Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

WOW Insider shows some of the BlizzCon 2008: Dance contest highlights. The undead female dance at the end of the clip was really well done. I laughed at the ogre dance right at the beginning. The rest of the dances weren’t terribly impressive. I would have given third place to the orc.

I like the general idea of this project: Turbine to launch a LotRO-focused social networking site. The big thing I would like to see is a way of chatting or at least sending mail to people in game without loading up the whole game. Allowing this kind of interaction would strengthen the social networks in the game, which would then add to the stickiness of the game. When you leave a MMO, you don’t just leave the game, you leave friends. From a purely commercial standpoint, anything that makes you more reluctant to leave the friendships you’ve developed in the game (or that makes it easier to maintain them) translates into increased revenue. As a player, I’d prefer a game-agnostic solution so that I could chat with friends who’ve switched over to Warhammer from within WoW but I’m dreaming big.

Too Many Annas has a link post up pointing to The Best of 3.0/WotLK Information. Lots of good stuff to read in there.

We’re getting awfully close to 3.0x’s release - no official date yet though.  Here are the builds I’m looking at for my toons.  I expect that I’ll have made some silly mistakes in picking out talents, but I can live with that.

Tristam is going to be tanking for any raids we get going between now and Wrath and for our static group after Wrath’s release.  I need to track down more build information, but for now I’m thinking Warrior 5/0/54.

Andromache is going to stick to protection as well.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she ends up doing 5 mans for most of her leveling.  I’m leaning toward Paladin 0/56/5.

Arthemis is definitely going for a primarily beast mastery spec.  Exotic pets look like fun, but I suspect I’ll stick with my kitty pet for actual leveling.  One of my favorite things about hunters is chain trapping.  Thus I’m aiming for resourcefulness down the survival tree with Hunter 41/0/20.  I know it’s sub-optimal for MQoSRDPS but this is not a grouping toon, it’s a fun toon so BRK can bite me. 

The following toons are not 70 yet, so here’s where I think I’ll head given their current levels. 

Emerys is likely going to stay feral.  I’m leaning towards Druid 0/51/6 at the moment. (An alternate spec from ThinkTank is Druid 0/50/11)

Anzu is going to stay enhancement.  I’m leaning towards Shaman 0/51/6.

I think I’d like to give demonology a shot on Merddyn, so I’ll try Warlock 0/54/0. 

Flint is staying in retirement for now, so I’m not even thinking about priest builds. 

A Dwarf Priest discusses Two Tools For Raid Stacking that will help raid leaders take advantage of all the new buffs. I’m probably going to use InTheBuff as I prefer in-game tools.

One of the things I’m not looking forward to in Wrath is re-calibrating all my addons, particularly those for evaluating gear. I know the theorycrafters are going nuts figuring out what the new values are, but I liked knowing the relative values of one point of defense versus one point of parry. Ah well, this way things stay interesting.

Kaliope has updated her Inscription Power Leveling Guide 1-350 to reflect the latest beta changes. My warlock is going to be dropping mining to take up inscription. From the look of it, I have the herbs I need to get me to 350 or so.

So far my plans for preparing for the expansion are going decently. I don’t have as much gold as I’d hoped for, but I can live with that. The gold sinks I’ve seen for the expansion are ones I don’t feel I have to have immediately upon hitting 80. My druid hit 66 and my shaman is a decent chunk of the way through 65. My fallback plan is to go resto and heal for groups of death knights if I don’t hit 70 pre-expansion.

Jaimie is waiting for the XP changes to levels 60-70 before we finish leveling our warlock/priest combo. If paladin healing remains the way it is now, Jaimie may switch her priest to holy and heal with her instead. There’s still time for Blizzard to make changes, so I’m not panicking yet.

Reading Lassirra’s slightly grouchy post on Azeroth Advisor Featured on The Instance and WoW Insider encouraged me to got take a look at it. It looks pretty good - I’m going to have to actually give it a try to see how it works out. I’d seen it a while back but at that time there were no samples. If it works out I’ll try to write up a review.

