by Copra
Aye, starting the beginning of this week I have taken on the Real Life which Tobold so excellently explained to everyone in his earlier post. This means in general that for the next few weeks I most probably will not be posting even though I might be playing quite a bit (guild has some real treaties planned, woot!).
Just a short note though. As I have now noticed, I found it a lot easier to gear my shadowpriest than my warrior tank. I don't know why, but I find the spriest gear easier to comprehend and select, whereas I'm all the time confused with my tanks gear. Ratingbuster and such are of no use as they do take the gems into their calculations on your current gear, but not those on the gear vendor has (and I haven't found a way to go around this: the earlier choices I have made by trying to calculate the gem effects have gone awry).
The other thing is the cost of gear. The amount of emblems needed is enormous after the initial heroic gear, at least to me it's a daunting number of abuse in heroics. With dps caster the whole heroics grind is much more fun than with the abused tank character, for reason I mentioned there. Tank=open for abuse, dps=unleash the full potential (it's tanks fault anyway). On the other hand, I have stood up for the tanks being abused when I've been playing with my spriest because I know that all the crap tank gets isn't justified. In fact, I've noticed that very small portion of it is really tank related, the main crap comes from the ranged dps who just unleash all their dps in one burst and claim that it's tanks fault that the aggro breaks.
Now I've seen all ICC till Mr. Cool (Lich King), and I have a bit mixed feelings about this all. Partly because my computer cannot handle the 25 mans at all, partly because it was much more fun as my spriest (even on 25 man) than with my protection warrior (in arms spec, melee dps), partly because... I didn't get any real upgrades. Oh, and the rain of Emblems of Frost from ICC is just incredible compared to anything else. No wonder people are calling for the "gs 5600+" PUG raids in the trade.
But then again, that only tells that the character has been in ICC, leeching emblems or not. It doesn't tell anything whether the player is capable to cope with the encounters or is capable of work in a PUG.
Which they seldom are, if heroics are of any measure.
Have a nice summer, which still is out there!
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Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Dear Diary: some thoughts on myself
by Copra
Dear diary. It's been a long time since I wrote to myself alone, let alone made a diary entry. I guess it's too long, as the blog has taken my writing as a hungry monster, craving for more and more. Now I make my way and take this time to slow down from feeding that insatiable beast and write for myself.
There have been a couple of issues I've been delving lately. Or should I say for sometime now, as the first traces of this seem to trickle back for over several months now. I guess the beginning was the fact that reaching of level cap with my main character, Laiskajaakko, proved to be more a shock than anything in WoW before that. Shock in the way that it was a very negative experience to feel lost by being 'liberated' from the ilk of questing. And that the stories and advancement quests offered while levelling were replaced by the senseless grinding of heroic instances and occasional raids if I was lucky enough.
In a way that shock might have been less severe, had I been more rude, selfish and extrovert by nature. Being the INTJ I am, I'm too much of an introvert and perfectionist to go on bragging on my skills and abilities, when I see my lack of either. As it happens, I also bear the stigmata of a social animal, that being the desire to belong and be recognized as someone. I think the first makes it hard to go through the gogogo grind of heroics, as I want to learn and perfect my skills. The latter makes it hard to give up the connections I have made to move on from the social surroundings I have carved my niche in.
Like I have written earlier, to advance in the PUGging, one should be selfish, rude and dishonest to get to the PUGs these days. First it would take a couple of addons to fake the Gearscore and achievements to be able to enter the PUG raids running in ToTC and ICC to gear up to the level where I would feel comfortable to apply for the guild raids: I know for sure I would be accepted in the gear grinded from the heroics in the form of badges, but I just cannot go in there so poorly prepared, really.
My integrity goes beyond the lying part. I would be lying to other players - whom I should think as being NPC's instead, like everyone else does - which isn't honourable in any social interaction. I rather suffer to a point, whine and grumble, until I've had enough. And then I lash out to someone or something from about something very irrelevant, pouring out everything that's bothering me about and around the issue at hand. The blog has helped me on this context quite a lot: it's been a way to vent out the frustrations, wonders and anger towards my own inability to cope with the game itself.
