En el transcurso de este blog usare varios terminos de dentro del juego. Aquellas personas que juegue MMORPGs constantemente sabran de que hablo. Esta guia es para aquellos que desconocen ciertos terminos.

WoW – World of Warcraft. Necesito explicar mas?

Char – Character (Personaje). Tu avatar en el juego.

Main – Tu personaje principal y usualmente el primero que creaste.

Alter – Tu segundo personaje.

Tank – Tanque. Es uno de los roles del juego. El tank es el encargado de mantener el agro sobre el, mientras los DPS y Healer hacen su trabajo.

DPS – Damage Per Second. Este tambien es un rol, estos se encargan de hacer daño sin jalar el agro sobre ellos.

Healer – Curanderos. Un rol tambien importante. Se encargan de curar ya sea al tank o a los dps.

LFG – Looking For Group. Unas siglas muy recurrentes en las cuales das a ententer que buscas grupo para mazmorras (Dungeons) o Raids.

Ogri – Ogrimmar. Ciudad principal de la Horda. Habitada principalmente por orcos y trolls, liderada por Thrall el Orco.

TB – Thunder Bluff. Ciudad principal de los Tauren. Liderada por Cairne Bloodhoof.

UC – Undercity o Entrañas. Ciudad principal de los no Muertos Olvidados (Forsaken Undead). Liderada por la Reina Banshee Sylvanas Windrunner.

BG – Battle Grounds (Arenas). En estas arenas, dependiendo en la que participes, es la tematica de esta.

Hasta ahora son los terminos que mas uso, ya que suba de nivel y conosca mas lugares ire actualizandolos.

I think many raiders, and sadly raid leaders seem to view all the same. That each is just as good as the other, at every job.

And its annoying.

While I was capped, another guildie took over raid leading for the ulduar run. He put a pug holy pally put on raid heals, and our guildie holy priest put on tank healing, which anyone who’s every played either class/spec will know is a bad bad baaaaad idea. So I decided to do a brief write up for people as a brief guide about what each healing class/spec is best at.

Holy pallys excel as tank healers. Either healing 2 tanks at once, or a single tank and somewhat limited raid heals and a single tank. Don’t make them cry and put them on raid heals full time.

Disc priests excel at mitigating damage more so than actually healing compared to other classes. Divine agis, Power Word: Shield, and so on. The disc priest should be low on the meters, as absorbs aren’t actually measured properly (:(). They can do limited raid healing/prevention, but again, this will make them cry. Don’t make the tank healers cry.

Holy priest are raid healers foremost. They CAN tank heal in a pinch, but again, this is not their strength, and you’ll probably make them cry.

Resto shammy can be a capable tank healer, or raid healer. They excel at raid healing multiple raid members packed together in a single cast.

Resto druids can tank heal (again), although it is not their strength. The strength of a resto druid lies in covering the raid in a mass of rejuv. Perfect for any case where the raid is going to take steady raid damage. (twin valk anyone?).

We find our hero in the Ebon Hold terrorizing the newbies with Munchy’s “War Stories”. Yes, he really did man the 50cal…

Generally as you live your life and do any sort of team sport/activity you will meet friends. With these friends you will complete the activity/win the sport together, and you begin to trust in them. You trust that they will always have your back if something goes wrong with your strategy, you trust that they will save you if you are getting hurt, and much more.

Then after spending so much time together with your new friends you can basically complete any activity and KNOW the person. By this I mean, know what they would do, if they were to have trouble, and basically work together so simultaneously you are surprised you are not fused to each other’s hips.

This is what we call Synergy, and you will find this in your WoW “life”. Everyone has friends/guildies that they know very well and will be able to work well with no matter what role you play (DPS/Tank/Healer). This is probably one of the most important ties that you can possible have, and one should make use of this tie.

Raiding is like a Soccer Team, you have your players and are all part of the same team striving for the same goals (no pun intended, but it’s there anyways). If a few people do not do their jobs, you will wipe or lose the game for your team. Now if the team is full of synergy, you WILL not fail because you all know each other’s strengths, limits, weaknesses, and ability. Working together with perfect synergy is essential for both activities to succeed.

The Backstory

Yes, I joined a new guild, a 25m Raiding guild with high ambitions and two very great Raid Leaders with my friend, Bigblakbul and some other of the “core raiders” from my other guild. So far it has been pretty good, we downed everything up to the Val’kyr and decided to finish them off last night.

Just one problem, we didn’t, we sat there and wiped for quite some time until we finally just called it. Was it a Tanking problem? Hell no, Blak and I brought our A-Games for sure. The Healers were pretty good as well, but what was wrong, was the DPS. There were quite a few Melee DPSers that never switched targets throughout the night, as I am sure there were a couple of Ranged, but melee was our largest problem of them all. So what does this have to do with Synergy?

The Back Story After the Backstory

After the Raid our RL (Boomkin/Feral Tank OS) and our other RL (Prot/Ret Pally) asked Blak and I to hop into a private channel in vent with them. I knew that we had not done anything wrong, but I feared for the worst anyways. Here is (basically) how it went down, and luckily my fears were proven completely wrong!

RL: El, Blak, how familiar are you with ToC?

Me: We have both done it and lead it multiple times, why?

RL: Well, the way this used to be done made things become very “cliquey” now Co-RL and I have Tanked together and know each other very well, just like you two are comfortable Tanking with each other. What we want to do is not make this cliquey so that all of us (Tanks) are familiar with each other, because face it we will not all make it to every Raid and will have to Tank with each other regardless.