Blessing of Kings: Bacon of Light (and the forum thread it came from) provides hope for all those rolling the new hero class - Iron Chef!

Bacon of Light is actually a skill for another hero class: the Iron Chef

The Iron Chef uses the Meal & Judgment system

The Iron Chef first creates a Meal (Meal of Light, Meal of Wisdom, etc), and when he calls for it, the judges come in and Judge the Meal

They have “Ham” spells that they can use on themselves or others. i.e Ham of Freedom, Ham of Protection

The Iron Chef also has auras like Froth Resistance Aura when you need to make a clear soup/broth/etc

Talents include “Rye for a Rye” and “Holy Stock” (much better than chicken stock, beef stock, etc.)

Only parts of the class are OP. Some parts are still questionable if it’ll work out. For example, I think Guardian’s Flavor should also affect Ham of Sacrifice, what with HoS being on such a long cooldown, but that’s just me.

Back to the IC… it’s even more dangerous in a group.
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Basting of Might fills up a warrior’s sage bar to full, and they’ll be handling out Mackerel Strikes left and right with no cooldown.

Basting of Wisdom turns a shaman into a Grain-heal spamming machine

Basting of Kings is just good for anyone

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Nerf ICs tanking, their holy meal is overpowered for mitigation, and their ladle of the righteous hits too hard.

And their unenders meal is overpowered, it makes THREE mobs hungry and they almost always come to eat your meal. Nerf the flavor on the ICs attacks.

You don’t have to say that much… a simple ZOMG PLATE + MEALS +GOBBLE = OP would do

Also they do yummy damage, and since there is no +yummy resist gear they do more gobbles per second.

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Bah, don’t get too comfortable with the buffs. You just know that Kalgan’s gonna nerf the hell out of us. I mean, we use plates and can restore huge amounts of health and happiness? OMG NERF!

no what’s really OP is how they can spam Dash of Spice on their allies forever and never have to stop.

don’t forget that Divine Sandwhich i mean come on thats so OP at least priests can now get rid of it with Meal Dispel

I’m glad they increased the proc rate on The Tart of War, bacon is so much better with a nice cherry or raspberry tart to go with it.

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Randomly, what do you all think about the changes to Judgments of the Fries?

a good move. this way Meal specced IC won’t be able to cast Dash of Spice endlessly, and should be much more balanced.

I guess, but JotF just strikes me as filler right now. Sure, it adds a bit to the overall variety but, now matter how I look at it, it just takes up space.

Besides, Blizz was gonna balance DoS by putting some diminishing returns on it. Sux to be you, Emril-chefs.

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I’m so glad they are making it so I don’t have to recook a meal after they judge it in the next patch!
I didn’t even spec into improved judges in 2.4 because the 2 sec reduction made it so I could barely recook a meal in time. That together with the oven cool down was a huge nerf to my overall deliciousness per second…

Rachel Ray of Hope:
Your meal spells now have a 20% chance to grant you an additional meal spell. This effect cannot occur more than once every 30 minutes.

Emeril Dream:
Cost: 30% of base manna
Cooldown: 3 minutes.
Duration: 30 seconds
Puts you in the Emeril Dreamstate granting you the BAM! ability. The BAM! ability randomly casts Dash of Spice at a different party or raid member every second for 30 seconds. During this time you will not be able to think straight or talk at a reasonable volume.

I will probably be leveling my dwarven priest again in Wrath - not because I plan to play him much but because I want to keep him at the level cap. When I do, Seri from World of Snarkcraft looks to have some good advice for Leveling Disc/Holy in Wrath « . Flint has always leveled Holy/Disc so this advice lets me continue down that path.

Euripedes at Critical QQ has a post,Pillowy Softness, arguing that all those filling a DPS role should be putting out roughly the same amount of DPS in a raid. (Obviously this assumes roughly equal gear, skill, proper specs, etc.) His arguments make sense to me, especially given the direction that Blizzard seems to be going with Wrath. If all tanking classes are supposed to be able to tank any encounter and all healers are supposed to be able to heal any encounter, it only makes sense that all DPS should be able to DPS any encounter. I wonder how this would play out for places such as Naxx where we can expect to see a lot of frost resistant mobs?

