Month: July 2010

As the world is changing the calls of classic realms are back.  So let’s look at the arguments.

• Blizzard are made of money
  True, they make a lot of money from the sales, but a chunk of that goes to support the kit, dev team, support etc etc.  A chunk of the ‘spare’ cash is going to develop Cataclysm, Diablo3, Starcraft2, the next MMO etc etc and some of it is going to investors and the like.
• It wouldn’t cost much to support just one classic realm
  Let’s look at this one for a moment, it’s so simple isn’t it.  Just one realm, the code is there, the client is there.  Except it isn’t.  The realm code would need pulled from the software archive, rebuilt and hopefully it would fire first time.  A completely separate backend DB would need to be built and fired up.  Auth system, well it wouldn’t work with battle.net (you may consider that to be a good thing), but either way it means more kit, and more kit means more things to go wrong and more maintenance.

  The client, things have moved on a fair way since TBC launched (let’s take our ‘classic’ point as just before TBC), so the client is likely to have problems with the current generation of home hardware.  Either way there are going to be support calls, demands for Blizzard to fix bugs with the code etc etc.

• The original devs did a far better job
  Rose coloured glasses, nuff said.
  
• Extra load on the system as a whole
  If they did implement then immediately there has to be additional support capability to handle multiple versions of the client (currently Blizz know exactly what version of the server and client everyone globally is using, this is a hell of an advantage in support, trust me on this).  They know what features are enabled, what isn’t.  The tooling which we as the users never see is developed for the current code, much of this would probably not work on a classic realm.All of which adds up to extra costs above and beyond.
• Balance
  So, do you really think the balance in Classic on the classes was better than now?  Or will there be a demand for nerfs / buffs to be made on the classic realm as well.  Add some more money to that pile.
• “Wouldn’t it be nice”
  Anyone want to bet on how long before someone on the classic realms asks “Can’t we have $feature, you’ve written the code already it wouldn’t cost anything to put it on the classic realm!?”
• Never say “Never”
  My opinion, if you hadn’t guessed already, is that they’ll never do this, but there are many other things which people have said they’ll never do.  However I can’t see a commerical gain for Blizz making the classic realms available, so guys suck it up and accept that WoW is a changing universe.  This is one of the features which has kept it going for more than five years.

Take one female lovebird, ideally fixated with nesting, eggs and populating the world with more lovebirds, add the top of a huge dresser where they can hide and play without being annoyed by the two legged food providers, throw into the mix twin and earth cabling.

I present a work of modern art, or possibly a suicide attempt.

Enough guildies on for a change (the summer interfers with WoW something terribble) to get a few non-pug heroics rolling.  One of which was with my new bear spec, I’m settling into the role better now, starting to work out the best ways to pull.  How to quickly grab aggro on packs and which cooldowns to blow and when.  Oh feral charge, how I love thee, can I have it on my tankadin?

Anyway, I think I only lost aggro a few times on packs where suicide storm was in use (no surprise there, I can’t front load the AoE threat in the same way as the paladin can), single target there was no problem at all.  I suspect I have more work to do on neatening up the rotation / knowing priority orders for the abilities for max threat.

I still prefer my paladin for tanking, he’s where I’m most comfortable and experienced, but knowing how bears build aggro, how long it takes to properly collect mobs is all good information for future reference (in all three major roles).

The tree spec is still my primary pugging spec simply because he’s massively overgeared and can deal with morons more effectively, though I will ‘forget’ to heal a DPS who keeps pulling aggro.  You keep pulling it, you want to be a tank, better hope your dps is enough to nuke it before the distance gap is closed.

The veg is doing well, we have ripening strawberries, peas and the cut-and-come-again continues to provide random snacking for me while I’m in the greenhouse.  However, on that front I have to report that the greenhouse has been killed (it’s a plastic cover job) by the local fourlegged evils.  Sharp claws, a convient drop point from my utility roof and plastic do not mix, so on Sunday I moved all the tools and stuff being stored in it back to the shed (the leather gloves were soaked, we’ll see if they dry properly) and removed the cover and cut a piece to protect the metal shelving from the weather.

Thank you local cat owners.  Oh and as various additional methods for repelling your pets from crapping in my garden have failed I’m moving up a notch to the more offensive tools such as the sonic repellers.  Subtle hints do not appear to work for these buggers.  Any recommendations on things which do work and keep the little buggers out of my garden would be appreciated.

Picking up on the weekly topic from Blog Azeroth, when should I as a healer down tools (branches, arms, random squiddy wavey things) and say “Enough is enough, enjoy your damage you moron and your corpse run”.

Generally I don’t, when in 5-man content I am generally focused on doing what I’m meant to be doing and keeping everything standing which should be standing and let’s be honest the pain caused by letting someone die is counter productive.  Wipes are worse, they add 5+ minutes to a run.  In a PUG our collective aim is to melt faces, hack trash, grab emblems and get the hell out of there before we wake up something even bigger and move back into the queue for more badges or back to something else if all we’re after is the daily frosties.

Players dying means drama, complaints, more time spent ressing, waiting for players to release and bitching all the way back, generally I find it just too much damm effort.  It also weakens the trust a tank needs to have in their healer, when tanking I need to know I have a mana burning health monster watching my back we have a very simple symbiotic relationship going and it’s a good one.

Tank: I promise to watch the healer, pull mobs off before they eat face, keep an eye on the pretty blue bar while keeping the party moving at a good enough pace that we make decent progress through the dungeon.

Healer: I promise to keep healing the tank, shout if I need a break for mana and run to the tank if the mobs eat on my face.

DPS: Rawr.. we hits things.

That said, have I let someone die, actually no.  However in a recent PUG I did stop actively healing a hunter who kept pulling additional mobs for the tank, only healing him back up when the pack was dead, while nothing was said the behaviour did moderate, hopefully he noticed that his health was taking a beating and altered his own tactics to minimise his incoming.

wow.com has the details but in short, if you’re in the US and reported the Actizard RealID issue to the ESRB they decided to share your email address with everyone else who reported it.

Classy move, I call this a first class cockup, nothing more, nothing less.

It’s also why using tagged email addresses is still a good thing 15 years on from when I first started using them to work out which companies were being too free with my information.

More on the real ID fiasco when I finish writing it up, I decided to keep the 1000 or so words which I’d written already and somehow seem to have doubled it since the announcement of the climb down.  I’ll see if I can get it finished and out this week.

[Edit: 2010/07/14 – ESRB have apologised, stupid mistake but they have accepted responsibility without the normal “we apologise to anyone who might have been affected” weaselling.]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmSwITU9PLQ]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1

I’ll just go and delete the 1000 or so words I had been working on…and I’m bloody glad to be able to do it.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

So, we wiped on him for an hour or two last week, and mashed him on the 4th attempt this week. I’ll do a proper post later on tanking P2 (shadow) which is … a challenge.