Sneak peek intro screen from Waterfalls/Exploration movie currently in edit phase:

CB06: Waterfalls Exploration

GOING UP:

Quick easy full epix as soon as you hit level cap (til Cata).

5p dungeons double-pull AOE fests (til Cata).

Battlegroup-wide instanced content where you know exactly what you’re gonna get

Linear, predictable gameplay with predictable, “safe” reward paths

Number of players who don’t know how to find the instance entrance after a wipe.

Number of players who don’t know what zone the instance is in (dude, that’s “RP lore” stuff! LOL11!)

Teleports

Complaints about not enough teleports

Loading screens

Flying mounts in your noob zone, in Undercity, in Ironforge and in your mom’s kitchen. Everywhere, pretty much.

People hanging out AFK on their flying mount waiting for something

QQ on the forums about players who AIR GANK these people on PVP servers.

Tol Barad

QQ about the Tol Barad buffs being too generous

QQ about the Tol Barad buffs being useless

WG-style not-instanced-BG-but-damn-near in every expansion so we can have a separate, sterile, designated “fair” pvp environment so pvp’ers won’t interfere in the rest of Azeroth.

Warrior/DK/Pally people with access to 25 Primordial Saronite and an Arthas-killing PuG

Shadowmourne-based arena teams

Caster legendary – coming “Soon” ™

Short BGs.

Rated BGs

Rated BGs drama and complaints.

Instanced pvp in general

Funny crazy Goon Squad antics in BGs.

Casual raiding 2 nights/week

Player health pools

Steady, large amounts of damage

Steady, large amounts of healing

Mana-draining

Obvious boss emotes to lessen the need for boss timer addons

Haste

Mastery

Reforging

Smart itemization (them devs are getting good yo)

Emblems and currency rewards

Get in a guild or bust.

Loading screens north of EPL so you can’t swim under Ghostlands anymore

Different endgame character progression avenues

Worgen

Gobbos

People gushing about the awesome new starting experience for Wolves and Gobbos

Population of the Exodar

Heroic everything. (Heroic Pop-Tarts? Heroic Urmomlol? Ultra-Heroics?)

Multiple difficulty levels for everything in instances.

Green Fire-glyphed/specced warlocks

Number of times Anub’Arak has featured in an instance

New Blizzard MMO rumours.

Players switching servers/faction/race/class/appearance at the drop of a hat.

Proc-based weapons (yeay!)

Balancing problems from proc-based weapons. (meh.)

Wolvar faction

.

STAYING ABOUT THE SAME GIVE OR TAKE

Players complaining that Blizzard hates their class and ruined/broke the game.

Overall dps and tanking and healing balance in raids and 5v5, 3v3 and BGs (the game’s never been more balanced, folks)

Players not understanding that gear not on someone’s “BiS” list isn’t automatically useless for you.

Official forums set up to encourage http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ type behaviour.

Wowhead doing a great job of encouraging funny/insightful posts and making abusive posts easy to report

Complaints about Ensidia and other “top” guilds

Kungen complaining about Blizzard not catering to the hardcore raiding scene.

Kill rates on faction leaders

Number of temporary buff procs you have on at any one time (Ugh.)

Honorfarming in BGs to gear up for arenas/rated BGs

World events that spread the server and location load (no more AQ gates heh)

Achievements for everything (did you manage to put your socks on this morning? GJ! *DING!*)

Funny achievements with suggestive names (take three bosses, tie in a knot, MT jumps in circle backwards while warlock stands in fire *DING!*)

Warlock complaining about no new demons

Warrior complaining about scaling

QQ about no legendaries for “your” spec

Honor Cap (til Cata)

Number of players who have a hard time in arenas initially and say “**** this, outta here”

Wow.com blog marketshare making the mainstream pay attention

Other wow-related blogs getting blown up by a link from Wow.com

GM workloads on PVP and RP servers.

Bada** pvp’ers running around inside opposing-faction cities.

Phishing emails containing a legit-looking link to a website with a one-letter difference from a Blizzard website or something official-sounding

“something something …WAS MERELY A SETBACK!” jokes when Kael’Thas comes back as a janitor for Deathwing

“Anyone who agrees is a despicable fanboy – anyone who disagrees is a despicable hater” -type attitudes.

Players posting “@GC” threads.

Blizzard employees fighting the Tseric burn-out syndrome

Players getting owned for doing dumb stuff on the forums like http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?sid=1&topicId=5974349555&pageNo=1&ST=US-4541190-CMaTctbiXgpEsgxjhqhxctqlDciTBc2IZrp

The nerfbat pendulum swinging back and forth every patch.

People posting useless lists

People posting funny flowcharts like Vertidog’s http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e388/vertidog/catdps.jpg

Bugs

Usage of http://lmgtfy.com/ so people can learn how to learn

http://coldbear.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/coldbear-vs-zarhym-on-blizzard-forums/

.

GOING DOWN:

Ragnaros (AGAIN)

Server communities

Faction pride

Brostorm+Puppies+blowallcooldowns arena strategies.

Complaints about arena after patch 4.0 (…fewer and fewer non-hardcore arena players)

Alliance raids every once in a blue moon on Tarren Mill just for the hell of it.

Use of PVE gear outside of PVE raids for most, but not all, classes (except trinkets and weapons)

Arenas and competitive small-group instanced pvp

Wintergrasp

Outland content

Northrend content

Shattrath

Aldor & Scryers

Dalaran (they’ll make ever more portals in the main cities or Dalaran will remain the hub of hubs)

World bosses

People setting their hearth anywhere but a major city

World pvp rewards

World pvp achievements

World pvp lip-service recognition like the Silithus sand fiasco

Being able to initiate world pvp on pvp servers

Players who know what the term “world pvp” means

Lolburstlol (thank god)

Paladin survivability

The population of Blood Elf paladins (Has to happen eventually – can’t go any higher.)

Arena rogues with 100% ArPen (funny while it lasted, though, as long as you weren’t on the receiving end)

ArPen

Melee dps positioning requirements (only one skill left lol)

Bossmod timer bar addons (still the first thing you download after joining your first raiding guild)

PVP outside instance entrances

MP5

Attack Power

Block Value

Defense

Spell Power

15 different emblem types (yeay!)

SS-TM battles just for the hell of it by a bunch of old farts

Raid or die

“Passive” talents

Content that might block anyone from seeing instance X/boss Y/content Z (good and bad imo)

“PVP happened on a PVP server” posts

Gorloc fascist apologists thinking they can silence the truth about despicable Gorloc war crimes. Any who support of the Gorlocs are racists and have small brains. You can’t dispute it. It’s science.

• http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=83318

Ahh, news.

School’s still keeping me pretty busy, but not so busy that I haven’t had a chance to check out new content. Got a chance to run Toravon a few times on various characters – not the DK – and I have to admit, it’s a really fun encounter. My only big problem with it is that the stacking debuff means I can’t solo-tank it yet, lol. So far, though, the most fun I’ve had on that fight was healing it on the druid. A nice combination of spike damage (from Frostbite, Frozen Orb spawns, etc) and sustained damage from tank melee hits and tank dots. Lots of fun, and kept me on my toes.

Just got an ICC 10 done on the mage, and that was a lot of fun. I was actually the only cloth caster in the group, which was pretty funny; a couple nice pieces dropped for me too, so I’m up and geared on that again. It’s actually pretty amazing; I managed to do a VOA -25 , and rocked with almost 8k DPS on Koralon. It’s good to know I can still top meters on that character. Working on my cooldown management and awareness too!

