Cataclysm Changes

Not changes that are coming, but given the reins to Blizzard's MMO juggernaut for a day here is what I would change...

1. Flying
The trek from 80-85 went fast, less than 1 day fast and while that was appreciated from a sleep stand point, it made it feel less epic. Part of that was the ability to fly during these levels. I'm sure Blizzard put a ton of work into the 5 new zones they created, but I barely saw most of it. From 5,000 feet, on the back of a Frostwyrm, it all looked pretty boring. It's why I prefer a good steak to being hooked up to a feeding tube. The outcome is the same, but the experiences are polar opposites.

2. 84 to 85

Those levels certainly zipped by, but not at the same clip. If memory servers it took two hours and one million plus xp to hit 81. Alternatively 84 to 85 took six plus hours and nine million plus xp. Why did we only get five levels in this expansion again? So they could cram three levels worth of play time into one zone? It felt cheap. Twilight Highlands was a great zone, but it dragged after I was half way through it. Add the mobs in the zone requiring me to eat and drink after every two kills and it was near grueling.

3. Tol Barad
Like Wintergrasp before it Tol Barad was supposed to be a world PvP zone. Apparently they were unhappy with tenacity though, so the solution was to only allow equal groups into the zone via que. While that will surely make for a balanced experience, it also defeats the initial purpose. On servers were the faction ratio is completely out of whack (2:1 or more) it means plenty of people don't get in. Currently my server is seeing near battleground numbers of players facing off, think sub 15 v. 15. That is not world PvP it is a server only battleground that only a hand full of people get to play in every two hours.

4. Common Raid Lock Out
I have previously expressed some concerns with the shared raid lock out system. To date I had not experienced any issues with it though. Until last night. Blizzard's reasons for changing the system still don't make sense to me. Outside of that their go to example is the 25 man raid that starts the week with 25 players and has to split the raid into two 10 man groups. What about the 25 man raid that only gets 22 people for the first night? Has to bench two of their players to form two ten mans and then can not expand a raid back to 25 players the following night. Our group is effectively locked out of 25 man raiding for the rest of this week. I'm sure the two players that got benched last night and the three that show up tonight are thrilled to be relegated to PUGs or a "C" team for the rest of this week.

5. Early Healing
The biggest play mechanic to change in Cataclysm was healing by far. Damage dealers still hit things hard. Tanks still stand there and get hit. Both at roughly the same pace and with the same pool of resources. Healers got a rude awakening though. Our heals did not scale with our level, they cost bunches of mana and our main challenge is not running out when the fight is only at 50%. Gear helps a ton, from an average ilvl of 329 to 347 I have seen that challenge become much easier. For healers who might not read EJ all the time or are stuck running heroics with the random dungeon finder, life is going to be hard. What will ultimately end up happening is there will be less healers. We are already a slim bunch, but up the barriers to entry and you will see even less players sticking with it.

6. Archaeology

Want another time sink profession that takes forever to finish, but offers ten times the reward that fishing ever did? No, what do you mean no. I'm never getting Tyrande's Favorite Doll, at least not while it would still be useful to me in this tier. Technically this is a bonus profession. With a few more hours or sacks of gold I will have my two main professions to 525. Eventually relegating them to once a week or month efforts. The return on Archaeology will never be that easy. I thought this expansion was about things you shouldn't feel you have to do (see: Common Raid Locks). Well is it or isn't it?

Around the World in 85 Levels

Way back in September I was under the impression that Cataclysm would drop in November. I was also under the impression that the only way to get it was at a Gamestop at midnight. Both of those turned out to not be true. It ended up coming out last week (Dec 7th), I shifted my pre-order at Gamestop to another game and just bought it directly and digitally from Blizzard. I was still prepared for a three day slog of no sleep though. A near 72 hour leveling binge that would leave me with only fragments of my sanity. That didn't happen either.

This time around things were different. For Cataclysm, Blizzard went with a common release date/time in the US and Europe. So I could not start until 3am EST (12am PST). I was upset about this at first. After finding out I didn't have to go out in the cold at midnight though, I just went to bed at 11pm and woke up at 2:30am refreshed and ready to level. I was 81 before 5am and 82 soon after that. By 5pm on Tuesday I had hit 84 and logged off to be with my family for the evening. I was back on at 9pm and before 3am Wednesday I had hit 85.

So all five levels in less than 24 hours with two breaks to be a husband and father. This was a much different experience than 2008 and a welcome one. Sure my lovely wife gave me the go ahead to do as I wished with my staycation (wowcation?), but not having to beat myself up in doing so was awesome. The rest of the week saw me getting a solid 8 hours of sleep every night. Sure I filled my day with 5 man heroics and daily quest, but I did it on a normal sleep schedule and ate proper meals.

