dwarven battle medic

6x6x6: The Challenge of Sixes

2012-02-16T21:44:00.000-06:00

There is a new meme going around, started this time by Gnomeageddon. It's the Meme of Sixes and is an interesting one. It turns out this has been around for a long time; a little casual link-surfing took me back to February 2009 and a swedish blog and a photo of a dog cuddling a baby. It's now making the rounds again in the WoW blogosphere and I have been tagged by both Navimie of the Daily Frostwolf and Karagena the Reluctant Raider to participate in it. It's so nice to be loved.

THE RULES

Go into your image folder
Open the sixth sub-folder and choose the sixth image.
Publish the image! (and a few words wouldn’t hurt, though I dare say I couldn’t stop a blogger from adding a few words of their own).
Challenge six new bloggers.
Link to them.

Of course, those rules are nice. They're simple and easy to do. Honestly, I could have this post done in minutes if I wanted to. But that wouldn't really be in the Battle Medic tradition, now would it?

So let's complicate things a bit.

THE BATTLE MEDIC RULE OF SIX BY SIX BY SIX

If there was a TV show for people who are incapable of deleting things on their computer, I would be featured on the premier episode. We'd call it Hard Drive Horders: Buried in Megabytes. I have all sorts of files and images that go back years, and quietly get transferred from hard drive to hard drive as I upgrade and then sit there collecting layers upon layers of virtual dust.

Consequently, I have many, many folders on my hard drive with images so picking just one doesn't seem quite right. Picking six would make sense, given the nature of this particular challenge, but that might take this innocent little challenge into deep, dark places of my computer that are better left unexplored. Who knows what one might find while picking through the decrepit ruins of my digital projects from the distant past.

Sounds like fun. Let's get started, shall we?

#1 - World of Warcraft Screenshots folder

Delving into my WoW Screenshots folder reveals a lot of subfolders. For simplicities sake, the source images of each panorama that I do get their own folder, and the sixth one happens to be Netherstorm. This beautiful panorama was featured in my Images of Azeroth: Outlands Part 2 post a few months ago.

However, the sixth image in this sixth folder turns out to be probably the least interesting image on my hard drive.

Yup. Nothin' but purple rocks. It's the sort of scene that makes your computer's video card wonder why the hell it's spending its considerable processing power rendering such a pointless, prosaic set of pixels. There really isn't much you can do with an image like this. Well, unless we decide to make it all about the textures instead of the objects. Hmm... let's try making it a black and white and then playing with the cropping and see what we get.

A little bit of creative blurring later, and suddenly we have something interesting and worthy of being featured on Battle Medic. Mind you, it's still not exactly a Monet.

#2 - Screenshots folder: Six Down and Six Across

Ach! This option puts me right in the middle of an unfinished Images of Azeroth panorama that I was saving for a later post.

Dude, you got your Deathwing all over my Tower. Ewwww.

One unexpected benefit to having a max-level Shaman at my disposal is the ability Far Sight. It gives me options for screenshots that I simply can't do on my Paladin. This image, for instance, was done after completing an End Time run and is a perspective that is not normally available to most other classes because it's half-way up a mountain on a completely vertical slope.

Look for the full image in an upcoming post.

#3 - Battle Medic sub-folders

The Battle Medic folder contains the very bones of this blog. Each image that I have created for Battle Medic, whether used or not, lies here in a state of perpetual readiness. This folder illustrates my image hoarding tendencies perfectly because I literally have no need for any of the images in this folder; the ones I needed have already been uploaded to the blog and are stored online, and the ones that didn't make the post aren't needed at all. It is an interesting archaeological dig through my blog's past, though.

The sixth subfolder of the Battle Medic folder happens to house the raw images from the photo shoot that I did with Ophelie of Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon back in June.

Digging through the layers of this folder is a little frightening. One of the fundamental truths that one learns very quickly as a professional photographer is that only about 1 in 10 portraits that are taken is worth keeping. The rest have closed eyes, weird expressions, strange homeless people wandering in the background or some other flaw that necessitates editing that image in favour of another. Randomly picking an image out of this folder could be disastrous.

As luck would have it, however, the sixth image in this folder was one of my favourites.

As a photographer, an image's success depends as much on your personality as it does the subject's; how people respond to you shows up very clearly in the finished images. A laugh is always photographic gold. I like this image because it feels incredibly genuine.

The image above is the unaltered version and is just how I took it. Below is the finished image once I was done with it.

Ophelie, probably laughing at my bad Austin Powers impression,
"IGNORE ME DOING THIS! IGNORE ME DOING THIS!"

#4 - Battle Medic folder: Six Down and Six Across

Like I said, I hoard my image files, and this illustrates it perfectly. This Blood Bowl image was pulled off the Cyanaide website for my post Encouraging Infidelity: On Burn-out and Blood Bowl, and I did use a portion of it in the article. I certainly don't need the full image any longer, so any sane, rational, non-hoarding person would simply delete it and move on. Not I. I kept it.

But not only that, I ended up keeping two of them. Because of the way that Chrome downloads files (possibly the only thing I don't like about the web browser), I accidentally downloaded an extra one; this is the second one.

"Some people think Blood Bowl is a matter of life and death. I assure you,
it's much mor... ARRRRRRGHsplorch."

And my wife wonders why I need to buy hard drives so often. Little does she know...

#5 - Artwork folder

The sixth subfolder in my Artwork folder lands us conveniently in the place where I store the finished work of my Portfolio. The sixth image in this folder is one that some of you will be familiar with already, as it was featured during my Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words series of posts.

Sunset in Motion

Of course, the actual sixth image in that folder was the printer-ready version of this file which weighed in at a hefty 11 megabytes, so this is obviously a slimmed down version for the blog. I actually gave a 20" x 30" print of this to my sister this Christmas, and it should be hanging on her wall by now.

#6 - Dwarfling folder

This is what most of you were waiting for, I'm sure. Admit it, you're here for baby photos.

Of course, I have a folder of images of the Dwarfling. There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of images in there. However, the sixth image in the sixth folder is this one:

The Dwarfling at 18 Weeks

Yikes. My daughter loves the camera and, at least in her father's eyes, is very photogenic. This one, on the other hand, is certainly not her best photo. It was taken by her mother and due to the camera-shake and the rather bizarre, doll-like quality of her expression this image would likely never have seen the light of day if not for this challenge. It would have been deleted except, as I mentioned above, I am an incurable image hoarder. It's times like this it can come and bite me in the ass.

Here are a couple of better, non-random images of her to keep you all happy.

One year old...

...and cute as hell.

PASSING THE TORCH

And in keeping with tradition, I hereby pass the torch along to these fine folk.

Mylindara, my Guild Master and author of the seldom updated Cleansing Waters
Gneisha, the lovely Ginger of Mountain Top and full of Unleashed Rage
Nymphy at DE the Tank, founder of the militant wing of the Dwarfling's Internet Aunties
Voros, fellow WoW Panoramist and author of The Other Tank
Corath of Corath's Blog, proud new papa of the Spawnling.
Aidrana of Miss Pew Pew

An End to Madness

2012-02-15T20:12:00.002-06:00

Deathwing is dead.

Actually, he's been dead for a couple of weeks now. I'm just damned tardy in my progression updates these days.

My guild, Mountain Top, cleared normal Dragon Soul for the first time just before the 5% Power of the Aspects nerf hit at the end of January. Sadly, I wasn't there due to a family crisis, but I'm proud that our guild managed to down Dragon Soul before it's difficulty was reduced. And we managed it despite losing key members of the team and not having a regular raid night.

Did I mention we're recruiting?

I got my own first Deathwing kill on the first week after the nerfs, and am going in again tonight for my third. We've also begun working on Heroic Morchok, whom we got down to 10% on our first night before time constraints forced us to kill him on normal difficulty so we had enough time left to clear the instance that night.

At the beginning of this expansion I set a raiding goal for myself; I wanted to clear each raiding tier while it was current, something that I didn't manage to do in Wrath of the Lich King. With Deathwing's demise at the hands of my Shaman I have now managed to accomplish that on the last two of the three raiding tiers this expansion.

I view Raiding Progression as a very personal thing. As much as I share the accomplishments with my guild and couldn't do it without them, I look at the raid bosses I've downed as my measuring stick as to how well I've experienced the content and how I am personally progressing. I was enormously disappointed that I didn't clear all of Tier 11 while it was current, only going 9/12; I didn't get Nefarian or either of the Throne of the Four Winds encounters down before 4.2 brought the nerfbat to them. Despite that disappointment, I'm very happy to have accomplished what I have done.

ON DIFFICULTY

I promised myself that I would not make this post a discussion on the difficulty level but I need to at least mention that compared to Lich King, Nefarian or Ragnaros, Madness of Deathwing was a hell of a lot easier. It didn't take my guild very many attempts to finally kill him. I think I saw about five pulls on normal difficulty before I got my first kill. Even Ragnaros after the savage nerfs that he received seemed more difficult than Madness.

The question that I pose to you, dear reader, is: Was the Madness of Deathwing encounter inherently easier than previous end boss encounters, or did it simply seem easier because the vast majority of us had already seen and defeated a simplified version of it on the Raid Finder?

On Flexibility, Emotional Attachment and Mister Spock. With Ice Cream!

2012-02-06T18:07:00.001-06:00

"Thus, flexibility, as displayed by water, is a sign of life. Rigidity, its opposite, is an indicator of death." - Anthony Lawlor, A Home For The Soul

Those of you who follow this blog closely and spend just a little too much time obsessing over it (and you know who you are) may have noticed that there has been a distinct lack of Paladin related posts around here recently. In fact, looking back at my archives the last post that talked about Paladins specifically was way back in July.

There is a good reason for this: I'm not raiding with my Paladin any longer.

A DISCLAIMER

You know, I started this post with the best of intentions: A short, to-the-point post about what I've been up to in WoW and why I'm not posting about or playing my Paladin. Half-way through it turned into something completely different. I guess you and I will both find out what the hell I'm talking about when we get to the end because I have no idea where this is going any more than you do. Maybe there will be Ice Cream and Whisky. Goodness, that would be nice, wouldn't it?

SHAMAN: The new Battle Medic? At least this one's actually a Dwarf.

With Dragon Soul on the PTR, I was approached by our Guild Master who asked me a question that took me by surprise: Would I be willing to switch my raiding main in order to help with raid healing? It turns out that our guild is so full of main-spec Holy Paladins that it is a little bit like a large, overfilled doughnut—taking a bite of which will get Holy Paladin goop all over your shirt. And that shit is hard to get out.

In the interests of trying to avoid a 10-man raid with three Holy Paladin healers—which would strain just about anybody's tolerance for egocentrics in a raid, I imagine—I switched my Raiding Main to my (then) newly 85 Restoration Shaman.

My GM's reasoning was pretty straightforward: Dragon Soul looked to be a very raid healing intensive series of fights and even with the strength of the 4.3 Holy Radiance changes it seemed as if our normal Paladin/Paladin/Priest setup wouldn't be ideal. This was made especially clear when we found that some of the fights would require only two healers, and neither Paladin had a DPS off-spec. My Shaman provided my GM with a different option.

So, the week before Dragon Soul opened I was running through Firelands, healing on my Shaman. I admit, it felt odd at first. Even though I had levelled her completely through dungeons I was woefully unprepared to take her on a raid. My understanding of the subtleties of the class were at a very basic level, my UI was not set up properly and her gear was, shall we say, eclectic; an odd mix of items cobbled together from every possible source and not powerful enough to even qualify her for the new Looking For Raid feature.

She's nicely geared now, although there are still some problem spots due to some very bad loot luck in Dragon Soul. I'm not sure why, but in our raids the only Tier Token that ever drops is Vanquisher tokens—we literally had a new Death Knight alt get his 4 piece in a single night, and the only reason he got each token was because all the other Vanquisher eligible players already had theirs. Meanwhile, I, along with a lot of other people in my raid group, are organizing strange voodoo rituals to influence the gods to drop something—anything that we can use. Now, I know that no one really cares about other people's loot problems, but that night made me want to roll a Druid just so I could actually get a drop.

THE SPOCK PRINCIPLE: The Needs of the Many, blah blah blah

Imagine, if you will, a dwarf lying on a brown leather couch, a worried expression showing through his beard and his armour poking holes in the leather and setting it smouldering because the shoulder piece is on fire, which for some inexplicable reason is perfectly normal. Next to him, seated at a comfortable armchair is a bald man with a white goatee neatly trimmed into a point and a notepad on his lap. He leans over towards the dwarf, and in a thick German accent asks, "Und how doez ziz make you feel?"

I wrote a long time ago I wrote an article entitled What Makes a Main?, in which it I talked about the emotional connection to a character as the fundamental element that determines which character would be a person's "Main Character". While that criteria certainly wouldn't apply to everyone (there are people who change their mains constantly due to many different factors, for instance), but it is absolutely true of me. My Holy Paladin is my main because I am emotionally invested in him, both in terms of character as well as the play-style and mythos of the Paladin. My Paladin just feels right.

So when Mylindara asked me to switch for the good of the raid, I felt a little conflicted. From a dispassionate point of view he made a lot of sense because even while temporarily undergeared, my Shaman brought something to the raid that we were lacking. Emotionally, however, my main is still my Paladin, and is the character that I am most interested in playing and progressing. Not only that, but I enjoy healing on the Paladin more than the Shaman.

So the real question that I, or anyone in a similar situation must ask themselves is: When does the needs of the group trump the desires of the individual? Should we always be selfless in order to help the group, or is it alright to say "No" so we can play the game the way we want to? Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one when the ultimate goal of the game is individual entertainment? What would Spock do?

FLEXIBILITY: When is it okay to take one for the team?

