Oct 19
I love reading The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett’s Journal because of essays such as this one: The Economics Of Fear. I’m at least a couple of steps behind where Ferrett is in personal development. I’m still learning to step out, to try things where I may very well fail. It’s baby steps, but I keep reminding myself that even stumbling forward is forward movement, which really beats sitting there with a blanket over my head.
Feb 23
I was reading Matticus’ post, What GMs Want to See on Your Guild App, and I stared thinking about some of my accomplishments in WoW. Since many of these were pre-3.0, I don’t have the achievements for them which makes me a little sad.
Healing
Tanking
DPS
Raid Leading
PvP
That’s all that comes to mind right now. It’s fun to look back on the stuff I managed to get done. I would say that raid leading is probably the most challenging part of the game – not the fights themselves but all the dealing with people and their issues, balancing things so that it all works out.
Dec 29
So you’ve been playing World of Warcraft for a while and have decided to make a fresh start and reroll on a new server. How do you decide which server will be right for you?
I’m assuming you’ve already decided on a server type, a faction, and have some idea of the play style and class(es) you enjoy. If not take a look at WoW Insider’s current WoW Rookie column. If you’re new to WoW, welcome here!
Server population affects a number of parts of the game. A more highly populated server will have more people to play with, but also more people competing for the same resources. WarcraftRealms is a census of the population on the different servers. Since it’s based on people submitting data rather than Blizzard numbers, it’s not 100% accurate but it can give you a pretty good picture of realm populations. If you’re playing on a PvP server, be sure to check out the Horde/Alliance ratio to have a rough idea of how often you’ll get ganked.
Your server’s time zone is also worth noting. If you want to play with others pick a server where prime time (roughly 6-11 PM) matches your play schedule. If not, pick one where it doesn’t.
These two factors should narrow you list down to a dozen servers or so. Now it’s time to dig down a little further.
If you’re interested in endgame PvE look at WoWProgress to see how progressed a server is. It will be easier to get into raiding on a server with many raiding guilds. If PvP is more your thing, look at SK Gaming’s Arena Rankings or Warcraft Realm’s Battlegrounds page. More teams/wins means more opportunities for you to get in on the fun.
Another factor to consider is the personality of your server. All servers will have loathsome jerks and terrific people. However, there are some servers where one or the other predominate. Take a look at the description for your server on WoWWiki’s Realms List. I shudder to recommend it, but it might be worth looking at the Official Realm Forums. You want to look at the reactions to announcements of accomplishments. Is the announcer congratulated or mocked?Hopefully this will give you some idea of the kinds of personalities you may be dealing with. Remember that mostly it’s the the scum of the server that post on the realm forums.
I hope this will help you in your search for a new server. Have fun!
(Inspired by Calling all Horde!! from Skeleton Jack)
Point 4 in Doofy’s Unsolicited World of Warcraft Predictions for 2009 is a good one. I know that I’d be tempted to go for two different tanking specs, or two different healing specs depending on the toon rather than spec for tanking and healing or tanking and DPS. If I was interested in PvP, I’d definitely have a PvP Spec and a PvE spec, which would leave my off-spec role abandoned again.
Matthew Rossi asks, Do you care about PvP anymore? He describes how he went from doing some PvP in classic WoW, less in Burning Crusade to not doing any in Wrath. I’ve found that as I played Warcraft more I PvPed less. The last time I PvPed was when my warlock hit 60 and I tried to do the AV quests for XP. My kids will occasionally take one of my toons and go to a battleground but that’s the only time you’d have seen my toons there in the last few months.
I don’t know what could be done to make PvP more interesting. A standard set of PvP gear so that it’s skill that matters, not twinking, might help. I’d still get owned, but at least I’d feel as though I had the possibility of doing something. Alternately, I like the idea of gear brackets of some kind – let those with full arena gear beat on each other instead of my PvE geared toons.
There may not be any point in try to get me interested in PvP again though. My preference is for PvE play. The changes Blizzard has made in PvP may simply be catering to those who prefer PvP. I can live with the fact that a portion of the game has no appeal to me. I’ll play the parts I enjoy and ignore the bits I don’t.
