Unreal Realities

When I first started playing WoW in the Beta, levelling was the entire game.  I wasn’t goal-focused at all – to be honest, I didn’t really see the point in getting to 60.  After all, that was the end, right?  What would you do then?  (I’d never heard of raiding.)  Levelling was enough to keep me playing for hours on end, exploring new zones, trying new and difficult quests, and occasionally running through an instance with my friends.

When I made 60 and learned about raiding and tier sets, all of that went out of the window.  Later, I rolled other characters, but always with the express purpose of catching up to either friends or to my other max level characters.  The end-game was the game.   Read the rest of this entry »

I’m often surprised what people will spend gold, a lot of gold, on in WoW. In the entire time I’ve played WoW, I’d had two windfalls, both in this expansion. The first was a Book of Glyph Mastery about three days after they became available and sold it for 3k. Last week, I bought seven of these books for my Mage, at 35g a piece.

My second windfall was a Battered Hilt, which I got just this week. I put it on the AH for 10k and it sold over-night. I debated with myself for a little while on whether to sell it or not. None of the quest rewards would be upgrades, but I do want to do the quest chain. Would doing the quest chain be worth 10k? No, so I sold it.

I’ve never been one to spend a lot of gold on gear. Well, strictly speaking that’s not true. When my Mage first hit 70 in TBC, I spent considerable time and gold on getting my Spellfire Set. Since I’ve been a raider though, it seems somewhat pointless to by gear upgrades, as you’re only ever one drop away from upgrading it again anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

As a general rule I am pretty forgiving of Blizzard. After all, I’ve never made the most successful MMO in history, so I really cannot speak with authority on the design and technical aspects of WoW. I do know that, despite best efforts, sometimes things just break. I understand that regardless of how much testing is carried out Blizzard cannot possibly know every consequence of everything they do. It’s is the nature of the beast.

So, if the new skin for Troll totems causes Durn the Hungerer to bug out, I forgive. If the introduction of the Core Hound Pup means that some spiders in Redridge start acting funny, fair enough. I know Blizzard will fix it as soon as they can and I move on with my life.

But right now, I’m shitty. Very, very shitty. Wednesday raid lag is making me a very, very angry Shaman.

Pirates raids twice a week and, unlike many others already dressed to impress in 25-raid items, we don’t out-gear the 10s version of ICC. This means we need to be very, very good to get our progression. Two Wednesdays in a row we’ve hit a brick wall in Rotface for no other reason than the lag.

We’ve managed to struggle through the early content with lag, but none of them are overly difficult. Rotface was the first example of a harder encounter in ICC and the frustration at trying to do this when your instant cast heals take two-three seconds is unbearable. This is playing havoc with our progressions, with plans of getting some good work on the Princes going out the window after lag induced wipe after wipe.

But that’s not what really bothers me. What really bothers me is it’s not fun. Even killing bosses is not fun. It’s all frustration and rage. Healing isn’t a set rotation, it reaction and timing. With lag it’s like Russian Roulette and knowing that that person should be at full health but waiting for your heal to finally go off, only to see them die before it does, makes me want to throw my keyboard out the window. Personally, I’d rather the servers just went down that have to continue to struggle on with this lag.

What’s my point? I don’t have one. I’m just pissed off and want it fixed.

This week I have been really late with my update for Pirates from last week. I know. Naughty Nasi, although, I did have a post written in regards to my hacking, that used a large portion of what Reebz said in this post, however, Vok completely ninja’d it. Last week the Pirates made their way through the first five bosses in ICC10 with a slight struggle because of some horrid server lag that I am sure most people suffered through, managing to leave just enough time to have three or four attempts at Rotface. We got him down to about 4% (if memory serves) on the second attempt but didn’t down him unfortunately.

Sunday night we defeated Rotface quickly, giving us almost an entire night to work on Professor Putricide. This was not as exciting as you’d think, given that we didn’t down him, even after getting him to a measly One Point Seven Percent. Spending so much time on him was quite exhausting, and to add insult to injury, when I logged in the following morning I discovered I had been hacked. Eight of my ten characters had their entire inventory (bags and all!) vendored, including the spending of badges. But I guess that’s what you get for not having an authenticator.

