Come patch 3.3 Kobsolete, the 10 man raiders, are going to try something a little different. We’re going to throw conventional wisdom to the wind and take a new approach to raiding. So, while other people are falling over themselves to defeat Arthas in record time, our look at Icecrown Citadel will be, if not more enjoyable, at least unique.

We’re going to go into Icecrown blind. No reading strats, studying layouts or planning for encounters. No watching vids, googling the bosses or prowling forums. We’re going to show up after 3.3 goes live, follow the crowd to the door and storm the citadel – slowly.

There are some pretty obvious disadvantages to doing this. It’s fair to say our repair bills are going to be through the roof – you can’t learn fights without wiping a lot. It is also going to mean slower progression. We only raid two nights a week as it is, so losing hours and hours on one boss will inevitably lead to slow progress. Finally, it could be frustrating for a few people and that could put more than a little strain on the group.

 But what fun we will have! Like the explorers of old, we’ll be discovering, and over-coming, the final raid of Wrath of the Lich King by ourselves! Who can truly say they have going into a raid with no-one knowing what will happen next, other than a few brave solos on the PTR? We’ll be like Columbus, Burke and Wills, Bronzebeard! Going where no other has gone before.

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Another fairly successful week for the Kobsolete team, doing our usual walk through Ony and ToC10. However, this week, everything seemed a little bit easier and quicker, so all of us guys and dolls thought, “what the heck, lets try ToC10 Heroic”. And we did. And it was good. We got the Northrend Beasts down in 4 attempts, with the only reason for death coming from the “ooops, no more speed buff!” on Icehowl. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing. Jarax proved a little tougher, but it is definitely one we can get, we just need to be switched on early. Sunday night we got stuck into the Ulduar hard modes again, but only got down Flame Levathian, for the achievement, XT and the Iron Council. Still very happy with the work done Sunday night, even 152g in repairs later!

The week before last in Kobsolete was our first real “off” week. Even though we cleared ToC10 and Ony quickly, we did wipe on Mimiron 4 times, which really isn’t that big of a deal to be honest, and all night there was only 4 or 5 sideways comments, but people were annoyed and it was enough for Serevok to call the raid with some evenly distributed, poignant comments. 

This is the melting pot that is Kobsolete. This is what we are probably lucky didn’t happen in the first couple of weeks of the group forming. Our team really does consist of people from all facets of the game: 

• Hardcore raiders, who still expect a certain kind of “professionalism”.

• Casual players, who may have never raided in a “professional” environment.

• Former raiders, who grew tired of the game being so serious, prompting them to ask “Why So Serious?” (Sorry, couldn’t help myself).

• People that just plain want to be in successful raids, whether casual or serious.

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Welcome to this week’s Heroes Herald, the weekly Heroes of Newerth column that insists you all wear flame-retardant suits before picking up this amazing game.

Heroes of Newerth, or HoN to the cool kids, is the latest DOTA-clone from S2 Games. Plenty has changed in HoN from its Warcraft 3 based forbear from gorgeous graphics, fantastic engine, low-lag netcode to a fully featured stats system. Sadly, much has stayed the same and HoN has also become infected with the awful DOTA community.

 Generalisations are a terrible thing so right now let’s just go with the fact that I’m a terrible person because I’m sticking by my statement. Now, to begin my rant with another statement: I love HoN. I love HoN so much I cancelled my WoW accounts since I muscled my way into the Closed Beta. 

As much as I love HoN I have come to realise that it is a truly epic task to enter and become a happy participant of the HoN community without being flamed, yelled or cursed at within your first 50 matches. 2 weeks ago I was so shocked I had to disconnect from a public 5v5 SD (Standard Draft) game – a newbie with no more than 5 games under his/her belt was being blasted over voice chat – everything from racial slurs to remarks about their mother and it went on and on.

 S2 went to great lengths to implement a leveling system so that noobs (and pros alike) can find their counterparts. Ideally, this would ensure a healthy and competitive game for all parties; but in reality there is a strong contingent of players who sit slightly below the line of “pro” and shamefully label their games as noob and then proceed to “pubstomp” (public game stomp – I think its rather self explanatory). It really starts to get ugly when you have two “really good players by not quite pro idiots” (herein known as “wankers”) on each team and the noobs are literally flamed so hard it would make them want to uninstall the game because of their, expected and totally acceptable, lack of knowledge. With the latest 1.5.0 patch pushed out a few days back, S2 reworked the PSR (Personal Skill Rating) system and this may alleviate some matchmaking problems.

Personally, I do not see a light at the end of this community-tunnel and I have taken it upon myself to coach newbies, over the built-in voice system, to ensure they grow and learn to enjoy the game as was intended. I challenge all upstanding HoN players to do the same. At the end of the day, all of HoN’s bells and whistles are only as loud as the community plays them.

