The Burrow

RealID, it’ll be with us in the EU within days, so time to think about whether it’s good, bad or simply “a something”.

So, firstly, the low down from Blizzard

Everyone read and digested?  Good.

I must use it

There’s no requirement to use RealID, seriously, you don’t have to use it, if you don’t like what it does then don’t bloody well use it.

Real names

It shows your real name to people you have connected with using RealID (or more accurately the name you have registered your battlenet account under).This isn’t a problem for me generally but I can see it will be a problem for some people, with the wider sharing of names this is going to be a deal breaker for some.

Sharing account details

The two people connecting must share their battlenet email addresses to make the connection, once connected this information isn’t displayed anywhere.

“If you are using Real ID, your mutual Real ID friends, as well as their Real ID friends, will be able to see your first and last name (the name registered to the Battle.net account). You will also be able to see the first and last name of your Real ID friends and their Real ID friends. Your Battle.net account name (your email address) is not displayed to other players through the Real ID friends list. In addition, players with Real ID relationships will be able to view each other’s online status, Rich Presence information, and Broadcast messages, and will be able to see which character and game their Real ID friends are playing across supported Blizzard games.”This I’m not entirely convinced about and the language is vague towards the end (at least to my rules lawyer mind).

Removing friends

Right click, click, done.

Let’s build an example

We have the following players A, B, C & D

A & B become friends
B & C become friends
C & D become friends

Real Name

A can see B & C
B can see A, C & D
C can see A, B & D
D can see C & B

B & C become RealID friends

BattleNet account name (email address)

Not shown through the system

A & B become RealID friends

This I think is vague, I suspect that they’re referring only to direct relationships, if that’s true then

A can see B
B can see A & C
C can see B & D
D can see C

Online status, “Rich Presence Information”, Broadcast messages

If however it follows the same rules as for your real name then those rules apply.

All your toons across all games on that battlenet account are shared with your friends.No opt outs, so that toon you keep for slacking, it’s now visable.  That banking toon you’ve been owning the AH with… visible.

The million dollar question

Will I use it, probably, maybe, while there are people on WoW who know my real name and there are others who can guess from looking through Facebook and put two and two together it’s not something I’ve pushed out there.  I don’t like the friend of a friend information sharing, and if that includes online status etc etc I like it less.

One of the largest complaints from the public (or those who think) about books, music, video and the way the old media companies is the way they’ve failed to really grasp to the internet and the whole host of new ways in which content is being delivered and the way people want it.

One of our regular ‘car conversations’ when travelling a long distance and I’m not the only one awake as been what book publishers could do for those of us who want paper, we like paper, but also want the ability to read the book while travelling without lugging around a crate full of paperbacks (yes she can read that many in a week).  So the thought is that with each book a code is provided to download a copy of the book in an e-format of choice, one time use or locked to a person, exact mechanism is implementation stuff.  However the core idea is that the incremental cost of providing the e-version is minimal, everything is built up on computers to start with now.

So moving on, as one of the father’s day presents from the short (well, not so short) one, was Wolverine on DVD, random SF / fantasy fare, the brain will be left on the hook and the film will be taken for what it is.  The extra here is a code provided with the DVD, shove the DVD in the drive, watch iTunes fire up, enter the code and a few minutes later I have a copy which plays on the PC and on the iDevice.

Ok, there are discussions about DRM and locking to specific devices etc etc but I think on balance the industry is starting to get creative.

New photo up at Deviantart


Taking a lead from Wrath of Nature who’s been reading Big Bear Butt I shall respond to the challenge to explain how to survive as dps without annoying the tank by ripping aggro and how to deal with it when I do.

By nature I’m a tank, I’m sure everyone who’s been past this place before has worked that out but I’ve got six 80’s, two of which are ICC25 geared and and another pair who are well geared, certainly enough for the first few ICC bosses on 10-man.  So I’ve seen it all, tanking, off-tanking, tank healing, raid healing, running like a loon healing and nuking the hell out of the ugly in melee and ranged camps.

I like to understand what the other parts of the team are up to when I’m trying to keep the big and ugly from nomming on their squishy faces.

So, for the purposes of this post I shall be considering Wubbles, a decently geared destro warlock, a “DestroGnome” if you will, also known as “Oh my god he’s gone and ripped aggro again”.

Single Targeting

The single biggest thing I can do to help the tank is nothing.  Do absolutely nothing, give him a GCD or two as necessary to get a lead.  There’s nothing like a threat lead to keep a tank happy.  If I really must do something then a quick curse just after the pull is fine, this also helps Omen work out what’s happening by generating threat to track.

With the rotation I’m using I spike threat at about the 4.5 second mark, so watching omen like a hawk is critical, make sure that before I pop the final move in the rotation assess whether I’m going to pull or not.  If I am, choose something else, keep the tank happy, tanks like to be the center of attention and hate it going to someone else.

This might mean I’m not the top of the dps charts.