Which leads to the other issue I'm having: I cannot let go of WoW. If I really think of it, I haven't found too much positive things to write about WoW: I've enjoyed the game in silence, commented and raved over the issues that bother me. All based on feelings and emotional responses rather than facts and research. Some readers have found that offensive or bothering, but they have seen blogs as information channels or guideline discussions.
Why do I find it so hard to leave WoW, even though I have enjoyed immensely on the games I've tried and played over my worst WoW burnouts?
I'm a social slacker. Like I said before, I want to feel I belong. I want the social recognition which you get in a familiar group. I'm one of those who Gevlon would love to bash. But being a human doesn't mean you're stupid or a slacker in the game, I think.
I liked EQ2 a lot, and I had very much fun in the game back in the day. A lot came from the fact that there was a friendly group of people playing in the guild I joined. What really was the turn off was the fact that the time zones were against the love: playing a MMO alone is very, very stupid and frustrating thing to me. The stories are not compelling enough and the mere advancing through the content alone doesn't have any meaningful reason behind it. In a single player rpg there is a reason to it all, a compelling story arc or similar to go through.
I loved EVE Online a lot. The fact is that I lost it because I didn't connect with the people in the game: the corporation I joined was very active, and still is, but in the deeper sense I didn't get any connection to the people in it. It just didn't make any sense to login, see familiar nicknames on the chat, call for missions and do them alone in the dark.
In many ways, WoW seems to be the easiest solution to my problem. It has a lot of solo content, the game itself is stable and solid despite its several (some severe) problems and I have brothers logging in every now and then. Oh, and two of my oldest kids, too. I find it very hard to make the effort to reach out and find new social groups to connect with, be it within this or other games. That is the stigmata of the introvert nature, too, the inability to make oneself known, bolster about in your own magnifience (even when there is none) or brag about your feats (especially when there are none).
If I had to change something in the blog, I would probably drop all the speculations and make this yet another class related blog with all the bells and whistles of such: guides on talents, builds, gear, levelling and stories about playing one. Then again, that would be just one of so many similar out there, so what would be the value of such a blog these days? Tanks go to Tankspot or Tank Hard, Shadowpriests to Shadowpriest.com and so on. There is just so little room to a class (or spec specified later on) specified blog out there.
Yet there is room for each and every opinion anyone ever has.
Dear diary, thank you for listening to my rant this time. I surely hope this helps me understand myself a bit better and help my readers to cope with my - sometimes edgy and unreliable - posts in the future.
Yours
Copra
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.
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Dear diary. It's been a long time since I wrote to myself alone, let alone made a diary entry. I guess it's too long, as the blog has taken my writing as a hungry monster, craving for more and more. Now I make my way and take this time to slow down from feeding that insatiable beast and write for myself.
There have been a couple of issues I've been delving lately. Or should I say for sometime now, as the first traces of this seem to trickle back for over several months now. I guess the beginning was the fact that reaching of level cap with my main character, Laiskajaakko, proved to be more a shock than anything in WoW before that. Shock in the way that it was a very negative experience to feel lost by being 'liberated' from the ilk of questing. And that the stories and advancement quests offered while levelling were replaced by the senseless grinding of heroic instances and occasional raids if I was lucky enough.
In a way that shock might have been less severe, had I been more rude, selfish and extrovert by nature. Being the INTJ I am, I'm too much of an introvert and perfectionist to go on bragging on my skills and abilities, when I see my lack of either. As it happens, I also bear the stigmata of a social animal, that being the desire to belong and be recognized as someone. I think the first makes it hard to go through the gogogo grind of heroics, as I want to learn and perfect my skills. The latter makes it hard to give up the connections I have made to move on from the social surroundings I have carved my niche in.
Like I have written earlier, to advance in the PUGging, one should be selfish, rude and dishonest to get to the PUGs these days. First it would take a couple of addons to fake the Gearscore and achievements to be able to enter the PUG raids running in ToTC and ICC to gear up to the level where I would feel comfortable to apply for the guild raids: I know for sure I would be accepted in the gear grinded from the heroics in the form of badges, but I just cannot go in there so poorly prepared, really.