After a weeks time I have already hit superior and grabbed two epics. Tonight is our first 25 man raid. The first two ten man raids did not go so well, but everyones gear is getting better by the day. All I know is Toxitron better drop some bracers.

Just like in 2008, I'll do the numbers...

Days to 85: 1

Purples Replaced: all

New Purples: 2

Coolest New Purple: Earthmender's Boots

Special thanks goes to...

• My beautiful wife for being supportive and understanding given my addiction to not just WoW, but all things geeky.
• My son, to be honest he never knew what I was doing. I was always there when he was awake, but he is awesome enough to get my thanks anyway.
• Chort for leveling with me up to 84, he almost got realm first warrior after I logged off, but missed it by that much.
• My brother, for being a champ and heading into work at 5am on Tuesday. He wanted to level, but took care of his real world obligations instead. He still hit 85 by Thursday though.

The Shattering

The World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion is just around the corner. In one month I'll be leveling to 85 with all of my free time. In preparation for the release I decided, like a good fanboy, that I'd read the book that precede it. It is something I wish I could have done before WotLK, but Arthas was not out until five months after the game. While the book did get me excited about facing Arthas, I'd been level 80 for a while and some of the shine had worn off already.

It is no secret that the big baddie of Cataclysm is Deathwing. Most everyone knows that the lands of Azeroth will be getting a face lift care of the Betrayer. What the average WoW player doesn't know is who he is and where he has been. The last mention he got in a game was in 1995, during the second war, covered by Warcraft II and the expansion. Thankfully for us lore nerds we know through the books, about his origin, what parts he played in the past and when he was last seen.

So The Shattering would to pick back up after Day of the Dragon, right? Deathwing escaping, tail between his legs, to live and fight another day. Nope. Apparently he has been healing and planning his return in Deepholm. A fact I had not picked up on yet, save the paragraph in the wiki. My expectation was that The Shattering would be the build up before his return and it was. Just without mentioning Deathwing at all. Isn't this supposed to be about him?

The elements are upset, but we never find out why. Thrall leaves the Horde in the hands of Garrosh Hellscream without any logical reason. The same Garrosh who was suspected of skinning night elves, actually killed Cairne Bloodhoof and is still running the horde. Moira Bronzebeard, a character no one has seen since vanilla, is back to rule the Dwarfs in her father's absence. The same Moira who the horde has been killing since BRD opened it's doors. I guess that wasn't canon.

All that and not one mention of Deathwing. The whole story felt like filler. There were to many plots and not one of them carried any weight. There was not villain to root against or heroes to save the day, it all felt like tire spinning. Sure there are new leaders for the Taurens and Dwarfs, but none of it felt book worthy. Call it 50% my misplaced expectations and 50% Blizzard pulling punches. It was 100% disappointing.

Update: Resto Shaman 4.0.1

More thoughts on what I've been reading and playing as of this Tuesday. First a quote from an EJ thread on this very topic:

Most Shaman argue that Deep Healing doesn't have much value in the current state of the game. Incoming damage operates still under the LK model. Damage is really spiky, a missed GCD may result in player deaths and mana is not an issue. Most of the time, this results in players being at nearly 100% health or dead. In both cases, Deep Healing does not offer additional benefits. It will be a lot stronger in Cata, when player health will range between 100% and 0% for a significant amount of time.

My raid experience Wednesday night was cast from this very same die. Granted we only had 20 raiders on a 25 man raid. We had six healers though and lost a tank on all five of the sorry attempts it took us to kill heroic Lord Marrowgar. A fight we have had on farm for months was causing our healers heart burn. As a Shaman, who wears whatever hat my raid needs, I was having a hell of a time keeping the tanks up with my new tools.

Thankfully we are back on break from raiding till the expansion now. Where my new tools will be better suited.  For now it is back to my silly Mage.  He is crushing it by the way.

Resto Shaman 4.0.1

Hey remember when this bee log was about World of Warcraft. Forever ago right. Well my trajectory has been up and down since my last post about frozen bone dragons. I quit for the month of September when raiding content finally dried up like a raisin. Wait, that makes it sound sweet and delicious. Uh, think of a better simile that describes no new content for five months. Scratch that, moving on.

I got a wild hair last week to reactivate my account. This was without the knowledge of the changes in patch 4.0.1 by the way or that it would be out this week. I came back with the silly idea to level my Mage to 80 and drop 5,000 gold for epic herbalism flying. My timing was perfect for coming back to re-tune my Shaman.  New spells, talents, glyphs, reforging, crunch overload! So I rebuilt him, ran some heroic five mans and healed in ICC 25.

