AI: Aionic Information

As the open beta continues and my excitement to finally start the game increases, Aion has been at the forefront of my illness addled mind. Obviously, with my raid group having an "off night" the other day, WoW isn't doing too much to challenge it for the spot. I find myself logging into WoW, doing a few maintenance/officer things, and then rushing over to level in the OB.

Why? I'm just excited about the game and a new environment. It's not that it's all that fresh or even all that different from WoW. There are a lot of good differences and a lot of similarities. It is, however, a completely unknown game to me as compared with WoW, and I'm enjoying the Newb. I'm enjoying the sense of discovery that comes from being on the rising wave of a new game. I've never done that before, having come late to the WoW scene from Final Fantasy. Unlike a lot of bloggers/gamers, I've really never "beta'ed" anything before.

In any case, this post is to introduce my new labelling scheme. I'd mentioned in the past that I plan to write a bit about Aion upon it's release and until now I've tried to keep it simple (for the same reasons I don't usually write about the WoW PTR). As we approach release date, I wanted to come up with something to let you, the reader, know when I'm waxing aionic. Thus, I will preface the titles of Aion specific posts with the "AI" designation. That way, if you're not into the game, you can be sure to ignore that post. :-)

My current goal for the open beta is to get my Warrior to ascend and try out some of the Gladiator class. As things stand, I've taken each of the four starting classes to ascension throughout the betas. Warrior is my last one. I haven't tried all 8 classes, but I feel hat I've at least gotten as sampling of the ones I'm interested in. My current plan is to roll a spiritmaster upon release, with a second toon being a melee class (probably Gladiator). I almost always roll two toons because I level one with Fuu and keep that static, while having a solo toon in case our play time doesn't match up. It works pretty well for us.

Like I said, I'm really enjoying being a newb again. The draw for me isn't to "kill" WoW, but to give me an alternate fantasy world to play in. It'll be nice to have a different game to play on those nights when WoW is laggy, offline, or I just plain want a change. Similarly, one of the problems with any new MMO is usually small maintenance bugs right out of the gate. Being able to go play WoW during those times when Aion is laggy or busted will be nice too. I like not being dependant on one game.

I also feel like I've gotten to a point in WoW where I'm satisfied. I still enjoy playing and want to raid and see the new stuff in patches, etc... but I don't need to do it all. I don't need every achievement or to grind out the minutia that the game has to offer. I'm content with raiding a few times a week, hopping on to play with friends, running random BGs, and casual things like that. I expect to spend a lot of time in Aion when it comes out because of this.

So, in short, this is a notification of what to expect around here in the months to come. I will label my Aion posts so you can *not* click over should you choose, and Aion posts make increase in frequency for a bit. However, I'm by no way giving up WoW and will still be writing about my warlock and death knight endeavors as the stories present themselves. I'm hoping that the positive of this method will be a lot of quality articles that don't feel like I'm groping for things to write about, while not upsetting too many people with my dual focus. As always, feel free to submit emails with questions or just leave comments with something you'd like to see or questions you'd have.

(Screen shot from the official site here. They have some cool wallpapers out there as well.)

We Had An Off Night

The dancing llamas told me to take a sick day today. I just woke up. I feel lazy, but perhaps re-energized. We'll see how it goes.

Yesterday was a struggle right down to when I forgot I had to coach a football game (it was moved to Tuesday due to Labor Day on Monday, duh), so I had to be an hour late to our raid. No biggy, but it means I came in on Kologarn. Now, that fight went fine and I did around 4k damage, reminding me as I finished 6th on the meters that I really do need to net me some upgrades soon. I just haven't had anything fun drop on those first few Ulduar bosses, and I'm still a few emblems shy of the 58 shot chest token.

The problem with coming in on Kologarn is that you usually go to Auriaya next. You know, the fight that makes me want to punch babies. And punch them I did. There was so much QQ, and it was like there was always something little that prevented us from succeeding. We were just having one of those "off-nights" where, for whatever reason, you just can't do anything even moderately challenging.

It's really a group fail. It's like everyone is just one button slower (sick me included), so that the little things stack up and equal death to the raid. Off nights on Auriaya suck.

We went to Razorscale to try to end the night positive and one shotted her. However, I noticed that her damn fireball thingies were hitting me for like 9k. I have around 17k health with raid buffs. That's more than half my health! Did they buff her? WTF?!

Since we, as a group, weren't doing the little things right, I was rarely topped off. Then, I'd get nailed for over half my health, followed up by a chain lightning from one of the add mobs, which of course weren't perfectly tanked... dead warlock. Looking back though, I can't expect tank healing on a clothy. I can't expect perfect tanking on the add phases. So I really don't see a way around my death. On a "keyed-in" night, we probably keep me alive, but not on off nights.

