Secret Santa: The Fellowship of Gamers

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...

Guest Post: Ode to Healers

Nymphy is an arcane mage in the US guild Eff the Ineffable and co-writer for the blog D/E the Tank. She has wandered over here to Fannon's healing blog to set him straight about a couple things by volunteering to write about the most important job in a group/raid: DPS! Err...healing. Yeah, healing.


ODE TO HEALERS
In Which Team Heals and the Healer Tyranny Receive Their Due

First off, DOWN WITH HEALER TYRANNY!!! They think they are so special just because they can battle rez and bubble and have healing circles that sparkle and make pretty leaves and flowers bloom on the floor. Bah! That ain't special! I will go one more step and say that healers are my worst enemy! Ever since I joined Eff the Ineffable I hardly get to visit my beauteous Spirit Healer anymore! My time is consumed with trying to find more and more creative ways to die because those stupid healers persist in keeping my health above zero. Why, the mere thought of it is... wait? What? You mean this is supposed to be a healer appreciation post? Oh. Right. Ahem. That was for a different post. On to the real post then.

For most of my WoW career I have played a ranged DPS; mainly, a mage. I have dabbled with a healer on and off but always return to what I know best: Raining sweet arcane destruction down on my enemies. I have regarded the species known as healer with a mixture of awe and resentment. Awe because they seem to effortlessly keep groups of up to 40 people alive with just a click of a mouse button. Now I realize a 40 man group would have more than one healer, but the principle is the same. Resentment because they stand in the back clicking away just like me, but everyone values them SO much more than the DPS. In some of the guilds I was in (names are not mentioned to protect the not so innocent) healers were outright favored for gear and raid spots. It seemed so unfair! I thought for sure that healers had the easiest job ever. Just stand in the back and play whack-a-mole with healbot or grid or whatever fancy-pants add on they were using that week, but everyone acted like they were SO special.

It is rather like being picked last in gym class when you are a DPS trying to find a raid group. So I decided that I wasn’t going to stand for this anymore, and started leveling a discipline priest. I was going to sprout wings and join the exalted ranks of the appreciated! I was going to be a valued member of every dungeon or raid group!

Ilona: Level 58 Discipline Priest

Although now that my priest, Ilona, is up to level 58, I realize that maybe, just maybe, they don’t have it quite so easy. In my priest's cloth shoes I realized that healers have a horrible, thankless job. The blame for wipes is on their shoulders alone, unless of course the group blames the tank. Their presence and the fact that they are keeping you alive is taken for granted. The attitude of "Oh we can pull ALL the things because we got a healer" is prevalent, especially at the lower-to-mid levels. It seems that the healer is responsible for making sure EVERYONE ELSE gets to feel invincible. ESPECIALLY those mages! Oh, how they stand in the back and spam arcane blast at ANYTHING but what the tank is targeting. Then there’s always some huntard with his pet who decides he can tank too, so I have to pay attention to HIS health as well as the tank's! Don’t even get me started on the ones who want their pets healed. And whatever happened to MOVING OUT OF A WHIRLWIND?!? Every class of melee DPS under the sun just stands there and eats it, and then they whine to me when I can’t heal ALL the things because of the stupid things they’re doing. I’ve had enough! I’m going back to my mage. I’ll go take the longer queue times because the Outland Dungeons are about to start for Ilona, and I’m already having nightmares about dungeons full of DK’s, their sheer stupidity, their death-gripping in every direction. Oh, it makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

There is a saying that says that you can never truly understand another person’s experiences unless you walk across the Barrens in their slippers. For me, I found that to be very true. Playing a healer isn’t just clicking some buttons on an add-on. It is stressful and a huge amount of responsibility. If healers are favored, they deserve to be! I will happily go back and play my mage and from now on give them my utmost respect and gratitude. I don’t know how they shoulder that load and keep their freaking sanity through leveling AND raiding! Go Team Heals! This mage will forever be your personal cheerleader!
 
 

Let's Be Careful Out There: Account Security - Guest Post by Aoife

While I am neck deep in diapers, baby powder, hyper-aggressive mutant cold germs and a zombie-like wife suffering from sleep deprivation, I have called out to the Blogosphere for help in the form of Guest Posts.  Aoife was kind enough to take pity on this tired ol' dwarf, and responded with a post about account security.

LET'S BE CAREFUL OUT THERE

Hi folks! Aoife of Mok'Nathal here, filling in for Fannon while he tends to Dwarfling Battle Poop (his words, not mine). As way of introduction, Aoife (Gaelic, pronounced 'Eee-fah'), my main, is a lvl 85 Hunter (BM/MM) and the first toon I created back in late 2006. I'm guild leader of the Divine Alliance of Mok’Nathal (we'll celebrate our 4th anniversary on 9th March this year). I have 9 other toons on Mok, 5 of whom are lvl 85, and numerous toons on other realms. No, I don't have a life.