I think the answer greatly depends on what type of player a person is. I believe that there are two extremes to this question where the answer is obvious and unchanging, and then there is a vast grey area in between where a large percentage of the player base sits.

The Activity-Centric people amongst us will look at this question as absurd because min-maxing every aspect of an encounter is fundamental to their play-style. Changing their character to bring that one extra buff or cooldown to the raid in order to gain any advantage—regardless of how small—is far more important than the attachment to a certain character or class. For them the emotional need is to progress at a personal level, and which character they do it on is only a secondary consideration; a tool used to achieve the desired end.

"Please don't shoot me"

The other extreme is the Character-Centric people. These folks form an incredibly strong emotional attachment to their characters, and asking them to switch their Main Character—or even to change their character's hair-style—is like asking them to shoot a puppy. It'll break their heart and the aftermath will be very messy to clean up. Not to mention that I like puppies, and well, shooting them is just wrong. I mean, look at those eyes.

The vast majority of us, I think, fall somewhere in the middle. I have always considered myself more of the activity-centric type, but again, if I am to be truly honest with all of you, I tend to let myself get attached to my characters quite a bit and was a little bit annoyed when I was asked to not bring my preferred character to the main raids. There is a constant battle raging between the two sides when I'm making the decisions as to what to play.

In the end I made the change and the raid team is the better for it, I think. We have a good core of raiding healers now, with a lot more flexibility than we would have had otherwise. I may not be playing the character I would like, but the decision was right because the activity, in this case, was more important than my personal need to play the character.

And I suppose that's the fundamental answer to the question of when it's okay to make a personal sacrifice for the team, and the answer is a lot more simple than the length of this post would suggest. Simply put, if the goal is more important than which character accomplishes it, make the change and be happy about it.

Now, as I'm writing this I'm thinking to myself, "Damn, you've really outdone yourself in stating the blindingly obvious. Should we do a section talking about the different ways water is wet? Way to spend 1400 words talking drivel, dumbass".

It is a pretty straight-forward concept, but I think that everyone is going to approach it differently and everyone is going to have a different reaction to being asked to change the way they like to play the game. It all depends on the balance between the activity and the character within a person.

For me, the activity of seeing our raid progress smoothly won the day over my own desires to play the Paladin. So for now at least, the Battle Medic is a Shaman.

Have you ever been asked to play a class or role that you didn't prefer so your group could move forward? How would you react? What sort of balance to you have?

OH MY GAWD, WHAT WAS THE POINT OF THIS POST AGAIN?

Oh yes, Ice Cream and Whisky. Excellent.

There ya go. Ice Cream and Whisky all in one.
It doesn't get much better than that.

Images of Azeroth - The Waterfalls of Azshara

2012-01-30T23:38:00.000-06:00

These images were requested by Navimie, the author of The Daily Frostwolf. She mentioned to me during my IntPiPoMo run that she had never been able to screenshot the waterfalls of Azshara to her liking. She asked me if I could give it a try.

This was at the end of November. I'm a little tardy.

Still, here they are in all their splendor. I admit, these buggers were hard to properly photograph. They're friggin' big and don't really fit into a screenshot terribly well. I had to get creative with the angles that I was using, and each image is a panorama of anywhere from 12 to 20 different screen shots. But I'm really happy with the drama and grandeur of these images. The first one is a particular favourite.

Going forward I hope to include image requests into future Images of Azeroth posts. I realize that I spend a lot of time in the Eastern Kingdoms, and so those images seem to dominate these posts. I hope that you folks can point me in a direction that I wouldn't normally think of.

So, what would you like to see featured here? Leave your requests in the comments.

As always, click the images to embiggen.

More Images of Azeroth.

Scribblings of the Clueless Noob

2012-01-25T18:42:00.001-06:00

"There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life." - Henry David Thoreau

Earlier this month I wrote a rather long essay on the feelings of burn-out that I've been dealing with lately in which I offered ten different things to do to combat them. For those of you with the fortitude to actually read through all 3300 words, I congratulate you; that post was a monster.

Like many people, I don't always follow my own advice. As I was writing that post and thinking about the different things I could do to clear my head and find a happy place with WoW again, I realized that at the time I wasn't really doing any of them. Oh sure, I was playing a different game and taking a bit of a break—which was what the post was all about, after all—but the other things I talked about were merely theoretical. So I figured that I should put a few of those ideas into practice and see what happened.

SCRIBBLING ON THE CAVE WALL

I'm not sure anyone has noticed but I have been on a bit of a posting renaissance lately. This post marks the fourth post in January, two more than I managed in the whole of October, and I still have two more posts that I would like to get done this month. It seems as if my brain has a WoW infection and has been using my fingers to vomit all over my blog. Gross.

I started out this year with the idea of getting Battle Medic back to where I'd like it to be by posting smaller posts more frequently. Ideally I'd like to get back to doing about ten to twelve posts per month, so the frequency is better but still not where I would like it. The length, on the other hand, I've failed utterly and completely. So far in 2012 (not including this post), I have written over 5700 words and seem completely incapable of keeping a post under 1000. I guess we'll see how this one turns out, although with the amount of things that seems to get added in as I go I'm not hopeful—I'm already at 400!

Either way, writing about WoW is a wonderfully self-sustaining process. I've got more to write about WoW because I've been writing about WoW, which in turn makes me more interested in WoW and makes it easier to write about WoW. It's a positive feedback loop that has done wonders in making me feel better.

LOOK AT ME! I'M THE CLUELESS NOOB AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DPS CHART

Virtually every second of my WoW experience at maximum level has been spent healing. My first max-level character was a healing priest, the main that I ended Wrath with was my Holy Paladin and now, as Cataclysm draws to a close I've added a Resto Shaman to the mix as well. I love healing, and I have no plans to stop doing it any time soon, but in retrospect, my entire WoW career has been extraordinarily one-dimensional.

Oh sure, I've fooled around with other roles. I even managed to get my warrior tank into a couple of raids back in Wrath—an experiment that ended rather badly, I might add. Retribution, likewise, was used for levelling and then discarded upon reaching level 85. My Paladin has been unable to kill anything efficiently by himself ever since. I am the guy that always hears, "Oh, Fannon's on so we've got a healer" when he logs into Mumble. Simply put, healing has been the absolute focus of my attention for a long time now. And even as experienced as I am I still find it challenging and realized there is a lot for me to learn and improve upon.

However, doing the same thing for two years can get a bit monotonous. Imagine eating the same sandwich for lunch everyday for two years; I don't think you'd end up looking forward to the noon hour if that same damned ham on pumpernickel with yellow mustard was the only option. I think at least some of the reason that I was feeling burnt-out in the first place was because every time I was in a group setting I was doing the same thing that I always did.

And so I decided to do something completely different—for me, at least. I dusted off my badly geared, poorly understood Enhancement off-spec on my Shaman and took it for a spin in some dungeons and the raid finder.

Oh my, what a different world. As a healer, I have the luxury to say away from the boss where it's relatively quiet and I can play undisturbed. Not possible in melee range. It's wonderfully chaotic; at times the sheer amount of spell effects that are going off completely obscure both the mob I'm hitting and my character. It feels odd trusting the health of the party to someone else, and I get damned nervous when my health dips. But then I realize that I'm only DPS, so I'm expendable, which makes me giggle to myself and want to hit the boss even harder.

I suck at it though. Yes, I am that noob at the bottom of the DPS meters in that heroic you're doing. Yes, I am in your dungeon group wearing that gear, horrible as it is. You'd better believe that I'm the one standing in fire or accidentally pulling mobs or doing any one of a hundred things that would make me pull my hair out if I were healing me. Yup, that's me.

And yes, I'm laughing the whole time I'm doing it. Sorry.

But I'm really enjoying whacking things with my giant beer steins. I'm enjoying the new challenge and the new responsibilities (or lack thereof) that come with dealing damage. It's given me something completely different to look forward to when I log into the game.

I'm still raiding as a healer, and it will always be my first, passionate love. But, if I can encourage infidelity to the game itself, why not cheat on my preferred role, too?

After all, unlike real life, in the gaming world, monogamy isn't good for the soul.

This post weighs in at 1029 words (not including the opening quote or this postscript). Close enough to call this one a win for brevity.

This Week in Raiding: Nerf Acceptance... Sort of

2012-01-19T18:55:00.000-06:00

"From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate." - Socrates

Yesterday, Blizzard announced that Dragon Soul would receive the first of a series of progressive Nerfs, starting on January 31st. They are starting with a 5% reduction in health and damage dealt to all mobs in the instance. As well, there will be a way to toggle the Nerfs off, similar to how Icecrown Citadel's buff worked.

Now, I'm sure that many of you are thinking to yourself, "Oh shit, here he goes again. Another vitriol filled post about how much nerfs sucks and how they're ruining the game. Where's the fucking exit?"

Well, stick around; I don't plan on spewing any Nerf hate today. No sir, not me. Nuh-uh.

Now, while I'm no fan of Nerfs (as you may recall from this post from September), I am in a zen-like state of acceptance with this round of adjustments for a couple of different reasons:

Firstly, Blizzard approached these changes differently than previously in that they made no attempt to hide the fact that they were coming. Even before Dragon Soul was released on the live servers, the developers told us that they would be nerfed at some point. As well, they are giving us almost two weeks of notice before they come into effect. Contrast this approach with the sudden onset of the Firelands changes and it makes them a lot easier to accept.

Secondly, they are gradual. Looking again at Firelands, the nerfs that were implemented were savage in their scope and extraordinarily sudden in their implementation. Such is not the case with Dragon Soul. Starting with a 5% reduction in all damage and health is reasonable and won't have such a jarring effect as the Firelands changes did. Dragon Soul will not turn into pale shadow of itself overnight; the adjustment period will be slow as the nerfs are gradually but progressively increased over the next few months.

Thirdly, they can be completely turned off to experience the fights at full difficulty. This brings back the successful buff system that Blizzard put into place for ICC, whereby talking to an NPC will turn off the Nerfs so a raid group can see the fights at full difficulty. This is a tiny bone to the hardcore players out there in an attempt to keep them happy by giving them the option to make the instance the original difficulty.

However, while it's nice to have I doubt this feature will ever be used—even by the extreme hardcore amongst us. And the reason is that there is no benefit to turning off the buffs other than self-satisfaction. With no way to tell whether a boss was killed with the Nerf on or off, any boss kill after the nerfs are implemented are tainted from a progression standpoint. I can say that I am 7/7 in Firelands, but anyone can look at the date of my Ragnaros achievement and see that it occurred after the Great Nerfening of September. That kill is valued less on a potential guild application than it would be if it had been done the week before. Dragon Soul will be the same.

Lastly, Dragon Soul normal modes are easy enough that it felt nerfed right from the beginning. So in that context, what does another Nerf matter? It's hard to get upset when something goes from easy to slightly easier.

I do have some questions though:

Why a raid-wide nerf? I don't think that a raid-wide buff was needed, honestly. Some of the bosses in normal modes could certainly use some tweaking: Zon'ozz, Ultraxion and Warmaster Blackhorn being the three that gave our raid team the most trouble. I sincerely believe that it's better to balance specific fights that are overtuned rather than nerf the entire instance. If a specific encounter is tuned such that the majority of people with the appropriate gear level cannot beat the encounter then by all means it should be re-balanced to bring it in line, but I feel the raid-wide approach is a bit like using a jackhammer to open a can of beans.

Why so fast? If, as Blizzard says, these Nerfs are being implemented because Raid Groups are hitting "brick walls" and not progressing, we now can gauge exactly what pace Blizzard expects their content to be cleared. These nerfs are appearing 9 weeks after Dragon Soul launched, meaning that Blizzard expects raiders to clear one boss per week at minimum before it considers them "stalled". Apparently, wiping on a boss for several weeks is now considered "hitting the wall" and "getting stuck on progression" and thereby grounds for nerfing the instance. Whereas in previous expansions wiping on a boss repeatedly was called "figuring out how to do shit" and an essential part of the learning process.

As with Firelands (which was nerfed in 12 weeks, giving slightly less than two weeks per boss), Blizzard isn't giving us enough time to figure things out. They continuously make more difficult and more elaborate dances in their encounters and are continually cutting short the time we have to learn them before getting heavy-handed with the nerfbat.

Kurn wrote an excellent article talking about the Dragon Soul nerfs and goes into a lot more detail on the timelines that previous instances have see in regards to difficulty changes. Check it out here: A Sigh of Resignation. She seems... uh... a little more angry about these nerfs than I am.

I AM THE PLAYER THESE NERFS ARE FOR

Matthew Rossi of WoW Insider shares an interesting statistic:

The Raid Finder is head and shoulders above normal mode raiding in terms of popularity. 35% of level 85 players have completed Raid Finder vs. 4% completing normal mode; that's a huge, huge shift. Keep in mind that Blizzard has more exacting statistics available internally, but this serves as an indicator of a trend.

On the surface, that is a shocking number. It seems like a lot of people have jumped in the Raid Finder at one point or another and have succeeded in killing Deathwing, far more than have done it on Normal difficulty. A 29% difference is significant, certainly, but let's think about this for a moment.

First of all, the statistic is for those players who have completed Dragon Soul by defeating the Madness of Deathwing encounter, something that can be done in the Raid Finder in an hour or two. Normal modes require a significantly larger investment in time, so it's not surprising that fewer people have completed it. Not only that, but divergent schedules of the raiders and other factors that aren't a concern in LFR can lead to slower progress. Nerfs can't fix that problem.