I don't remember that ever being a problem before. Maybe we just haven't had an off night like this in a long while. Maybe they did buff the dragon. Maybe I was just extremely unlucky. Either way, I came in for three bosses, and didn't enjoy two of them because one is the fight from hell that we failed and the other I got two shotted early on and got to watch from the floor. I've been spending a lot of time on the floor lately. Did I mention I'm in bad need of some upgrades?

Maybe I'll capitalize on this sick day and get back into the 10-man Crusader raid tonight. I dunno, Aion is calling me in Open Beta pretty hard. In any case, does your raid group have "off nights"? Do you just power through them, or is there some trick I'm missing?

Wi not trei a holiday in Sweden this yer?

Hope your Labor Day was wonderful. I spent mine on a booze cruise where we tie some tubes to a boat filled with coolers and float down a river. It was actually really cold and I got really drunk as a result of trying to stem the coldness. Always a good decision...

In any case, I wasn't in a condition or location to facilitate writing yesterday, hence no post. Apologies. In retrospect, I don't have a whole lot to report on anyways, so here's the cliff notes version...

• Just did BGs and dailies this week, nothing too exciting, was mostly busy with RL stuff.
• I'm raiding tonight. Still Uld. Not too much new in the department.
  
• Apparently the strategy in the new BG has shifted from paratroopering in to taking the docks and workshop. Probably a good thing as you get a decent siege going.
• Those cannons in the new BG are pretty OP. You can like three whack people... or get three whacked. Good times.
• Noonish on Saturday is a good time to pwn face at PvP. I think mostly kids are playing and they spend more time trying to come up with clever racially/sexually suggestive or just blatanly offensive lines than they do playing.
  
• By kids I mean, people who act immature and suck at playing. I suppose the fact that I attribute this to a younger demographic shows my age prejudice. Point being, I know some 13 year olds that are more mature than 45 year olds. That's a whole 'nother post tho.
• If you type "reported" after every thing one of said "kids" says... you're that guy. Srsly, we all know you're not actually reporting everything these idiots say. And if you are, kudos to you for trying to make the world a better place. I just /ignore.
• All evil needs to win is for good people to do nothing. That's a quote from somewhere. I just demonstrated my fail at understanding and implementing it. Double kudos to the report guy. Also, I'm evil.
• I've totally sidetracked myself on stupid crap.
• A moose once bit my sister...
  
• We apologize for the lack of focus in this posting. Those responsible for this posting have been sacked.
• Aion open beta started, we got to level five. We're playing with Mr. Spooner. If you're looking for a place to play, check out his post here.
  
• We only got to level five because I tried to go to bed early (rez sickness from the day before, long debuff, trust me).
  
• Little known fact, drinking actually lowers your body temperature. Thus, though you *feel* warmer, you're actually colder. It's all relative, man.
• There's a say about "the hair of the dog that bit you", I'm debating it's wisdom.
• Mynd you, moose bites can be pretty nasti...
• We apologize again for the lack of focus. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked. - "Ralph" the wonder llama.

¡Hasta!

(Referential humor pilfered from Monty Python and the Holy Grail opening credits. Why? 'Cuz why the f@#$ not.)

The Prodigal Daughter

Stunned into silence, Fulguralis backed up as the death knight in his grip toppled forward to the dirt floor of the tent. His mind reeled as he tried to make sense of what he'd just heard. But, Boy, it's me... So simple, so innocent, yet could it be?

He tried to force himself to see through the tin can veneer that coated the voice of every death knight he had met. He tried to put the glowing blue eyes in the face of the girl he once knew. He struggled with the obvious changes, not only from the years, but also from the transformation that the Lich King had bestowed upon her. He tried, for once, to see his sister.

He succeeded.

The shock of the revelation tore through Fulguralis' brain like a whirlwind of fire dashing malevolently through the midst of a group of adventurers, tossing random thoughts to the wayside like weightless corpses and burning him down to his very core. Somewhere deep inside, a wound he had attempted to seal rent itself open again, bleeding fresh and spilling over the walls of his heart to flow up and threaten to drown his very being. Tears sprung fresh to his eyes as the memories of his only kin, the sister he had left behind, rose to the surface of his war torn mind.

The succubus across the room raised one seductive eyebrow in the direction of her master, sensing the turmoil in him. Something was going on here that she didn't understand. Why didn't he just kill this interloper?

