Ding 80 ; Goodbye SSC sword/badge offhand ; Frostfire Bolt and you ; mage-tanking Utgarde ; questing in Wrath ; heroics

Hit 80 a couple days ago. Ground out 77-80 in less than 15 hours–they certainly lowered the curve for leveling in Wrath.

Did the Amphitheater of Anguish quests a few days ago as well, and that staff is amazing! Replaced my [Fang of the Leviathan]/[Fetish of the Primal Gods] by a long way! also got my bracers enchanted (+6 stats, thanks Whatley!)

Thinking about farming Kara for [The Lightning Capacitor] as I already have its successor, [Thunder Capacitor].

Now for the real content: the heavily hyped mage spell Frostfire Bolt.

Speaking as a fire mage, this new spell is failure. For the same cast time, it deals much less damage than Fireball. It’s only really useful to replace Frostbolt in a rotation or on a fire-immune boss. Other than that, this spell was a lot less worthwhile than it was presented as being.

I’m a lot more enamoured with Mirror Image, though. Although your mirrors don’t hit for much, they have many uses–mobs seem much more likely to attack them than you, and they can serve as confusion in PVP.

Some of the rep rewards from factions seem sick. I picked up a HUGE upgrade cloak for me from Kirin Tor, and am grinding rep for new dagger/robes as well. Crazy good stuff. I hear there’s a great belt out there too, but I haven’t looked into it yet really.

A few days ago, I was running Utgarde at 76 for some friends, and we had no tank. Well, me being me and having like 13k HP buffed, I decided to try my hand at tanking. Threat generation wasn’t a problem, and we had 2 healers, so things went pretty well till we got to the 2nd boss. That. . .got pretty nasty pretty quickly. Even so, was a lot of fun. Currently, I’m at 15k HP buffed–something I never thought I’d be even CLOSE to!!

There was a fun quest I did back at level 74 for the Bronze Dragonflight that had me helping my future self to kill some agents of the Infinite Dragonflight. I was very happy to find out that they let me go help my past self at level 80. Really well put together quests out in Northrend – so far my favorite has been the final quest chain in Dragonblight, which involves Sylvanas getting dethroned due to a coup in Undercity. I’ll leave it at that, save to say that you don’t want to miss this quest chain.

Heroics are hard again, and it’s kinda weird. I haven’t gotten any upgrades so far froom them, but that’s more due to unlucky drops than unavailability. I find myself longing for the good old pre-WOTLK days where I just breezed through heroics, but at the same time I’m enjoying the challenge again. It’s been a while since 5-mans mattered, and it’s fun to get back to the basics sometimes. I was running a H-Violet Hold today, and we could just not down the water boss, I’m not sure why. Even so, Blizz’s well-designed rep gain system coupled with the great group we had (props Hakuba, Eradicator, Boomczx, and Dragön) at least let us enjoy the run despite wiping. I can honestly say that despite complaints of endgame being made “too easy”, there’s still a lot of content to see, and I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t even done half the zones, either, so I’m looking forward to going back and questing through these areas.

On the RL side of things, I’m taking a quick break for Thanksgiving, and another one for Christmas; unfortunately, things are gonna be a little hectic for a while.

Tobold wrote a great blog post that deals at least partially with the moral system in WoW. I highly suggest reading both the blog and the comments as they are both insightful.

And yes, I did make that new header graphic by myself. Isn’t it sexy?

Why I’m in the guild I’m in! ; my new habit

As some of my VERY long-term readers may recall. . .I originally set out as a player wanting to join From Ashes We Rise. Currently, I’m in Cloudy Day. I made a conscious decision when I got to 70 to join Neo Imperela, and I made another decision when applying to Cloudy Day – I specifically didn’t even make an effort to join either Contempt or Confirmed, the 2 “hardcore” raiding guilds on our server, and also chose not to apply to The Prophecy, another guild at about the same progression level as CD. By then, FAWR had disbanded, so they weren’t even an option.

At the time that I apped to CD, I was being pressured by Razzdi to join the guild that he was currently in, Chilling Till WOTLK. Now, I’m glad I didn’t take him up on that, after what his guildies did to try to discredit CD.

My goal has always been to raid, but I want to do so in an environment where I could still have fun. Cloudy Day gave me that environment. The other guilds mentioned, although they were raiding, either were too childish from everything I heard (Prophecy), were over-zealous about raiding (Contempt/Confirmed) or turned out to be a bunch of jerks. (Contempt).