Nov 5
As I look forward to Wrath, I’m worried about having to PvP for PvE gear again. I still use my PvP shield for tanking on my warrior despite having cleared Kara many, many times and having done a good chunk of ZA. I’m bored with PvP and I really don’t plan on doing much of it come the expansion. No incoming dramatic protest, I’ll just live with having sub-optimal gear if the optimal gear requires PvP to acquire. If PvP becomes fun for me again, I’ll do it then.
Sep 14
Blizzard has opened up PvE to PvP transfers. I think this is a decent idea. I leveled my first characters on a PvP server thinking that it would add something to the game. It didn’t for me.
I think the timing is key for this. At this point the majority of the players who are leveling are playing alts. A 70 who transfers over from a PvP server to gank lowbies is going to get owned. I hope that new servers have six months or so before server transfers are allowed.
If you want a long take on this, see Lume the Mad’s PvE to PvP Server Transfers an Overdue Policy Change.
Sep 9
The Warhammer MMO is coming out in a week or so. I definitely will not be buying it on release, but I will be reading the reviews. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing what Tobold has to say about it since he seems to write from a largely PvE perspective. If Warhammer makes PvP fun for him, it’ll definitely be worth checking out. In the meantime, Massively has put out a A World of Warcraft player’s guide to Warhammer Online. It makes Warhammer sound interesting, but again I’m withholding judgement.
I will be looking for a new game a few months after Wrath comes out. Blizzard may do something amazing and revitalize WoW enough that I’m happy playing it until the next expansion. However, I feel that I’ve pretty much tried everything in WoW at this point – leveling, exploration, different classes, battlegrounds, professions, healing, DPS, tanking, raid leading, guild leading. The biggest exception is that I haven’t even set foot in Arenas on any of my toons. There just isn’t much appeal to getting slaughtered and my reflexes aren’t good enough to do more.
I’ve considered a number of MMOs and I expect that I will try a lot of them. Eve Online’s economy might be fun to play with, but the idea of PvP with significant losses is a turnoff. EverQuest 2 is supposed to have a vast world to explore, but I suspect the graphics may fall into the uncanny valley for me. Lord of the Rings Online’s lack of customization and graphics that fall into the uncanny valley drive me nuts. Warhammer is shiny and new, but if it’s mostly PvP I doubt I’d be interested. Freerealms isn’t out yet, so who knows if it’ll actually be fun. Ah well, there are always possibilities and maybe by the time I’m done with WoW I’ll find something to suit my tastes.
Aug 25
At 70, you can choose from one of three factions: Raider, PVP, and Casual. You then blame the other two factions for ‘ruining the game.’"
Aug 19
On one of the blogs I read someone posed the question "What would your ideal WoW party consist of?" Here’s my answer as of late in Burning Crusade World of Warcraft. I am assuming you are forming up a group of level 1 people who are going to be instancing together from now to the expansion (and you are all reclusive millionaires so you can play as much as you want to before Wrath comes out and completely invalidates this).
Tank: Either a protection warrior or a protection paladin. The warrior for their numerous "oh crap" buttons and sheer survivability and the paladin for their amazing AOE tanking abilities. A bear druid would be a strong second place – the main reason I wouldn’t put them in first is that all those lovely plate and shield drops would get sharded.
Healer: I would go with a holy priest. From what I’ve seen there are no situations where a priest is a bad choice for healing 5 mans. In cases where the group is taking a lot of AOE damage, a paladin healer may not be able to keep up. A restoration druid or shaman would also be a strong choice, but they’re not as versatile as a priest. A discipline priest would probably work as a main healer as well, but I don’t know enough about them to say for certain.
DPS/off-heal: I would pick either a elemental shaman, a balance druid, or a shadow priest. All three should have a good sized mana pool and their gear should allow them to do a decent job of picking up heals if needed. I would lean slightly toward the shaman for utility and so that mail caster gear doesn’t get sharded. The shaman’s hourly self-resurrection would also be useful on rough runs. Retribution paladins and enhancement shaman are less likely to have the mana pool and gear to pick up on healing.
DPS/utility: Mages take this hands down. A warlock or rogue will probably pump out similar or slightly greater DPS but they’re nowhere near as useful. Mages offer the best CC in the game for humanoids and beasts, portals to capital cities, food, and water.
