want spoilers.

The environment.

Everything from the fantastic “Hallelujah Mountains” that floated in the sky above the ground to the phosphorescent plant life at night left me in awe. Fantastic clouds, misty rivers and waterfalls, a massive tree home. So many wonderful and unique creations for a world with a name like Pandora.

The characters.

The digital ones were incredible not simply because they moved well but because of how REAL they were. The Navi are cat like in many features. And some of the best things they did with them were dialating eyes, ears that reacted as a cat to various emotions, tails that moved WITH the characters and not like some afterthought animation. Again – sensistive people might be bothered by the thongs worn by the Navi. But I was pretty impressed at how they always managed to cover the nipples of the females and the thongs always stayed in place. I personally caught a few side nipples but I was looking for them on the second viewing thanks to being over sensitive to my family next to me. The texturing was amazing on the Navi as well! All in all it was VERY easy to forget the Navi were only digital. They really were REAL at points and were incredible.

The Characterization.

Something I can be picky on is how a character might develop. My biggest concerns were for Jake who is constant throughout the movie and his growth. To quote a friend, it is a Furngully situation. Young forester comes and finds himself involved with the forest protectors. He’s arrogant but falls in love and realizes he loves nature. However, in this case we see a hurting ex-marine who has come to Pandora in place of his twin brother who was killed in a mugging. Through comments we can assume he has a pretty big chip on his shoulder and we never find out the details of why he’s wheelchair bound. Only that he accepts his brother’s place because he needs money to get his spinal cord repaired. He has serious pride issues with allowing people to help him but is afraid of nothing and really just appears to be out for himself. However, in place of his brother he becomes an “Avatar Driver.”

Basically he is neurologically linked to a body created with a mix of dna from a human and navi. We get a brief introduction to his new found liberty to run and walk as an avatar that awakens an interest in a program he was thinking was stupid and then we get to see him being asked by the military leader of the base to spy on the navi for him. Jake goes out with the science team a little later and is separated when a while animal attacks. He is rescued by Neytiri, a navi huntress and the chief’s daughter (she was going to kill him but she saw a sign from their god and stopped). He’s eventually taken in by the tribe to teach him their ways and they learn about the warriors of the humans. By mid movie, we’re seeing him basically growing to love the ways and things about the Navi. He begins to think about others a bit more and about the world around him. In the end he learns self sacrifice and what it means to protect. He falls in love and in the end decides to stay. I won’t say how here.

As a side note while I think about it. Jakes character as an avatar when he first meets Neytiri is wonderful. She tells him he’s like a child and indeed, he seems like one. And with his cat like features of the Navi its fun to watch. Its like watching a kitten as he bats at everything and everything seems new and unusual. You can picture him picking up new scents or perhaps a bright color catching his eye. He has to touch everything and see everything. He’s super curious! It was very fun to watch this scene. Haha

The Story. Ok, so perhaps it wasn’t the most original. In fact it takes a lot of our own US history. The white man wants the Indians land and when they won’t move with nice words the white man comes in and chases them off. In this case, the humans want Unobtanium (Un-obtain-ium) that is rich on the planet and sells for billions per little bit of mineral. They realize the Navi’s home, Hometree, is sitting on the biggest deposit on the planet and they want it. So the scientists develop this Avatar program in the hopes of talking to the native and getting them to move diplomatically. However, the corporate don’t want to wait much longer and send in their mercenaries. If you’re a person who supported Bush then you’re also going to be picking off the comments from the head mercenary that (imo) didn’t fit about “fighting terror with terror” or a spy talking about the movement against the navi being for “shock and awe.” And then in comes the final frequently used theme which is noble traitor – turning on his people for the people he just met and fell in love with. And finally the last theme wasn’t mentioned often, but had a pretty big plug near the end of the movie when Jake talks about the Earth and tells Pandora’s god tree about how the humans had killed their mother (earth) and that it had nothing green left and that it needed to do something to stop them from coming and killing her.

Positively about the story, the idea they touched up with the planet and the circle of life theme. The entire planet was a network! The Navi’s own hair allowed them to connect with the world around them. They could upload and download memories at will basically and communicate with all living things. I really loved the idea of this in the movie and as Grace (scientist) said. The true value of the planet was what was under the ground but what was above it. I imagine if the villains of the movie had believed her that so much could have been gained.

I could really continue about the things I really loved about this movie. I think it could have maybe been fleshed a little bit more in story. Why certain characters outside of Jake behaved in certain ways or came to certain decisions that later effected how things happened. But overall, I think it was a good length of movie. It had a very good pace and didn’t feel like it lasted 2.5 hours. I frequently was lost to the world of the movie and especially in the IMAX there were points were I forgot I was even sitting in a theater until someone shifted beside me or moved in front of me.

I still recommend seeing this movie to anyone. Though again – caution towards the conservative and sensitive who MIGHT be bothered by a few of the things I mentioned above. Go see it and have fun! Probably the best movie I’ve seen all year!

Concerning Accounts and Hackings

2009-11-30T10:37:00.000-08:00

Days, months, even years of work lost in a span of a few hours. Accounts taken and stripped. Hacking is a growing issue for the wow player today and keeping your account safe seems harder and harder. WoW is a huge game, every growing in population and with that come the eyes of those who would profit.

There are a few ways a hacker can get your personal information and your account.

1. You download a file
I had three members of the guild hacked recently after downloading a hack for WoW 3. Downloading cracks for games or mods for games is very risky. Always run scans on the files before unzipping and using. Also, I wouldn’t recommend getting files from sites that aren’t particularly well known.

2. You visit a website and stuff downloads some information to your computer.
I was hit by this last year. Unaware this had occurred, one evening I found myself battling for password changes with a hacker. I managed to win, but a scan revealed a number of keyloggers. It took a week before I was satisfied with cleansing my computer. And now-a-days keyloggers are smarter. Some will only run once the launcher has been activated! If you are scanning your computer for them, its not a bad idea to have the launcher running while you scan in order to raise the chances of uncovering and removing them.

3. You buy gold or an account or hire a leveling service.
First you shouldn’t even buy gold – frequently gold is bought from or attained by hacking other’s accounts. The money or toon you may be buying might have been made and worked for by a friend! But many gold sites get initial information on your account simply by you buying from them. They’ll likely have your email address, the name of a character on your account and your real name. Then they may log your keys and the rest is history. Its not safe and certainly its not healthy for your community.

4. You reply to an ‘official’ blizzard email.
Don’t be fooled. Blizzard will never ask for your account name, password or other private information. The most you may get is a warning about something. Links in these emails should NEVER be followed. Look here at this example:

As you can see, the email was appearing to be sent by “noreply@blizzard.com” and looked valid enough. However, its ALWAYS better to be safer than sorry and most phishing emails can be revealed by seeing who the mailed-by address was and not just the “from”. Gmail offers the ‘show details’ option as seen in the SS. Click it and the new information will show up.

If this doesn’t thrill you, going to links in the post and hovering your mouse over it should show an address in the bottom corner of your internet browser window. As seen in my SS, the link was named properly. But the actual adress of the link was NOT an official website. If I had visited the site I might have had something downloaded to my pc, or perhaps windows prompting for my login in formation that would have been used for something OTHER than registering a survey.

5. You get a whisper in WoW and go to the website.

There are a number of very false whispers being sent. Free mounts, accounts that are being suspended, gold for sale, etc etc. Blizzard will never whisper you about these things. Certainly not under the names the whispers are sent from. And as far as I know, a Blizzard employee will only whisper with the official blizz icon by their name in blue text. Don’t trust these whispers. Do not follow the links these whisperers try to get you to go to. The only free you will see is the free of your account kind. The only surprise you might get is the surprise of being unable to log in to your account.

OK, so you have been hacked and are locked out of your account. Maybe they have an authenticator and you cannot access your account to reset your passwords. What do you do?

-- My account has been hacked and the hackers put an authenticator on it!!! I can’t even get on my account to try to fix the information!!!! Help! ---

First, go find your software and have your serial numbers available.
Next, call billing and account services. Info is:

Live Representatives Available Mon-Fri, 8am to 8pm PST/PDT
For phone assistance please call: 1 (800) 592-5499 || 1 (800) 59-BLIZZARD

* Players in Australia should call 1-800-041-378
* Players in Singapore should call 800-2549-9273
* Players in Chile should call 1230-020-5554
* Players in Mexico should call 001-888-578-7628
* Players in Argentina should call 0800-333-0778
* All other international players should call: (949) 955-0283

be ready to give them information like your payment type, the number, the account holder name, the account name, possibly the password, and phone and email. I’m sure there is other information they might ask. If you are unlucky enough to have this happen Saturday or Sunday, just do what you can to warn people about the account breach and try not to fret too much. Blizzard replaces the stolen items (though it can take a lot of time).

--- What can I do to protect myself? ---

Most expensive but perhaps one of the most solid ways to protect your account: buy an authenticator. The authenticator has a serial number that is placed on your battlenet account and applies to any account your register to that account. Each time you go to log in, you push a button and a one time, six digit number will appear for you plug into your account each time you log in.

See this thead too from Blizzard: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14318909866&sid=1

Blizzard makes the additional suggestions:

Complete operating system updates regularly (preferably as they become available).
If you use FireFox, install NoScript and run it consistently while browsing.
Run antivirus and anti-spyware scans weekly.
Select a secure password and change it periodically.
Never willfully share your login and password. Even friends, family, and significant others can place your account at risk.
Be aware of "phishing" emails and websites, and do not to respond to any invalid requests. Remember that a Blizzard Employee will never ask for your password.
Monitor the availability of your email address and do not post it publicly.

There is no way (probably) to make your account absolutely safe. But there is no reason for you to make it easy on the hacker either. Most gold sellers need to get in and out quickly. Showing you are going to make it hard for them is one of the best ways to protect yourself.

It was too late for a few of my guild members, but this knowledge is here for you now. So now you know, and knowing is half the battle. Best of luck!

Thanksgiving

2009-11-24T11:59:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving… that day we all pig out on domesticated bird, breads and gravy. Where we might watch football on the television or throw the ball around the yard. Or maybe just sit and talk with friends and/or family.

Thanksgiving, traditionally, is a harvest festival that commemorates the feasts shared by the Pilgrims with the American Indians. The Indians had taught the Pilgrims how to plant crops and hunt wild game when they have come to North America and without the Indians, the Pilgrims would have undoubtedly died that first winter.

Today we honor Thanksgiving as a day a “thanks giving day.” A day for all of us to remember what we have to be thankful for! A day where we can look at everyone or thing around us and just find goodness in what you see.

I struggle a lot with depression, anxiety and just being happy in general. I think really, a lot of us get so caught up in those things that much as unhappy or dissatisfied that we tend to forget the positives and goodness around us.