I don't know about your guild, but ours hasn't had enough time to even pull the Madness of Deathwing encounter yet after only 7 weeks of raiding, and yet I don't feel that we've hit a roadblock in our progression. In fact, at 7/8 I had thought we were making damned good progress towards our goal—until I heard about these nerfs that is. Now it seems that we're behind the curve and require some divine intervention from the developers.

I think Blizzard is making the classic mistake of underestimating it's user base. We're a resilient, intelligent bunch of people who are very good at figuring out what to do to get an encounter down given enough time.

I would be very interesting to see just how far people are getting in Dragon Soul without the nerfs. If 4% of level 85 characters have cleared Dragon Soul on normal, how many have gone 7/8 like me? How many are 4/8 and stuck on Ultraxion? How many are 2/8 and stuck on Zon'ozz? How many people just need more time to clear 8/8?

If specific encounters can be found that are causing the majority of the problems, then adjust those encounters to help those that are stuck and let the rest of us get back to work.

LEARNING TO ACCEPT REALITY

Frankly, I've come to accept that the days of the exquisitely difficult raid encounter are gone for good. No more will a raid encounter stubbornly refuse to yield to a dedicated and prepared raid group because the developers were feeling really evil when they designed it and just made that particular boss a massive son-of-a-bitch. The hard work, preparation and min-maxing that those encounters required are an out-dated mindset, apparently. And the raiders who enjoyed that type of challenge—the smart, resilient problem-solvers who think figuring out a problem is half the fun—are continually being marginalized.

If Blizzard feels that the raid is difficult enough that it is preventing people from completing it, then they should do what they feel is in the best interests of the health of their game. I can accept that.

Really, I don't much care what difficulty baseline Blizzard wants to set for it's raids. Whether it's incredibly hard, ridiculously easy or walking a fine tight-rope in between, I just want to complete the raid at the same difficulty level as the top-end guilds and everyone else. I don't want help and I don't want charity.

I'm not trying to sound elitist here. I don't consider myself a hardcore raider by any stretch of the imagination. I don't spend hours thinking about my spec or my gear or where I need to stand during an encounter. I have never run a gearing simulation and wouldn't know how to use a spreadsheet to tell me anything about WoW at all. All I do is show up and push buttons and dodge the fire until the boss dies.

If the fights are legitimately too hard, I'm all for nerfing them carefully and thoughtfully until they provide a good balance between challenge and accessibility to everyone. Everyone deserves to be able to play all aspects of this game, including Normal Mode raiding.

But I hope the developers never forget that there is a benefit to hard work. We as human beings learn from failure more than success. And while making raids simpler and easier is a good way to increase the overall number of raiders, allowing people to fail every once in a while—to truly have to work at something before succeeding—will make them better raiders.

Cross Realm Raiding and Crystal Ball Gazing

2012-01-18T23:56:00.000-06:00

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” - Norman Maclean

Looming quite close, just over the metaphorical digital horizon, is Patch 4.3.2. A minor patch with a few tweaks, a few fixes and one new feature that, had it come a year ago, would have sent the WoW community into a frothy orgy of excitement: Cross-Realm Raiding.

People have been clamouring for the ability to Raid with their friends on different servers for ages, and it seemed like an idea that was inevitable ever since the cross-realm Looking For Dungeon system was introduced in Patch 3.3. And, of course, Patch 4.3 introduced the Looking For Raid system which allows raiding Dragon Soul with random cross-server people at a unique difficulty level.

But what LFR does not address is the ability to form Raids to tackle normal and heroic difficulty modes with people who are not on your server. And while the current raid tier, Dragon Soul, will not be available initially, that's what this new Cross-Realm Raid system is designed to do.

KINDA LIKE KISSING YOUR SISTER

Unfortunately, excluding Dragon Soul leaves me a bit underwhelmed with cross-realm raiding. There will be no scouring Twitter to find a last minute replacement to fill in for your Mage who is being rushed to the hospital with alcohol poisoning leaving you one short for your regular raid night. No cross-server guild partnerships to form a 25-man raid out of two 10-man guilds. No Dragon Soul All-Star Raiding Dream Teams will form up spontaneously to crush the heroic modes.

Portrait of a Pissed-off Dragon Aspect

No, without the ability to run the current raid in a cross-server group, this feature will be an afterthought, and is probably the reason that it seems to have been welcomed by the WoW community with a resounding wave of meh.

What it can be used for is to join LFR with a larger group than was previously available (yes, it's Dragon Soul, but only the watered down version), join a Battleground as a premade group, and to run through older tiers of raiding content.

Very useful stuff, and I think that the Battlegrounds feature especially will be used a lot. However, the system will never live up to it's potential until the current raid tier is able to be done with a cross-realm group.

I can only speculate as to why they decided not to include it. Perhaps they felt that it would dilute the value of guilds. Maybe Blizzard didn't want people instantly transported to the raid instance as they are with LFR, thereby preserving the one, final reason people have for actually leaving the capital cities. It's possible as well that there is a technical reason, too, but most likely Blizzard decided to exclude Dragon Soul for a gameplay or balance reason.

Regardless, it seems that Blizzard is taking the cross-realm capabilities of WoW very seriously, and I imagine that seeing cross-realm raiding with no restrictions is only a matter of time. Which is great. I really look forward to the days ahead where the entire WoW population (faction permitting, of course) is at my disposal when I need to fill a hole in a raid.

INSULATION FROM ISOLATION

However, once cross-realm raiding of current content goes live, how long until we have cross-realm mail? Cross-realm chat channels? Cross-realm universal auction houses? And eventually, are cross-realm guilds possible?

I am just indulging in some wild and completely unsupported speculation here, as Cross-Realm Guilds are certainly not a feature that anyone has even hinted at being on the horizon, but it seems as if it would be the next logical step in the direction that Blizzard is taking us. It would pretty much remove all the remaining barriers between the various different Realms and create a single cohesive WoW population.

If this truly is the direction that Blizzard is moving, it may serve to be a very clever way to prolong the games life.

I think that it is clear that after being at the absolute top of the MMO world since 2004, there are more days behind WoW than there are in front of it, at least as the biggest and most relevant of the genre. Don't get me wrong, I don't think WoW is going to die any time soon, but I don't think it's possible that any game—even this one—has 14 years of staying power. Times change, games change, new games come out. Such is the way of the world as so will it be for WoW.

It is a certainty that at some point WoW will start to diminish in terms of active players. It will be slow and subtle but will eventually leave some servers as ghost towns, their capital cities echoing with the unheard cries of NPCs trying vainly to add colour to an empty world. I've always believed that the first definitive sign that WoW is truly on the downward slope is when Blizzard starts consolidating servers in order to keep the population of active players high enough to be viable.

However, what does it matter if your server is virtually abandoned if your guild is spread-out over 20 or 30 different servers? While it would be rather odd to go to Stormwind (or whatever the hang-out du jour is in the distant WoW future I'm describing) and have it deserted save for a single, lone naked Night Elf dancing on the mailbox, as long as there are enough people online on some server somewhere to do the group activities the game will have the appearance of vitality.

And in the end, in order for a game to survive it has to still be fun to play. WoW without people isn't fun. And the perception that there are loads of other people around ready to do something with is critical for any MMO to stay alive and vibrant.

To that end, the cross-realm features that Blizzard has implemented, as well as those we can speculate that they might implement at some point are great steps to unify and enlarge the pool of players that a person can interact and play with, which will help the game survive and prosper for longer than it might otherwise. And as someone who plans to play this game for a long while yet, I think that is a great thing.

Encouraging Infidelity: On Burn-Out and Blood Bowl

2012-01-12T17:48:00.000-06:00

"The universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. There is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it." ― Terry Pratchett

When I was in high school, O those many years ago, my best friend and I would spend countless hours in my basement sitting on our billiards table playing games. It was an old, heavy commercial pool table, originally used in some bar somewhere, and very sturdy. We would sit on it—inadvertently destroying the felt in the process—and endlessly play a game that captured my imagination fully and completely. The game was Blood Bowl; a tabletop fantasy football miniatures game from Games Workshop. It was (and still is) a game of mayhem and bloodshed, all about the unfettered joy of bashing the living hell out of someone all in the name of good fun.

Back then I was completely hooked on Blood Bowl and pulled my friend Mike along with me. We had a large league just for the two of us, and we played literally hundreds of games against each other. I kept detailed statistics, agonized for hours trying to come up with names for new characters to replace fallen players and created logos and back-stories for my teams and players.

Yes, I was a massive Blood Bowl geek. Needless to say I didn't have a girlfriend at the time.

Still, the time I spend with Mike playing Blood Bowl was well spent. An absurdly high number of inside-jokes were created on the top of that billiards table and each square of that polystyrene pitch that we played on has a great memory attached to it—often involving the death of some innocent Goblin or Halfling who unwisely chose to try his hand at football one afternoon. In fact, the phrase, "squit like a pimple" was used often to describe the precise way that a Halfling dies when faced with a large, angry Ogre. A lot of these jokes have stuck with me, and thinking about any one of them can send me into a giggle fit. The name Steve Tuttle, for instance, cannot be spoken around me unless you want our conversation to be cut short by a lot of frantic chortling. Best not to ask why.

THE WHEREABOUTS OF A CERTAIN DWARF

Why am I writing about this on Battle Medic, an unashamed WoW-centric blog? Clearly, reminiscing about games played during high school has no relevance to slinging healing spells during Spine of Deathwing, right?

However, the excitement that Blood Bowl filled me with has only ever been matched by one game: World of Warcraft. When I first started playing WoW it engulfed my imagination like nothing else had since those long lost days on the pool table, and in my excitement I yearned to learn everything I could about the game; to get a deep, fundamental understanding of everything that Azeroth contained. This blog is the result of that passion.

Lately, though, I have been feeling a little tired of WoW. Looking at the character selection screen made me feel like I was going to work―doing something I had to do, not necessarily something that I wanted to do. Obviously, that is a counterproductive feeling towards a recreational activity. The last thing I want to do when I get home from work is to go to another job. I want to have fun, damn it.

Now, please don't misunderstand me, I am not quitting World of Warcraft. Far from it, actually. I am still raiding regularly, and my guild and I are progressing nicely. In fact, on Monday night, Mountain Top went into Dragon Soul and managed to down 7/8 in a mere three hours. Aside from a couple of hiccoughs on Zon'ozz, it was a very smooth raid, really. But I wasn't truly excited about it. Not like I was when we got the good Majordomo down, nor did I feel the exhilaration of when Cho'gall fell for the first time. It was just... something to do.

Dwarven cheerleaders come prepared
with their own kegs.

I contrast this to the joy that I felt playing WoW when I first started raiding, and there is definitely something missing. This was crystallized in my mind over the New Year holidays when I installed a new game to try out: The video game version of the game that absorbed so much of my youth, Blood Bowl. When I tried it for the first time on New Year's day, I was enthralled. All those old feelings and memories came flooding back and I remembered what being truly excited about a game felt like. And I also realized that it had been a while since I sincerely felt that way about WoW.

(Then again, he thinks, as his silly Dwarf team fumbles the bloody ball yet again, this damned game is the stupidest, most frustrating, damned, arrrrrrgh, fargin' greasy bastich son of a ...)

Burn-out is a mental state. I think it happens when one perceives that the effort expended to do a task becomes greater than the reward one expects to receive upon it's completion. Considering that the reward for playing WoW are intangible things such as relaxation, enjoyment and a sense of accomplishment, it's a tricky thing to gauge. At what point do I think that my playing time could be better spent doing something else?

WoW is an interesting game in the sense that it becomes somewhat like a relationship. Time needs to be spent to maintain the relationship or else it will begin to decay—manifested by characters falling behind in progression, gear or daily quest rewards and the like. The more developed the relationship becomes the greater the feeling of obligation to maintain the relationship. For me, at least, it's this sense of obligation that has contributed more than anything to my burn-out.

And I don't know about anyone else, but WoW is unique in that, like a relationship, it creates a feeling of monogamy unlike any game I've ever played before. The notion that the characters in the game need to be constantly maintained leads to the feeling that playing anything else is like cheating on your spouse. I think this is the reason that a lot of WoW players get upset when their fellows begin dating another game such as Rift or Star Wars: The Old Republic. Faithful spouses are the ones that are most likely to look down upon infidelity. Frankly, this idea is kind of insane; it's just a game after all.

I think it's normal and unavoidable that after doing an activity like playing WoW for a long, continuous period of time to feel less enthusiastic about it than when it was fresh and new. I've been playing it to the exclusion of just about anything else for over three and a half years now, and at least for me, right now, the lustre of the game has worn off a bit.

And given that it's unrealistic to play the same game for three years and still remain as excited about it as when it was new, yet not wanting to give up on it, means that I need to manage my feelings of disinterest.

I have been giving some thought as to what can be done to take a break from WoW, get refreshed and get one's mojo back while still maintaining the relationship.

FIVE THINGS TO DO IN A GAME THAT YOU'RE BURNED OUT ON

1) SET A GOAL THAT YOU WANT TO DO, NOT THAT YOU HAVE TO DO

The first step for me is to remove the feeling of obligation. I want to play the game because I want to play it, not because I have to play it. During the Firelands patch the prospect of grinding out a month of dailies was an incredibly unappealing thought that made me want to think twice about logging in until eventually I just stopped doing them and felt a lot better. Same goes for capping Valor Points; it's something that is nice if I can do it, but if I don't manage it every week I'm not going to fret about it.

Once I realize that I don't need to play if I don't want to, I need to find a goal that makes me want to log in. I realize how much stuff that I haven't actually seen or done in the game, so there are lots of potential goals or achievements to go for. For instance, I decided that I wanted to get Jeeves for my engineer, and while it was a grind to try and get the recipe, I actually enjoyed the process knowing that the reward at the end would be something that I and my raid team would find extraordinarily useful.