DPS/support: I would lean toward a hunter for this role, particularly a hunter with improved traps. A hunter’s traps provide CC for almost every mob in the game. Hunters can pump out some very strong DPS. A hunter with jumper cables can help with wipe protection. That being said, it’s easy to argue for just picking another one from the DPS/off heal category. An elemental shaman can bring totems for strong group buffs. A shadow priest provides a steady stream of mana and health while DPSing. A balance druid brings Gift of the Wild and a battle rez.
Here’s the party I’d make for running 5 person instances: protection paladin, holy priest, mage, elemental shaman, and shadow priest. The shadow priest could be replaced by a balance druid giving stronger off-tanking possibilities traded for weaker off heals/mana regeneration.
Classes/Specs I would not bring: Fury warriors,arms warriors, retribution paladins, rogues, warlocks, and enhancement shaman all bring DPS and utility to the group but their contributions pale when compared to those of the classes I’ve listed. These classes all have strong places in raids or in PvP but they just aren’t useful enough for 5 player instances.
Aug 15
I was thinking that leveling a death knight on a PvP server is going to be a cruel experience. I can guarantee that there will be level 70ish people in PvP gear waiting patiently just outside the death knight starting area to ensure that the first few waves of death knights get repeatedly ganked and camped. From what I can understand of the ganking mentality this is too good of an opportunity to pass up – a fresh wave of characters 10 levels lower than you who are new to their abilities (particularly in PvP), who are focused on leveling as quickly as possible, and who will probably have to pass though a particular area. Ganking gold! (I’m glad I’ve moved to a PvE server.)
FOLLOWUP: Looks like I was right – I wouldn’t have expected the ganking to have started in Beta though.
Jul 29
Clive Thompson recently posted Back to the Grind in WoW — and Loving Every Tedious Minute in which he discusses World of Warcraft and grinding. (Found via WoWInsider)
I’d define grinding as killing a given group of mobs over and over again to achieve some reward. The in-game reason can be straightforward and short – "That guy offered me 10 silver if I kill 10 vicious piglets" or well reasoned and more abstract "If I kill one vicious piglet every 10 seconds, I can reach level umptety-one more quickly than if I run around doing quests." The grind can also be frustrating, as you kill 100 boars, all of whom seem to be lacking their livers. Whatever your motivation, you will spend time grinding when you play World of Warcraft.
I liked Thompson’s point that ultimately the grind is rewarding. Whether you’re killing ten mobs or a thousand, if you put in enough time you are guaranteed to reach your goal. As Tobold put it, "If you managed to kill that wolf at level 1 to gain your very first experience point, chances are you’ll also be able to kill that level 69 mob that makes you ding 70." World of Warcraft guarantees you a reward at the end of the day.
I suspect that this is one of the issues that makes the transition from leveling to endgame difficult. There are no guaranteed rewards in endgame. We’ve been killing Moroes for 5 months now without seeing the Mongoose enchant drop even once. You can play arenas all day every day but if your team isn’t good enough you’re not going to get the latest and greatest PvP gear. You can farm Kara for badges or farm honor in battlegrounds for outdated PvP gear, but that reward you want may forever be out of your reach no matter how long you play. That’s frustrating after 70 levels of being guaranteed (most) rewards if you just play enough.
The fantastic element that explain the appeal of dungeon-clearing games to many programmers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milky-skinned, semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without user requirements changing.
– Thomas L. Holaday, The Guru’s Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM) by Ken Henderson, ISBN: The Guru’s Guide to Transact-SQL, page: 119
Jul 25
Life of a Nin had a post On Raiders and raiding which discusses summer slumps in raiding and lack of progress. He mentions the idea of a large scale raiding alliance as a possible solution. You stay in your guild, but raid with people from the raiding alliance at the times that work for you on the raids you want to run. One example of this in action is Leftovers Community Raiding. For further reading, see the WoW Insider article.
I really like the idea, but thinking about the overhead scares me. The loot system would have to be 100% impartial. If you have the points or win the roll you get it. If there is even the slightest room for favoritism the whole thing would fall apart.
How are troublemakers handled? In the relatively small guilds I’ve been in, there have been a number of disruptive people. Sometimes it was just a bad night. Sometimes it was a regular occurrence. How do they avoid blacklisting someone for having a bad night while keeping the troublemakers from stirring things up?
