Pixels

One Door Closes....

2009-05-05T20:28:00.002-04:00

I had an epiphany today.

I got all upset yesterday trying to PvP for the School of Hard Knocks achievement for Children's Week.
The horde were thwarting people's efforts to get their achievements done in the battlegrounds. Well they were actually playing the game, whereas the members of the Alliance were just too focused on themselves.
Everyone grouping up in the middle on EoTS trying to run the flag doesn't work so well when the Horde have taken all the towers, for example. And EoTS is supposed to be the easy one.

The thought comes to me as it has many times, "why am I doing this if I hate it?" So I gave up on PvP and just decided I wasn't going to get the Long, Strange Trip achievement after all.

As I'm thinking about how it sucks that I'm not going to be getting a Violet Proto-Drake, it dawns on me, "does it really matter?"

Am I going to look back on my achievements in WoW 10 years from now and think about how gratifying it was when I got that proto-drake? Am I going to put my gaming history on my resume one day? Will I be remembering this when I'm lying on my death bed? Will I be telling stories about WoW to my grandchildren, about how cool my gear was and how I led the healing charts?

The answer of course is no. No!

So why in the world does it all seem so important sometimes? Why does it dominate most of my thought processes throughout the day?

The WoW commercial with the guy from the Sopranos really is so poignant. "Just when you think you're out, they pull you back in."
Blizzard is banking on the fact that we are going to be addicted to this game. That us consumers are going to get consumed by wanting every little shiny thing and title they can throw at us.

And we justify it everyday in our minds with excuses like:
We're having fun playing it.
We have nothing else to do with our spare time.
It's better than watching TV.
It's cheaper than other forms of entertainment.
We do it because we like hanging out with our online friends. And so on.

I'm not here to bash all MMO's or make some blanket statement that they are evil. I am making a point about when a video game becomes more than just a pastime.

Since 2003 when my husband introduced me to Everquest, I've been playing an MMORPG in some form or another. During the time I was playing EQ I was also living in Manhattan. I didn't spend my weekends going to cool restaurants or museums and exploring the city, I spent them cooped up in a small apartment playing a game. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't regret doing and seeing more while I lived there.

I don't need Blizzard to tell me I've been on a Long, Strange Trip. I already have accomplished that - it is called Life - and that trip isn't over until forces outside of my control say it is. It is up to me to best use every moment I'm given.

Maybe I'm just finally coming to the realization that so many other gamers have, we don't need this anymore.

To the readers I have, I thank you for stopping by and reading my thoughts.
To the bloggers out there, I thank you for continuing to post and making this community colorful.

What am I going to do next? I have no idea. But for one, I can't wait to start getting some more sleep.

I Should Have Known Better

2009-05-01T22:47:00.002-04:00

I was lucky enough to get the Delicious Chocolate Cake recipe via the Dalaran cooking dailies.

I wasn't however prepared to have to make one for a Children's week achievement. The ingredients aren't difficult, I just don't have herbalism.

Mageroyal is currently going for 6 gold a piece. I refuse to pay that much for a low level herb, even if I can afford it.

Seeing as I just transferred to my server not long ago, I don't have any alts here. I'll be pretty pissed if I have to pay to get my level 30 shaman over here just to get some Mageroyal.

Here's hoping the price comes down in a few days, or I'm lucky enough to snag some from a vendor.

In Dreams

2009-05-01T22:06:00.001-04:00

I had a strange dream last night in which I had switched my main character to a level 80 hunter.
It was one of those dreams that doesn't make logical sense, because it was like I created the hunter and was instantly level 80.

When you create a character your initial spells are placed on your hotbar for you. In my dream, I had only a few spells on my hotbar, like auto shot and a few of the ranged abilities that also do spell damage.

I was invited to a raid, even though I didn't have good gear and didn't have a clue how to play a hunter.
The raid instance didn't look familiar at all. Essentially, the raid had wiped to whatever boss we were killing and I was the only one left standing.

I recall standing very far away, just plinking arrows at the boss with auto shot and kind of kiting him around.
And suddenly it hits me, I'm not at all prepared for this!
I realize there are tons of spells in my spellbook that aren't on my hotbar. I don't have any of my traps hotkeyed. But I have no time at the moment to open my spellbook and start fiddling around with that.

As I'm still shooting away, I realize I didn't stock up on arrows or anything before the raid. What is going to happen if I run out? I'm such a noob!

That's all I remember of the dream, so I have no ending but I'm sure it couldn't have been a good one. But perhaps the undergeared noob of a hunter really did kill the boss and save the day, it is a dream after all!

I have no desire really to play a hunter, especially since #1 they are very popular (or at least once were) and #2 hybrid classes really have the advantage now. There's never a shortage of priests, pallys, druids and shamen in a raid anymore.

It seems this was another one of those "anxiety" dreams that I have from time to time. Usually they revolve around me not being prepared for something, being really late, or realizing I have forgotten to do something very important.

This is the first WoW centered one I can recall though. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I died during Hodir twice last night because of not jumping on top of the snow pile thing quick enough, so I got frozen in place. Both times I was too busy trying to get heals off and wasn't paying enough attention to my surroundings.

In Ulduar, I have to recondition myself that I need to worry about saving my own ass first.

Remember When Heroics Were Challenging?

2009-05-01T22:02:00.002-04:00

As I was getting ready for work this morning I was thinking about my pre-raiding days in WotLK, when I had just leveled my priest to 80 and began to run heroic instances.

I was so excited, because there was so much to glean from them. I got reputation for wearing various tabards, I got emblems, and I got a chance at one piece of epic loot. As a healer, it was never a question of whether I'd find a group. Whether or not that group would actually be good was another story.

Heroics were challenging then, and I was healing them all as Discipline. Best of all, there were several to choose from. I felt a real sense of accomplishment when my group would make it through to the end without any deaths. And even more so if we got some of the achievements done.

Then I began to think what a shame it is that these heroics aren't of any use to me any more. Sure I could still run them just to get greens to disenchant, but it wouldn't be much of a challenge anymore with my 25-man gear.

What could be done about it?

Blizzard could add additional heroic dungeons to the game that are designed specifically for epic geared characters. They could either drop ilevel 226 loot, or just have each boss drop emblems of Conquest. Have them drop some rare crafting patterns too.

This would give raiders an incentive to run them, especially if they added additional items you could buy with the emblems other than Tier gear. How about more heritage items for your alts, or pets, mounts and tabards? Believe me people will spend effort trying to get the vanity stuff, as already proven.

Ok, but what happens when we outgear those dungeons? What if the dungeons could somehow automatically scale based on the average level of gear for the group upon zoning in? What if the dungeon map itself would randomly change? (which I know is possible due to Everquest's LDoN expansion) That would allow more variety without having to keep adding more and more dungeon portals to the world, and players could congregate at one spot.

Would the addition of 5-man heroic dungeons of this caliber destroy raiding? I don't think it would. It would give raiders something to do on off-nights, other than the same boring dailies that Blizzard keeps churning out for us.

Call me crazy but I'd much rather see Blizzard put efforts into new heroics rather than these silly Holiday events.

Ulduar Adjustments

2009-04-29T19:00:00.001-04:00

There has been some talk about the recent nerfs to Ulduar around the web, including this post from Dueg outlining the changes so far.

There is debate of course about whether or not these nerfs are a good thing for the raiding community.

I did notice this week on Tuesday there was a patch. Strangely I couldn’t find any patch notes though, as the notes they had displayed in the downloader were the same notes from the previous patch. On Tuesday however our raid on Ulduar did seem to go a little smoother.

We all noted the trash before Deconstructor seemed much easier this time, as we had no player deaths at all. Then on Deconstructor himself, I noticed only one Tantrum effect throughout the kill, whereas on the attempts of him last week we would get 2 or 3. It’s duration was shortened as well. I no longer felt the same pressure and rush to get people healed up that I did last week. It was one of the things that made this fight a little fun actually.

Auriaya however doesn’t seem to have been nerfed, since she is still a major roadblock for my guild. We finished off last night wiping repeatedly on her just as we did last week, with still no clear idea of how to pull that encounter effectively.

I have no problem with nerfs if they are warranted. As I noted in my previous post, the continual wiping and stress since Ulduar came out as begun to wear on me. I’ve even considered whether or not I should take a break from WoW.

I’m wondering if this is what Blizzard has in mind too when they make these nerfs. Are they doing it to keep people raiding and getting upgrades so the customers remain happy and keep playing? Are they playing to the strengths of the average raid and not those of guilds like Ensidia?

The paradox that ensues though is that once guilds can start “farming” an instance, the gear level of the raid improves dramatically. Thus the encounters are now too easy and become mindless. The developers role is not to make it too mindless from the start though. There must be a balance, which can’t be an easy thing to achieve.

The Novelty is Wearing Off

2009-04-27T21:12:00.004-04:00

Lately I've been dealing with multiple frustrations.

For one, I'm no longer able to remotely connect to my home computer from work.

It either has something to do with the new router we've recently installed, or my company has finally gotten wise to my efforts to get around their blockages.

Either way, that's the reason my posting has slowed in the last week since I rarely have time to do it from home.

Frustrations are in-game as well.

Noblegarden and the meta-achievement madness:

So Noblegarden began yesterday and I finally got to log in around 7:00pm server. I head out to Dolanaar thinking it would be less crowded there (haha!). I didn't participate in the event last year so I have no idea what to expect. I arrive to find all these people standing around in the bushes. Then I realize they are all camping spawn points for eggs.

Seriously, how can Blizzard think that standing in one place waiting for an egg to pop is fun? I was able to find an unclaimed spot that apparently no one knew about and managed to get about 50 of the 100+ needed chocolates for all the achievements in 45 minutes. 45 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

And what is the point of the egg basket that gives you a 60% run speed increase when everyone stands in one spot?

Ulduar and my eventual burnout:

My guild has been progressing in Ulduar but not without a lot of headaches. For example, two hours spent wiping over and over on Auriaya. Each time we would wipe we would adjust the strategy, trying all different mechanisms to avoid the pounce from her cats. By the time we finally killed her, I'm not even sure what it was about the strategy that worked since we changed it so many times.

Each time we face a new boss we run into a new snag and the process starts over again. The same people start to get agitated. The accusations begin to fly. Everyone has an idea, but no one is really taking charge or being decisive.

I can't help but feel that people who claim to love wiping in raids are either in well managed guilds or are just delusional. Sitting in my uncomfortable desk chair for four hours straight listening to people argue in Vent is not my idea of fun. WoW is beginning to feel more like a second job than a game I'm paying for to provide entertainment.

So do I quit playing the game now and reclaim hours of my life? Or do I tough it out and start having fun when my guild is smoothly downing bosses in Ulduar? At this point I'm going to give it another week or more before I make a decision. But it is definitely in the back of my mind.

Divine Hymn and the Deconstructor

2009-04-20T10:21:00.003-04:00

For the Deconstructor fight last night I pretty much relied on the well described strategy on Tales of a Priest.

I don't believe this fight will be too difficult once your raid gets the mechanics down.
Why do I believe it was so tough for my particular guild last night?

People weren't moving away from the groups at all when they got Gravity Bomb, or they weren't moving far enough away. I can't tell you how many times I would be happily casting away my AoE heals then would be suddenly yanked backwards into the person with the bomb.

We didn't have as much trouble with the Light Bomb, since it is really obvious when you have it, other than some people who felt they had to get so far away from the group that they were out of range for heals.

Other issues where just add control.

What I really want to discuss is the awesomeness of Divine Hymn. With it's 10 minute cooldown, I was able to use it once for every attempt. I'd wait for our resto druid to use tranquility first and then use DH on the next Tantrum.
According to my recount, it was healing for about 150k to 190k if I got a full channel. That's from one spell folks!

For the first time I was number 1 on the healing charts, beating out our holy paladin. /snicker
I do feel bad for the pallies though. I know they are cursing all these AoE damage heavy fights we've been seeing so far in Ulduar.

Razorscale Observations

2009-04-17T10:17:00.004-04:00

I got my first taste of Ulduar last night starting with Razorscale. My new guild had already gotten started on the instance on Tuesday as I was transferring.

To get a full breakdown of the fight I recommend reading some of the strategies out there, but here is a summary followed by my newfound knowledge.

Phase 1

In the first Phase, Razorscale will be in the air. While flying, she will bomb the raid with Devouring Flame and Fireball. The Fireballs by the way were hitting me for 10 - 11K damage, they are completely random but they can strike you twice before you can heal the first hit making you dead fast. Devouring Flame strikes the ground and kills anyone standing in it. It looks like a blue flame, very obvious.

During this phase, the friendly Dwarf NPCs will collect mechanical parts on the ground and repair the nearby turrets. You need someone to stay near the turrets and click on them when they come up. The turrets will put chains on Razorscale and eventually pull her to the ground.

Also during this phase, big drills will come up out of the ground and iron dwarves will pop out. There are four areas where this happens.

The important dwarves to watch for are the Sentinels which hit hard and whirlwind. It is best to use ranged dps on them.
The Watchers cast chain lightning, so it is best to stay somewhat spread out. They can be crowd controlled however, or the casts interrupted.

Phase 2

Phase 2 is the ground phase. During this phase Razorscale has a Flame Breath which does 17500-22500 damage in a frontal cone, so stay away from the front. There is no tailswipe.

There is also a Wing Buffet which knocks players into the air and back. This is preempted by the message that Razorscale "takes a deep breath". I've found if you stand outside the circle you shouldn't be hit by the knockback. It doesn't do any massive damage, but you'll have to run back into range to heal.

Phase 3

Once you get Razorscale to 50%, she stays permantently grounded.
Now she puts Flame Buffet on the whole raid - which increases everyone's fire damage.
Also she puts a debuff on the tank called Fuse Armor, it is important to have your tank switch after 2 stacks of this! They will not be able to survive hits after that.

Important to know that she keeps doing the Devouring Flame during this phase, so your tanks will have to kite her around some to get out of the fires. You have to stay right behind the dragon so they don't get out of range of heals, spam fast heals and instant casts.

Our Strategy

We started out with 4 tanks and 6 healers. We did eventually add a 7th healer.

There is literally a circle drawn out on the floor where the encounter takes place.

In our initial attempts on Phase 1, we spread out the healers and dps evenly inside the circle.
However, the raid was taking significant amounts of damage from both the devouring flame, and the chain lightning.

We were trying to figure out if there was a pattern to where the devouring flame would land, and noticed it would tend to be focused in the middle of the circle. The flame can be placed outside the circle but it seemed less common.

From that observation, we split the raid into two groups.
One group begins the fight on the left side of the circle, and the other on the right side. We tried to stay outside of the borders of the circle.
We had one tank that would stand in the top and center of the circle to pick up the group that always spawns there.

The Sentinel would always spawn in the center, which would be called out and ranged dps would immediately switch to down the Sentinel. Players would move inside the borders of the circle to get in range of the Sentinel and accompanying mobs, and then move back out once they were down.

Using this method of splitting the raid, we had less deaths from the Devouring Flame. The raid was taking significantly less damage at once.

For the group on my side, my strategy was to always keep renew up on the tanks and keep PoM bouncing. That left me free to switch to a dps or myself immediately after Fireball hits. I missed my Desperate Prayer during this fight after taking a sudden 10K + hit from a fireball. :(

I found that group heals like CoH or PoH were wasted on this fight. People have to stay spread out to avoid big chain lightning damage. I would sometimes use PoH on a group though during the ground phase when we collapsed.

For phase 2, everyone dps's the boss. The additional tanks would just keep threat on any adds that were still alive and we'd return to them once the dragon took flight again.

Once we got her to 50% (phase 3), dps has to let the tanks get agro. We had a couple attempts go awry as once the boss landed permanently as she was running haywire breathing on the raid.

Once a tank gets agro immediately start spamming heals. Have a second tank ready to taunt at two stacks of the Fuse Armor. The rest of the raid really shouldn't be taking much damage if they can avoid fires. Keep in range of the tanks and you should be fine. Get ready to use cooldowns like Guardian Spirit.

DPS goes all out and hope you kill her before she kills your tanks. :)

Other comments:

We wiped many, many times. We finally killed her right before the raid was scheduled to end.
This fight can be tough on your mana due to its length.
I used Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend during the ground phase.
I'm loving Empowered Renew.
I found I still didn't use Greater Heal for this fight that often even with the haste proc.
I did use PoH when practical though.
Ulduar is definitely tougher than Naxx but still not on a BWL level. Still it is a nice challenge.

