The Lament for Theramore

Thee Theramore! O sadly lost!
Alliance lament frae coast to coast.
Now war grips, the barking host
May kill us a';
For noble Jaina's fabl'd post,
Is ta'en awa'.
Dwarvish Lament for Theramore *

It is the worst kept secret in the World of Warcraft that Theramore is going to be destroyed in the pre-expansion event leading up to the release of the Mists of Pandaria expansion. The details are still unknown, but the destruction of the city will change the Alliance's position in Kalimdor drastically. At this point it's unclear as to whether Theramore will be in Alliance or Horde hands, whether it will remain a quest hub or become an instanced scenario of some kind, or just be left as a smoking, purple glowing crater in the ground.

And while others (ahem, Rades) have speculated on what the destruction of will mean to the Alliance from a lore perspective, I want to talk about what it's going to mean from my perspective as a life-long Alliance player.

What brought this topic to mind is that I was watching this video of what Theramore will look like after the Horde have their way with it. It broke my heart a little bit.

DUSTWALLOW MARSH

Even the name isn't really evocative of a place you'd choose to go willingly, and certainly Dustwallow Marsh isn't exactly a vacation spot. It's not pretty or scenic. In fact, it's downright dreary and just plain creepy; the sort of place you'd expect a spider to drop down out of the trees at any moment as you're walking through it. As a player, I get an ominous feeling when adventuring in Dustwallow, particularly in places like the Wyrmbog with it's wandering Dragonkin, Witch Hill and the spirits that eternally haunt it, and Darkmist Cavern with it's endless supply of eight-legged beasties.

In stark contrast to the impenetrable depths of the Swamp stands proud Theramore, a small but gleaming (relative to the rest of the marsh, at least) Alliance city perched precariously on an island. Compared to the rest of Dustwallow and Southern Kalimdor, to the Alliance player Theramore seemed like a bright shining beacon of civilization jutting out of the literal middle of nowhere. It was the essential travel hub for an Alliance player looking to get anywhere on Kalimdor since the only other town with connections to the Eastern Kingdoms was in Auberdine (now Lor'danel) and trying to get to some of the more far-flung areas (I'm looking at you, Gadgetzan) could result in a half-hour long hippogriff ride and a good chance to catch up on some reading.

Theramore was also the main quest hub for Dustwallow, and for a lot of players like myself it was the first time setting foot on the Kalimdor continent after following a breadcrumb quest from a bloke eternally standing on the Menethil dock asking whomever walks by to deliver something to the Inn there.

Now, I can't really speak to how other people level their characters, but I always made a point to go through Dustwallow with my characters. It just seemed a more natural and interesting place to go after the Wetlands than Arathi Highlands or the Badlands. I always liked the stories that were told in Dustwallow during it's first iteration. The Shady Rest Inn storyline was particularly moving, with a great emotional pay-off at the end. I've always liked the chain of quests at Swamplight Manor to cleanse "Swamp Eye" Jarl. And of course who can forget setting the raptors loose on the unsuspecting Grimtotem?

It's a zone that reminds me a lot of one of my other other favourite zones, Duskwood. It has the same kind of creepy, foreboding atmosphere to it that I like so much. And both zones had an insane amount of running back and forth before they were mercifully streamlined in Cataclysm. And all of those great memories started in poor, doomed Theramore.


THE COMING DOOM

With the impending destruction of Theramore there is a lot of uncertainty about the future of Dustwallow as it continues it's transition from sleepy, moody swamp that felt very insignificant in the grand scheme of the world to the front lines of an all-out war with the Horde. What will become of the small stories? Who's going to take the time to cleanse Jarl of his demonic possession in the middle of a battlefield? Is someone going to walk "Stinky" Ignatz home with Horde siege engines laying waste to the landscape?

But all that having been said, why do a lot of Alliance players lament the loss of this town so much?

Well, it's been talked about to death, but during the early stages of the War (represented by the Cataclysm expansion) the Alliance has been getting the hell kicked out of it. Southshore lost, massive horde incursions into the Night Elf homelands of Ashenvale and minor ones in Darkshore, the loss of Andorhol after the Scourge were finally defeated, and our new allies in Gilneas turned to homeless refugees forced to live in a tree by the Forsaken war machine. To the Alliance player, Cataclysm has been one iron-booted kick in the nuts after another.

Now we're losing Theramore. Whump. That's gonna sting the ol' Dwarf Potatoes.