Neo Imperela was a good fit for me in that although we did raid, we didn’t raid very much. My big beef there was that we weren’t accomplishing anything. We never moved forward. In Cloudy Day, we raid enough that I enjoy it but not so much that I get burned out, and we try to progress, too. Really just perfect for me.

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Audiosurf! Is amazing! I’ve been playing a lot of it in my free time. Highly recommend it.

Relationships Part II: A unique position ; my current situation.

More on relationships.

What do you do if you’re in a relationship that’s going downhill. . .but if the breakup happens, drama is guaranteed to ensue, and it’ll be hard to get away from?

I say, break up, but don’t leave. Moving away (e.g. to another college) could really affect your future negatively.

I have a friend who’s in this situation currently. I’d like to think I gave the right advice, but that’s one thing that worries me as well. I’ve had a couple people who’ve talked to me about their relationships; I try to do the best I can to help out, but at the same time, I’m scared I might be giving bad advice. Even so, I can be proud to say that I have told people that the relationship they’re in probably won’t work out. A lot of the time, I’ve heard people say “It’ll get better” or “It’ll be okay, everything will be fine eventually. Just wait it out”. Stuff like that.

Well, the truth is. . .things don’t always work out the way we want them to. Relationships are tricky like that. Sometimes things go badly. Often, it’s tough to predict what’ll happen. . .but I can at least do my best for my friends. Granted my experience is limited, but I try to be as unbiased and objective as possible. Sometimes having an outside observer that doesn’t have their judgment clouded by their own current relationship can help, I think.

Even with that, the knowledge that things don’t always work out the way they’re expected to, it’s hard a lot of the time to give advice, knowing that what I say may have an impact on someone’s future. Even so, I think it’s worth it to at least give it a shot. I know the people that I give advice to pretty well, and I know that I’m not gonna do anything to intentionally screw something up.

——

(Non-serious title: MAGE IRL QQ GO)

I mentioned feeling lost in my last relationships blog.

Things aren’t working for me relationship-wise. I haven’t really met anyone who I click with, and the people that I do have a lot in common with are not available for relationships (for various reasons). I don’t know what to do at this point.

As far as how my WoW stuff figures into this: I honestly think right now, it’s gonna be tougher for me to find someone because of WoW. Does this mean I’m gonna quit playing? Naah. I’ve made too many friends, and I wanna keep those friendships. But the honest truth is, especially with leveling to 80, WoW takes a lot of my time, and that’s gonna be a big problem for a lot of people. I wish it didn’t have to be that way, but that’s simply how things are going to be for a while.

Of course people are gonna say “Find someone else who plays MMOs”, and I agree with that, but it’s a lot harder than people make it out to be. I can’t just go out to the middle of campus and run into someone who plays WoW. Wish I could find someone who did, though – of course then there’d have to be a mutual attraction as well. Nothing’s guaranteed, and the more I think about it the more I get discouraged.

I think I may have lied a few posts back when I said that I didn’t need the “complication” of a relationship. I think it’s more of me being either afraid to try or, more likely, just the lack of finding anyone at all so far. For someone like me, who neither looks really good nor is one of the “in-crowd”, it’s really tough. I’ve tried many times before, but it’s never really worked out, and honestly, sometimes I wonder if it ever will. As I’ve said to others, sometimes things really don’t work out.

It’s hard for me, writing this blog. I have a lot of trouble opening up to people (might surprise people in-game and on Ventrilo, but I’m kinda an introvert offline), and maybe I find it easier where I’m both behind a keyboard and not telling this to any one specific person. Even so, it’s tough for me to just put my problems out there for someone to see, but I have to let it out sometime. I hope you guys don’t mind that I’m taking a couple posts off from WoW; I’m trying to keep up my WoW-related stuff at the same time, but I can’t promise to keep everything up at once.