Those people who grew up with you. Those people around you. The places you may have lived. The clothing you may have worn. The food you may have eaten. The place you are now.

You may not have loved those people who grew up with you or lived with you or around you. But they played a role in who you are now! You may not have liked where you lived or where you are now, but you had a place! You may not have liked your cloths, but you had something to wear! You may not have liked the food, but you had something in your belly!

I find my mind this week pulling up thoughts and images of a lot of things. As I grew up I always said I wanted to live a life without regrets. But it always felt that I was only seeing regrets! But later when I’d look back on them and see how things had shaped me, I found myself thinking – its not all for the worst. Yeah I would regret the event, but the result in my life was something to be thankful for.

Like my sexual molestation six years ago. If you’d asked me then if I was thankful it happened, I probably would have socked you in the face. But that event (once I had healed from the mental wounds) actually opened a lot of doors for me to talk to other people who had been in similar situations.

Or I could look at how it pushed me into playing my first mmo in which I sought an escape from reality and met two friends who would a year later keep me from committing suicide (simply because they showed they cared about me and loved me for who I was and made themselves a constant presence in my life). And who would lead me to playing world of warcraft three years ago where I’ve since met many new and wonderful people.

I could look at my time as an intern at Disney and think about all the terrible things I went through while there. Or I could look at it and realize how it opened my mind to other people and what they believe. It created a sensitivity to others that I hadn’t had growing up in a conservative home. I learned it was ok to be different, to believe in other things.

I could look at how I don’t have people to do things locally anymore since moving back to my parents home. But then I never would have the time I do now to spend it online leading the FB. I wouldn’t have developed the friendships or connections there that I have. I wouldn’t have met such wonderful people that I know now and talk to.

If not for video games, I doubt I would be writing this now. I doubt I would have ever considered being anything but a follower and never a leader. I doubt I would have been very talkative.

I can look at many things in my life and find all the negatives. I could pounce on them and blow them up or I can be thankful for the things that have happened, the bad and the good, and think about how they’ve helped play a part in who I am today.

I think I’m not alone in this. I think that a lot of folks will find if they just look at themselves they’ll see that while maybe things were pretty black and dark around them, that they have been positive in helping create who they are.

So this Thanksgiving week, lets all remember the good things. I am Thankful you all and for the things around me. And I am thankful to a God who put you all in my life and put me in these circumstances.

Happy Thanksgiving Day everyone! And Thanks~

Ashen Verdict Reinforcements

2009-11-19T00:33:00.001-08:00

So a friend popped into vent tonight and as we talked this picture on the Simple Math forums was brought up. I did a double take and then was pulling up the breaks. It didn't look quite right. Something about how things were laid out in the text, or the graphics.... The image for the item seemed off. But I was willing to second guess it and went to the store to look it up. Nothing came up. Convinced it was photoshopped I decided to have some fun with it.

The image I chose was official artwork, which seemed more logical that a capture from the trailer. Next was making sure the text was appropriate. I needed a slightly believable name for the sales item. Then I needed appropriate text. Finally I needed to go in and carefully write in and match the font type, size, coloring and spacing. Finally I needed a good display picture of the in game item. To do that i found a large image of what looked like an Ashen Verdict image and shopped it up to be a bit more glowy with an emboss. Then to duplicate the background the pets sit on (which should be a reflective solid), I created a solid with a gradient. The reflection was created by shearing the icon and putting its opacity down with a overlay layer type.

This being done I showed it to the guys in vent and got a series of double takes and lol's. I was told I should post it on a forum. So I took it to: MMO-Champion & the Blizzard forums (The latter I started praying wouldn't get me banned).

I've not been disappointed. So far responses have amused me. Not just those who call me out for the shop, but the few serious responses and those playing off of the image. An hour of shopping = a few hours of amusement.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/general-discussions-22/ashen-verdict-reinforcements/
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=21254576169&sid=1

Faction Transfers: Day 73 & Cross Server LFG

2009-11-14T03:45:00.000-08:00

I know I go back to this a lot…

Day 73

September 2, 2009 Blizzard announced Faction changes would be allowed for a nice round sum of money. Only about half of $100. And so the wheels began to turn.

Faction changes continue to ravage my poor server Andorhal. Eleventh Hour made the jump and headed over to the horde side to find the greener pastures. More people to recruit from. Richer pvp benefits. Wintergrasp is now called Hordeygrasp. Well not really. Alliance still wins at 5 am. Maybe they win at 8 pm.

Screenshot above was taken at 5am. By the end of the game we had 12 people and 9 stacks of tenacity. Most games the Alliance almost has 30-40 people. However, 8-9 stacks of tenacity during the first 20 min of the game is normal. Which makes the assumption of 70-75 horde players, maybe more. This is my speculation from only my experiences in games the last two weeks.

But regardless, this was one of the last of the BC guilds of the Alliance to have seen all content. I wish them well but I morn for yet another guild gone.

Now IOD (Instruments of Destruction) will be transferring. Supposedly about 15 have agreed in their guild to go so far. All day their officers could be seen putting things up on the AH. After all, you cannot take a guild’s inventory from the bank with you.

I mourn their passing as they were one of the strongest guilds currently working on progression for the alliance side of the server. I wonder where their other members will go who don’t transfer. Will they somehow find another guild? Unknown is suffering from raiders leaving. Maybe they’ll go there. Or maybe they’ll try their hand with us as we rebuild.

Another sign of the decline of the alliance was about 20ish horde taking over Stormwind for about 2 hours this evening. For an hour they stayed comfortably holed up in the trade district. Then they killed the King and returned only to swing over to IF and kill the king and camp a bit there as well. All the while mocking from level ones. But the alliance was never able to gather more that 15 to the area.

Unless it is around 7pm server time, the alliance has been basically dead. I’ve done my best to learn what guilds are out there, and there are some guilds working in Ulduar now! There is hope that these courageous guilds and people of the alliance will meet ICC head on and become names for our side of the faction! As for FB... Like I told an inquirer tonight: "FB was started on Andorhal and on Andorhal it will die."

As a side note, has this hurt the horde at all? Actually yes. If anything, the queues for BGs are longer. Thus less honor per hour for the horde. So perhaps in this case, the grass was truely only appearing greener..... but hey, they still have wintergrasp.

So what is my beef right now? Why am I writing this?

Well in part I’m whining about the whiners. I’m sick of hearing from the complainers of how bad we are. I’m tired of their putting down of their own faction. Granted when we’re roflstomped in Wintergrasp, I facepalm and look to the heavens and cry out to the devgods to make alliance good somehow. But even before the constant losses, alliance still struggled with not going straight up the center, not taking down turrets, not defending towers and just plain not playing the event properly.

After tonight’s take over of SW I was privileged in my raid free Friday to listen to trade as they raged for an hour about the state of the alliance. The best suggestion: leave the server. The best argument: I’m not paying for that. The best counter: then you aren’t that unhappy yet. And the circle continues.

I agree the best solution is to get out if you’re so unhappy. Though I wish less would leave. The trickle in the dam has sprung into a flood and while my guild still has maintained a majority of its raiders, the rest of the alliance on the server has not been so lucky.

Is it a mindset that is required? Is it just key people who keep the masses in? Who was it in each group to spawn the thought that they should move to horde or find another server? Why did all those people follow? Who was the first friend to lead the others away? Is it true that the friendship and camaraderie can be so tight as to get people to put down so much money for such endeavors as faction transfers?

Looking at Valiant, Eleventh Hour, IOD, Real Men of Genius, and Ninja Pirates from Space (who in fact have done it once before but came back!) it seems that it might very well be this way.

Cross-Realm Looking For Group

With the huge imbalances to servers, the smaller faction is likely seeing trouble in getting groups together for pugs. My guild members have complained about this actually. “I can’t believe I’m having trouble getting dps…”

It is my belief the cross realm LFG was created to try to solve some of the issue of people being unable to get groups. Not just because of gear or experience, but because there simply isn’t anyone there.

I recently copied my character to the test realms for the CS-LFG and I can see how it will work well. It throws you in, looks for those about your gear level, registers what you are claiming to be, and tosses you into a group. A couple times I experienced people leaving quickly but it was very simple to queue back up and get replacements. No bothersome shouting in trade, just a reflagging and bam, there is a new person.

Granted you run that risk that the person is a total idiot. But I think when you escape pre-made characters that are in the same gear as you who don’t know how to play – the system will work fine. Also, the loot is interesting as well with the DE option given. I never tested it but it seems a good way to avoid ninjas. Especially since ML cannot be activated (supposedly. I’ve not tested it).

The group buff was very very nice as well though in one group the tank wasn’t very good and the shadow priest would grab hate and be pwned pretty fast. Often before I could get a HoP off or before its CD was up.

To keep people from jumping group to group to quickly, a deserter like buff is placed on people and they cannot re-queue for 15 min. Also a likely good feature to keep people from abusing the system too much. Overall I see this system is fairly positive and interesting and will make my life easier with my alts. No awkward /2 shoutings and computer assisted groupings.

Will this keep some Alliance on Andorhal? Maybe. If people aren’t getting groups and getting stuff done, they’ll leave. But if the option is there and they can still do stuff, they’re more likely to stick around. Note though, this only works with the heroics. No raids. You’re still going to have to deal with gear checking idiots and armory pages if you’re pugging. And this could just be a hopeless cause as well. They can still use this on any new realm they go to. And if they think Horde has all the toys and that all the pugs will have toys, this may only continue to push them to the opposite side here on Andorhal.

A Review: Princess Tutu

2009-11-10T14:20:00.000-08:00

To continue down my anime freakness…

Princess Tutu.

Yeah I hear you out there. Sounds like a very girly anime. Very likely a very silly anime.

But its not. This anime breaks a lot of the stereotypes of a magical girl anime. If you might even call it that!

We begin the story seeing a plain, ordinary duck watching a young man dance on a foggy lake. She is taken in by his lonely, sad eyes. She feels for him. She is infatuated. But there is an unworldly observer.

Drosselmeyer.

Drosselmeyer sees the duck watching the prince and is greatly amused. And so he decides to use her. And he gives her the ability to be a human girl. She awakens to find herself a dance student in Kinkan Town. Not only this, she is in the same school as her prince Mythos…. And his overprotective companion Fakir and the quiet beauty Rue.

A lot is discovered in the first half of the series. First, Mythos the Prince is devoid of all emotion. He is from a story called “The Prince and the Raven” – where he had been locked into an eternal battle there. However, somehow the raven monster had managed to escape from the story and into the real world. The Prince followed him and was forced to shatter his heart to seal the raven away.