So what, are the mobs dead, did I pull my weight, is everyone else alive, is the healer cursing or drinking on every pull because of the heavy healing?

It’s all good, an extra 5 seconds to kill the mob isn’t going to kill anyone except a certain class of “gogogogo” dps, and I’ll have words to say about them in a bit.

Multiple Targets

This is more of a problem, depending on the tank it’s highly likely that in a large trash pull there will be several mobs who only have proximity aggro on the tank, opening up instantly with rain of fire will mean collecting lots of new friends who wish to chat and show off their big weapons.

Again, give the tank a chance to spread his love around a bit before opening up with the big guns, spend a few cycles whacking the tank’s initial target before AoEing the universe to death.

Tools

Soulshatter: Horribly long cooldown for current heroic running but don’t be afraid to use it.

Caveat: Don’t soulshatter next to the healer, if you don’t play with a healer in the same room let me tell you that they swear like troopers when that happens.

Close to death: Can it be nuked before reaching me?  What about the dots, if I run around like a girl will it give them a chance to take it down?

The biggie, rule #1

Run to the tank

I cannot stress this enough, there’s nothing which annoys a tank more than having to chase a mob all over the instance because the dps is running away.  All the time the tank is chasing your mob they’re not building aggro on the others, which increases the chance of other mobs breaking making his life even harder.

Unferth had his first heroic last night leading from the front kicking mobs and generally trying to keep ahead of the ICC10 geared dps from the guild.  On the whole it wasn’t too bad, doubly so when it’s considered he’s not gemmed, enchanted and is still running with chicken glyphs.

I need to do more work on where the keymappings are and get the threat moves settled into my brain a little more solidly than they are at the moment.  Including getting the AoE taunt into the space place as RD is on my tankadin (keep the tanking keys mapped to “similar” abilities, that’s the trick).

In general for single target threat I had no problem keeping it off the dps, ok the warlock in the guild got close more than a few times but he can do that to ‘wolf if I’m not paying attention.

Spreading the threat love around is going to be the trick to work on, I spent a fair amount of the time picking mobs back up off the DKs because they were walloping on my off-targets which I hadn’t built huge amounts of threat on.

However all said, a good start to his tanking career.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8759590.stm

Steve,

Just how did you manage to let this one slip through testing, go on this I have to hear.

Update:
Gizmodo summary of issue
Gizmodo response from Apple

On balance it appears to be a decent upgrade, though there’s some issues on my iPhone 3g.

The good

• Google calendar integration
• Notes > gmail storage
• Changes to the mail interface & threading

The bad

• I’m sure it’s more sluggish than before, slower on the response after shifting apps.  I suspect there is more checking back with the net / google / apple going on in the background.
• Google / Apple, how about a decent todo / tasklist tool?

The evil league of evil rumour mill

• iAds has been enabled for targetted adverts.  It is possible to opt out http://oo.apple.com/
• However it appears that the location tracking being logged back to Apple Central{tm} and passed on to their “partners” can’t be opted out of.
• It’s possible that this isn’t as evil as it sounds but there’s nothing in the formal statements / documented agreement which completely clears their name either, It’s something I’ll be watching for and commenting on as news grows on this.

So the “bag of wind kicking tournament” is in full swing, as expected the English national team went out with the “1966, we’re going to win” and proving to (as ever) be made of complete fail.  Them going out in the first stages will fortunately mean the coverage backs off a bit and the stupid levels of hype die down and we can back on with normal life.

However, what this carefully crafted rant is about is the various schools which are apparently closing early tomorrow (England kicks off mid-afternoonish) so the school kids can watch the match.  What!?  It’s a sodding football match, closing down the school does have potential problems for parents, scheduling of pickups where required, potentially access to the family home etc etc.  I know the teachers want to watch the match but that’s not really significant.

Cue the morons on the radio with the standard lines of “it’s only once every four years”, “what a parent having to take responsibility for their children”, “but it’s football”, “chill and watch the game” and other meaningless moronisms.

So let’s look at a couple of those excuses.

“It’s only once every four years”, and in two years time we’ll have the same excuse for the olympics, the same applies to the commonwealth games etc etc.  All the major sporting world championships are on a four year cycle.  Football is nothing special, there are plenty of us in the UK who couldn’t give two farts for football.  It is when all is said and done, only a game.

“Parent’s having to take responsibility for their children”, the parent who raised the problem (who had 24 hours notice of the school deciding to close early) had taken responsibility for their offspring.  Making sure they’re ready for school, get to school, knowing when school closes for the day and having contact information with the school for if there is a major problem / illness / poor behaviour etc etc.  The school has decided to change their side of the service which they get paid to provide for an entertainment event.  Remind me, who’s the responsible one again?

I accept that there will be problems with some children faking illness, skipping school at lunch etc etc to be at home for the game, or firing up the iPhone to try and watch the game in lesson.  These are problems for the school and parent to deal with.  It comes with the territory.  For the record if the short one skipped school for this reason he’d be without television / iDevice / computer for quite some period of time.

Presented without comment