The paladin finally got the bracers from 10-ICC to drop last night – the ones with bonus armor – so I’m over 30k armor now, which is AWESOME. I’m loving this new bonus armor on the tier pieces; getting my 2 with bonus armor in the next couple weeks as I get the badges.

Blood Prince Council…argh. Got ‘em to 12.7% last night, and they totally shoulda died…but someone D/C’d, and wasn’t able to get back on, so sadly they’ll have to wait ’til next week. I’m excited to see them go down in 10 though, there shouldn’t be any problems – especially since we apparently only need two tanks.

Blizzard’s development team on all their games are comprised of people.

(Revolutionary insight, right? Bear with me… no pun intended.)

People make mistakes.

I make mistakes. Sometimes in my line of work when people make mistakes they die or other people die.

Luckily that’s not the case when game developers make mistakes. Blizzard has a QA team. I have no idea how big or well-funded/staffed it is, but it’s there and they’re working. I’m sure Ensidia would prefer if they worked harder and fixed the buggy end-boss encounters before Ensidia gets banned after beating buggy encounters – exploit or no exploit (I will believe that they deliberately bypassed intended game mechanics when I see proof of that in a chat log or vent recording or detailed report from the GMs watching their kill). I would also prefer if they caught every single bug with every new patch and expansion.

But that’s not happening. The latest patch introduced some good pvp shoulders on a new vendor in Wintergrasp. Do WG, eventually get enough marks to buy ilvl 251 pvp shoulders. Except the druid stuff only has the healer and offensive caster versions. The feral shoulders were marked “Class: Rogue” when they should have been marked “Class: Rogue, Druid” in the game item files thingamajiggy computer stuff that I have no clue about.

Internet searches later it’s been posted about by numerous irate customers and we eventually got a response on the EU forums.

• http://www.worldofraids.com/wow-blue-tracker/eu-forums/12304215550-where-s-the-feral-shoulders-from-new-wg.html

This is what I posted prior to the acknowledgment that it was, indeed, a bug that would eventually get fixed (thread got locked – for no good reason imo):

• http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22748822970&postId=229809015934&sid=1#6

They've gotten tons of bug reports and a few threads on this forum.
 It's 1/30 specs that's affected.
 It may or may not be hotfixxable.
 They'll get to it, I'm sure - just they've got worse things at the
 moment with buggy end-of-expansion boss encounters and whatnot.
 Yeah, sucks for those like me who went to the trouble of busting into
 losing WG's for a day or two only to find that
 PSYCHE!
 ...no shoulders.
 Oh well.
 Soon (tm).

Now for the FUNNY PART. A reader of this blog – Druan of <Lemmings> on Ner’zhul:

Coldbear, much as I enjoy your blog and Feral play guides, why are you such a Blizzard apologist in these situations? They’ve made a mistake and should have measures in place to fix the problem in a timely manner.
Mistakes will be made in a game this large, stuff will get overlooked. The real issue is Blizzard’s unwillingness to fix it in a timely fashion.
If the “fix” requires an onerous process or complicated client-side patch, that is none but Blizzard’s responsibility for coding the game the way it is. Blizzard’s time would be well invested streamlining their ability to fix bugs, any up-front effort would pay off many times over in the ability to fix future issues quickly.

Apologist?? No offense, mate – you seem like a smart guy. But that was kinda funny.

All I can say is scroll down a bit and you’ll see my forum ban for criticizing blue posters. That should give me a bit of “street cred”, right? I guess the major difference me and this guy has (Hi, btw! Thanks for the kind words about the blog + videos!), is what really constitutes “…a timely fashion.”

To me, that’s like a week or two after they’re made aware of the issue – unless it’s absolutely game-breaking for people. As is, this affects a very small part of the player base, isn’t high profile (like the Lich King fight, they ****ed up pretty good with Ensidia on that) and there’s other options available. If you really need pvp shoulders you can pick stuff up for Honor or Emblems of Triumph (or Arena Points in a while). Ok, so those alternatives aren’t as good and the other specs/classes will have a slight advantage while we wait. But it’ll hold you over for a week or two.

Now for the JUICY PART.

The game is tons better now than it was at launch. At launch, when you chose your class you chose your fate. Warlocks were useless transportation services mostly. Warriors were tanks. No-one else was allowed to tank. Druids were healers and sucked the big donkey at pvp. Rogues were unstoppable ganking machines. Paladins buffed and healed. A geared raider was unbeatable. Anyone without raidgear sucked. It took forever to get bugs fixed and class issues were on a patch-by-patch one “class review patch” after the other. But it was fun and addictive and the WORLD was a huge and exciting place full of adventure and danger and WAR.

Now the class balance has never been better – it’s tons easier for casual raiders and pvp’ers and solo artists and 5-player dungeon runners to have fun at endgame. Classes are largely working as they should in pvp and pve. Sure there are issues.

Ferals in arena? Yeah, they exist. Or so I’ve heard. Either I just suck at arena or the spec is too hard to arena with – or a bit of both.

Some specs have damage issues in pve? Yep, sure is the case. Rake is a bit of a messed-up and NOT FUN mechanic atm, but less so than other spec’s mechanics iirc. It’s a bit late in the expansion cycle to make major overhauls, though. Hopefully they can incrementally fix some issues at least.

You hardly ever see anyone out in the WORLD anymore. You hardly know people ON YOUR OWN SERVER ANYMORE. It’s all battlegroup-wide this instance or that instance or queue for BG this or that now. They’re slowly killing off the server communities that used to develop. Now it’s your guild and not much else on your server, and then just random people you meet and never meet again. Good luck developing the kind of deep-seated guild rivalries or personal nemesis relationships that existed back then. You’d be hard-pressed to make a server-wide reputation outside of running instances anymore. I know there’s good pvp’ers on my realm – I just never see them. They’re in arenas or …whatever arena players do when they’re not in arenas. WHERE DID ALL THE PEOPLE GO? You know – the people that used to be in the WORLD of warcraft??

Teleports are everywhere.

Log in. Teleport. Instance. Teleport. Log out. Repeat. Not exactly the WORLD of WAR …craft that I was sold on.

CONCLUSION:

I’ve got some major issues with where they’re taking this game – away from the WORLD and the WAR and the SERVER COMMUNITIES and towards instant battlegroup content that’s all instanced and “safe” and linear and very predictable and gives the player an almost certain expectation of reward. But they’re fixing the class issues and bugs faster and better than they ever have, and they seem to be getting better at that. That said – I’d rather hear “Soon ™ ” and “When It’s Done” than have to deal with crap like this shoulders issue.

“He’s too powerful! Heroes, quickly, come to me! We must leave this place immediately! I will do what I can do hold him in place while we flee.”

Horrified to see the indomitable Sylvanas turning on her heels, I run along with her and my team-mates as I suddenly realise that the Lich King himself is coming for me… and he’s pissed off! Cue adrenaline rush. Cue running for my life.  Cue a big grin on my IRL face. I’m totally lost in the moment. This is Warcraft history in the making.

Then: “Shammy, come over here.” I turn to see my fellow team-members, instead of running with Sylvanas as she makes a defiant last stand, have cowardly hidden in a corner. They casually ignore Arthas as he strides slowly past them. They’re actually ignoring the Lich King. Confused I huddle up with them, wondering what’s going on. When I ask why we’re not legging it along with the  Banshee Queen, I’m told that “it doesn’t matter, its easier this way”. We then proceeded to rather pathetically follow behind the Lich King instead of fleeing from him, picking off his undead minions in ones and twos. We got to the end, defied physics by walking through the final rockfall  and completed the instance. I was annoyed. This was the first time I had run the Halls of Reflection and that thrilling experience had been marred by a PUG who would rather finish the instance in record time than to become immersed in the awesome-sauce of Warcraft. I felt cheated. I had been taken from my exciting make-believe world where I was fighting alongside one of my favourite heroines, to being reminded that I was just stabbing buttons on a keyboard to make pixels hit other pixels.