Make the goals small and doable in easily accomplished chunks. There is no point in taking on a task with a grand scale that will simply increase the feeling of obligation or force you to quit before it's done. Failure to accomplish a goal will only make the burn-out worse.

2) DO SOMETHING IN GAME YOU'VE NEVER DONE BEFORE

While there are some people who have been playing this game so long that they have literally done and seen everything, I cannot even begin to list all the things that I have yet to do. I have never levelled a horde character past level 15, and there are whole zones that I have never experienced other than riding through to get the explorer achievement. PVP is still more-or-less a mystery to me. There are more than a few raids I haven't seen, and I really haven't raided seriously in any role other than as a healer. I could go on as the list is extensive.

When burnt-out from doing the things that one normally does, it's time to change it up. Find something—anything that you haven't done before and try it out. The worst thing that can happen is that you won't like it.

3) INTRODUCE SOMEONE NEW TO THE GAME

Enthusiasm is very infectious; if it caused sneezes it would be considered a Level 4 Biohazard and very serious men in very serious suits from very serious government agencies would be present to monitor the situation any time a 13 year-old girl told her friend about Justin Beiber in case a pandemic broke out and doomed the Earth. It's serious shit.

It's interesting to see a game that I'm so intimately familiar with through the eyes of someone new to the game. I watch my young nephew play, for instance, and am amazed at the things that he finds interesting and fun. Fishing, for instance, is tremendously entertaining for him. And he would happily have his character swim for hours in the rivers and lakes. Seeing the things that he finds interesting and fun is fascinating, and allows me to see the game through the eyes of a 9 year-old.

So try finding someone who hasn't played the game before and show it to them. Even if they don't go and pick up a copy, show them how to play and let them give it a try. Sharing their experiences as they see things for the first time is a fantastic way to rediscover the magic yourself.

Alternately, help someone learn to do something that they don't know how to do. Try showing a guildmate the ropes of a role they don't often do. I have often found that they best way to discover new ways to do something is to try to teach another person how to do it. It can be a lot of fun, and is very rewarding.

4) BE MORE SOCIAL WHILE PLAYING

It cannot be argued that the most compelling feature of any MMO has nothing to do with graphics or quests or gameplay, but rather in the people that play the game. Whenever I log onto WoW and see our guild chat silent, it's a little bit deflating. I love lively chatter, and having a fun conversation is a great way to get me in a great mood.

Meeting and talking with someone new is a great way to reinvigorate interest in an MMO, and can potentially expose you to a different way of thinking about it. There are literally thousands upon thousands of potential friends online at any particular moment; all it takes is a little bit of effort to meet them.

5) TALK ABOUT IT. WRITE ABOUT IT. SCRIBBLE SOMETHING ON CAVE WALLS USING CHARCOAL ABOUT IT

There are a gazillion support groups out there for just about every conceivable problem that a person can possibly have, and they work. Talking about feelings and problems with people who share them is a great way to begin to get a grip on them.

So talk about how you're feeling about the game. There are any number of places you can do it: Post on forums; comment on blogs (like this one!); write a blog or hell, even talk about it in trade chat if you're desperate. The point is, don't keep it bottled up. You'll feel better. Honest.

As a blogger, Battle Medic has been my outlet for a lot of things when it comes to WoW. This post has been wonderfully cathartic in getting some of this stuff off my chest and feeling better about this game. I plan to do this more often, and focus more on the things I really enjoy about this game.

FIVE THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO DO THE THING YOU LIKE TO DO BUT REALLY WANT TO DO SOMETHING

I think I may need to tweak that title somewhat. It's not exactly pithy, is it?

There comes a point when it's just time to get the hell out of dodge for a while and actually take a break. Even though I don't plan to quit WoW any time soon, the past week or so of not really playing WoW very much has been nice. A little distance has been a very nice thing, indeed, and I'm starting to feel the irresistible urge to return to the sunny shores of Azeroth.

So what can be done to take a break from the game and reinvigorate the gamer's soul?

1) PLAY SOMETHING ELSE FOR A WHILE

Feelings of infidelity aside, there is no reason why anybody needs to be a monogamous gamer. WoW's feelings won't be hurt if you start seeing something else on the side, regardless of whether it's a single player game or another MMO. I flirted with Lord of the Rings Online for an afternoon, and other people have dived into other games head first, and through it all WoW has soldiered on and is always ready to take back it's players who have strayed. Variety, as they say, is the spice weasel of Neptunian cooking.

Games—all games—are a lot of fun. Over Christmas my Dad and I played a game of Tiger Woods golf on his Wii (the fact that my father has a gaming console and I don't felt a little odd, honestly). As we were starting up the game he said, "I didn't take you for a golfer."

My reply was simple, "I'm not a golfer, Dad. I'm a gamer. Let's rock." And despite the horrifically bad slice in my golf swing, we had a blast that night (and the whisky helped, certainly).

Exclusively playing a single game—even one as vast and deep as WoW—is very limiting. Expand your horizons and try something new. You may find, as I have, that cheating on your game may just remind you of why you fell in love with it initially.

In fact, it was cheating on Warcraft that inspired me to start writing this post. The days I spent transfixed to my computer pitting eleven stout Dwarven footballers against enemies on the Blood Bowl pitch were so exciting and so much fun that I was reminded of why I play games in the first place.

2) DO SOMETHING CREATIVE

Of course, there is more to life than gaming. Sacrilegious, I know, but perhaps the best thing to do when you're burnt-out on a games is simply not to play anything.

For me, whenever I'm feeling in a rut or depressed, I find that doing something creative will always lift my spirits. Writing, for one, is a phenomenally powerful power-scrub for my brain, and always helps me regain my emotional balance. Likewise, spending some time working and playing with photographs is always good for my soul, like eating a bucket of chocolate at Halloween.

Personally, I find that doing something that allows me to flex my creative muscles—especially if it produces something tangible, like a finished print I can hang on my wall—is a tremendous stress reliever. I don't ever do it often enough for my liking, but I always feel better after I'm done.

3) GET SOME EXERCISE, SLACKER

I am the single worst person you could ever imagine to give this advice given that I am one of the most sedentary people on the planet, but physical activity is a perfect way to change the switch in your brain from the CRANKY BASTARD mode to the ULTIMATELY CALM CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE setting. It's good for the body and the mind.

Every Friday during the winter my wife and I go Curling. I always feel emotionally recharged when I get off the ice, especially if I've had to sweep hard and am physically drained. There is just something purifying about getting a good sweat on, especially if it is then followed up by a pitcher of lager at the bar that's attached to the rink.

Yes, I know, it's not the most effective diet and work-out plan. This could explain why I don't ever lose weight.

4) READ A BOOK

Likewise, giving the mind a workout is equally good for the spirit. Plopping down in front of a cozy fire, or on the couch with a glass of wine and a great book is a wonderful way to change your attitude. It always works for me. It's very peaceful, very zen, and allows me to put my mind in neutral and forget about all the crap that I have to deal with during the day.

Of course, when the Dwarfling insists that she wants some attention and oh my doesn't that book look like a fun thing to grab and see if it fits in her mouth means that I seldom get time for this particular option these days. But any chance I get to steal a bit of time to plant my face between two pages, I take it.

5) SPEND TIME WITH PEOPLE WHO INSPIRE YOU

The final, most obvious and infinitely most effective tip I have to combat burn-out is this: Go spend time with someone that puts you in a good mood. Hang out with your buddies, get a hug from your wife or a cute Holy Paladin that drops by your house occasionally, go play with your kid or even chase the dogs around the backyard. Just find someone who makes you smile and let them do the hard work of cheering you up.

BURN OUT IS A REVERSIBLE STATE OF MIND

Feeling burnt-out on WoW is an emotional state that can be reversed. Any of these tips can be utilized to get yourself in a better mood and back to doing what you want to be doing. The real trick is, and one that can't be answered by anyone but yourself, is to figure out what you really want to be doing. There is no point in forcing yourself to play a game you no longer find fun.

However, I think that most of us still enjoy World of Warcraft and don't want to leave the game permanently. I think it boils down to giving yourself permission to do something else, to remove the pressure of needing to maintain the high maintenance WoW relationship, and allow yourself the freedom to do other things.

Go ahead, cheat on WoW with another game or with your family. Take a step back from your sense of obligation and take it easy for a while. I think you'll find it will still be there when you have the urge to come back.

And I think that you will want to come back. It's been two weeks for me and I already do.

Secret Santa: The Fellowship of Gamers

2011-12-25T09:00:00.000-06:00

Happy Holidays from Thespius, over at Healer By Nature! As a recent transplant into the Star Wars universe, and also as a WoW player for 5 years, I thought it would be great to remind everyone that we're all gamers with a passion for what we do. Especially those of us that blog, read, podcast, or more!

I sincerely hope your holiday season grants you lots of love and happiness with family and friends, be they in person or in game! I wish the Blessing of Kings on you and yours. Bond with nature; be bestowed with the Mark of the Wild. Let the Earth Shield you from harm and negativity. Look to the new year with Fortitude and Grace! Look to your friends in times of need as they offer you a Hand of Protection. For the spiritual, sing your Divine Hymn to those you believe in, and find Tranquility in that Hymn of Hope. Swallow your pride, find Penance, enabling your Ancestral Awakening and Redemption. And finally, from the home of the Dwarven Battle Medic, let the Healing Rain down on your allies! And...umm.... Power Word: Barrier..... Let us all...

This post is part of the Blog Azeroth Furtive Father Winter event where bloggers exchange holiday themed posts in a Secret Santa-style, RNG-determined blog ring. My gift-giver, I was delighted to discover, is Thespius of the blog Healer by Nature. I have heard a lot about Thespius in my many conversations with his WoW guildmate, Opehlie, and am very happy to publish his gift post this holiday season on Battle Medic! Thanks, Thespius!

You can read the article that I wrote for Akabeko at Red Cow Rise entitled One Winter's Veil Morning...

Inconvenience, Entitlement and The Abominable Greench

2011-12-21T13:40:00.000-06:00

"You're a mean one, Mister Grinch..."

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,

Wie treu sind deine Blätter!

Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,

Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.

O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,

Wie treu sind deine Blätter!

As in the real world, Azeroth is crazy busy with holidays this time of year. The Feast of Winter Veil is upon us and brings with it many new and interesting things to do. New dailies, lore and as with most of the holidays we have a big bad boss to fight for a chance at some holiday themed loot.

This Winter Veil is threatened by The Abominable Greench, who has stolen presents and other holiday goodies, hoarding them in his cave in the Alterac Mountains. There, adventurers must gather to defeat this implacable monster with a taste for Grandma's fruitcake. At stake, the very fate of Winter Veil itself.

Okay, that might be exaggerating things somewhat. The world will likely not end if Little Johnny doesn't get his toy train. But still, ooooo, The Big Bad Greench. Scary.

INCONVENIENCE AND ENTITLEMENT

"Now look at them yo-yo's that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV

That ain't workin' that's the way you do it

Money for nothin' and your chicks for free" - Money for Nothing, Dire Straits

What is different with this years holiday boss is that the Greench is not available through the Dungeon Finder as the other holidays bosses have been. During Brewfest all you needed to do in order to defeat the wicked Coren Direbrew is to press the I button and you would be instantly transported to his location with a party of fellows to help you dispatch the fiend and collect your goodies. With The Greench, however, a long flight (for Alliance folk, anyway) to the Alterac Mountains is in order, and then the long wait in hopes you can find other people there to help you kill him.

Compared to past holiday events, this is inconvenient. Blizzard obviously has the technology to automate the Greench destruction process, but chose not to. Probably due to the fact that the Greench does not or could not be made to exist in an existing dungeon and the developers likely didn't want to spend the manpower and resources to create an instanced version of Alterac specifically for the Greench. There are more important things for the developers to work on after all, like fixing the silly Mature Language Filter bug that doesn't allow me to express myself with my accustomed colour and wit in Guild Chat.

These thoughts occurred to me as I was hovering over the Greench's cave, admiring his 3.4 Million health and the beautifully wrapped presents dangling from his horns. I was annoyed. Annoyed that I had to spend ten or fifteen minutes just getting there, and then finding no one to group with to get the boss kill and save Winter Veil. I was annoyed at the simple inconvenience of not having this boss kill handed to me as previous holiday bosses had been.

Needless to say, that is a terrible attitude to have. It's a sense of entitlement; that everything should be easy and convenient and require virtually no real effort. Money for nothing indeed - Mark Knopfler, you are truly the great prophet of our time.

As I was sitting and waiting for enough people to show up so that a group could be formed I started thinking about how easy everything has been made in WoW. The Dungeon Finder, the Raid Finder, the ease of levelling and so on. I don't want to complain about these things, because honestly I think they are very important changes and overall very beneficial to the game. The Dungeon Finder revolutionized the accessibility of dungeons and heroics, and the new Raid Finder is doing the same thing with Raiding. These are all great things. Easy is not necessarily bad.

However, what all these systems have done is create an expectation that things will always be that simple. And in those few moments as I was waiting, I started thinking about what my expectations were and frankly, just how spoiled I have become because of all of the great, time-saving convenience gifts that Blizzard has given us over the past couple of years. And the fact that this time I had to do things the old fashioned way suddenly didn't seem like such a big deal.

Still, it bothered me. Am I, and by extension the WoW playerbase as a whole, so spoiled that we can't handle a little inconvenience? Are we so used to getting everything we want, right when we want it that we can't deal with even the littlest setback? Are we forever in the days when a single wipe in LFD or LFR means that the group breaks up and everyone goes back to their little personal corner of Stormwind or Orgrimmar complaining at just how bad and impatient everyone else is. Is that really where we are?