My out of the gate build was 0/2/34, something I drummed up a week before the patch without any research. Last night after raiding for two hours I left and respeced to 2/3/31.  My first impressions are as follows:

• Chain Heal feels weak for situations where the raid is not grouped up. You might say "duh that is the intent", but prior to the patch it was not the case. The first hit is much weaker now, so in these case the new Healing Wave is actually a better option, from a mana perspective at least.  Granted running the new Glyph of Chain Heal doesn't help either.
• Healing Surge seems like the go to spell, though I have read it gulps mana at 85. For 80 though I could spam it the whole fight. High cost, fast cast, big heal. Sold!
• Riptide used to be a "use on every cooldown spell" and now it seems it is even more valuable. Greater Healing Wave and Healing Wave both seem painfully slow without it. Glyph of Riptide seems to be a better option than it's counterparts too.
• Focus Insight seemed like a perfectly worthy 3 points in the 2nd tier last week.  That was until I saw first hand and read about just how situational it is.  First, you don't get the benefits of the shock if you miss with it. Second, any free GCD you could use to shock could be used to heal.  Third, if everyone is topped off and you can DPS you lose the benefits of the bonus healing in over heal.
• Telluric Currents, see Focus Insight.

Lots to play with still, mastery, reforging to get mastery, best bang for my buck stats, gemming, etc.  More as I play it.

November 2nd Cometh

I had a strong feeling that the next WoW expansion would be on the back half of this year.  Finding out this week that it was six weeks away was a bit of a surprise though.  Actually I just cancelled my account to go on a break. While Blizzard decide to do they same by not offering new raiding content.  Scathing commentary from a jilted lover? You bet your buns.

Back to the expansion.  My plan has always been to go on a binge the likes of my WotLK vacation in 2008.  Mind you that is tempered with a healthy understanding that I do not want to lose my wife and son in the mix.  So this time it will be slightly less hardcore, but still hardcore by most normal folks account.  A Tuesday release date makes that even easier, as my rule of thumb goes, if my son is around and awake I'm not gaming.

I'll admit this expansion has me less excited than the last.  From a lore perspective Deathwing has only existed in books for the most part.  They weren't the best WoW fiction on offer, to be fair, but I'm excited by it.  Just less than Arthas.  Only getting five new levels kind of sucks for the way I play WoW.  I stick to one character and attempt to max said character out to the best of my ability and time available.  Revamping the whole trip from 1 to 60 doesn't really offer me anything save a bored hour or ten flying around the world months after I've hit 85.

I'll play it none the less though, there are tons of cool things to see and do and I have less time to do them now anyway.  So bring on the expansion!

P.S. My local GameStop already sold out of collectors editions, WTF!

Rusted Proto-Drake

What sounds like sophomoric sex slang is actually my newest flying mount by way of Ulduar's ten man hard modes. The Rusted Proto-Drake is my reward for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider Friday night. A task that I got started a month behind on and took the entire summer to complete. Granted if my focus had been solely on this achievement I probably could have done it months ago. The time constraints of a daily 6:30am Kaden wake up call don't really lend themselves to post 12:30am raiding with my ten man group. Thankfully there is no uber achievement in ToC 10 man, so my desire for a third 310% speed mount can wait until Icecrown Citadel. A Proto-Frostwyrm maybe?

Saturday night I learned that I no longer have das juice in the arena. To be fair I had a loose association with les juice in the past on my mage, but I was probably being carried. Apparently I can't even be carried these days. In my mix of Hateful and Deadly I tried to get carried to a Furious totem by my friend and possible* season 6 gladiator the Chort. All I needed was a 700 personal rating. Easy enough if the Chort's rating wasn't putting us against folks who would rather see my face on the business end of their boots. I would get rolled in seconds and he would almost solo the two folks rolling me. After about 4 to 5 plays of the same song I decided to get off the merry go round. Hey the Deadly totem can be bought for honor, perfect!

To wrap my WoW things up, I am toying with the idea of leveling my mage again. He is already 71 from the last time I toyed with said idea, but now I need a herbing alt. Tooling around on a ground mount in Northrend might sound fun to some, but I'd rather pick my flowers from the sky. It will most likely take a while (see Appendix 16.3: I Had a Baby), but I figure I can keep my Shaman swimming in flask for a while before I have to hit the auction house.

*I say possible because Chort might or might not have been screwed over by the recent arena calculation that has apparently gone horribly wrong. He will find out soon and when he does I will post here about it.

Healer for Life

I spent the formative years of my WoW youth as a dirty, distracted and dissatisfied DPSer. A Mage to be exact, at times a very good one (BC) and at others just plain bad (MC & BWL). It was easy to be bad though, in 40 man content I could be carried while mashing one button (Frostbolt) and watching TV. When Burning Crusade came out, it was time to shape up or ship out. Raiding spots went from 40 to 25 and no one could be carried like they used to. I learned to play my class and helped lead a moderately successful guild.