All: Damn Straight (In multiple variations, but that one sums it up)
RL: What we hope to do is to gear up people and get familiar with each other in 10m ToC, because the guild has more than enough people to do these full-guild we will be splitting off into 2 groups. Me and El will Tank the first one together, and Co-RL and Bigblak you guys will Tank the second so that we can break up any “cliques” and get to know each other.

All: Sounds good!

After, we talked about times that would suit us best and what-not, but I thought this was an extraordinary idea and it should work out very nicely. There is very little loot competition between the groups except for Trinkets/Rings/Neck/Cape and it will be easy to create a synergy since the groups can/will be swapped around once and awhile.

Skiiing! Yay!

How to Create Synergy

What my RL suggested was a great way to create Synergy between Tanks, you simply Tank with the people you will most likely be grouped with. After a few sessions you will know the person like he was your own brother in terms of Tanking. Once this happens, it will be a very powerful and effective tie for your Raid to have. Sure, the best geared Tanks in the server could do a great job Tanking some boss, but they will never know each other’s limits if they do not make a bond with the other.

Synergy is stronger than gear, being able to seriously know the person you are fighting beside is a huge advantage in any field, especially WoW. But are Tanks the only ones that need synergy?

Hell no! In fact there are multiple synergies that can be created in WoW, there are exactly 6 different combinations. These include:

• Tank to Tank
• Tank to DPS
• Tank to Healer
• Healer to DPS
• Healer to Healer
• DPS to DPS

So how does one actually create synergy? Very simple, just like our RL has done you “force” each other into playing alongside one another until you create a very strong bond. With said bond everything becomes easier because you have someone you can always count on to get the job done.

What does this have to do with my performance?

You are a Rogue and your best bud who you play all the time with is a Healer. Your buddy KNOWS that you are not always aware of fire and will be sure to top you off accordingly. The Healer buddy just saved your life and allowed you to keep DPSing your heart out. See the connection? Without that synergy your Raid would be left with one less DPS, and that can make a significant difference as to if your group will finish or crash and burn on the spot.

Let me take Klinderas for an example. There are points when my Runes start to stay on C/D and can be very tricky for me to get Aggro, as a great Hunter and friend he knew when to pop an MD on my ass and keep me Tanking when it really mattered. Hell, there were times back in TBC where he would put a Trap on me to lessen the inevitable chance of my death, it felt good to be able to count on someone.

As a Tank we will generally pop our OH SHI- buttons when needed, but depending on the Healer’s capabilities we may have to pop them earlier than we expected. If [Insert Healer friend here] and I were in the middle of a fight and I know when his heals start to dry out due to synergy, I press my shiny buttons and save both of our hides for a few more seconds.

This is very confusing, what is the point of this?

Look, we all establish ties with someone, and as *ahem* awkward as it sounds a bond with a friend is extremely valuable. Synergy is when this bond grows to the point of us being able to successfully complete tasks as if we were somehow turned into that person, and by doing so we know each other’s next move and limits. With this knowledge we can have a more wholesome experience in our Raid/Everyday life because we know who to count on and what they can do.

Synergy, it has saved my Raids, will continue to save my Raids, and makes the game that much more enjoyable because I KNOW that I have friends that I will entrust my virtual-life with.

Happy WoWing!
-Elno

On a Separate Note

@Baenhoof was taking requests for a free fully colored commission of their WoW character. All we had to do was be the 1st to tweet her with a screenshot of said character at the loading screen. Guess who got that commission?

No, I'm not taking off my pants, that costs extra!

Me! Still I question why no woman wants this hunk ‘o Blood Elf love. Those aren’t tattoos ladies, them be fightin’ scars!

I was browsing around, online shopping if you must, after I found a bit of money burning a hole in my pocket. I have been extremely good this year – Santa, can you hear me? – in not spending those hard earned pennies. Even when I found all my cashmere and wools had been violated by moths. I merely trudged on.

When I needed new pants or work gear, I became a frugalista.

When I wanted new funiture, I thrifted.

In trying to find a home for that money burning so hot I stumbled upon an ultimate gift. Shoes. Every month. For a Year.

It’s almost too much to bear, until you reach the price tag. For a mere $1,800, I could have a new pair of heels delivered to my door each month of 2010 – that works out to $150 per pair. Yikes! I do not currently own any garment that I paid more than $100 for, and those are the heavy hitter items – coats, cashmeres, etc. – and even those I stalked until they were around $100. But $150 pair of shoes each month? I’m sure they’re just gorgeous – especially after having seen all the shoes that came out of their catalog this previous year – but I think it would be daunting to wear a pair of shoes that cost that much – mostly because I would see every pair as having cost $1,800. Though I’m sure I would get over it…

This puts Fruit of the Month clubs to shame!

When you’re a stranger. -The Doors

So every time I am able to eek out a few minutes to write a post here, I look at the searches bringing traffic to my site. Spank me is inevitable, as I wrote a post about my wife’s warrior named spankmeplz. Today, I got a disturbing search.

Sylvester Stallone has an Amazing Ass

WTH?

I don’t even know what that means.

Ok, Druid is 73, and moving quickly. I have pretty much stopped BG, because I want gold from quests. Also questing in Outlands and Northrend has provided me plenty of herbs for my Inscription and alchemy professions.

That being said, I am having to purchase almost every Northrend herb that goes for less than 1 gold in order to keep up with the inscription business.

That being said, I am not making as much as I thought I would, but still enough.

I mainly heal with my Druid.

I tanked Regular UK and Regular AN last night. It was fun, but that shit requires crazy multi-tasking. Especially when I have a warrior who loves to spin in circles with his axe out.

I want everyone to have a great Thanksgiving. get your pet. Have some fun with the family. Be thankful for the things that matter.

Enjoy some Turkey.