Choosing a New Name

2009-04-15T14:25:00.003-04:00

I decided to take the plunge and join a new guild for Ulduar on a different server.
Doing this on a patch day probably wasn't the best of ideas, but as it turns out I probably wouldn't have gotten to play much anyway.

Amidst all the craziness last night as the servers popped up one by one, I found that the account maintenance page was down. I couldn't put my transfer through, but once I was finally able to log in to my old server I was able to transfer gold and items off my bank character, and make sure I had canceled my auctions.

As I wait for the account page to come back up - I check the armory for my name on the new server - taken! Uggghhh....

Choosing a name is always a big process for me. It is how people are going to identify me, so I want it to be memorable and meaningful.

How do you choose a character name? Well for me anyway I have to take into account the following things:

It has to be easily pronounceable on VoIP chat. Sometimes you think a name is pretty straightforward and simple only to find people struggling to pronounce it.
I'll avoid using special characters which make it impossible for people to type out.
It should at least somewhat sound like a "fantasy" name. This of course isn't as prevalent in WoW, but people are going to judge you by the name you chose. I can't take someone with a name like "Hawtsecks" seriously.
It should be somewhat unique. Are there 100 other characters with this name? Are there other characters of max level with this name? Luckily with WoW, the armory can help you determine how unique your name really is but it is getting more and more difficult to find one.
Finally, can I envision other people calling me this name in Vent?

I've had all day to think about this but my mind was just coming up blank. I decided to look the internet for help. Here's some of the resources I found.

Elven Name Generators and Translators:
I'd really like a name that fits a Night Elf, and there are tons of these Elvish name generators and translators out there. These names are quite beautiful, but they are usually quite long, and if I have no idea how to pronounce them I can't expect others to be able to.

If you want an Elvish name this site is pretty good: http://www.arwen-undomiel.com/elvish/names.html

Random Name Generators: These can help you come up with ideas, but I find it annoying to have to click endlessly in the hopes that a name I actually like pops up. Plus if I wanted that, I could just use the in-game one.

This generator stood out amongst the others, because you can save names you like in the box on the right and just keep clicking away. http://www.fantasynames.net/index.php

Name Lists: Like the books of baby names, there are lists of fantasy names out there too. I found one to be very extensive, with names that weren't too far fetched.

Scrolling through this list should at least give you some good ideas: http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/names/mysticalnames.htm

I've managed to come up with a list of about 5 names but still no real decision.
I need to get it over with so I can get myself all ready for Ulduar tomorrow night - my next post will be about my experience with the new content I promise!

A Change is Gonna Come

2009-04-14T10:38:00.003-04:00

I'm so excited I can hardly think about anything else!

WoW Insider has the official announcement about Patch 3.1 going live today! I'll be reading through all the coverage to make sure there was nothing I missed.

I have to admit when I first heard about the Argent Tournament, I thought it was a new PvP enabled zone, similar to the PvP dailies they already put in the game where you have to be flagged to participate. Since I'm not really into PvP, I just glossed over all that information.

Now I'm finding they are actually PvE dailies. Some of the quests sound pretty interesting, as interesting as dailies can be anyway.

One of them has you gathering wood from trees that you actually have to chop down, with a falling down animation. I remember seeing this for the first time when I chopped down a tree in Vanguard to harvest lumber for tradeskills. It adds a nice level of realism to have the tree actually fall.

Another quest has you blowing up stone into small pieces you can collect. The stone actually does explode, and I love how the explosion causes real fire damage that can actually kill you. No wimpy balls of fire or simple animations here.

Some of them are the typical go kill 10 scourge, which I imagine will be a pain to find any mobs alive once all the players flock there when the servers come back up. However of the dailies already documented on WoW Insider they all seem very simple and shouldn't be too time consuming especially if you can do them in non-peak hours.

You can get titles as well for championing a city, I'll probably be championing Darnassus for my night elf heritage. If I feel the rewards are worth it, this could take up quite a bit of my time.
Combine that with the two holidays that are coming up and I think I won't be playing my shaman alt for a very long time.

For the last couple months we've all been starved, and now content is about to be shoved down our throats in mass quantities. I'm pretty happy to have something to write about as well.
Now let's all say a prayer for a smooth release today.

A Different Approach

2009-04-08T15:04:00.003-04:00

I've come pretty far as a player since I came back to WoW in November of '08, after a very long hiatus.

I leveled my Alliance priest from 60 to 80 and ran lots of heroics to get myself ready to raid. I remember standing in A Hero's Welcome in Dalaran and seeing another night elf priest decked out in full Tier 7.5 for the first time. She had the glowy winged shoulders and a glowy staff, and I remembered thinking how far I had to go to look like that.

After some trial and error, I finally found a guild with a raiding schedule that worked well for me. I've been both a main tank healer and raid healer. I've cleared all the 25-man content.
And now I am that night elf priest wearing T7.5 with a beautiful shiny weapon.

Since WoW is a subscription based game, I have to decide if the game is providing me with $15.00 worth of entertainment every month. I also have a motivation to maximize that value, by getting the kind of playtime I want and the feeling of advancement.

For me that entertainment largely comes from raiding. I don't take much interest in tradeskills or grinding repuation and doing the same dailies over and over. I could care less about the Oracles egg. I dislike pvp'ing with a bunch of strangers in a battleground.

So when I can't raid, I start getting anxious. We're at the point of outright canceling raids now because of low attendance. Because Easter is coming up, I'm unlikely to get any raiding done this week unless I join some other guild's run.

As the anxious thoughts arise in my head and start to take over, I have to remember that sometimes a break isn't a bad thing. Life is full of other possibilites. Ulduar is coming, and it could be as soon as next Tuesday or the week after that.

I think I'll go to the coast this weekend. And I won't have to worry about rushing home on Sunday to raid.

Playing with Holy Builds for 3.1

2009-04-07T12:49:00.006-04:00

With Ulduar possibly only a few weeks away, I'm going through the process of coming up with my spec choices in the new patch.

The problem I am running into with trying to come up with a build now is that I haven't done any testing on the PTR so I'm really unsure how my healing is going to change.

If I base my spec on my current play style, then it would look something like this:

14/57 - points in emp renew

Reasoning behind this build:

I currently almost never cast Greater Heal. I also very rarely use Prayer of Healing. My top spells used are CoH, Flash Heal, PoM and Renew.
I'm almost always assigned to raid healing.
I chose Improved Renew because of my heavy use of it.
Skipping Divine Fury because I rarely use GHeal, and increased cast time on Smite and Holy Fire doesn't help me in a raid.
I chose Spell Warding because I needed the points to advance, and I figure reduced spell damage might help with raid-wide aoe effects and less of a need to heal myself.
Inspiration - no brainer.
Desperate Prayer - I've gotten used to having it and it's a life saver for me.
Holy Reach - I don't have this in my build now and would really like to see the impact of a wider range on aoe spells. Plus I'm not yet sure how awesome Divine Hymn will be.
Improved Healing - Needed this to advance, its usefulness would really depend on how much I'll cast Divine Hymn and Gheal. Really more of a Disc priest talent.
Spiritual Guidance and Spirit of Redemption - no brainer.
Healing Prayers - Another one I don't have in my current build, but PoH could be used more in 3.1 because I can cast on other groups, so I thought it might be a good investment.
Surge of Light, Spiritual Healing, and Holy Concentration - all no brainers in my opinion.
Empowered Healing - It was the Flash Heal throughput increase that mattered more to me than the GHeal effects.
Serendipity - This is where I began to struggle. Considering I don't use GHeal much now, is it really worth dumping 3 points here for hasted GHeals? What about the hasted PoH effect, will I use PoH enough?
Empowered Renew - This new talent causes Renew to frontload an instant heal on the target, making Renew even more useful. If I don't max out Serendipity I can put all 3 points here to maximize the throughput.

After filling out the remainder of the Holy tree, I was left with 4 points so I put 3 in Test of Faith (why not?) and still had a point I wasn't sure what to do with.
I put the last point in Serendipity, thinking I could at least get some of the hasted effect which also stacks up to 3 times, giving me a total 12% cast time reduction on GHeal and PoH.

Theoretically, I could put only 1 point in Empowered Renew. I'd still get the benefit of the initial instant heal with could also proc Holy Concentration. Then I could fill out Serendipity for a total 36% cast time reduction on GHeal and PoH.

Then I started to really look at Test of Faith.

It doesn't seem to be quite as good as the former version because they took away the increased critical effect chance of heals by 6%. Now it only increases healing done by 12% on targets with 50% or less health. As a raid healer and not a tank healer, how often will I really be focusing on one target anyway?

If I put only one point in Test of Faith, I'm now free to max out both Serendipity and Empowered Renew, making the final build look like this. Would that be a crazy move?

It's So Shiny, But Heavy Too

2009-04-06T22:01:00.005-04:00

Finally, finally, my coveted mace drops in Naxx and I can actually walk away with it. I've seen it drop three times previously, but I never had enough dkp to outbid anyone.

I feel like I've paid my dues for it. I've been raiding constantly since January and I have a great attendance record.

So why do I feel a tinge of guilt for taking it?

I don't know what it is with me but I hate getting into a bidding war against other people for loot. Especially when people start talking about how "it's best in slot" for them, as if that means they are somehow more entitled to it. The Torch is pretty much best in slot for a lot of casting classes, you just can't beat the spellpower on it.

I wish there were an easier way to do loot distribution without this kind of stress, but I really don't know what it would be.

20-man Raids!

2009-04-02T12:31:00.002-04:00

What do you do when it's raid night and your raid is way short of people? Work on the "less is more" achievements!

I log in last night to find our raid a full group short at a few minutes to raid time. I'm getting myself mentally prepared for the announcement in guild chat that we don't have enough people to raid and that we are calling if off.

Instead the officers decided we'd just try Sartharion and Malygos with 20 people.
We did Sartharion and one drake to make it easier. It added some difficulty but actually made the encounter more fun.

We were able to complete Sarth in one shot and even got an Illustration of the Dragon Soul out of it.

Then we attempted Malygos with 20 but after about 3 attempts we gave up. The DPS kept getting one shot in Phase 2. I believe it had something to do with the fact that we didn't have enough melee dps taking the hover discs, so more of the raid was taking damage from the Scions than usual.

The unfortunate part of this is that we aren't making any progress at all on Sarth +3 drakes, since Weds night seems to be the night that we can't get enough folks. Our GM decided to move Sarth and Malygos to a different day to try and allievate that.

I did already get the Sarth +3 drakes achievement with my former guild, but I would like to do it again and survive to the end this time. :)

I do hope this is just a slump my guild is going through that will be alleviated with Ulduar.

It isn't just because we lost Bigredkitty as a raider this week, though that was a very big loss of our highest dps, this problem of low attendance has been happening since I joined.

Though we all understand why BRK had to quit playing for the time being, I can't help but feel like it put a little dark cloud over our guild, and the blogsophere as a whole.

Astranaar is Under Attack

2009-03-30T22:32:00.001-04:00

I wonder if it is a common occurence on all WoW servers that Astranaar is attacked on a regular basis. Is it something about the proximity of Ashenvale to Orgimmar that causes this phenomenon?

It has been a long while since I leveled a Horde character, but I recall that Crossroads used to come under heavy fire by the Alliance from time to time. Especially in the days before Battlegrounds existed, attacking other towns was really the only way to incite some PvP on a larger scale.

I took part in some of these raids on towns, and they were actually very fun. It wasn't an easy task killing all the guards who would just infinitely respawn on us. After a short while, enough players from the opposing faction would show up and drive us away. We were never successful enough to actually kill any quest-giving NPCs or vendors, so we were really just a minor inconvenience. Not to mention if we did kill a "civilian" NPC, we would get dishonor points, remember those?

When Battlegrounds launched, it seemed like the fights in the lower level towns died down significantly. But by this time I was level 60 and no longer hanging out in places like Crossroads. So I wonder if today the Alliance still attacks Crossroads sometimes, and is the attacking of Astranaar something the Horde just does to retaliate?

Is this just the result of an old feud that dates back to the game's beginnings, or is it simply that some people just get a kick out of slaughtering all the NPCs in a lower level outpost? I believe it is probably the latter.

Take my experience this weekend for example. I'm playing my shaman alt on a Saturday and she's currently level 31.

I'm in Ashenvale to do all the quests they added to the Forest Song outpost since the Exodar crashed into Kalimdor. And speaking of Forest Song, how it has changed dramatically! It used to be one lone night elf out there with nothing but a campfire to keep him company. Now there are all sorts of other night elves and draenai out there helping to build an outpost. But after all this time, they've only managed to put up a couple of shoddy tents, and still no inn. But I digress.

I still needed to turn in a couple of the quest chains in Astranaar and as I'm riding up to the entrance of the town, 3 horde on their epic mounts go riding past me.

My first thought is that I have to reach my quest turn-ins before the Horde, because I know they are going to kill them first.
The horde rip through the guards with ease. I run into the little house to turn in the last part of the quest to the guy who is trying to cure his sick daughter. I select my reward, I'm about to hit the "complete" button, and suddenly the NPC is yanked away from me with Death Grip.

I bolt to the inn, maybe I can reach Raene before they get to her. But of course they just follow me there and snatch her away too before I can turn in the last part of Raene's Cleansing.
At that point I just logged out, because I had some tasks that I needed to do and I wasn't going to waste time standing around waiting for the NPC's to respawn.
This isn't the first time I've come to Astranaar to find that everyone has been slaughtered, and it is usually by the hand of a single level 80.

Clearly these Horde were there specifically to kill quest-giving NPCs, so that the level 20-30 Alliance couldn't turn-in or pick up any new quests. This is of course not only an annoyance, but it slows down the leveling process to have to wait on respawn, and then you have to hope the Horde aren't going to be camping your NPCs. You can't hope that any high level Alliance are going to come and save you either, because they are all in Northrend.

When I logged back in later, the horde were gone. But all throughout the day while I quested near Forest Song, I could see that the town kept repeatedly getting attacked.

What is the point anymore of attacking lower level towns? You'll one shot everything with ease and get no resistance, especially on a PvE server. Do some people just really take that much pleasure in ruining someone else's leveling all day long on a Saturday?

I have to say I don't understand it, but if it is going to happen it at least shouldn't be so easy. I say it is time for Blizzard to give the guards an upgrade.

An Award from my Peers

2009-03-27T09:43:00.003-04:00

I've been tagged by Holy Dueg for a blogging award and much to my surprise!
According to the rules:

I must post about the award and who bestowed it upon me,
along with a list of 7 other bloggers I read,
and 10 honest facts about me.

I started this blog only about 4 months ago after I came back to WoW for the WotLK expansion. Seeing how many gaming blogs were out there specifically about WoW, I thought I'd try my hand at creating my own.

I didn't want to corner myself into a WoW-only blog (hence the generic name), because knowing my gaming history I tend to not be truly faithful when it comes to MMOs. But since WoW is the only game I'm playing for the time being, and the only game worth playing in my opinion, this truly has become a very focused blog.

This blog was meant to be a journal to chronicle my experiences and thoughts, and I didn't advertise it. It was also admittedly a way for me to waste time while at my job.

I've apparently managed to pick up a few readers along the way, and I'm very grateful to receive some recognition from my gaming colleagues.

So without further ado.....

Seven other blogs I consider worthy in no particular order:

Player vs. Developer - Green Armadillo writes about game design, and what motivates us to play. Because I love anything about human psychology this is one of the first blogs I began to follow, and I really thought the name was creative.
a wall of text - Brent & company write about gaming in general and I can count on them for breaking news on games and technology that are in development.
World of Matticus - Really needs no introduction, as a big resource for healers in general. I don't always agree with Matticus's views but the posts there always spark lots of discussion.
Violaceous Mana - Raesa's a priest as well so we have something in common. She also writes about the struggles of leading a guild (something I have no experience with). I also really enjoy her posts about UI mods, she's really obsessed about her UI!
Reflections from the Pond - One of the more recent blogs I've picked up, Tessy writes from the heart about all kinds of WoW related subjects, especially those of a personal nature.
Penance Priest - A newer blog from a discipline priest that I honestly can't remember where I picked up. I liked Paolo's theorycrafting and helpful posts about mods and macros. Even though I'm not discipline any longer, it is always interesting to see how other people solve problems.
Ramblings of JoBildo - Finally I have to give a shout-out to JoBildo. He was very active in the Ten Ton Hammer community. He's a comic-strip creator and blogs about all his many gaming experiences and personal views. He's been inactive as of late and I hope he returns soon!