Lost, and without emotions, he is taken in by Fakir’s family. He is basically a living, un-aging doll. Fakir decides he will be his knight and is severely overprotective of him. To the point of being a bully who keeps Mythos locked away in his own room. Rue meanwhile has grown up with them and has been in love with Mythos since she saw him. She is constantly trying to keep him to herself and away from the over protective Fakir.

The first thirteen episodes Ahiru (Duck in Japanese, and the name used in the English version) realizes she has the power to change into Princess Tutu, a character from a story like Mythos is. But perhaps, Princess Tutu’s story is far more tragic than the Prince’s own tale. For her story only had a few lines. Princess Tutu was in love with a Prince. She confessed to him that she loved him and vanished in a spec of light.

Duck is told by Drosselmeyer that she should help Mythos get back his emotions by finding the shards of his heart in the town and return them to him. Duck agrees because she wants to help him, to rid him of the loneliness and sadness that sees in his eyes when he dances.

However, she meets resistance from Fakir who wants to keep Mythos a mindless doll and not have him beset by his emotions. And then from Princess Kraehe who appears and wants Mythos to only love her and wants to possess him. At first Kraene stops Tutu from returning the shards, but then her father the Monster Raven tells Kraehe that Tutu needs to return the shards so he can be released from the seal so she allows it with much taunting and agitation.

Meanwhile, as each shard of the heart is returned Mythos is beset with some of the worst of human emotions. Fear, sadness, loneliness and very little positive. Duck begins to angst over what she is doing and it takes the Prince telling her to continue for her to consider doing so.

So she follows her heart pendant to the shards of the Prince’s heart – often living within the hearts of other people or objects. And she figures out what emotions those shards represent and she dances with them and soothes them and comforts them. And instead of fighting them into submission, her gentle persuasiveness wins them over and she is able to return the shards to Mythos.

Meanwhile we also learn that Fakir himself is a tragic figure of a story. He is the Knight who fights the Monster Raven to protect Mythos, but is torn apart by the Raven and dies. He actually has an acute phobia of the birds, something that Kraehe takes advantage of while pawing Mythos or antagonizing Tutu. By the 13th episode he decides to rebel against his fate in the story and not die. Refusing his roll in the tragic story.

However, half way through the series Princess Kraehe cannot stand how the Prince feels about Tutu and kidnaps him. Duck is forced to reveal herself to Fakir and together they go down to fight the Princess and save Mythos. However, Kraehe has the heart of the Prince and demands a contest. They must tell the Prince how much they love him and he must pick one of them.

Of course Tutu cannot do this or she will vanish. But she comes to the conclusion that she doesn’t need words and we get perhaps one of the most tragic and symbolic dances of the show. Tutu dances solo a dance for a couple that generally represents the couple’s deep eternal love for one another. Wordlessly she performs alone in the moonlight. Performing as if she had someone dear next to her.

It would perhaps put into form her fate. To be alone in the light. The heart of the prince is moved and his body moves to her to finish off the dance and Kraehe vanishes into the darkness. And the Prince and Tutu escape from the prison and dance into the night. Supposedly having a happy ending.

However! Drosselmeyer calls out through the darkness as someone reading a book to the reader – The Prince’s heart is still incomplete!!! And is it really all over?

Unlike the lighter tone of the first half of the series, the second half is much darker. Rue’s alter ego, Princess Kraehe reveals she has dipped the heart of the Prince in the blood of the Monster Raven and the Prince is now a villain – seeking out the hearts of pure hearted girls to sacrifice to the Monster Raven. The people of the “story” begin to act out of the storyline and a lot of questions of Free will, fate, love and affection are raised.

Angst is abundant as the characters look within themselves. Who they are. Why they do what they do. Drosselmeyer becomes a twisted god who’s creations are rebelling against the tragedy he’s creating for his own amusement. I would describe this half more but its really where the best of the series comes out to me. The ending isn’t want everyone wants. But it holds a very true and good lesson. Be true to yourself.

My favorite Character in all this: Duck / Ahiru / Princess Tutu

.
Duck is a small yellow duck with a gentle heart and innocent heart. She sees suffering and wants to help and soothe. She is given a magic pendant by Drosselmeyer to this end (For his own amusement and to get his story going) and turns into a girl : Ahiru (aka: duck in English).

As a human, Duck loves Ballet. However, she is clumsy, lacks focus, and her performances are very bad when you look at them from a technical standpoint. This causes her a lot of grief in school because of mocking from the students or the teacher. And yet, its often noted that her dancing has a lot of heart that makes it fun to watch, winning her viewers over. Duck has a very sweet and outgoing nature, if not incredibly ditzy and gawky one – yet despite her flaws, and sometimes even because of them, she wins over many people and makes friends easily.

However! Unlike Duck’s human form – Princess Tutu is one of near perfection. She is poised, graceful, elegant and extremely skilled in dance. Her dance is filled with pure feelings and wins over the emotions of any who dance with her. Duck often struggles throughout the series with compairing herself to her alter ego. She questions if Tutu is really her or simply a character from the story somehow working through her. --- In "The Prince and the Raven" (the story Mythos is from) Tutu was a minor character that confessed her love to the Prince -- which, because of a curse, caused her to turn into a speck of light and vanish. --- Tutu can retrieve Mytho's heart shards by dancing with them and helping them to realize their true feelings. However, Tutu's curse still haunts her. So even though when she encourages others to be true to themselves she can never speak of her own feelings out loud. Also, she suffers an additional angst through the series. Because with every shard of Mythos’ heart returned, he learns to feel sadness and pain, which cause Duck to doubt her own actions – is she really helping him or hurting him? But she pushes forward, hoping that in the end she'll be able to see Mytho smile.

In all three forms, she displays her best trait : Her willingness to put other ahead of herself. Even at the cost of her own happiness. Her self sacrifice and love make her a real hero.

Conclusion!

Princess Tutu has a very girly and silly title. But I think this is perhaps one of the most underrated anime series ever created. It takes many classic ballet themes. Its music is also almost entirely classical. I really would recommend this anime to people. I went back to it about a week ago and just fell in love with it all over again. I even made some anime music videos on it (thus sealing my fate to being a terrible nerd)!

Princess Tutu: Dark Waltz -- A video created to illustate my feelings on the tragicness of Princess Tutu fated to never be with who she loves

Princess Tutu: You Must Love Me -- A video created (SPOILERS) for who Duck (the girl) likely end up with.

EHEM! So Anyway! If you can, go out and get it. Watch it in the Japanese first, then the English since you lose some translation and ... the voice of Fakir is Cloud Strife.. cough... anyway! Peace.

Integrity

2009-10-31T01:05:00.000-07:00

So I’ve been doing reading online about “What Makes a Good Leader.” I found a number of good articles, but one had a quote about how Integrity was the most important quality of a leader.

What is Integrity?

The longer I live, the more I question this. Not simply because I just don’t see it in those around me, but because I question if I myself could ever hope to be called someone of this value. What is it?

The dictionary defines “integrity” as adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

Joe Love wrote an article on “The Importance of Integrity.” In it he shared a lot of very true and good information. Integrity is considered a value – like wisdom, virtue, patience, courage, intelligence or perseverance. It is a foundation of ones character. It is someone who is able to be totally honest and truthful in every part of their life. And they say a person who can achieve a life filled with integrity will find himself or herself in a very happy and successful life.

This doesn’t just mean you are this way with others though! You must be able to be honest with yourself: “Be true to yourself.” If you can do this, the idea is that you will always be able to be honest with others without trouble.

Integrity to One’s Self

Why is having integrity so important personally anyway? What’s so bad about lying if it’s just to you? Can’t you just tell yourself one thing and then go and do another? Nobody will find out since its just you. What’s the big deal?

Well, when you can self justify lying to yourself by thinking you are the only one aware of the lie, you put yourself into that mindset that your judgment is not important – that only the judgment of others is important. The result of this mindset is a diminished sense of self-respect and a break down of trust in yourself over time till you simply don’t trust yourself at all.

In the end, without that integrity towards yourself within yourself, you’re only deceiving and hurting yourself. A loss of your personal integrity is self-invalidating and as one anonymous online author said: “it is a sign of a mind rejecting itself.”

Integrity towards Others

The Universal Law of Attraction says that like attracts like. Things in harmony with your dominant thoughts will come to you: events, people or things – because of who you are. If you should be honest with yourself and note that there is something you are unhappy with in your life, work on changing who you are so you stop attracting those people or things or events into your life!

Your willingness and ability to adhere to the values most important to you show integrity. “It is easy to make promises but hard to keep them.” Every time you keep a promise, you’re performing an act of integrity. If you act with integrity in everything, you’ll find those of like-mindedness to yourself.

Think about it a moment. Think about those people who you trust and respect. What did they have in common? More than likely, those people do AND say what they mean!!! They are consistent and are showing integrity. BUT! What do you think when you meet someone who is opposite? Those people who say one thing but do and act in another way. Do you trust them? Not very likely.

This is the Universal Law of Attraction. What applies to you, applies to them as well!

In an article called “The Critical Importance of Integrity” by William A. Cohen wrote the following :

Maintaining absolute integrity is the bottom line rule for any leader if they want their subordinates to follow them during all conditions. You can develop your integrity if you will:

1. Keep your word. If you say something, make certain it is the exact truth.

2. Choose the harder right over the easier wrong. There are times when you are faced with choices of right or wrong. No matter what your boss thinks...no matter what the stockholders think...no matter if you will lose your job...choose the right.

3. Guard your principles. This means that you must be trustworthy and principled. This is a part of maintaining your integrity as well.

4. Do the right thing. When you are in a situation that you stand to lose a lot by stating the complete truth, that is exactly the time to do the right thing. When you treat others with respect, they will treat you with respect as well.

General Alexander Haig, Jr. was once Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and later Secretary of State under President Reagan. He has been a leader in peace and war and government and industry. He has this to say: “In an era marked by at least the appearance of questionable integrity and moral courage by many contemporary leaders, the demonstration of absolute integrity by a leader is the most important principle that any leader must follow.”

Integrity in a video game?

People seem to think a video game excuses a lot of things. I myself did for quite sometime. And I excused it as a game. A place I could be someone that I wasn’t. But as time went on I began to realize people were coming to expect things of me that I wasn’t. Things I could never maintain. And I came forward and was honest. It was perhaps one of the hardest things I had to do. I had to be honest first to myself about the falseness in my life and next I had to be that way with someone I cared about.

Someone might say “integrity” in a video game is taking things way too serious. But if I am to truly have this as a description of me, it cannot only be something in my real life. It needs to be someone I am to myself and to the virtual.

Even more so, after my study I see a need for myself to be this way as a leader!!! Self-confidence is born from self honesty. Self-confidence is attractive to others and boosters their courage. Honesty to yourself and others, boosts a trust from others towards you. It allows better communication. Better team work. Fierce loyalty. It is perhaps a true charisma and motivator.