From the Associated Press:

BRUSSELS – With a caretaker holding his hand, a Belgian man who was diagnosed as comatose for 23 years typed out a message Tuesday that he felt reborn after decades of loneliness and frustration. A leading bioethicist, however, expressed skepticism that the man was truly communicating on his own.

Car-crash victim Rom Houben was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state but appears to have been conscious the whole time, doctors here said. An expert using a specialized type of brain scan that was not available in the 1980s says he finally realized Houben was conscious and provided him with the equipment to communicate.

Assisted by a speech therapist who rapidly moved his finger letter by letter along a touch-screen keyboard, Houben told AP Television News that years of being unable to move or communicate left him feeling “alone, lonely, frustrated, but also blessed with my family.”

The therapist, Linda Wouters, told APTN that she can feel Houben guiding her hand with gentle pressure from his fingers, and that she feels him objecting when she moves his hand toward an incorrect letter.

“It was especially frustrating when my family needed me. I could not share in their sorrow. We could not give each other support,” Houben wrote during the interview at the ‘t Weyerke institute in eastern Belgium.

“Just imagine. You hear, see, feel and think but no one can see that. You undergo things. You cannot participate in life.”

Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said he is skeptical of Houben’s ability to communicate after seeing video of his hand being moved along the keyboard.

“That’s called ‘facilitated communication,’” Caplan said. “That is ouija board stuff. It’s been discredited time and time again. When people look at it, it’s usually the person doing the pointing who’s doing the messages, not the person they claim they are helping.”

Caplan also said the statements Houben allegedly made with the computer seem unnatural for someone with such a profound injury and an inability to communicate for decades.

Asked how he felt when his consciousness was discovered, Houben responded through the aide that: “I especially felt relief. Finally be able to show that I was indeed there.”

“Just like with a baby, it happens with a lot of stumbling,” he wrote.

The doctor who discovered that Houben had been wrongly diagnosed said that he is re-examining dozens of other cases.

Dr. Steven Laureys said he has discovered some degree of consciousness using state-of-the-art equipment in other patients but won’t say how many. He looks at about 50 cases from around the world a year but none are as extreme as that of Rom Houben, who was fully conscious inside a paralyzed body. Many center on the fine distinction between a vegetative state and minimal consciousness.

He said Tuesday that: “It is very difficult to tell the difference.”

His studies showed that some 40 percent of patients with consciousness disorders are wrongly given a diagnosis of a vegetative state.

“It is clearly unacceptable. It is four times out of ten that they think the patient is in a vegetative state but in reality he is minimally conscious,” Laureys said.

Patients from Europe and around the world brought to his center in Liege for a second opinion go through and PET scans, MRI’s and a battery of other tests during a weeklong reassessment.

“Sometimes patients fly in and there is all this hope. But after the tests we have to confirm they are the opposite case from Rom and that there is no error,” Laureys said. “But that too helps the family accept reality.”

In Belgium alone there are some 350 patients diagnosed as in a vegetative state, he said.

Não!… Não estou mudando o blog de lugar!…. estou mudando meu bonequinho do WOW de faction…. Isso mesmo… deixei meu lado humano e virei uma Blood Elf… *-*

Para MIGUXOS da Ally, que pensam ter se livrado de mim… estão enganados… a Lakina continua na Alliance… Só mandei a Grë pra Horda.

Today is World of Warcraft’s fifth birthday! Though there are often in-game events, Blizzard parties and hilarious meme images to accompany games’ birthdays, to commemorate the anniversary of this time-and-CPU-eating behemoth I will share with you the best WoW-themed birthday (and event) cakes Google Images has to offer. Behold:

Via ArsTechnica, a roommate’s girlfriend’s creation

Amazing airbrushing, via Erisana’s deviantart

Inspired by the Horde cake above, this thing is truly magnificent

Tons more, after the jump.

Two-tiered birthday cake – formal!

Nothing says, “Happy Birthday!” like a scowling green orc

Via geekologie and WoW insider, source unknown (though click through for a TON of additional themed cakes

A groom’s cake by Swank Cake Design

Fondant topping skillfully crafted by by Lori F. (Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England)

Really cute gnome cake by Clever Cake Studio; click through to see the amazing marbled inside!

WoW wedding cake by Art Eats Bakery. For the Horde!

Guild photo on a sheet cake (for the poster’s boss…the company that plays together, stays together!)

Happy Birthday, World of Warcraft!

Is it odd that while i dont really have a use for gold in wow, I loooove profit. I like seeing large numbers on my account total.  Large is relative of course.  The most gold server-wide i’ve ever had was just over 11k.  Currently i’m sitting at about 9.

I was almost dirt poor until ToC.  But when you run Toc 10 and 25 on your main, and another 10 on your alt.  that’s 45 triumphs a week, not counting any VoAs or Onyxias.   My server is not a high ranking server, we dont have world class guilds, and the economy is horrible.   So with that, there was a decent stretch of time that people still horded all their triumphs, and didnt sell a damn thing.

Hear that? It’s my greed.  So I sold a number of Crusader orbs, and got myself up to where i stand now.

This begs the following thoughts.  Do i really care about icecrown?  I dont forsee my guild clearing it any time soon.  Maybe we never will.  Who knows.  But what i do know, is that i’m very excited over cataclysm.  What better way to start cataclysm than with a lot of gold.

Do i really need to get tier 10 right away?   How much are the new crusader orbs going to be? (primordial saronite this time around i believe).   Will the market for them go well?   I certainly hope so.  I will bleed out my emblems of frost if it means i can fatten up my wallet in preperation for….  for anything.   For whatever may be.  Cataclysm-esque mammoth?   Did our mounts get too used to the cold, so we need to train temperate flying?***

I dont know what i’ll need gold for.  But at the same time it doesnt really matter.   If theres one thing that always happens in wow, it’s a gold sink.  Mark my words.  I’ll be ready.