And now the 10 facts about me:

I'm the daughter of a Southern US man and a British woman. You better believe I was taught about manners as a child.
I love food and I like to push the limits of my own cooking by learning ethnic recipes.
I'm also obsessed about nutrition and eating healthfully and naturally.
I'm currently wearing braces on my teeth as an adult, which is totally painful and I hope to get them off this year!
I work in the soda manufacturing business but I don't drink soft drinks (see #3.)
I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.
I got introduced to MMO's via my wonderful husband.
I love cats!
I've often fantasized about traveling back in time.
I'm trying to become a mother, which is both wonderful and scary.

Noticing the Slowdown

2009-03-24T12:13:00.002-04:00

We didn't have enough raiders show up last night to finish clearing Naxx, so no Kel'thuzad this week and not even a chance at my healing mace. The same problem occurred last Wednesday, when we couldn't attempt Sarth +3D or Malygos.

I've noticed around the blogosphere that other people are reporting the same issues with their guilds. We seem to have gotten to a point where people are bored of raiding, or maybe they just have everything they want. Whatever the case, it leaves those of us who still need upgrades out in the cold.

I'm not really sure what else to say on the matter, and it has definitely sparked some conversation in my guild. We still have plenty to work on in regards to downing Sarth +3 and working on some of the achievements, but it would seem that achievements aren't important to all people.

For now, I think I just have to put up with it until the next patch. My gear is certainly passable where it is, but I might just have to be prepared for the fact that I can't upgrade those last few items for ilevel 226 gear. I may just have to accept that I won't be getting a drake from Sarth, or completing the Glory of the Raider achievements.

After all, when Ulduar launches we'll have forgotten about all that. The raiding will begin anew.
In the meantime, it is a test to see if guilds can stick through this rough patch.

And if your guild does fall apart?
Check out the cool new website from some of the people who were involved with Curse.

I'm really liking their Blue tracker, and their guild recruitment tool makes it very easy to search for a new guild. It is miles above searching through the Blizzard recruitment forums where you have to read every single post to find out if a guild is a possible fit.
The site is still very new so there are few guilds posted at the moment, but I think this one could really take off as the word gets out.

Insights into Ulduar

2009-03-19T10:30:00.004-04:00

In reading through MMO Champion's summary of blue posts, I've picked up on some interesting topics about Ulduar.

On the new raiding model:

"Your old model towards end game was a success, it brought you eleven million players."
"Most of whom never had a chance to finish a raid. They didn't get to see some of the best art in the game, hear the unique music or voice over, or in many cases even see the villain at the end of their quest line. From a production POV, instances are very expensive. It seems an odd choice to lavish all that attention on such a tiny percent of the player base.

At the same time, we know there are players who love a challenge and are willing to do almost anything to beat a raid-destroying boss provided they also have a shot at the best loot. They don't want the instances to be over too soon. They like banging their head against the wall.

And so hard modes were born. We tested the water a little with Obsidian Sanctum. We're going full bore with Ulduar." source

This to me solidifies what we can expect from Blizzard going forward. A new patch every 6 months or so, adding one new raid zone with hard modes. As they admit themselves, developing raid content is costly, so rather than provide us with multiple instances they'll reuse the content to keep the progression guilds busy.

I don't mind what Blizzard is doing to make raid content more accessible. I'm serious about my game, but I don't want to raid more than 3 times a week so it works out well for me. I do get bored with seeing the same instance over and over though. I wish they would resurrect some of the old world stuff and re-tune it for level 80s. It would be fun to go back and do that on occasion, but it isn't the same to go back and clear MC now as a level 80 when the mobs are level 60.

I did RFK on my shaman alt the other day as an example and it was fun! I haven't stepped foot in that instance in years, and it reminded me of the early days when I was leveling my first character.

On crowd control:

"However we stepped up the difficulty on the encounters too. There is no “just burn him down” boss like Noth. The trash will require crowd control on some pulls." source

I'm so excited to see that they are putting crowd control back in the game. There is a lot of good stuff in this same thread, as Ghostcrawler goes on to talk about how dps won't be getting away with "standing in the fires" in this raid. If they are putting back actual strategy in the game, where we will have to coordinate pulls and think about what we are doing, this is going to be exciting stuff!

On mana regeneration (from the same thread):

"In Ulduar, you should run out of mana if...

1) You don't have enough gear for the instance.
2) You aren't playing the encounter well enough.

If you have good enough gear and good enough skill and aren't standing in fires and are kiting adds correctly and doing all the right things, then you aren't designed to run OOM."

This sets my mind at ease in regards to all the upset over the mana regeneration changes. It is relevant to my post from yesterday, if people don't spam heals mindlessly and watch what they are doing they shouldn't have an issue.

I understand the reason to nerf regen now, it was a way to force people to step up to the plate and work together in raids. It was to take the sloppiness out that has become the norm in Naxx. I doubt there will be any PUG groups going into Ulduar, because you won't be able to get away with it. At least not until you already have some geared and experienced people, at which point there wouldn't be a need for the PUG anyway unless you were running some alts through.

And the other reason to get really pumped about Ulduar - it is going to be cool looking! No more boring looking floating ziggurat filed with green sludge and slimes.

"Ulduar is new content. Naxxramas was updated, but only to some extent. We never really got to see in the LK raids just what the dungeon artists, creature artists and encounter designers are now capable of . You'll see it in Ulduar and it's pretty amazing." source

To Spam or Not to Spam

2009-03-18T11:55:00.002-04:00

I've been focusing a lot on the healing role on the blog lately and wanted to write something more general today. Then I saw Matticus's post about how spamming is a healer's most important skill and I had to address this.

I don't quite know where Matticus is going with this. I think telling people they need to heal by spamming is a bad idea, considering how things are about to change in the next patch.

Ghostcrawler made a post about the goal being to make healing less spammy.
Our goal in 3.1 is going to be to heal only when it is needed, not just letting it land because it won't matter if we overheal anyway because mana isn't an issue.
I get the feeling that if we just spam heals like we have been used to in 3.1 that we'll run OOM fast.

I've been trying to practice restraint now, which is difficult after playing a discipine priest for the last couple of months. I use incoming heal indicators now on my Grid, so if I see someone's already getting a heal I'll cancel mine. I focus more on instant heals or my fastest casting ones, so I can get my heal landed before someone else gets a chance.

Priests are lucky to have Prayer of Mending, which costs mana for the initial cast, but after that it can keep bouncing around the raid healing up others for no additional mana. It is one of the reasons I can stay near the top of the meters.
Ghostcrawler alludes to giving us more spells like this, ones that are more interesting and dynamic.

It isn't that I'm depending on OOFSR regen, it is more like I'm depending on not running dry in the first place. With this playstyle, the nerf to spirit shouldn't affect me as much. It is only there to remind me to manage my mana while in the FSR, because my only option of getting mana back in 3.1 is going to be through Replenishment and my Shadowfiend.

Keyboard Turning

2009-03-17T14:26:00.002-04:00

I have a confession, I'm a keyboard turner!

I decided to write about this today since it happened to come up in raid chat last night. Also I just read Larisa's post today about teaching her daughter how to play WoW, and how she wanted to stop her daughter from getting into the horrible habit of keyboard turning.

For me it started when I played my first MMO, Everquest. My husband taught me to keep my first 3 fingers of my left hand on the W, S, D and A keys for moving backward, forward and turning left and right. So since day one, that is the way I learned how to move.

I still don't understand why keyboard turning is such a bad thing. I've been doing it for years. I've PvP'd this way, and I keyboard turn during Heigan and rarely die to the waves. The only time I've died during Heigan was a result of lag actually.

I think it would just be next to impossible now to break this habit. Plus I try to use my mouse as little as possible, since I suffer from a lot of wrist pain in my right wrist.

I guess if it really is that much better, it makes sense to teach someone to mouse turn at the beginning of their MMO career. I think for me personally it is just too late, but I'm fine with it!

New Shoulders!

2009-03-16T22:06:00.002-04:00

Nothing much to report except that we just finished up Naxx and I had enough emblems saved up to purchase my T7 shoulders. Now that I'm holy, I needed the additional spirit and of course they go nicely with the T7 robe.

Really my last coveted item is the healing mace off Kel'Thuzad, but seeing as how it went for a 1,000 points tonight, I think it is going to be a long time before I see it!

Frantic Healing

2009-03-16T12:38:00.003-04:00

Saturday was a rainy, cold day. I had nothing stopping me from playing WoW all day to relearn how to heal as Holy. As soon as I logged in, I saw a call in trade for a 10-man OS pug needing healers. Perfect, as I could get actual raid experience in and on something that is relatively easy. That went pretty well, but I didn't stop there.

After that, I tried running Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom since it was the day's heroic daily quest. It was kind of amusing actually, as I got into two different groups initially and both of them wiped on the first boss, prompting people to leave.

Of course this being my first time healing as holy I began to worry that it was me. I had never had any trouble healing this fight as discipline. Turns out that the first two tanks were undergeared, one of them admitted he had just dinged 80.
The third time around I got it right, got a decent tank and we were able to clear the instance. There were occasional deaths here and there but I guess that is to be expected in a PUG.

After the heroic, I got into a 10-man Malygos PUG. We tried for at least two hours to kill Maly, subbing DPS in and out of the group. In the end, we didn't have enough dps to make it with enough time in the 3rd phase before the enrage. But I was there for practice, and I certainly got tons of that.

My assessment of holy healing after the weekend is one word: frantic.
I noticed the spikier damage now that I didn't have all the shielding capabilities.
Holy is definitely more about spamming heals, and you have more healing options to choose from at any given time.

Tank is dropping? Cast some flash heals on him quick. If you've got time, maybe an Inner Focus + Greater Heal. Keep renew up on him, maybe a PW:Shield but I'm learning to rely on that spell less, because I know when I raid with Disc priests they'll appreciate it if I'm not shielding others and let them handle it.

Oh wait now the raid is taking damage? Cast Circle of Healing on somebody, and hope they are standing around enough other people to make it worthwhile. Get a Prayer of Mending on somebody who has agro. Start renewing like crazy, maybe a couple of flash heals to top people off. Prayer of Healing if I notice its my own group that's damaged.

As discipline, I focused on tanks and knew I could rely on Penance to boost them back up. It was more like shield, penance, stand around and wait for some damage to hit, ok penance again, renew the shield, wait again, etc. I might have healed my group with a holy nova or threw out an occasional PoM, but mostly I just relied on the holy priests to do that.

I liked the change and I liked feeling more active in the raid. And of course I noticed my healing output go through the roof. I have to watch my mana now which adds another level of challenge.

When I finally got to raid 25-man Naxx with my new guild last night, I was neck and neck on the top healing spot with a holy pally. Sure I definitely miss having Penance and I expected that I would. That spell is just awesome and such a life saver. It was mostly the heroics though where I missed it most, especially when you are running with people who aren't geared to the teeth and can drop before you land a Gheal.

A New Chapter Begins

2009-03-13T10:45:00.004-04:00

How things can change in one night! So, I've been getting frustrated as you can tell by my recent posting. I've been disenchanted with my spec, and I haven't felt as though I've been contributing much to my guild. I'd been getting sit out of raids at least once per week lately, and since we've been clearing the content in only two days, I was only getting to raid one night per week.

The other reason this has been aggravated for me was that my guild has been running 7-8 healers for everything, even 25-man Naxx which they've had on farm for a while. That meant during Naxx I was really not challenged. In fact most of the time, I'd start healing someone only to have 2 or 3 other people beat me to it and I'd have to cancel my spell. I'm really not sure why they opted to bring so many, if only for the reason that they had a core group of healers who were consistently online on raid nights and they didn't want to sit them.

I don't know for sure I'm only making assumptions. But I do know they have been recruiting for another holy pally pretty heavily, which meant adding a healer to an already crowded roster in my opinion.

Couple other things that bothered me were that they started raiding at 9:00pm and went until 12:00am. That's a little late for me and it has been making me very tired at work.
Also I never knew prior to a raid that I would be sitting out, I only found out minutes before, so I'd still have to make plans to be online and fly to where ever. There was a guild message that the raid was full and that was that, no personal message.

On other levels though there was nothing wrong with my guild. I was happy with our progression and the general drive of the members and the officers. There seemed to be no drama during the brief time I was there. When I left last night, I got plenty of whispers inquiring why and even an offer to take me back if it didn't work out with the new guild. That was pretty cool. I did make me wonder if I had made a mistake, but only time will tell.

So, I'd been in talks with another guild on my server. I didn't know much about them, only that I had grouped with some of the members in the past on a heroic run and I was impressed. Smoothest PUG I've ever done. One of their members is the famed BRK from his hunter blog that apparently is pretty popular. I admit I never read it much, because I don't play a hunter.
Kind of cool though to be in a guild with other bloggers, as there are even more members that have blogs including the guild leader. (I've added them both to my blogroll).

They raid earlier, and they work out their raid schedules prior to the raid so you know whether or not you are getting a spot. Also, they've only been taking 4 healers to Naxx! I was shocked at this, and the fact that they've been able to clear Naxx and Malygos, with only 4 healers is impressive to me. So I'm hoping with them I can play a more pivotal role and should be sitting out less often.

Furthermore, I got to respec to Holy last night! The new guild already has a couple disc priests, so now I get to try out a different spec and this might breathe some new life into my priest. Now to relearn how to heal again, and actually manage mana! I will miss that large mana pool I had.

Curious about Holy

2009-03-10T17:01:00.006-04:00

Last night I went to heroic Halls of Lightning in a PUG, big mistake I know. I wanted to get the daily done for killing Loken which I've been carrying around in my log. I've got to kill him and the Oculus boss for the achievement.

Of course HoL being one of the harder instances it isn't easy getting a group for it. When I got a hit last night I went for it.

I've healed Loken a few times before by standing in place (not running away from his lightning nova or whatever it is). In my previous attempts though they had always been guild groups made up of geared members who could do at least 2k dps and have enough health to withstand the damage. It was never a problem for me to heal this boss at all.

Last night's group had 2 caster dps, one of which admitted this was his first instance since coming back to WoW pre-BC. Of course being casters they were already squishy and were the first to drop. None of the dps in our group did over 1k for the entire instance.

We made it through the instance just fine until Loken, we couldn't kill him using either method and they called it. So all that time spent for nothing.

The whole point I'm making though is that it got me thinking about holy spec again. If I had a choice I'd much rather heal instances as holy since they do tend to have periods of group-wide damage that are kind of hard to manage. I'm sure being holy wouldn't have helped much in last night's group, but I do notice the lack of raw healing power of discipline and fewer options for group heals.

I suppose with dual specs it would fix the problem. I don't really want to spend 1k to be able to do it. I'm not sure if I'll even enjoy holy since I haven't played a holy priest since pre-BC and I've never raided as a holy priest.

I could respec to holy to try it out prior to the patch, of course I'd have to switch out some gear and gems. But on the other hand I'm thinking why try it now when everything is about to change in 3.1? Would trying it now really give me a good idea of it?

Missing Out

2009-03-09T14:31:00.004-04:00

For the last 3 weeks my guild has been working on Sartharian with 3 drakes up. Last week they downed him, without me.

I know 3 weeks isn't a very long time. But this is the state of raiding now in WoW, it no longers takes months of wiping on something to succeed. It doesn't make the sting I feel any less painful, however.

We had been making something like 15 - 16 attempts in a night twice per week on this encounter, and had not been successful. That is a lot of wipes if you count it all up. I was so looking forward to the day when we'd finally kill him for the first time.

I don't understand what happened. I know I've only been in this guild for a month but I don't feel that makes my contribution here any less important. Being discipline, I was always assigned to main tank healing and the other MT healer and I had worked out a really nice strategy. When it came down to using my Pain Suppression however, it was determined that it wasn't a strong enough spell to keep the MT alive during the breaths in the last phase.

They tried switching me to raid heals, but that didn't work either as two holy priests couldn't keep the MT alive long enough to get to the point of using cooldowns. But Guardian Spirit is without a doubt a better spell then Pain Suppression.