I can honestly say this is a trait I want in my life. And now if I wish to continue being honest with myself, I will endeavor to put this into action in all aspects of my life. The virtual and the real.

The Art of Leaving Gracefully, Guild Recruitment - How to Do it on a Dying Server, and Other Subjects

2009-10-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

When pre-writing blog posts in word, be sure to hit save every now and again….

On Monday I had this fairly long and rich "rage post" nearly written out when the program crashed. Without having saved anything about an hour worth of angry typing was washed down the virtual pipes. But perhaps that’s not a too terrible thing. Like any girl, my emotions have flipped and I’ve been fairly upbeat the last two days. But things have also been looking up.

----
As a snippet. October 11, 2009 I wrote: “But the Alliance is dying slowly and I can’t expect my officers to want to play this forever.” – Be careful what you say, because it might actually come true.
----

Yesterday my right hand man and friend returned to the game. Maaaaybe because one of the agitators finally left the guild. (cough) – Might be a trend actually. He will stay if I can get rid of the people he hates.

I’d not been doing it because I’d not had the strength or opportunity to do it. As it turns out he did it on his own. I don’t know the full reasons why the kid left, but he did say “I’m taking my toons out of guild now since they’ll be kicked in a month.” So either he’s planning to stop a while or he’s apping to another guild or something. Who knows. But he left on the coat tails of one of other agitators who had been actively trash talking about the officers and laughing at us.

He re-apped to raid with us after I told him it wasn’t likely he’d get to raid for a while. And so I pulled him into vent and explained why without the nice answers and non-confronting attitude I’d been holding. No bars held, I told him how I’d heard what he’d said about the officers and the guild. I told him we knew his DCs in early ulduar were faked and that when he stopped raiding with the excuse he had school and couldn’t play much was bogus because he’d been in vent during raids playing and talking with social members. Also, I told him we were aware he’d been mocking us in vent, saying how badly we needed him and how geared he was etc. I told him we didn’t think he respected authority or us and we didn’t want him raiding with us again and that we even only let him stay in guild was because he still had friends here. He didn’t deny anything and left vent. He took his app down almost immediately and then took his characters out of the guild with a “/wave goodbye friends” comment.

The final agitator, perhaps in light of the rage rained down on two members who were caught apping to another guild without saying anything, whispered me telling me he’d be apping to another guild in two days or so. I appreciated this since I’d just told the guild the other day, I understood moving on and that if they could just let me know, it would be all I’d ask of them.

After all, I don’t mind if folks move on… when I’m given notice. It shows they appreciated the time with the guild. It shows they understand maybe the things the guild has given and done for them.

How Should You Leave a Guild

Really, its impossible to avoid all hard feelings. But you can limit those feelings with showing some appreciation. This doesn’t mean paying them off with donations to the bank.

1. Give them heads up you’re leaving.
Like the work environment in the real world, giving heads up is showing understanding and respect when leaving. It shows consideration. Because if you’re a raider, you’re a member of a team that works together. Letting them know you’re going to be leaving or applying elsewhere, allows them to start looking for someone to replace you. It gives them a chance to keep themselves running when you’re gone. It shows you like and valued them enough to not leave them with their pants around their ankles.

2. Give them thanks
Don’t just leave without a word! Write something or talk to them. Let them know that you valued your time with them and explain your reasons. Thank them for all the time you’ve shared in the guild with them. If you want to keep up good terms with them, let them know! Ask about leaving an alt and show you have an interest in the guild and the team there.

Just two easy steps. And generally, your leaving will be received much more graciously and if you ever find yourself having a desire or need to go back, you likely still have an open door with them to get back in with.

I had two members on Monday around 3:00 AM put in apps with another raiding guild on the server. One I had spent a lot of time talking to the O’s about to get him to at least a standby as he’d taken a large break before and had done it without saying anything to us. He’d given assurance he’d stick around and prove himself. He had even gone so far as to tell me he was interested in being an officer in the guild. But either because I’d denied him that leadership or because he was simply standby and not as happy with that as he’d said – he applied without saying anything. Just hours after a guild meeting in which I’d asked guild members to let me know if they were going to move on.

And then along with him was one of our best geared members. A rogue had been brought up carefully under the tutelage of our best dps’r and rogue. He’d gotten loot because my officer rogue had passed numerous items to him. And had given him a lot to help him.

Both had their ranks removed when the applications were found. The DK left after I confronted him and the other left when I wasn’t online. I received an in game mail telling me how he wanted to keep moving and that he’d noticed we’d seen his app since he’d been demoted. The lack of loyalty in people is frustrating.

However, I had members whisper me afterwards. They told me that these kind of things actually encouraged them to get things going again even more. A rebellion against those who would say we’re not going anywhere.

Recruitment is actually going pretty well. Outside of pausing to talk to people who are asking what happened to the guild (There have been rumors of most of the members going horde, or some major drama bomb) and fielding questions about ‘would we like to merge guilds’ – I’ve almost got all the positions we’d lost filled.

Also, like I said earlier (briefly) our priest came back! Unfortunately, I’ve been in survival mode and replaced the healing position, but he seems excited at the idea of being our new Shadow Priest. And maybe it is something he would have liked all along. Certainly he won’t have that stress the healers face of keeping the raid and tanks up and the idea of ‘if I die, the raid will die.” The guild moral rose noticeable as well with his return and folks seem very happy to have him back.

Remember what I said earlier too about leaving? He’s the only officer to have left a note to the guild telling them he was going on a break or possibly leaving forever. He’s the only officer to have thanked everyone and tried to leave under the best light as possible. And I think it’s a reason why so many of them have been so willing to see him back with us. Because he cared enough to say goodbye and thank everyone.

If the other officers were to try to return I severely doubt they would be received well. It would be like our former GM when she had come back from vanishing for three weeks. Basically coming in charging and claiming she was going to get the guild straightened up and lead the guild. Meanwhile the officers had all been leading and trying to help the guild and even paying for things out of their own pockets when the guild controls hadn’t been left to allow for things during the vanishing.

RACE CHANGES

People have been asking for this for a bit. They start off with a sexy Draenei chick and then over the year of play time they start downing savory delights and nogginfoggers for something different. Not only this, but for the serious gamers, it’s a question of racials.

Racials are that something special in a class that makes them unique to other classes. For some gamers, they’ll take the racial over a preferred look of a character. Many racials are incredible and a few are so noticeable that its almost considered required for elements of play.

With the coming of the race change, MANY people will changing to new races who perhaps started this game with a race because they thought it looked cool. Or sometimes it was because they originally had a very strong and good racial. Blizz of course took that away.

I’ve played a Draenei on alliance for over two years. And when I logged in to find this, I was ecstatic. In 20 min I was a chunky human. Not nearly as sexy, but the racial and reputation bonuses far outweighed the visual appeal of the race I had played for so long. I estimate about a third of my guild got this race change as well.

Good money for blizzard when they’re charging 25 bucks for it. And it can be done every three days. So if you don’t think about the money you’re spending, you could be changing race every week if you can’t find yourself happy with what you’re doing.

How might this affect things negatively? Well, it will limit the individuality of people. Even with the multiple haircuts, you’re going to see more and more people who are alike. Some races will provide raid wide buffs that may now no longer be present because of the change. Case in point: I think almost all our Draenei with their hit buff are gone. (Unless you count our Draenei shaman.) So if I wanted our casters to all have the buff now, I’ll have to spread out my shaman. Not terrible. But a minor inconvenience.

I don’t think this is as crushing as faction changes however. And in a way it may stop some people who might change factions for buffs. Ie: a Draenei warrior might not go to undead horde for the racial when he could now just as easy go human.

Faction Transfers : The Fall of the Alliance or a Changing of the Guard? A Return Look

Last night I was whispered by EH’s GM about trying to do some joint things together. His guild and mine. Operation Flaming Hour! It had a catchy title and I laughed a bit at it. And we got to talking. They’re not going anywhere, but he’s got people willing to do anything and like the guild and want to stay. Pretty much like ours. We got to swapping stories and comments about people and life. And its really alike.

The disgust at people fleeing to horde. The frustration that they do it without care for those who helped them. The total lack of loyalty. The conversation was pleasant and it was encouraging to find that I wasn’t alone in my nerd raging and that he’d been feeling just as down about the state of things as I was. Though he was of the mindset that there were no more alliance here to get.

So I went to thinking about our faction transferee. He left well enough. Told an officer he was leaving. Said nice goodbyes and asked to leave an alt in guild. And he pops into vent to talk to friends still here and in guild. He applied to the top horde guild and perhaps he’s applied to others. But he left us with the statement that he didn’t think our own guild would be seeing any Icecrown Citadel.

Now, as my guild looks at getting back into raiding 25s tomorrow, I look to him to see he’s pugging but guildless. I wonder – how many of our alliance who have transferred with their big dreams have found what they were looking for on the other side of the fence. Was that grass as green as they thought.

I took another look at the horde progression. They’ve got four guilds in hard mode progression and alliance has three. Are they really so much better still? Just because we don’t have a guild in the top three? We’ve got two horde guilds and one alliance guild at 4/5 hard mode progression. If the alliance guild downed Anub, would that suddenly make people wake up a bit and realize maybe the alliance isn’t as dead as they thought. Or would they turn to saying the guild is just zerging and years behind?

I was asked last night as well about if I’d join a vent to discuss a guild merger. I was stunned. Had rumors of the guild been such that people thought we were that far down? I told them that we weren’t interested in a merger, but that I was flattered that they should ask.

He was quick to inform me that they had fairly good gear scores and that they just wanted to raid and not change anything. But I stuck to my answer. They had about seven people who would have come over and honestly, I doubt they would have ALL been able to raid and there’s no way I’d bring them in under that light.

I’ve had similar whispers but from smaller groups though. More people coming to apply in groups rather than individuals. People who like playing together but don’t want to give up and move on. No money to transfer or no money to faction change.

Zerg/Absorption guilds are growing but I can’t imagine how they keep people happy and playing. And I cannot imagine the harsh competitive raid environment of one where people have to play well or get booted. But suppose it is a player mentality too. If you were willing to leave a guild for that, you get what you asked for.

Where does one look when recruiting people into progressive guilds on a dying faction?

Perhaps finding friends outside of the game that play? We’ve gotten a few good members that way. The easiest but probably the most loathsome way is being willing to take whomever you can get and train them.

Training new players is a bother – especially if you were in the top and suddenly have to stop and go back in content. You risk losing players because you take a step back. People have to be understanding and willing to work with you as you work with the new people. It truly becomes a team effort. It’s not bad, but its not something that is going to work for every guild because people in guilds are so different. Each guild unit is so unique. People tend to play with people who are like them.