Azjol-Nerub ; new action-bar! ; from Arena players: “l2play” in PvE ; Ding 74 ; Strand of the Ancients ; Return of some old friends

Ran Azjol-Nerub recently. Fun stuff. What makes me sad, though, is killing Anub’arak as a 5-man raid boss. Yet again, Blizz has made a MAJOR lore figure into a trivial encounter. It’s pitiful, too, cause he’s not even that hard. I found it cool that he mostly uses the Crypt Lord’s abilities from WC3 though. =P

Got a new actionbar today–found out that Slow Fall was good to have, and a lot of 5-mans can be AoE’d through in WOTLK, so I needed all my AoE abilities. Think I might expand Bartender from just my alts onto my main–it’s a great mod, the best bar mod I’ve come in contact with. (experience with Trinity and a couple others)

One of my friends, a holy paladin with TK/Hyjal/BT experience, including Illidan downs, recently was told by a S2 (lol) (plus 1 piece ZA) hunter to “l2heal”. That’s just a laugh. First off, obviously the guy himself couldn’t play, cause S2 was total BG grind forever. Secondly, hello? My friend has T5/T6 on, some of it from pre-nerf. When my paladin friend told the hunter about his PvE experience…silence ensued.

Ding 74! Yes! It’s happened! And since there are only 6 mages 74+ on the server. . .I can sell ports for outrageous gold. =P New fireball rank was excellent too.

Did Strand of the Ancients earlier tonight. Man is that place fun! Vehicles, assault/defense…it’s just a blast and a half. Already got a couple achievements–it made PVP fun again.

Both Nathanielle and Wackko are playing again! Guys, if you’re reading this. . .missed seeing you in game. Good to have you back.

Next post: death knights. =)

IRL: Relationships

Well, I had mentioned this blog to a few ppl and I figured it was about time I started doing some RL blogging anyway. I’ll try to touch on how WoW affects relationships too.

I’m gonna start with some of my personal history with the whole subject.

A few years ago, in sophomore year of high school, I went to a dance with a girl I went to school with, and knew somewhat well. We talked a lot during the dance, kissed at the end, I asked her out, and we were an “item” if you will for 8 days (according to my Live Space), before things fell apart.

A few failed relationships and rejections later . . .I started writing poetry. =P

as i wait in my prison cell
alone for those seven hours
i look to either side
and see
people talking together
free to fly
to spread their wings
but i have noone to fly with
what is freedom without someone else
without that
there is no freedom
only a prison
a cage
with noone to free me
to fly together

–March 01, 2007, perhaps. Maybe ‘06. I’m not sure.

Well, I actually got back together with her a year later, but yet again things just didn’t really work out – and we ended up splitting after two months.

Anyway. Had a couple other rejections, heard some “Just friends” stuff from some other people, and through a series of things like that I’ve managed to stay single all the way into college.

I met two girls who I thought might like me at college orientation. Unfortunately, one hooked up with someone else between orientation and opening day, and the other. . .well, I found out she “swung the other way” if you will. Rather unfortunate IMO!

And that brings us up to today.

Honestly? Of course I’d like to be in a relationship. Yeah. No question. Sadly, it just doesn’t seem like there’s much chance of that happening any time soon; I can’t seem to find the right person for me no matter how hard I look. =( I’m kinda lost right now tbh on this front of my life. Even in that failed relationship, I really did care for my girlfriend – we just didn’t “click”, i guess. I’m not really sure what I’m going to end up doing.

Currently, I’m just kinda moving through everything, taking things as they come. Not an ideal way of finding the right person for me, but I’m out of ideas. I’ve tried a lot of things, and I guess I must just be not very good at projecting my emotions, or I’m just not building the right bridges.

I touched on this a couple posts back, but I wanted to expand my thoughts on how relationships and WoW interact. I’ve seen both the positive and the negative side of how they can work.

I’ve seen a couple relationships work in positive ways, either being started or being supplemented through WoW. I was actually fortunate enough to see a relationship start through WoW; honestly, I think it makes sense. You’re going in with no sense of who the person really is, in terms of how they look. You’re judging solely by their personality, which is sometimes difficult to hide through a keyboard, and even harder through Ventrilo. You’re not prejudiced by looks, and I think that it’s hard to get away from that in face-to-face meetings. (A recent study showed, for example, that something like two-thirds of guys focus only on appearance in speed-dating.)

Negatively? WoW can, at its worst, tear apart a relationship. I’ve heard stories of people breaking up because one of them was playing too much, and the other didn’t play MMOs. I don’t often agree with my old GM Mymichelle, but in this case. . .I totally get what she said when she said that gamers should be with gamers, and non-gamers should be with non-gamers.