***:  I really, >>Really<< cant wait to see the reason blizz uses to keep up from flying right away in cataclym (if any of course.  they might not)

All this hype on google wave!  I wish i could actually motivate myself to devote the hour+ to watch the video.  Luckily, my fiancee has watched some of it and given me some summaries.   While it sounds flexible, and pretty crazy interesting…  its probably something i’ll just have to use myself to get a good idea over.

Just as back in the day when i was offered a gmail invite and i thought “I dont know, i already have an email address….”, wave could end up the same deal.  I dont know where i’d be without my gmail.   My original email vs. gmail is like B&W vs Color TV.  Or maybe closer to B&W to BluRay.

But, there’s not much i can do about it at the moment.  I’ve lost touch with old friends, especially ones who would have google invites.  There may be eventual hope in some other people, but nothing major.   I did make a post on ‘WoW on Wave’ thanks to #Ithato.  How that’ll end up I’m not sure.  But it’s nice to see a list of wowers on there.  Even the coveted Tekkub (/swoon).

Not much else i can write about something Iv]sfda;lfjdsghad;.

I dont like typing on this laptop >.>

Anyway… something i’ve had no personal experience.

All this being said.  I wonder how lightweight ChromeOS will be.  This laptop has issues running XP, so i’m wondering if it’ll be able to handle Chrome…   Issues for future times i guess.

One of my guildies and I were brainstorming some ideas for a new Arcane spec taking advantage of the mechanics in the fights in ToC, and we came up with a nice spec that maximizes theoretical DPS while keeping all of the core talents of the build.

Here’s a link to my WoW Armory profile; I may have my active spec set incorrectly, but you can still look at the Arcane spec.

Some of the major differences you may note are the lack of any points in either Arcane Stability or Magic Attunement (I don’t really feel the lack of 6 yd of range), as well as not taking Arcane Barrage. This is because, as I have mentioned before, the ideal rotation for Arcane is Arcane Blast x4 (or more, if you have the gear – which I don’t anymore) -> Arcane Missiles. What I’ve done with the extra talent points I freed up was dump them into Student of the Mind for a small crit bonus (although I’m not really geared for Spirit; once I get some more gear, this talent will only get better), and also pick up 3/3 Incanter’s Absorption.

Yes, Incanter’s Absorption. I don’t know whether I’ve said this on my blog, but I held for a very long time that IA was a cool sounding talent with no practical application, as you’d burn too much mana with Mana Shield absorbing incidental damage. I ended up being proved very, very wrong in 3.2 – you still aren’t burning mana, GCD’s, or anything using Mana Shield, Frost Ward, or Fire Ward, but Blizzard gave us a really cool opportunity to have a LOT of spellpower on certain fights.

Think about the mechanics of Val’kyr Twins. You pick a color aura to have – and both twins are doing a 1500/x time global AoE. By picking up an aura from the portal, you…ABSORB the damage from that color aura. ABSORB. That means…a HUGE bonus to spellpower from IA. We’re talking a hundreds-of-DPS increase here – my spellpower literally went up by 800 or more.

Situationally, you could probably gain some DPS in certain situations too – I’m thinking fires on some fights with a situational Flame Ward, or something to that effect – but largely you’re going to see the benefit coming from incidental, fight-based absorptions. Regardless, IA has shown itself as a decent utility talent, and I recommend grabbing it.

No, not that KT! The one in Tempest Keep. Last night was Classic Raid Night at Crits so 17 of us wandered to Netherstorm to take on Kael’Thas and pray for a mount like this one.

It was all fun and games … lots of turning people into leper  gnomes and skeletons with leftover wands from Hallow’s End, lots of drinking Brewfest Brew and dancing, lots of misdirecting mobs to the level 73 warlock … you know, the usual.

Until we got to KT himself, of course. What a fight! I got mind controlled … and wiped out most of the raid. My scrolling battle text flashes on the screen in big letters whenever I get a killing blow. Ya … I got KBs on at least two people in the raid. Oops?

Next fight went fine though because now we’d seen it once. When someone got mind controlled, they got sheeped. No problem. Achievement spam ftw.

We headed back to A’lar because we had saved him for last … and that’s when the battlegroup went down.  Doh!

Sooo … I talked Trout into logging onto his cute belflock on Dawnbringer. Juna and Teufel had lots of fun bouncing turkeys legs and pumpkin pie off each others’ heads.

He even danced nekkid on the table! I’m sure Arioch will approve.

So we hit all four cities and got our Pilgrims’ Paunch then he had to go to bed. So I got on my little belf pally Galor and did all the quests….and killed a ton of turkeys.

Karius and Kalyon should be getting their titles and pets today, so I’m off to do that now. Bye bye!

StackExchange™—The Stack Overflow Knowledge Exchange Platform http://bit.ly/3PKQcJ

Hoje é um dia importante para os jogos online. Hoje fazem 5 anos que World of Warcraft, ou WoW para os intimos, foi lançado. Um acontecimento extremamente importante para a Blizzard, não só porque cimentou o seu lugar no topo dos MMORPG, mas porque principalmente foi o início de uma longa campanha de crescimento, que diferente de outros jogos, que têm um crescimento de vendas, principalmente no seu lançamento e depois cai, WoW tem atingido picos de vendas e inscrições mesmo passado anos do seu lançamento.