Siha of Banana Shoulders has a good suggestion for how to Fix your UI in advance! I probably won’t take her advice - I find that addons change so much on those big patch days that you end up reconfiguring the whole thing anyway, but it’s worth thinking about.

Most evenings when I get home, I do a daily maintenance routine in Warcraft.  First I log onto my bank alt, see what’s sold, and scan the auction house for bargains.  If I’m lucky I’ll have passed another goalpost money-wise.  Then I log into my enchanter, disenchant the stuff my bank alt has sent, mail the resulting mats back, and check the daily fishing quest.  If it’s one I can do I’ll do it on her and my paladin to skill up their fishing and pick up some extra fish for buff food.  Then it’s on to my warrior for my daily transmute.  If it was one of the tougher fishing quests, I may go do it on him.  Then it’s on to my shaman to prospect any ores that my bank alt may have found.  Finally I log back into my bank alt and put the enchanting mats and gems up for sale.  By the time I finish that, it’s about time for me to log off to help the kids with homework.  I’ll be back on to play in an hour or two. 

The whole routine takes me about an hour.  Why do I do it?  It’s easy money.  I’m nowhere near the gold cap, but I’ve had no problem buying epic mounts for my level 70 toons.  It’s easy to interrupt.  It really doesn’t matter if I walk away from my computer for 15 minutes in the middle of a transmute.  If I tried that in the middle of a run it wouldn’t go so well.  This part of my evening is prone to interruptions anyway, so I may as well plan for them. 

A good chunk of it is just a personality thing.  I like to get the dull stuff out of the way first so that I can enjoy the good stuff guilt free.  Doing this little maintenance routine is enough fun that I get a little break between work and starting housework.  At the same time, it’s dull enough that I’d rather not be doing it during my prime playing time.  Taking care of routine stuff this way works for me.

  Do you have any routines you follow in WoW?

I bought Spore when it came out.  I’ve played it but it was rather dull.  My five year old plays it a a lot because he likes to make new critters.  The DRM is very obnoxious.  It’s really annoying - I’m going to be installing this on the kids’ computer (which means I’ll be wiping and reinstalling the system every three to six months).  This means that my legal copy will stop working in less than a year, while if I get a cracked copy it’ll keep on working.  The legal copy is a downgraded version of a pirated copy.  Sigh. 

Massively has a post asking Can a space colonization MMO work? I really hope that a space colonization MMO comes along soon. It would make a nice change from the fanatasy fare that’s out there now. I know that EVE offers some science fictional stuff, but so far it hasn’t pulled me in.

Gevlon of Greedy Goblin discusses loot distribution.  This time of transition as we move into the new expansion is a great time for thinking about this kind of thing.  As always, Gevlon manages to come up with an original take on the subject - one firmly founded in the practical wisdom of Goblin philosophy.  

Zero sum gold: People bid for the loot with gold, highest bidder distributes the money equally between the raiders. So if you win a Karazhan loot with 1000G bid, you have to pay 100G to everyone else (and 100 to yourself). This way the others get something too, just like in zero sum DKP but with the difference, that money is not bound to the guild, you can spend it wherever you want. So

• It encourages preparation and demanding others to prepare, since no loot or money if no kill.
• If you kill, you surely get something (money or loot)
• Encourages farming or business, since you have better chance to loot if you have more money.
• Allows PuG-ed people to come and equally participate.
• Encourages participation in bosskills where you don’t want loot (since you get money).
• Encourages well-geared players to stay in guild, since while they can’t get loot until the guild downs their boss, in the meantime you get very rich. This point is extremely important for the guild’s tank-keeping potential. Tanks are needed to be geared for the bosses, so little or no drop for them. But this way they are saved for farming which is hard for tanks.
• No mod, administration, or tables needed (though 24 trades can be a pain, it can be decreased by giving all the money to the raid leader who distributes it at raidend.)