EDIT: Wups, forgot my really great story. So I was in sophomore year, really early on. Hadn’t hooked up with my first girlfriend yet. There was this girl in my Biology class that I really liked; I got her MSN Messenger address, and was gonna talk to her that night, but I left the paper with the email at a friends house. He started talking with her, and they started going out; later, she dumped him for someone else, and 2 years later the whole thing blew up in a gigantic cloud of drama and suspicion. And it was ALL MY FAULT. =P

Ding 71, Utgarde/Nexus runs

Well, I hit 71 today. Rather exciting. Stuck another talent point in the Arcane tree (Looking at a 15/50/3 or so when I get higher up in the 70’s).

Got my first gear upgrade too – got rid of my Scryer’s Bloodgem for a beautiful crit trinket (added almost 2% to my crit, which means a lot considering my crit-centric build).

I did want to talk through a quick look at the first 2 instances out in Northrend – Utgarde Keep and The Nexus.

Utgarde is quite a kick; 3 bosses, a lot of trash, and it’s pretty easy. The increased experience coefficient meant I was getting 1300-2600 xp per mob. The boss fights are done well without being too difficult – just some tricks you have to learn, like not getting interrupted when the 3rd boss does his shout. The 2nd boss was, in my opinion, very well done – similar to Romulo/Julianne without looking like a total ripoff. Run it twice now, and it’s okay. Nothing great, and certainly similar to BC instances in length, but it’s well constructed. My favorite part might be the first big room, where Blizzard showcases their new fire graphic. It looks very sexy.

Can be 4-manned with no CC and a ret paladin with no shield at 70. One of my friends did it. =P However, it can be a 20-30 minute run with a full group, a real tank, and decent players.

4 Cloudy Dayers, including me, and a pugged healer (who did awesome!) went to The Nexus earlier this evening – that place may be the best single 5-man I’ve ever run, and I think our tank may have agreed with me. It’s well-constructed, the bosses are fun without being too hard, and there are unique things that happen in every fight. There’s one room that really reminds me of the Final Fantasy universe – contains a lot of plants, dryads, trees, etc. Very cool stuff, and the coloring is AMAZING. Certainly a great instance. Last boss is really unique too – you have to keep moving around lest you freeze to death. You get a stacking debuff that’s a DoT and also increases casting time / time between attacks. As our tank said: Totally a druid fight.

Probably woulda been harder if 4 of the players hadn’t been T6′d. As it was the bosses kinda felt like pushovers, although there were some surprises and some scary moments.

Next on my hit-list for Northrend: 72 and Azjol-Nerub! Looking forward to it!

Apologies for the lack of pretty pictures. I’ll start posting ‘em when CD starts raiding again.

The countdown…

Well, 2 hours to go where I am! I’m working on finding a ride to get out to GameStop for the midnight release. Until then…I’m taking a break from WoW, taking it easy so I can be ready to pull a near-all-nighter for the expansion. Hoping to hit 72, since I won’t be playing much tomorrow. (LOTS of commitments =()

I’ll post my first impressions of Northrend soon. Cloudy Day’s starting in Howling Fjord when we get going–I plan to try and get ahead a bit so that I don’t have to worry about falling far behind.

Fire spec as a 70 mage, and thoughts on leveling and WOTLK

To continue my recent flurry of posts, I thought it would be nice to get back to the root of the blog with a post on mage specs and how to play a mage successfully. In this post, I’m first going to explore playing a mage in a 25-man raid environment at level 70 with the new talents (a little late, I know!) and then take a look at how Fire will be a viable leveling spec in the expansion.

One thing that Blizzard appears to be doing that I don’t like is catering to the casual player as WOTLK comes out. Raid difficulty appears to be easier, especially the early raids like Naxx, which is going to be easier than Kara pre-nerf. However, I’m hoping they’ll scale it up for higher-tier raiding.

As far as raiding at level 70 (Hey, we’ve still got 2 days!), Fire is definitely the way to go. Despite changes to the Arcane tree that modify the Arcane Blast debuff and change rotations up tremendously, Fire is currently far and away the most viable raid spec at 70 in both DPS and mana sustainability. With my 11/50/0 spec, I’ve beaten our arcane mages almost every time. Let’s take a look at some of the talents in my current spec, and see why they work.