Sylvanas Windrunner: Not just a pretty set of pixels.

So I was relieved when I ran the Halls again today and found that Blizzard have made it impossible to do this anymore. Now if you try to hide round the corner from Arthas his evil aura of death blasts you and your naughty ways into nicely charred chunks. If you want to complete the instance, you have to do it the proper way, the way which tells a story. Quite frankly I find it sad that they have to do this at all. Personally I would always choose a cool story-based version of a game over one which just involved you getting through the content as quickly as possible. Otherwise why have content at all, why not just have a random shooting gallery of brightly coloured pictures to blow up in the fastest possible time? Of course others do not share my lore-love, which is why I was glad to see Blizzard making sure that even for the power-gamers, there will always be a story to play through.

Of course maintaining the balance between gameplay and immersion is a tricky issue in any computer game. If the gameplay isn’t fun and engaging, whats the point? But if the engaging narrative and immersive world isn’t there, we may as well be playing Space Invaders. Now of course Blizzard should not force players to have to slog through complex lore-laden encounters at every turn. Not everyone wants to be playing The Longest Journey, sometimes they just want to log on for half an hour and kill bad guys. However I do think that wherever it is possible to do so without significantly affecting gameplay quality, that narrative experience should be there without fail. What has always set WoW apart for me is that it really is a living breathing world, full of wonder and excitment, and even places to relax and have a cup of tea. That’s something we should cherish, not dumb down.

Now, despite my current praise, Blizz have not always been on my side on this one. The Random Dungeon Finder itself is kind of an immersion killer. I remember not long after Wrath had been out, myself and some guildies proceeded to do every heroic in one day, which involved a lot of flying around and travelling. It was a hassle, but it was also a great experience, flying towards Utgarde Pinnacle together, or making our way toward Ulduar. Nowadays such a thing would not be necessary, you can just teleport there and back in the blink of an eye. Easier but less realistic (and yes I know its a world of dragons and sorcery, I’m talking subjective realism here). Now I totally understand why Blizzard implemented such a feature. With the current state of gear most of the end-game population has, heroics are a cakewalk which are run primarily for the sake of collecting emblems in order to raid new content. The random dungeon feature also helps keep all that content fresh and keeps player boredom under control. In many ways it was a clever move, but one that I hope they will be responsible with.

For instance (no pun intended), whilst it doesn’t break believability too much when we’ve already run these instances a hundred times, I really hope that in Cataclysm we wont be able to just teleport straight into a dungeon that we’ve never visited before. Cast your mind back to when Wrath came out. Now imagine that not long after arriving in Howling Fjord, you had used the random dungeon feature to get a Nexus group. You would have been teleported straight inside without any knowledge of Malygos, the Nexus War or any of what the Blue Dragonflight were up to. You’d even kill Keristrasza without having first fought by her side or even knowing who she was. Yes, it still would have been a cool instance and good fun, but you’d have lost a great deal of the immersive process. Therefore, I can only hope that Blizzard act in the future as they have done with their Halls of Reflection hotfix, in a way that is responsible with the background and the player’s experience of it. It really does make for a better game.

Water Walking: Another barrier to immersion..... get it?

Read Muqq’s post about Ensidia’s world first kill of Lich King 25man (buggy encounter, use of Saronite Bombs etc):

• http://ensidia.com/muqq/blog/4078/

Then – and this is the fairly hilarious thing, read Tigole’s post from way back when in Legacy of Steel EQ days (scroll all the way down):

• http://www.legacyofsteel.net/oldsite/arc27.html

Ahhh, I love the smell of drama in the morning!

I disagree with a lot of the things Muqq said. For starters the game is tons better today than it was at launch – mostly – with the exception of maybe world pvp as far as I’m concerned. But you can’t deny that Blizz, who supposedly pride themselves on Soon ™ and polished content and the “When It’s Done” philosophy – really did release a very bugged Lich King encounter and then banned the raid who completed it while it was still bugged – whether or not the one rogue who was using the Saronite Bombs that were causing the bug knew – or whether the rest of the raid knew – that they were clearly making the encounter significantly easier than intended. Until proven that the raiders knowingly exploited a bugged mechanic (show me chat logs, or a vent recording of them saying “hai guise – every time I drop a Saronite bomb the platform rebuilds itself – should we continue to exploit this?”) then I’m inclined to side with the people who did NOT release bugged content that had been inadequately tested.

Dropping Saronite Bombs as extra dps in a raid environment is an expensive thing to do, but it was clearly something that was very regularly done by this rogue. That the Blizzard QA team didn’t know about this mechanic and therefore didn’t test it is an indication that the QA team needs to be more aware of how players play the game. It should not be the responsibility of the players to alert the QA team on how to maximize their dps.

They fixed it quick. But it’s still just as bad as what Tigole had to deal with back in the day.

So mega points to Muqq for a well written parody post. And points given to Blizzard for a good game and hotfixing issues quickly – points then taken away for banning a raid for creative use of game mechanics and releasing bugged VERY HIGH PROFILE content.

I wouldn’t have care much if this was a bug issue on Festergut or Rotface. But Arthas? The Lich KING? Come on, this is the biggest bad guy you’ve ever set up to fall in the story of the game and the previous games and the game world.

I’m waiting out my Dungeon Cool down by writing this post. I JUST WANTED MY BADGES.

Once upon a time there was a DK tank  who entered an instance as tank in his DPS spec. So this here Shadow Priest come healer out of desperation of 13 min queues told him he was in the wrong spec, and I’m the baddie!

Look I went for a week without posting bad Looking for group stuff. I deserve a rant!

I have Elitist Group installed. He was taking a fair bit of damage  – and I wanted to understand why.  So I checked the summary for the party.  I was confused.  Gear = 0%  and then I checked his details. He wasn’t in tank spec, but was in tank gear.

Could I have healed a DPS tank with no sheild,  and in the wrong spec.  Probably,  and I would do it if a tank I knew wanted to try it for kicks.  Means more work for me, but thats ok – if its someone I know.

I just cannot believe the nerve, and hell yeah it was worth leaving party for it.  If only I could have left a warning note for the next healer.

And yes I was nice enough to leave inbetween pulls.

I shall do another random and find someone nice to talk about..  Wish me luck!

Since I have just dinged lvl 68 and Northrend has opened up for me, there’s some basic stuff I would like to know. Like first off, what kind of gear can I expect to find in Utgarde Keep and the Nexus, since those will be my two primary pug dungeons with the new dungeon finder tool.

Keep in mind this is not warlock loot per se, but everything is a fucking upgrade at this point

Normal instance gear Utgarde Keep
Reinforced Velvet Helm (48 sta, 49 int, 43 spi, 51 spell power – Drops from Prince Keleseth 28%)
Skein Woven Mantle (33 sta, 41 int, 30 spell power, 15 mp5 – Drops from trash 2%)
Keleseth’s Blade of Evocation (60,7 dps, 24 int, 31 spi, 233 spell power – Drops from Prince Keleseth 29%)
Shroud of Resurrection (28 sta, 29 int, 44 spell power, 19 mp5 – Drops from Gortok Palehoof 25%)

Normal instance gear The Nexus
Attuned Crystalline Boots (31 sta, 41 int, 31 spi, 37 spell power – Drops off Keristrasza 30%)
Wand of Shimmering Scales (187 dps, 21 haste 26 spell power – Drops from Grand Magus Telestra 29%)
Band of Glittering Permafrost (25 sta, 33 int, 26 spell power, 10 mp5 – Drops from Keristrasza 30%)
Tome of the Lore Keepers (25 sta, 32 int, 23 spi, 26 spell power – Drops from Anomalus 29%)

Last night I was on Wookie and as I do my quests I ‘Q’ up for pug dungeons, my normal thing I do. I get into a couple, grind up some xp and upgrade some items along the way. The last pug I did for the night was Halls of Stone. Our Pal Tank is very green and wet behind the ears. It’s obvious as he accidentally pulls 3 3-4 mobs at the same time. I wait for the ever so unfair but fair feature for allowing a vote to ‘kick’ another. It never came.