I think that for me, at least, losing Theramore is going to make Kalimdor feel a lot less friendly and much more foreign. It's hostile enemy territory now, with no real safe havens worth mentioning for the Alliance. Go away, Dwarves, you are not welcome here.

But in all honesty, the real reason that people are complaining about the loss of Theramore has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with human psychology: People embrace the familiar and fear the unknown. Things that we know are comforting. And in this terrifying new world of conflict, destruction and all-out factional war that MoP is bringing with it people are naturally going to cling to those things that remind us of a simpler, better time of relative peace.

You know, when all we had to worry about was an innumerable, unstoppable undead army that was going to take over the entire world and suck out our brains. The good ol' days.

* Adapted from Robert Burns' poem Old Scotch Drink.

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

"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?"

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.

This Week in Raiding: Unfamiliar Waters

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

The Litany Against Fear from Frank Herbert's Dune

In recent weeks my guild has run into a wall.

Shadowgarde needs healers

Call it the summer doldrums or boredom from running the same raids for four months, but our raiding has pretty much stopped in its tracks. The raid group that began the expansion with such promise and progress has fallen to the attendance boss for the past three weeks: A boss that is impossible in its mechanics, and has a very poor loot table.

Our Raid Leaders have given up on trying to get raids together after losing a few people. Our tanks have disappeared. One of our healers wanted to switch and start raiding with his warrior, and then quit the guild when he felt that that wasn't going to happen. Our Raid Leader is leaving for the summer.

Nine bosses out of twelve down and we give up. Speaking personally, it’s very frustrating to see my goal so close and then see progression ended simply because the weather has improved.

It has left me with a few options if I want to continue raiding before the next tier becomes a reality in Patch 4.2:

1. Continue as is and hope that the raid group reforms. 
2. PUG or run with a different guild.
3. Quit Shadowgarde and join another guild, hoping to get a roster spot. Not an encouraging prospect.
4. Suck it up and lead my own raid group.

Simply waiting for the problem to solve itself is not an option because it simply won't happen and everybody involved knows it. If history has taught me anything with this guild it's that Raiding runs hot and cold, and after an intense hot patch to start the expansion we are moving into a lull.

Option two or three would be the easiest option in many ways. It's easy to run away from a problem and join another guild, but all I would be doing is moving from a group with known issues to one with unknown problems. And it would mean abandoning the effort that I have put into this guild. I have been there for over a year now, and I like the people in it very much. I have worked very hard to fit in to the guild and to become a respected member. Leaving Shadowgarde is something that I really don't want to be forced to consider, but if eventually it turns out that my goals are incompatible with the guild's then it may eventually be my only option. Frankly, it sickens me to even have to be thinking about it.

I admit, out of all these choices, leading my own group is by far the most intimidating. I have never led a raid before, nor have I ever really even considered it. Do I have the situational awareness to successfully manage a raid during a fight? Do I have the ability to get people dancing to the right tune without becoming a shrill, demanding dictator? Will anybody even listen to me? Hell, will I even be able to find enough people to fill a raid?

I have always been the guild cheerleader in many ways. I've always been the guy who offers up the "Good attempt, we'll get him" encouragements after a wipe and the one who cracks jokes and tries to keep the mood light when things are getting tense. But I rarely get into discussions regarding the strategy beyond talking about healing assignments. An actual leadership role is entirely foreign territory.

All that being said, I am jumping somewhat blindly into the unfamiliar waters of Raid Leading. I guess I'll learn if I can swim once I'm submerged into it.

Our first raid is scheduled for this coming Sunday, so I have a full week to prepare myself and assemble my team. I think we'll be okay for Tanks, even though our Bear off-tank is a little rusty and not geared as well as I would like to see. Our DPS will be fine as well, I think; with a mix of newer raiders and (hopefully) a couple of seasoned people who have been raiding with this group from the beginning.

The big concern I have is healers. Aside from me, I have no idea where the other healers are going to come from. I am likely going to have to do some heavy recruiting this week and see if I can snag a raid-ready healer or two.

And then there are the fights themselves. I've always studied the fights from a healers perspective, but now I'm going to have to explain them to everyone and give people assignments. Which mean I'm going to need a great deal more detailed knowledge about what's going on. And I'm going to need to learn how to communicate what is going on and what I need people to do clearly. "Avoid the giant purple puke" isn't going to cut it.

Luckily I have the help and support of my friend and co-leader, Medea, who is an experienced raid leader and our main tank. So I'm not doing this entirely alone.