First of all, as Fire, with the right talents, you’re adding 9% to fire crit, plus an additional 10% with Scorch stacking. Don’t shy away from this kind of increased crit chance; with the percentage of crit you’ll be seeing, it’s worth it to go crit-heavy and start looking at the crit-centric talents. Top on your list should be both old standbys like Ignite – an additional 40% crit damage is welcome, even if the mechanic’s still not optimal – and newcomer talents such as Hot Streak (which procs ridiculously often, making this one of the BEST fire talents in game currently). Fill your Fire tree in with all the regular talents like Improved Fireball, Pyroblast, Burning Soul, Master of Elements, Pyromaniac, Molten Fury, Empowered Fire, Burnout…stuff like that.

Once you’ve got your Fire tree fleshed out, let’s look at Arcane, and where to spend your last 11 talent points. The first 10 pretty much go in just as if you were doing a conventional 10/48/3 Clearcasting build pre-patch, but your eleventh point should go in Focus Magic. Ideally you should be casting this buff on a healer, but if your healers are awesome anyway, go ahead and stick it on a high-critting caster DPS. Having an extra 3% crit every time it procs (and it can proc a lot!) makes this talent a must-have.

Rotation for this build is similar to a conventional Fire rotation, with two changes: first, Glyph of Improved Scorch makes stacking the debuff much faster, and therefore increases your dps; and second, whenever Hot Streak procs, after finishing your current cast, you should hit your new instant Pyroblast before continuing your rotation. Pretty easy, but also deadly.

Leveling? Wow. It’s actually worth it to go fire, in my opinion! Hot Streak combined with a lot of stacking crit rating should make a fire build truly viable in solo PvE. When you’re getting an extra 2.5k to 5k damage every 10 seconds or less, things are really a lot better.

Friendships lost, friendships gained ; and the real world.

Matt, I told you I’d blog something non-WoW sometime. =) The second half of this post is gonna be that blog.

I’m gonna start this somewhat non-orthodox post off with a short retrospective on things that have happened since shortly before I left Neo Imperela for Cloudy Day’s raiding environment.

The restructuring of the guild that Biochemistry did was perhaps a little extreme for most people. I saw good players like Reanimator get screwed by the new ranks, and the guild’s raiding suddenly got A LOT more intense. Mymichelle started yelling at more people–I don’t know whether by not being GM she felt less responsible for the emotions of guildies or what, but that’s what started driving the guild apart. Wasn’t helped at all by the extreme approach taken to Kara and Bio’s sometimes caustic attitude towards formerly casual raiders.

It was around this time that I started getting ridiculed a lot more in Vent, and also when I thought about leaving guild. I did ask whether there was a way I could give my raid spot to someone who needed gear, but that was never really an option, unfortunately.

Reanimator and I had talked about leaving NI (and possibly transferring servers) for a while. Re left a couple weeks before I did (to Mal’ganis), and I left shortly after, staying on server. My decision was basically made once I talked to Bio about our chances for progression, and he replied that we had 0% chance of hitting 25-mans and not much of a chance of breaking into ZA.

I heard that shortly after I left, a guildie asked where I had gone, and Michelle said something along the lines of “I DON’T FUCKING KNOW, WHY DON’T YOU FUCKING ASK HIM YOURSELF?!” Needless to say this isn’t really the reaction I expected from someone who I had respected as a GM.

As of the writing of this post, no officers of Neo Imperela have logged in for 9 days; most have been offline for longer than that, and Michelle, I know, has gone back to playing Alliance. The guild didn’t die wholly because of this, but certainly it was the deciding factor in a lot of guildies’ decisions.

After I left, I kept in touch with as much of the guild as I could. Most of the raiders are still on my friends list. There were about 3 separate groups that eventually split off of NI; I had been talking to most or all of the people that left before they actually /gquit about the situation. I think things were handled fairly professionally in the situation, and unfortunately Michelle has chosen to shun me and other people that left the guild, as was evident when I asked her to come to a Kara raid a couple of weeks ago, and got absolute silence in response; in addition, Galistul, who had left long before us for reasons of progression, had been shunned by Michelle for a while on Vent when he came by to check up on us. =S

I pulled my alt out of NI today. Last I checked, out of 80+ accounts previous to the disaster, less than 30 were left in guild. Fortunately I have kept in contact with most of the people who I knew in NI, and have actually gained better friendships with many of them–even to the point of organizing a “Former NI Members” run tomorrow.