We all rezzed.

He repeats the mistake but with half of the 12 npcs gone we –nay– HE aggroed’ the big metal patrol guy, so..we wipe again.

I wait once more for someone, anyone to initiate the kick. There are drawbacks for doing so. First and foremost it’s a tank. A sub 80 tank at that. Finding pugs on a consistent basis being under 80 is a crap shoot. Hence, me going about my questing. Tanks aren’t a dime/dozen nor are healers. I would venture to say, sub 80 there are less tanks than heals. So, with running the risk of a wait time that could exceed 10-20 mins, I guess no one wanted to risk that, let alone me.

We rez.

This time around I ask ‘Is this your first time tanking?’

Silence.

We eat/mana up, buff then I see that there are no real leaders in the group (me excluded). So I speak up and ask again if he’s new. I then go on to explain how to correctly ‘pull’ mobs and that I will MD him and pull since his way of taunting is to wide. He finally opens up and says he’s been here before but never as a tank. Halls of Stone (HoS) isn’t the best place to learn tanking 101 sub 80. But it does give opportunity to learn. So I ask the rest of the guild if it’s OK that we slow down. They all were good with this.

I still lay the agreement based on my comments above of the alternatives.

We slowly make our way to the 2nd to last boss — rather the waves. Our tank announces his chest, helm and gloves are all ‘red’. Red means the items or armor are ‘broke’, which in turn means the stats like life, strength, agility etc. are now useless. Over time unless it’s a Heirloom everyone has to ‘repair’. Apparently our tank forgot to do so prior to the run.

As I sit there sighing I realized that I’m witnessing my own progression in WoW. Difference being I wouldn’t publicly admit my dumb ass ness. He asks if he can go repair, another says the same thing and the other has to take a shit…or ‘bio2′. I smile.

10 min. later we all reconvene to the hall of the final boss. Kill it then I get a very nice tell from the healer. The healer is the girlfriend of the tank. She apologized to me and thanked me for not being an asshat, as prior to this run they would boot him from the group, she would then follow. I was, I guess the only one with patience and stepped up to the plate to offer advice. They have been playing for about 6 months and are both guildless because they simply take longer to learn things. I thank them for being THEM. I wished them well and if there ever on Azshara to give me a shout.

They left the group and I sat there in the instance feeling like I did something decent ingame. My MO is to simply leave the group after the 2nd wipe or if one of the healer or tanks leave. I don’t have much play time to fuck around like that. I tend to have 2-3 hrs a night, if that. This time around it was well worth  the TIME spent. This is what gaming is all about to me.

… in the world wide web daedalus.
The story begins during one of our Warhammer online sessions. While crushing some elven skulls, we were talking about the upcoming ‘next’ WoW expansion.
We somehow decided to go there with some new fresh characters to enjoy the brand ‘new old’ world.

A few days later, desperatly looking for some good online game to play, we ended up deciding to just start doing some WoW characters in the meantime.
Just as for the upcoming ‘new expansion’ characters though, the goal is to play almost only in dungeons as soon as it’s possible, and that requires some tanking, some healing and some damage.

But we also would like to avoid doing the very same characters we will do when the expansion is released (aka Paladin/Druid/Shaman).
There’s not that many classes in WoW and even less when it comes to what the people like to play !
Only one real possibility was left: Bear-Druid/Rogue/Heal-Cat-Druid (could have been Druid/Druid/Druid of course, but might as well put in some real rogue in there).
This setup also has some additionnal benefit: all can stealth ! We might be able to do funny moves in some of the dungeons.
Will Aajmi, Acquilara and Skaloo be ready for the challenge ?
Our travels begin tonight…

• Plug – Director’s Cut Music Video Version of last film: http://www.filefront.com/15356503/CB05.5%20Director%27s%20Music%20Video%20Cut.mp4

• PRO Prof. Put. TIP (try saying that fast and out loud ten times): Use the double-pot trick if you know your tank is good and will use it, too, or if you’ll get Vigilance or w/e. Idea is to pop a Potion of Speed a second or two (easy if he gives you a countdown) before you all go into combat. The timer starts and you’ll be able to use a second potion later in the fight. How much extra dps? I dunno, dude. I just work here. Get off my back. Go talk to a manager or something.

Maybe you do, but I personally don’t particularly enjoy fiddling with raid timer addons. I don’t like addons. I don’t like BigWigs. Yes, I’m grumpy. I much prefer DBM (resource hog?), and would like to try out Deus Vox Encounters. Or just go no-addon if Blizz ever gets around to making things so obvious and so unpredictable that raid timer addons go out of business as far as being useful goes. Yeah, I’d like a pony, too – but I sure as hell ain’t getting a pony or a chance to raid without timer bar addons anytime soon. You’d be either ridiculously stupid to try, or ridiculously skilled to succeed.

I’m not ridiculously skilled as I’m sure you noticed if you read my last post.

Professor Putricide kinda puts this **** on the spot since it’s so bloody dynamic and complicated and there’s crap on top of the crap on top of the crap on the floor.

1. Abomination blocking your view.
2. Boss facing changes every second.
3. Tank dragging boss around.
4. Mob pathing bug introduced in 3.3 that makes them behave badly and sometimes go off to the side of the tank a bit when he moves – or even behind him.
5. Two sets of adds that require wildly different responses from you and the raid.
6. Choking Gas Bomb vials on the ground.
7. Ground covered in green stuff.

But yeah, I finally figured out how to not suck at this. I will from now on not be anywhere near the top of the list of people who got hit the most by Malleable Goo or Choking Gas Bomb.

Here’s how to set it up in BigWigs, right-click and select “View Image” to see the settings since I haven’t figured out how to do thumbnails yet bloody hell:

Audio file on how to set up BigWigs for this fight that may or may not help you and/or your guildies:

• http://www.filefront.com/15433475/bigwigsputricide.mp3/

Why does my guild use BigWigs? I guess it’s a bit of a left-over from previous guild leaders, plus on this fight it does actually seem to have an edge on DBM in that it can output chatbubbles in /say over the top of the heads of people targeted by Malleable Goo. I’m sure your guild is much more skilled than mine. And I don’t really care. I raid to see cool stuff and hang out with friends.

YES PLEASE.

Don’t ever tell your guild that you’re not gonna wipe the raid again this night – like you did last night. On the limited-attempt boss. Right before the very first attempt of the night.

• Plug – Director’s Cut Music Video Version of last film: http://www.filefront.com/15356503/CB05.5%20Director%27s%20Music%20Video%20Cut.mp4

Yo Zarhym, my main man, WAAASSSSUPP!

OP in the thread, some 56 troll type person:

Seriously, everybody just afk queues in Dalaran all day long to get teleported to their instances or else join raids to get teleported too, so please let us uninstall everything in the game but that town once we reach level 80, and add an auction house in it.

