07.23.09
Changing Gears
Due to Middea’s recent wow quit and now Fedoldinn’s departure, this blog will be focusing on the upcoming release of Aion and will continue after it goes live.
Middea's WoW Obituary
Distinguished holy turned shadow priest for the Bloodhoof server, wowquit last night due to lack of interest in the future of WoW. She was 169 days /played. Gutter-minded and obsessive, Middea never looked the part of one who would give up on WoW. But, in the final days of her life, she revealed an unknown side of herself. Rather than re-roll to perform at the levels of other caster dps or re-embrace her role as a healer, Middea has given up the grind. Sadly, her home in Mental Atrophy was no longer as they retired from raiding, and after a brief stint of trying to make a new home or join one already established, she realized that neither could replace her home in Mental Atrophy or reignite the spark of desire to play WoW.
Yet even in certain defeat, the courageous Middea secretly clung to the belief that mmo gaming is not merely a series of nerfs aimed at placating the casuals or that epics ought to be handed out like candy. Uh-uh. But rather, it’s a tapestry of moments and people that culminate in an exquisite, sublime experience. Without her home, Blizzard’s newfound ways of selling out/homogenization, and lack of acknowledgment of scaling problems related to priests, things were clear to Middea. Ultimately Middea concluded that if she were to lower her expectations of the game to live in harmony with the universe, she very well may enjoy the game more, but decided against such a course of action.
TLDR: Middea /wowquit.
07.21.09
Performance Issues…
No, not that kind of performance issues… the computer kind silly.
After returning home and raiding on my desktop this past Monday night again, I’ve realized that my computer isn’t handling World of Warcraft as well as it once did. I’ve known this was the case for quite some time now, but it seems to be exceptionally bad in 25 man Ulduar. Monday was the first time I’ve been in a guild raid since I took a break from WoW in my old guild back in early April, before patch 3.1. I’ve done a few 25 man pugs since then, but a high level of performance wasn’t really necessary there.
It turns out that the opposite is true for hard mode Mimiron. Let’s just say that it’s highly unlikely I’ll be of any benefit to this guild’s progression attempts for Heroic: Firefighter while raiding at 2 FPS. Dodging rockets, running from laser barrage and trying not to stand in the fire isn’t exactly easy when your camera turns at 90 degree increments and your character doesn’t respond all too quickly to the commands you’re giving.
I’ve had issues with my in game performance in raids since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. Sometimes a reboot right before raid time helped my framerate, othertimes I just dealt with it. I raided most of Naxxramas around 10 FPS on good days, and 5 FPS on not so great days. I managed to avoid dying to Sartharion 3D (for the most part) and still be able to call out flame walls in time in this range; I also managed to heal the Immortal achievement with no problems whatsoever. Malygos? A non issue.
Ulduar on the other hand seems to be the last straw for my poor desktop that has gotten me this far in the MMO that I’ve come to love and hate on a daily basis.
As a Balance Druid, I’ve gotten used to being roughly the bottom of the DPS chart over the past few weeks, but the prerequisite for doing any damage at all is that you have to stay alive. Not being healed through Napalm is one thing, but dying to fires that I can’t even see is another thing entirely.
And before you ask, yes I’ve done the registry hack; no, I do not raid on Vista.
I was hoping I had ironed out the hardware issues I was having after the last round of fixes, but I guess I’m not quite there yet. So, a couple weeks after joining a new guild, I’m looking at taking a break from raiding already until I can figure out what is wrong and hopefully fix it. If that can’t easily be done, then I think it’s about time I parted ways with my favorite past time for the past three years and moved on.
I can only hope that I can find a solution by the time Aion is released…
07.14.09
A Quick Note on Tier 9 Models
Tier armor sets. These are the rewards that players receive for their efforts from raiding. In the past, these sets were unique and distinguished those players who were able to conquer the end game raid content from those who were not. The only way to acquire these pieces was to go into a 40 man raid instance and defeat the bosses. They were not available for sale from a vendor for badges. They stood out. They were worn with pride.
MMO-Champion recently posted a preview of the Tier 9 models from the upcoming 3.2 patch and unfortunately, this is really no longer the case with the latest sets. Although they may not be complete as of yet and a few classes were missing, a few initial observations can be made from looking at them.