My integrity goes beyond the lying part. I would be lying to other players - whom I should think as being NPC's instead, like everyone else does - which isn't honourable in any social interaction. I rather suffer to a point, whine and grumble, until I've had enough. And then I lash out to someone or something from about something very irrelevant, pouring out everything that's bothering me about and around the issue at hand. The blog has helped me on this context quite a lot: it's been a way to vent out the frustrations, wonders and anger towards my own inability to cope with the game itself.
Which leads to the other issue I'm having: I cannot let go of WoW. If I really think of it, I haven't found too much positive things to write about WoW: I've enjoyed the game in silence, commented and raved over the issues that bother me. All based on feelings and emotional responses rather than facts and research. Some readers have found that offensive or bothering, but they have seen blogs as information channels or guideline discussions.
Why do I find it so hard to leave WoW, even though I have enjoyed immensely on the games I've tried and played over my worst WoW burnouts?
I'm a social slacker. Like I said before, I want to feel I belong. I want the social recognition which you get in a familiar group. I'm one of those who Gevlon would love to bash. But being a human doesn't mean you're stupid or a slacker in the game, I think.
I liked EQ2 a lot, and I had very much fun in the game back in the day. A lot came from the fact that there was a friendly group of people playing in the guild I joined. What really was the turn off was the fact that the time zones were against the love: playing a MMO alone is very, very stupid and frustrating thing to me. The stories are not compelling enough and the mere advancing through the content alone doesn't have any meaningful reason behind it. In a single player rpg there is a reason to it all, a compelling story arc or similar to go through.
I loved EVE Online a lot. The fact is that I lost it because I didn't connect with the people in the game: the corporation I joined was very active, and still is, but in the deeper sense I didn't get any connection to the people in it. It just didn't make any sense to login, see familiar nicknames on the chat, call for missions and do them alone in the dark.
In many ways, WoW seems to be the easiest solution to my problem. It has a lot of solo content, the game itself is stable and solid despite its several (some severe) problems and I have brothers logging in every now and then. Oh, and two of my oldest kids, too. I find it very hard to make the effort to reach out and find new social groups to connect with, be it within this or other games. That is the stigmata of the introvert nature, too, the inability to make oneself known, bolster about in your own magnifience (even when there is none) or brag about your feats (especially when there are none).
If I had to change something in the blog, I would probably drop all the speculations and make this yet another class related blog with all the bells and whistles of such: guides on talents, builds, gear, levelling and stories about playing one. Then again, that would be just one of so many similar out there, so what would be the value of such a blog these days? Tanks go to Tankspot or Tank Hard, Shadowpriests to Shadowpriest.com and so on. There is just so little room to a class (or spec specified later on) specified blog out there.
Yet there is room for each and every opinion anyone ever has.
Dear diary, thank you for listening to my rant this time. I surely hope this helps me understand myself a bit better and help my readers to cope with my - sometimes edgy and unreliable - posts in the future.
Yours
Copra
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.
.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Should we praise the talent change?
by Copra
I have decided to keep the information I receive about Cataclysm to minimum, but the new talent change thing penetrated my shields. The system changes considerably, and as far as I understood the amount of talents is going down as well as the selection of optional ones, too.
In a way I see this as a step back from the 'freedom' players have had so far. EQ2 took a step back from character archetypes and switched to more open system of AA's in the early days. Now it seems to me at least that Blizzard is taking the opposite direction: moving from freedom to archetypes.
The change reflects the same ideals as the proposed and withdrawn RealID issue: to make the game more non-gamer, social friendly. By making the original character development decision the player commits to the character (which I like, because people are really making a mess of the game by playing tens of alts and not learning even one of them properly), but at the same time it urges people to make more characters to experience all of the classes out there. From 10 classes to 30 archetypes.
Make no mistake, I'm not a min-maxer type, but doesn't this sound like Blizzard is trying to make that min-maxing more a curiosity than a viable metagame within the game?
Or am I just paranoid in thinking that WoW is getting a wee bit more dumbed down to the direction of Free Realms and Facebook integration?
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Few short notes
by Copra
I'm still crossed about the RealID thing. Completely irrational rage and suspicion.