And you also could give the option to never install the rest of the game at all and just install Dalaran and instances on our hard drive from the start! You can level from level 15 to 80 with random instances anyway!

That would be a great save of disk space! There is no World PvP and no World PVE to do anyway, just solo daily quests that are, I think we all agree, completely dull and boring.

Why did you create a World blizzard? We don’t need it! Please let us save disk space!

Thanks.

Zarhym’s response:

Is Monday when a bunch of aspiring Jonathan Swifts hit the World of Warcraft forums?

I wrote a rather harsly worded response to that, as it’s an issue I care a bit more about than the same old regular OMG U NERFZ ME WAAAAAAH crap that’s general issue for the official wow forums. I’ve now joined a long and rather illustrious row of people who have been banned from them for speaking their mind a little too much. Yep, a bunch of us are people who just plain deserved it. And maybe I did, too – you, Dear Reader, can make up your own mind about that. And a bunch of us are people who were just plain very outspoken advocates of a class or issue, and got caught up in being reported and banned for things that are pretty dam well selectively enforced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum Example:

I’m gonna make a rule that no-one can step on the cracks on the pavement, and ban you from the pavement when I catch you doing so. I’ll then leave it to your fellow pedestrians to notify me when it happens.

Haha! I just caught you stepping on the crack in the pavement. BANHAMMER.

I’m also gonna make another rule that if you disagree with any decisions I make you can email neverreadjunkmail@rulesfeedback.com and tell you that your complaint will be handled with due diligence and your problem will be dealt with by the people who oversee me. Don’t worry if you don’t receive a response, that’s normal. If we decide an error was made in banning you we will let you know. It’s also illegal to discuss these issues while walking on the pavement where the ban took place and there is no oversight or transparency in the process after you no longer have a right to walk there. [Incidentally, this type of procedure is why we need congressional civilian oversight on everything I do and say as a real-life military person - and everything the various intelligence/police/security/government people do. Of course, Blizzard forums are run by a private corporation, so a parallel argument is not very useful or appropriate as it's perfectly fine and even beneficial for society-at-large for them to make whatever rules they want regarding a service they provide for their customers.]

1. Then again, it’s their forums and they can do what they want.
2. Or you can take the view that he was really doing me a favour since I waste way too much time on the game and the forums as is, and generally fight an uphill battle against the vast majority of players who are generally speaking more interested in quick easy phat epix and telling you that you suck because of your lack of achievements or arena rating.
3. Or you can take the view that my voice on the subject of the progressively more apparent lack of a WORLD in the WORLD of WARcraft has now been conclusively, absolutely sure beyond the shadow of a doubt – heard by the powers that be. And that’s really cool. I’m perfectly fine with giving up my posting privileges on the official forums just for knowing that YES FINALLY SOMEONE WITH SOME SORT OF CONNECTION TO A DEVELOPER DID ACTUALLY PAY ATTENTION to what I wrote regarding the continually worsening situation with regards to WORLD pvp, immersion, instant teleports, battlegroup-centric content in BGs, arenas etc versus building persistent server communities in an immersive, dangerous WORLD full of adventure and excitement.
4. Or you can take the view that I’m just a jerk who got what I deserved. I’m ok with that, too. Feel free to have whatever opinion you want to have. My voice was heard. I’m cool. Peace.
5. EDIT: Or the post was reported by whomever and actioned by another nameless faceless forum moderator, with no connection to – or input whatsoever on the powers that be. In which case this is all just a moot point. Oh well.

Either case, if you take the view that Blizzard is out to get you or that Zarhym’s an ***hole you’re just plain wrong. They want you as a paying customer and their employees generally speaking will act to further what they believe is in the best interest of the game, the company and the community as a whole.

EDIT: Dammit, I could’ve sworn the ban was permanent. Must. Resist. Urge. To get PERMABANNED. Ugh. Not like going with a massively persistent sandbox WORLD full of WORLD pvp and capturable zones and towns/cities and WG-style buffs and help for the outnumbered faction will ever be as popular as the phat easy quick lootzors that most people who just log in, queue up, teleport to instanced BG/arena/raid/dungeon, teleport back & log out really want. So really, having what I wrote make even a negative, small, minor impact is really about as good as you can ask for in this situation. There’s been hundreds of posts on the subject, ten times more reasonable than the troll that got the attention or the post that got me banned. Oh well. WORLD PVP WILL NEVER DIE. Not while I’m still playing. Might actually get a second account, turn down all the settings on it, face a wall inside a safe area on a lowbie Horde alt, then take my main and run rampant in Borean Tundra or something while taking screenshots of the Horde general chat and whispers on my Horde toon – kinda like a certain  http://dkeserver.se/stuff/angwe/ character.

Previous history reference:

http://coldbear.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/coldbear-vs-zarhym-on-blizzard-forums/

EDIT:

80% sure that it originally was a permanent ban. Was very surprised when I looked a little more carefully after getting the same “Account Banned” screen upon accessing the forums, and saw that it was temporary. Of course, I could be wrong.

• Plug – Director’s Cut Music Video Version of last film: http://www.filefront.com/15356503/CB05.5%20Director%27s%20Music%20Video%20Cut.mp4

You want something in game.

Easy groups.
Easy access to raid bosses.
Gear.
Action.
Arena Rating.
Guild membership.
More dps
Be a better tank
Be a better healer
More gold
More Primordial Saronite or “Resource Whatever”.
Legendary this or Legendary that.

• Option 1:

sit on your *** and complain and hope that mommy or daddy will hear or someone will come hold your hand

• Option 2:

Figure out who might possibly be interested in the same damn thing.
Figure out who amongst those might be good resources or are already good at this
Figure out who might be – not good, but reliable/decent enough – to get better/accomplish the same things you want, alongside you.

Google is your friend most of the time. Among 10-15million players someone’s probably already solved your issue and posted something on the internet about how they did it. There’s guides for every class, role and spec. If you don’t use easily available information then you’re damned to always having to figure things out on your own.

Who’s good for your PuG raid on instance X, Y or VOA? Hmmm… probably people in already established raiding guilds, or people who are already experienced at this kind of PuG or that kind of content.

http://www.wowprogress.com/pve/us/ravenholdt

/who majestas
/who the dark passion
/who hand of the gods
/who syndicate

/whisper
Ctrl+C
Ctrl+V

Or you can just use the Elitist Group addon. Or any of the many other addons that will give you info about a player. Or look them up on QuickArmory and check their achievements/gearlevel.

BUT WAAAAAH THESE PEOPLE ARE ALL JERKS WAAAAAH AND DON’T LET ME IN WAAAAAH

It’s ok, little girl. Daddy’s here to help you.

Google your class + role + guide

or “how to”

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=warlock+dps+guide
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=warrior+tanking+how+to
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=boomchicken+I+don%27t+understand+how+to+fire+my+lazer
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=i%27m+a+rogue+and+my+dps+sucks+and+they+make+fun+of+me
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tanks+get+all+the+girls
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+is+katzeus+such+an+arse+WAITLISTING+ME
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+solo-heal+Arthas+on+25p+heroic+ultra+hard+mode

Get better. Get all the easily available emblem gear. Do VOA every reset. Get in on the GDKP runs. Study. Learn. Research. Organize things yourself, and learn how to do it. Get a reputation.

.

Ok, fine. So this doesn’t work all that awesome if all you want is Arena Rating 9000 because you just got spanked by Swol and Lupelupeluuu. Witness my grand arena rating of exactly… *drumroll* …170.
.
But you can still google some guides and How-To things on getting started on arena stuff. You’ll find SOMETHING useful. Then make some friends and see if you can’t solve problems together instead of each one of you by yourself.