The death knight lay sobbing on the floor, heavy plate armor heaving up and down. No tears fell to blot the dirt floor. Still, the armor almost seemed to swallow the suddenly fragile form of the girl inside. What had once been a strong, proud knight of Arthas was reduced to a blubbering mass huddled on the floor, patiently awaiting her deserved fate.
The succubus loosened her whip at her side. If her master was bewitched by this knight, she must do what she can to protect him.

Her devotion was not out of any sense of loyalty, but merely because without his power, she would be cast back into the never ending night from which she came, and she rather did prefer this world. She took a menacing step towards the heap on the floor.

"No," Fulguralis called. "Let her be." With a flick of his arm he dismissed his minion and she faded, screaming, from the world. Fulguralis knew he would probably pay for that later.

"Girl, is that really you?" He called out hesitantly.

The memories poured over him in a deluge now, many he had thought he'd forgotten years hence. His early years in the orphanage flooded back. They'd been left on the doorstep with nothing but two notes on matching baskets: "It's a Boy! It's a Girl". Growing up, they'd been given names by the sisters, but they'd always jokingly call themselves "Boy" and "Girl", as that was the only names they'd ever truly known as theirs.

Then, at sixteen he'd run away to join in the fight that had claimed his family. He wasn't even quite sure what fight that was. Still, he'd sworn to his sister that he would go in search of power, the power to avenge their parents. It was that drive that had led him down the path of the Warlock. It was that drive that had led to his abandonment of the only family he'd ever had.

He knew she'd try to follow him, she was always so clingy like that, so he'd snuck out of the orphanage one night while she was asleep. He'd always assumed she'd grow up, taught by the sisters of the Light to sew and cook and do the other things that the womenfolk of Stratholme were taught to do.

Less than a year later, the Culling occurred, and after searching in vain through the wreckage of the city, he had assumed his sister to be dead. Five years of searching and study later, he was introduced to the ways of the Warlocks, and thus his journey began... alone. Somewhere along the way, apparently his sister had died and been born again in the service of his greatest enemy. Now she had broken free of his claim in order to return to him, to reunite the family he had thought was lost. A monster she may be, but, in his own way, so was he.

He walked over to the pile of plate on the floor and put one hand on her cold, hard shoulder. She turned and looked up at him, emotion tearing at her beautiful features. For a moment, her eyes didn't burn quite so bright and her hair wasn't so dark. She was the bright eyed girl he'd grown up with. Whatever she might be now, she was still and would always be his sister.

Kneeling down, Fulguralis wrapped his arms around his long lost kin, and felt a curious warmth spread through him. Somewhere, deep inside of the warlock, a cold, hard hole had been filled.

For The First Time: The New VoA and ToGC

Last night I got the chance to do two things I hadn't done before. First, I got called in to help out with a VoA run. This was a guild run for a friendly guild, and they'd been about three people short of the full ten. The plan was to start off on the new boss. Many of the raiders had not seen this boss before, myself included.

We had hoped the run would be a quick, three boss foray into the vault. However, as with most learning experiences, the run turned painful pretty quick. We wiped for about a half hour before calling it because several of us had another raid to attend. It really wasn't all that bad, there were just too many of us trying to learn the encounter. People stayed positive and it wasn't a big deal when we all had to leave. A key to this is probably starting on the new boss, so that if you don't succeed, no one is saved, and thus you can just break it up with not a whole lot of hard feelings or "when the hell are we going to be able to schedule this again."

The fight itself is not that difficult, but it does take a moderate level of coordination. The tank must kite the boss around the circular room in order to avoid standing in fire. As with most boss fights we're used to, standing in the fire is bad. The fire spots for this boss are somewhat smaller than most of the circles of death that we're used to seeing, but they definitely will kill you if you're not quick to get out of them. He randomly puts these on raid members, so everyone has to stay alert.

He also does a crazy whirlwind of fire that will hit similar to XT's temper tantrums. That is to say, it'll hit everyone and take everyone pretty low on health. If you've been recently bathing in fire, you'll probably die. I don't care how much you think it exfoliates... bad fire is bad. He'll also cleave you if you're in front of him, so the more clothie folks will want to stay behind the tanks kite path. The attack is called meteor fists and conically spread out over the people standing in front of him at the time. It's not so bad if you're a tank, but if you're squishy to begin with, I suggest finding the butt.

So, in short, stay out of the fire, try to stay behind the kite path, and DPS your little heart out. Standing outside of the inconveniently red-colored inner circle of the room can help you see the fires. Also, say thank you to your healers if you survive, because the onus really is on them for this one. There's just a lot of damage to heal through.