So I suspect that is why didn't get chosen to go, but I really don't know for sure since no one bothered to send me a tell to explain why I was benched. I got to raid one night last week for the Naxx clear and got one upgrade, the Accursed Spine, but I still have no mace to pair it with.

Now I feel that since they've proven they can down him without a Disc priest in the raid that I'll be of no use to them anymore unless I respec. I may wind up doing so anyway, since from what I understand the Ulduar fights are AoE damage heavy.

To me, nothing sucks more than feeling left out, or feeling like you aren't contributing enough.

What is the impact of Dual Specs?

2009-03-04T10:54:00.006-05:00

Larisa's post about dual specs (along with her links to other blog topics) really got me thinking.

There are so many factors that come into play when you consider dual specs. It makes me wonder what the meetings were like at Blizzard when they decided to implement this feature in 3.1.

I'm sure that Blizzard thinks this opportunity will increase their subscriber retention rates. I don't think they are necessarily doing this because they have designed encounters in Ulduar that will require some switching of raid personnel in the middle of a raid. At least I hope that isn't the case.

But considering how easy they've made switching your spec (a 5 second cast done from anywhere as long as you aren't in combat) I'm beginning to wonder if they do intend and expect people to switch specs during a raid.

I've read a lot of comments on the matter and it seems that people fall into a few different categories of loving it, hating it, or being indifferent to the matter.

Some say nothing is changing, that all this dual spec feature is providing is just making it easier to change your spec. That the people who switched specs all the time before will still do so, only now with less cost over time and much more conveniently.

Others say (and I'm more in this camp) that when dual specs goes live, the fact that it has become so easy may cause raid leaders to expect people to carry two specs and different sets of gear. Guild applications will now read what are your two specs and what are your stats in each? And will we somehow have multiple armory listings that we can link to show our different setups?

Still there are other effects aside from raid makeup that have to do with class balance. Some are saying that dual specs is making pure dps classes much less viable in the game. They feel even less important now that they can't use the dual spec feature to switch to a different role. Combine that with the fact that crowd control has become pretty much unused and they become concerned that their raid slots will be given away to hybrids.

I can empathize with the pure classes. The dual spec feature really doesn't give them much of an advantage. I can also see how those who started playing WoW four years ago, or pre BC, chose their classes because they wanted to fill the role of dps and be the best at that role. They had no idea then that eventually the dps of hybrid classes would equal or even outdo theirs.

The reason I chose the priest in fact, was because I wanted to be the best healing class. At the time we were the most "pure" healer, because Shadow was crap and nobody used it. I even leveled as holy when WoW launched, especially since I played with a group 99% of the time. I never considered a priest to be a hybrid but I suppose now by definition they are.

On the other hand, I can see why those who chose hybrids wanted to perform equally as well in their roles. If I rolled a healing shaman and wanted to raid, of course I would want to be able to heal as well as a priest or druid and not be penalized just because I chose a hybrid class. But the difference here is that back then I wouldn't be constantly switching from restoration shaman to elemental or enhancement for dps.

And therein lies the rub! With dual specs, a hybrid could potentially switch from tank to dps or healer on a whim and perform equally in those roles without having to re-roll another character from level 1! Not to say that it will be particularly easy to do so however.

First you have to cough up 1,000 gold. Then you have to amass two sets of epic quality gear, because there is no point in switching specs in a raid if your abilities will just be sub-par because your wearing blues. Lastly, you have to actually perform well in each role.
Believe me I'm just as concerned as the other dedicated healers out there that someone will spec holy or resto as their secondary but not have a clue how to heal.

My final thought on the matter is that it is going to come down to the community on how to best utilize, but not exploit this dual spec feature. Guild leaders are going to have to come up with clear policies on dual specs. If people want to volunteer to fill different roles depending on the needs of the raid, fine. Don't force it on people however or expect everyone to carry dual specs. How you deal with loot is another blog post and I don't even know how you can come up with a fair situation there.

Those who will utilize dual spec for raiding or grouping need to take the responsibility seriously and gear themselves appropriately. They are going to have to keep up with the latest and greatest theories, specs, and strategies for each of their roles to be the best raider they can be.

People who utilitze dual specs only in order to solo, farm or PvP are of course excluded and this feature will be highly useful for them.

What will I do with my character is yet to be seen. Sometimes it would be nice to switch to holy for raid heals and back to disc for main tank healing. I just have to decide if that is worth spending 1,000 gold on.

Time for an Alt

2009-03-02T14:38:00.002-05:00

In order not to become totally obsessed about Patch 3.1 and the PTR, I decided over the weekend that I would work on an alt character.

I'm not a big "alt" person, I've only had two characters in the past that I leveled to the maximum level and played both extensively. Those were my undead priest and my tauren druid from my old PvP server.

I think I've tried all of WoW's class types at some point, but I didn't get any of them past level 20 or so before giving up and eventually deleting them.

This time I chose a shaman. I've never played one past level 18, and nowadays they are exceptionally good at either dps or healing. I have a 40 druid on this server as well, but since I have played and raided with a druid in the past, I pretty much know what I can expect. But a shaman would be a totally new experience to me.

So far I've made it to level 19 and I'm enjoying the experience. I'm going to go enhancement for leveling, and I think this will get much easier whenever I get windfury and dual wielding. Right now I use a mix of spells and melee, but I run out of mana pretty quickly and need to drink quite a bit. I want to get to the point where I can just whack things and destroy them with little downtime.

I finally made it out of the Draenei starting areas, which for some reason I feel so trapped on those two islands that I can't wait to get off of them. I still have so very far to go though, and I whether or not I can take the shaman to 80 is probably going to depend on how much content there will be for my main in 3.1.

For now I'm just enjoying hiding out on my alt in the very quiet classic zones of WoW, with very little chatter and no one asking anything of me.

Shield Bots?

2009-02-25T17:01:00.002-05:00

I may have overreacted a little yesterday when reading the 3.1 patch notes and all the speculation about them.

What I've learned from this is that I can't be sure of anything, since the information as it was presented by Blizzard and what is being reported from the PTR are entirely different.

Here is the wording from the patch notes found on MMO Champion about Rapture:

"Rapture (Tier 8 ) revamped. Now a 3 point talent. When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled you are instantly energized with 1.5% of your total mana, and you have a 33% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy or 32 runic power. This effect cannot occur once every 12 seconds."

What is sure at this point is that they have indeed changed the Rapture mechanic to only proc off PW:Shield. PTR testers are reporting that it isn't as harsh as we may have thought because you can now spam shields on everyone if you want, due to lack of the 4 sec. cooldown. Plus they are reporting mana returns on every shield, so the whole once every 12 sec rule or only when "completely absorbed" seems to be false, or just bugged.

What does still concern me though about Disc healing after 3.1 is that if this Rapture mechanic is still in place, it will relegate us to just being "shield bots." It corners us into keeping shields up on others in order to keep up our mana regen, and provide the raid with the benefit of mana/rage/energy and runic power return.

Yeah sorry but, I want to heal. Damage absorption is great and all, but I want something else to show for my efforts than just keeping people bubbled all the time. Not to mention during boss fights when I'm focusing on my main tank healing, I can't also be bubbling the whole raid at the same time.

So we will see, and I'm trying not to overreact about this until things work themselves out on the PTR. For now I'm just going to try and focus on the current game and keep doing what I'm doing, but in the back of my mind I'll start thinking about gaining some more spirit gear for a possible switch to Holy for Ulduar.

Speculation on 3.1 PTR Patch Notes

2009-02-24T14:09:00.003-05:00

The patch notes are out and the whining has begun all over the internet. Well, maybe calling it whining is a little harsh, how about speculation?

It is difficult to read these patch notes and not have 10 million thoughts start to go through your head as you play out how your class changes are going to affect your future gaming.

Priests are especially taking notice, and so am I.

I can't help but feel as though the changes to Rapture are extreme for Discipline priests. With mana only being returned from PW: Shield now, and only if the shield is fully consumed, I'm worried that this may not be enough. Like others I've been totally ignoring mp5 and spirit in my gear choices.

Interestingly the Rapture changes aren't mentioned in the official Blizzard patch notes, but they are mentioned on some of the updated online Talent calculators.

So at this point I'm unsure if I should be getting all worked up about what I'm reading.

Further changes are that Grace can only stack on one target, further cementing our role as single target healers. However PoH is now targetable to other groups. The mana cost of Holy Nova is reduced too!

So I'm a little confused, I can help heal the raid if I want, but I won't get any mana back for doing so. I might leave a nice Divine Aegis shield on a group of people, but I won't get any mana back on that absorbed damage either.

Am I only supposed to stand around and keep a Shield and Penance up on the tank now?
And what happened to the Power Word: Barrier (aka group shield) that was mentioned?

What I really want to see with Discipline is for us to bring things to the table that Holy Priests can't. The additional Divine Aegis shield is a really unique feature, as is the fast casting Penance heal. It lent Disc priests to stack up crit and just spam heals all over the place to see those bubbles go off everywhere. But in order to withstand all that casting, we needed the mana back from Rapture.

Now the raid healing abilities of Holy are beginning to look more appealing to me.

Ok, no more speculation (whining)! I must wait to see how this all plays out. I might even have to get on the PTR myself, but I really want to wait so I don't ruin the surprise.

MT Healing on Sarth +3D

2009-02-23T10:25:00.002-05:00

We attempted Sarth again last night, we didn't down him with 3 drakes but got much closer this time. I feel really good about my strategy on the main tank and now run the same pattern each time.

On main tank heals it is myself plus a holy priest, and our tank is a DK. It's important that me and the other priest work in sync and move together.

This is my strategy.

We pull Sarth to the opposite edge of the island, which would be opposite from where he is standing before you engage him.

I shield the tank before the pull so any damage is absorbed while the raid gets into position.
The tank receives a misdirect and a hunter pulls him towards the raid. As the tank positions him in the corner of the island, the raid moves around him going behind his tail to get in position on his side. You can get hit by the tailswipe here but not if you move in a wide arc.
Sometimes I get hit, sometimes I don't, but it is not a big deal if I do since I have a shield up on the MT.

At this point my character is now facing in the direction of the portal where you enter the instance. I'm facing Sarth, and I'm lined up with the MT. The rest of the island is to my back. So I don't see any of the other drakes land or any of the rest of the raid. But that isn't for me to worry about.

I angle my camera to the side so I can see the wall on my right. I just keep healing the MT and listen for the Flame Tsunami (aka flame wave or flame wall) announcement. On the Big Wigs mod, you get an alert sound when the flame is going off. If I see the wall appear on the right, I know I have to take a few steps forward and hug Sarth. I stand right behind his front legs so I don't get hit by the cleave.
As soon as the wall passes I step back to my original position.

If the Flame Tsunami goes off and I don't see the wall forming to my right about a second after I hear the sound, then I know it is coming from the left and I have to move back to the middle of the island.
There is a red line that passes through the middle so I use that as my guide for where to stand. I actually walk backward, I don't turn my character around first.

Now during a middle flame wall, the tank has to pivot Sartharian towards the entrance. If the tank moves him too far you may be hit by the tailswipe when you move back in after the wall. If the tank moves just enough, Sarth will be on an angle and you should not get tailswiped when moving back in.

Furthermore, you can still be in range of the tank for heals during a middle wave, as long as you don't move back too far. You can stand right on the edge of the flame wall and not be hit by it. This is important, since the tank can take some significant damage if you are not spamming heals due to being out of range.

Aside from moving either forward or backward during Flame Tsunami, I just watch the ground for the Shadow Fissures. These are the blue swirly circles that one shot you if you don't move out of them within 5 seconds. If one appears where I'm standing I just stop casting and take a step forward or to the side. You also have to make sure you don't back into one during a flame wall.

While doing all this moving and healing, I also keep my Power Infusion up on a nearby mage everytime it is off cooldown.

When Vesperon lands, this is when things get hairy as the tank is now taking huge amounts of fire damage from Sarth's breaths. Our strategy is for the DK to use their cooldowns intially to help mitigate this damage, but once they've used those cooldowns, the priests have to step in.

However we haven't actually gotten to the point of using priest cooldowns yet. It is really just a matter of communication though, the holy priest uses Guardian Spirit first and I use Pain Suppression on the next breath.

More to come as we progess on this fight!

Two Nights of Raiding - Naxx, Malygos and Sarth +3D

2009-02-20T18:18:00.001-05:00

Where to begin? The last two days have been exciting!

It's my second week with the new guild, but it already feels like its been much longer than that. We raid on Wednesday and Thursday, right in the middle of the week. So for the rest of the week I just log in to do the Sons of Hodir dailies, which have become incredibly boring now. It feels like it is going to take forever to get to exalted so I know I'm probably not going to want to step foot in that zone again.

But I know I can look forward to raid nights because for me this content hasn't gotten boring and repetitive - yet. I guess there is some benefit to starting the game a little late!

Naxx-25
We cleared it in one night in 3 hours time. It is like a whirlwind when we go in there. Plow through the trash, down the bosses with no long set-ups or explanations, get loot distributed quickly and keep moving.

I got two upgrades from my list of wanted gear, so I'm working my way to my ideal set. It is a little frustrating though being an initiate because I have very little DKP, especially since I'm spending it faster than I can earn it at this point. I also cannot win an item over a full member, so I saw two things drop that I really desire but couldn't even bid on, one being the Soul of the Dead trinket and the other being the Torch of Holy Fire godly healing mace.

I couldn't have outbid the full members anyway because of my lack of DKP, and there was a little bidding war over the mace so it is going to have to drop a few more times before I'll have a chance at it. Who knows, maybe I can pick it up for one point :).

Malygos
It was my first time ever in Eye of Eternity, because we hadn't gotten there yet when I quit my former guild.
The first attempt though we did wipe, and I know I screwed up because for some reason I couldn't target my own drake to stack up the healing.
The fight is very chaotic and things move quickly, I didn't know what was happening half the time. It is funny how you can read all the strategies (which I did) but nothing really prepares you for it like experiencing it first hand.

The first thing I had to do was turn down spell effects some, because the place is bright and there are lights flashing everywhere. Combine that with all the spells of the raid, and my FPS dropped to like 18.

When he spins everybody around in the Vortex it really hurts, but I knew to start spamming Holy Nova on the way down as everyone is nice and grouped together when you land. I knew about this trick thanks to all the blogs and forums I read. I'm even thinking about trying the Holy Nova glyph now since I seem to be using it a lot more often these days.

On the second attempt I followed the strategy that I had read about which if you are assigned to heal, you just target your own drake and stack the healing to 5, then hit your AoE heal. I didn't use the shield when he focused on me, I just kept healing and it worked.

One of the drops was the Hood of Rationality, which is the best cloth helm, but again I couldn't bid on it. It went to another priest, but now I'm the only priest in the guild who doesn't have it. It did pain me a bit to know that the priest who won it was replacing T7, whereas I'm still wearing the blue helm from Culling of Stratholme. But that's how it goes.

Sartharion with 3 Drakes
After Malygos we moved on to Sarth. I've done heroic Sarth before with no drakes in pickups, so I knew about the lava waves and such. It was pretty daunting though to go from no drakes to three.

I was assigned to Main Tank healing, which is what I'm good at so I was very happy with that. It was myself and a holy priest, so we could use our Guardian Spirit and Pain Suppression during the breaths. Well we never got to that point but we came very close once.

I can't really describe how insane this fight is. You have to keep watching for the Flame Waves every few seconds, so I position my camera in one spot. It if see it in my view I know I have to move beside Sarth. If I don't see it a second after the warning goes off, I know its coming from the other side and I have to move back.

All my focus is on healing the tank. I didn't try to deviate from my assignment and heal others, even if I saw they were low. When Shadron lands he is right behind me. So suddenly I have this purple drake taking up half my screen, and there's little fire adds littering up the floor. It makes it hard to see the Shadow Fissures that form on the ground. On top of dodging Fissures, I'm still watching the sides for the Flame Waves, and making sure the tank is topped off and shielded.

On top of all that I'm also watching my cooldown on Power Infusion so I can give that to one of the mages when its up, because we need all the dps we can get. And that was the ulitmate problem last night, we didn't have enough dps in the raid. We actually had one more healer than we needed. We did get pretty close though and I think we will get this down with a better raid makeup.