Point is:

Sit on your *** and get NOTHING done, and get NO sympathy from ***holes like me.

OR

Take charge and go make some money, do your research, get in a good guild, buy up 25 Primordial Saronite from wherever and then BAM you’ve got Shadow’s Edge and you’re going places. And then find yourself being asked to go do stuff instead of you doing all the asking.

Lastly, don’t b**** about not getting what you want if you’ve never led a raid or taken the lead in getting pvp organized. Start doing that and you’ll learn a ton of stuff, real fast. Especially about having to balance competing priorities and whiny little kids who are used to solving their problems by crying to mommy.

What is srvctl? it is the Server Control Utility, we use SRVCTL to start and stop the database and instances, manage configuration information, and to add, move or remove instances and services.

These are some of the most commons srvctl commands I use, this is not a complete reference guide.

I organized the commands as follow:

• To start a rac database
• To stop a rac database
• To check status and configurations
• To start and stop instances
• To start, stop and manage services

Start a rac database (order: nodeapps – asm – database)

srvctl start nodeapps -n
srvctl start asm -n
srvctl start database -d
options are: srvctl start database -d -o open | -o mount | -o nomount

Stop a rac database (order: database – asm – nodeapps)
srvctl stop database -d -o immediate
options are: srvctl stop database -d -o normal | -o transactional | -o immediate | -o abort

srvctl stop asm -n
options are: srvctl stop asm -n -o immediate

srvctl stop nodeapps -n

To check status and configurations
Nodeapps:
srvctl status nodeapps -n

srvctl config nodeapps -n

ASM:
srvctl status asm -n
srvctl config asm -n

Database:
srvctl status database -d
srvctl config database -d (shows instances name, node and oracle home)

Instance:
srvctl status instance -d -i

Services:
srvctl status service -d

To start and stop instances

srvctl start instance -d -i
srvctl stop instance -d -i

To start, stop and manage services
srvctl status service -d
srvctl config service -d
srvctl start service -d -s
srvctl stop service -d -s

srvctl relocate service -d -s -i -t [-f]

Documentation for Oracle 10G R2 and 11G

I’ve classified this under a raid, though strictly looking it’s just an instance. But for me anything that takes 3 hours or more just to get to the end (but not to complete all of the quests, oh no!) is very raidish.

Anyway, I’ve done it! I’ve been to Fornost! Hard to believe after all, but after failing to find a fellowship for The Twisted Heart in Evendim, I rode out to North Downs, with a rough plan to keep looking for a fellowship willing to immerse in gargantuan Fornost instance while I rode from Tinnundir to Esteldin (a long, long ride). It was my lucky day, it seems. Just one LFF message, I haven’t even reached the Greenway on the Fields of Fornost proper, and I already had not one, but three (3!) answers to my message. One of them was one already formed fellowship that took me in. In the end we had to turn people down! Incredible luck to be online in time when so many others showed interest for the same content as me. Rare event for Evernight server indeed.

The fellowship was led by a level 65 warden, but of other fellows, my champion was the most  advanced (level 43). Others were 40, 38, 36 and such. In other words, the party was more or less on par with quest designated levels. We had, besides a warden and a champion, a captain, a hunter and two rune keepers (in other words, plenty of heals). This is the fellowship that started out, but one of our rune keepers had to quit sometimes mid-instance, but even five of us managed quite well.

Read on for my Fornost impression.

Fornost is a great instance and I’m really happy that I had the chance to experience this content. There are many areas to pass trough, many quests to complete and even sub-instances inside the instance proper, not to mention related quests before the instance entrance itself! Many quest chains reach their culmination here, from all over the North Downs area.

But many bosses (some rather tough) means a lot of work just to reach them. Instance itself is a maze, similar to Garth Agarwen, but even larger and longer. You have to clean different areas, with different types of enemies (orcs, goblins, trolls, undead…), each area has its tower, and at the top of the tower is the area boss. In some areas are secondary bosses – ends of quests lines picked up in different parts of North Downs.

Interesting thing to note is that killing mobs on Fornost gains you reputation with Rangers of Esteldin, which is kind of neat.

I’ve really enjoyed playing Fornost, however, there are some things I found rather bothersome, to say the least. First and above all: the area is HUGE. It took us over three hours straight just to reach the last boss. When you die and respawn at the instance entrance and you have to run to rejoin your buddies, then it is that you grasp how huge this maze is. A wrong turn (you get lost running eventually) and you run into a group of overlooked mobs that you cannot tackle alone, and its dying and running all over again. Hopefully, didn’t happen often, at least not until we reached the final boss.

And that one is TOUGH! Five of us failed miserably. Then it was running arround, getting trough the shortcut-gate only to find (many) new mobs and an area needing cleanup and so on. When we reached the boss (again), we failed (again). We lasted a bit longer the second time arround though. I guess it requires a full fellowship, better equiped (and fresh!) to tackle that guy. Fighting bosses with loads of dread with late 30s or early 40s characters is very, very though.

Another issue I found is a quest where you have to free some trapped spirits (15 of them, if I recall correctly). Problem is, there aren’t many of those spirits arround anyway (we at least haven’t run into many of them, but on the other hand we haven’t cleared the entire area where the spirits are), plus each of the fellows has to free 15 . That makes it some 90 spirits to free (and they are not quick to respawn)?! Plus, it seems like that quest has a followup, or something?!  Thanks, but no thanks.

In the end, after we had enough and said out thank yous and goodbyes, I logged off just in front of the instance entrance, I haven’t even turned in the completed quests and sorted out and sold the gathered loot. After 3+ hours of eventful playing, my arse (pardon my words) went numb, my feet hurt and my hands were sore. And it was quite late, time flies when axes work…

My Fornost impressions are rather positive, but the instance is just to big to play. No wonder people avoid it. All the fun aside, after some two hours inside the instance everything becomes a toil and all fun is gone. Everybody is just looking to get it over with. Also, many fellowships break apart sometimes mid-instance, because everybody can’t afford three or four hours straight playing a game. That, plus spirits quest issue makes me think I’m not going in to finish those quests that are left. I had enough of Fornost for some time.

However, listening a LOTRO related podcast, I heard developers have in plan revamping the North Downs, including Fornost instance (similar to what they did with Garth Agarwen in the Lone lands). That gives hope, because there is some great content in there, something all players should experience.

]]> http://shrubform.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/lfg-to-carry-me/ Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:22:44 +0000 Hoof http://shrubform.wordpress.com/2010/01/17/lfg-to-carry-me/

Today I’m going to talk about the flaws with the new LFG system Blizzard implemented. Thanks to Moonmystic for the idea. I know we’ve all had great successes with the LFG system, particularily if your a tank or healer. But there are those times when things just don’t seem to work out with the system. Getting paired with people with 2k less gearscore, or everybody a DPS but people with terrible gear queing as tank just to get into an instance faster but not tanking.

We’ve all seen it. One way I thought of to make the system work, was have the system itself check your gear beforehand and scale the instance to your gear. I don’t mean make all heroics a cakewalk for people in bad gear, but scale them accordingly. If your group is all in ICC 10/25 gear, make it a bit harder! Scale it up so we don’t have to just sleep our way through it! And if your group is in the lower gear category, scale the health and hits of the boss down a little bit until they get better gear. In the end, both parties would be happy. Geared people would get a challenge, while undergeared people would still get their heroics. Just a thought though.

Tell me what you think of the idea.

Introducing a not-so-new way of making gold and emblems which everyone knows about, A quick tour of the Looking For Group system.

This post is really for people who are coming up to level 80 and don’t know how to make gold. This is also a good way to get emblems too for gear, although if you don’t want gear then you can exchange 15 Emblems of Triumph for a Crusader Orb and earn a quick 200 gold… Just saying.