I got bored though. Knowing how to play my class wasn't enough. My class was boring. Outside of a few interesting fights in BC there was little to do as a Mage, but just mash buttons again. I ended up taking a seven month break from the game. When I returned it was not to reprise the same role of button presser down at the local factory. My new main is the Shaman that I play today. Life as healer is good, no numbers races, people actively seek you out for groups and you actually have to pay attention.

The last two paragraphs were supposed to be a reflection of why I enjoy healing so much, but it looks like they turned into why DPS is boring. Oh well random thoughts and snippets follow...

PvP/Arena
I know I lamented my role as a healer on an arena team a few weeks ago, but that was before new gear and a new team. Macaroni Machine is still the core healer combo that it was previously, but we have shifted and replaced our DPS. Our new make up is Mage (/w a Boomkin sub), Paladin, Warrior, Hunter and Shaman. It seems to be working out for the most part. We are all well geared, playing for competitive fun and don't yell at each other. The lowest the team ever got was 1491 two weeks ago. Monday night we finished at 1644 and the more we play and learn to communicate it should hopefully get even better.

Lore
I am thirty pages out from the finish of Night of the Dragon, so I won't review it just yet, but I will say that it is frustratingly bad so far. I never really knew what people were complaing about when they talked about Richard Knaak, but now I think I get it. Hopefully Arthas is good.

Progress
I am now known as Samichez the Undying, that is all.

Around the World in 80 Levels

Well, I'm back. It was a crazy five days of leveling, raiding, pvp, a poor diet and no sleep. By Monday night I was siting on a pile of blues, my first emblem pieces and some sort of nasty sickness. I missed work and blogging on Tuesday unfortunately as a result, but I'm feeling much better this evening. Time for a brief run down I guess.

11/13/08: Showed up at my local Gamestop with my brother at 11:30pm (11/12/08). I was out of the mall and back at my house game in hand at 12:07am and on the boat to Northrend by 12:45am. Lots of leveling and yawns later and it was 11:45am and time for a nap. Near 12 hours of gaming can do that to the best of us. Three hours of napping later and it was time to level again. To be honest my mind was a bit of blur at this point, I don't remember what level I was and when.

11/14/08: Sometime around 4am I crashed hard, I went to bed and slept a deep sleep till noon Friday. I had planned to wake up five hours later, but the flesh was not willing. I felt much better than I had in days when I got on though. It was a little bit of catching up with my group, but we were unhampered.

11/15/08: Realm first 80 was secured by my friend on Saturday. Congratulations to Majargjr on realm first 80, shaman and troll. No, his name is not a coincidence we both named our toons in homage to our friend Majarg. Around 4am Saturday I decided to go to sleep as I had two level lead on winning the realm first Orc to 80.

11/16/08: I woke up at 10am and not thinking clearly reset my alarm to 12pm. The sleep was nice, but it ultimately put me an hour behind the realm first orc Magnuso, another friend and guild member. It wasn't my goal to hit realm first, but when it came down to the wire I tried to make the push. It was a lot of fun to 80, but really that is only the start. Level 70 gear is trash for the most part, as we soon learned in our first heroic. It was tough and the blue drops were outpacing our tier six.

11/17/08: Monday was more heroics and our first trip to Naxxramas 10 man. We cleared the arachnid quarter, downed Patchwerk and wiped till we were sleepy on Grobbulus.

11/18/08: Tuesday I was supposed to go back to work, but a sinus infection that had been building for 2-3 days took a toll on my sleepless body. I woke up sick as a dog and ended up sleeping most of the day. By the evening I was feeling better, but probably shouldn't have raided. We cleared the construct quarter and got our first pieces of tier seven.

Tonight I am heading back into Naxx with the same group of ten, but before I go I'll do the numbers.

Days to 80: 3.5

Purples Replaced: 15 (as of 11/19/08)

New Purples: 5

Coolest New Purple: Aegis of Damnation

Special thanks goes to...

• My beautiful wife for being supportive and understanding given my addiction to not just WoW, but all things geeky.
• My brother for calling to wake me up many times and leveling with me from start to finish, grats on realm first mage and undead.
• Chort for leveling with me from start to finish, I hope all of your family business is better now.

T Minus Zero

I am prewriting this post on Wednesday because I am not available to write on Thursday. If you are wondering dear reader where I am, I'm most likely in the middle of a 120 hour gaming bender. Wrath of the Lich King came out Wednesday night or rather Thursday at midnight. The plan was for my brother and I to brave the night and pick up our copies as soon as they were released. So in theory I started playing around 12:30 am Thursday and have off from work until Monday next week to play video games (5 days or 120 hours).

Ah yes video games, I am sure even people who have known me for many years are casting judgment. Being obsessed with playing, reading and watching video about video games is one thing, but taking off work. Yes, my hard earned vacation days are being spent boarded up in my office. I'm sure it seems odd or unhealthy to some, but it is the hobby I love. Wanna fight about it?

See you Tuesday!