So that was my last two days in Azeroth. I'm taking tonight off from the game to get back to reality. My house is in total disarray and I have a pile of laundry to do.

Thoughts on Ulduar Preview

2009-02-18T10:14:00.006-05:00

We've gotten a little bit of information on the next raid content which is now posted all over the internet so I won't re-post it here.

After reading what they have planned for Ulduar a few things jumped out at me.

1. Replayability.
Because they are only releasing one raid dungeon, they are making it multi-dimensional in order to keep players challenged. There will be a boss with a setup similar to Sartharion, in that there are defense towers that you can destroy to make the encounter harder. According to the article 11 out of the 14 bosses are designed in a similar way.

Essentially you're still raiding the same content, only making it more difficult each time to increase the challenge and the loot. It sounds to me like Blizzard has learned from this last content addition that if they can't provide us with more encounters, we'll get bored and leave the game. I guess giving us different ways to kill the same bosses is supposed to keep us busy for several months.

2. Hard Mode.
Blizzard keeps referring to a "hard mode" in the article, it seems like they've changed the naming convention over from "heroic" mode. Whatever you call it, the good news is that there will be a normal and hard version for both 10 and 25 man content. However, I'm not sure how this coincides with the heroic mode that we know of today, which was really just dependent on the size of your raid.

Will the 10-man content be just as challenging, or in some cases more challenging, than 25-man? This has already been an issue with WotLK. Yet the 10-man loot is less desirable.

3. Vehicles.
I have to admit I'm not a fan of using vehicles for raid content. It was fun for the occasional solo quest, but in a group situation when you have to depend on everybody else to know what buttons to push, it can fall apart.

There are also issues with add-ons, when you have to heal say a drake that the player is riding on and not the player themselves. It can be difficult getting this to show up properly in add-ons like Grid.

I remember the first time I did Drak'Theron Keep. During the last boss where you turn into a skeleton which you are "possessing," my bartender wasn't set up properly to show the abilities so I couldn't do anything but stand there. Needless to say we wiped.

I can see the vehicles being a hurdle to get around initially.

4. Dual Specs
It is too early to tell what kind of effect Dual Specs will really have on the game. I do think it will be a pretty drastic change. I think this is another effort by Blizzard to provide retention of subscribers. After all the years we've spent playing this game and putting so much effort into our characters, making it easier for us to change our role on a whim might keep some people from quitting of frustration.

After all, as they keep raising the level cap, it will become even more painful to just re-roll a different class if you suddenly decide you are sick of tanking or whatever.

It could go the opposite direction though, in which guilds are pressuring their members to respec to fill a needed role. It may be expected that people be able to change on a whim and keep up with various sets of gear, now that Blizzard has made it so easy. It happens to some degree now, so if respeccing has become easier and cheaper I can see the problem worsening.
Hopefully though guilds will be smart about this.

At the end of the day, I'm happy to see some new content coming. And I do believe it has the potential to be a very cool and maybe even beautiful instance.

Mending Hearts and Exploring the Old World

2009-02-16T09:15:00.005-05:00

This weekend was not very eventful in WoW. I did finally get "Love is in the Air" completed on Sunday afternoon.

The most annoying part about the holiday was the "Heartmender" achievement, where you had to mend 20 players broken hearts. It sounds easy, but with all the people crowding up the streets in the main cities competing for mends it was quite difficult.

First, you cannot visibly see when someone has been heartbroken unless you target them and look at their debuffs. The only exception is if you happened to be standing near someone the second they get heartbroken, as it makes a glass breaking sound and you see a broken heart above their head.

I got many of my mends by just being lucky enough to be there when it occurred. So my first strategy was to stand at a crossroads, where several different NPC's would be stationed, and just wait for people to come by and get heartbroken. But this wasn't always a good use of time, since more often than not a player is successful at getting a gift.

I could have just followed someone around as they made their rounds to see if they became heartbroken, but I figured that would be a little creepy.

I finally took the strategy most other people used, which was to stand at the steps in Stormwind. You just have to click on everyone who approaches, to see if they have the debuff. Most people knew they could get a mend at the bank. There are also a couple NPCs right there at the steps so sometimes I'd catch one in action.
It was tough as I had to be quick with the mend, since other people were standing around doing the same thing.

I was also a little concerned about the achievement for getting the roses that drop in certain instances. I'd been watching the channel all day, but it didn't seem like many people were advertising for groups. Maybe everyone was too busy running around getting gifts? I asked for a group farming the roses and got no bites. Finally someone contacted me because I was in the queue for UK.
I didn't get the roses the first time around but they agreed to reset and go back in for the first boss. Because of the kindness of strangers I got that deed done.

I also took the time to finish exploring Eastern Kingdoms to knock out that achievement, since I was already in the old world doing the Holiday stuff.
The longest part of that was opening up the Blood Elf starting areas that were added with the Burning Crusade. They really are very unique areas and from a visual standpoint they blow away the Draenei starting areas.

I also had to fly up to the Isle of Quel'Danas. This area was added in after I had quit WoW during the Burning Crusade era, so I had not seen it on any character.
It is pretty, and matches the styling of the other BE areas. There is another neutral faction there, because once again the Horde and Alliance are working together to eradicate some evil up there I'm sure. I don't even know the lore.
But I took a look at the faction rewards and there were some really beautiful robes. I feel we got a little shortchanged with the look of T7 with this expansion (at least for priests anyway).

So this is where the Sunwell raids took place that I've heard reference to, along with a 5-man dungeon Magister's Terrace.
Really the only time I've felt a little regret that I missed this content was yesterday. I've been a part of WoW since it launched, and now there is this one chunk of its history that I didn't witness and is gone forever. Unless of course they recycle the content later like they did with Naxx, but I doubt it.

I'm betting Sunwell was probably some of the more (if not most) beautiful raid content. Naxxramas is not a place you want to hang out in, there's this green slime everywhere and it is filled with slimes and spiders and gross abominations.
I'm looking forward to Ulduar though, I'm sure there will be some spectacular imagery there, similar to what we've already seen with Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning.

"Love" is Boring

2009-02-15T12:06:00.003-05:00

I do appreciate the holiday events that Blizzard puts into their MMO. They break up the monotony a little bit and can give some fun things to do outside of the usual questing and raiding.

But some of these things you have to do for the achievement are just total time sinks.

Thursday night, I didn't get chosen to for the raid. Which I was kind of expecting, seeing as I'm an initiate and I got to go on Weds night, plus they were doing some progression content by working on Malygos and Sarth + 2D. So I expected they would want their best geared healers for that.

Having the night off gave me an opportunity to do some of the tasks for Love is in the Air which ends on Monday 2/16.

I spent an entire evening running around Stormwind, Darnassus and Ironforge doing nothing but wearing perfume and finding guards and NPC's with hearts over their head.
This took 3 hours of my time, and I managed to get a few of the achievements done, but I'm still very far away from completing every achievement needed for the holiday (and for the meta-achievement).

You have to put together a gift package from each city, and combine into one Alliance gift package, which you turn in for your choice of items. This is how you get the Handful of Roses to sprinkle on players heads, or the arrows to shoot at players, or the rockets, or the food that you need for the achievement.

You also have to get "adored" packages, which also contain the items needed, but you can only do this once every hour! Certain items only come from these adored packages, like the Lovely Black dress.

It is totally random what you will receive from a package, so there is no guarantee you are going to get what you need before time runs out. The event only lasts for 6 days. For people with limited playtime, or simply with other things to do, running out of time is a very real possibility.

The other two events I've participated in (Winter's Veil and Lunar Festival) weren't too bad. Some of them were time consuming, the worst probably being locating all the elders spread out all over Azeroth, but I got them done well within the time frame for the Holiday.
This one is going to be a struggle, and I may just fail on this and not be eligible for the meta-achievement Violet Proto Drake.

Oh well, who knows if I'll still be playing after a year anyway.

25-man is More Forgiving

2009-02-12T14:59:00.002-05:00

I'm trying out a new guild. I'm going through the "initiate" process now, so in other words they are watching my progress and can /gkick me if I'm not up to par.

I did a 10-man Naxx with them on Tuesday night, because 10-mans are run on the off nights with alt characters. We didn't have an ideal raid setup, so there was no replenishment.
It was very messy, I was running low on mana quite a bit, and there were several wipes.

I think it was due to not only not having all the buffs but some undergearing issues as well. Also you have people performing roles that they aren't used to since they were playing alts.

The 25-man Naxx last night was quite different. It was really much easier than running 10-mans with my old guild.

My experience in 10-man content was that it moved much more slowly. Sure the bosses have less overall health in normal mode, but the added dps of having a larger raid seems to make things move much quicker in heroic.

On 10-man each fight was explained throughly before the pull. We mapped out where we were going to stand, who was going to heal who, when to use shield wall, etc.
In the 25, they all knew exactly what to do and just got down to it. Very little explanation was given.

Healing a 10-man was very different, as you have far less overheal. When I was assigned to a target no one else was going to be helping me with it, so it was critical that I not miss a beat.
On 25s they don't even assign healing most of the time. Only when they need to like for situations where we split into groups.

On 25s, there is a lot more room for error. If I messed up and got ten marks stacked up in Four Horseman, it didn't matter. With so much healing power you can heal through most mistakes.
I died on Thaddieus, and it didn't matter.

We pretty much steam-rolled through the instance clearing everything but Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad in 3 hours. Granted I don't know what it was like for them at the beginning, but I don't really understand why 25-man content gives so much better gear, when 10-man is actually more challenging.

For now, they seem to like me and I'm currently the only discipline priest. I got 4 upgrades last night off stuff no one else wanted, one of which is a best in slot robe. :)

LFG

2009-02-10T12:19:00.003-05:00

Now the search begins for a new guild.

It is really like applying for a new job, and just as much work. I've barely been able to concentrate on anything else today. I've been scouring various forums looking at recruitment posts. I'd like to stay on my server so I don't have to pay another $25 transfer fee, so that narrows my options.

My biggest concern right now is being able to find a guild that understands the Discipline spec.
I was talking with a guild representative last night for one of the larger guilds on my server. They aren't in the very top of the list on progression but they are doing quite well.

He stated that they didn't have a discipline priest in the guild, and that no one seemed interested in that spec or was able to perform well as disc.
This surprised me, with the growing number of priests converting to discipline and number of blogs and even forums now that are dedicated to the spec, I would have thought a larger guild would have had at least one.

It seems though that discipline is still largely misunderstood and undervalued.
The best I can do is state clearly in my application what we bring to the table, and make it clear that you can't value a disc priest on WWS reports alone.

I don't have any desire to respec to Holy, especially with all the gear I've obtained being focused on stats for Disc, I'd have to scrap a lot of my current gear and gems and start over.

I can only hope that with the changes to mana regen that are being discussed for the next patch, that Disc priests will only grow more powerful and finally get recognition.

And finally, unfortunately my husband has decided to quit the game again. He felt that we wouldn't be able to find a guild that would take us both, and he was unhappy with the role of the rogue anyway.

I finally got epic flight last night and can use my Bronze Drake which is a vast improvement, but it is very bittersweet as it was all his gold. I love you baby, and I'll miss you greatly.

Issues with Over-Recruiting

2009-02-09T12:20:00.001-05:00

I've seen my guild grow and I've been there since we started raiding Naxx.
We were originally always short a couple of players, but we had people we could bring in from outside the guild.

In the last few weeks, we've added 6 people to our roster. Now there are more than 10 players online on raiding night, so that means the officers have to decide who is going to sit out.

I'm uncertain as to why we wound up recruiting more people than we needed.

On the one hand, if you try to maintain a roster of exactly 10 raiders of the proper makeup for weekly raiding, you are always going to have somebody that can't be online at some point because they have some real life issue that takes precedence.
Then you have to pull people from outside the guild, who won't be reliable. Plus it kind of sucks to gear up people who aren't actually guilded.

On the other hand, if you maintain a roster of more than 10 raiders people aren't going to be guaranteed a raid spot on any given night.

I used to look forward to raiding nights, but not any longer as I never know if I'm going to be sitting out or not.
For a guild that only raids 3 times a week, if I sit out once I'm only raiding twice in a week. There could be as many as 4 days that pass before I raid again.
Plus I'm already saved to the raid, so I can't go join someone else's PUG that week.

It further complicates the issue because I play with my husband. It has been highly likely that the two of us won't get a spot in the same raid, so we actually aren't even raiding together.

There are other issues as well, such as decisions that the officers have made in regards to loot counciling, or choosing who gets to raid, that I've felt weren't fair. I'm also baffled by some of the recruiting choices they've made, such as a level 80 healer who is still wearing level 70 healing gear. I was top on the healing meters in our last raid, and if a discipline priest is top on the healing meters something is seriously wrong.

My husband and I stayed up very late last night discussing the issue. We've decided to leave our current guild tonight.

We can only hope at this point that we can find a new guild who will have raiding spots for us both.
Rogues aren't a very desired class anymore unfortunately, so it might be difficult. He doesn't want to have to start over and I don't blame him.

This could be our opportunity to get into some 25-man content which could be exciting.

Disc Changes in 3.1

2009-02-05T15:52:00.002-05:00

Everyone's talking about the possible changes posted today for Patch 3.1.
Discipline priests are getting a Power Word: Shield that is a group ability.

It is a little weird to me, almost creepy, because I've been thinking about this heavily this week.
When healing 5-mans especially, whenever there is an encounter where your entire group suddenly takes a ton of damage and are sitting at less than 50% health, it makes me panic.

Holy priests can just cast their Circle of Healing, instantly, and bring everybody back up.

Disc priests have to shield somebody first, probably the tank since they likely still have aggro and are still taking damage. Then we have to cast our Prayer of Healing, which is slow even with borrowed time.
Then switch back to the tank, who could be dangerously low by this point, and quickly Penance, Flash Heal, Flash Heal, to get him back to full.

The Gluth fight in Naxx is a particularly good example of this when he does that Decimate, and reduces everyone in the raid's health to 5%.

I've been thinking wouldn't it be great if we had a group version of Shield? So that in these exact situations it bids us a little time so we can get that PoH off without worry of somebody dying while it's being cast.

I don't know if it could be pre-cast for the Gluth decimate, since that particular ability will probably always take everyone's health to 5% regardless of whether or not they are shielded, but it would definitely help to cast it afterwards.

Still don't know any details at this point on if it will have a cooldown, or be instant cast, or if it will proc Borrowed Time.

I'm hoping its instant, cause if it had a cast time that would lose a lot of its benefit, and I can live with a 10 min cooldown or something.

Contribution and Loot

2009-02-02T15:46:00.001-05:00

I was so excited when I heard about Warhammer's system of awarding those in the party who had a higher contribution with a bonus to their rolls. Theoretically it would give those who were present the whole time and worked hard a better chance at the loot.

Their system didn't quite work as intended, in fact it didn't really work at all since people who showed up late and did nothing but afk the whole fight were in fact placing first when rolling. I haven't been following WAR in detail lately but to my knowledge this system still hasn't been fixed.

But it was a good idea in theory.

WoW of course has nothing of the sort, and has left it up to guilds to decide who gets what. When you're in a PUG, all bets are off and you just have to hope for a lucky roll.

I did a 25-man PUG OS yesterday. I inspected the other priests in the raid, neither of them had a single epic.
We also had a resto shaman and holy paladin, but I didn't get a look at their gear.
The raid leader put me on main tank healing upon learning I was a discipline priest, so he wasn't completely clueless.

It took 3 tries to finally down Sartharian with no drakes up. Most of the other healers kept dying to the lava waves. Myself and the resto shaman were the only ones really contributing any healing, as he was first on the chart and I was second.

Granted his total healing was way higher than my own, and everyone at the end of the raid was congratulating him on a job well done. Healing meters are not kind to discipline priests, but I wasn't going to get into an argument with these people.

I was not hit by a single wave on any of the attempts. I spammed heals on the MT which was my assignment. When I had time I topped off the OT's or the raid.

When the loot dropped, there were two glove tokens for the priest gloves, also shared by paladins and warlocks. Of course every priest, pally and warlock in the raid rolled. The two healers who kept dying everytime and contributed nothing, won.

But that's what you sign up for when you do PUGs. I just have to keep running them until I finally win what I'm after.

LF Boot Enchants

2009-01-30T12:43:00.001-05:00

What's up with the lack of good boot enchants?