I have to admit that I am exited and terrified at this new challenge. I honestly never thought that I would be doing this. Does anyone have any advice for a fledgling Raid Leader about to take the dive?
 
 

Day Sixteen: What I Miss Post-Cataclysm

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.

DAY SIXTEEN: WHAT I MISS POST-CATACLYSM

“There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Today's topic comes and an opportune moment, actually, because I've been longing for a pre-Cataclysm feature lately.

I really wish Blizzard had left the 25-man and 10-man raid lockouts separate.

Now don't misunderstand me; for the most part, I am a huge fan of the Raid Lockout system that is in place now. While things may get a little bizarre when Heroic modes are thrown into the mix, on the whole the Lockout system is a marvel of simplicity and flexibility. And I love that both raid sizes give the same quality of gear as it ensures that 10-man raiders are not second class citizens.

But it would be nice to be able to do run both sizes in a week if you wanted to.

I am running into a peculiar problem right at the moment that being able to run a second raid lockout during a week would help solve. I have been raiding twice a week for almost 4 months now, am 9/12 and yet my gear still sucks. Apparently my luck with gear drops was a feature that was nerfed in 4.0.

Back in Wrath I could have ran a 25 man raid to try and get another shot at gear but with a single lockout system, I'm stuck at waiting until next week for a chance at a drop. For all the flexibility that the Cataclysm system gives us, this feels very restrictive.

In my opinion, with a Valor Point cap and no difference in the gear being dropped, there is very little point in having the lockouts tied together. The reason behind the change was that Blizzard did not want people to feel they needed to do both, but all they have accomplished is taking away the possibility for people who want to run both. And in doing so they have unnecessarily slowed down the gearing progression.

Oh, on a slightly unrelated note: what's with all the Holy Paladin gear being on the really hard bosses? A Retribution Paladin gets his bracers off of Omnotron - which once you figure out is a piece of cake - and a Holy Paladin has to kill freakin' Cho'gall to get his. I think Blizzard really does hate healers.

Yesterday, DAY FIFTEEN: ART, INSPIRATION AND A DESKTOP BACKGROUND
Tomorrow, DAY SEVENTEEN: MY FAVOURITE PLACE IN THE WORLD (OF WARCRAFT)

Day Six: Dwarven Battle Desk

This post is part of a series "20 Days of... WoW Blogging Challenge", a blogging challenge suggested by Saga at Spellbound. She proposes twenty questions to be answered in twenty days and I, foolishly, have decided to take up this most daunting task because clearly my schedule is not full enough.


DAY SIX: THE DWARVEN BATTLE DESK

My office space is exceptional, and is my oasis from the hectic world.  I raid in the private luxury of my own computer room that is a good size, with a magnificent, winged desk that takes up a whopping thirty-six square feet.  I have two large bookshelves behind me that keeps my library of books and CDs within easy reach.  My chair is huge and incredibly comfortable, with both heaters and massage functions.  This room is my own personal version of a security blanket.

Or rather, that's how my office used to be.  Before the Dwarfling.

Along with virtually every other aspect of my life, my computer arrangement needed to change to accommodate a baby.  My office became the Dwarfling's room, and I had to give up my office nirvana shortly before the she arrived.  In it's place I got a new desk, new chair, and a new location in the house.  I honestly think that the change of my office space has been the hardest adjustment that I've had to deal with since the Dwarfling was born.

My new desk space is actually quite good, and I customized the IKEA bought unit a fair bit to suit my needs. It's nice, but it's not the same.  I had my old desk for about fifteen years, and as you can imagine I got pretty used to it.  It felt absolutely perfect - custom moulded like a really great ass-grove in a nicely broken-in couch.  It was comfortable and familiar.

This is my new setup.  As I said, it's nice, but not nirvana.  I custom built the monitor shelf with spare parts from the desk, which came with an upper hutch that was beyond useless.  My wife has a matching desk in the opposite corner, and both corner desks are connected by a long, skinny, straight desk with drawers.  The desk is located in our family room, which is where our TV is and where we spend the majority of our time while at home, so there is very little privacy.  I use headphones when I play now so I don't disturb my wife or the baby.

The Dwarven Battle Desk:  Click to Embiggen!

1.  My Logitech G15 keyboard.  The keys glow orange, which is just cool since it goes with the colour scheme on my blog.  Also, the six extra keys on the left side are very useful for keybinding cooldowns.

