Unreal Realities

Well, what can I say except what many others have been saying for a few weeks now?

WE KILLED PROFESSOR PUTRICIDE!!

Despite having some absolutely horrid lag (from 600ms up to 1800ms) we managed to have our best night yet, managing to kill all of the following bosses:

• Lord Marrowgar
• Lady Deathwhisper
• Gunship Battle
• Deathbringer Saurfang
• Festergut
• Rotface (one shot!) – two healed!
• Putricide (two shot!) – two healed!

We also cleared some trash and had two attempts at the Blood Princes, which looks like going down on Sunday. Needless to say, we were very happy with ourselves! Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes it’s the big things that make a raid zone standout, things such as “big kills;” Illidan, Kael, Arthas.  But sometimes it’s the little things that make an outstanding raid zone. ICC has the little things in droves and, having seen most of it now, I think it is up there with The Black Temple as being some of Blizzards finest work.

What makes the zone….zing…for me? First off, mini-bosses. Stinky, Precious and Svalna are excellent ‘little’ fights, breaking up the regular trash successfully.  None of them are overly hard (once you know what you’re doing) but none are walk up starts either. I hope this is something we can expect to see in the future.

Some of the fight mechanics are fantastic. The healing marathon on Dreamwalker is great, it’s very rewarding as a healer to finally have a chance to shine, to be the ones that finish the encounter, not just keep everyone alive to do it. Chaining DPS buffs is nothing new but the Queen is an enjoyable twist on the normal “run the cloud into the melee” drill and Putricide is just a great fight all round (other than the vehicle element). Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been healing instances on my druid alt, Lyf, and I’ve come across an interesting phenomenon.

No one can tell when she’s drinking!

In a game like WoW, visual feedback is really important – the mouse icon changes when you hover over someone who can repair your gear, you cast a spell and your arms go up, the ground changes colour and you know to move away.  This feedback is an important part of an intuitive user interface – you understand what the game is trying to tell you without needing to be told that this person can repair, that your spell cast has finished, or that the stuff on the ground will probably kill you.   Read the rest of this entry »

Recently on the forums a guild member posted in the twenty-five person forums about raids and player’s attitudes towards raid bosses.The statement was:

Progression fights used to take three or four weeks, now, if there are three or four wipes people start leaving.

This statement is fairly accurate in today’s raiding environment, especially for the PuGs and casually formed groups.

I, personally, didn’t do much raiding in TBC (only Kara and Gruuls) and hadn’t even started playing before the end of vanilla WoW, so all of the “hard content” of yesteryear (Kael’Thas, Vashj, Illidan, Reliquary of Souls etc) is very foreign to me. The mere thought of spending three or four weeks attempting a kill horrifies me (looking at you, Putricide). That’s not even mentioning the stories I have heard about Razorgore, the first “guild breaker”. Whilst I am an advocate for being in your raid until the allocated raid time is over, I am definitely a part of the generation of raiders that has lost interest in a fight after ten or so wipes. I have found that, in PuG ToC’s in particular, if we wipe three or four times on any given boss that I am at the point of leaving. Saying that, I am not as bad as those five PuGs that I did a ToC10 with who left after one wipe on Faction Champions. Read the rest of this entry »

This week I’ve been playing a lot of Mass Effect 2. When I say I lot, I don’t mean three or four hours after work, I mean last night I was up playing until 2 in the morning and I stumbled out of bed at 8 this morning, booting up before I’d even put on a shirt (sexy image for you right there). Mass Effect 2 is a Bioware game and I’m a Bioware fan boy because they do something so much better than any game company out there, tell stories.

While the story Is taking place around you, while you are shaping the story, you become invested in your character and those around you. You genuinely care, they become so much more than avatars, they are people.

I wonder if that’s how role-players feel about their character in WoW.

Role playing scares this shit out of me. It’s taking the geek to a level I’ve never been and am scared to go, but at the same time I’m intrigued. Serevok does not have a personality, just over-sized shoulders and a bucket load of titles. I’m attached to him, but not in the same way as I am to Commander Shepard. Serevok is an avatar, Shepard a character. Read the rest of this entry »

A few nights ago, whilst in ICC10, there was quite a lot of chitchat happening in the general channel, most probably because of the god-awful lag we were all suffering through. As I often do, I found myself shift + clicking to have a look at what guilds were talking, and there was several familiar names such as <Red Sun>, <Vitare>, <Obsolete> and <Schism>, among a few others that I can’t recall. One of the comments was that all of the “nub guilds” should leave so that the “real raiders” could do the content easily. Shift + Click. Ah yes, that guild (no, I wont mention which one, not Obsolete though). From there the conversation deteriorated into racial slurs, my “’hoods” tougher than yours and, eventually, rape jokes. Shift + Click. Shift + Click. Shift + Click. Hold on, what? <Unreal Realities>? One of our guild members had made a particularly tasteless comment, which had them quickly demoted to the think about it, or, asshat rank. Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been a lot of talk going on about Bornakk’s revelation that Blizzard are looking at integrating the Armory and the Auction House.

Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.

I spy with my little eye, a problem.  Auction House functionality is strongly tied to characters.  You can only auction the items in that character’s bank, using that character’s gold.

I don’t know about you guys, but my bank alt and auction mule, Kassiara, is a level 1 Human Rogue.  I’d link you to her Armory profile… except that I can’t, because characters don’t show up on the Armory until level 10.

Does this mean that our Level 1 Bank Alts will be unusable under the new Armory/Auction House application?

Read the rest of this entry »

Back in ye olde LAN days, you’d hear the call.  ”OHHH LAG”

Depending on who was there, some people would call ceasefire, and others would try to use it as an excuse to rush your base.  Someone would yell out “STOP DOWNLOADING PORN!“.  Within a minute, the network would right itself, and you were back to pwning again.

Server lag nowadays is quite similar to to network lag back then, only without the ability to fix it by stopping someone’s porn download.

Raiding as an Aussie is already hard work.  I know Americans don’t believe us when we tell them what our average ping is, so here’s proof:

400ms, on an average day.   Read the rest of this entry »

Just released, the closest thing to a MMOFPS on the market. Is it any good? No idea, but I am intrigued….

One of the flock of new people to join Unreal Realities when it was first created, Hitme is now a regular voice in our Guild Chat. While totally insane, he is a pleasure to share the game with and, despite his protests, a genuinely top bloke.

ABOUT WOW
What is your main characters Name, Class and Spec?

Hitmeagain Resto druid, Rochamadour (formerly shamaramadin) ele/resto shaman, 73 Marshal Marshal (Formerly stupidspet, formerly diana) and the annoying and most fun brotherlove.

What do you think is the most challenging thing about playing your class and what advice would you offer to new players?
measuring myself against very good players and wanting to be better.

haste is the new spell power, resto druids are strong, but need to be more efficient IMO. same with ele shaman and thanks to vok, rum, dog and others helping me on the shaman path and isla who sets the benchmark in resto druids.

How long have you been playing World of Warcraft and how did you get started?
I started a druid and got 20, started a horde shaman and got to 23, i had no idea what i was doing, just running around doing stuff. first ‘high’ level was a 60 nothing druid (bitsa). Then i discovered the awesome power of a pre 1.4 nerf NELF hunter (shadowmeld aimshot for insta kill), back about 5 or 6 months after wow started. Read the rest of this entry »