P.S. This blog started after I took off a day of work following the release of Burning Crusade.

C.asuals R.ule E.verything A.round M.e...

C.R.E.A.M; get the money; dollar dollar bill y'all...

The Wu assuredly had no clue what an MMO was back in 1993, because the internet as we know it didn't exist. They knew their video games though. I spent my summers in high school playing the Dreamcast/N64 and watching hip hop artist play the same systems on MTV (riveting television I know). They also knew about the power of currency, hence cash ruling everything around them. Blizzard got the same memo, as they have been making money hand over fist for going on four years.

It wasn't a difficult formula that made their first swim in the MMO ocean such a success. Take all the good things about old MMOs, drop the annoying parts, reward instead of penalize and polish to perfection. They didn't foresee having the population of a small country playing their game though (...Tunisia, WoW, Hungary...). So the initial product offered slower leveling, 40 player raids and an honor grind fit for a pimple faced shut in.

Burning Crusade brought faster leveling, 25 player raids and a more casual honor grind. The development focus for end game content still seemed to be hardcore focused though. Now Wrath of the Lich King is coming in a month and every raid will have a 25 and 10 player version and they are nerfing B.C. raids before the release. The game is leaning slightly more casual, but no were near what it should. Well according to the numbers at least.

World of War put up an article comparing the number of active players to ranked players to end game raiders yesterday. It is some back of the napkin math for sure, but roughly 1.5% to 2.5% are seeing the end game content Blizzard is building. That means at best 97.5% of WoW players aren't seeing all of Blizzard's hard work. There are some carrot on a stick shenanigans involved, but Blizzard seems to be waking up to their larger audience. Not on a Nintendo scale, but I'm sure hardcore raiders will need a box of tissues the first time Arthas gets ten maned.

My Kingdom for an Albino

See that dragon (drake) it is white, looks slick and is hard to get. How hard? Do you have 75 mounts laying around in preparation for the expansion? You do, good your set for your Albion Drake come November 13th. Oh, you don't have 75 mounts, well lets see what it takes for the typical Horde player to sit atop a Jim Gaffigan colored dragon.

Mount Name	Quantity	Cost	Total
Blue Wolves	3	10	30
Purple Wolves	3	100	300
Blue Hawks	4	10	40
Purple Hawks	3	100	300
Blue Skeletals	3	10	30
Purple Skeletals	2	100	200
Blue Raptors	3	10	30
Purple Raptors	3	100	300
Blue Kodos	2	10	20
Purple Kodos	3	100	300
Total	29		1550

So without ever traveling to Outland you can grab 29 mounts for the cost of 1,550 gold and some capital city reputation grinding. A trip to some a lot of battle grounds can also reward you with mounts for the cause.

Mount Name	Quantity	Cost	Total
Frost Wolf	1	0	0
BG Mark Mounts	5	0	0

That's six more and they are free, but they'll take a ton of your time to attain. Maybe you already have tons of marks filling up your mailbox though. Then it is time to head to Outlands, but bring your cash and get ready to grind.

Mount Name	Quantity	Cost	Total
Riding Talbuks	4	70	280
War Talbuks	4	100	400
Dark PvP Talbuks	2	0	0
Nether Drakes	6	200	1200
Nether Rays	5	200	1000
War Hippogryph	1	2000	2000
Blue Windrider	3	100	300
Purple Windrider	4	200	800
Total	29		5980

Time for a recount, we are at 64 out of 75 mounts, 7,530 gold and a healthy portion of your WoW life. Want to break 75 before the expansion drops? Things are about to get expensive and/or you're going to be poop sockin' it in instances for a while.

Instance Drops	Quantity
Fiery Warhorse	1
Qiraji Crystals	4
Amani War Bear	1
Deathcharger	1
Brewfest Kodo	1
Raven Lord	1
Brewfest Ram	1
Razzashi Raptor	1
White Hawk	1
Zulian Tiger	1
Ashes of Al'ar	1

Three of the crystals have a high drop rate, but the rest of the mounts are like winning the lottery. I wouldn't rely on them dropping as part of you quest for a creamy dreamy white drake. There is also the option to pick up and level engineering which will net you two flying machines and any empty bank account. Your last options are the expensive ones, there are roughly five mounts that are randomly distributed through the WoW trading card game. They're made available in a number of ways to the average WoW player.

1. Actually buy the cards and hope to get lucky (expensive).
2. Ebay the card(s) you want (expensive).
3. Buy from a guildmate with in game gold or sexual favors (expensive).

So what is the net net on all of this pre-WotLK pokemon collecting? There are currently 85 some odd mounts in game at this time, but only 64ish are readily available to all players. You won't be riding any flying mounts until level 77 anyway and there are bunches of mounts coming in Wrath. My advice get as many of the 64 as you can right now,maybe solo some trash in AQ40 with a friend for some crystals and wait for Wrath to drop and make the Albion Drake even easier to get.