O jogo atingiu números recorde de vendas e subscrições (veja aqui). Já lá vão mais de 12 milhões usuários. E bem que merece. O jogo não parou e sempre tem as expansões, que tiveram início com The Burning Crusade, e mais tarde o Wrath of the Lich King. Este ano foi anunciado na Blizzcon 09 a terceira expansão Cataclysm.

Veja também:

Adulto: Whorecraft – Swords Sorcery and Sex

World of Warcraft no Atari 2600

WoW – WII Fit

WoW

To prevent the monkey from bursting your eardrums the direction has taken the liberty of firing a few tranquilizer darts beforehand. Thank you for your understanding.

I was happy this morning, well-rested, good breakfast and the sun was shinning. This all changed rapidly while I was doing my morning rounds of blogs and forums. One of the hot  topics is still the changes in WoW regarding the next patch. To be more precise the changes to the newest raid that I’ve already talked about. I was reading a well-written post nerd rage about how Activision has taken over Blizzard and ruined everything good in WoW to cater to casuals. This got the blood pumping a bit because I am very tired of elitist kids who have nothing to worry about besides playing WoW and complaining how the “evil” casuals are destroying everything. Then I started reading the comments and a reply  caught my attention:

I’ve been arguing for a long time that casuals don’t deserve the same experience as people who devote more time and effort,..

I think something in my brain tilted at that moment because I then brutally murdered the person sitting next to me.

I may have imagined that last part.

Deserve???? What makes you think you deserve anything you little brat! What have you done that is so incredible that we need to prostate ourselves at your feet? You’ve risen the dead? Walked on water? You save puppies from fires for a living? God!!! Get over yourself!

Let’s talk first about what makes the difference between a hardcore and a casual in the sense that most people understand it when talking about MMOs. A hardcore player is someone who is doing top end content on a regular basis and who is very well-informed about the mechanics of the game. And how do you do both these things? Time.

Besides a desire to do said content, the main difference between a hardcore and a casual player is how much time they have available to devote to the game. Many players like me would love to play “hardcore” but can’t because of real life and other interests. So basically the arguments boils down to this :

Because I have more time than you to devote to this game I deserve more content than you do and you don’t deserve access to the content I have already completed. You have to play the same way I do if you want that.

Or to put it simpler:

Playing WoW, ur doin it wrong!

Access to content

Before bringing up the “I pay 15$ a month” defence of the casuals (wich isn’t false in itself), let’s talk about access to content. The main point of the casuals since WoW launched is  this:

I don’t want to be penalized for having a life. I want the choice of whether of not I want to raid and not be locked out of content because I can’t/ don’t want to commit to a raider life style. Real life will dictate how much time I can give to WoW, not the other way around.

Here’s the main point a lot of hardcore players seems to be missing. Casuals don’t want to have content handed over to them or made easier, they want access to it. Just like I have access to Arena. Hardcore players get way more out of it but I still can choose to participate if I want to, I have access to it.

Raiding however doesn’t work that way. If I want to have access to the latest dungeon I need to find a guild who can complete the lower tiers of content. If I don’t I am stuck. And to find said guild, which will almost always be hardcore I need to change my real life schedule around that, something I cannot do. Thus I don’t have access to the newer content and I don’t have a choice.

I’m not asking for easier content, nerfs or any other change to the content but there’s need to be a way for me to have access. Blizzard did that with the changes in the latest expansion wich made sure I can get on my own gear appropriate to start raiding at the current tier if I make the effort to farm it.

To all those who say I don’t deserve access or the same rewards I ask again what have you done that makes you deserving of exclusive content? We pay the same price each month and like I said the only difference between us is time. You do get rewarded for it too by getting to do hard modes wich leads to better gear, exclusive mounts and titles. The very thing you asked for in Burning Crusade.

I fully agree that Blizzard could have found another way, that the latest expansion isn’t that great and that the constant nerfing of content sucks. But I’m also really happy that for once I’ll get to at least see the big bad boss without having to kiss my life good-bye like I had to back in vanilla WoW.

From the New York Times:

Day after day, night after night, Francisco Hernandez Jr. rode the subway. He had a MetroCard, $10 in his pocket and a book bag on his lap. As the human tide flowed and ebbed around him, he sat impassively, a gangly 13-year-old boy in glasses and a red hoodie, speaking to no one.

After getting in trouble in class in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and fearing another scolding at home, he had sought refuge in the subway system. He removed the battery from his cellphone. “I didn’t want anyone to scream at me,” he said.

All told, Francisco disappeared for 11 days last month — a stretch he spent entirely in subway stations and on trains, he says, hurtling through four boroughs. And somehow he went undetected, despite a round-the-clock search by his panicked parents, relatives and family friends, the police and the Mexican Consulate.

Since Oct. 26, when a transit police officer found him in a Coney Island subway station, no one has been able to fully explain how a boy could vanish for so long in a busy train system dotted with surveillance cameras and fliers bearing his photograph.

But this was not a typical missing-person search. Francisco has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism that often causes difficulty with social interaction, and can lead to seemingly eccentric behavior and isolation. His parents are Mexican immigrants, who say they felt the police were slow to make the case a priority.

“Maybe because you might not understand how to manage the situation, because you don’t speak English very well, because of your legal status, they don’t pay you a lot of attention,” said Francisco’s mother, Marisela García, 38, a housecleaner who immigrated in 1994 and has struggled to find ways to help her son.

The police, however, say they took the case seriously from the start, interviewing school officials and classmates, canvassing neighborhoods and leafleting all over the city.

Francisco says his odyssey wound through three subway lines: the D, F and No. 1. He would ride a train until its last stop, then wait for the next one, wherever it was headed. He says he subsisted on the little he could afford at subway newsstands: potato chips, croissants, jelly rolls, neatly folding the wrappers and saving them in the backpack. He drank bottled water. He used the bathroom in the Stillwell Avenue station in Coney Island.