THE UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCE OF INCONVENIENCE

All your presents are belong to us. Rawr.
Note the self-satisfied smirk.

So there I am: Up in the air on my flying mount thinking all these profound thoughts on the nature of entitlement and humanity, all the while the Greench is still down there needing to be killed. That's when something magical happened that would never have been possible if the encounter was set up through the Dungeon Finder.

Waiting with me were two other Alliance players and on the other side of the snow covered mountain plateau were hovering two Hordies. On a PVP server such as mine, situations like this can get messy, and involve a lot of running back from the graveyard as the factions fight amongst themselves and no one manages to get anything done. It was a standoff, with no one daring to pull the boss in fear that the other faction would attack from behind.

Suddenly, someone unexpectedly pulled the Greench and without a single word or indication, everyone there attacked the boss and left each other alone. We fought the Greench together; Horde and Alliance, fighting alongside one another getting something done in the spirit of the season.

Soon the Greench died to our collective, cross-faction efforts, and there was a great deal of /bowing, /waving and an overall general feeling of seasonal cheer and camaraderie, not unlike the temporary seasonal armistices between Allied and German soldiers during the bitter trench warfare of World War I. And like those weary soldiers in the battered fields of France a century ago, no one wanted a war - the Alliance and the Horde players that were there just simply wanted to be able to celebrate the season (in this case the seasonal achievement) in peace. Which is what this season is all about, isn't it?

THE ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE CONSEQUENCE OF INCONVENIENCE

Well, not always, of course. Stories like that are the exception. More likely, if a soldier was to stroll out into No Man's Land - Christmas or no - he'd be shot before the second verse of Silent Night. But no one remembers the second verse anyway, so it's probably for the best.

When I went to kill the Greench on my Shaman, Thallie, it was a bit of a different story. As I got there, I noticed that there were a large number of skeletons in front of him, and I swear that the bugger had a self-satisfied smirk on his face. I figured that perhaps some unwise souls had tried to solo him, with fairly predictable results.

Go Go Mountain Top Vengeance Squad!

Well, not quite.

As it turns out, a Horde hunter was hiding in the cave, sniping people as they attempted to fight the boss. He managed to kill me a few times as before I got fed up and had enough. Obviously, the spirit of the season did something nasty to this guy's eggnog and he wasn't exactly in a giving or charitable mood.

So I did what any self-respecting, non-PVPing healer would do: I called in the reinforcements.

Within three minutes, I had 3 hardcore PVP specced guildies zoned in and hunting for this guy. If there is one thing my guild is extraordinarily good at, it's raining fiery vengeance on any player foolish enough to ambush one of our guild in the world. Within a few moments we had showed him the other, much more violent side of seasonal cheer.

It just goes to show that magical season of fellowship or no, some people are just inherently douchebags.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Winter's Veil from Dwarven Battle Medic! And honour any unofficial armistices lest we not forget the guild banner that gets planted in your buttocks. Happy Holidays!

One Year Later...

2011-12-14T15:11:00.000-06:00

“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln

One year ago Sunday, I was sitting in my office at work. It was a cold, snowy, miserable Saturday in December, ensuring that only the bravest and most motivated customers would dare visit the lot. In an attempt to stave off a level of boredom that would have resulted in me falling asleep at my desk, I started casually fooling around with Blogger to see if I could find a blog design that would catch my eye. An hour and a half later, I had the basic look that you see here now (unless you're on a feedreader) and my first post up. The rest, as they say, is history.

I've talked before about what motivated me to begin writing Battle Medic, why I chose the name and who my influences were - all really excellent topics for an anniversary post, but I'm not going to go into all that again. But I have been doing some pondering on my experiences and feelings about this whole blogging thing.

SOME VITAL STATISTICS

Because I'm sure there are people out there dying to know...

Over the past year, as of this writing Battle Medic has seen over 41,500 pageviews according to Blogspot's statistic's page. The best month I had was June with 6,136 views. As well, I have a good number of subscribers to my feed, although I don't really have an accurate way to track that. Google Reader tells me that 188 people are subscribed to the blog.

4 of my Top 5 all-time posts in terms of traffic are unsurprisingly due to being linked by the 800 pound gorilla of the WoW blogosphere, WoW Insider, which always results in a 20-fold increase in traffic for a day or two. However, the post that is hanging on in fifth place is my most controversial post, but also the one that I am most proud of writing: On Raiding Disappointment: An Open Letter to Blizzard. Although some people didn't agree with the content of the post, I think that in terms of the way in which the ideas are expressed it is my most powerful bit of writing. I'm glad that it's managing to hold on to a top spot, despite not being linked by WoW Insider.

I'd like to give a shout-out to my top referrers while I'm at it. WoW Insider is, of course, the site that has sent me the most traffic, although it's not as extreme as you might think. Blessing of Kings - the big daddy of Paladin blogs - is second, even beating Google. It appears that a lot of you use Rohan's Blog Roll to find your way here, and I credit getting listed on his site as what really got Battle Medic off the ground in terms of traffic and exposure. Thanks, Rohan! Orcish Army Knife, Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon round out the top referrers.

I am extremely proud that Battle Medic is listed on so many Blog Rolls around the blogosphere, and I thank everyone who thinks enough of my writing that they would add me to their site. It's a thrill every time I run across a blog that I'm unfamiliar with and see my blog listed there as something that they read and recommend.

All told, I have been extremely satisfied with the amount of people that are seeing what I write.

Traffic, however, is not that important if the people visiting are not finding the content engaging, and the only way to really know what you, the reader is thinking is the comments. There are a lot of reasons why a person wouldn't write a comment, but the only thing that is going to make someone (especially someone viewing a post in a reader) to stop what they're doing and respond to a post is if it has a compelling message. Agree with me or not, I value every single comment that I have received on Battle Medic, and over the course of the past year people have commented 572 times on the blog. Now I just need to be better at responding to them.

IMPRESSIONS AFTER THE FIRST YEAR

I can honestly say that Battle Medic has not quite turned out the way I anticipated. Don't get me wrong, I am very proud of the posts that I have written, but I hoped that it would have turned into more of a Kurn-esque resource blog rather than the personal game journal that it is now. While I would like to do more analytical posts, I think one of the most important lessons that I learned is that while those how-to and resource posts bring in a lot of views from the search engines, regular readers are more interested in what a blogger thinks about something. It's the personal opinions and viewpoints that keep bringing readers back.

That idea has shaped the evolution of Battle Medic more than anything.

Well, aside from the Dwarfling. I've written about this numerous times - it's almost to the point of getting quite stale - but my life, and consequently my ability to focus on my blog, has changed remarkably since I started a year ago. There have been far too many of the "I'm tired, no time to write" posts for my liking. The last thing I want is to turn this post into another of those, but the Dwarfling certainly has had a big effect on my posting and gameplay.

Still, I have enjoyed writing this blog more than I ever would have thought possible. Before starting it, I didn't realize how much I enjoyed the process and creative release of writing. More importantly, though, I didn't realize that I had something to say. I have opinions on this game and my experiences playing it, and I had no idea that there was a burning need to express them until I started writing about them. It's made me think about the game quite differently.

COMMUNITY

Writing a blog is fun, but interacting with the readers is much more rewarding. It's that interaction that begins to build a community, and the WoW Blogging community is great. It's diverse, engaging and very supportive. I don't think there would be much point in blogging in a void.

Everyone I talk to, whether it be on Twitter, forums or through comments, has been amazing. Support, advice and sympathy have been offered whenever I've been feeling like a grumpy Dwarf, and congratulations are never in short supply when something good happens. And, of course, there is nothing that will generate conversation and comments like posting a picture of the Dwarfling; the internet certainly seems to be taken with her.

I was planning on doing a list of people who have been influential to me and the blog and thank them, but honestly, there are far too many to list. The post would either get too long (it already is... this was supposed to be a short post!), or I would end up forgetting someone important, and I would hate to do that.

However, if you are reading this blog regularly, I thank you. I appreciate how special it is that someone takes time out of their day to read the drivel that I spew onto the interwebs. I hope that what I write is informative, enlightening or at the very least entertaining.

If you have ever commented on Battle Medic, I thank you. Believe me, I know how hard it is to comment on a post. Personally, I find it much harder to write an interesting comment than I do an interesting article. Know that each and every comment, regardless of whether I get off my tuckus to respond to it or not is read and appreciated. In fact, I get a shiver of anticipation every time I see that there is a new one.

If we have ever interacted on Twitter, I thank you. I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon quite late - I still haven't had one year on that yet - but I have a really good number of followers. In my wildest dreams I didn't think that there would be that many people interested in what I have to say.

If you are a blogger and have added me to your Blog Roll, I thank you. If you've ever ReTweeted, linked or written a response to one of my posts, I thank you.

If I have influenced you in some way - to start a blog, join Twitter, think about screenshots differently, or even to ditch all the other races in favour of the clearly superior Dwarves - I thank you. I write this blog for myself, but to know that there are people out there who enjoy what I write enough that it inspired them to do something themselves is very satisfying. I'm glad I could help, and I thank you for valuing what I do here.

And if you read this blog and didn't like it, well, I thank you anyway. Honestly, I get a lot of positive feedback here (the WoW blogosphere is very supportive), and I would love to get some idea of what I'm doing wrong. So thank you for all the constructive criticism in advance.

There... I think that covers just about everyone.

THE FUTURE OF BATTLE MEDIC

Back on that blustery day last December when I pushed the Publish button for the first time, I had no idea whether I would enjoy blogging or whether I would keep up with it. So many of the projects that I take on start out so brilliantly and then fizzle into a small, grey lump of nothing, and I'm glad that I've managed to keep Battle Medic as active as I have, given the circumstances.

I will continue to write this blog as long as there are people reading it. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to increase the frequency of the posting around here, as it's been much quieter than I'd like since August. I look forward to writing another of these posts next year!

The Proof is in the Search Terms

2011-12-02T11:32:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I posted my first impressions of the new Dragon Soul raid. It seems as though I am not alone in my fears that the level of difficulty is a little too far on the easy side; Twitter and the Blogosphere have been abuzz with debate about it.

However, bloggers and tweeters are not necessarily indicative of how the average WoW player reacts to the game. Even though I in no way consider myself a hardcore raider, just the fact that I write a blog means that I'm probably more hardcore about the game than the average player. I tend to read a lot and think a lot about the game.

So what does the non-blogger, non-twitterer think?

Well, there really is no way to know for sure. But we do have a way to see what people are asking the search engines, or at least see what questions are leading people here.

Here are some of the Search queries that have lead people to Battle Medic since the First Impressions post:

dragon soul easiest raid ever
dragon soul easy -demon
dragon soul raid boss encounters
dragon soul sared lot
random ride drop in dragonsoul
zandalari heroics harder than dragon soul

Clearly, this is an issue that is on the mind of a lot of people. The proof, as it were, is in the Search Terms.

As well, I thought I would share this one because it gave me a chuckle:

a beacon of light hit my face when i say welcome to th

I would really like to know what he said to get a Beacon of Light in the face. We may never know. I bet it hurt, though.

UPDATE: Upon closer inspection of my Google Analytics, I managed to find the full search term from above:

a beacon of light hit my face when i say welcome to the dwarf race!

I'm still completely mystified as to why someone would type that into Google or what they were hoping to find, but in the event that this suddenly turns into the new, fashionable search-term de jour, I am at the top of the results. Go me!

2ND NIGHT IMPRESSIONS OF DRAGON SOUL

We went back to Dragon Soul last night to see how far we could get. As I suspected, our Raid Night was cut short again by Real Life issues. All told, over the two nights that we raided this week we managed a mere 4 1/2 hours total. Still, we got a fourth boss down last night and despite some add-on issues managed a few good pulls on Ultraxion.

Ultraxion (Image courtesy wowpedia.org)

To put things in perspective, it took us approximately 8 to 10 hours of raiding - in which we attempted 3 different bosses - to get our first kill in Firelands.

Our average pace in Firelands before the nerfs was to get one new boss down per week, excepting the first and last kills which took longer. Getting half of the new raid down in half the time it took us to kill one boss in the previous tier is a little alarming.

It's not as if we overgear the new raid, either. We're not loaded up with heroic Firelands gear; most of our raid team have 378 gear, and a few have even less than that. This week I was asked to bring my Shaman instead of my Paladin main in order to help with raid healing. My Shaman has a grand total of 3 raid kills to her name and wasn't even eligible for Looking For Raid based on the item level of her gear - not to mention that I don't have a lot of experience healing with her. At least two others in the group have a similar level of gear.

However, the level of difficulty does seem to climb as we get into the second part of the raid. Ultraxion is no joke. Timing is tricky, DPS requirements are high and everyone - particularly the healers - needs to know exactly what they're doing in order to get him down. And that trash before him is quite brutal in an oh-my-gawd-why-won't-this-end kind of way.

I'm actually glad that we encountered some resistance. I still think we'll be through Normal Modes very quickly, but at least a few of these bosses have some fight in them so as to make it interesting.

I just wish we could get a raid group together for a decent amount of time in a night.

This Week in Raiding: Dragon Soul First Impressions

2011-12-01T18:26:00.000-06:00

Alrighty, now that the 50,000 Words project is done (and so help me if I see another screenshot again...) I can get back to writing about the game that I've been photographing for the past month. I would hate for Battle Medic to be known as just a screenshot blog.

There will be no screenshots in this post. I think I'm imaged out for a while.