I'm stuck with my shadowpriest in cooking: the skill is at 288 and I don't seem to find a trainer with any recipes which would be better than green to go on. Either it's visiting a WoW tradeskill levelling site or waiting till Pilgrim's day for speed cooking quests.
Gear Wishlist and Elitist Armory get a very old gear for my shadowpriest, for some peculiar reason. I'm not amused by the fact that they show outdated stuff on her.
I'm removing Gear Score from my computer. It was fun as long as it lasted, but it's become more and more obvious that people are using it as the guide above all guides in PUG generation. Or how would you feel about someone calling for LFM Naxx10, achievements (all) and gs 5.9k+ ?! Seen that, and that wasn't the most outrageous yesterday.
Oh, and I cancelled my EVE subscription. Because of lack of time to play. Really. WoW, despite its flaws and inadequacies, showed its fun side again as I started playing my original main. Might as well switch my shadowpriest as my main because of that.
Heatwave is going on, I have a headache and can't sleep well. Thankfully my vacation is coming closer every minute.
That means, more minutes to play. Outside.
.
.
.
I'm still crossed about the RealID thing. Completely irrational rage and suspicion.
I'm stuck with my shadowpriest in cooking: the skill is at 288 and I don't seem to find a trainer with any recipes which would be better than green to go on. Either it's visiting a WoW tradeskill levelling site or waiting till Pilgrim's day for speed cooking quests.
Gear Wishlist and Elitist Armory get a very old gear for my shadowpriest, for some peculiar reason. I'm not amused by the fact that they show outdated stuff on her.
I'm removing Gear Score from my computer. It was fun as long as it lasted, but it's become more and more obvious that people are using it as the guide above all guides in PUG generation. Or how would you feel about someone calling for LFM Naxx10, achievements (all) and gs 5.9k+ ?! Seen that, and that wasn't the most outrageous yesterday.
Oh, and I cancelled my EVE subscription. Because of lack of time to play. Really. WoW, despite its flaws and inadequacies, showed its fun side again as I started playing my original main. Might as well switch my shadowpriest as my main because of that.
Heatwave is going on, I have a headache and can't sleep well. Thankfully my vacation is coming closer every minute.
That means, more minutes to play. Outside.
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Monday, July 12, 2010
I am not prepared
by Copra
First of all, Blizzard backed up from the RealID forum implementation. Small victory, the pebbles did their work in downing the Goliath. Now the issue is to keep our eyes on what Activision/Blizzard/Vivendi is going to do next, as they will most probably come up with something clever to get what they want.
And to open our eyes what they have implemented during the riot and ramble around the RealID issue. Whenever there is something big and rousing going on in the politics or media, something minor, but at least as annoying, goes through without anyone noticing.
Enough.
Over the weekend I learned one thing. I am not prepared, or at least my computer isn't prepared to run anything more than the basic 10 man dungeons. You see, I was lucky enough to be online when the guild ICC25 run folded due to lack of participants. There were enough people to run the weekly, though, so they asked for more people just for the heck of it.
Well... I was well among the first to rise my hand, this time with my shadow priest. The weekly was Ignis the Furnacemaster must die, which I have tanked with my warrior earlies, so it suit me well to see it from the dps side, too.
The beginning of Ulduar was simple enough for my computer to cope with, and it was actually fun to go through the Flame Leviathan encounter. But as soon as we started clearing the trash mobs from the Forge area, I saw it happen.
Slow motion jerky pictures, framerate around 7-10.
And it got even worse when we launched on Ignis. I was glad to stay alive, not a small feat when you have to anticipate seconds in advance, hoping that the cooldowns are done and bad things aren't on the floor.
From the success the group, which had grown to 23, decided to go for ICC25. I kind of hoped it would have been easier on my computer, but Marrowgar proved how wrong I was. I had tanked Marrowgar earlier in a 10 man group, without problems, but it seems that the 25 man strain to the processor is too much to handle.
Never the less, I am happy that I have at least seen the first 6 encounters of ICC, all up to Professor Putricide. Which I still have to do to get the second achievement in ICC.