Otherwise, he says, he slipped into a kind of stupor, sleeping much of the time, his head on his book bag. “At some point I just stopped feeling anything,” he recalled.

Though the boy’s recollections are incomplete, and neither the police nor his family can retrace his movements in detail, the authorities say that he was clearly missing for 11 days and that they have no evidence he was anywhere but the subway.

For his parents, the memories of those 11 frantic days — the dubious sightings, the dashed hopes and no sleep — remain vivid. “It’s the most terrible thing,” his mother said in Spanish.

Just what propelled Francisco to take flight on Oct. 15 is unclear. Administrators at his school, Intermediate School 281, would not comment. But Francisco said he had failed to complete an assignment for an eighth-grade class, and was scolded for not concentrating.

After school, he phoned his mother to say he was heading home. She told him the school had called and she wanted a serious talk with him.

His first impulse was to flee. He walked eight blocks to the Bay Parkway station and boarded a D train. It seemed a safe place to hide, he said.

When he did not arrive home, his mother started to panic. In January, after another problem at school, Francisco had left home and ridden the subway, but returned after five hours. “We thought this time it would be the same,” Ms. García said. “But unfortunately it wasn’t.”

Her husband, also named Francisco Hernandez, went to the nearest subway station and waited for several hours while she stayed at home on Bay 25th Street with their 9-year-old daughter, Jessica. After midnight, the couple called the police, and two officers from the 62nd Precinct visited their apartment.

The next morning, Mr. Hernandez, 32, a construction laborer, borrowed a bicycle and scoured Bensonhurst. He and his wife separately explored the subway from Coney Island to Midtown Manhattan.

They had been trying to help their son for years. Born in Brooklyn, Francisco grew up a normal child in many ways, his mother said, earning mostly passing grades and enjoying drawing and video games. But he had no friends outside school, and found it difficult to express emotions. A gentle, polite boy, he spoke — when he did speak — in a soft monotone.

In

2006, his parents had him evaluated at a developmental disabilities research clinic on Staten Island, where his Asperger’s was diagnosed. The clinic’s chief neuropsychologist concluded that Francisco struggled in situations that demanded a “verbal or social response.”

“His anxiety level can elevate, and he freezes in confusion because he does not know what to do or say,” the doctor wrote.

After he disappeared, his parents printed more than 2,000 color leaflets with a photo of Francisco wearing the same red hoodie; friends and relatives helped post them in shops, on the street and throughout the subway in Brooklyn. The family hand-lettered fluorescent-colored signs.

“Franky come home,” one pleaded in Spanish. “I’m your mother I beg you I love you my little boy.”

Francisco said he never saw the signs. He lost sense of time. He was prepared, he said, to remain in the subway system forever.

No one spoke to him. Asked if he saw any larger meaning in that, he said, “Nobody really cares about the world and about people.”

Sightings were reported. An image of a boy resembling Francisco had been captured by a video game store’s security camera, but he turned out to be someone else, the police said. A stranger called Mr. Hernandez to say he had spotted Francisco with some boys at a movie theater in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. A search turned up nothing.

Ms. García said one detective told her the boy was probably hiding out with a friend. She replied that her son had no friends to hide out with. Frustrated, the parents sought help from the Mexican Consulate. Officials there contacted the Spanish-language news media, which ran brief newspaper and television reports about Francisco, and called the police — “to use the weight that we have to encourage them, to tell them that we have an emergency,” a consular spokesman said.

Six days after Francisco’s disappearance, on Oct. 21, the case shifted from the police precinct to the Missing Persons Squad, and the search intensified. A police spokeswoman explained that a precinct must complete its preliminary investigation before the squad takes over.

The squad’s lead investigator on the case, Detective Michael Bonanno, said he turned the focus to the subway. He and his colleagues blanketed the system with their own signs, rode trains and briefed station attendants.

About 6 a.m. on Oct. 26, the police said, a transit officer stood on the D train platform at the Stillwell Avenue station studying a sign with Francisco’s photo. He turned and spotted a dirty, emaciated boy sitting in a stopped train. “He asked me if I was Francisco,” the boy recalled. “I said yes.”

Asked later how it felt to hear about the work that had gone into finding him, Francisco said he was not sure. “Sometimes I don’t know how I feel,” he said. “I don’t know how I express myself sometimes.”

Apart from leg cramps, he was all right physically, and returned to school a week later. But Ms. García said she was still trying to learn how to manage her son’s condition. Though doctors had recommended that Francisco be placed in a small school for children with learning disorders, she said, officials at his school told her he was testing fine and did not need to be transferred.

“I tell him: ‘Talk to me. Tell me what you need. If I ever make a mistake, tell me,’ ” she said. “I don’t know, as a mother, how to get to his heart, to find out what hurts.”

One of the fluorescent signs hangs on the living room wall. The others are stacked discreetly in a corner, and Ms. García said she was not ready to discard them.

“It’s not easy to say it’s over and it won’t happen again,” she said.

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Last night my 10-man-only guild, the Fancy Hat Club, finally killed Anub’arak in Trial of the Grand Crusader and Algalon in Ulduar (grats on being months behind!).  It was precisely encounters like these for which I have been so careful to always keep my dear elemental shaman so close to the bleeding edge of her DPS capacity, spending thousands of gold on gear and many hours on theorycraft, playtesting, encounter strategy and staying “in practice” so that I can be the best asset I can be.

It’s therefore rather ironic that, when we got these kills, I was playing my feral druid.  As a tank.