If you’re going to be picky – be ready to put in the time and do whatever you can to find those people. In my case, it was sitting in trade 10 hours a day spamming a recruitment macro and talking to people. Unfortunately, we got only one person out of this. The rest were returning members, socials or friends of current members.

Another thing from that though!! Get your guild members involved. As a GM, I’m generally worn out. I want to use my free time to run through achievement things. I’m rarely running anything and I don’t know the people I once did when I was just an officer of the guild. But the members do!!! Many of them came from guilds and had friends there and they’ll know if that person is a good fit for the guild or not. And sometimes they can get those friends to come over to play with them.

One of our shaman had four friends come over to play with us (granted one was a 2’s partner of another member too) which actually REALLY filled a lot of the holes. I’m in talks with a mage who is friend of another member and we have a resto shaman coming in who was friends and taught one of our resto druids how to play.

Yeah, you might have to go and get friends gear but there is another bonus to all of this. The people who get their friends to stay are LOYAL. They are helping you rebuild. And are getting involved. They are making the guild more a part of them. And they will be even more likely to stay. And they are going to be happy and feel good because they’ve played a roll in helping the guild succeed.

So to wrap up quick. How can a guild on a dying alliance faction get back together?

1. Bring in Real Life friends
2. Recruit and train and gear people who may not have been someone you’d take before.
3. If not 2, be online a ton recruiting. Get recruitment pages on all available public recruitment forums.
4. Get guild members involved. They have friends who play too!

Peace!

Guild Blues, Gear Scores, Mechanical Boys in Metal Underpants

2009-10-24T16:49:00.000-07:00

GUILD BLUES

You know how when something just absolutely shaking hits you, you feel like the world just stops and time comes to a crawl?

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 – some time around 6:00 AM EST
I had gone to bed early feeling odd and woke up in the morning. Following my normal routine. I go use the restroom and sit down before my pc to check out the guild forums before breakfast. Mostly to check for new applications and see if the officers have posted anything of interest. However, I was rocked to find a note from the one person in the guild I would never have expected this news from…

My right hand man and bro who has really helped me stay sane through everything and helped run the guild came to the overnight decision that it was time to move on. Or maybe move on. His folks had asked him to house sit for them and he’d gotten to thinking about his bday next week and where he was going in life. He’s about as old as I, which is in the late 20s. He’s working as a professor at a university and a writer. So he said he needed to step away to focus on life.

My first reaction of course was tears and shock. He’s my best friend in a way. And knowing how his last break went, I didn’t anticipate I’d hear from him ever again. Additionally, I was also led to self blame since our last conversation had amounted to him telling me that raiding wasn’t as fun right now because I was worrying about things too much (about the other officers not helping much with the guild, and various members giving trouble, etc).

So I write a very emo posting in response apologizing for playing a role in him leaving the game. And he ended up getting on vent a bit and talking to me to try to reassure me that it was him and not me. (Cheesy eh?) I did my best to assure him that I understood and supported him in needing to get things going in his real life. And he logged. Supposedly his house sitting ends at some point today. I’ve no clue if I’ll hear from him about anything. If he’s really going to pull away from the game and try to avoid getting involved again, I’d assume he’d do his best to avoid the forums at least…

Thursday, October 22, 2009 – some time around 6:00 PM EST
I am told that our Spriest in the guild has decided with the letter from our priest announcing he was leaving was a sign that we weren’t really going to be seeing Ice Crown and that he wanted to see content and was planning to Faction Change. I was frustrated, but what could I say? I didn’t see it as a huge loss. I was insulted that he thought we wouldn’t see the content certainly.

Thursday, October 22, 2009 – some time around 8:00 PM EST
I am told by our last DK that he is interviewing for a job in a few days and that if he gets it he will no longer be able to raid. I wished him luck but I was sighing a bit. Just another person probably thinking of going triggered by the officer leaving.

Thursday, October 22, 2009 – some time around 9:00 PM EST
I was feeling encouraged. Some of the O’s had taken the effort to communicate throughout the day on the forums. But if I’d thought about it, I would have wondered at why they’d not gotten online when they’d said they would. Rather, when raid time came up, our MT and husband of an O got on and told me his wife (one of our dps) wouldn’t be on tonight. I was fine with that. But then he went on to say that she would no longer be raiding with us. And that he himself would only raid with us until we possibly had a replacement for him. And that our priest’s message had been what had led them to make the final pull away.

Thursday, October 22, 2009 – some time around 11:00 PM EST
We are taking a 10 min break and I go to read the officer forum to see our female officer has written a lengthy goodbye to the officers. Her husband takes the time to reply… and then I see another officer has written his own goodbye during raid announcing this was his last night as well. In fact, the night before he had been talking to the spriest about the first officer’s departure and had decided then to do it. He had been pondering it a while and looking for the opportunity to pull away. Probably between them both, this was an encouraged action. But he wanted to focus on real life and move forward in life. He was finishing college and needed a job. So what could I say?

The raid was poorly set up. People were missing. Our elemental shaman was out, his dad was in the emergency room. Our ret paladin went afk and never returned. (Found out later, he dropped his laptop and he would be unavailable to raid a bit). Dps was low. People were dcing. We barely downed the first boss of the hard modes of TotGC. When we tried the second boss, we just continued to wipe.

I had no words to encourage though I attempted to crack jokes. But I was so shell shocked by all the news of my friends and officers stopping the game that there was little else I could do without crying. So I call of finishing TotGC work and have us go to Onyxia. We down it and then I finally break down and announce to the raid that this would likely be the last raid we have for a while.

I cried and thanked everyone for raiding. I fully expected that they would all be dropping the guild to find other guilds. Really, I’m still waiting now. But I received so many encouraging whispers and people telling me they would stay with the guild. And I decided I would try to rebuild.

Thursday, October 23, 2009 – some time around 1 AM EST
I’ve got my officers in vent with me in another channel and we say our goodbyes and I give them a very depressed and crying goodbye. And another officer says that without his brother and sister-in-law playing and with the content being so boring for him that he would be breaking as well. I had no energy to respond.

The wife officer commented the night felt like a bad break up. Indeed, the entire thing reminded me of it as well. The heartbreak and sorrow. I’m sure we’ll all still be friends. But we’ve played closely together for almost 2 years in some cases. People I’d come to rely on and depend on. People who had been my eyes and ears and legs. Who had helped me get through the departure of the last GM when I was put into this position. Yeah, that had been in decline from some.

The betrayal in a way is very potent as well. I’d had no warning. And suddenly they’re all just dropping the bomb. The guild members had no warning either. I’ve had a mix of whispers from the guild. Asking why, how and whens. Feelings of shock and betrayal. And all I’ve been able to assure them with is that I and three other O’s were staying and would try to rebuild the team again and that we’d keep moving forward as best we could.

I was up till 5:00 AM speaking with members. It was a very long and emotionally draining night. And throughout the day I was blessed with the encouraging words and whispers and emotes from the members as they would log in and see how things were going or asking about things after reading a post I wrote up clearing things up on our forums about it.

October 24, 2009
So here I am, sitting in game pushing my recruitment macro. Hunting for new members to replace the ones who’ve left. A new MT, 2 mages, a hunter, a spriest and a disc priest. People who did so much and will be hard to replace. Especially the Main Tank.

I’m not sure what I think about everything at this point. I feel it would be such a betrayal to end it. Even with myself feeling so discouraged and torn about playing now. But giving up now would make me feel like I’m just doing what they did. I feel I made a commitment and it may be an obligation in a video game, but I take my word serious too. And I want to see us through to Cataclysm. Whether I’ll continue past that, I don’t know yet. Who knows, maybe they’ll all slowly return.

GEAR SCORES

So until today when I was forced to sit in trade hunting people for the guild’s raid roster, I’d not realized this new fad of taking people to raids based off their “Gear Score.” All gear in the game has a number and people look at the numbers of your gear and your average is the score of the gear. Ideally, it means you’re in a certain tier of gear.

So as I’ve been sitting, spamming my recruitment macro in the trade channel, I’ve gotten whispers from people. They present themselves as candidates based upon the number of their gear. I find it nice to read but the numbers mean very little to me. What about their itemization? What about their actual skill? A person can easily grind up the gear for a ‘score’ people have stickered to a raid or instance but gear is nothing if you don’t know how to utilize it. It means nothing if you’re stacking your gear totally wrong. And it means nothing if your spec and rotation is wrong. Not to mention there are pieces of gear someone may use that are equal or better than some higher ‘scored’ gear.

When did this ridiculous practice begin? Why do people simply not ask for stats or stop being lazy and armory someone for gear. I’m hoping this is just a fad.

MECHANICAL BOYS IN METAL UNDERPANTS

I’ve been so depressed recently and with the release of Astroboy I found myself desperately hoping for a movie that would lift my spirits. So I went this afternoon around 1:00 to see it with my folks. Unlike the last movie I saw, the movie was very family friendly and feel goodish. I left much happier than I had felt going in.

I’ve got the astroboy remake series box set. I’ve not seen the classic series. But the movie was still good to me. The animation was very clean. Character designs were very good. And the story was adult but childish in appropriate parts. It was easily appealing to all ages.

The story starts with typical idea of a single parent working and neglecting his child. And then great loss and realization of what was missed. There was a very deep adult story ton of love and acceptance. Not judging others and loving them for who they are. Kindness, honesty and self sacrifice out of love. It was really a wonderful move with campy ending that made me chuckle.

Definitely a movie I’d highly recommend. I’m probably going to see it again! And if I can get a hold of the soundtrack, I’ll definitely be grabbing that up too. And now I’m on an astroboy kick. Trying to watch my boxset of the cartoon remake. And I’ll probably turn to hunting the classic cartoon on youtube much later too.

I’ve had a lot of downy things happen this week and everything feels way too serious and dark for me. But I’ve got wonderful people behind me and I will rebuild.

Where the Wild Things Are SPOILERS

2009-10-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

This is filled with spoilers. If you wanted to see the movie baddly - you shouldn't read this.

Second. I didn't like this movie. If you did, you probably shouldn't read this.

Where the Wild Things Are… I will say off the bat I knew nothing of this movie beyond it was a children’s book that was supposed to be somewhat popular. People seemed relatively excited about it and I was curious. So I went with my mom to go see it. I left the movie with no major impressions about it other than wondering how that was even considered a kids book.

Things were jumpy. It was like having ADD. Your attention just ping ponged off of everything. The kid was a brat as well. I didn’t find myself endeared to him at all. He was selfish. He bore no consequences of his actions. And approached everything from the cruel nature of a child. Which I suppose was the purpose.

The terribleness and wildness of kids.

