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Sunday, October 27, 2013

World of Warcraft: Random Sunday Reflections

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So, my Horde Shaman was just about to ding (literally one kill away) level 70 when she was deleted today.  There was nothing wrong with her class or race or guild, but my brain has Pandaren firmly in the Alliance camp and she always felt like she was on the verge of committing treason and defecting.  Being to cheap to pay for a race change, I made a new character, pictured above.  She’s back in the guild and this time she feels like she belongs in the Horde.

While leveling today, something occurred to me.  When they implement cross-realm zones and now connected realms, why have the not correspondingly increased the number of nodes and mobs?  Players aren’t suddenly going to change years of gaming habits and group up to kill 10 ogres or gather 10 whatevers.  Now, the competition is fierce and you spend almost as much time waiting for mobs to spawn as you do getting from point A to point B.  I think a lot of the complaints about comingled realms would cease if there were more mobs and more gathering nodes.

Other than that, the Headless Horseman has still refused to drop his mount.  I’ve lost track how many years it’s been but too many given the number of characters I have run that instance every day.

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

World of Warcraft: An Idea

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I can’t sleep so I fired up WOW and a couple of things are bugging me at 2AM.  First at level 72, a priest should not have been able to easily kill an elite level 80 dragon in Coldarra.  Second, and I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, why can’t the development team over at Blizzard implement a hard mode option similar to what Guild Wars had way back when?  The button would slow down questing to non-nerfed rates (i.e. before the release of the latest expansion made past content irrelevant) and returned mobs, bosses, and fights to higher hit points and difficulty levels.  This option would let those that want to rush to end game do so and those of us that want to experience more challenging content at level appropriate questing to do so.  I want the danger back when doing awesome quests like rescuing Winterfin tadpoles.  I don’t need to two-shot everything along the way. 

Thursday, October 3, 2013

World of Warcraft: Sometimes it isn’t the class that sucks but you…

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So, Flamingoo is a warrior.  She is small but had grand aspirations to be powerful.  Unfortunately, the person behind the mouse sometimes goes brain dead and forgets how to effectively become “the Goo” (as she is known around here).  Thanks to my wonderful hubby, and some tweaking thanks to icy-veins, she is no longer spending more time taking dirt naps than she is killing things.  In fact, the Goo ventured into her first raid this morning.  While she didn’t light up the damage meters, she also didn’t die and did respectable damage for still having two greens and a blue weapon. 

The Goo may not be my first go to character but she isn’t the de facto choice to ignore any longer either.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

World of Warcraft: Raiders, Raiding, and Communities

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I never wanted to be a raider.  My game time and enjoyment was never derived from aspiring to be in a raiding guild.  But I knew that meant I missed out on story that could only be seen in a raid, sucked but I accepted it.  Then the LFR (Looking for Raid) tool was introduced and I dipped my toes into a raid for the first time at level 90.  For the most part my LFR experiences have been smooth, drama free, and wipe free.  That may be in large part because I tune out the bitchiness and whining that comes from twenty-five random people thrown together. 

I have started running Recount only for my own dps numbers, I don’t care what numbers others produce.  I especially am amused when healing by the sheer amount of overhealing that occurs, especially when the top overhealer is so very proud of their hps.  I laugh at them in the privacy of my office.  I know that damage/healing meters are inaccurate.  Hubby and I can be in the same raid and have wildly different numbers for both of us, we are in the same office and use the same connection, and yet somehow we’ve seen dps differences in excess of 10k at times.  So yeah, meters are meaningless.

What I have noticed in LFR is the utter disdain from the progression raiding community that feels free to do LFR and smack talk the people that are appropriately geared for the raid.  Vastly outgearing content and being smug about your damage or healing meter is very sad, and even sadder when you feel the need to publically humiliate those that can’t keep up with your numbers. 

LFR is a more than decent tool implemented by Blizzard to give a broader range of the community access to raids.  What it is for a small percentage of the player base is a tool to boost their low self-esteem at the expense of other players.  My ignore list is growing and what these people fail to comprehend is that when I’m healing and it’s one of “those” LFR groups, all my direct heals and shields will go to those players that haven’t seen fit to publically berate other players (and yes I apply this rule to tanks, healers, and dps).  I run Healbot/Vuhdo and I will blacklist players from heals, I don’t think twice about it.  I have no patience for spoiled children who think they are the best thing since sliced bread. 

Truth be told, when raiding with hubby my heal priority is always hubby, tanks, healers, and then dps.  Doesn’t matter, hubby will always get a heal if he needs it before anyone else.  Don’t like it, then I suggest you don’t act like a preschooler that missed his nap. 

Our recently created, or in my case rerolled, Horde characters have joined a guild founded by a deaf player.  So far the guild is awesome, they are friendly in chat and don’t seem to be full of what we consider the “typical” Horde players to be.  You might be wondering why two non-hearing impaired people joined such a guild?  Because by definition, the guild has to be able to communicate effectively in chat without relying on voice chat to communicate ideas.  That alone was reason enough to try out the guild.  I am looking forward to raiding with them on the Horde side.

Our Alliance guild is open to accepting new members for the first time.  But be warned, drama is not welcome and we will never be a progression raiding guild.  If we get enough members to run raids then it will be for fun and laughs and to see content, old and new.  It won’t be to massage egos and claim bragging rights.  I’d love it for more people had a willing attitude about figuring things out while raiding rather than expecting to face roll all content immediately.  If you reside on Silvermoon and are interested, send me a DM on Twitter.