For a discipline priest, the +18 spirit enchant isn't much help. The Greater Vitality which gives +6 mp5 isn't really useful once you get past a certain gear level, as mana regen shouldn't be an issue for discipline priests.

That leaves Icewalker, it is +12 to crit rating, but we don't need the added hit it provides as well.

I've heard of some priests choosing Tuskarr's Vitality, which is a high level enchant that adds run speed and stamina. I can see the usefulness when making long treks in Naxx, like running all the way to the Four Horseman encounter for example.

However I wouldn't want run speed equipped during Heigan, since I tend to get a little ahead sometimes on that encounter as it is.

So I chose Icewalker, more crit can't hurt and I see it as the better of our limited choices.

Before I head out for the weekend, another update on our raiding progression:

Last night we downed Four Horsemen, Patchwerk, Grobbulus and Gluth. We discovered a better strategy for Four Horseman and had a good raid makeup to pull this off, so now that we are past that point we were able to kill 3 additional bosses that we had not seen before.

12/15 in Naxx now and I suppose we will start on Thaddius on Sunday. This has been a great week in terms of progression and I'm amazed at how things have suddenly turned around, especially since we keep subbing in new people because of our small roster.

I think the fixes to the server lag have been the largest contributing factor.

My husband who has been playing a rogue and desperately trying to catch up with me should be hitting 80 tonight!
I'm very relived as he can now group with myself and the other guild members regularly, and we can start running heroics this weekend.
I know how it feels to be left out of groups and raids and I'm proud that he has struggled through that in order to be able to group with me.

Random Observations

2009-01-29T16:10:00.002-05:00

There isn't a particular topic I want to focus on today. Just some random observations from this week.

Progression:
It's been a great week for raiding so far. The lag has been non-existent in Naxx.
Our guild has clearly progressed as we cleared everything up to the Four Horseman in one night. We only had one raid wipe from Instructor Razuvious, other than that all the bosses were killed in one shot. We didn't have any healing items drop, all the cloth that dropped had hit rating so one mage that we brought with us wound up with about 4 pieces of gear I think (would be great if we could recruit her). The only mage we had in our guild is still AWOL.

Tonight we go back and start with the Four Horseman, so if we can find a way to defeat that encounter, we will officially be on brand new fights.

Discipline Fixes:
Our rapture talent was previously not working properly when casting heals on warriors, death knights or druids in bear form. The talent was returning mana based on the mana pool of the target you healed, instead of your own mana pool as it should have been. So casting heals on most tanks (with the exception of pallies) would return no mana to me.

Now most of the time I run with a pally tank but not always. Sometimes I'm assigned to heal our feral druid. Now that Blizzard has fixed the ability in Patch 3.0.8 I've noticed the difference. My mana bar barely moves during most of our raid encounters. The exceptions so far being Razuvious, because I actually GHeal spam the mind controlled NPCs because they have so much health. Also on Loatheb, because I actually dps for the majority of that fight which is a quick way to burn some mana.

I've been paying attention to the other healer's mana after a boss dies, and our holy priest will be sitting at half or 1/4 mana, while our resto shaman is almost out of mana. I don't have to drink water after a fight and would rarely be under 75% of total mana.
It really seems overpowered now. But then again I haven't done any 25-man raiding yet.
I've been carrying around the same water and mana potions in my bags for an eternity. This is also the reason why I haven't been compelled to further my cooking or fishing skills, because I don't really need food buffs.

Economy:
The WoW economy is really wierd right now. Some days I can sell my Ebonweave, other days it comes back to me unsold. Same way with my Frostweave Bags. Even though enchanting uses less dusts now, the price of inifinite dust on my server hasn't moved, and shards are still cheap.
I was looking into selling the epic Spellthreads, but the Frozen Orbs which are a component would cost more than what the threads are going for.

I'm kind of at a loss as to how to make gold. I'm making it but very slowly. I just don't have time to go out and farm materials.

I've managed to level enchanting up to 400 just doing enchants for my husband. At least it is providing some use since I'm currently not making any gold from enchanting. I need to decide how high I want to take it and at some point just start selling all the mats.

Fallen Earth

2009-01-27T11:40:00.002-05:00

I signed up for Fallen Earth updates a long time ago and haven't seen an email in quite some time. I got one yesterday with an announcement about how to sign up for alpha testing. Also it looks like they are gearing up for a closed beta soon.

Fallen Earth is being developed by a company in my town. It has been in development for so long, I thought the project would be cancelled before it ever saw the light of day. Yet it looks like they are still moving along, so perhaps we will see the release of a unique MMO this year.

A post-apocalyptic MMO, where you skill up your abilities to shape the character you want, not having to be limited to specific class types. I'm not 100% sure if the game will even have levels in the traditional sense.

The game will offer both PvE and PvP, as there are different factions which will be vying for control in world where goverment and law as we know it doesn't exist. I think of it as a Mad Max type atmosphere.

I can see this being a game that draws in a lot of roleplayers. But will it have any depth to it other than just crafting and roleplaying? That remains to be seen.

I'll keep my eye on this title, but I'm not going to sign up for any beta testing as I've found it ruins the experience for me when the game finally launches.

More PUG Moments

2009-01-27T11:35:00.000-05:00

Last night I wanted to get the Elders of the Dungeons achievement out of the way so I ran a few PUG normal instances.

Some went well, like the UK I did with several lowbies. Pulling was a little slow as the tank was being a little overly cautious, maybe he didn't realize he had a level 80 epic geared priest with him.
But I'd rather have that then some moron who pulls dangerously, or who doesn't know how to hold agro. I "healed" the DK using only my PW: Shield. Other than that I helped dps and it was a fast run with no deaths.

The normal UP I did though was the opposite. Had several group members for whom it was the first time in. I kept pulling agro somehow.
The group was slow, and we wiped once on the gauntlet event due the people not getting away from the wirlwind the boss does. Right before the last boss they didn't pull the mobs back far enough, so someone got feared into King Yimron and we wiped.

It's a long run back, so I'm sitting there waiting for everyone else and this warrior in our group keeps going the wrong way and getting killed. He does this not once, but three times!
Eventually the other members of the group started laughing at him, I was just shaking my head thinking "God is this ever going to end?" Fun times I tell ya.

I think my husband should hit 80 on his rogue by this weekend, so we were talking about how we are going to run heroics to gear him up. We certainly don't want to run heroic PUGs, but with our small guild there typically is not enough people online of the correct makeup to put together a group. I heard that we may be picking up a third tank though which should help. /crosses fingers

Gratitude

2009-01-26T15:51:00.000-05:00

As I was thinking about what to write down in my blog, I noticed all the news stories on the web about the massive job layoffs today.

I began to think about the thousands of people who just lost their jobs around the world, added to the thousands who have already lost jobs and I can't help but think this chain reaction is not at an end. What will happen if our economy crashes? Will we all be wandering around in the streets, jobless, hungry? Will we go back to a simpler way of life and start growing our own food again?

The word that comes to mind in my head is not one of sorrow or worry, but gratitude.

Right now I'm thankful for what I have. My home, even though it may have very little furniture and personality at the moment, it is still large, warm, and bright. I have the love of my husband and my two beautiful cats.
I have a nice car that gets me around. I still have a job, even though I complain about my job internally every day, and even though it isn't my life's purpose, I still have one and I'm still bringing in an income.

I have the money to afford the games I love to play, and I have a working computer to play them on.
When you stop to really think about it, you realize your life is full of abundance.
And if all these things get taken away, I will adjust and accept the new situation.

In light of today's layoffs, it is a reminder that we get too bogged down with our own worries about things that don't even matter. Things that work themselves out in the end anyway.

Like my distress over not winning a certain piece of loot last week, it turns out I was able to get a replacement item over the weekend from a PUG raid. They are not quite as good as the item I lost but close enough, and now I have another piece of T7 gear.

Or the venting over the lag on our server. Now that Blizzard seems to have the Wintergrasp situation under control, there was no lag in Naxxramas last night. We downed Heigan on the first try, and I was the only healer to make it through all 3 of the waves, flawlessly. Our raid leader even pointed out the excellent job I did in voice chat. No healer items dropped last night but so what? We made progress as a guild.

At the end of the day though I have to remember that WoW is just a game, just a form of entertainment. And it will not last forever, especially if our economy continues this sharp decline.
If I have to move back to the mountains to the family farm and work the land for my own food, I doubt I'll be owning a computer. But will I really miss it?

The Price of Lag

2009-01-23T10:14:00.001-05:00

Last night the lag on my server was so terrible, it caused us to not kill a single boss.

Yes, I'm blaming the lag.

With the Heigan the Unclean fight, timing is everything. The success of that encounter is related to your raid making it through the eruptions, which means if you have any kind of server lag you're just screwed.

How can Blizzard program encounters such as this, which are really simple aside from the avoiding green lava thing, and then allow this lag problem to continue therefore making it impossible to raid?

Unforutately we were up to Heigan and if you don't kill him you can't move on in Naxx. We tried for a hour and a half, sometimes getting him down to the 3rd phase. But by that point there would only be about 3 people alive and if just one of them died in the next wave of eruptions it was over.

We decided to try Obsidium Sanctum after that, but the lag was no help there either. The raid leader wanted to try it with one drake up, which just added to the complexity. People are standing in the fissures (the red swirly circles that do shadow damage from the drake we left alive) without realizing it. Heals are taking way too long to cast. Add to that the fact that we had to figure out who was best suited for tanking the drake, the adds, where they should stand, etc.

After a couple more wipes we finally called it, and ended the night killing nothing, and paying only repair bills.

On another note, why is it that we kept trying, time and again? Personally if I had been leading the raid, I would have called it after about the fourth attempt on Heigan. It was clear to me that the lag was the issue, our raid has done this before, people know the steps, but if they can't see the eruptions or if their screens are locking up how in the world can we be successful? Call it before more time is wasted, and more gold is spent unnecessarily. But I guess people don't want to admit defeat, it is hard to come away from a night of raiding with zero kills and zero loot.

You could say I'm being negative, I say I'm being realistic.

It's Not You, It's Me

2009-01-22T15:28:00.001-05:00

I'm beginning to feel trapped in my small guild. Why is it so difficult to find a guild that fits my particular needs and playstyle? I've yet to remain happy anywhere for long, and I'm wondering if I'm alone in this.

When I first joined up with them, I did so because they had not yet started raiding and I was still leveling up. So I knew I'd be in there when the guild got its first kills, and I knew they'd accept me and not turn their noses up because I wasn't already 80.

Furthermore their raid times and philosophy about raiding were equal to mine. They wanted to raid only 3 days a week which was the most I wanted to commit to. However we aren't really casual, because raiding and progression is still very much important.

But they want to keep the roster small, so everyone gets a guaranteed spot in the raids and so it creates more of a "family-like" atmosphere. This is where things become tricky, because if one of our members decides to drop off the face of the earth (which has happened with our mage) we are left with a spot to fill.

They are trying desperately to recruit. I see our GM advertising in the Trade channel, and constantly posting on our realm forums and the general guild recruitment forums. But it seems to be going nowhere and we haven't recruited anyone in the last 2 months.
I have a feeling that people just aren't attracted to a small guild that is only running 10-mans, and one that requires raid attendance in order to operate efficiently.

The upsides of the guild are that we may have few players, but the ones we have are of high quality. For the most part our members know their classes and they know how to play and I've been impressed with what we've been able to accomplish. People know how to follow directions, be on time, and are courteous to one another. Our raid leadership is excellent, knows how to put a raid together and assign tasks, and does a good job of describing each fight. We have a loot council which for the most part works well, they try to be fair and it is nice not having to worry about DKP.

So why am I unhappy?

I'm growing tired of logging in each night to see only 7 or 8 people online. We don't have enough to form two heroic 5-mans at the same time. I used to be the only level 80 healer, so I automatically got taken to all the instance runs. Now that we have another healer who just recently leveled, they are taking her instead since she needs the gear more. But does that mean I have to constantly be left out in the cold?

We are still having to pick up one or two people for raids. I'm never certain on any given night that we will have the manpower, and I don't like having to depend on (and gear-up) people that aren't in our guild.

What happens when we grow bored of 10-mans? There is no way with our small roster and our track record of recruiting that we can get 25 people together for heroic raiding. If I want to do any 25-man OS or VoA PUG groups I have to be online at the right time, and I usually miss them.

Is a larger guild really the answer?

It seems like most of the larger guilds aren't as picky about their members. They'll accept anybody who is 80 and has somewhat decent gear, as long as they fill the role they are missing. I don't want to run the risk of joining a larger guild to run 25-mans with, only to despise the people in my guild because they are immature, or are terrible players.

I wish there was a way to do some "trial runs" with other guilds without having to leave the one I'm in. Because there is only so much information one can infer from guild websites and recruitment posts.

What do I want?

Ultimately what I want in a guild is this: Quality, mature members, who can get things done in less time (which means raiding no more than 3 times per week). A roster that can support forming up multiple 5-man groups on off-nights, and 25-man raids without having to look outside the guild for "fill-ins". A guild that values its members and preferably uses a loot council or random roll distribution.

It doesn't seem like it would be so difficult to find a guild like that.

For now I will wait and see what happens. If things don't improve, I may try talking to the guild leaders to find out what their viewpoint is, to see if they've thought about perhaps merging with another small guild. At some point I feel this is all going to come to a head.

On Patch Day Everyone Loses

2009-01-21T13:56:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was a strange day full of ups and downs.

It snowed pretty heavily which is very rare where I live, so I got a full day off work - good thing

Yesterday was both maintenance day and patch day, so the servers didn't come back online until 4:00pm - bad thing

I got to watch the inauguration of our 44th President and witness history - good thing

When I finally logged into WoW, I found myself being booted back to the character screen about every 5 mins - very bad thing

Despite all the troubles with Wintergrasp resetting and screwing up all servers, our guild leaders decided we would raid Naxx anyway. I was sure they'd cancel it, but they wanted to continue.
So the evening started with me having to respec back to Disc, and since I couldn't stay online more than 5 mins, I wound up doing this in a hurry as invites were going out.

It took almost an hour to finally get everyone into Naxx and start clearing trash.

But randomly, people would just disconnect. It happened to me 3 or 4 times, luckily never during a boss. So it appears the instance servers weren't immune to the problems linked to Wintergrasp.

I was frustrated already, and then another blow was dealt when I didn't get a drop I had been hoping for. The item was given to a mage instead, and he is not a guild member either. I was furious for a while, but I decided not to bring it up in the middle of the raid. I waited until we were finished to let the GM know that I was definitely interested in the item, but I was confused as to why it didn't go to me especially since our other healing priest already had it.

Now I don't think of myself as a loot whore. I've already gotten a few nice drops from Naxx that I'm grateful for. My guild has been very helpful at times, even coming to finish heroics with me that were left undone because of a bad pickup group for example. But I just couldn't understand why I was getting passed up.

The mage in particular has run with us one other time. He's a good friend of a guy who also runs with us a lot. The leaders told me they were trying to recruit both of them into the guild, and we are pretty desperate for more dps as we don't have 10 level 80s in the guild yet to bring to raids. But is giving him a drop really enough to bribe someone into joining? What happens if we never see him again?

I was assured that I'd get the item next time, which at this point I can only hope it drops again soon. This particular item is just as good as the T7 equivalent, in fact I think it would be superior as it offers more crit.

Respeccing for the Guild

2009-01-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

Snow is falling outside and I have a day off work. Of course it had to be a Tuesday, so I can't play WoW while I'm stuck at home until this afternoon, and that's if nothing goes wrong when they implement today's patch.
On the other hand though I'm looking forward to the patch as there a lot of crafting changes and the market is unstable right now.

But I digress.

In the last couple of days the most important thing to happen is that the only mage in our guild has suddenly disappeared. We're not sure if he is having computer issues or what. So the leaders asked both myself and the other priest in our guild who just dinged 80 if one of us would respec to shadow for Sunday's raid.

My thoughts on the matter are mixed. On the one hand, I've always wondered what it would be like to raid as shadow and the guild was going to pay for my respec to it would be a free way to find that out.

On the other hand, all my gear is oriented for healing. I just got the T7.5 robe from a PUG VoA run, but it is the shadow priest version with +hit. I had no other hit gear at the time I was asked.