2.  A coffee mug from work.  It's not my desk if there isn't a coffee mug on it.

3.  A stack of unused CDRs.  I don't even know why these are on my desk any more, let alone why I have three stacks.  Who uses blank CDs any more?  Do I even have burning software installed?

4.  A stack of games that I'm not really playing any more but can't bring myself to actually put away.

5.  A baseball signed by the 1999 Montreal Expos.

6.  Altec Lansing 4.1 Surround Sound speakers. They sound gorgeous, but with the baby and the wife in the room most of the time they seldom get used anymore.

7.  Dwarven Battle Mouse.  I'm looking to get a new one and considering either the WoW Gaming Mouse or the Naga Razer 17 button one.  I'm having a tough time deciding which, but it's irrelevant since I can't afford either of them at the moment anyway.

8.  A baseball signed by the 2000 Montreal Expos.  I used to be a huge Expos fan, and was devastated when the team moved to Washington.  Since then I have lost my passion for baseball, but I still display these as a reminder of a long lost love.

9.  My wallet and cell phone.  I desperately need a new phone.  I have a Samsung Blackjack phone that works perfectly well, but I have a festering case of iPhone envy.  I would really love the extra capability that the iPhone would provide, especially the better internet experience.  Reading the web on a Windows Smartphone is brutal, to say the least.

10.  This is the monitor stand that I fashioned for my new desk.  I'm actually really quite proud of it.  Which is kind of sad considering it represents the most elaborate thing I've ever built.  Still, it's sturdy as hell.

11.  Atramedes killing me.

12.  The Dwarfling and both of my beagles doing something so incredibly, epicly cute that words simply fail to describe it.  I can't believe how lucky I was to capture this adorable - and completely indescribable - moment in this shot.  It makes me tear up just thinking about it.  It is... just wow... look at the photo, because I can't begin to do justice with words how precious this is.

13.  My second monitor.  It's an 18" LCD monitor that is insanely old.  It's refresh rate is slow enough that it's impractical to play games or watch movies on it.  I use it while I'm gaming to have boss fight strategies visible while I'm playing.  I also keep Ventrilo, Twitter and my website stats up at all times while gaming.  I love multitasking.

14.  My blog stats page.  I am so bloody addicted to watching my stats that I almost never turn them off.  They got washed out in this photo, sadly.

15.  My main monitor.  It's a 24 inch Acer monitor with a 2ms response time.  It's sexy and fairly new and I love it.  Previously I had a Viewsonic 19" CRT monitor that was as big and heavy as a barrel full of really heavy things.  This one is much better, and I love the widescreen format, but the colour reproduction of the old Viewsonic was better.

16.  Rottingham.  My only WoW figurine of any kind, and the one thing that lets people know that this is desk belongs to a hardcore geek.

17.  A Hasselblad 500 C/M circa the 1960s.  I bought this camera secondhand about 15 years ago.  It was my primary camera when I was running my Photography Studio.  It no longer works, sadly; it seized up after a photo shoot that was done on a wet, rainy evening.  I really miss shooting in a square format - the rectangular format of my Digital SLR just doesn't really get my creative juices bubbling quite the same.  I loved the simplicity of that camera; in fact this new-fangled Digital SLR is the first camera that I've ever owned that actually needed a battery.  All the buttons and blinky things just make me nervous.

18.  A picture of my beagle, Milo.  As of right now it's the only framed photo on my desk, but once I get around to printing up some Dwarfling photos, I'm certain that will change.  I really adore that photo of Milo, though.  It really shows off his sad, sweet eyes.

19.  A stack of crap, on top of which is my notebook that I carry with me where ever I go.  I use it to jot down blog ideas and post outlines when I'm at work.  It's so full of scraps of paper with ideas on them that I need to hold it together with an elastic band.

20.  A drawer full of crap.  Really, I need to clean that out.  It's got a lot of junk in there that doesn't need to be in there.

21.  All my important papers.  Note the complete lack of a filing system.

22.  My Metz flash.  I hate on-camera flashes, and so I use that bulky thing when I need to photograph the Dwarfling at night.  It's a pain in the neck to use, but is much more flexible than the flash built into my camera - I can easily bounce it off the ceiling for much softer light.  The only bad thing about it is that I haven't used the batteries in a number of years and they don't really hold a charge very well anymore.