 Reybz is a 400+ game Closed Beta veteran of Heroes of Newerth who will shed honest and an occasional brutal light on this ever-growing title.

Lore and Order – WoW

Come World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, players will be able to finally see for themselves the outcome of the epic conclusion to Warcraft Three as access is granted to Hyjal for the first time.

Hyjal is one of the most important places in Warcraft history. Located atop Mount Hyjal it saw Illidan Stormrage commit the act that saw him imprisoned for ten thousand years. The Well of Eternity was destroyed during the War of the Ancients, the first invasion of the Burning Legion, as it was believed that it was the power of the well that drew the Burning Legion to Azeroth. Prior to its destruction, however, Illidan had filled three vials with water from the well. Illidan scaled to the top of Mount Hyjal and it was here he created a second Well of Eternity, adding the water from the vials to a stream at the top of the mountain. Illidan’s actions were discovered and he was imprisoned until we see him released in Warcraft Three.

A second Well of Eternity was deemed to be pretty bad news by the Night Elves and Malfurion Stormrage (Illidan’s brother and first of the Druids). He was able, with the help of the Great Dragons, to plant a seed which would grow into Nordrissal, the World Tree, which would soon cover the second Well of Eternity completely. Nordrissal was important to the Night Elves for a number of reasons, first among them was the fact that from the World Tree that their immortality sprung forth. If anything were to happen to Nordrissal, they would grow old and die as any other race.

With the second invasion of the Burning Legion (in Warcraft 3) something certainly did happen to the World Tree. Archimonde lead the invasion of the Burning Legion and his goal was Nordrissal, to strip the Night Elves of their power and to increase his own. As the forces of the Burning Legion marched on Hyjal, a historic alliance formed. It was at Hyjal that Humans, Elves and Orcs fought side-by-side for the first time, slowing Archimonde’s ascent of the mountain.

Slow the ascent, however, was all the defenders could do. Eventually Archimonde reached the World Tree. It was now that Malfurion unleashed the power of the tree –destroying Archimonde and ending the second invasion of the Burning Legion, although the World Tree was greatly reduced as a result.

So now, the incredible place of history and power is going to be opened up once again. What state is the tree now in? Does the second Well of Eternity still exist under it? Who will have control of the area – and to what end? We’ll find out soon…

Stepping away from the MMO space for a moment, it’s around that time of year where my head verges on exploding as I stand in my local EB Games deciding which of the massive amount of triple A titles released in a rush will get my money. Usually this will involve me picking up, and putting down, box after box as I agonise of the choices before me. This usually results in me walking out after 30-40 minutes completely empty handed with a rather severe headache.

This year is going to be different. This year I’ve planned ahead and I know what I’m going to purchase over the next month or two. I plan on doing it all without leaving the comfort of my own home and being exposed to this deadly creature they all “Outside”.

Thanks to the wonders of Steam, each of my games will be downloaded directly to my hard drive, before I will go online and find people to either blow up, or blow up stuff with.

Vok’s post In a Guild of Strangers got me thinking: how many people are actually proud to be associated with WoW?

Gaming in general is a tough sell to non-gamers, especially in a professional work environment. For starters, it’s seen as fairly childish – only kids play games. That’s changing, especially with younger generations, but it’s still there.

Stereotypes of gamers make us sounds unappealing as people. A definition of gamer from Urban Dictionary is:

Anyone who sits on their ass all day and plays video games either on the computer or video game system. Usually overweight for they sit on thier continually enlarging ass and eat Doritos and beans while ruining the controller. Also they usually smell because they have no regular shower times, only when they can put the controller down for a few minutes. Often enough they forget the most important places to wash while in the shower for they can only think of video games. Also see: soon to be evicted and living with their Grandmother in her basement because they overdraft too much on video games.

Would you want to hang out with someone like that? Worse, would you want to employ someone like that? As with any stereotype, it’s based on the extreme scenario, but it tars us all with the same brush.

The reputation that really causes the issues in the workplace though is regarding interpersonal skills. The stereotype suggests that gamers don’t “do” people – they’re misanthropic, self-centered jerks who can’t carry on a conversation without insulting your mother or making a Chuck Norris joke, as per the below image.

So gamers aren’t that respected. But even if you happen to divulge your dirty gaming habit to someone who happens to have nerdish tendencies themselves, you’ve got issues. World of Warcraft players are seen as the lowest of the low – MMO players stereotypically have no life outside of the game, WoW players are seen at the extreme end of the stereotype. Due to good user experience and marketing and a good brand, WoW has a lot of players. It’s accessible to lots of people. Unfortunately, that creates problems. A sizeable portion of the WoW community seems to be foul-mouthed teenagers and immature jerks who call “FAIL” or “n00b” with the least excuse, giving it an even worse reputation. Let’s face it, hanging around in trade chat sometimes is like hanging around in a club full of stupid, horny 14 year old boys, which brings the reputation down even further.