Then there is the matter of playstyle. I like healing and love healing as discipline. I get a good amount of satisfaction knowing that I'm responsible for our success or failure, because if I don't heal there will be no players alive to kill whatever is attacking us. As DPS, sure I still have a role to play but I was afraid my dps would be dismal compared to the rest of the raid (and it was.)

I felt I had the better gear since the other priest had not been 80 very long, so I volunteered. After buying new glyphs and rearranging all my bars, I ran a few heroics to get practice.

It was very difficult to train myself to stop watching health bars, but once I got the hang of it and figured out a good spell rotation, it was bascially queuing up the same spells over and over. You could say the same about healing but healing is also unpredictable. If something goes horribly wrong, you have to step into action and use the spells that are suited for the occasion.
With dps, it just seemed like the same thing over and over for me.

My final conclusion is that if I can't output enough dps to top the charts consistently, or at least not be dead last, then I don't see the point of playing a shadow priest. If I wanted to dps in a raid, I go with another class choice. We have to go back to Naxx tonight, and I'm hoping our mage shows up and that I'm not asked to raid as shadow again.

WoW, and the Evolution of MMOs

2009-01-16T10:45:00.003-05:00

There is a post on Wowhead today about whether or not WoW is a real MMO. There are some interesting points in the post which got me thinking.

I believe MMOs are still a niche market and always will be. Blizzard, with the creation of WoW, opened up the market to people new to MMOs because they were responsible for Diablo and Warcraft. They already had a following of people who played PC games, only these were single player RPG and RTS games.

However I believe the people that are truly in love with MMOs, and that will play them until their demise are people that were around at their creation, or soon after. These would be people who started with the MUDs, Ultima Online or Everquest.

The original MMOs were not graphically advanced (the MUDs had no graphics at all) and were unforgiving. If you could use your imagination, and make do with a very basic UI which gave you little to no information about your surroundings, then you were going to be successful. And that meant you had to study up on the game, without the use of extensive databases, online maps and add-ons. I know that people used to write down things in notebooks that they kept beside them at all times.

You had to group with others, to keep a good reputation for yourself, and depend on other people to help you through a bad situation. For all these hardships, the games were fun and you had a real sense of accomplishment when you achieved something. So the people who played these games, had to love it. Because no other type of gamer would put up with all this.

Blizzard made the MMO more accessible. It is still an MMO, just not of the extreme cases like the originals. And even the originals have been made a little easier, including Everquest today.

As the article asks, I believe it is foolish for companies to continue to invest in new MMOs. WoW has created a different standard now. The marketplace for the old school MMO was already established 10 years ago so there is not much flexibility there. WoW added on to that market, but you have to account for the fact that majority of their 11 million customers that they tout are Asian customers, which most other MMOs don't target.

It seems so easy to think that a company could just make a game like WoW, or use a lot of the good elements of WoW, when designing their MMO. But many have tried since 2004, and failed miserably.

I believe we are eventually going to see the demise of MMOs as we know them. Computers are getting smaller, and more mobile. People are going to have less reason to have a large desktop computer at home. Gaming is following that trend, with more people using consoles and kids using the handheld units (PSP). MMOs are going to have to adapt to the console market, and as such they will morph into something entirely different. Certainly less reliant on a computer mouse, but also a move away from text based chat entirely.

As long as I can still create my own character, upgrade her armor and weapons, and be able to build up her abilities and customize them to my playstyle, I'll be happy. But the real challenge is how do you to play with a constant set of friends, in a constant world, on a console game?

Journal update:
Also need to update on the current happenings: Our guild did Sarth w/ no drakes and VoA last night with 9 people. We got a 10th for Naxx to pickup where we left off and finally killed Heigan, after about 4 wipes. Yours truly was the last healer standing after the first eruption waves, but it wasn't too difficult to heal. Loatheb was easy, after I realized there is a gate that closes to his room, of which I was on the wrong side of during the first attempt.
We've been taking 3 healers to OS and VoA, but I really believe we should be taking only 2, as those encounters are not very taxing and I was actually able to do some dps with all my extra mana.

Checking up on goals

2009-01-15T10:48:00.002-05:00

It's January 15, a good day to check on where I'm at with the goals I set for the New Year.

1. Gearing up - Check. This is the easy part. I've got a few more slots I need to fill in with epics, namely two biggies the chest and legs. I'm working on the Kirin Tor rep for the robe reward, which is just as good as the robe that drops in Naxx 10 anyway and it will hold me over until the day I get a T7 chestpiece token (maybe tonight?) If I can ever find a damn group for HoL I can go for the epic cloth pants from there.

2. Reputation - I'm exalted with Wyrmrest but that is the only one so far. Slowly working on Kirin Tor, I'm making sure to do the cooking daily every day but that is the only one I've been diligent about. I'm totally burned out on dailies already.

3. Leveling Professions [Cooking/Fishing/Tailoring] - I've made very little progress here. I've been reading other blogs on the economy, and I think I've been taking the wrong approach with tradeskills by focusing so much on trying to level them. I really should be selling the mats instead. I could have had my epic flyer already if I had sold all those infinite dusts I've been using to level enchanting. And I hear the Northern spices are an excellent market, maybe I should sell the stash in my bank instead of using them for food. I don't feel I really need the edge of the food in Naxx 10 anyway. Mana hasn't been an issue.

4. Epic flight - Still not even close, in fact I have less gold now as I spent 1,500 after I dropped skinning to level enchanting. Now its time to get that gold back out of my investment. /sigh I've never been good with money.

5. Finishing quests and achievements - I'm slowly making progress here and have been getting more of the heroic achievements lately. I've even started working on the explorer title.

Naxxramas Finally!

2009-01-14T10:03:00.002-05:00

I actually did begin to grind for Argent Dawn reputation back in the day but gave up before ever getting into Naxx. Last night I finally got to zone in to the new and improved Naxx.

After reading posts about how 10-man encounters can be more difficult than 25-man encounters, I had some anxiety going in expecting it to be a horrible meltdown.
I have to say it was relatively easy, and now I can understand what some guilds have been complaining about with the raiding content not being challenging enough.

Sure we had some wipes. It was most people's first time in and no matter how much you read up on the encounters or how many times the fight is explained you just have to go through it yourself once to really understand.

There were a couple things that irritated me that Blizzard could definitely do something about.

1. The Lag!
We might have to stop raiding on Tuesdays because the lag was horrible last night. Everyone was complaining about it in general chat. It must be because the instance resets on Tuesdays and all the guilds are hitting it at once.

The lag was causing most of us to randomly disconnect. One of our healers in particular would DC at the beginning of every single boss pull. So myself and the remaining shaman healer had to pick up the slack, but honestly it wasn't that difficult (go discipline priests!)

2. The people that sit on their mounts blocking the summoning stone.
Once you fly into Naxx you should be automatically dismounted. There could be a little landing platform right outside that you could land on and remount from to exit. People should not be able to crowd up the already limited area inside Naxx where people need to summon and wait for the rest of their raid.
I can't believe these people who purposely sit there on their stupid giant Mammoths just to piss everyone else off. Why do some people get such a kick out of ruining everyone else's day?

/rant off

There were also some wonderful things about last night's adventure.

1. The instance is well laid out with easy access to bosses, and there are a lot of them.
Hardly any trash to clear out, and no stupid bottle neck points like the suppression room from BWL. This is my first time raiding since BWL so I'm really noticing how Blizzard took a lot of the frustration out of raiding.
If you do wipe it is a pretty short flight back to the instance.

2. You can take a group of 10 people in there in average gear and still down bosses. It is really like a larger version of a heroic instance.

3. Each boss drops an emblem, so you are still getting something out of the raid if you don't win actual drops. Of course once you've bought all the badge gear you want the emblems will be useless to you, unless Blizz allows us to trade them in later for the emblems of valor.

4. I got two new rings! Yes two different rings with crit dropped and they were both awarded to me. We use a loot council in our guild so it is nice not having to worry about winning a roll or not having enough dkp to bid. However I did feel guilty about getting both rings since we did have other healers and a mage in the raid that could have used them. But it would be our officers, not me, that would have to deal with any complaints.
Now I really need to work on my enchanting.

5. My spec really shined.
I was also anxious about us not having enough aoe healing. Our guild currently has no raiding holy priest but we should soon as one is almost level 80. But I couldn't have been happier last night when our paladin kept disconnecting and I had to keep both our healing assignments up. Even with spamming heals on two tanks I could not run out of mana. I don't think I ever even dropped below 50%. My huge mana pool, now 23,000 raid buffed, is paying off.

Raiding - A Look Back

2009-01-12T11:21:00.001-05:00

The Alliance failed to obtain Wintergrasp again, so no VoA raid last week. My guild decided to complete the Blackwing Lair achievement instead since we already had a group of people online.

Most of the raid had never been there before, so it was interesting to get their reactions to the old world raid. BWL was largely responsible for my initial burnout with the game, and going back there last Thursday reminded me of why.

We had 8 level 80s in the raid, and we were able to walk by a good portion of the trash mobs. BWL had entirely too many trash mobs, and after you killed Vaelastraz it was a long way until you encountered the next boss when you had to clear all those groups at level 60.

We read up on the fights online before the attempts, as I had forgotten a good deal of it, but it did all evenutually come flooding back.

We killed Vael on the first attempt, although no one survived it as the remaining two people were blown up as soon as he dropped. I reminded everyone in the raid that it would have taken weeks for a guild to get to the point of downing Vael.

Then we skipped all the trash until the suppression room. Since the rogue has to be in stealth to disarm those suppression devices, we just killed everything with suppression on and agroed everything as we slowly walked forward. Never in a million years could you have gotten away with that at 60.

We also killed the Broodlord with suppression still active, which slows your casting time by about 80%, but there was really no need for me to heal much.
Once we got to Firemaw we did wipe due to the Shadow Flame aura. That thing is still nasty to anyone not wearing an Onyxia Scale Cloak, and we only had one which the tank wore.

That meant fighting back through the suppression room again, so now the raid was beginning to see what a pain it was to wipe repeatedly in BWL and how unforgiving that was.

We had a couple other mishaps on the dragons, mostly due to the Shadow Flame aura since if anyone but the tank got it they were toast. Chromaggus was so easy for us as we could just ignore his breaths and not have to play the line of sight game. We kept the debuffs dispelled as best we could, which was a bit of a challenge with only two people in the raid who could cleanse as the encounter was designed for you to have multiple healers in the raid.

The Nefarian encounter was a cinch. We handled the initial waves of mobs at one time, where as in the past we would have had to split up into two groups. I remember my old guild struggling to even get Nefarian to land, and there were many nights of wiping over and over on those adds without even a shot at the final boss.

After he landed the fight was over in a matter of minutes. The class calls were no hinderance, they seemed so scary back then but this time they were just fun little diversions.

As for the loot, all the judgement pieces dropped. Our paladin wound up getting a judgement set in one night, except of course for the helm which comes from Onyxia and the legs from Ragnaros. The randomization of loot was unforgiving as well, as for all that effort it would take months to get a full set of tier 2 gear simply because it had to drop in the first place, and then you had to win the roll (or have enough DKP). If that had been a "real" raid and one person got all the loot, I would have been very angry.

Now that the BWL experience is fresh in my mind, I can clearly see the drastic revolution of raiding in WoW. I had forgotten how challenging those encounters were. Having to coordinate 40 people and get them to do their jobs, fight through loads of trash and then kill a boss that would easily take multiple attempts to get right meant your guild progression was slow. The only recourse was to raid every day if possible, and this led to the burnout of many.

In WoW 3.0, the rate of getting epic gear is so much quicker due to the smaller raid sizes, and the ability to purchase most pieces with emblems. Instead of a boss just dropping some priest-only robes, they now drop a token which three different classes can redeem so you have a much greater chance of equally gearing up your raid. And you have a greater chance of something dropping that someone in the raid can actually use.

The downside to raiding being easier and gear coming much faster is that people are already running out of things to achieve. I believe for the most part the changes Blizzard have made are for the better, but they do need to keep the new content coming for this to work. Otherwise people are going to become bored and leave again, guilds will start losing their members, and we will be in a slump until a content patch.

Avoiding Burnout

2009-01-08T10:35:00.003-05:00

Keen has a post today about why Wrath of the Lich King didn't hold out for him.
It made me think about why I'm playing WoW currently. While I certainly understand his reasons, I believe it all relates to the mindset of the player and what brings you enjoyment.

The end game is still the end game, that much hasn't changed. After hitting level 80, you are left with running heroic dungeons for emblems to buy gear. You also run heroic dungeons to gain reputation with factions to buy gear and enchants. After getting a certain amount of gear, you can start 10-man raids to get more gear.

WoW is heavily gear-based. Anyone who has played it at least once in the past 4 years knows this. You can't compete and you can't progress without it. It is also a little bit about the "show-off" factor.

My strategy is not to let this go to my head. Yes it is easy to get sucked in and become obsessed over what you have or don't have. I wind up staying up way later than I planned because I'm running a heroic and I'm really wanting that mace from Keristraza. But I know if I continue down this path I'm going to burn myself out.

So what else do you do in the game to prevent this burnout? Fortunately WoW offers plenty of other options and this is where I think it shines over games like Warhammer.

Quest: The quests really do keep getting better and better, and PVE is where this game shines. For the most part they are creative and they are involved. If you aren't reading the quests you are doing yourself a great disservice. But why quest after 80?
For achievements, for extra gold, and possibly for reputation. I also do it because I can shard the gear rewards for more enchanting materials.

Achievements: Some are very simple and some require going back to complete old content. You could spend many hours in this area if the achievement popping up on your screen gives you satisfaction. Considering that I see so many people fishing in that pool in Dalaran all the time, it is a draw for some.

PvP: I have to mention this because it is a large part of the game. I personally don't find the PvP in WoW to be gratifying, because as Keen mentioned, it is just another gear grind and it is very frustrating to PvP without the required gear because you won't stand a chance. Some people though do get enjoyment out of doing the occasional battleground or Wintergrasp, and there is a whole other progression to be had there.

I suppose if you didn't turn PvP into a goal and just went in there to have a good time it could be possible. The one battleground I actually can stand is AV, because I have a much higher chance of survival in there by hiding behind the zerg. I stay away from Arena like the plaque though.

Crafting/Gathering/Fishing/Making Money: There is an art to making gold in WoW that some people get enjoyment out of. You can play the auction house, or farm stuff to sell. You may be able to make money with your trade. I want to level my tradeskills eventually just for the satisfaction of having a maxed skill. I'm holding off on that for now until this inflation decreases and after the next patch. But it is nice to be able to supply your own enchants, or bags, or whatever.

Do stuff with your guild: For me a good guild is key. I enjoy grouping with them, even if we are running the same dungeons over and over. The runs go smoother and there is little to no frustration. Most importantly, it is more rewarding for me to see a nice drop go to a guild member than it is to see it go to a total stranger. If I had to PUG heroics every night, I probably would have cancelled already.

Alts: You can always start a new character. Some people have so many alts already that this is not an option, but I've never been a big "alt" person. If I get to the point that I've accomplished everything I want to on my priest, I'm saving a little hunter for that day. And I've chosen a class with a totally different role so it really will be a different experience.

Finally, I know this sounds so simple but it is important, take nights off and do something away from the computer. If there is nothing else enriching in your life that you can do besides WoW, it is a serious problem.

Disc Priests...they keep going and going

2009-01-07T10:28:00.004-05:00

Last night we couldn’t win Wintergrasp so no VoA raid for our guild. Wintergrasp was ridiculously laggy, I’m not sure if it was because of the amount of people there at once or that fact that it was maintenance day yesterday or what.

Regardless, when it takes me 10 seconds to cast one heal and my screen looks like a slideshow it becomes very difficult to coordinate any kind of effort.

We decided to try Obsidian Sanctum instead. Many of the guild (myself included) had not done Sartharion before so we killed all 3 drakes first.

After pulling the boss, our paladin healer got disconnected immediately. A couple people died to the walls of fire. We wound up downing the boss with only 5 people left, including myself and one other druid healer.

I used my shadowfiend once, and didn’t even have to use a mana potion. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t run out of mana and I saw without question how sick the mana regen of a discipline priest could be. I focused on healing the tank with penance as I always do to keep Grace stacked up. Everyone else got shields and flash heals.