The other lovely thing to happen was the impromptu guild pug doing IC5 man hc all the way through, so I got to see what HoR really looks like. IMHO, it's boring as hell compared to the build up of tension and expectations of FoS and PoS. Go in, stick to one spot, kill everything. Get past big bad wolf and kill, kill, kill.
Thanks to our guild's lovely, adorable and [add your own favourite superlative] recruitment officer Elora, I got to experience these both. First she insisted I participated on the ICC25, and second she put the guild group for two of us 'non-raiders' to experience the IC5 as whole.
Now the experience in ICC25 was a lacking one, and I really didn't get much insight on the fights themselves due to the framerate problem. I checked my computer with the CanYouRunIt tool and found out that my processor was the main reason to the issues I had. Everything else checked on the recommended specs, even overcame them nicely. Except the crucial part.
Now the only thing to do is to get a new computer, really.
All things taken into account, the weekend was quite successful and action packed, as Pupunen got exalted with Sons of Hodir and almost exalted with Wyrmrest on top of the ICC25. Laiskajaakko got his IC5 questline done and some nice upgrades to the off-spec gear.
We'll see what the week brings in. One hell of a heatwave I've heard, but that shouldn't affect the game.
Or should it?
.
.
.
First of all, Blizzard backed up from the RealID forum implementation. Small victory, the pebbles did their work in downing the Goliath. Now the issue is to keep our eyes on what Activision/Blizzard/Vivendi is going to do next, as they will most probably come up with something clever to get what they want.
And to open our eyes what they have implemented during the riot and ramble around the RealID issue. Whenever there is something big and rousing going on in the politics or media, something minor, but at least as annoying, goes through without anyone noticing.
Enough.
Over the weekend I learned one thing. I am not prepared, or at least my computer isn't prepared to run anything more than the basic 10 man dungeons. You see, I was lucky enough to be online when the guild ICC25 run folded due to lack of participants. There were enough people to run the weekly, though, so they asked for more people just for the heck of it.
Well... I was well among the first to rise my hand, this time with my shadow priest. The weekly was Ignis the Furnacemaster must die, which I have tanked with my warrior earlies, so it suit me well to see it from the dps side, too.
The beginning of Ulduar was simple enough for my computer to cope with, and it was actually fun to go through the Flame Leviathan encounter. But as soon as we started clearing the trash mobs from the Forge area, I saw it happen.
Slow motion jerky pictures, framerate around 7-10.
And it got even worse when we launched on Ignis. I was glad to stay alive, not a small feat when you have to anticipate seconds in advance, hoping that the cooldowns are done and bad things aren't on the floor.
From the success the group, which had grown to 23, decided to go for ICC25. I kind of hoped it would have been easier on my computer, but Marrowgar proved how wrong I was. I had tanked Marrowgar earlier in a 10 man group, without problems, but it seems that the 25 man strain to the processor is too much to handle.
Never the less, I am happy that I have at least seen the first 6 encounters of ICC, all up to Professor Putricide. Which I still have to do to get the second achievement in ICC.
The other lovely thing to happen was the impromptu guild pug doing IC5 man hc all the way through, so I got to see what HoR really looks like. IMHO, it's boring as hell compared to the build up of tension and expectations of FoS and PoS. Go in, stick to one spot, kill everything. Get past big bad wolf and kill, kill, kill.
Thanks to our guild's lovely, adorable and [add your own favourite superlative] recruitment officer Elora, I got to experience these both. First she insisted I participated on the ICC25, and second she put the guild group for two of us 'non-raiders' to experience the IC5 as whole.
Now the experience in ICC25 was a lacking one, and I really didn't get much insight on the fights themselves due to the framerate problem. I checked my computer with the CanYouRunIt tool and found out that my processor was the main reason to the issues I had. Everything else checked on the recommended specs, even overcame them nicely. Except the crucial part.
Now the only thing to do is to get a new computer, really.
All things taken into account, the weekend was quite successful and action packed, as Pupunen got exalted with Sons of Hodir and almost exalted with Wyrmrest on top of the ICC25. Laiskajaakko got his IC5 questline done and some nice upgrades to the off-spec gear.
We'll see what the week brings in. One hell of a heatwave I've heard, but that shouldn't affect the game.
Or should it?
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