As everyone knows, Patch 4.3 dropped Tuesday. Between a cranky computer that chose a horrible time to have a software glitch, a cranky baby that was overtired and dealing with a cold, and a cranky wife dealing with said baby, I didn't have a whole lot of opportunity to run the new content. I did manage to run End Time twice, once on my Paladin and once on my Shaman. End Time was a lot easier than I was expecting; very straightforward mechanics and what felt like low damage. I didn't really feel pushed all that much on either of my healers. End Time, at least, feels a lot easier than the Zandalari heroics and I am okay with that.

Last night Mountain Top went into the new raid instance Dragon Soul on Normal Mode for the first time. Our realm already has a number of 8/8 guilds, which made me optimistic that we would be able to get through it without too much trouble. From what I've heard, Dragon Soul is a lot easier than Firelands was, so long as the raid can manage the various different mechanics.

Without extensive preparation we managed to get three bosses down before we wiped to the Real Life boss. We spent about an hour and a half in a brand new, never-before-seen raid instance and yet still managed to easily one-shot Morchok and Yor'Sajh the ~~Unchallenging~~ Unsleeping. In addition, Zon'ozz fell after three or four pulls once we got the ball rolling, so to speak.

That's kinda nuts, really.

I really like the new 5-mans; they are short, well paced, absolutely stunning to look at and have the right amount of trash, I think. The boss encounters are easy enough to explain to a random group, and the entire dungeons can be completed quickly enough that they can be farmed without too much hassle. Which is what they are for, after all.

A raid, on the other hand, has to last. There is absolutely no reason that bosses should be killed on the first pull on the first attempt in the first week of a new raid - at least not by the non-hardcore crowd. Hell, some guilds have already 9-manned Morchok.

Now, as a disclaimer, we haven't pulled 5 of the bosses yet, so this may be premature, but I'm really worried that Normal Mode Dragon Soul is going to be easy enough that we'll blow through it in a week or two. And if this raid can be cleared by casual raiding guilds like Mountain Top so quickly, then unless the Heroic Modes are brutally, butt-clenchingly hard, the next five or six months until Mists of Pandaria comes out are going to be boring as hell. How long until we're through Heroic Modes and thinking, "What now?"

Mountain Top has never been a Heroic Mode guild - we have trouble getting the same people together each week and even more trouble getting a decent amount of time to raid. Five hours a week is about all we can manage on a good week, and quite often we're struggling to get more than two or three. With those time constraints, Heroic Modes always seemed out of reach. Now, however, with Dragon Soul it seems like Blizzard has lowered the bar for a guild like ours to get into them.

End game content in WoW has always been gobbled up extremely fast by the top-end guilds, and short of extremely restrictive gating mechanics (releasing the raid slowly over time, as they did with Trial of the Crusader and Icecrown Citadel) that's never going to change. Now, it seems as if Blizzard wants everyone to burn through the content just as quickly. I think this is a mistake.

When the Firelands were nerfed, I brought up the idea of the Tourist, which was received with a bit of controversy. Personally, I thought that the Looking For Raid difficulty level was going to be tailored for those people who couldn't or wouldn't run normal raids and just wanted to see the content to experience the story, but now it feels as if the Normal Modes are going that way as well.

Tonight we go back into Dragon Soul to see the remaining encounters for the first time. I would be very disappointed if we don't end this week at least 6/8, and wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Deathwing falls. Really, the only sticking point is how much time we'll have before we have a raider needs to leave in order to deal with the far more difficult fights with girlfriends, wives, babies and work.

It will be interesting to see where the numbers are in a few weeks. Will there be far more Guilds at 8/8 than Blizzard was expecting? And if Guilds do burn through the content as quickly as I suspect that they will, what is that going to do to the subscriber retention between now and Mists? Or, with the advent of the Yearly Subscription Pass does Blizzard even give a crap anymore, since the bribe of a pretty My Little Pony means that people aren't going anywhere and Blizzard has a free ride until the next expansion.

Time will tell, I guess.

I will say this, though, on a more positive note: I am enjoying the new content. Aside from the ease, I think the mechanics of the new bosses are quite cool, the scenery is beyond gorgeous and the sheer amount of lore that is stuffed into the raid and new heroic dungeons is amazing and engaging. I will be writing a lot more about the good things that Blizzard has given us in the coming days, I'm sure.

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (52/50)

2011-11-30T23:30:00.000-06:00

End Time

The Well of Eternity

Dead in the Caverns of Time

Pines #2

Well, this is the final post of my Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words challenge for November. And of course, being me I couldn't just do the challenge, I had to overachieve; so I posted 52 images.

This challenge was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, actually. Putting together the images - both from in game and out - took a lot of time and effort. I almost hope I don't see another screenshot for a while! But I really enjoyed doing it. I hope that you've enjoyed these images!

Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November. I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (48/50)

2011-11-29T11:30:00.000-06:00

Verrall River Falls, Uldum

The Egypt themed Uldum is, in my mind, the most visually appealing of all the zones introduced in Cataclysm. It evokes a feeling of majesty and mystery - and loneliness. It reminds me of how I felt as a new player roaming the wastes of Tanaris. I have never managed to finish every quest in Uldum, but I really enjoyed the feeling of discovery as I went through it. It's got a great atmosphere, and like all the best zones it makes the player feel something while there. And creating an emotional attachment is what takes anything from being ordinary to memorable.

The Great Statues of Uldum

And besides, who didn't enjoy those whacking those thieving little pluckers with a gigantic hammer?

Cameron and Tennille

With each wedding that I booked, I included a free engagement shoot with it. This allowed the clients and I to get to know each other before the wedding so that they would be more comfortable with me as a photographer, be more relaxed and ultimately get better photos on the big day. It also gave me another opportunity to create spectacular images in a more casual and less time constrained environment. This one is another signature piece that I did, and featured prominently in a lot of the promotional material that I created for my business. This image was not cropped at all, and all colours are completely natural. It was printed as a 30x30-inch wall portrait.

In getting this image ready to put on the blog, I remembered just how much of a pain in the ass it was working with film. The scan of this image was dirty as hell, and cleaning it took forever (and I still don't think I got everything). Viva la digital!

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (45/50)

2011-11-28T22:00:00.000-06:00

The Twilight Grove, Duskwood

Seradane, Hinterlands

The two portals in the Eastern Kingdoms, as requested by Nymphy and Draccus. Places of mystery and silence, now that their dragon guardians have abandoned them.

Greg and Charla

Ahh, the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. Without a doubt the most popular destination in Saskatoon for weddings to get portraits done. On any given Saturday during the summer the sheer number of weddings is incredible; they practically are tripping over each other. Using this very common location was quite often unavoidable, but using it in a novel way was difficult, but possible. This is one of my absolute favourite images that I did there, in a tiny little alcove between three buildings that is almost entirely covered in ivy. Very beautiful. For this particular image I chose to present it in black and white, and added a glow to the background. Greg and Charla have this hanging in their home as a 30" print.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (42/50)

2011-11-26T23:00:00.000-06:00

The Majesty of Old Ironforge

Jackie

This is one of my favourite wedding images ever. I ended up using this for a lot of promotional materials including my business cards and ads. It was my signature image for a long time. Interestingly, it was taken on my very first shoot with a digital camera, one that I borrowed from a camera store to play with. I was so unsure as to the quality of the digital images that I took a film camera and ended up shooting half of the wedding digital and the other half traditionally. Once I took a look at the images that I had captured with the digital SLR, I was completely sold. I bought the camera the next day.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

A Thanksgiving Evening at Fannon's

2011-11-24T12:12:00.000-06:00

The sun was still peeking over the mountains of Dun Moroghas the day waned, the dying light glistening off the freshly fallen snowsurrounding the little home cut into the rock. A warm glow was coming from its frost covered windows, wafts of smoke floated out of the little chimney. The scentof the nearby pine trees mingled with the tantalizing aroma of cooking. Inside, a crackling fire was burning merrily in the hearth,warming the small room, in the center of which stood a table filled with bowls and trays and platters filled with steaming food of all sorts. In the center of the table was a conspicuously empty space.

Around the table were seated an eclectic mix of people. At the headof the table sat a tall, dark-skinned man, powerfully built and dressed in asimple tunic of silver and gold. He was sitting on a cushion on the floor so asto be at the right height for the table. Next to him was seated a ferociouslyred-haired Dwarf wearing a festive red dress, trimmed with an intricate gold pattern that set off her pale,freckled complexion. She was chuckling at the gnome seated across from her.

The gnome, whose head and shoulders barely rose above the table height, peeked around the large, foaming mug of ale thatshe had placed in front of him that completely blocked his view and grinned, "Now that is a proper sized drink, Thallie."

"Aye," she smiled, "Tis nearly as large as yer head. But wha ye’d expect from a dwarven draught?"

Thosif gave a hearty laugh and shifted on his cushions toget more comfortable. "I’ve always wondered where you managed to store all theale that you drink, Krupel," he said as he took a drink from his own glass. "Truly,it is a marvel that such a tiny little creature can put back such a quantity!"

"It's an ancient gnomish secret; very hush-hush,"Krupel laughed in his squeaky, yet oddly gruff voice as he wiped the foam from his white moustache.

"Indeed," said Thosif seriously. "And where is that husband of yours,Thallie? He's been sequestered away in that kitchen for hours, it seems. One must wonder if he plans to feed his guests in a timely manner or merely let us waste away!"

Krupel placed his mug on the table with a loud and empty thud. "I don't blame you for being impatient, Thosif," he said cheerfully. "I image that you're sick of eating those severed fish heads and greasy whale milk that you Paladins do. Ick!" The Paladin scowled at the gnome as he continued, "Getting some hearty Dwarven food into your belly will be good for you. But I've gotta agree; Fannon sure is taking his time!"

A string of dwarvish swear-words, uttered by a deep, gruff voice with a thick Dun Morogh accent came from the kitchen doorway, "Magni's beard! A little patience, a'ready! Th' food'll be done when it's done!"

From the opposite corner of the room a piercing cry interrupted the laughter of the guests. Sitting in a comfortable armchair was a young, fetching woman holding a tiny baby who had just begun to cry. She had a startled look on her face, as if she was unsure what to do. She stood up, bouncing the baby to try and calm her down, whispering, "It's alright, little dwarfling. Shhhh."

After a moment, the crying subsided. "She likes yeh, Ophelie," Thallie said, "Ye're a natur'l."

"Thanks," Ophelie said, smiling. "She's adorable! And thanks so much for inviting me over to share in the holiday feast."

"Nae mention it," Thallie winked. "Consider yersel' part o' the family."

Between sips Krupel chuckled, "That means you have to do the dishes, Ophelie. It's not as great a deal as it seems like at first."

"You don't seem to complain too much as long as there's plenty of food and drink, Krupel," said Thosif.

Thallie gave Krupel a playful slap, "Quiet, you. Ophelie, find yersel' a place t' sit 'round the table, the rest o' th' guests should be here any minute. An' Fannon should be done w' th' food soon. I hope, a' least." She gave a skeptical glance towards the kitchen, where a great deal of worrysome noise and the occasional curse could be heard. "I should go check on 'im, make sure he's -"

Just then a knock on the door resounded through the house. Thallie moved to open it, and from outside heard, "Vidyala, my love, I do not think I can fit though this door."

Opening the stout, wooden door revealed a large, blue-skinned Draenei crouching low so that his head would clear the top of the it. "Greetings, my dear Thallie. We are so glad to join you on this auspicious occasion," Vosskah said as he twisted and contorted his huge frame through the diminutive, dwarf-sized opening. His wife, Vidyala, followed him through with considerably more grace. She was nearly as tall, with pale, almost translucent skin, her long brown hair styled smartly around her horns. "That's how it's done, Voss. You just need a little more dexterity," she laughed.

"We warriors are built for power, not dancing, my darling," Vosskah said gently, smiling. "Hear hear! Built for power!" slurred Krupel in the background, who raised his tankard in salute before guzzling it back.

"Welcome an' welcome again t' our home, both o' ye!" Thallie beamed, "Fannon an' mesel' are s'glad t' have ye!" The distinct sound of something breaking came from the kitchen. "Errr, dinner'll be in a trice; Fannon's just finishin' up sae details," she continued, a slight flutter of concern in her voice.

The newcomers found a seat at the table and got comfortable. After a moment, Ophelie began animatedly telling a story of her many travels to exotic lands, while Thallie busied herself getting drinks for the new arrivals as well as Krupel - who was now starting on his third gigantic stein of beer and showed no signs of slowing down.

Suddenly, the door flew open and a man burst in. Clad from head to toe in simple black leather, he quickly shut the door and sprinted for the fireplace and began to warm himself up, shivering. "Winter in the mountains!" he said mockingly. "I'm not sure why on Azeroth we couldn't have met at my place where it's warm!"

The company laughed. Thallie hugged the latest guest, "Good tae see you too, ElBne," she laughed. "Th' weather would nae be s'bad if only you'd dress for it!"

ElBne smiled at Thallie, "Do you know how hard it is to move around stealthily when you're wearing six layers of bear skins?" he asked. "My professionalism wouldn't allow that!"

"I would think the clinking of the wine bottles in your cloak would tend to give you away more than the bulkiness of a winter jacket," joked Vidyala.

ElBne grinned and pulled out two bottles of wine from his cloak pockets, "I come prepared for anything!"

"Welcome, laddie," Thallie said warmly, "Now we're just waitin' for our last guest. ElBne, did ye chance tae spot Corath out there a' all?"

"As it happens, I did. I think it's alright to start without him, though," ElBne said. "When I saw him last he had accidentally attracted the attention of a few of the guards of Ironforge and they were chasing him through the hills towards Gnomeregan. I think it will be a while before he loses them and makes it back here."

Thallie sighed, "It's a pity tha th' guards dunnae know him as we do. I know he's a Tauren an' technically the enemy, but he's such a sweet little cow. I hope he escapes."