Wrath of the Beta King

Yeah, I said I'd post on video podcast today in my last post. Well that's not happening, check back Wednesday if you have a burning desire to read about what videocast I watch each week.

/*Warning Spoilers*\

A million thanks to my good friend Chris who got into and was kind enough to let me play the Wrath of the Lich King beta this weekend. The header image above is of my death knight on a frost wyrm, who shall remain nameless should the Blizzard police come looking for Chris. Onward to my exploits that seem more grandiose than anything I have ever done in the World of Warcraft. That's right bigger than killing Rag in MC, Nef in BWL and every other boss I have downed since way back in 2004. It is bigger and badder because Blizzard is building on a foundation of game play and world that they have had four years to iterate on. Don't mind the alliteration.

I started at level 55 oddly enough on a Death Knight, a class I had previously had no interest in leveling. Given the opportunity to get behind the curtain and meet the beta wizard early and it was the first thing I wanted to try. As far as I know Blizzard has yet to create a story driven set of levels (55-58) that is this compelling. You start out high above the world aboard the necropolis Ebon Hold and one of the first NPCs you talk to is the Lich King himself Arthas. Soon I had completed my training, received my first runeblade and was on my way to the world below to wreck havoc on the mortal races. The story ultimately culminates in the reason your death knight changes sides from scourge to horde (in my case). Even if you don't plan to play a death knight beyond level 58 it is worth your time to see this event. It rains freakin blood!

Death Knight shenanigans complete it was on to world exploring. Chris was kind enough to transfer a bunch of his characters over to the beta servers and some level 80 premades as well. So I had my choice of whatever I wanted to try out while exploring. I ended up picking a level 70 shaman which may seem strange given the choice of a level 80 with a flying mount, but the best way to see anything in WoW is from the ground. My first taste of the new continent was a zeppelin ride from Orgrimmar to Howling Fjord, which was made cooler by the full crew that manned the zeppelin. When I landed at HF I hopped on my mount and tooled around Northrend through three zones before the server crashed.

When the servers came back up I decided that I wanted to see Icecrown and Dalaran before Chris came calling for his account. I logged on to a level 80 shaman this time and took a zeppelin from Undercity to Borean Tundra. When I landed I was amazed at the fortress that the horde call home in Borean. I was soon aboard my flying sperm and on my way to Icecrown. On the way I was awe struck by the Nexus and reminded of Un'Goro Crater by Sholazar Basin. Upon arriving at the Citadel I just sat back and marveled at how freaking big the place was. Half way through making kissey faces at Arthas's casa Chris came on vent kindly asked me to log off. I spent a few more moments with the Lich King's beta and I was back to AFKing in AV. See you in two months Arthas.

Seventy and Crashing

With a name like Addicted 2 WoW you'd think I'd write about the game more. Thankfully there is enough going on in my life that I don't post every day about my leveling adventure. Dr Majarg did hit 70 over the weekend though. Since he is a man now I think I can dedicate a post to him on his birthday bar mitzvah.

It took me a grand total of 7 days and change played to break the big seven oh. Compared to my mage who took almost 8 days played to reach 60. Chalk it up to Blizzard speeding up the leveling process and a mod called Quest Helper. I leveled as enhancement from level one on, so when I hit seventy and went restoration I looked like clown barf. It will be a long road of honor grinding and Kara badges to get to an acceptable place with my gear for raiding.

That grind would be made easier if my game worked. I have been crashing at least once a night and at most ten to fifteen since level forty. I did everything just shy of reinstalling before I hit seventy to try and fix things. I got to my breaking point when I started my honor grind in Alterac Valley this past weekend and crashed every five minutes. Last night I uninstalled and attempted to reinstall. I got through eight disk (original and BC) and attempted to patch the game without success from 9pm to 1am last night. Tonight I will try a fresh install of windows, my second in two months, in the hopes of fixing the game. Wish me luck.

Diablo III Art Direction
I mentioned previously that Diablo III might not be the gameplay leap that everyone was looking forward to. I love the art though, when in motion it just feels right. Some D2 fans don't agree and have started petitions to try and get the game to look darker, "emo" even. MTV's MP Blog recently sat down with Diablo III designer Jay Wilson to have him comment on community created screenshot modifications. It is an interesting look at what makes games fun and less frustrating from a visual stand point.

UPS Knows Me
Wednesday last week Crystal and I stopped in to the local UPSery to send my borked 360 back to the mother ship. When we opened the door the gentleman behind the counter gave me a knowing look...

Him: Xbox?
Me: Yeah, do you get a lot of them?
Him: Tons!

Yesterday I got an email letting me know that my Xbox had been fixed or replaced already and would be shipping back today. The incredibly fast turn around time makes me think it was just replaced and shipped back. Even though it broke the quick response and solution speaks volumes for the company. Comcast are you paying attention.

