New FBD Site

Far Beyond Driven rolled out a brand new website today. It is on a wordpress backbone with modified template and look. Please check it out and note the most recent thread about recruitment. Kind of personal news, but most of the stuff I post here is, so take it for what it is worth.

Attrition, Regression and Nazjatar

Nazjatar is a bit on an oddity. It was started just a few days before the Burning Crusade (January 4th, 2007) to transfers only from: Illidan, Spinebreaker, Daggerspine, Destromath, and Mal'Ganis. It then opened its doors to new characters the day TBC was released (January 16th, 2007). So most of its players left from high population servers to get a fresh start or wanted to reroll a new character on a new server for a fresh start. Either way you have people who deemed their former situation as unpleasant and wanted to start a new on what they assumed would be greener pastures.

Since the day it opened and saw an influx of player transfers and rerolls it has slowly been losing those players. At one point it was the least populated US realm in WoW and has since shifted to the top 20 least populated. It is bad on the Horde side (5,974), but even worse for the Alliance (1,546). It is tough to keep guilds together, even harder to get a 25 man raid guild together and harder still to actually make 25 man progress. Two horde and recently one alliance guild have had success in doing so. Nascent seems to be the golden child of the realm, WTF seems to have broken up with a large number of their members going to Nascent and Demise have only recently found success.

The rest of the guilds, FBD included, are left to rinse and repeat the recruitment cycle. If and when we hit a wall in our progress we will inevitably lose members. When we do we have to feed from the 10 man guilds and start to gear a new generation of 25 man raiders. This starts the process over for the 10 man guilds and the cycle continues to repeat it self. With the current population we face a limited resource, which only allows for one or two guilds to progress. It is on the guilds to fix the problem (mergers or stealing players) or on Blizzard (free transfers or realm mergers). I don't see either happening any time soon, so we will be stuck in the cycle for the foreseeable future.

Nazjatar's population issues seem to carry over to the battleground (Shadowburn) as well. We are significantly under represented in the top 100 of three brackets. Currently we field no teams in the top 100 for 2v2, one team in the top 100 for 3v3 and one team in the top 100 for 5v5. With our player pool so small it can only lead to a select few excelling, just like the realms raiding scene.

On Reading

Originally posted at WNE on 10/25/07

My "reading" section on the right hand side of this site sat dormant for a very long time. This wasn't because of a lackadaisical effort on my part to update, there was just nothing to update. I hadn't been reading. Well that has changed now that I read three books in the last three weeks, well listened to actually. That is neither here nor there though, literature has penetrated my brain in one form of media or another in the past three weeks and I think I should share.

The Tipping Point
This is the kind of book I want to read to people or at least give them as a present so they feel obligated to read it. Rarely do I find nonfiction reading so fascinating, but the tipping point holds up on all ends. The basic concept looks at the three types of catalyst that are present in every epidemic. Epidemic can of course mean disease, but it also encompasses everything from fashion trends reaching critical mass to crime rate reversal. It is not very long, but it left me thinking and talking about its premise and concepts weeks after I completed it.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
I started this book in the middle of the summer and fell behind in completing it as other books peaked my interest. This should not be a commentary on this books pacing however, I am just a huge WoW lore geek and I stop everything when a new book comes out. Back to Confessions of an E.H.M. though.

The book puts a grim twist on the United States in the 70's and 80's that I want to take with a grain of salt, but even recent events make me think are valid. The view from thirty thousand feet has private engineering and economic firms working as consultants in third world countries in unison with the world bank and American contractors. The private firms convince the third world countries that they are on the edge of an economic boom and they will will need the systems to support said boom in place before it occurs. The countries borrow from the world bank to pay the American contractors to build their new systems. The boom never comes and the country is now indebted to the World Bank (which is essentially the United States) so they now can be manipulated (UN votes and the like). If the country won't play ball the US government sends in the CIA or goes to war. Great reading even if it makes me a little scared. If only half of the stories are true it still makes me question United States foreign policy.

If any family or friend reading would like either of these on CD please let me know. If I don't know you and you are reading this I would suggest you drop a few dollars at Audible.com or grab them off Amazon.

Magus Blade and other some such

So I posted on Tuesday with my QQ goggles on because I had never seen a caster main hand drop after months of raiding two instances that drop them. Well Tuesday night my luck finally turned and Gruul coughed up a Bloodmaw Magus-Blade for me. I guess he reads my blog. No, that is not me, gross little alliance gnomes...smell like loose change, but that was the only picture of the blade I could find.

2.3 Engineering Notes
So now that engineers are getting their own mounts they are willing to share some more useful items with the rest of us I guess. As of 2.3 potion injectors can be used by none engineers, which is a god send for my poor bag space. They are also finally getting new repair bots that can be made with Outland mats. What a concept Blizzard.