Although I have lost some friendships from that guild that I valued (Michelle, for example–sorry things ended up how they did), I have gained/deepened others. Reanimator’s coming back to the server, and it’ll be good to get back to doing stuff with him. Shoutouts to Tril, Sfc, Eradicator, Demuerte, Maerad, Carolynz, Amph, Sini, Galistul, Re, Fingan, Det…all you guys that I met through NI and am now better friends with. If I left anyone off the list, let me know =)

Not only have I been talking to all my former guildies, I’ve made a ton of NEW friendships in Cloudy Day. Shoutouts to Rêpentist, Vidaire (Have I mentioned you’ve sounded really familiar since I first started raiding with CD? Did we talk at some point before my CD raids?), Bisu, Eff (how could I leave you off the list?), Nino of course, Johny, and everyone else who I’ve started building a friendship with. Great to meet all you guys, and I hope to spend a long time continuing to hang out and play WoW with everyone!

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Well, that turned out longer than I expected. With the advent of WOTLK, I’ve been getting pretty bored, which is probably where all of these posts have been coming from. I’m really starting to run out of WoW related material due to simple boredom with my mage. I’ve been playing some alts, but have had difficulty finding groups. That said, I’m looking forward to all the new content out in Northrend, and don’t intend to stop playing my mage–lots left to do!

Life outside of WoW has been very hectic recently. As a music major, I end up having a lot of commitments, and sometimes have trouble taking care of everything, as is the case right now. I was sick recently and missed nearly a week of classes. I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, but it’s tough. (As an aside, I was asked if I had ever considered journalism after a friend read my post on how MMOs are not addictive.)

One complication that I don’t need right now is a relationship. As nice as it would be to have someone that I could really open up to on a face-to-face level (Sometimes a keyboard just isn’t enough), there’s a lot of time commitment involved that I simply can’t meet right now. Next semester should be better as I’m taking very few credits due to schedule conflict and having extra credits, but I still think I’d have to find someone who either plays WoW or understands why Thursday through Saturday nights are bad nights for me, and the chances of that happening…well, let’s just say they’re not too high right now. Part of it could also just be me being leery of relationships–I’ve been in one before, and it wasn’t successful.

Relationship troubles aside, life is getting pretty stressful–I’m feeling pretty weighed down with the extra work that I’ve been having to do in order to get by in class recently. I’ve got some serious projects going now in a couple classes, and that’s making things a little harder.

However, despite all of that, I think things are gonna turn out alright. I’m just hoping for the best right now.

CD downs Illidan again, as well as a 1/6 Sunwell run.

This post will be edited with screenshots!

Cloudy Day is finally a Sunwell guild. Trash was easy–the book for Hardened Khorium Bars dropped, I rolled a 96, but Nino rolled 100 =(

Kalecgos on the other hand was crazy. After two sloppy wipes, we downed him (also a sloppy attempt, compounded by me not having a mic and therefore not being able to call portals on me. Oh well); he dropped the LEET tanking sword as well as 3 non-mage bracer tokens. Regardless, the down was awesome, and the fight is certainly unique. Here’s a quick run-through for those who don’t know it:

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There’s Kalecgos sleeping. Awwww….

The whole raid needs to run in at once lest some people be locked out. Portals will spawn at various locations, groups associated with those locations need to click them to be transported into some kind of nether world where you have to kill a demon.

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Here’s a portal that will teleport you…

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…here. You have to kill the demon before you kill Kalecgos, which is hard because you have tanks cycling in and out of the portals (and therefore tanking the 2 mobs at different times), and you have less DPS on teh demon both because you have less bodies down there and because Kalecgos gives the raid cool buffs that allow you to do more DPS on him.

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Now that the demon’s dead, DPS Kalecgos. He’ll enrage, and he will hurt. I believe our successful attempt left no tanks standing.

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Collect your phat lewtz. ^_^

I also spent all my badges on epic gems, and auctioned those gems as well as half of my bank. I now have 38 free bag slots for the grind to 80, and made about 1500g yesterday. Well on my way to an epic flyer now!

(edit 9 months later) lol, forgot all teh screenshots. And this is an epically abbreviated strategy.

“It’s just a game”

Wow. Seems like those four words can justify anything these days.

Using a leveling hack? Oh, it’s just a game. It doesn’t matter that we’re exploiting the game that you worked legitimately through to get your character to max-level on so that we can have level-capped characters within one day. No, that’s no big deal at all. I just saw two people in Org that went from 20 or less to 60 just standing there. That’s not my idea of a fair shake for everyone.