"I'm not certain there would be room in here for both of us," said Vosskah. He was sitting on a cushion on the floor next to the table, his head bent at an odd angle to keep it from hitting the wooden beam of the roof.

A long series of alarming sounds suddenly burst forth from the kitchen, accompanied by a loud hooting and more than a little smoke. The dwarfling, whom Ophelie had rocked to sleep and put in a fur-lined basket near the fire, began crying again. Thallie picked her daughter up, sat down on the hearth and began softly singing an old Wildhammer lullaby to calm her down.

Thosif stood up at the table suddenly, narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the ceiling, and pulled everyone's attention away from the drama that was happening in the kitchen. "Please friends, find a place to sit around this magnificent table," he said formally. "Whilst our host is, uh, otherwise occupied with the preparations for our repast, I would take this opportunity to offer a toast.

"I would like to thank you all for coming tonight, on this most excellent holiday," he began solemnly. "Each one of us have, at one point, stood up against the worst evils that Azeroth has to offer and has come out victorious. But not one of us could have achieved these victories without the help and support of the people around us. Friendship is what allows us to endure the unimaginable hardships and succeed when we feel that the Light has abandoned us, for we know that our comrades will stay true and show us the path through the darkness."

He raised his glass, "To you, my friends. To Vidyala and Vosskah, who came from so very far away to see us tonight. To ElBne and, yes, even our "enemy" Corath. And especially to you, Ophelie. All of you, your friendship means so much to me that it is truly impossible to properly describe. I salute you."

The room was silent as each person raised their glass and took a sip. The dwarfling gurgled in her basket.

"Brilliant!" Fannon exclaimed, appearing at the kitchen entrance holding a large, red cooking pot. "Finished a' last!" He was a mess. His elegant white robes - made of a shimmering material and trimmed with black and gold - were covered with stains and several rips. The hem of both sleeves bore the unmistakable scorch marks of being recently set on fire. His white beard - pulled into a thick braid in the front and tied with an ornate silver band - was frizzy and disheveled, with a still-wriggling fish tail protruding out of it. "Tuck in!"

With a flourish, Fannon placed the feast in the middle of the table. The room was suddenly quiet for a long, awkward moment. The guests glanced at each other nervously.

Krupel broke the silence, "Umm, isn't that lobster supposed to be dead?"

This post is part of the Blog Azeroth Thanksgiving Event hosted by Amerence, in which we are to give thanks to those bloggers who have inspired us in some way this year. I chose to thank those people whom have come out of the digital ether to become real life friends. I salute you all:

Vidyala from Manalicious
Vosskah from Sword & Board
Corath from Corath's Blog
ElBne (No blog, but we're working on him. Follow him on twitter in the meantime)
And the lovely Ophelie from Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, despite the fact that it's a month and a half late.

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (40/50)

2011-11-23T23:33:00.001-06:00

Surwich, Blasted Lands (By Request)

I asked on Twitter for requests for Images of Azeroth. Relysh mentioned the spooky woods in the southern Blasted Lands by Surwich. This is a neat place, nestled in between the steamy jungles of Stranglethorn and the scortched, barren Blasted Lands (right next to the rather odd Murloc slave labour camp). I love the aesthetic of the Gilnean areas, they have such a great, creepy, horror-movie atmosphere. This is a 360 degree panorama and was quite the pain to put together: The water, being essentially featureless, confused the hell out of my photostitch software (PTGui) forcing me to manually blend in clouds to fill in some gaps. And just for the hell of it, I added a bit more glow to the moon to up the eerieness factor a bit.

James

This is another wedding image, of which you'll be seeing a fair bit of over the remainder of the challenge. I worked as a professional photographer for five years and made a living off of photographing weddings, which formed the bulk of what I was shooting at the time. I like to think that I had a unique style. One aspect of the wedding that most photographers never pay quite enough attention to is the groom, and so I always like to make sure that I did something special for them. I always saved my most dramatic locations and lighting for photos of the guys. This one was taken under a rather run down bridge, and has a certain shabby chic that really appeals to me, especially when contrasted to the rest of the album, which had a certain ethereal wispiness to it.

Oh my, listen to me talkin' all artsy-like. Golly.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (38/50)

2011-11-23T23:28:00.000-06:00

Flying Machine

A Fog at Sunrise #1

I love this image. It's probably the coolest thing I've done in a long time. It was taken on the same morning as this image, although a little earlier. The sun was just rising on a crisp, fall morning and a mist was hovering delicately over the lake. This image is a series of nine or ten different photographs stitched together, making it the most ambitious panorama I've done with actual photographs. I love the ultra-wide angle effect that this technique gives this image. I haven't printed this image yet, but I plan to create an image that spans a full seven feet and proudly display it in my house.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (36/50)

2011-11-22T19:07:00.000-06:00

He's Just a Dragon, Right?

A Simple Tree

You never know when an interesting image is going to come in front of your lens; there are great, interesting images literally everywhere you look. The problem that a lot of inexperienced photographers have is that they never change their perspective. Look up at the sky, or crouch down close to the ground, or tilt your camera; take a look at an object from all sorts of different angles before moving on. This photograph was taken looking straight up at an overhanging, dead tree, which, combined with the sky gives the image an ominous feel.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (34/50)

2011-11-21T21:58:00.000-06:00

Aku'mai

Aku'mai shortly before being killed by a Clone

I rarely take "action" shots during my travels around the world. In fact, most of the time I try to avoid have any mobs or players in my shots at all. The other night, however, I was going through Blackfathom Deeps and walked into the last cavern with Aku'mai, which stuck me as quite lovely - in a "dank, skeletons on the ground" sort of way.

The Kids

Before the Dwarfling was born, my dogs were the subject that most often ended up in front of my camera. These are a series of photographs I did for a "family portrait" concept. These were some of the first images that I took when I got my digital SLR, playing around with the camera in a studio setting for the first time.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (31/50)

2011-11-20T21:22:00.000-06:00

Poolside in Kezan

A Portrait of the Dwarf as a Young Man
Fannon, In Real Life.

At one point or another, every artist does a self-portrait of some sort. In fact, it's a standard part of most art classes. This was mine; done as I was learning my trade as an apprentice with one of the best photographers in my home town. I used it on my business cards when I went into business for myself and I still use it as my Facebook profile picture today (not that I use Facebook any longer, mind you). The fedora was my signature look at the time, and I wore is almost constantly. Thank you, Night Court, for defining my aesthetics at such a young age.

I haven't done any other self-portraits since. One of the drawbacks of being a photographer is that you're seldom on the other side of the lens.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (29/50)

2011-11-19T13:16:00.000-06:00

Stranglethorn

The Pond

Art can be a lot of different things. It can be ugly and yet important and thought provoking, or it can be beautiful simply for beauty's sake. I think in many ways photography can capture uncomplicated beauty better than any other medium because the artist can choose to step out of the way and let an image speak for itself. This is a strength, but it also the reason why fine art photography is often treated as less than "real" art. In a lot of my previous posts I have been showing you my attempts to break out of that and explore the areas that photography has difficulty depicting. This image, on the other hand, is more about conveying a single, simple idea: Damn, that's pretty.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (27/50)

2011-11-18T12:10:00.000-06:00

The Hidden Valley of Dun Morogh

There are moments when travelling that even I, the hardened WoW Landscape photographer that I am, get truly stunned by the beauty of the vistas that I find. One such moment happened to me not that long ago as I was exploring the Hidden Valley of Dun Morogh that lies behind Gnomeregan. It was late afternoon and the sunlight on the mountains and shining through the trees really moved me. It's times like these that I know that the developers really care about this world and how it looks, which gives me a nice, warm squishy feeling down in the cockles of my stony, dwarven heart.

Needles

Given the fact that winter has finally arrived where I live, this image is appropriate. It's another image exploring abstraction and motion - although this one is a little easier to figure out what it is. The high-key background and false blue colour that I have imposed upon it make me think of frigid winter temperatures, but also reminds me that there is a great deal of beauty in the winter, if you're willing to look for it. Ironically, this image was taken on a lovely end-of-summer day when the temperature was sitting at about 25C.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (25/50)

2011-11-17T12:11:00.000-06:00

Gnomus Dramatis

I actually find it very difficult to take portraits of my characters given the limitations of the WoW user interface. Always having the character centered, the basic camera controls and the difficulty of getting truly interesting lighting tend to make every image I take of my characters look, frankly, like a video game screenshot. This image is an exception. It's an old one, when I was still playing my Warrior as my main and before I discovered my true calling as a healer. I love this shot because the lighting is wonderfully dramatic and unique.

Tanya

Ahh, weddings. Every photographer does them, at least at first. They are a constant, easily booked source of work, especially for a photographer that is just starting out. But they are demanding: bridezillas, extreme time constraints, large groups and rambunctious children are all some of the hazards that a wedding photographer will have to deal with. Photographing a wedding can be an exhausting exercise.

But the results can be nothing short of spectacular. This is Tanya, one of my favourite wedding clients. We did this image on a very hot summer day at the top of a parking structure in the blazing sunlight. The location allowed for me to create a high-key lighting effect very naturally and easily, with amazing results. This image, and another that was done at the same time were two of my favourite wedding shots of all time, and were prominently displayed in my trade show booths, this one as a 24" x 24" print.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (23/50)

2011-11-16T21:39:00.001-06:00

Ironforge Airfield

Pines #4 Source Image

Not much in the way of commentary today. The top image is a 360-degree panorama of the Ironforge Airfield showing some extreme distortion. The effect is quite interesting, and more than a little on the bizarre side.

The second image answers the question I posed yesterday. This is the source image for Pines #4 that I posted yesterday. This image is natural - all the blurring and streaking was done in the camera. The only alterations were the cropping (square, for the win) and colour correction. I love this image in it's raw form, and each adjustment I made was more and more exciting. You can always tell when you've got a really strong image when it can work in multiple different ways and formats.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (21/50)

2011-11-15T16:51:00.000-06:00

A Unique Perspective on Dalaran

Sometimes all it takes to create a unique image of a mundane subject is to simply change your perspective. Any WoW player who played during the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is so familiar with the city of Dalaran as to be bored with it, despite it's obvious beauty. This image was taken high above to see the gorgeous city in it's entirety and is a panorama of seven different images.

Pines #4

This image is very exciting. I was poking through some images and started playing around with one - doing the Photoshop equivalent of a quick pencil sketch - and an hour later this was the result. It's probably my most abstract image to date, and my wife and I have had a couple of very interesting conversations as to how to interpret it. The wonderful thing about abstract images is that the mind will build a framework so as to be able to understand what's it's seeing, and it will be different for every person. What do you see?

Bonus Dwarfling pic!

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

What's Up, Dwarf?

2011-11-14T19:56:00.000-06:00

"Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean, like butter that has been scraped over too much bread." - Bilbo Baggins, Fellowship of the Ring

It's been a while since I've posted anything substantial and I thought it time to catch you all up on what I've been up to lately. I have never been one to do the more personal posts, but I'm getting sick at seeing this blog wither and die like a spring flower in the harsh bitterness of an approaching winter. Cheerful metaphors aside, I need to get some things out of my head and onto the blog. I apologize in advance for the distressing lack of WoW content in this post.

"Omnomnomnom"
The face of pure destruction has never
looked so danged cute.

It feels like life is getting more and more hectic everyday around the Fannon stead. The Dwarfling is a very robust 9 months now, in perfect health and fully mobile; she's crawling and scuttling around like a famished Zoidberg going after a discarded hamburger. Nothing is safe from her wrath, and a rapid and frantic baby-proofing of our house is taking place at all hours of the day as she finds new and wonderful things to get her hands on to destroy.

I'm realizing that this parenting thing is a marathon that I have not trained for; my stamina is not nearly buffed enough to keep up with a rambunctious child. And it's only going to get worse as she realizes her legs are not merely for kicking the dogs when they get too close. Once she's walking, I'm doomed.

I know all the other parents out there are reading this with a bemused, knowing smirk on their face, and a feeling of pity mixed with a certain smug satisfaction that the hell that they went through is indeed universal.

Still, she's a treasure. The best part of my day is seeing her face light up when I get home from work. Nothing in this world beats a child that's happy to see you; I look forward to it all day.

Really, being tired from chasing a kid around isn't really the major stress source in my life at this moment. That honour definitely goes to my job. If you are a reader of my Twitter account you've no doubt read my many vitriolic tweets threatening to walk out. Well, dear reader, I am still in the same job I have been for the past two years. I haven't made a move yet because the hours are really quite cushy, but there isn't a day that goes by where I don't want to punch all the things, jump in a rather expensive vehicle and drive it through a plate-glass window. I'd love to just rage quit, but knowing that the Dwarfling is depending on me for everything she has means I can't be hasty when it comes to the major source of income in the family.

I bring all this up on Battle Medic because all this real life stress is affecting how I perceive this game. Frankly, I think it's clear that I've been going through a rather serious bout of depression for the past couple of months which has been negatively colouring my attitude and sucking the fun out of most everything in my life. I feel deflated and helpless when I log into WoW and look at the character screen these days - knowing that no matter what I try to do I will likely get interrupted by family matters and be unable to finish. I don't think I've done anything on my main other than raid in over a month because I just don't have the time. It's a terrible feeling and it has turned my stress-relief activity into an actual source of stress. I hate that.

Normally when I write something like this I try to broaden the topic a bit to make it less about me and a little more universal. But in this case I can't. I can't tell you how I'm going to work myself out of the funk that I'm in, nor can I offer any advice if you're going through something similar. I don't have any answers this time.

But what I can tell you is what I've been up to, trying to keep myself distracted.

WHAT'S UP WITH THE BLOG, DWARF?
(Are you still posting about WoW, or what?)