The directive I received from Fannon was to write about any WoW-related topic that I wished. Well, there are oodles of WoW-related topics near and dear to my heart and I couldn't decide on which one. So I sent a message to my guildies requesting ideas for topics. I started to write from the perspective of my lvl 85 healer, Caöimhe (also Gaelic, pronounced ‘Kee-vah’), but things conspired against her ranting about DPS refusing to heal themselves in instances and raids even though they are capable. Plus there were other blog posts that week that shared her views and she just didn't feel the need to be heard. So that post was shelved (deleted) and what took its place was my personal ranting about account and internet security and safety, plus some useful (I hope) tips to keep your account safe.

I'm a webmaster for our guild website and forums, and several non-WoW-related websites and forums as well. I do battle daily with hack attacks and attempts to break into our sites and forums mostly for no other reason than to spew garbage and wreak havoc. About a week ago Sunday, our guild forums came under attack by hackbots that were out to crack the passwords of members. This caused a huge headache and many moments of terror and panic but the attempts were thwarted at the beginning by our tight security which has been made even tighter since the initial attacks. Account security and safety for forum members is utmost in my mind at all times. I can appreciate fully the concerns and efforts Blizzard has on these topics as well.

As a guild leader, I’ve had to deal with guildies who've had their accounts hacked, oftentimes being the one who discovers that hack and opening the first ticket to nail the thief. More than once I’ve even had the opportunity to 'chat' with the thieves who try unsuccessfully to convince me they were the owner of the account. One of them even said to me, "Excuse me, I'm busy – my account has been hacked." <sigh>

In our guild, we talk daily in guild chat and on vent about account security. I post information on our forums under our 'Account Security' board and send out information to our email list. And yet friends and guildies still get hacked. And this past week, one of our own officers received a whisper ingame from a hacker pretending to be from Blizzard. The officer's account was hacked the next morning, and our guild bank was stripped of gold and items. I discovered the hack about 2 hours after it had happened and opened a ticket and notified the officer immediately. We got the items back within a few hours of my reporting the hack to Blizz – they were right on top of it and got the account secured and items returned in record time! As I said, I've had to deal with Blizz folks several times concerning guildies' hacked accounts and I just cannot praise those Blizz folks enough for their efforts.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Let's go over some ways to prevent these hacks from occurring. I will say that attempts will occur. There is no way to stop the attempts. Not with people being paid to do the attempts and being paid to create ways to do the attempts. Not gonna stop the attempts. Nope. Not gonna happen. So, what can we do? There a number of steps we can take that, when combined, will set up an nearly impenetrable defense. And I will state this over and over:

GET AN AUTHENTICATOR! Going without an authenticator on your account is like leaving your car running with the doors wide open and a 'Please Steal Me' sign on the dash. With an authenticator, combined with all the other measures below, you're protecting your credit card and bank account information as well.

A lot of the following information comes from Blizzard’s updated Account Security and You (Yes, You) - World of Warcraft (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2299938).

· Create an email address and password that are ONLY for your Battle.net account and be sure to use that email address and password ONLY for that account. If you get a phishing email to some other email address, you'll know it’s a hack attempt.

· Never give out your account information. Sharing account information with ANYONE is an easy way to lose control of your account and have your account compromised. Allowing someone else to access your account can definitely put it at risk because you can't control how that person will make use of your account information, or how secure their own system might be.

· Be mindful of phishing scams. Phishing scams are designed to trick you into giving out your account information, and they'll usually come in the form of emails or in-game messages that appear to be sent by Blizzard employees. Sometimes these messages encourage you to visit a malicious website, which might contain a web form, or even software that can steal your login information. In other cases, you may be asked to reply with your account name and password. NOTE: Some of these emails can look surprisingly legitimate, and even the links will lead to websites/pages that look authentic. DO NOT BE FOOLED! Suspect every email and whisper! (puts on tinfoil hat) Blizzard will NOT whisper you ingame about potential account violations and threats of closing your account. AND Blizzard will NOT ask for your password in any correspondence.

· Don't use gold selling or power-leveling services. Supporting these types of illicit services is not only against the Terms of Use, but it promotes botting, spamming, and other forms of exploitation -- as well as account theft. And that gold you're buying is commonly stolen from compromised accounts and turned around to be sold back to other players.

· Get an Authenticator. The Battle.net Authenticator and Mobile Authenticator are easy ways to add an additional level of security to your account. They work by providing a secure authentication code on command that's unique to your Battle.net account. After an Authenticator is associated with your Battle.net account, the authentication code will be necessary for each client and Account Management login, increasing your protection against account compromising attacks.

· Install antivirus and anti-spyware software. There are a number of programs that can help you identify and remove any viruses, Trojans, and/or keyloggers that may sneak onto your computer. KEEP THIS SOFTWARE UPDATED!

· Keep your operating system up-to-date. If you're using Windows, you can check for the most current updates at any time by visiting the Microsoft Windows Update page, or by clicking Windows Update in the Start menu. If you're a Mac user, you can check for software updates at Apple.com; Apple security updates are also available there.