23.  A chess set that my wife bought in Europe.  I love chess, although I'm not very good at it.  I have six or seven different chess sets in the house.  This particular one is notable because it's made of a beautiful green and white stone, and is completely impossible to play with because, aside from the Knight, all the pieces look virtually identical.  The only think that distinguishes the pawn, rook, bishop, queen and king is either height or a small, hard to notice detail.  It's like looking at a room full of Blood Elves and trying to decide which one is using a different hair gel than the rest of them.

24.  My computer. It's an Alienware system.  I won't bore you with the specs, but this is the first computer system that I bought prebuilt since high-school.  I've always built my computers myself, but this time I just said the hell with it and picked this one up refurbished.  It's been weird not having a personally built system, but the insides of this thing are spotless as hell - not the jumbled mess of wires and cables that I normally leave when I build my own.

25.  Way, way too many pens.  Really.  I have two pen holders that are absolutely jammed with pens.  Why do I need so many?  I type everything!

26.  My subwoofer.  Also makes a great footrest!

27.  A mess of cables that really look hideously ugly in a photo, don't they?


Yesterday, DAY FIVE:  FAVOURITE ITEMS
Tomorrow, DAY SEVEN:  THE REASONING BEHIND DWARVEN BATTLE MEDIC
  
  
  

The Death of WoW and the Circle of Life

It is safe to say that World of Warcraft is going through something of a transition these days. The change to Cataclysm's new style of play has not been easy for a lot of people – particularly people who have been playing this game for a long time.

Evidence of this is all around us. Every time someone gives up healing or tanking because it's too hard, there it is. Whenever we hear that a long time WoW player has dropped his subscription we're reminded of it. Every time that a player drops WoW for Rift and starts spamming Twitter with an incessant stream of achievement spam, we can't help but notice. Whenever a beloved, long-time WoW blogger closes up shop, a flagrantly obvious fact is right there in your face like a village full of murlocs:

WoW isn't the same game that you fell in love with six years ago.

Over the past couple of months, many notable WoW bloggers have decided to retire their blogs. Tam at Righteous Orbs, for instance, and most recently Larisa at Pink Pigtail Inn has called it a day. Many others have quietly faded into oblivion without so much as a 'farewell' post - their blogs going dark, leaving their readership to wonder. There is no question that the WoW blogging community is smaller and less brilliant because of their loss of these voices that we were so accustomed to hearing, but as Vidalya at Manalicious so elegantly put it, "other's endings are not my endings".

Being plugged into Twitter and the Blogosphere means that it's impossible to not hear grumbling and griping about all sorts of things and very rarely do we hear someone mentioning how great something is. We bloggers are, if nothing else, champion complainers - and it's not a hard stretch to imagine that hearing all the doom and gloom would affect our opinion of our game and our community to the point where we would begin to believe that it's dying.

I'm curious how a WoW player who isn't active in the community feels about this game and it's health. Do they look at their guild and the competition for a raid spot and feel that the game is hemorrhaging people? Do they think that losing a long time guild member means that there is something wrong with the game? Or do they look at it as the natural way of these things?


IT'S NATURAL

With any game that sticks around for a long time, it's natural for people to come and go as their level of interest waivers. I'm not sure how anyone could play the same game for five or six years - or any length of time for that matter - without losing interest or feeling burnout at some point.

Before I started playing WoW, my game of choice was Counter-strike, and I played it for a long time. I ran my own large clan of players, operated my own public server, a private server and Ventrilo server and even competed in organized league play. I was as involved in that game as it was possible to be. Over time, the game became much less fun and the only thing keeping me coming back was the relationships I had with my clanmates. Eventually I quit, disbanded the clan and moved on. It was a very tough decision.

I see the same thing happening with WoW. I know that when I left Counter-strike the game continued on just fine without me, and the same is true when someone from the WoW community leaves. This game is bigger than any of us and will soldier on as we leave.


CHA-CHA-CHA-CHA-CHANGES

For better or for worse is still a point of great debate, but there is no question that World of Warcraft has changed a lot in the past six years.  And whenever change happens there are going to be people who don't agree with or like the changes. There is no way to please twelve million people, and as I mentioned in my 2010 Peevie Awards, it's the definition of insanity to try.

The people who are most likely to be left out in the cold when change happens are the people who have been around the longest. These are your raid leaders, guild officers and respected, pillars-of-the-community types. And in the blogosphere, they are the ones that have become institutions.  "Oh, [Popular Blogger] could never leave, he's been here forever and he's too good to ever quit." Of course, it doesn't work that way. Quite the opposite; they are the most likely to drift away to something else.