Screwing with someone’s raid? Oh, it’s just a game. No big deal. Not like anyone REALLY cares about raiding, right? I’ve seen this one happen too. Some guy sat in our BT (he was saved from the night before) and wouldn’t let our 25th person in for 3 attempts on Illidan. Not something I was particularly happy about. (As an aside, those who say “It’s just a game” as they denigrate serious raiders are dead wrong; this is a responsibility for those who choose to raid, we take this very seriously as we made this commitment.)

Duel spamming or whisper spamming? Yeah, I’ll ask politely to stop. Half the time I’ll get back “It’s just a game, deal with it” or something similar. Eventually of course this will lead to /ignore, but while it’s happening it’s pretty sickening.

As much as some people would like it to be, WoW is not “just” a game. It’s a responsibility at times. There are REAL PEOPLE that you’re interacting with, and that, I think, makes WoW more than a game, and the social interactions within it need to be handled with maturity and poise rather than with the childishness that I see day in and day out.

MMOs are NOT an addiction

Coming from a WoW player, I know this may sound hard to believe, but I can honestly say that MMOs such as WoW are not addictive normally. The few people that are “addicted” are a small section of the in-game community; most play the game simply because it’s fun or because they use it to socialize with people.

For those who think that the designers made the game with the express objective of “getting people addicted” (I’m talking to you, Dr. Phil. You and your special episode on MMOs. You inspired me to write this post.), you’re wrong. The designers designed the game to be fun and to make money for the company. If the game wasn’t fun, players wouldn’t play. Are cigarettes fun? No. Are they addictive? Yes. Are MMO’s fun? Yes. Are they addictive? No. (As a side note, MMO’s aren’t harmful to your health like cigarettes are.) Reasons people play MMOs are not consistent with addictions either. Most people don’t play WoW to be “cool”; heck, some people in my high-school percieved me as kind of a “geek” for playing WoW. No. They play it because it’s what they enjoy doing. I doubt that many people enjoy inhaling carcinogenous smoke directly into their lungs anymore.

I personally have taken breaks from WoW a few times. Felt no urge to get on and play, and simply came back to the game recharged and excited about it again. No “withdrawals”, no nothing. The only way one could be said to be “addicted” is in that a lot of work has been sunk into their character and they don’t want to lose that–and honestly? I understand that. I’ve put a lot of time into my mage, I know more about the class than 90% of the people I know, that’s something that I’m proud of, regardless of whether it’s “real-world” or simply in WoW. It’s something *I’ve* accomplished. Referring to my recent post on achievements, people as a whole–not just WoW players–revel in that sense of accomplishment. That’s just human nature. Those who are “addicted” are also only considered to be because they’ve never tried to take a break. Once you take a step back from the game, and you realize that there really are no serious urges to get back on and keep playing, it’s notable that you’re not just playing for the sake of playing, you’re playing because you’ve accomplished something and you want to continue to better your character. That’s all there is to it, folks–no “addiction” there.

For those who still have doubts, check out the Daedalus Project at http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/ .

I had a friend point out to me that many cases of MMO “addiction” stem from some psychological issue such as depression. This is true, and may have merit. HOWEVER, the “MMO addiction” stems NOT from the game, but from the event that caused the depression. Plus, let’s face it–would you rather have a depressed alcoholic or drug addict who ends up, say, trying to take his own life, or accidentally overdosing and killing himself–or a depressed MMO player who has the chance of not only recovering through perhaps this sense of accomplishment/affirmation but also through social interaction with people in the game, say if he finds a guild? An instance like that, you could even see WoW as PRESERVING lives rather than destroying them through some falsified “addiction”.

I know that most people who believe that video games and, more specifically, MMOs are addictive will not be swayed by this blog. For those who are open to debate, I invite you to comment; I’ll reply in as timely a fashion as I am able.

Finally: Velinath’s take on Achievements

Achievements: love them or hate them, most people still find themselves going after one at least once. I’ll attempt to answer a couple questions with this post, such as why most players go after achievements, as well as taking a quick look at some of my favorite achievements as well as some that I’m currently working on.

Achievements have, in my opinion, added a lot to WoW. They give me something to do instead of running around Shattrath when I’m bored, say when I’ve finished my dailies and still have 4 hours before raid time. I also find it very relaxing to go and do some exploring or some other achievement if I’m stressed out. Also, having something concrete like an achievement saying I’ve completed BT if, say, I haven’t gotten any loot from Illidan is nice to see. Lastly, it gives people a reason to go back and experience the old-world raids. I, for one, really want to go do C’Thun–so far I’ve only run AQ40 up to Twin Emperors.