The second new experience I had was running 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader, aka the newish raid instance that takes place in the coliseum. I'd like to say I learned a lot, and I did... from watching. You see, a snobold jumped on me right away, banging away at my head and stunning me directly in the middle of a little fire. If we've learned one thing from the previous boss of the night, it's that bad fire is bad. So yeah, crispy warlock is dead. Which sucks because there are two more bosses immediately following this first guy that I now have to just lay there and watch. At least it got that damned snobold off my head.

I'd like to offer a summary of tips and tricks for these guys, but I'll reserve that for a later, more alive posting time. I'd like to, you know, experience the fight first. And not from the floor.

So after I got rezzed for the second phase, I was all focused and ready not to die again. I was moderately successful. We kept wiping when he'd summon those infernals. In retrospect, I think there were just enough DPS that were confused about how to handle these that they stayed up too long and caused too much damage. What really needs to happen is that people need to mostly stay put, DPS the adds when they're in range and switch to the boss if they go out of range, all while avoiding the various AoEs and fires that spring up. What was happening was half of us running around trying to "DPS the adds!" and then getting out of range of a healer and succumbing to AoE when an infernal balls up and Sonic-the-hedgehog's our ass.

After getting night-at-the-roxbury'ed (yeah, descriptive verbs today, right?) by two infernals, I bit it again, but watched as we finished off the boss. I'm happy to say that in our previous unsuccessful attempts, I had be one of the last ones alive, but of course when we actually kill the bugger, I'm one of the early ones to die. Thus, I again watched a lot of a fight from the floor. It was just one of those nights.

Real quick, I'm going to segway (on a segway, ha!) and say: WTF is up with this Jaraxxus character getting green fire before the rest of us warlocks. I mean, he sort of a frackin' minion right? Granted he kills that idiot gnome (Grand Warlock fails at summoning a doomguard? Srsly, that's elementary for 'locks) that summoned him and stylizes himself as a "Lord", but minions so totally DO NOT get green fire before the masters. It's just not right and offended my tender warlock sensibilities. So screw you and your green fire Mr. Lord Jerk Person. You and your creepy hands-pulling portal thingy can go back to the fiery pits that spawned you. And no Fizzlewhatever is gonna bring you back, you crafty opportunist you. Now leave before I taunt you a second time.

And since I'm on a rant, lets go right into the final portion of the night: the so-called "PvP' portion of the encounter. I dunno who keeps saying "it's like PvP", but you can go fly a damn kite. Maybe I just horribly suck at PvP, but this was not like any PvP I've ever done. You see, PvP normally consists of pitting yourself against another player with similar reflex times (lag variable of course) and a similar number of cooldowns and abilities. Sure, gear may alter how much you hit or get hit for, but generally speaking you're in the same ball park. One of you is NOT a boss.

Maybe this is similar to PvP'ing in a bracket where you're the low level and everyone else is like three to five levels above you. Oh, and they don't have cooldowns, have infinite trinkets to get out of any CC you throw down, hit like a truck, heal like a pally on meth, have the twitchiest reflexes of the most experienced FPS player, and on top of all that, they just nabbed themselves a tenacity bonus since it's 10 vs. 6. Then, on top of all that, they're completely stupid and run around randomly targeting people and not really using any special abilities other than three whacking your shoddy clothie ass with white noise attacks.

What you should take from the above rant is not that the opposite faction champions are "good players" you're PvP'ing against, they're just six minibosses with no aggro table that run around wreaking havok on your raid. There is no strategy here, burn healers fast and try to survive. CC doesn't stick. The only thing that seems to work is stunning, but you only get like, one of those per fight for most classes. Plus, you're getting harassed by that damn hunter's cat so you can't cast shit anyways. ZOMG /headdesk.

The fight just makes me angry. Perhaps 25-man is better. Perhaps we're just undergeared for the encounter as a group. Perhaps we all suck terribly at PvP (though experience would tell me otherwise. I'm not an arena junkie, but I'm not a noob either). Perhaps we just don't really know how to go about this yet and our strategy of burning healers was fundamentally flawed. However, it didn't seem like we could DPS through their ridiculous healing. The druid/paladin healer combo was fuggin' ridonkulous.

Anyways, that's enough rantiness for one post. I hope maybe you learned something. Hopefully the learning wasn't from the floor like mine. If it was from the floor, you probably need to lay off the sauce. I mean, it's early.

Then again... it's five o'clock somewhere. *Cheers*

For The Love Of...