Naz’s recent blog has given me an idea, something that I will likely try and do with my weekly Pirates update, in place of my rant.

Stuff Nasi Liked. This is going to be things that I have noticed over the week, either in the blog-o-sphere, podcast, game or developement, that I liked. So to kick it off:

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently announced Transformers : Battle for Cyberton. Why, oh why isn’t this an mmo??

You know how sometimes stuff makes you mad?  And I don’t just mean mad, I mean go-around-to-the-offender’s-house-and-smash-all-of-their-windows-with-their-face mad?  No?  Really?  Oh… erm…

Hai, my name’s Naz, and I have an anger management problem.  Certain things make me very mad.  And you won’t like me when I’m mad.  So here’s my new post series, cleverly entitled Stuff Naz Hates.

So, the other day, TankBear Ramp, a DK friend and I were hanging around in Dalaran, minding our own business.  We decided that we’d do our daily heroic, only for a change TankBear Ramp would heal, our DK friend would tank, and I would DPS (lolret).  We queued, and instantly joined the dungeon.

I watched the pretty loading screen and the progress bar for a while, before my screen cleared to a whispered message from one of our brand new PUG DPS.

“Kings plz”

No hello, and clearly no opportunity for me to buff him being as I had JUST ZONED IN and all.  Just “Kings plz”, in that self-righteous all-your-buffs-are-belong-to-me tone.

I suppose you’re thinking that I should be thankful that he said please.  I ignored him.   Read the rest of this entry »

More and more lately I’ve been playing different characters in Wow, in fact have been a little Meh myself as far as playing goes.  Still now I’m not real sure what I want to do.  Remember that feeling when you were a youngling and you just winged and whined at your parents that you were bored, expecting them to have the best new thing in the world for you to try.  Well, I’m feeling a bit like that lately.

To walk the line between personal and gaming lives, there are a few ex-game reasons for this, but I’m also in a bit of a ‘what to do slump.’  I’ve started a Pally, she is level 14, but in line with some recent posts I’ve found myself checking out the damage spec rather than a heal (which Vok has banned me from doing  =O) or tanking spec.  That’s fine with me, but another dps, I might as well play my Hunter.  Which is exactly what I’ve done – he is now level 36, and is questing in Dustwallow Marsh, which is one of the low level areas I quite enjoy.  Probably because I get a gazillion levels from one zone. Read the rest of this entry »

No doubt when Nasi blogs this week, he’ll talk about our almost kill on Professor Putricde. 1.7%.  We wiped on our sixth attempt on Sunday night. Obviously this was heartbreaking and we never quite got it together again that night, getting to around 16% on our next best attempt.

The thing is, as soon as we wiped on 1.7% I knew we wouldn’t get it that night. It seems that, on a progression boss, there is one attempt, just one, where it all comes together and it’s kill on that attempt, or wait for another night.

Leo the Blind, 1% wipe, no kill that night. Gorefiend, 1% wipe, no kill that night. RoS, 3% wipe, no kill that night. These 1% or there about wipes are burned into my brain, as are the subsequent attempts that don’t result in a kill that night. Putricide now joins those encounters. Read the rest of this entry »

Nasi has recently been hacked, which has sparked a few conversations in our forums. I’m sure Reebz won’t mind, but I’m pinching his post to use as a blog today.

As an IT controls specialist with one of the biggest firms in the world, I deal with account security on a daily basis.

Stay safe

Appendix
4. I change my password every patch day to keep it refreshed and its easy to remember when to do it!
6. I personally use Firefox, AVG-Free, AVG SafeSearch (in Firefox), AVG Security Toolbar (in Firefox), PeerBlock and CC Cleaner. It’s really set and forget stuff, its great.
7. IE is not THAT bad, its that exploits specifically TARGET it, so its under the microscope more-so.
8. Sometimes you *need* to do this, so I’d recommend changing your password directly afterwards yourself (don’t ask the other person to). Change it to something unrelated to your previous password.
9. Be very careful of torrents here, especially stuff you get with serials and keygens. They MIGHT give you a good serial, but it doesn’t mean they’re not installing keyloggers in the background.
10. I got an authenticator 2 months ago, so I’ve been clean for almost 5 years simply following these rules.