This is the goblin way!
By the way someone can say that "encourage farming" can backfire, people will spend more time farming (or worse, buying) gold, than preparation for raid. I don’t see it a problem. The system encourage people to check for the preparation of others, if the raid is unprepared, no loot or money. It’s true that the guy with the more money will get the loot, but he distributes this money, so next time you will be the guy with the more money.

The big thing I don’t like about this system is that it may encourage gold buying.  Even if the others don’t buy gold, when you’re dealing with limited playtime and you’re bidding against someone who plays 12 hours a day, you’re going to lose.  What happens when a warrior-only item drops and there’s only one warrior in the raid - does the warrior get away with bidding 1g for the item?  I’m sure there are other problems I’ve missed too.

Anyone have any thoughts on how the problems with this loot distribution system could be overcome?  I’d bet there’s a solution out there in real world economics.

Power Word: Totem’s Stages of my WoW career amused me because it’s so true. Fortunately I’ve been able to write off a couple of my Epic Fail Self Esteem Plummet Stages as “It was all new and I didn’t know any better, honest!”

Ciderhelm at TankSpot gives us something to look forward to in his Protection Warrior 3.0 Overview. After seeing what happened to hunter talents in the latest Beta build, I’m not taking anything as gospel. That being said, I did make sure to go farm for Coren’s Lucky Coin in the BRD Brewfest event on both my tanks.

Geekdad has a post on how Teaching Kids to Roleplay is Only Natural. I haven’t had much luck playing games with my kids. Either the games are too simple and I get bored or the the games are too complex and they get frustrated. Reason # 4,991 why I’m a bad parent.

I hate reading the official forums.   Read the forums for pretty much any class/spec you play and you’ll come away despondent at how underpowered you are.  With Wrath coming out and a lot of things changing, there’s also a lot of QQ going on on various blogs.  Here are some good things about QQ that I think about when it starts to get me down.

Someone cares!  Nobody QQs about how overpowered a party of 4 magic users is in Ultima III because no one cares.  The QQing is proof that there is a passionate community around WoW.  Otherwise the threads would look like this: "Rogues are OP!" …. <crickets>

There’s another side!  In a lot of QQ posts, counters are given.  Hunters may not be able to heal their parties but they bring a lot of other utility to counterbalance that.  There are strategies for dealing with stunlocking rogues or warlocks that chain fear you - read the QQ threads and you’ll find out how to deal with them.  A lot of stuff isn’t nearly so bad when you know both sides.

You’re not alone! The QQ threads show that you’re not alone with this problem.  Annoying as some problems are at least there are others out there who are seeing the same thing.

Broken things are being seen!  Sometimes stuff is just plain broken.  It may be there for balance reasons, it may be a bug, it may be an unintended side effect but if no one QQs, the developers won’t know that there’s a problem  There is hope that the problem may be fixed.

At the end of the day, I’d rather skip the QQ entirely but there are good things about it.

Larísa of The Pink Pigtail Inn has a post up: Are healers responsible and dps just having fun? The followup comments are great - be sure to read Saresa and Gevlon’s posts on the subject. Ulv’s ranking of the different roles on different scales is good stuff.

I still think that Rohan hit the nail on the head with his comment “…if DPS is working just as hard as healers are, why do so few of them roll healer alts?” When I’m feeling stressed and don’t want to deal with taking care of tender egos I shut down my chat boxes and play DPS. Healers and tanks are for group play and synergy (”We did it!”), DPS is for personal enjoyment (”I rock!”).

Tanks and healers have more pressure to keep the group going. Without a group, tanks and healers are lost. DPS has more pressure to perform individually. There’s lots of DPSers out there so DPS in a group has to defend their inclusion.

CRAZY IDEA What if all classes were DPS when not in a group, then within a group each would get the choice of the role they want to play? Have all the classes resemble druids - tank, healer, ranged DPS, melee DPS as needed. Would this inevitably lead to homogenization of classes?