Looking For Group

Dungeon Finder Tool-Tip

Looking For Group is the little ‘Eye’ on the bottom of your screen (unless you have addons installed). If you have not edited your key binds then you can get to it by pressing the shortcut key ‘L’.

The Group Finder

This is the group finder, you’ll be able to open it up and search for a group from level 15. You can join groups with anyone in your battlegroup, but who you join groups with is not optional. If it is your first heroic of the day then keep in mind that you’ll get a Emblem of Triumph at the end of every boss too.

Assemble your group!

If you’re a level 80 DPS, then good luck getting into a group within 13 minutes… You might have a better chance making a group with guildies… However eventually I got into a group.

Group Ready Check!

It states your roll, the amount of gold you’ll get from completing the instance and what emblems you’ll get. The green flag means that you’re the leader of the group.

The Achievement

When you’ve grouped with 10 different people (2 groups, 3 if you’re unlucky), you’ll receive an achievement, along with your promised prize, Emblems and Gold!

A Frozen Orb drops at the end of every Heroic

In the final boss of every Lich King heroic, a Frozen Orb will drop. It may only be worth 20 gold in the auction house, but it’s still gold. Think of it as instead of getting 26 gold at the end of the instance, you get 50 gold.

Take Two!

If you have more spare time and wish to do another group, you can! But with a slightly smaller prize, 2 Emblems of Triumph and 13g 23s, which is half the gold. Still, fingers crossed that you’ll get a group in a easy instance like Violet Hold and it’ll be a breeze.

Oculus is Nerfed!

I hope this post helped or came to some use for you, Good luck in your Instance…ing! (Especially if you’re a DPS)

Next, please.

I tend to find there are few people who actually want to run a lower abyss instance. The LFG chat rarely sees any activity from someone looking to put together a group for these, at least on the Nezekan server.

The odd thing is these are pretty fun to do with a group and only take 15 minutes or so to complete. These instances are also nice source of AP and XP free from being ganked by the other faction when grinding in the abyss. You might even get a nice drop too!

The main point of running these instances is to get the treasure found in one or more treasure chests. The quests you receive to kill things come after every chest has been looted or the 15 minute timer runs out. Why the treasure chest(s) first? You can gain everything from rare drops, quest drops to seals and other items worth a lot of additional kinah and AP! Even kinah itself can be found in these chests, anywhere from 20k+ each. The chests only stay for 15 minutes once someone runs past the transparent wall so grab them while you can.

Entry Points

You can enter these instances by going to the relevant lower abyss fortress and entering via the gateway/portal found in the artefact room. There is also an NPC in each fortress with a repeatable quest which rewards additional XP/AP for completing the objective.

Note that once inside the instance there will be a blue transparent wall at some point. The 15 minute timer starts as soon as a player crosses it, this includes pets (careful Spiritmasters!). Once the timer runs out all remaining treasure chests disappear so the main focus is to get to as many of these as possible in the time limit and loot them.

Also there is also a lock-out of 17 hours for each instance once you are inside. If you leave even having not started the instance you will be locked out until the lockout has passed.

Sulfur Tree Nest

The treasure chest in this instance has a chance to drop the Blade Fragments required for the quest To Catch a Dragon. I have also seen this drop multiple seals as well. I would recommend anyone starting off with Abyss instances to attempt this first as it is the easiest.

Note that I have borrowed these pictures from an overseas non-English site. If they are yours and you want them removed, please let me know

Sulfur Tree Nest (Click for larger image)

Once you pass the barrier you want to only aggo the minimum mobs required to get to the centre. All participants should then stand on the island and not move off, so as to avoid aggoing the patrols and other mobs nearby.

The treasure chest itself requires quite a beat down to open. It is based on total hits not DPS so the best option is to all put your weapons away and simply punch the box, it is your fastest attack. If you have a Spiritmaster then he should additionally train the pet to hit the box for additional hits but make sure it is in a spot which will not aggro anything. The box itself takes up to 10 minutes to open if this is done correctly, far longer if you don’t.. Also, you will probably have these annoying little monsters chewing at your legs for 1 hit each time. Just ignore them and keep hitting that box!

Left Wing Chamber

This instance is a fair bit more difficult then Sulfur Tree Nest but a lot more nail biting and fun!

Left Wing Chamber (click for larger image)

Once you get past the transparent timer wall and kill the first few guards you will find the six chambers as per above. Note that you do not need to aggro all the mobs in the initial hallway if you are careful. This can save you a bit of time to help get to the chests.

As a group you want to kill the 6 elites in front of the bridges. Fail to do this and your group will most likely wipe! After this, the best strategy I have seen employed is to split the group into 3 groups of two and each group hits two chambers each one at a time. As per above, group one takes chambers 1 and 4, group two takes chambers 2 and 5 and group 3 takes chambers 3 and 6. Once you get to the end there should be a door, click on it to open and the chest is in the centre of the room.

To the far left you have the Treasurer mob accompanied by an elite mob and a patrol. You want to avoid aggoring him at all costs until you have completed the treasure chest component of the instance. He is pretty tough to kill and is the mob you need for the repeatable quest for this instance.

Another strategy for completing this instance is to split into two groups of 3. This is far safer and should still allow just enough time to loot all six chests if you are quick.

Once you have completed all six treasures (or time expires) go back to the main area and begin clearing the Elite mobs. The named boss for the repeatable quest can be found at the far left hand side.

Right Wing Chamber

I have deliberately left this one to last as I have yet to run it. So far the Asmodians have owned this fort every time I get a chance to run instances!

Right Wing Chamber (click for larger image)

Rewards

If you are lucky enough to get a seal or other reward you might be wondering what to do with it. Well the answer is simple!

At Terminon Landing there are various administrators standing around near the Eltnen teleporter. For the Asmodians reading this you will have similar at your lower abyss entry point. You just need to talk to the correct administrator for your reward item to cash it in. The smallest reward I have received was for a badly damaged seal and gotten 300AP for it! Well worth all the hard work (well 15 minutes of it) getting those treasure chests

glare

“Nice robes, hot stuff,” Kaliandra Mal’ashan commented with a grin. “Planning on seducing yourself some Scarlet boys?”

Cocking her jaw to one side, Taetra Sorrowstar levelled an icy glare on her best friend.

“Shut your mouth,” she snarled.

“Just walked in and picked the bustiest thing you could find, did you?”

They were standing at the entrance of the expansive library wing of the Scarlet Monastery, and with a group of the zealous humans standing only a few feet away, Taetra was in no mood to draw early attention to themselves, especially with her much more experienced sister still outside.

“They’re cute,” Kaliandra murmured, still going on about the new robe Taetra had picked up. It certainly wasn’t the rampant tomboy’s style, but as an aspiring Warlock she had to take any help she could get, and while the apperance offended her, she couldn’t argue with the magickal properties imbued into the smooth fabric. “Even you could find a man in these.”

“Get off it,” Taetra muttered, slapping her friend’s hand away.

“A woman, then?” Kaliandra suggested, and burst into laughter at the shocked, speechless expression that crossed Taetra’s face. Behind them, Saelym finally slipped through the door, her owl Baptyst at her side, and glanced sidelong at the girls.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Nothing!” Taetra yelped before Kaliandra could open her mouth.