Now for various reasons I’ve not been very keen on my dear old druid this expansion, but a couple of months back I did put some effort into getting him a bit geared up in case we needed the extra tank.  There were no spreadsheets or even napkins involved – though I did use Rawr for one or two tricky decisions, it was mostly just rule-of-thumb head maths and vague intuition.  I was familiar with the tanking strategies partly because I helped to devise them for our guild and partly because I’m usually the designated go-between for the RL (when it’s not me) and the tanks and healers.  I’d never tanked either boss before.  I’d only been to ToGC once on my druid, and Ulduar only up to Iron Council with a PUG.

How many tanks am I holding up

When we started 10-man raiding, we had two “main tanks” and two “off-tanks” – that is, two guys who just wanted to MT and were fully focused and geared to that, and two other guys who were playing DPS toons but didn’t mind being the second tank if either of the mains couldn’t make it.  Unfortunately over the summer one of our MTs had to call it quits, and we’ve since been relying on our one remaining off-spec tank to pick up the slack.  With University semesters starting back, workloads increasing and availability of raiders decreasing, we started using more folks’ offspecs and even some “alts” – such as most recently, my own.

Again with the irony.  When we started Ulduar, we had two main tanks but many of the most difficult encounters in the instance required only one (Heartbreaker, Freya+3, Hodir, Firefighter, Vezax/Animus, One Light); our 2nd MT was often relegated to DPSing.  When we started ToC, we had only one main tank but every fight in the instance required two.  Our poor DPS warrior found himself tanking every single boss of every single raid and feeling like he couldn’t roll on either tank loot (as he wasn’t the MT) or DPS loot (as he never seemed to DPS anymore).

Unnecessarily flamboyant headgear

Fancy Hats are a very casual guild, in the sense that we’re not focused on progression or amassing phat lewts – for us, raiding is about enjoying the WoW endgame.  We chose the 10-man format because it was more intimate and fun, and put much less pressure on the group (especially its leaders).  However, most of us also come from quite a hardcore 25-man raiding background and are elitist minmaxer types, so we’re able to accomplish quite a lot in our limited raiding time even though we don’t generally race after progression.  Though we just killed Algalon and Anub’arak, it was only our fourth night on Algalon (and each time we’d had a different group and an offspec OT) and we spent less than 80 attempts on Anub’arak, again with constantly varying raid configurations.

What I’m saying is, the rest of the group had absolutely put in the effort to have their best gear (even for offspecs) and skill and knowledge of the fights and whatnot.  The DPS were pumping out high numbers and controlling their targets and timings perfectly.  The healers were performing amazing feats of proactive and reactive healing, cooldown usage, and mana management.  On Anub, our MT was quickly grabbing and holding all his targets, placing them perfectly, and using cooldowns – such as locking them out of shadowstrikes – flawlessly.  On Algalon he helped keep me alive by taunting and intercepting and whatnot, while closing black holes and stuff.

It’s nice to be not needed

In my past raiding career, there were many times that I felt “if only I was DPSing, we would’ve had that”.  Sometimes in PUGs or semi-PUGs I’ve even thought, “it’d make a big difference if I switched to healing for this”.  But last night I didn’t have to contribute my heavily min-maxed DPS or my vastly-improved healing skills.  I just had to sit in front of the boss and soak up its attention while the rest of the raid got on with all the hard work which they had prepared for so thoroughly.

Now, I won’t indulge in false modesty by claiming that I did nothing.  I had after all geared up my druid as best I could given my limited time and energy.  I’d prepared special consumables and alternative gear options for each fight, and I co-ordinated with our healers and MT to reduce the gear disadvantage I had as much as possible through careful use of cooldowns, taunts and whatnot.

But I still did much less than everyone else – not much more than turning up, really – and that makes me strangely happy.  In the “Why I DPS” post I explained how crucial the DPS role was, and how it was a realisation of precisely that pivotal importance which led me to fill that role in a raid.  To see the other guys you raid with perform their roles so well that you aren’t needed in those same roles is just brilliant.  To see them fill their roles well enough that they make up for your own lack of gear/experience/whatever is extremely gratifying.

With that in place, all we needed to get our first kills was a second tank – and I was able to fill that role, the one that was needed.  I’m not hugely fond of WotLK feral tanking, and my shaman is by far my favourite character.  But it was more fun to fill the actual gap than to try and shoehorn myself into a role in which I frankly wasn’t necessary while the raid failed due to lack of a tank.

That almost makes up for the fact that I finally got those achievements on my all but abandoned alt while my shaman, who’s put in all that time and effort, still lacks them!

Absulon the Death Knight celebrates WoW's birthday with a smiling pumpkin. Charming.

It was not quite five years ago today that I took my first faltering steps into a brave new world. A World, would you believe, of Warcraft. Half a decade ago, a wrinkly ginger Paladin called Belen was dropped into the middle of a cartoon wood in a blue romper suit with nothing but a wooden mallet and a magic spell or two to make his fortune. Half a decade. Blimey. The fact that Belen still occasionally returns to Azeroth to club some orcs speaks volumes for the quality of Blizzard’s creation. The fact that he still staggers hopelessly around the middle levels, watching sadly as his old contemporaries soar around on their own private superdragons says rather more about me.

Five years. It hardly seems possible. The days when MMOs were the specialist pursuit of the rather bizarre may seem prehistoric in some ways, but WoW itself still feels surprisingly fresh. It has a crisp gorgeousness which stops its archaic graphics engine from looking ridiculous and the compulsively simple mechanics which make it so easy to spend entire days scrapping with mobs, or plunging through dungeon after dungeon.