Losing one of these bloggers or guild members is hard, but it says nothing about the game or the community or your guild as a whole. The health of any community is determined by the strength of the people involved, and as someone leaves for other things inevitably someone else will come forward to take their place. New raid leaders will step up, a guild will pick a new leader with new ideas, and new bloggers will begin writing to fill the void.


THE CIRCLE OF LIFE

In the past few months since Cataclysm several high profile blogs have shut down, but even more new bloggers have taken up the blogging challenge. These blogs aren't high profile yet, and they don't have the readership numbers of the blogs that have quit, but they are providing fresh new voices for the community to listen to. Different styles, new opinions and formats are being injected into the community everyday.

That's what tells me that our game and our community are doing just fine. This community and game are far from stagnant, as the new and vibrant voices are showing in every corner of the blogosphere.

The circle of life continues.


NEW VOICES

Vidalya issued a challenge in her post: Introduce and link to a new blogger.  I love this idea, and even as a new, post-cataclysm writer myself, here is a list of recent blog starts that have caught my attention. All of these blogs were started around the time that Cataclysm launched, although I'm using this criteria fairly loosely.

Muradin Musings by Janyaa

Unleashed Rage by Bloody Gneisha.

Ask a Salty by SaltySlainte

Mortigan the Lock by Mortigan

Zwingli's Blog by Zwingli (An older blog that has recently returned from the ether.)

Beer Bacon Brawling by Beerbelly.

Healer Aggro by Ttrinity

The Casual Raider by Jack

Rants of a Priest by Morituri

Elfi's World by Elfindale

Cleansing Waters by Mylindara

Specced for Drama by Ama (Who turns out to have been around longer than I thought... her blogspot blog has only been around since November, tho!)

Stand in the Blue Circle by Alacran

Word of Glory by Lynesta

Heavy Wool Bandage by Glorwynn

Healbot by Gina

And more!  I'm quite certain I've missed a bunch of people, and I'm sorry for forgetting you! If you have a newish blog and would like it listed here, leave me a comment and I'll include it.

Light of Fizzle Update: Stealth Nerf Stealthily Unnerfed.

As I'm sure most of my readers have already discovered from far more reliable sources (Kurn, Ophelie), it seems that Blizzard has decided to unnerf (de-nerf? Antinerf?) Light of Dawn just as sneakily as they nerfed it before.

As others have I have confirmed that Light of Dawn is, in fact, still transferring through Beacon of Light.  It seems that this change has been reverted.  This doesn't really make a lot of sense, especially considering how quickly things were turned around.

I have a theory, however.

It's one of two things:

It's possible that Blizzard heard the outcry from the community and reversed the change.  This would mean that the WoW developers are listening to their players and as much as they are trying to balance the classes, they are willing to reverse a change that the player base can make a legitimate argument against.  In this case, the idea that this change might cause Paladins to lose a lot of their versatility may have been persuasive enough to cause Blizzard to change it back.  Or, perhaps they are just sick of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth; we paladins are a boisterous, vocal lot, after all, and are willing to rise up in armed revolt over the least little nerf.

Either way, the idea that Blizzard listens to the concerns of their player base and is responsive to their feedback is so optimistic that it almost borders on silly.  There is no way that we have things that good, is there?

The other option is that Blizzard has taken the idea of beta testing to a whole other level.  All developers will beta test new features or changes to the game before they are released to ensure that they work before they make the change.  This way they can prevent mistakes and improve quality.

I think that Blizzard, on the other hand,  is pioneering something different:  Blizzard has started beta testing patch notes.  Yes, in order to ensure that they produce the best patch notes possible, they are releasing potential changes to the notes before they release the actual notes.  By releasing a beta patch note they can see how it looks, play with the fonts and colours to ensure that their notes are the absolute best in the industry.

It's a brave new world.

Lament for the Shieldless

I just did something unpleasant that made me feel a little weird.


First off, I dinged 83 last night on Thosif, my Paladin. That wasn't the unpleasant thing; on the contrary, leveling felt really quite good. I immediately hearthed to Stormwind and trained Holy Radiance, the Holy Paladin's new bread and butter group heal. I am really looking forward to trying that out tonight. My next post will likely be a run down of how the first dungeon with HR goes and my impressions of the spell.

The unpleasantness actually happened earlier in the evening during a random Stonecore pug run where I obtained the Prophet's Scepter for my main healing set.

"So what?" you may ask. And you'd be right. It's a nice leveling off-hand, and it's certainly a large upgrade from what I had previously. Thats not the problem.