As far as motivation goes, most players, at least in my experience, are driven by a sense of accomplishment. By completing achievements, you’re accomplishing something–and then of course you can get stuff with your achievement points in WOTLK, as far as I know.

Past that, here are some of my favorite achievements, some of the achievements I’m currently working on, and some that I recommend or do not recommend.

Outland Dungeonmaster: Complete every regular Outland dungeon. It’s really too bad this wasn’t retroactive, or I would have finished it a lot sooner than I did. Currently working on Outland Dungeon Hero, its heroic counterpart.

Medium Rare (kill one of the listed Outland rare mobs): I don’t recommend this. It chains to Bloody Rare, which has you kill all of the listed mobs.

Loremaster of [continent]: Of course these are worth working on. The “Loremaster” title is something I’m seriously looking at. I haven’t really gotten a good start, but it’s worth doing if you enjoy questing, and I’m very close to Loremaster of Outland.

World Explorer: VERY doable. I’ve already done most of Eastern Kingdoms, and I know some guildies that have done EVERY area in the entire game so far, and are just waiting on Northrend.

The Fishing Diplomat: Easy, if you’re Horde and feel up to a little swimming. I did it, and it was worth it. =)

Old Ironjaw: Another fishing achievement, and one that I’m planning to do AFTER WotLK comes out. Breaking into Ironforge is SRS BSNS right now, and fishing for a low-drop fish is not my idea of fun, especially not in enemy territory.

They Love Me In That Tunnel (exalted rep with Timbermaw Hold): What can I say? BEST ACHIEVEMENT NAME EVER!

By the way, have you SEEN the shoulders you can buy with level 80 badges?! They’re bind-to-ACCOUNT and they scale with level! Plus…+10% experience gain. How can you lose?

On another note, this was my 100th posted article. =) Thanks for reading!

Near-full BT clear in one night, Kara bracers replaced

Well, we raided till AFTER midnight tonight, unfortunately only got Illidan to 10%. Still had fun–but for some reason we had issues with parasites this time despite having 3 mages. In my defense I would argue that it wasn’t my fault! I was FN+BW’ing every time it came up and there were Sahdowfiends nearby.

Even so, we ahd some good attempts, one-shotted most bosses, and then Galistul decided to be way too generous on Akama loot, and by doing so, allowed me to replace my Kara bracers! I’m now running with the bracers off Akama, meaning that I will probably go ahead and enchant them before WOTLK.

Speaking of WOTLK, who’s excited?! I know I am! Planning to keep my fire spec for leveling, just cause I’m so used to it at this point. I do plan to roll through 71-80 very quickly as I have a lot of free time to grind on my hands, and plan to take full advantage of it.

One thing I do hope to do before WOTLK comes out is take a look at Sunwell, hopefully tomorrow after we down Illidan. It looks fun (but difficult!) and I wouldn’t mind some of the gear from there.

I’ve been working on my Fishing lately–picked up about 6 different fishing Achievements as well as getting my skill up to about 230. =) I want to have my skill Outlands-ready by the time the expansion hits.

5/5 Hyj, new graphics settings

Well, Archimonde went down after 4 hours of attempts. Finally got him, and now I can say I’ve done every BC raid instance pre-2.4. We’ll probably either hit up Sunwell or BT tomorrow–looking forward to either.

The Archimonde fight was frustrating tonight for me in a couple ways–first, we had lots of little mistakes that led to wipes that were repeated or happened in a slightly different way over and over again, and second, just like our last Illidan kill, absolutely NO caster loot dropped. Oh well.

On another note, I found out how to maximize my graphics settings PAST the default limits that WoW sets.

I found this lovely site: http://blog.danielgovier.com/?page_id=362 . It explains how a simple macro like

/console showDetailDoodads
/console showLowDetail
/console horizonfarclip 2112
/console farclip 777
/console groundEffectDensity 256
/console detailDoodadAlpha 100
/console characterAmbient
/console maxLOD 3
/console SkyCloudLOD 3

can make WoW look absolutely amazing.

There’s also a way to make shadows ultra-sharp and defined, which I have found to be quite the improvement as well.

Playing my alts has suddenly become a lot more fun as I am taking a lot more time to look around and enjoy the scenery. =)