The movie starts with our ‘hero’ ripping around the house like an animal. Then shoot to outside where you see he seeks to get the attention and playtime of his older sister – who is busy getting her guy friends over and then going out with them. A fort he built to play for both of them is destroyed in the process. He returns to an empty house and throws a destructive tantrum, getting snow all over his sister’s room and things and destroying an item he had made for her.

Later his mother returns home and they clean up etc etc. Then you find the father isnt’ with them anymore. She’s a stressed and working mom. And she has him tell her a story and his story basically reveals how he thinks he’s not like everyone else, and has been abandoned.

Cut to the next day in school where they show him sitting in a class being painted a terrible tale to kids from a science teacher, talking about how the sun will die and there will be endless darkness. You see him seeming solitary though surrounded by mother and sister and later in the night he throws a tantrum to get his mother’s attention while she entertains a man. He bites his mother when she tells him he’s out of the control. And he runs away.

Finds a boat and somehow manages to find himself on the island “where the wild things are.” I’m not sure how much you can garner lesson wise from this. He lies to everyone – to save himself from being eaten. He encourages rough, destructive play housing as a way to cure loneliness and bring happiness. Perhaps the only thing he hits upon is how nice it is to sleep together in one giant pile. Indeed, that becomes a desire for the group through the rest of the movie.

You see glimmers of understanding about how his wild actions lead to hurting others. And how not reigning himself in and going mad when upset only pushes people away. He realizes he was wrong and tells the truth to his friend Carol who says being max isn't that much and max ends up deciding to go home. Carol finds some markings left for him by Max and has a change of heart - supposedly having understood how his actions affected others as well and that he was indeed loved.

Max returns home to find his mother sitting alone and it ends with her wordlessly watching him eat his food and him watching her as she falls asleep. No mention of time passing. No idea if it was a dream of his, or him actually being gone and slipping into another world. Maybe reading the book would explain that. But the movie was unclear and it felt disjointed.

Disturbing things that made me question how this was a child’s book:
1. Max finding the bones of previous kings.
2. The wildthings contemplating eating max.
3. A fight between Max and female wildthing accusing him of the very adult concept of unequal love and favoritism.
4. An incredibly brutal mudball fight that leaves a lot of people hurt.
5. Carol rips off the arm of his friend.
6. Max is actually swallowed by GT or TG – the sister figure of Carol – in order to hide him from Carol who is seeking to catch and eat him once he realizes Max had lied.

I left the movie feeling somewhat dissatisfied. I would have liked to see the Wildthings find happiness and not the last thing seen of them being them crying and watching a Max sail off. I would have liked to see the mother be a bit more disciplinary about running away and his actions while still embracing him and showing him love. Little kids arn't going to watch this movie and walk away thinking about the subtle lessons hinted at. I doubt they're going to watch this and understand max changes at all in the movie and learns anything. I had to really rethink things I saw myself before I was able to drudge up a suggestion as to character change.

Overall, I wasn’t impressed with anything in the movie really. I felt bad for the wild things who were left behind. But outside that scene, I wasn't emotionally moved. I like to leave a movie thinking about the things I liked about it and what I enjoyed. This was not a movie I was able to do that with.

Honestly, I wouldn't suggest seeing this to anyone until it comes out on video. Its not worth putting the money down. If you take little kids they're going to maybe laugh at 5-6 cute scenes. But I heard a lot of whimpering and tiny questioning voices to parents more in that movie than any other "children's movie" I've seen. Teens and up might enjoy it a bit for the darker elements. I give this movie a no.

Aggitators

2009-10-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

Its now been a week since one of our members finally reached a breaking point and left the guild. She was very unhappy with how things were being handled. She joined us in naxx and was – in my opinion – one of those women who has given women players a bad name. She died frequently (despite being a healer), got lost, didn’t understand her class, and talked far too much about nothing in particular.

And yet we kept her on. Because she was nice and we liked her. And at the time, under that leadership in the guild we were not aiming to be a progression guild. We were social with raiding. We didn’t enforce our rules. We talked to players about how they were performing a bit, but we never pressured them.

When Ulduar came up and I became the GM a lot changed. I began enforcing gear and gemming. I began pushing for smarter play. I limited down time and asked for no drinking during raids etc. I expected a bit better behavior from the team. I pushed attendance and started to not take excuses outside of emergencies and family.

What I didn’t realize was the resentment building in this woman. What probably started as a few small things continued to build up till last week.

“'I’ve watched the bunnies go from a fun loving bunch of people who knew how to lead and have fun (Former GM Names here) to a selfish lot of loot mongering, rank placing chasing, 10man core of elitists.”

This sentence bothered me the most. Mostly because I think it is untrue. And I think that the majority of the guild who read her good bye to the guild on our forum would agree with me. But I think it displays the degree of unhappiness she was at.

I sat her out that week. She wasn’t our best healer. She died frequently and had issues with not standing in things. She ran into the paths of rampaging angry yetis. She ran into the melee and died to special attacks that melee didn’t even stick around for from bosses like Mimiron and his Shock Blast. The week before I’d been pressured to not bring her and I said we’d give her another chance and brought her in. In consideration that she wanted to raid and would show it. But instead she did what she always did. Died to things she shouldn’t, stopped focusing and really put in little effort. One officer commented she was likely drunk again, which we’ve asked her to stop.

You know when you are in trouble when people stop critiquing you and trying to help you. And my officers were tired of trying to get her to keep up with where we wanted to go. I spoke with her once, and told her honestly that she wasn’t our best. It wasn’t a matter of gear. She just was not keeping up and that she’d likely be out more. She threw a tantrum but later came back and apologized.

So I sat her last week. And she quit the guild. And I spent the rest of the raid night with her whispering me, growing more and more angry. I’m sure in part because I didn’t say much – after all I was raid lead and its not like Trial of the Crusaders has trash to afk/chat with.

But I found she held a grudge at being told not to camp. I find griefing to be deplorable. She held a grudge at not going in the 10mans run on off raid days. She held a grudge that I didn’t allow drinking in raids. That my idea of fun didn’t include pulling bosses at random and wiping the raid. That my idea of fun didn’t include putting no effort into game play. I’ve no clue where her declarations of loot mongering came from. And yeah, we chase the rank a bit now. But only so far as to show how much we’ve grown. Even if we weren’t first now, I’d still be pushing us to be better. Rank is good and is a good bar to run for. But with every growth I’m proud of the guild.

Not once do I think I’ve told the guild we’re pushing to be first on alliance. But I do think that pressure was placed and implied in peoples minds. Because it was the kind of player behavior I was pushing them to achieve.

Our lady member did the right thing in my mind by leaving. Not in the way she left mind you. She chose to create a thread of drama which erased any good will I had towards her. And I don’t know if others ended up going away feeling the same. Certainly though it gave fuel to a few of the people in one of our cliques. (But she left because she wasn't having fun and you shouldn't stay in a guild if you're not having fun)

So now I’m stuck trying to decide how to approach it. Already the officers who are online most of the time and helping me are encouraging me to release them from the guild. This group spends most of their time in the vent talking and complaining amidst themselves about the state of the guild. They don’t contribute to the guild. They’re people who were raiding at a point and stopped because they didn’t want to put in the efforts (aka: didn’t like) how we were leading the guild.

I am sure they only stay for a small handful of people. But too, they have their own inner circle in the guild which allows them to feed off of one another and grow the dissatisfaction. Do I have them leave the guild because they continue to agitate and incite rebellion. I know for a fact they’re not secret about their unhappiness around some members. I’ve heard about some of the things said myself.

I’m sure this is taking a game way too serious but I’ve invested a lot into the guild. And when I’m going to bed at night and having anxiety attacks and not sleeping because of it – I recognize something needs to change. I don’t want to have gray hair before I’m 30!!!

My officers have asked me to kick them. They think these people are immature. Unwilling to participate in guild. And have just used the guild while here. I was friends at a point with some of these people however, and really – they came here because of me.

I've turned away alot of friends because of the direction of the guild. And really, it feels like sometimes the officers are willing to voice their unhappiness but leave it to me to do the 'dirty' work. So like before, this would be up to me.

Am I ready to play the 'bad guy' again? Am I ready to explain why I would kick them. Am I ready to deal with possible guild backlash and drama? Some of these people paid money to faction change to be over here. Obviously they thought they could raid on those toons. So I feel responsible for that. But I don’t want to gear up other toons when I could use the ones I got gear for and brought to raids before they got flakey on attendance and developed attitudes and started whispering in corners.

So yeah, I’m running in mental circles a bit. This feels like another hurdle to overcome. And each time I am left wondering. Did I really make the right choice? Was I wrong? I take this game way to serious. But I’ve invested too much to let it go to ruin. Question is: how far do I let this go.?

Kimi ni Todoke

2009-10-15T07:22:00.001-07:00

I used to be a huge anime nerd. Back in the day I even worked with some groups to distribute anime on the web. Back when you could expect to download episodes in segments and you were lucky to find something subtitled! Ahhh those were the days.

I’ve slowly declined watching anime though. I have found the characters to have been growing more bland and stereotyped and just lacking in anything new and interesting. But this morning looking for something to watch while eating my frosted mini wheats, I found a show called “Kimi No Todoke.” At first I wasn’t sure what it would be like.

I liked the art style though and decided to watch it. I was touched. I’m not a huge romance fan, but this was so sweet and appealing I ended up not only watching the first, but the second as well.

It’s the typical romance idea – pairing an unpopular girl and the popular boy. Only this anime looks at how one appears to others and how relationships tend to affect and change people. The heroine of the story is lonely. Being a lonely nerd myself and understanding how rumors can go, I found myself quickly attached to the girl. Taken in by the ability to be open and communicate easily with his peers, she falls into an initial deep admiration for a young man.

The young man isn’t your typical popular boy. He is courteous, sensitive, and really just a nice guy. They’ve hinted though that he’s not quite behaving as he’d like. He’s not presenting his true self. And by then end of the first episode both seem very taken with the other but with different mind sets.

Additionally, Sawako (the heroine) begins to make friends because feeling challenged and led to be more open and honest with people thanks to the hero (Kazehaya). Through the snubbing of the kids at school you get to see how her attempts to be more open (very awkwardly!) and gentle naivete win over two of the tough girls in class.

By the end of the second episode Sawako sees an end to her loneliness and is feeling truly happy for one of the first times ever. But they left a suspicion that there is trouble ahead with a girl who seems to always show up with the two heroes are communicating privately. Sawako seems to be realizing she holds more than just a deep respect and admiration for Kazehaya and he too is finding out more about himself.

The character development and pacing is actually very smooth and gentle. The characters just feel refreshing and aren’t flooded out too much by comical bunny trails or too weird of faces. Accompanied by what I feel is a very pleasant art style, I pretty much have fallen in love with what I’ve seen of this anime so far.