First, let’s take a quick look back at the past tier armor sets in World of Warcraft, shall we?
Tiers 1, 2 and 3 were all available before the first expansion, coming from the early 40 man raid instances. They were distinct, each set had its own style and looked nothing like any other. The Tier 3 set specifically was a status symbol among players, identifying those guilds who were able to reach and defeat bosses in the original Naxxramas.
When The Burning Crusade was released, although the sizes of raids changed from 40 man to 10 and 25 man instances, the tradition for designing the Tier armor sets continued. I can’t say I really liked the look of Druid Tier 4, but Tiers 5 and 6 more than made up for it. Again, each set was unique and distinct.
In those days, you could recognize the individual pieces and identify which Tier armor set a player was wearing when you crossed paths with them in Ironforge or Shattrath.
Enter Wrath of the Lich King. The first raid dungeon we have is a reused Naxxramas and with it comes a reused Tier 3 armor set posing as our Tier 7 gear. Tier 8 introduces a new design, but the set itself looks rather bland and pales in comparison to the work done on Tiers 1-6. You can still make a distinction between classes, but you can see the beginning of the end as it now stands.
To put it bluntly: Tier 9 is terrible. I’m not even looking at the stats, the set bonuses or anything else to do with the gear at the moment (but I may have a rant on that from a Balance druid perspective at some point), I’m just looking at it from a model perspective. All of the sets look similar between classes, to the point where the only real distinction I can make is in a subtle color change that I will never remember later on. On top of this, we firmly believe that each set looks like plate armor. Where is the distinction between cloth, leather and mail? There is absolutely nothing about any of these models that looks nifty, cool or even remotely interesting that makes me want to wear them.
Although a few classes are missing, I’ll fill in the blanks for you. Take one of the models for another class, any of them will work really. Let’s go with the Mage one for fun. Open the file in an image editor. Find that blue color that distinguishes it from the other classes and replace it by: orange for Druid, green for Hunter, yellow for Rogue and a darker blue for Shaman. Voila! You’re now well on your way to becoming an artist for a certain gaming company we all know.
Welcome to Blizzard’s latest expansion and new motto: reduce, reuse, recycle. They reduce the amount of work they need to be doing by reusing what they’ve done before and recycling raid content. Instead of designing new armor with new stats and everything else that goes along with it, they’ve homogenized as much as possible across the board to make it easier to design new gear. This now includes the models of our beloved Tier sets.
Soon enough Dalaran is going to look like a scene out of Brave New World where the main difference between the gear players are wearing is its color which denotes our class…
07.09.09
It's the principle
The only correct actions are those that demand no explanation and no apology. ~Red Auerbach
Pugs. Love them or hate them, mostly everyone in the WoW community has been in one at some point or another.
The server on which we play has many regular Naxxramas 25 pug runs, and I have run one of those for a few months now. Over the last couple of weeks we have lowered our playing time quite substantially, partly due to travel, partly due to Aion betas, and partly due to lack of interest.
Loot distribution seems to be the worst part of it, but in my runs we tried to keep it simple. One purple item per person for roll one, and if no one rolls it goes to a roll two which is open for anyone to receive the item for whatever talent spec they wish. All BoE’s are held until the end to be rolled on in case someone did not receive loot, and if all did, free for all rolls win them. If you have received a purple/epic, you no longer can roll in roll one. Plain and simple. Got something shiny? Great! Now wait for roll two if you want anything.
This concept, while simple, still eludes some of the regulars and trade channel pug pickups. The rules are clearly stated both in Ventrilo and in raid chat. People who have won something still roll in roll one. “But it’s for my main spec” is the most common argument as to why rolling after winning something is still okay for them. Rules are predetermined and there for everyone to know and judge prior to killing anything, even trash. They are free to leave without any hard feelings before they get saved and then find out they do not like the rules. I do a ready check as well typically, “Hit ‘Yes’ if you understand and agree with the rules.” Everyone hits yes, we proceed to own Naxxramas in ~3-3.5 hours, and everyone leaves with something purple and shiny.