I'm not going to deny that I have been feeling very lackluster about posting Battle Medic these days. This post took me more than two weeks to finally finish, and I'm still not really happy with it. Looking at the blank post-entry page gives me the same feeling as when I'm looking at the character selection screen; a deep sigh and an immobilizing sense of panic.

The invent of the IntPiPoMo challenge that I have been tackling has been relatively lackluster in terms of generating traffic to the blog, but if it has accomplished nothing else it has got me posting again. It's been nice to be able to talk about something that I'm passionate about that is related to the game but not necessarily about the game - if that makes any sort of sense at all. It's been nice to get back into my image archives and show my faithful Battle Medic readers some of the other images that I work on and to talk a little about how I make them.

WHAT'S UP IN WARCRAFT, DWARF?

I have still been playing WoW over the past while, even though I haven't really been posting or Tweeting about it. I have a lot of posts in the works with my thoughts and reactions to the upcoming 4.3 patch and the new expansion which will hopefully be insightful even if they aren't exactly timely. Raiding is proceeding well enough, and I'm starting to get the itch to take my recently 85 Resto Shaman into the Firelands now that her gear is approaching acceptable levels. Not that I have time to raid with another character, mind you.

What I have been doing with my playing time is to work on some side projects.

The Deadman's Challenge

I started Vrykerion and Pysnister's Ironman Challenge as well, creating a soon-to-be-dead Orc named Grykthar. I plan to post more about this in a bit, but my spin on it makes it a perma-death challenge. So no items other than white and grey, no heirlooms, no dungeons, no nothing - and when the character dies he's dead for good.

I don't think that Grykthar will ever survive to be max level - in fact I fully expect to be writing many tales of woe and misery as I kill off character after character in ever more gruesome and entertaining ways. Look for a detailed introduction to Grykthar and my Deadman's Challenge coming soon.

Gnome Clone

Lillifleur the Gnome Clone
Fear our spiky and flirty Hair-dos!

More recently I have joined the Gnome Clone Army of [ Punt This ] with my lovely little clone mage Lillifleur. If you haven't heard of this before, it's a project started by Alas; the goal of which is to create an army of Gnome twinks, all with the same look, "uniform" and similar names, that will run roughshod over the Level 24 Battlegrounds. The idea has exploded on Twitter, and the Glorious Clone Army has surpassed 100 members, none of which are more than three feet tall.

Personally, I've been having a blast with my little clone. Levelling as a mage is fun and I think I may become addicted to blowing stuff up. She's an absolute beast and has already reached level 20 - by far my highest mage to date. Not only that, but the Clone Army is filled with scores of intelligent, witty and fun people, mostly culled from Twitter. Guild chatter is fun and lively, and I have been enjoying the levelling process.

Given my current state of mind, this project couldn't have come at a better time. I've tried starting other lowbie characters (my Druid is still languishing at level 24), but the prospect of levelling a character to 85 is a very daunting thought when time is an enemy. Getting a character to a "Level Cap" of 24, on the other hand, is simple, quick and painless. I'm excited to log in and play my little clone and I'm looking forward to getting her into some Battlegrounds and burning some Horde faces. I can't say that I have been excited about much of anything lately, so this feeling is a nice change of pace.

The highlight so far happened last night: A spontaneous flash mob of Gnome Clones descended on the unsuspecting denizens of Stormwind and entertained the bewildered spectators with Gnomish dancing and formation marching accompanied with loud and vociferous proclamations of gnomish supremacy. It was probably the most fun I've ever had in game, to tell the truth. By the end we had about 20 Lilli's precision marching from the Dwarven district to the Cheese Shop by the main gates, followed by a large crowd of very curious and fun-loving converts to the gnomish cause.

The Gnome Clone Army invades Stormwind to start a Dance Party

Quite a sight to see.

WHAT'S UP, DWARF?

Hopefully, my spirits. It's funny, but since I started writing this post several weeks ago, I have hit lows and highs - my mood has been quite variable and unpredictable - but I'm feeling a little better these days. Work has been less than completely awful the past few weeks, and the constant stream of house-guests, events and other time-sinks that have been eating away at my soul are done at least for the near term. And last night I actually managed to force a little alone time where I could just sit back and enjoy myself. It was nice and desperately needed.

With any luck your favourite Battle Medic will be back in good spirits and posting more soon. Thank you all for your patience, and perseverance to actually read through this rather whiny post. Writing it seems to have helped; I hope it wasn't too painful to read. But at least you've got a bit more insight as to what I've been going through personally the past while.

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (18/50)

2011-11-13T17:04:00.001-06:00

Atramedes

Portraits are the professional photographer's bread and butter. They are easy to book, easy to take and can be very lucrative. This image is a family shoot that I did for these clients shortly after replacing my film cameras with a digital SLR. It was done in the late summer just before sunset. This time of day is called the "magic hour" because the quality of the light is just spectacular.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (16/50)

2011-11-12T21:57:00.000-06:00

Ahn'Qiraj

The Dock

I tried to come up with some idea or concept to link these two images; I've actually been quite surprised at how well the previous pairings have gone together. But I couldn't really think of anything other than the fact that they're both panoramas.

What these did make me think of was my photography classes back in University. As a studio class, we would put our assignments on the wall and then go around the room and critique each other's images. The most important lesson that I learned from these critiques - apart from the fact that they were held far too early in the morning - was that as an artist, if you can explain or justify why you did something you can pretty much get away with anything. A mistake can become an artistic decision very easily. I learned this lesson extremely well, and a deft combination of fast-talking and quick thinking allowed me to explain away a lot of things that would have otherwise cost me marks.

It's really a pity that they don't offer a degree in Bullshiting, because truly, that's what I learned from those studio classes. I didn't learn the skills I needed as a professional until I started working for one, but that's a story for another post.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (14/50)

2011-11-11T14:21:00.001-06:00

The Greymane Wall

Grain

A lot of my recent work, both with a camera and with WoW screenshots, I have been playing with stitching images together to create panoramas. There are a couple of reasons for this; firstly, my camera, while very good, is quite old and the largest file size is actually very small compared to cameras that are very commonly available these days, and by stitching together a number of different images I can create larger files and therefore larger and higher quality prints. The other reason, of which both of these images illustrate, is that by stitching images together a photographer can create effects that are otherwise impossible -- or at least very difficult to do without specialized equipment.

In The Greymane Wall I have created a distortion effect that is similar to what you would get from a extreme wide-angle "fisheye" lens. Whilst in Grain I have gone for a Hyperfocus look where everything in the image is in crisp focus (oddly similar to how WoW displays images, like I talked about here). This is actually very difficult to do in camera, and almost impossible when an object is very close in the foreground. However, by stitching different images with each element properly focused, it's much easier.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (12/50)

2011-11-10T12:57:00.000-06:00

Ahh, the square image format. It is such an incredibly unique way to present an image in this day and age and I love it dearly. When I was working as a professional photographer I used a Hasselblad 500C which took 2 1/4" square negatives. It took me a long time to truly understand how to compose a powerful image using the square format, but once I figured it out I completely embraced it and tried to produce as many images as I could using the natural dimensions of the 'Blad. Now that I am using a digital camera that has the standard 35mm dimensions (4x6, roughly) it's harder to visualize things as a square, but I still try to use it any chance an image demands it. Same principles go for WoW screenshots.

Damn, I really miss that camera.

This image is along the same lines as yesterdays: An exploration of movement and an attempt to create an abstract photograph. I am particularly fond of this one; the colours and the motion really work. This is another example of an image that resisted every attempt that I tried to improve it. The only processing I did with this image is to choose the square format for it.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (10/50)

2011-11-09T11:47:00.000-06:00

Stormwind after Deathwing

If there is one thing that ruins screenshots for me, at least in terms of photo-realism, is the lack of depth-of-field. Video games render all scenes in perfect clarity, but what I want to see is a little bit of blurring of the background or foreground. It's a very old photography technique to not only enhance the sense of depth in an image, but to also emphasise and draw the eye to the most important part of the image. In this image of Stormwind, I added a progressive blur to the background, which forces the eye to the towers up front.

Of Light and Darkness

A lot of my more recent photography work has been exploring motion. I've been working with a lot of camera movement trying to reduce the realism of the photograph, because if there is one thing that is hard to do as a photographer it's to create a truly abstract image. This particular image has a great deal of extreme camera movment, and because of this the image has a distinct feel of unreality to it. It actually reminds me of a painting; the streaks of light the brushstrokes.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (8/50)

2011-11-08T12:00:00.000-06:00

Standing before the Halls of Reflection

Sunset in Motion

I am a huge fan of custom cropping my images. I love playing with different shapes in order to get the maximum effect. However, sometimes spending a little extra time with the camera gets you the absolute perfect image that doesn't need any additional monkeying around with; one that modifying will actually detract from the power of the image. These are two great examples of this. As much as I try to find a more interesting angle on either of these shots, they stand perfectly on their own, stubbornly refusing any tweaking.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (6/50)

2011-11-07T11:37:00.000-06:00

The Scoured Reach, Deepholm

Pines #3

Some images, especially those done in black and white, are more about texture than the subject itself. I think that is the main appeal of black and white images; the wonderful detail isn't overpowered by all that flashy colour.

Please note that all World of Warcraft screenshots are copyright Blizzard Entertainment. The photographs are copyright Brad Stover and should not be reused without permission..

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (4/50)

2011-11-06T20:18:00.001-06:00

Here there be dragons. Grim Batol

Oftentimes I am amazed at how little we as players look around and really see what's going on in the peripheries of the game world. There is an amazing amount of detail going on all around us. This particular image is of Grim Batol. I wonder how many players who in their rush to get through the instance to collect their points have never bothered to look up and see the war going on between the Red and Twilight Dragonflights?

Sunset in Copper

This is actually a composite of two different images taken of the same scene. The basic image of the sunset is overlaid with a second photograph that I blurred significantly by moving the camera during the exposure. Back in my days of shooting film I would have done this in camera, but digital certainly makes it easier! I really love the extra glow that the blurred image gives this photograph, adding an ethereal quality to it. I also find this image interesting in it's monochromatic nature; it seems to be nothing but shades of orange and black, with no purples or blues that are commonly seen at sunset.

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (2/50)

2011-11-05T12:43:00.000-05:00

Darkshore, Kalimdor.

I think out of all the zones that received the Cataclysm make-over, Darkshore is one that benefited the most. Previously a dreary and uninteresting zone, it has been completely transformed into perhaps the most visually stunning zone in the game.

To create the look of this image I first cropped it, sharpened it, then added a blurring effect (you'll see it on the left side when you enlarge it) to enhance the sense of depth. As well, I "burned" in the outer edges to draw the eye into the main focus of the image, namely the interaction between the sun and the trees.

Sturgeon Lake, Saskatchewan.

This image was taken a few years ago on a cold, foggy October morning during my vacation at our cabin at Sturgeon Lake. The calmness and serenity of this image has always intrigued me. Even though it was fall when this image was created and the colours on the leaves at the end of the lake were truly stunning, I chose to present this image in black and white to help convey the chill that was in the air that morning and accentuate the feeling peaceful stillness.

Images of Azeroth: 50,000 Words (Introduction)

2011-11-05T11:46:00.000-05:00

November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo); a month where the English language (among others) is tortured, abused, slapped, tickled and polished by thousands of prospective novelists in mostly abortive attempts to write the Next Great Novel. The goal is ambitious: Write 50,000 words within the month of November.

I admire anyone who has the stones to attempt such a herculean task and am in bewildered awe of anyone who actually finishes it. Personally, I would love to attempt it; as with most anyone else on the Internet, I have an idea for a novel that has never seen the light of day. But if I am to be honest with myself, I don't think I would ever be able to properly dedicate myself to it and so it would end up being yet another project that I've taken on which never sees completion. I have enough of those already; anyone remember the Through Your Interface challenge?

However, Angelya over at Revive and Rejuvenate has come up with another Challenge that I, as a Photographer and self-styled Visual Artist, am very excited about. It's IntPiPoMo, or International Picture Posting Month. As a picture is worth 1,000 words, the goal for this challenge is to post 50 pictures during the month of November.

This is right up my alley.

So here we go. It's the 5th today, so I'll be posting 2 images per day for the remainder of November. But of course, it wouldn't be a true Battle Medic challenge if I didn't have some kind of unique spin on it. So rather than simply posting 50 different screenshots of our favourite virtual world, I will be posting 25 Images of Azeroth and 25 photographs or art projects that I have been working on personally (and no baby photos, sorry ladies). As well, I will be posting commentary and context with each image.

Look for the first post a little later today.

As well, on a personal note, I hope to get back to posting more regularly than I have been lately. Two posts a month on Battle Medic is unacceptable to me. I really appreciate those of you who have stuck around and kept checking the blog during this little unannounced and unexpected hiatus. Look for a lot of action here at Battle Medic over the next little while!

Images 1 and 2: Darkshore and Sturgeon Fog
Images 3 and 4: Grim Batol and Sunset in Copper
Images 5 and 6: Scoured Reaches and Pines #3
Images 7 and 8: Halls of Reflection and Sunset in Motion
Images 9 and 10: Stormwind After Deathwing and Of Light and Darkness
Images 11 and 12: Badlands Tree and Untitled Abstract
Images 13 and 14: The Greymane Wall and Grain
Images 15 and 16: Ahn'Qiraj and The Dock
Images 17 and 18: Atramedes and a Family Portrait
Images 19, 20 and 21: Dalaran, Pines #4 and Bonus Dwarfling Pic
Images 22 and 23: Ironforge Airfield and Pines #4 Source
Images 24 and 25: Gnomus Dramaticus and Tanya