It's Too Damn Hot

If, then statements tend to explain most situations with a nice little bow...

If (x=hot as the devils knee pit) Then
--we will not ride bikes
Else
--we will ride bikes
End If

Simple enough right. It has been crazy hot in Richmond this July and as such my riding has taken a nose dive. My mileage log is down right embarrassing...

February: 46.6 miles
March: 82.25 miles
April: 121.42 miles
May: 135.22 miles
June: 134.02 miles
July: 39.6 miles

2008 Year to Date: 559.11 miles

August will probably be more of the same unfortunately. The earlier I have to get up to beat the heat the less inclined I am to ride given my proclivity to sleeping in. By ten in the ante meridiem it is already too hot to ride most days anyway.

Images
A google image search of all things hot, heat, steamy, etc yield near naked and fully naked women. Half the search terms you put in have this result, the internet has porn on it, who knew? A search for all things temperature, sun, etc yield pictures that belong on science fair posters. Tough day to find a header.

Slash Played
I was listening to a podcast the other day and heard a discussion about the total amount of time spent in WoW across all of your characters lifetimes (/played). A listener had written in with a total just one day shy of 365, meaning they had spent one human year out of the four years that WoW has been out in the game. Pretty scary to consider. Mine was 85 days and 23 hours across five characters.

Hellboy, The Betrayer & Camera Slacking

Hellboy 2
Comic movie summer two thousand eight continues with the release of Hellboy 2 this past weekend. Crystal and went out for dinner and a movie a second time this week Saturday night and caught Hellboy. We both liked the original, so we were geeked to see the sequel turn out so well. The mix of humor and action seems genuine and the special effects never drop you off at that looks lane. I have yet to read any Hellboy comics, after making plans to do so four years ago. If you look on the right hand side of this here blog you can see my to do list that I am slowly working through. I might just toss Hellboy to the front of the line after seeing the movie Saturday.

Camera Slacking
My kingdom for a sharper memory in the face of group rides to be remembered. Twice this weekend I went on great group rides and forgot to bring my camera. Friday night I went out with Russ and Grant for a 23 mile stomp around Richmond with a dip into southside. Sunday morning Grant, Russ, Gabriel, Crystal and I met up at the Glen Allen Cultural Arts Center and did a shortened 16 mile ABC loop. Both rides without a camera, what was I thinking.

The Betrayer
I will most likely never see Illidan on my new Shaman, look he is sixty! That doesn't mean I can't use my family connections to get a glimpse of the Lord of Outland though. Tazeer (mein brother) was over at my place two weekends ago and jumped on his mage to give Mike and I a tour of the Black Temple and some face time with Illidan himself. When I first started raiding three years ago it was an arms race above all else. I needed gear to win at pvp and had to use pve content to do so.

Now that honor gear is passed out like candy and arena gear is just expensive Bavarian chocolate there is no need to pve for pvp. Then why raid? It is still about the gear, but only in that gear is a medium to see end game content. It is a lore nerds wet dream to throw off the shackles of gear greed and know that every piece of gear the guild gets benefits me in my goal of seeing more story. I know there is still greed, I see it everytime I log on, but my new outlook sets me free from that squabling.

WoW Dumpster

The monster is back! Run and hide the kids, I am playing World of Warcraft again. Last week I jumped in feet first to my four year on again off again romance/abusive relationship with the game equivilent of black tar heroin. I have retired my mage to collect dust and maybe get turned into a collectibable that collect dust (j/k, I like napping on the couch, but not sleeping there). So in place of my glass canon I rolled a shaman (a.ka. Jesus). Dr. Majarg M.D. is the podigal son of the original prodigal son, Majarg. He is in every way brighter, faster and stronger than his fore father and will hopefully do no wrong by my hand.

The game plan is to get a toon up to 70 and semi geared before the next expansion rolls out in late 2008 or early 2009. There will be ten man versions of every raid dungeon and tons of 5 man content as well. I vowed to stay away from pvp since it is what I burned out on last time, but only the twisted hand of WoW time will tell.

Nostradamus
Back in October of 2007 I made an argument for more strict personal rating requirements on WoW season 3 arena gear. My thoughts got picked up on WoWInsider and the post garnered the most traffic my blog has seen to date. Most people thought it too strict to place requirements on all items. Season 4 rolled out yesterday with rating requirements on everything save gloves and the off hand. It is nice to see Blizzard and I are on the same page.

Lore Splosion
Christie Golden in her second blog post announced her newest collboration with Aaron Rosenberg, Beyond the Dark Portal. Carrying the same name as the Warcraft 2 expansion pack it covers the same plot that the game did. It is currently resting on my night stand half finished. Christie is also writing a new novel on the origin of Arthas. That and a script for a new WoW manga that is coming in August. The WoW comic is on issue 8 and finally picking up steam and lurking some where in the depths of Hollywood is the long announced and never updated live action movie. It is good time to be a lore nerd.