I’ve learned too this is based off a manga (graphic novel) and I’ll likely look into getting this as well.

I watch a lot of my anime at animeseason.com and you can find this series there. Some heads up on the site though – in the past it had some malware popups. I think they’ve dealt with most of it, and not had issues in a while. But be sure to keep the popup blockers up and if you find yourself oddly redirected heads up on that as well. I’ve been watching anime on the site for about a year now though and overall I’d say its trustworthy.

Another option is to check out youtube!

Link for now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUQlf26UwPM

Internet Radio: Pandora

2009-10-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

As I’ve been sitting pondering what I might write about a number of topics came to mind. One of them though tickled my fancy and I decided to go with it.

A while back Itunes introduced a music program that would look at all your songs, learn what you like the most, and create a playlist from your library that could play. It was an interesting concept and I told it to go ahead and run a scan. It was a slow process. So slow in fact that the itunes stopped running and had to be closed through the task manager.

I gave up on the curiosity as I had better things to do. But then about two weeks ago a guild member began to talk about this new Internet radio website called Pandora!

www.pandora.com

Pandora is a music genome project created to be somewhat of an ultimate radio station. With countless songs and albums you can almost always find something you really enjoy.

How it starts:

When you start an account on Pandora you can create your first playlist. Doing this is as simple as picking an artist or song you enjoy listening to. Pandora will either play that song (if they’re allowed) or it will know what a similar song is and play it. Based on a thumbs up or down that you give that song, it will pick the next song.

Your entire playlist depends upon you rating the songs as they play. If you like it, thumbs up and more of that type will play. If you dislike it, the song is stopped immediately and songs similar to that will likely never be played again.

What if you wanted to add more artists or songs to the playlist?

Once that playlist is created, you’ll see a “Your Stations” listing. Under that is the current ‘station’ or playlist you have up and running. “add variety” will give you the chance to put in additional artists and song titles that you might like.

What if you really like the song you heard? What can you do?

If you liked it, you can bookmark the song. Also, you will have the option to buy it! But it is a redirection to Itunes. If you don’t find redirection is working, Pandora is excellent about listing albums, artists and song names and you can usually write down those names.

The nice thing about your playlist too is that you will generally here the songs you checked with a thumbs up, multiple times. I have one song called “Dark Waltz” that I heard on Pandora and I can frequently hear it play 2-3 times in a sitting. (I usually have Pandora playing in the background during raids)

Of course, Pandora doesn’t have every song. I’ve gone to input a few song titles in, only to find they’re not their. Most of the time however, if you can find it on itunes, you can find it here. But Pandora is definitely still a good internet radio site and its ability to interpret what you might like (once you go through the motions of thumbs up and thumbs downing) is incredible. I’ve found a number of songs and artists through them since I started listening to them.

Finally, one of the best things about this radio site?

It is free. You can upgrade for more listening hours. But for myself, I’ve tried listening to it more than 80 hours. If you wanted to upgrade though, you get rid of adds, get higher quality of audio (not that it doesn’t sound lovely free!), a desktop application and some extra skins. It all costs 36 bucks a year. Probably not too bad. And maybe if I start hitting the marker on time listened, I’ll invest. For now though, free is good for me!

I’ve recommended Pandora to a few friends. And I recommend it to anyone. Its very excellent and worth at least checking out if you are one of those folks sitting at your computer looking to listen to something you enjoy without having to dig through countless files or playlists on your computer.

Faction Transfers : The Fall of the Alliance or a Changing of the Guard?

2009-10-11T13:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve always felt a resentment for the people who sit off to the side when something happens and announce how they had ‘told you so” about things. And yet, I slip into hypocrisy as I sit here watching the Alliance crying about the diminishment and eroding of our population here. Months ago when Blizzard announced the plans for Faction Transfers I told some friends that this would kill the Alliance.

It was doubted and I did not press the issue to much. I do believe in loyalty. But I also know that people play this game to get things done and seen. And I knew the personalities of many people here. In a previous post I discussed other guilds on the Alliance a bit and how they are run. I’ll touch upon this again shortly.

But one of the things I knew would draw away alliance from my server to the horde:

The illusion of better players.
For some reason people think that all horde are good players here. But I would actually argue that it is simply a matter of ratio. There are far more horde on the server than alliance. Thus appearing to show a larger amount of good players. A larger player base gives chance for a seeming larger and better player pool. The ratio up till Faction Transfers was likely fairly even.

The illusion of more raiding guilds.
Again, this is a population factor I think. Because there are more people wishing to raid on Horde, there are more guilds created to compliment this. As with alliance, the population determines the number of guilds. The level of progression of these guilds is also evened by the player skills and generally is also very even.

There would also be players who would transfer to hang with the group they felt was ‘cooler.’ When your trade chat is dominated by seeming immature or stupid conversation, overflowing with trolls who can’t contribute humor better than the ripping down of others, and just seeming younger people you will allow yourself to believe the other side has to be better. Funny, but both sides actually think the other side has less “12 year olds.” But really both sides contain just about as much stupidity as the other.

Another thing that acting negatively on the Alliance mindset was the coming and going of the transfer guild “Six to Midnight.” Having been competing against then number 1 guild, Valiant. They became a favorite of many Alliance. A lot of people had hoped they would drop a guild that was appearing cocky and arrogant from their throne and take up the crown. However, their GM had to step away and the person the GM was given to was a baaaad choice. Known for ‘sniping’ members from other guilds, they destroyed a guild, picked off members from others and then proceeded to implode. The new GM took everything and transferred and many of the good players either transferred or stopped playing.

I don’t know why, but the number one guild stopped progression. The leader or the officers or maybe the members themselves just seemed to stop caring about pushing forward. Especially with the announcement of Trial of the Crusade coming soon. So rather than push the content they grew lazy and complacent. The Alliance ‘progression’ appeared to stall while the horde continued to move forward and see content and grow.

Some alliance even began to roll horde characters, they were so disgusted by the languishing of the Alliance. The appearance of the faction falling apart and being worthless began to set in. This resentment would lead to members of many different guilds transferring as soon as Faction Transfers were opened up.

So now I sit here watching and listening as my fellow Alliance who remain stand stunned in the face of another guild leaving. Valiant is moving away to another server, having lost about 5-10 people from their guild to the Faction Transfers. They have given up on the server and joined the crowd who feels the Alliance are unredeemable here. As most alliance guilds who have left, I doubt they will survive a rebuilding elsewhere. Many might even return at some point.

Another rumor is Eleventh Hour will be experiencing a transfer as well. They had been second for alliance before Six to Midnight. Many of their ‘better’ raiders had been taken in by Valiant (And unsurprisingly, those were some to Faction Transfer and Transfer off) and they’ve been trying to rebuild for a while. I’m not sure how they’re doing now and since we took in a warlock from their guild their former GM hasn’t really talked to me. It’s a bit depressing since she and I had been friends and talked frequently not that long ago.

With these top three guilds no longer here, it made it all the more possible for my own guild to move into the first position. Our competition has been IOD – another guild like ours that had been somewhat in the middle and has found ourselves somehow at the top. Near us and upcoming is Unknown who has regained its members.

It is a new set of guilds for the top three of the Alliance. And just from my opinion, we’re all guilds that at points had been thought little of. No one expected much of us. No one respects us. I’m sure we all grouch about one another too and I’m sure we trade comments back and forth. But I for one respect both guilds for sticking with it as well.

Because the voice of the nay-sayers is growing louder. “ALLIANCE IS DEAD” etc. The more these people cry out, the more likely people will continue to transfer or faction change. Because if they allow themselves to listen – to consider those words as even slightly true - then this side of the server will die for sure.

I predicted the Alliance would die from Faction Transfers. But I'm not ready to give up on it just yet. So I sit here watching and waiting. My guild shall remain for a while. At least until we’ve seen the Lich King defeated and this expansion completed.

Flaming Bunnies was started in 2007 by three friends from another MMO. It has continued to slowly inch forward and see what content it can. But the Alliance is dying slowly and I can’t expect my officers to want to play this forever.

Bleach

2009-10-05T03:57:00.000-07:00

Ok

So I’m a giant Bleach fan. No not the chemical. Bleach is a manga/graphic novel and Japanese animated television series! Yes. I am an anime geek.

So over a year ago a friend introduced me to the show and I was taken by it. It was very unique compared to the other anime I’d been watching. And I remember really liking the hero, Ichigo (Ichi = One, go = protects.). He was virtuous. Protective of his friends. Honorable. Loyal. And someone who never let the huge power boosts he went through go to his head (no ego!). Unlike every other action show with a teenage male as the hero.

Just yesterday a group FINALLY released the third Bleach movie! Fade to Black! In it the girl soul reaper who gave Ichigo the powers of shinigami (soul reaper) in order to protect his family ‘vanishes’ and her memory and everything associated with her is erased from the memories of the “Soul Society” (kinda like heaven and purgatory mixed into one I think). His friendship and loyalty to her, sends him there. And he fights all the friends there who don’t remember him (because he was a product of her and therefore is erased from their memories) until the end of the movie.

I’ve been looking forever for an English subtittled version. It was released over a year ago in Japan! Well the entire thing contained a lot of flash backs to key parts of Ichigo and Rukia’s friendship. It made me pretty nostalgic and I’ve been having a marathon of it all night! Its really a pick me up when I’ve been kinda downy and emo.

To see a hero overcoming his weaknesses without an over bearing ego. Who protects for the sake of protecting those he cares for and not get a giant bratty ego. Who keeps his cool and is steadfast. Who cares for his family and his enemies alike. Someone who doesn’t crush people for weaknesses. Really just a guy I really respect and wish existed in real life.

Another awesome thing I’ve watched in the last day or so is Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. Another guildy linked it for me the other day while we talked about the stories behind people who’ve created incredible things. Turns out the guy probably lived about 15 min away from me. But even more incredible was the story of the man’s life.

He was also aggravatingly optimistic. Like, I was feeling angry a bit by it. But then at the same time I felt a deep respect for someone who has been through such stuff and yet still maintains a positive outlook and is constantly looking for ways to go further. Like the guy not only never gave up on his dreams, but he helped others find it too.

And one of the most challenging things he said that left me feeling challenged about myself was:
"No matter how angry someone makes you give it time and they'll surprise you."

I’ve a lot of folks I’ve been angry with recently. Some of those are friends and some of course are people I don’t really know. The challenge lays in just not letting it get to me. To just remember that yeah, some of them are aiming to get under my skin. But some of them aren’t. And those who are may not always be like that and might be nice when they decide to not be douche bags.