It looks like Leftovers is an Alliance group on a role-playing server. Looking at their setup tempts me to pull Flint out of retirement and give it a try. Sadly, Flint would lose the provable distinction of having leveled on a PvP server as a holy priest. I’m also not sure if I want to get into raiding on him again. It’s definitely something to think about.
Jun 25
I recently engaged in some world PvP on my shaman – it started by accident, then reminded me why I’m playing on a PvE server now.
I was hunting tigers in Stranglethorn for one of Nessingwary’s slaughter the local wildlife quests. Tab, kill tiger, tab, kill tiger, tab, zap tiger…it has a name…oh crap! It was a flagged hunter’s pet – the hunter was a level above me and I suck at PvP. I tried, even popped my reincarnate but was completely owned. Then the hunter decided to camp me – fortunately I was able rez and pop ghost wolf fast enough to get out of range. He ended up chasing me all the way back to Grom’Gul. I lost my fire festival buffs which made me a sad little carebear.
I’d been thinking that I wouldn’t mind getting back on Flint come the expansion or possibly leveling Ali those last nine levels before Wrath. Incidents like this remind me why that’s not likely to happen. For me PvP outside of battlegrounds does get my heart pumping, but it almost always leaves me frustrated. My lack of skill is the problem and I’m not willing to practice enough to remedy that lack.
Carebears FTW!
Jun 11
Every time someone talks about how much S4 loot is better than T6 gear, God ganks little Timmy and takes away his white kitten.
And feeds it to Magtheridon.
metaquotes: mephron (in worldofwarcraft) on PvP gear vs. dungeon loot
Mar 27
Till I read Ratshag’s post, I completely failed to make the connection that you can now buy a set of PvP gear from vendors. Time to run my toons around to the faction representatives. It’s not going to replace Season 1 gear, but it could give you a nice boost in earning the honor for the better PvP sets.
Helm – Thrallmar ( http://wowhead.com/?npc=17585 )
Chest – Sha’tar ( http://wowhead.com/?npc=21432 )
Shoulders – Lower City ( http://wowhead.com/?npc=21655 )
Gloves – Cenarion Expedition ( http://wowhead.com/?npc=17904 )
Legs – Keepers of Time ( http://wowhead.com/?npc=21643 )
Mar 11
I don’t actually have a level 70 rogue. My highest rogue is 42, Alliance, on a PvP server, and has been parked for many months. However, I do run Kara with one rogue in our raid and one of our guildies has an up and coming rogue alt. This Pre-Karazhan Gear list for rogues could be useful to them. So could A Rogue’s Guide to Karazhan.
I need to do PvP on my warrior and paladin for the shoulders (if there were worlds enough and time, I’d also do it on my hunter). This seems like a good idea, but I’m really reluctant to take charge. I don’t like being a leader.
Losing AB is no fatality | Altitis
I wrote a simple macro which I would use 15 seconds before the game start unless someone else was taking charge.
The instructions? Simple.Group 1: Mine. Group 2: Stables. Group 3: Mill.
Announce incoming in chat, and remember, 3 bases wins the game.That’s all it took to go from a 1-9 win ratio to 4-6 with that toon. Something I verified over several dozen games.
Nowadays on horde, it works the same way, except the dispatches are sent to LM, farm and BS. I usually add a “stables last only after the other 4 are secured” after the first nodes cap for us. And you know what? It works.
Jan 29
PvP’ing as a Tank « Critical QQ is an article I’ve been looking for. My warrior does maybe two battlegrounds a week, so I’m not about to respec. However I do have my eye on the Gladiator’s shield and shoulders so I’d like to do a decent amount of battlegrounds. More or less it boils down to treat battlegrounds much as you would a PvE encounter. Your role is not do deal damage, but to take hits and distract from the damage dealers.
Need More Rage: Ratshag Does Mathifications gives a nice priority order for a warrior for PvP. I’m still going for the shield first, but at least this way I know where to go from there. Now I need to figure out a list like this for my tanking paladin who already has the shield.
Item Hon/Sta Hon/Res
Gladiator’s Plate Gauntlets 250 273
Gladiator’s Plate Shoulders 250 308
Sergeant’s Heavy Cloak 280 397
Veteran’s Plate Belt 317 476
Veteran’s Plate Greaves 317 476
Gladiator’s Shield Wall 333 517