“Sure, sure,” Saelym replied, unconvinced. She edged to the corner of the short hall and pressed her hand to the stone, using her second-sight to locate the humans around the corner. “Ah, there they are,” she murmured, and when she glanced over her shoulder at the two girls, raised an eyebrow slightly. “Are those new robes?”

partners

The air in the void was cold, below-freezing – their breath puffed out in white clouds and their skin chafed against cold armor and cloth. Still, the adventurers of Nox Natus Iterim were not deterred. They’d come for the head of Malygos, and the head of Malygos they would secure.

Having never visited the dragon lord’s lair, Saelym was uncomfortable, and it showed – normally talkative with her fellow guildmates, she sat alone near the outer ring of the prepatory platform, arms wrapped around her knees, watching the others prepare for battle.

“Mmm, Northrend’s truly frozen over the day you stop babbling,” Eternalash commented idly as he dropped to the stone floor beside her, chewing away on some conjured food. He offered her the half-eaten goods and she shook her head, not meeting his somewhat amused gaze. “Going to lose your head over a silly dragon?”

“No,” she muttered.

“You’d be as bad as Vash.”

“I’m fine.”

“Mmm.” He gazed up to Malygos’ swooping form, watching the dragon weave slowly over the small group of raiders, and his bony features widened into a grin. “I could probably grip him from here, you know.”

“Eternal…”

“Would be fun.”

“No. No, it would not.”

pausing

Moraena was one of the Blood Elves that reminded you why they were such a proud, strong race, and why they’d been able to overcome hardships to rebuild their culture despite their crippling magickal addiction. Strong-willed and sharp-tongued, the young Priest-in-training had razor wit and a cold stare that shook me to my roots whenever she levelled it on me.

Thankfully, more often than not it was directed at her companion, Saelym, who was giving her young friend a tour of Zul’Farrak, the two of them culling the resident Troll population (from what I gathered, in my many conversations with Saelym, it was one of her favorite hobbies). I encountered the two while doing some stealth photography in the sandy city, and we chatted for some time before they moved on, leaving arrow-ridden and shadow-blasted bodies in their wake.

• Director’s Cut Music Video Version: http://www.filefront.com/15356503/CB05.5%20Director%27s%20Music%20Video%20Cut.mp4

Released late last night. Plugged it on a bunch of forums and websites this morning. Now to sit back and let the Oscars committee come to me. Oooooor NOT. This isn’t exactly high-brow art – but there’s some cool visuals and good music and some fun stuff and I like it.

The music video version turned out OK and I can actually stand watching it a few times – not that there aren’t as usual fifteen different little things I’d like to fix now after the fact. A movie is never really finished – it’s just in different stages of being almost ready for release – so at some point you just gotta say “**** it – time to drop this *****”.

• ORIGINAL Guide: How To Feral DPS

http://www.filefront.com/14885557/Guide How To Feral DPS.mp4
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=130705
http://www.viddler.com/explore/parl2001/videos/2/ (Full Movie)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nuc5MhpekM (part 1 of 2)
http://www.wegame.com/watch/guide-how-to-feral-dps-part-one-of-two/ (part 1 of 2)

• Things I got wrong (update):

http://www.filefront.com/15359235/CB05.5%20Things%20I%20got%20wrong%203000.mp4

http://www.noobflicks.com/watch/8744/cb055_things_i_got_wrong
http://www.wegame.com/watch/cb05-5-things-i-got-wrong-2/

• Written Guide:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Feral_DPS_guide (hopefully to be updated by community)

…OF COURSE, THAT’S JUST MY OPINION. I COULD BE WRONG.

The original video is up to about 160,000 views now (not counting re-uploads on overseas sites), the update isn’t that big of a deal but I figured I should at least address the common complaints (like “TOO FAST OMG HEAD EXPLODE”) and fix my mistakes.

Ghostcrawler: If you want to do the best damage possible, you need to be able to master a complex rotation. This is one of the features that attracts players to the Feral spec. However, it’s also pretty forgiving. If you just Shred, you’re going to do decent damage. If you Shred and try to keep up Savage Roar, it’s going to be better. If you can also manage your Mangles and Rips and Rakes, then you have the potential to do very high damage (assuming you don’t have to move around much and can reach the target’s back).

Now – here’s the crux: I worked my butt off to make these things. I did my research. I talked to Allev, Murna, Kalon, Aranor, Astrylian, Vallen and a bunch of other smart/good ferals about this. Ok, so my opinions might be wrong about a lot of things – but there is no way in hell I can make a guide and start off with a straight face saying you don’t need addons to play this spec well – or even remotely effectively. All dps specs face this issue to some extent – but the JOHN ****ING MADDEN design of this spec more or less makes average players like myself disproportionately dependent on the addons to get the job done to an approximate level of the people I’ve leveled with, geared with and raided with for a good two years now. Yep, I’m saying it’s unfair.

The way to show your mastery of a class and skill at performing should be evident in your play – not dependent on what addons you download or how you design your UI to get short-term buffs, threat meter, debuffs, energy, combo pts, your hp, target hp, cooldowns, boss timer bars, raid frame addons all fit someplace on the screen where you can easily monitor it all quickly while getting your much-harder-than-anyone-else’s positioning requirement right as well.

Sum up:
1. tons of stuff all over the screen
+
2. one of the more complex priority lists in the game, if not THE most complex
+
3. only dps spec with positioning requirement for main attack

equals:
You simply have to have addons to be nearly as effective as other specs using no addons given approximately same skill/gear etc.

EDIT: Just found a funny little cool thing. If you go to 3:47 in the video you’ll see a FC Cat from a front camera angle – apparently the front paws get a green glow during the jump. Looks kinda cool.

Unfortunately there is no direct way to do it. Speacialy for the managed code. May you can use memorystream and serialization for getting an idea but this are not actual size of your object. You may use some solution below for calculation actual size.

GC
One way is to use the GC.GetTotalMemory method to measure the amount of memory used before and after creating your object. This won’t be perfect, but as long as you control the rest of the application you may get the information you are interested in.
Source :http://stackoverflow.com/questions/605621/how-to-get-object-size-in-memory

Using Strike or SOS Debugging Extension (SOS.dll)
use : DumpHeap [-stat] [-min <size>][-max <size>] [-thinlock] [-mt <MethodTable address>] [-type <partial type name>][start [end]]

Displays information about the garbage-collected heap and collection statistics about objects.
The DumpHeap command displays a warning if it detects excessive fragmentation in the garbage collector heap.
The -stat option restricts the output to the statistical type summary.
The -min option ignores objects that are less than the size parameter, specified in bytes.
The -max option ignores objects that are larger than the size parameter, specified in bytes.
The -thinlock option reports ThinLocks. For more information, see the SyncBlk command.
The -mt option lists only those objects that correspond to specified the MethodTable structure.
The -type option lists only those objects whose type name is a substring match of the specified string.
The start parameter begins listing from the specified address.
The end parameter stops listing at the specified address.

!dumpheap -stat
Note that !dumpheap only gives you the bytes of the object type itself, and doesn’t include the bytes of any other object types that it might reference

More Info:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb190764.aspx

3rd party solutions

Using .Net Memory Profiler (Easy way)
http://memprofiler.com/download.aspx

using CLR Profiler (free)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A362781C-3870-43BE-8926-862B40AA0CD0&displaylang=en

ANTS Memory Profiler
http://www.red-gate.com/products/ants_memory_profiler/index.htm

Note:
Some people have confused the System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.SizeOf() service with this API.  However, Marshal.SizeOf reveals the size of an object after it has been marshaled.  In other words, it yields the size of the object when converted to an unmanaged representation.  These sizes will certainly differ if the CLR’s loader has re-ordered small fields so they can be packed together on a tdAutoLayout type.
source : http://blogs.msdn.com/cbrumme/archive/2003/04/15/51326.aspx

code bye…