[insert preferred deity here]... is how I'm sure at least a few dubious sentences started last night when people logged in only to find "extended maintenance". It always sucks to have your plans for the night ruined. However, as Jess over at Miss Medicina points out, we should probably all cut Blizz some slack and just take it in stride. It's not like they don't usually try to make up for it with account credit. Besides, when you think about the sheer volume of work probably has to be done, it's amazing they still even try to say it's going to be by a certain time. I mean, I guess they have to, but it's a pretty ambitious task to begin with.

After the maintenance boss crit all over our raid (not QQ, mind you, just the superfluously stated facts), we decided to shoot for a 10-man alt Naxx run. With the new emblem changes, it's always a great idea to just try to do something easy that you've already progressed through on nights like these. You never know if there will be lag, DC's, addon errors, or other flukes of cyber nature, so running something you know pretty well and can conquer easily is just the ticket.

It can actually end up being quite fun to approach these old, worn battles with some new challenges. A healer DC's during the first boss fight? No problem, solo heal it! Your tank's addon screws up and aggro cannot be held? Welcome to Azerothian DPS Ping Pong! Your DPS DC? Who cares? They're just DPS! Amirite? (*grumble*).

In any event, it gave me a chance to test out my dual wielding death knight craziness in a raid environment. I went in with the intention of rolling on tanking gear, even though I'd be in a DPS role. I'm happy to say that I was up around 3k DPS all night. As is normal with my spec, I'm a lot better on trash and multiple mob pulls than on single boss fights (spreading disease and howling blast give you a nice little DPS boost). That fact alone always throws me for a loop when I try to compare it with my performance as a warlock. It's just completely the opposite.

On Patchwerk, I laid down a healthy 2800, which I think is pretty decent for my gear level. I also topped the damage done for the night, despite not being the highest DPS in the group, though I know many of the others weren't exactly playing their hearts out. It's still nice to know that I can put up competitive numbers with my dual wielding DPS in a raid environment. The number is pretty similar to what I was doing back when I was using a 2H weapon, and I really haven't made any gear upgrades since then (just shuffled things around with my new spec).

We cleared the first wing (spider) with seven people, then picked up two more and did two more wings with nine. It was pretty fun to be undermanned and we had a lot of utility in the group. As is usual when I run Naxx with my DK, I was called upon to kite the adds for Gluth. I feel I have to reiterate how awesome my PvP/DPS spec is for this task. The chillblains with the howling blast really make it easy mode. It keeps frost fever up on all the zombies, keeping them in a nice, neat, slow moving group. It just works out perfectly and you don't get a ridiculous number of stacks even after three rounds (I was up to 45 last night, but I was a bit rusty as well, I've done it with around 20 at the end before when I had a hunter helping out with frost traps).

Finally, I picked up the tier token for my legs and spent them on the tanking version. I also got two different DPS shoulder drops (one I'm going to gem/enchant for PvP, the other for DPS). Those drops freed up my tank shoulders so I could enchant and gem them properly. After all was said and done, I'd achieved the heroic defense cap at 535. Woot! I'm hoping this means I'll soon be able to not fail tank something. :-)

For The Alliance!

Today the trend of photojournalism continues with two more pictures and small stories surrounding them. Forgive me if I'm not uber-clever today, as I'm feel pretty sick. I think I ate too many sunflower seeds at the JV football game last night which led to some sort of upper respiratory infection. Don't ask me how that can even happen, I just got like a sore upper throat immediately after the game. It's not like a yelling sore throat either, so IDK. Webmd.com here I come! (Cuz, why should I treat RL sickness any different than sickness in-game? I mean... "there's a forum for that").

Anyways, as the title might foreshadow, I have a fun picture of the aftermath of a For the Alliance run.

ZOMG, think of the scat!

As you can see, the run was obviously a success. Afterward, what better to do that congregate in Dalaran and enjoy our new reward? This wasn't really a planned event. In fact, if I remember right we had failed to get enough people to run the intended raid, so we just said screw it let's PUG some people on this random Sunday afternoon and go for it. I'm pretty sure we didn't even have a full forty. It is random things like this that keep me coming back to WoW and MMO's in general. Eventually, the scenery of any game may wear on you, but a game with a good community will stay fresh just because of the interactions of its players.

Take, for instance, picture two:

Oh, hai Mr. Fountain O' Smoke!

I was just sauntering out of the bank in Dalaran one day and... oh look, someone made a smoke fountain on the crazy floating sculpturing thing-a-ma-jig. It's the little things like these that make you smile. Or at least they make me smile. I mean, raid progression is all well and good. Hooray for lore. Yippee for achievements. They all make the game. However, things like this define the community. I think for many of us, it might be these small wonders that keep us playing. What are your favorite memories of "small wonders"?