But five years is a long time to stay top dog, and the MMO market is getting increasingly competitive. When World of Warcraft launched, there were perhaps four or five MMOs in the marketplace, a marketplace which was widely thought to be tapped out at around 500,000 Everquest subscribers. These days there are dozens of the blighters, and games like Warhammer Online or Age of Conan were able to attract player bases of over 1,000,000 on launch day. MMOs arrive on an almost bi-monthly basis, each promising piles of exciting new features and glistening contemporary graphical sound and fury, but none of them, not even Korean juggernauts like Aion, are able to siphon away even a dribble of WoW’s terrifyingly huge ocean of subscribers.

Why? What makes Blizzard so successful, and keeps their hordes of hungry competitors scrabbling for the scraps from their table? EDR wants to know. So, using Cartesian Pure Reason*, EDR is going to find out.

Isn’t this exciting?

Actually, it’s all pretty simple. You probably know this yourself if you’ve ever wandered around Goldshire of a late night, killing wolves and stumbling upon Night Elves pretending to have sex in the back room of the pub. Thing is, if it’s so poundingly obvious (and surely it is) why haven’t Mythic / Cryptic / Funcom etc. picked up on it for themselves? Why haven’t they learned?

Let’s spell it out then, in case one of the senior figures at Mythic etc. is having a self-flagellating “WoW birthday” google. The reason World of Warcraft is top dog, the reason it towers unassailably over the heads of every other MMO in the west is this; it is, by a country mile of rough terrain, the better game. In fact, saying that flatters its competitors – it is the only MMO that realises that, to be successful, you must be a good game. WoW is a very good game in a genre populated by, at best, drably workmanlike games. WAR is nearly a good game. The others? Let’s not be a gentleman about this – they’re all rubbish. To a man; useless, dreadful games.

Blizzard get criticised occasionally by the Internet Whingers for not having innovated with WoW. “It changed nothing!”, cry the Internet Whingers. “It just took all the good ideas from Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot etc! WoW is gay!!1” They’re wrong, natch. WoW took the good ideas from other games and realised them fully, improved upon them. It married this to an ageless graphics engine and masterful world building. It took the meat and potatoes of the game, the baddie thrashing, and made it enjoyable.

This is absolutely crucial. A child could tell you that (and will – kids love violence). Belting people in the face must be fun. It must feel heavy, dangerous. Show me the blow connecting, don’t just float a little wussy number and hope to sate my bloodlust with stats. I want to see a reaction. I want to hear a reaction. Combat ain’t worth a damn without a good meaty “THWACK!” sound when you biff someone in the face with your huge brutal sword. This is extremely important. If I don’t make a thuddingly violent bashing, slicing, howling death sound when death-ing somebody, then I immediately cease to be interested. It makes combat feel less impressive than prodding a scarecrow with a stick, developers. This is no good at all when I spend all my time having fights. Make it fun. Make it sound good. Get this right before letting the words “…and our endgame player versus player will revolutionise the genre!” even unpack their bags and take their shoes off.

But do they learn? No chance. Even today, if you pick up an MMO, most of the time the physical act of playing the game is cumbersome and ungainly. It is very rarely fun. If a single player game was released that played like Age of Conan or Champions Online it would receive a critical panning and most likely sink without a trace, un-mourned and forgotten. Make it an MMO, however, and suddenly these faults are excused. MMOs are expected to be a bit rubbish. We forgive them their cluelessness because they are MMOs.

The initial review of World of Warcraft in PC Gamer UK nailed it. Ross Atherton wrote that (if you’ll permit me some paraphrasing**) there are times when you forget that WoW is an MMO, when you think you are playing a single player game. It was the only MMO that was also a well designed game from the ground up. Perhaps that was forgivable at the time, for a genre in its infancy. The fact that it is still the case today is rather more worrying.

So why have no other studios learned the lessons of WoW? Good question, Me. The answer, I suggest, is that they believe they have. Most of the other studios making MMOs are exclusively MMO developers. That’s all they make. Cryptic, Mythic, SOE – these studios focus so much on giving MMO players what they believe MMO players want that they neglect the basics. Counter intuitive chat interfaces. Shoddy animations. Inelegant crafting interfaces. Boring fighting. Blizzard have made beautifully crafted single player games for years. They know their business.

EDR-fave BioWare is in with a chance. Star Wars: The Old Republic is the first MMO that looks promising in this regard. It looks fun. It looks like an interesting world to explore. The combat looks beefy. The sound effects are brilliant. The most important factor however is BioWare’s expertise with game design. They have made piles of cracking single player RPGs (and even a shooter, millions of years ago). They know how to make a good game. Will SW:TOR be the first genuine post-WoW MMO? And how long before EDR collapses under the weight of all these bloody acronyms?

None of this should denigrate WoW’s achievements. It’s a wonderful game. Oli Welsh’s breathless assertion in yesterday’s Times that WoW is “one of the best games ever made” goes a little far perhaps, but World of Warcraft is a genuine joy. If you haven’t tried it yet, make a statement to the various clueless MMO devs out there – have a go. Download the free trial. Show those idiots that until they get better at making good games, WoW is just going to grow more and more powerful.

I returned to WoW myself recently, after dalliances with Champions Online and Warhammer Online. Coming back, soaking in the atmosphere and fighting off the Headless Horseman with buckets of water, was a delight. So if you’re an EU player wandering around on Terrokar and an awfully impressive Death Knight named Absulon goes galloping by, say hallo and give me a wave. Or if you’re on Earthen Ring, send a few coins to poor old Belen. The clueless carrot top needs all the help he can get.

________________________________________________________________________________

* Because no-one else knows either, so we’re just going to use our superbrains.

** And if you won’t, tough.

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