The WoW Comic(s)

About two weeks ago I got issue #3 in the mail of the official WoW comic. The art in it is superb, the writing is good, but not great (not on the same level as the books at least). The story they are spinning so far is about pvp and arena teams, but it looks like the tale may become more grand very soon. I like that it is about the horde because that is all I ever played and I like that it visits so many places in the game world. One of my favorite things to do after finishing a Warcraft book was to go and visit all the places mentioned. Going to Medivh's tower before it was just a ten man raiding stepping stone was a blast.

Reading the comic has got me excited about the coming expansion again. I've been checking MMOC regularly for screen shots and other media of WOTLK. I have also been thinking about going back soon to prepare my character for WOTLK. I still need an epic mount and a purse full of gold would be nice too. This time when I stand in line with Tazeer at midnight he won't be mocking me for being a geek, he will probably be buying two copies.

Cycling
On Friday I picked up my frankenbike and ordered my creamy dreamy Surly Cross Check. I am in the process of planning out the gear to go with my lovely, but the frankenbike is running like a champ with its new fork and headset in the mean time.

Site Watch
Harris Cyclery is an online bike store created by the late great Sheldon Brown (1944 - 2008). They have a ton of great parts available for sale and leave a good bit of personal commentary on each. I will probably end up buying a bunch of my parts from them very soon for the Check mentioned above.

The Anti WoW

I was not a big fan of massive multiplayer online games before I fell victim to WoW. I think I mentioned previously that I had a brief experience with Star War Galaxies. I had also tried out City of Heroes for month as well and left in frustration. Needless to say I had a sour taste for the genre before getting into the WoW beta in October of 2004. I was bowled over by Blizzards master piece, they took all of the fun elements of SWG and COH, cut the fat and polished to a fine gloss.

The experience wore thin though, prompting my departure five times in the last three plus years. Not any thing I would directly attribute to the game, but it is designed to become even more of a time sink once you reach the highest level (if you let it). Progression raiding can take up to 6-7 days a week, maintenance raiding 2-4 and that doesn't include farming for materials and repair cash. The pvp was fun, but became redundant. Hence my most recent retirement.

So what does it take to get a hardened MMO rookie to try another MMO? I'm shooting at 1 for 3 at this point so I'll say it takes a lot. The Agency is the first game to have such potential. It is the casual MMO that Blizzard tricks new WoW players in to thinking they are playing. It is anti WoW. Relying on action style game play with a RPG twist. The premise being two factions that coexist in an action movie style world. There is U.N.I.T.E which is your classic bond style organization, super slick, nondescript covert action in a tux. ParaGON is the polar opposite, mercenaries with big explosions and a cigar clenched tightly in their teeth.

It can be both a FPS and third person platformer and the graphics ring of The Incredibles and Team Fortress 2 (No One Lives Forever as well). If done right the game could be a smash to play and for SOE's coffers. I have a few concerns though...

1. SOE's track required includes so many missed opportunities that it is hard to count, Everquest was their last and only successful game.

2. Similar to Huxley's lofty goals, The Agency is attempting to conquer new fronter by melding multiple game types and genres. There has not been a game to accomplish what they are attempting and the biggest title in the space (WoW) is just a refinement of an already proven model.

3. The game is being developed by Sony and as such it is coming out for the PC and PS3. It is not unreasonable to project red headed step child support for the PC, even though the PS3's market is limited.

In any case watch some developer walk throughs and some of the other trailers and see how cool it is for yourself. I will be here on the bandwagon, fingers crossed and playing my DS till we see if it can live up to its hype.

The Prodigal Son Returns

Majarg is back! Our 3v3 team from last season has reformed and is in fine form. We went 5-1 last night and stopped to do our BG dailies. Hopefully we can pick back up tonight and push the rating a lot harder. Even though our only loss last night came at my hands, I think I have become a much more rounded player than I was last season. Coupled with all my new spell damage (100+) I am hoping that we can really push past 2k and play with the big boys. The rock, paper, scissors nature of the game may be the only thing to hold us back though.

My main hand is in sight...now I just need to take it!

Apparently the influx of new players from a bunch of over populated realms has the leaders of FBD in a tizzy. They reformed the guild and put up recruitment threads for raiding. I must admit that I am out of the loop and missing the "Soft N Pink" tag. I also came to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter what guild I am in though when I'm just pvping. So maybe we'll start up the penfifteen club this week and wait to be reported.

Project Beesta
Nothing special with my druid leveling project, I jogged over to Ghostlands after reading this. Apparently the barrens suck and now everyone knows it. I should have my boots and wand this week allowing me to focus more time on Beesta.