Does this mean I can’t get pissed when they slander? Meh I’m sure within reason it would be ok. If I can manage to not take it way to serious and relax. NOW relaxing when you are a paranoidish person with anxiety issues? That is something else as well. Haha

Anyway, back to Bleach. Peace.

nerd raging

2009-10-02T03:28:00.000-07:00

Aion sucks. Yeah I said it. But not for the reasons one might typically think and really its more a ranting than an issue with the game itself.

World of Warcraft has been in a state of regurgitation as it seeks to keep the attention of its player base. Some are more successful than others. Right now with Onyxia and Trail of the Grand Crusader, its flopping a bit. True, not as many of passed through the heroic versions. However, the content is boring and some find themselves uninterested in the content. Its just a boss. No story. No interesting elements.

So then Aion comes along. Stunning graphics. New play style. New end game purpose. Its interesting and somewhat fresh.

It is filled with World of Warcraft players. Fleeing a game quickly becoming homogenized and dull. Things that made classes unique are being stripped away. Boss fights are simple but hard hitting. Movements are pretty straight forward and its not hard to pay attention and do well.

How does this affect the guild and me? Well its not entirely the issue. But it explains the issue for a few. Like anything, when you don’t do something as much, your skills in it can rust a bit. And what I saw in a few mistakes tonight reflected the reaction times from Aion. The game is sluggish. You don’t have to move fast. You just grind really.

There was no focus. But really just not from the Aion players. The entire team was doing poor. People stood in green puddles in second phase. People stood in front of the worms in second phase and were one shot. People stood in fires in phase 1. Tanks died in phase 1 when they didn’t get CDs up in time. Healers got Snowbolded and dps was slow to burn them down leading to tank death. AND multiple times people were targeted by Icemaw and killed, leading to enrages and raid wipes. One at 10%.

A night which could and should have pushed us into working on progression ended with wiping endlessly to a boss we have on farm. And then when I push us to Onyxia because we obviously were falling apart, we wipe to her. People body pull TWICE. They pull whelps. They turn and get half the raid killed by cleave. They get breathed on.

We downed her but the night was unsatisfying. Sloppy and felt like a failure. After all of this I got to deliver the mama-lecture. I was pretty calm I think and no one said I was wrong in how I presented which is good. But I wanted to shout. Nerd Rage and Bitch. But That doesn’t work and it wouldn’t help anyone. I’d feel more like shit and they’d be upset. And who knows who would show up for next raid.

I’ve told them we’re going to try again on Saturday. Normally we farm the old content and catch people up on their gear. But the new content can provide more and on that end, I want us to get in and do it. Not to mention if we down it we move into first position for our faction. Ah dreams.

I’ve been told not to let myself take it way too serious. To have fun. And I can try to push myself towards that end. But I’m terribly competitive. Hopefully this was one of those situations that comes up where the entire team is just playing bad and when we come back Saturday we’ll one shot the downed content and can push the new stuff.

We did test the strategy I put together over the weekend on the normal version and I think we’ll do it well if the proper team shows up! Here’s to hoping.

guilds

2009-10-01T03:39:00.000-07:00

Its that time of year again where I spent half my time living from anxiety attack to anxiety attack. It’s a terrible feeling. You sit there and someone says something or you do something only to pause and kinda inwardly folk and wait for some sort of attack. A terrible sense of paranoia. I have to pause and close the eyes and try to calm myself. It’s a miserable state.

I am a leader of a guild that began almost three years ago on World of Warcraft. I’ve seen it grow from barely 10 people who were social and pvp’d a bit to a guild with over 80 accounts to its name and a strong raid team. Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it, keeping the GM title. I’d never really cared strongly for the name and I’ve always wanted more. But because of friends, I chose to stay.

Then when the drama hit early this year that left me holding the reins I threw myself into the job. Mostly out of sheer rebellion and determination. I had been unhappy with how things were being led. It lacked direction. The female leader was uncommitted and hypocritical. And yet she and her bf had been close friends that I’d been playing MMOs with online for 5 years.

Things I felt strongly about that a leader would have to do would be to be compassionate and understanding but authoritative and sticking to the guns. Someone who would uphold the rules laid out even when faced with a decision they didn’t like. Someone who would be willing to put the interests of the guild ahead of their own. Someone that would have the respect needed to command authority when things got unruly and someone who would dedicate themselves to being available to those in the guild.

When I took the reins those had been my goals. I brought in new officers and we began to build a raid team I felt would succeed. Since then I’ve had to make choices like giving Ashes to someone unpopular and on an alt because my own rules had allowed it despite my desire to see it go elsewhere. Other decisions have been in recruiting people and replacing those who have been unable to keep up. Friends who helped build this guild from where it once had been.

A stress on being honest and not babying has also been something I’ve been finding the need to do more. With members who have shown bad attendance or flaky attitudes. With members who can’t quite keep up and might have to sit out more often now. With members who aren’t able to make both days.

I desire to see this guild become one of the best. I want to win. And perhaps I do take this role way to serious. Certainly in some ways it has become a job. Make sure the members are happy. Arrange strats for fights. Arrange dates and times for raids. Make sure people are getting along. Keep the bank clean and field questions. Do your best to keep the guild’s rep clean.

Guilds are so different. Every leader has chosen to run things different. Alliance, we have four guilds of higher status. Valiant, IOD, TheEnclave, and Flaming Bunnies (my guild). Valiant seems to run off of a small core of friends. They allow members pretty much any actions provided it doesn’t cause inner drama. They are skilled and have been top for quite a while. IOD is like a sponge. Any guild that folks, a good number of people can be expected to go to them. They talk almost anyone with a good application and can change up a team composition easily. However, there is a lot of inner fighting which can often be seen by fighting in their recruitment page. There is much competition for raid spots. But that is probably how they are so successful. The competition forces higher play. TheEnclave is more a notorious guild right now. Home to a good number of the guild’s pvpers, they’re full of egotistical douche bags. Their strength is their love for PvP. Whether fighting horde or fighting alliance in trade chat. It’s a free for all in their conversation and when they do pve their strong respect for their leader brings them together and into success.

Sometimes I get frustrated while leading. Too many wish to follow and not enough want to lead. I want to be a follower too. To not feel the need to be responsible for the group. But there is no one willing to step up. No one who can do it the way I believe one should. And because I’m power freakish and micromanaging like that, I continue to do it.

I am ambitious. I want to do more, see more and push more. But I have to pace myself. I cannot push more than they are willing to go. I know a number of them would follow, and go with it if I pushed us harder. But I know there are some on my team who wouldn’t want to or couldn’t even if they wanted. Right now the content is simple – though complicated in some fights while learning.

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it. – Norman Schwarzkopf

I take this game way too serious. But I enjoy the challenges.

nerd raging

2009-09-27T02:01:00.000-07:00

I dislike PvP, so sue me. The entire mentality that takes over people who pvp tends to get under my skin as well.

Oh? You don't pvp? You must be bad. You are a bad player! LOLOLOLOL Why do you suck?

You get where this is going. I enjoy PvE. I like the challenges of seeing in game encounters that force you to defeat a boss. Healing when a boss might spike down my tank if i miss a CD or I have to time my abilities to last.

I rarely enjoy PvP. Sure, the world pvp is fun. Being in a group with five friends and keeping them up with multiple groups trying to take them down is great. Keeping them and myself up and seeing them go down is fun and nice to see! What I dislike when I get bent over and raped by multiple people of the opposition. I dislike dishonorable combat. I dislike the attitudes of people who PvP.

I take it way too serious? Perhaps.

It takes being in a rotten mood where I feel I need to put others down to find any satisfaction in ganking someone or taking a group to kill just them. Using other's misery for my own pleasure and all that. PvP just encourages it. Making others miserable for your own benefit.

Its why I don't get the trollers. I don't see how you can get giggles out of making someone upset. If you hated them and were vindictive and out to get them, sure I could understand the 'trolling.' But if you were bored and just out to smear someone for your amusement, naw.

Its just a game. I can play however I want.

Does anonymity of the web somehow make it magically ok to be a creep in a video game when it isn't in real life. I don't think it does.

I take it way too serious? Perhaps.

Girls suck at video games. They are all bad. They are all whores and sluts.

etc etc but these statements piss me off. Why? I know its not true. Yes, there are some who very much fit these categories. But i know PLENTY of female players who are good. Who've not whored their way up into positions in raids or gear.

When i hear statements like that I want to punch a guy in the throat and tell him maybe he should get in the kitchen since he's got the BITCH part down so well.

You're being trolled. Don't feed.

Let me ask you this. When you hear slurs against you and you know they are outright lies and wrong do you want to sit there and quietly take it? You can sit there quietly and take the bullying and abuse. Feeling disgusting because you just allowed them to feel like they walked all over you. Or you can speak up and protest and be branded an idiot or someone who takes things way too serious and can't take the joke.

I spoke up ONCE to a person in trade when they went on this smear campaign and I've been getting whispers since. The 'you're bad' type or 'lolgirlscan'tplay' types or comments about my vag. I just tell them thats nice and shrug it off.

Some of the recent ones have been really weird. Random whispers from people I don't really know who have apparently tried to read up on me. And think that what they know empowers or something weird.

Do I take it way too serious? I don't think I do. I recognize everyone has their own beliefs and lives like they want. Does that mean I have to sit and not speak up against things that I think are wrong? No. Do I have to show respect to someone who has to try to put down others for their own amusement because they apparently have no personal self worth? No.

I am in a minority. I take things way too serious. But maybe sometimes thats not a bad thing.

Way too Serious

Raiding and Guild Wars 2

Engineering Like TF2 Babeh!

Anime Recommendation: Bakuman

Still Alive!

Final Fantasy XIV - Thoughts and Impressions

Concerning Betas

Pax Prime – Day Two ((late post!))

Pax Prime – Day One!

Pax and MMOs

Ramblings

What Makes a Raid Leader?

KickAss, Healing Hands, Paladin Leveling in Cata

PLD AoE Heals and The Guild

Concerning Proposed Paladin Changes for Cataclysm

Concerning Assisms in the LFG

Some Ramblings

Avatar - A Review

Concerning Accounts and Hackings

Thanksgiving

Ashen Verdict Reinforcements

Faction Transfers: Day 73 & Cross Server LFG

A Review: Princess Tutu

Integrity

The Art of Leaving Gracefully, Guild Recruitment - How to Do it on a Dying Server, and Other Subjects

Guild Blues, Gear Scores, Mechanical Boys in Metal Underpants

Where the Wild Things Are *SPOILERS*

Aggitators

Kimi ni Todoke

Internet Radio: Pandora

Faction Transfers : The Fall of the Alliance or a Changing of the Guard?

Bleach

nerd raging

guilds

nerd raging

Where the Wild Things Are SPOILERS