4 Piece Mage Season 3 Change
I was honestly looking forward to the return of the reduced poly cast four piece bonus. The blink reduction is nice and all, but I just don't notice it as much. Most of the time I am not the focus target in 3v3 or 5v5 so I don't need my blink, but I sure do polymorph a lot. Even a reduction of just .15 seconds can make a world of difference. In a fight against another mage rush down team a reduced poly cast can mean the difference between winning and losing.

My New Staff and Spec

I have been running around with my Staff of Infinite Mysteries since June of this year and no matter how many times I have been to Prince and Gruul (more than I can count) I have never seen either of the caster weapons they drop actually drop. I think even the blue geared casters in our guild at least have the prince dagger. I have had the off hand from Netherspite collecting dust for months too. This makes me one sad mage (panda). Not for long though, I have been rubbing my palms together in anticipation of the season 3 staff for so long that they will soon set a flame from the friction. I did the math today and as long as the 2.3 patch comes out sometime soon, I will have the points for my staff in three weeks. Personal rating requirement not with standing of course.

Fire! I finally took the plunge that I only had the stomach to talk about months ago. Now that I am free of tailoring and the spec lock it forced me into, I can spec back and forth all day long. Fire for raids and frost for arenas, cost prohibiting of course. Fire certainly is a lot more fun than a deep pvp frost spec in raids, I get to spam two buttons instead of one and mixing combustions timer with my trinket gives more to do as well. It looks like I will need to get a threat meter again now that I can actually approach the tanks with ignites, dots and pure fireball damage.

Season 3 not far enough?

I have been posting like wild on my real life blog and the last thing I posted here was a truck commercial. So an update is in order, but first some commentary on season 3 personal rating requirements.

The incoming 2.3 patch will bring with it arena season 3 and the implementation of the personal rating system. There are still questions as to how the score will be calculated, but there is no question as to how it is going to be used. Season 3 shoulders (2000) and weapons (1850) will have a personal rating requirement in order to purchase them, but not to wear them. The main reason Blizzard is giving for these two rating requirements is scarcity. They want these items to be harder to get and also be used as a status symbol.

"Johnny Warlock must be a baller he has them fancy season 3 shoulders"

I have two qualms with their personal rating implementation though and both deal with it not going far enough.

Firstly, I wonder why they would not place a requirement on all Season 3 gear. If you want gear that is itemized to match tier 6 to be scarce, why not make people earn all of it. You wouldn't have to make it as hard to get as the shoulders, but at least put it at a 1700-1800 requirement. You would keep out half the population at least and leave the good gear for the people who have earned it through skill, not time invested. If you put in any effort at all for season 2, from start to finish, you could be in 5/5 with just a 1600 5v5 team each week. Considering season 2 isn't even over yet you may have time to get a weapon too. Players will be getting tier 6 itemized gear that is only available to a small percentage of the raid community, make it mean something.

1600 5s team gets 465 pts/week x 18 weeks = 8370 pts - 8250 pts for full 5/5 = 120 pts left over

Second, a by product of the new requirement is a sort of forced loyalty to your team. Currently good players are free to team hop all week, but as long as they get their real games by Tuesday they are golden. This has lead to a lot of unfair practices from good players. Team selling, carrying less skilled players and carrying less skilled teams. Now that there is a personal rating players may be less apt to continue, well at least until they get their shoulders and weapon. So that buys your average player maybe a month before he sees skilled players in full s2 with s3 shoulders and weapons slumming it on 1500 teams. In theory your skilled players have banked 5k arena points already. So they only need to get their personal rating up long enough to get their shoulders/weapons and then they can go back to team hopping and selling. Go a step further to require personal ratings on all items and you buy the average player some time.

The argument against this more strict requirement is for players who like to play with their friends. There is a skirmish system in place to take care of this. If it is about team hopping to play with your friends and not about bumping players points then you should be satisfied. The next argument might be the for bridging the gear gap. If you create disparity in gear that is too large then the haves will always out pace the have nots. This would be valid argument except for the fact that all of the season 1 gear will be available for honor (an uncapped system) and all of the season 2 gear will be on clearance. S3 is better that s1 and s2 gear, but not so much that a little skill can't push you over the hump.

FBD Notes
Far Beyond Driven lost its founder last week (Vermilion) to real life issues. While Verm is away we have new management team in place that should easily fill his shoes. We are still progressing in SSC and I expect a few boss kill shots in the coming weeks.

Arena Notes
My 3s team finally broke the 1900 ceiling that we had been under for 4 weeks. We got our rating to 1922 last week and then decided to add some new players this week and we are back below 1900. Fun while it lasted I guess. I am on a new 5v5 and 2v2 team as well. Both seem to have greater potential then the other teams I have been on in the past.

Profession Notes
Finally got a replacement for all of my crafted gear (4/5 s2), so I decided to celebrate by breaking my tailoring chains of oppression and taking up herbalism. I got it to 375 in 3 days and I couldn't be happier. Bring on the gold!

I am the lawbringer!