In theory, games like WoW can be an excellent opportunity to improve leadership and teamwork skills in a high-pressure environment – where else can a young person gain experience in developing a strategy and lead a team of 25 very different people all working together to achieve a goal? Nick Yee at the Daedalus Project did a long-running in-depth study of all aspects of MMO playing, and found that numerous players reported that in-game leadership posts did in fact help them to improve their leadership skills in real life, as per the following quote:

I learned several things; I could manage events for a few hundred people, I could mediate agreements, I began to notice traits in individuals which where helpful in predicting what they were most likely to do next or likely to be interested in. I learned to delegate authority without releasing responsibility. I am very proud to say that my experience strengthened my diplomatic skills which had never been a strong point prior to my experience. [WoW, F, 56]

This kind of experience could be highly valuable in a job interview or workplace situation, but the reputation of games in general and WoW in particular means that gaming leadership skills are embarrassing to admit to at best, and a black mark against you at worst.

So in a job interview, I don’t admit that I play World of Warcraft, or mention games at all. I’m quite happy to mention my triathlon experience and my leadership of a small sporting team, but I purposely leave out my raid and guild leadership history, despite having learned so much more through the latter. It doesn’t feel right, but that’s how it is right now.

What’s your opinion? Does playing games in general or WoW in particular give you a bad reputation?

In any guild there will always be personality clashes. While we all start off having some common interests, we are still going to have different beliefs, morals, humor, backgrounds etc. From time to time, we are bound to see or hear something that bothers us within the guild. Most of the time we do, and should, turn a blind eye, because tolerance is important, and no one really likes confrontation.

I’m going to borrow a thought from Shut Up We’re Talking here – I think I’ve turned into a bit of an old man, sitting on the porch yelling at the kids to get off my lawn. Well, I’m not doing the yelling yet, but it’s building up to it.

Over a period of time I have become more and more disillusioned with my guild and it started about the time I started the 10-man group. That’s when it first became apparent that some of the people in the guild considered people who did not raid 25-man content with disdain. Not being part of that 25-man group, I was shunned by some, as were, and are, some of the guys I run ten-man content with. Recently night we completed heroic beasts first time on the heroic zone. When we announced our achievement in guild not a single guild member congratulated us. Not one. It really feels like we are not accepted members of the guild, rather an annoyance that is kept around for some unknown reason.

Then there are some of the things that are said in guild chat. I’m certainly not adverse to adult language – in fact I swear like it’s going out of fashion. There are some words that I cannot stand however, generally any racial slur and the word faggot. They make my skin crawl with distaste. These words have become more and more common in my guild chat and it bothers me. Do I really want to be spending time with people that think these words are ok?

We also have the epeen. There are a couple of guys that regularly kick players from their groups without saying a thing to them because they are “shit”. Apparently 2k dps is not enough for heroic Nexus. This behavior makes my blood boil. If you want to go back and do lesser content, then you should be accepting of the people who are at the appropriate level for it. Not to mention, in guild chat “wave at eventide”. I am of the strong belief that unless the guild member is a monkey, you should take them on whatever you’re going to do, short of the hardest encounters. Asking to inspect me for a 10-man VoA is sure to make me fly off the handle pretty quickly when we’re in the same guild.

This post was triggered by someone within my guild who posted on our forums. One of the 25-man group got hacked – a top bloke by the way – and the post in our forums in reply was “I feel bad for you and all, but you only get hacked for doing something you shouldn’t so I can’t help but lol.” Now, the person that posted this is someone I quite like and a regular reader of the blog, but I really cannot stand these kinds of comments. One – getting hacked is sometimes because you did something you shouldn’t have, and the rest of the time it’s bad luck. You don’t need to be up to anything dodgy for it to happen. Two – “lol” at a guild member is completely shit-house. This is not how we should treat each other – leave it to the Asshats in trade and pugs to be Asshats, treat your guild members with a little respect.

So, I’ve been thinking a lot lately of what to do. I’ve been part of this guild for so long I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t start and end every day by checking the Obsolete forums, not to mention I have some great friends within the guild and there are some truly fantastic people there – many more than this post implies. That being said, I feel more and more like I’m on the outside looking in and I really do not like it.

So this angry Shaman is going to start speaking his mind a little more internally. What will come of it, who knows? But those damn kids will get off my lawn off way or another.

A new trailer for Modern Warfare 2 – what will probably be the greatest selling game ever…

Two vids this Friday!!

First off, a few people in Obsolete (well, me and Naz) have been on about how good LotRO is lately. This is a pretty old clip, but it shows some of idea’s I really like so I thought I’d share it.

THIS clip is the first ever WoW clip I saw and it is still one of my favourites. I hope you enjoy.