Granted this was a 10-man normal version of the raid, and by killing the drakes we did make it super easy, but I was still impressed that I didn’t go OOM before the fight ended. Especially since I’m still wearing mostly blues! At times I get frustrated that I don’t have the aoe healing abilities of a holy priest, but last night left me very satisfied with my spec and what it is capable of.

Thanks to our raid leader passing on the gloves for me, I got my first piece of tier 7.
I also hit exalted with Wyrmrest last night for the epic boots, which I gemmed with more intellect and MP5.

People are Strange

2009-01-06T10:44:00.001-05:00

To quote a line from Seinfeld, "People… they’re the worst."
Sometimes you just don’t get other people.

I’ve decided to start blogging about little experiences that occur to me in WoW, mostly for myself so I can look back at all the stupid things I’ve seen other players do. I don’t want to turn this into a big ranting blog, it is more for me to look back and laugh at these situations as a reminder that none of this is worth getting very upset over in real life. I’ll keep names out of it for anonymity’s sake.

So here’s the list from this past weekend:

1. Ebay’d Paladin? - I’m with a paladin tank in heroic Drak Keep and he is extremely slow between pulls, standing there doing nothing or sometimes drinking to regain mana. This is the first indication something is not quite right with this guy, as if this is his first time playing the game or something. I tell him to move out of the black circles on the floor in that first hallway, but of course he doesn’t listen and dies.

He tells the group, “my weapon is red.” Someone graciously offers to summon their traveling mammoth outside for the repair. They run out but he is still standing there until they tell him again “run outside.” I remain inside the instance, several minutes pass, but the group hasn’t returned yet. Finally someone asks what the problem is, and the paladin replies, “I need 30 gold to repair, can somebody loan me 30 gold?”
I promptly leave group.

2. Druid who gets reported – I’m in a heroic Utgarde Pinnacle with this moonkin druid, who starts exclaiming to the party that he is arguing with Blizzard because someone reported his name as being offensive. I’ve seen people with worse names, but this one was a borderline case that could potentially be seen as a racial slur.

Apparently Blizzard will just boot you from game, so he suddenly goes offline (thankfully not during a boss pull) and comes back in with a different name that he didn’t even get to pick himself. He spends the rest of the time arguing with Blizzard in tells and complaining. After the run, he’s screaming in trade chat wanting to know who reported him, as if they would ever admit to it.

3. Hunter who doesn’t play well with others - I know hunters get a bad rap, but here is a case where I really was confronted with a “huntard.” We’re in heroic Halls of Lighting, hailed as one of the toughest heroic instances existing. The hunter keeps drawing agro from the warrior tank, but he doesn’t FD, just stands there and gets beat on until the warrior runs over and gets agro back. I’m baffled, and I send a tell to the warrior who is noticing the same thing and also adds that the hunter isn’t using misdirection.

Finally I get so fed up I mention in party chat that he should FD when he gets agro so I don’t have to expend all this energy trying to keep him alive, and the warrior chimes in too, and his response is “I don’t love that.” Ok so you don’t like to use the abilities that keep you from dying? But, the real kicker is when it was clear we were going to wipe, he would FD somewhere in a corner so he wouldn’t have to die with the rest of us, so I know he knew how to use the ability.

At one point we all wiped near a group of mobs around a corner. Everyone else in the party runs back, but the hunter hasn’t even released. When asked why he isn’t with the rest of us, he replies that we should rez him after we’ve cleared the mobs. Even though it would be much easier to clear them had we had our additional dps. This guy goes on my list of people never to group with again.

The Downfalls of Disc Healing

2009-01-05T17:55:00.002-05:00

Now that I’ve been running heroics everyday for the last week, I’m getting exposure to different types of boss fights, and different types of group makeup, and I’m finding the weakness in my spec.

Notably, and I think it is no surprise, my guild runs are going extremely well. We have a competent leader who gives out clear instructions, we will talk it out if we need to change a strategy or figure out what went wrong, and of course we use ventrillo.

Pick-up heroic groups though are an entirely different matter. There is no vent and little communication exists, and many times a boss strategy is not discussed prior to the pull because everyone assumes people know the fight (though I always announce in party if I haven’t been there before). There is the added problem of not knowing your group members and how geared (or not) they are.

I had read that discipline spec’d priests are not strong at AOE healing but I didn’t realize how much of a detriment this could be. Yesterday in heroic Halls of Lightning, with a pickup group I found a few trouble spots.

First there are some adds that spawn in the room before the second boss, they are elementals that do fire damage but they are non-elite. I never expect to wipe on trash, yet our groups plan was to run straight through the room aggroing everything and them aoe them at once.

Well of course the mobs can slow you when they hit you so some people got slightly behind and people are taking damage all along the way. Knowing I’m not strong with AOE heals, I figure I’ll be smart and start doing some holy nova while we are running.
Not a good idea as I now have a lot of agro and I die as soon as we stop.

Then we decide to run the same plan but I’ll not heal at all until we make it to the steps. Then I have to frantically start healing people individually, and the DK who is a little farther behind and doesn’t get in range in time of course dies. Holy Nova doesn’t heal for enough, but Prayer of Healing is too long of a cast time. What I needed was Circle of Healing.

Next is the dreaded Loken fight. From what I’m reading on the web this is the toughest heroic boss. Everyone is taking damage from the aoe. Everyone has to run away at a certain time and stick together, and run back in together. Anytime there is aoe damage plus a lot of movement, I know I’m going to have a tough time healing it. I’m keeping up PoM, and shielding people, yet it doesn’t seem to be enough to keep people topped off properly. It winds up being another “I wish I had insta-cast Circle of Healing” moment. I can’t help but think holy priests would have a much easier time of this.

I’m going to stay discipline for as long as I can. Some of these fights are very frustrating, but I also know that CoH is going to get nerfed to a 6 second cool down soon. Plus aside from the aoe healing, I love discipline spec.

My First Raid, and Enchanting!

2009-01-02T10:39:00.004-05:00

On New Year's Day I played WoW from when I woke up at 8:30 in the morning, until 11:00pm when I had to go to bed. A day off work, a lot of businesses are closed, it was freezing outside, what else am I going to do right?

I ran a couple heroics with my guild in the morning, and got a new blue helm and boots which I still need to gem. We did heroic Culling of Stratholme with plenty of time to spare and I actually won the bronze drake! I feel a little guilty though as it will be a long while before I will be buying artisan riding skill. Why?

Because I spent over 1,500 gold yesterday leveling enchanting!

My heart just broke a little more every time I hit the buy out button in the AH for all the materials. Except for the very beginning, it was cheaper to buy the dusts than it was to buy all the cloth to make items to disenchant.

I did decide to keep tailoring and drop skinning for enchanting. I had been selling leather but only for about 18 - 19 gold per stack, so it didn't seem that profitable for all the farming. My hope is that I'll be able to sell bags from tailoring, and dusts/shards from disenchanting.
Furthermore, there is no enchanter in the group of guildies I've been running dungeons with, so we've been vendoring drops that could have been DE'd.

Later in the evening my guild put together a pickup Vault of Archavon raid. We did both the 25-man and 10-man versions, and interestingly the 25-man was much easier as we had no deaths except for one hunter who stood in the rock shower.

On the 10-man, one of our off-tanks died after taunting as he dropped pretty quickly before I could get a heal off. But we were still very successful, and even though I'm in full blue gear I didn't feel my gear was a detriment at all for this fight.

Unfortunately no priest items dropped, but one lucky warlock in the raid walked away with two epic drops. I'll get my gear eventually.

The other great thing about last night is that the raid went very well, so many people seemed interested in running with us again. I'm hoping these pickup raids will help put our guild on the radar as we desperately need more DPS.

New Year's Goals

2008-12-31T09:33:00.004-05:00

I'm not very fond of the word "resolution", and I never really believed in stating any resolutions since they all get forgotten about by February anyway.
Nevertheless this time of year always makes me think about what I want to do in the New Year.

So I do have some personal goals in 2009, both for the game and outside of it

Goals for WoW:

1. Start gearing up via Heroics and 10-man raiding - My priest hit level 80 last night (yay!). Time to start running heroic instances. Hopefully my guild will have 10 people ready to raid within the first few weeks of Jan so we can start Naxx.

2. Building reputation - Wyrmrest Accord is the first faction I want to advance for the mace, and of course the drake at exalted. After Wyrmrest I will continue to work on Kalu'ak for the fishing pole.

3. Level Cooking and Fishing - I've been stuck at 393 cooking for a while. I'm at a point where Feast is the only yellow recipe. I'm trying to get the meats farmed to make a least a few feasts to get me to 400. I'm also trying to run the cooking daily everyday to store up the awards and Northern Spices.

Since leveling has been my main goal for the last month, I don't have a lot of time to farm for meat, and chilled meat especially for the cooking dailies.
As a priest I can farm for meat but it is not incredibly efficient for me to do so, which leads me to fishing in order to get stat food.

I got my fishing skill to 225 on this character back when I first made her, but haven't messed with it since. After dinging 80 I should have more time on my hands to fish. I need to run the old fishing dailies from TBC. One day I may actually do the Stranglethorn Vale fishing competition. My plan is to be able to make Imperial Manta Steak , Firecracker Salmon and Spicy Blue Nettlefish for raiding.

4. Buy Epic Flight - I'm not busting my tail to farm the 3,000 gold I still need to buy epic flight training. I'm making money slowly everyday from quests and selling leather. It will be really nice when I can afford it, but for now I'm crawling along on my slow flying mount in Northrend.

5. Level Tailoring - Tailoring, how I hate thee. It is currently stuck at 405. I'm making bolts of netherweave when I get enough, and I'm in the process of making some spellweave for myself. Next goal is to get to 410 in order to make bags. I'm not sure if tailoring is going to be worth keeping and I've struggled with the idea of changing my profession. But I'm also scowling at the idea of leveling another one from 1 again. By the time I'm able to make any armor for myself, I'll probably have better from raiding.

6. Finishing quests and achievements - After 80, I still want to go back and finish all the Northrend quests because they are actually enjoyable, and they'll be a source of gold. I also want to go back and work on some achievements, since this didn't exist in the game when I last played. I'd like to fully open all the maps one day to get the Explorer title, for example.

Personal Goals:

1. Exercise more - OK most people have this one right? I don't need to lose weight, I just need to work on being more healthy and playing an MMO means I'm spending a lot less time (ok no time) going to the gym. I really need to work on that balance.

2. Read more books - I've got tons of books sitting around my house that I want to read "one day."

3. Have a regular "date night" - Actually one of my husband's ideas, we want to set aside a regular once or twice a month where we actually leave the house and go to a new restaurant, or go do a new activity near our home that we have not done before.

WoW: There and Back Again

2008-12-30T10:41:00.003-05:00

In order to set the stage for the posts to come, I thought I should make a post about my WoW experience and where I'm at today with the game.

2004 - 2005:

I started playing WoW when the game first launched on 11/23/04. I had played Warcraft (the RTS game) prior to this so I had some knowledge of the lore, and I was sure it was going to make a great MMO.

My husband was playing with me, and we both created Night Elves (he a hunter, me a priest). My first priest was named Daria, which is the name I still post under today. We were on a PvE server (Eonar), and we leveled those characters to 50 which back in those days took us a couple months.

At the time we were playing with some friends that we had played Everquest with. One night we all decided to try a PvP server (Eredar) just for fun and rolled Horde characters. I made another priest, undead this time. What started as an experiment became our full time server. I didn't care much for PvP, I loved my NE priest, but since my husband and friends wanted to stay on the PvP server I got out-voted and remained there.

I don't entirely regret the experience however. I witnessed some great moments on that PvP server, before the invention of battlegrounds and before Blizzard tried to tack on a PvP experience for its customers. The natural PvP that occurred was much more fun, we used to run around with our guild attacking towns like Darkshire and starting trouble in Stranglethorn Vale.

2005 - 2006:

Eventually our characters hit 60. My husband had been playing a rogue, but there was no tanking class in our little group of friends and we were contstantly looking for a tank for instances and such. My husband got fed up and decided to make a warrior, so I made a druid to level up with him. I now had 2 level 60's, but decided I liked the change of pace of a druid and made her my main.

We joined up with a raiding guild with my druid as resto. The guild already had MC on farm status, so I got all my Tier 1 gear within a matter of about 3 weeks. We moved on to BWL, and raided 5 to 6 days every week trying to progress. Naturally, I got burned out. I was logging in to raid all the time and did nothing else, no pvp, no crafting, etc. This led to me taking a break from the game.

I tried returning sometime around the summer of 2006 and with a fresh start made yet another Alliance night elf priest, on a relatively new PvE server (Ysera). I leveled her to 60 pretty quickly in a casual guild. The guild changed leadership, I left to find a new guild and got into a couple that quickly folded. I wasn't playing with my husband or friends, and had nothing really to strive for, so I quit again in the Fall.

2007:

Sometime in the summer of 2007, months after the release of The Burning Crusade, I got a trial copy in the mail. I wasn't playing an MMO at the time, so I thought "what the heck" and installed it. My husband got interested again, so next thing you know we were all back in the game on the PvP server, leveling our Horde 60's in Outland.

With the burnout of raiding with my druid still fresh in my mind, I went back to playing my undead priest. We played around in TBC until Dec of 2007, and then burnout set in again. We did not raid this time around, we decided to focus on gearing up through PvP. But one can only run the same battlegrounds so many times, and arena was just a frustrating mess. And let me tell you, pvp'ing as a priest is just not fun to me. This time I thought I was done with WoW for good.

2008:

In 2008 I played a variety of games: Vanguard, LotRO, and Warhammer Online. At times I played no MMOs. Then after the letdown of Warhammer, I decided once again to try out Wrath of the Lich King.

Around 11/17 I reactived my account, and I logged in to the 60 priest I had made on Ysera in 2006. I had not done any TBC content as Alliance, so I started in Outland. I came to the realization that the quests for Horde and Alliance in TBC were pretty much the exact same, but I breezed through it with the increased experience gain and tons of rested exp.

Having to level to 68 before stepping foot into Northrend, I was already behind the curve. The guilds on Ysera were already clearing 25-mans and I couldn't find any guilds that were interested in recruiting me. I wound up transferring to Drenden and joining a nice small guild that has not begun raiding yet and has goals that are in-line with my own. I'm currently level 79, specced Discipline and should begin 10-mans pretty soon.

So there it is, my entire WoW history. It has been a convoluted mess of changing servers, factions, and classes.
I don't know what the future holds, but I really like what I'm seeing in Wrath and if the days of long hours of raiding and gear treadmills are over I think I can stick around this time.

Another Gaming Blog

2008-12-29T11:40:00.001-05:00

After much internal deliberation I'm creating my own blog that no one will probably ever read.
So why am I doing it? Mostly because I needed a reason to write, to hone my skills, and a place to get these thoughts out of my head.
This blog will be my pensieve.

So for my first foray into blogging, I've learned starting one is not particularly easy. A name is important to me (it can take hours just to name my characters!), so first I had to come up with a good name for the blog. I wanted to do something with the word Pixels, because of the tendency of people to proclaim in the MMORPG world "Remember these are just pixels!" when players become overly obsessed or emotional over the game.

Of course many blogs already existed with "pixel" in the name or domain name, most of which to my dismay were either never posted to, or had not been posted to in years. I finally settled on pixelsgaming.blogspot.com.

So why a gaming blog?

The blog will be centered around gaming simply because it is my hobby, my distraction from the real world. I've been playing games at random since the introduction of the Atari and the first Nintendo. But I didn't really get hooked until I learned about MMORPG's (massively mulitplayer online role playing games).

It all started with Everquest in 2003. With its dated graphics and unforgiving gameplay, I was enthralled that I could play with total strangers and collaborate with them to take down powerful enemies. I could advance my character, make it more powerful, change its appearance.

And that is what I think really drew me in. It was like playing virtual dress up - I can change her hairstyle, her clothing, I can make her look like myself or what I wished I looked like. Wait a second, this could be an extension of me! I can accomplish things that I could never do in reality!

So after my hard day at my job, I can come home to the next adventure, not knowing what lies around the corner for my alter ego. Who will she meet next, what new shiny toy will she find, what new land will she discover?

After Everquest the games just became more advanced and I've tried many others. Today I'm playing the most popular MMO, World of Warcraft, so most of my posting for the time being will likely be centered around WoW.