· Keep your browser and browser plug-ins up-to-date. Browser updates can include new security definitions and more comprehensive phishing filters.

This Week in Raiding: How Long is Your Raid

This Week in Raiding is a (hopefully) weekly feature discussing the raiding encounters that my guild tackled this week, the lessons learned from them, as well as any news or thoughts on raiding in general.  This week the lovely and talented Ophelie from Bossy Pally and the Giant Spoon offers a guest post on Raid Lengths, proving that it is possible to be so full of awesomesauce that it could be bottled and sold in very upscale boutiques.


Hi everyone, Ophelie here from Bossy Pally. I'm helping entertain you keep things moving here while Fannon is spending time with his new family.

Since Fannon writes quite a bit about raiding, I thought I'd keep with the theme and write about raid lengths. That's right, lets forget about the size discussions for awhile. It's all about length today. (I'm fully aware of all the possible dirty jokes I could make here, but I'll be a good guest and spare you all my juvenile sense of humour.) 


HOW MUCH DOES LENGTH MATTER?

When shopping for a raiding guild, the raid schedule is most likely one of the first things you try to dig up on a guild website. (Why so many guilds bury their raid schedules under pages of uselessness, I'll never understand.) You check which days of the week they raid, how often they raid, if they raid at times where you'll be occupied with your real life dailies... But how much importance do you attribute to how long they raid?

Me, I'm really picky about raid lengths. Too short and the raid will be over by the time we get warmed up, too long and I'll inadvertently wander off, like a bored child in a shopping mall.

From my guild shopping experience, I'd estimate that most teams raid for 3 to 4 hours. Yet you'll occasionally come across some guilds that raid for less than 2 hours, and others with 8 or more hour long raids.


Making the most of your time

Do you have trouble starting on time? Do people randomly go afk? Do you frequently have players leaving before the raid ends?

If you notice a lot of time wasting, chances are your raids are too long. Your teammates are taking their precious raid minutes for granted. Or maybe your teammates just have the attention span of a newborn goldfish. Either way, too long, too long, too long. Cut, cut, cut.

Not the players, the raid. If you can't start on time, consider pushing back raid start-time by 30 minute. If a lot of people are leaving before finish time, think about chopping 30 minutes from the end of the raid. If people are wandering off outside of breaks, cut whichever side of the raid you prefer. You goal is to make sure that your team is able to sustain interest in what they're doing, newborn goldfish or not newborn goldfish. They need to be able to appreciate the time they spend getting smacked around by virtual monsters.

Obviously, be reasonable here, if you only have 1 or 2 players who are unreliable, and they're consistently unreliable, maybe the raids are too long for them but changing everyone's schedule is silly. If you really like those people and you're of the accommodating type, guilds who do those scary marathon days often swap players in and out after a few hours. If you have a few goldfish raiders, there's nothing stopping you from setting up a similar arrangement for your goldfish to relay each other (breaks make for great hello/goodbye time).


Time Perception: It's Like One of those Visual Illusion Thingies

Pretty much every team I've raided with had 3 hour raids. Most of the time, that's way longer than my attention span (I confess to being a goldfish) and this happens:

Me: ....
Me: ....
Me: Sorry was alt tabbed out.

But sometimes this happens:

Me: WHAT DO YOU MEAN LAST PULL?

What makes time fly during a raid?

• Limited dead time (in other words, fast recovery from wipes, no waiting around)
• Being encouraged to participate in strategy adjustment discussions
• Novelty (this includes new approaches to an old fight)
• A feeling of learning something
• A feeling of teamwork or, at very least, camaraderie (according to my very unscientific and highly biased personal experience, the perceived length of raids is inversely proportional to the number of times the /flirt emote is used)

The Time Spent Raiding Sweet Spot

My paladin grew up on a PvE, fairly casual server during BC and early Wrath. There was one guild that aimed to be "hardcore". They had 6 hour raids several times a week (note: I don't know for sure if this was true or not, but for the sake of the moral of the story, we're going to pretend it was true). Rumour had it that they did all the "hardcore" things: forcing standby players to stand outside the instance during raids , raid kicking anyone who screwed up, imposing unreasonable farming quotas.

"Wow", I used to think. "They're so hardcore."

Then, one day, I transferred to a more progressive server. I quickly realized that the "hardcore" guild was only hardcore in attitude. Their boss kills were nothing out of the ordinary. Despite raiding about 20 hours a week and treating their players badly, they were hardly progressive.

At the other end of the spectrum is Imperative, one of those super intimidating top world guilds. Even though they only raid for 3.5 hours at a time, they cause heroic bosses to seize up and topple over dead wherever they go.

It's like that "Studying for Exams Curve", where the more you study, the better grade you get, up to a certain point, where studying more stops having much of an effect. Everyone plateaus out at some point, and the key to being efficient means finding that sweet spot.




Time, the Elusive Resource

Whether you're raid scheduling or you're shopping for a raid team, keep the sweet spot in mind. The team's sweet spot and your own. Time is a rare, special thing, and you want to make the most of it.