Having stopped running these pugs, Fedoldinn and I decided to tag along with some alts and mains of our soon to be and now new guild along with some pugs from trade channel. No loot rules were shared, so we figured it was the roll if you want it and hope you roll high method. This seemed to hold true until we reached the third wing. Grim Toll dropped. Most of the melee rolled. Suddenly, raid leader comes on over Ventrilo “Main toons and main spec priority, grats *guild mate*”. What? Seriously? I am not melee nor do I care about the loot really, I was just bored and wanted something to do, but honestly? That pissed me off, but I let it go, we were almost done. None of the others seemed to mind and the loot pertained to them, so who was I to raise a stink about it?
Well we get to Kel’Thuzad and this special priority loot system designation hasn’t kicked in for any other number of possible Best in Slot items or as close as most could get without Ulduar Hard Modes, including Sapphiron’s necklace. We kill Kel’Thuzad and Signet of Manifested Pain and Cape of the Unworthy Wizard drop, both really great caster/healer items. Rolls go out for the ring, and over voice chat a mage gets really excited because he is winning; suddenly, he loses to an alt for their main spec. Low and behold, it is now “Main toons and main spec priority, grats *mage*” with a precursory “*Alt* you will be passing this to our main raider, right?” in a tone that did not really offer much of a chance for said alt to say no without coming across as an ass. Sigh. Next up are rolls for the cloak. Myself and a few others roll; I lose to another main that was a trade channel pick up and then an alt from the guild ends up the final winner. No *special* rules apply, grats *guilded alt.*
Now, we all know life is not fair so how can we expect a pick up group to be any different? But everyone enters into it with the expectation that the loot rules will not change and flex depending on the whims of the raid leader based entirely on how the roll is going. There is no call prior to the roll going out that this item is considered best in slot, so please, only mains and main specs roll, but rather the rules changed when the person they wanted to win did not win.
Back during Sunwell trash farming days for the chance at BoE’s and Sunmotes, some loot was predetermined, raid leader will always get a sunmote, rest will be rolled on along with gems and gear, patterns are free for all or just to that profession that can make them. That is fine in my book, you can run with whatever rules you see fit so long as the group understands and acknowledges them. You have explained them and everyone agrees that they are fair by staying in the group.
It’s the rules that change during the run to suit the needs of those in charge that drives me bonkers. How is it fair for a raid leader to walk into an instance knowing ahead of time that item x will be going to player z without telling the rest of the group? What if others are only going along for a chance at that same item? Why give them the illusion of hey, you can roll, but, we’re going to change the rules to let player z win.
A principle is a comprehensive and fundamental law, doctrine, or assumption. It can be a rule or code of conduct. It can be a law or fact of nature underlying the working of an artificial device. ~Wikipedia
Everyone goes to the pug and puts in their effort. We all were there and did what we could in our abilities to down the boss, trash, what have you. The assumption is that the rules will not change on an item to item basis. This principle allows for the fair distribution of loot. Changing that code of conduct is a matter of changing the principle of the run and the fairness felt by the pug. I was not affected by the distribution of the melee trinket, but I viewed it as a kick in the balls for all the melee who, based on the rest of the run, should have had a fair shot at the item. If they won it was for them and for them alone to decide to pass it if they so desired. It was not the raid leader’s call to do that.
When I asked about the change in policy after the raid was over, I was told the decision was made because the items were the best in slot. As best in slot they ought to go to main raiders. The alts that won the rolls had the chance to say “No” that it was not alright with them. If they wanted to keep the item that was all they had to say. Righhhhht.
Needless to say, I will not be running with that group again, and I do not wish them future successful runs for pulling that shit.
Players will now be able to trade soulbound items with other raid or group members that were eligible for the loot. This system will work like the Item Buy Back system and allow 2 hours for players to trade an item after it has been looted.
With the upcoming change to loot systems, this issue seems only to have the chance to become more widespread and insidious. Players who do not want and possibly could not even use an item will be able to roll and hook their friends up as long as they are in the raid with them. In a 25 man pug, how are the raid leaders to begin to evenly divide loot in a fair manner without reverting to a simple one purple per person type of system? Even that could be corrupted in the hands of those gearing up their buddies, alts, what have you.
