So I may or may not have mentioned it's been rather hectic around here. Work, a side project, and family issues have conspired to try and corrupt me. Or something equally warlocky. (Side note: I wanted to mention that I was talking about Warlocks way before Mr. Sheen, though I guess it's good to see us finally getting some credo or something). In any case, I suppose I have been fortunate that there's a bit of a lull going on in the game right now. Surely you've noticed the general malaise around? Nothing we haven't weathered before, though it is probably extra evident this time with the Rift crowd picking up some steam.
A small byline of my busy-ness is that Fuu's computer died last week. Oh noes! Fortunately, we set up the laptop to perform as a stopgap until we could get our grubby little hands on the parts we needed. This is where the nerdout comes in.
I thought perhaps the computer tinkering crowd out there might like to hear of our upgrade adventures. As any good tinkerer knows, when something dies, that's just another way of saying: time for an upgrade. In this case, we had been running an Intel dual core CPU on a suitable Foxconn mobo for about the last four years. Dual cores were all the rage back then, and we've been quite happy with our set up. 4GB of DDR2 RAM. An nVidia 9k series card (a 9800 GT from Asus). Nothing mind blowing now, but respectable and still quite capable of rendering Azeroth on "ultra" settings, even today.
Well the mobo died. And the CPU. One probably caused the other, but we have no way of knowing how or why (at least easily). The power supply was more than adequate and I have fans out the wazoo (with a temp sensor on the proc, of course). Like I said earlier, failure is just another way of saying upgrade.
Originally, I was noodling going after a new(ish) nVidia card. Perhaps in the realm of the G4 series (I believe this years model is the G5, right? So I'm talking like a year old GPU, but they're pretty cost effective that way, I've found). Since the mobo took a dump on me, I figured I'd fix what was broken instead. We'd looked at getting a new mobo and trying to salvage our 775 socket Intel dual core, but a quick test showed that it was dead, plus we weren't real excited about the manufacturers on Newegg that we still making the mobo we'd need.
So, after looking around, we actually jumped ship to an AMD phenom II six-core processor and an ASRock mobo. Seemed to be a good deal for a good price after only a moderate amount of shopping around. Also, with WoW being a notoriously more CPU intensive game, we'll probably get good returns on a proc upgrade. The whole kit-n-kaboodle cost us about $250, and allowed us to keep using our current RAM sticks. (Important to note that I'm affiliated with none of the above linked anythings. This is simply me relating what I did. YMMV).
When our parts came in, we were rather concerned about replacing the mobo/proc and how it would behave with our previous Windows 7 install. After all, we weren't replacing anything else. Past experience with OS'es such as XP have proven a small bit tricky.
So we had a friend who is a veteran of such tricks help us out. Turned out to be unnecessary. He slapped the mobo and proc in and everything booted just fine. Took about five minutes for Windows to go out and nab some default drivers, and then we were off. Of course, we updated the drivers with the better ones on the disk, but the concern was that the thing wouldn't even boot, not recognizing the drastically different set of HW. All in all, we were all suitably impressed with Windows 7 and how it handled the repair process. We didn't lose anything and now we have a more powerful machine. I can still upgrade my Vid card whenever (maybe for Fuu's birthday, she doesn't like jewelry anyway). It was a relatively painless batch of troubleshooting, which is a nice change from the norm. No keyboards were destroyed by foreheads.
The real test will be when we raid tonight. She'd better be super tank! Or something.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
At What Point Do You Give Up?
Labels: QotD 9 comments
Here's a question for you PvPers. At what point, in your opinion, is it "okay" to say: F-it, there is no way we're going to win this BG, might as well fight in the middle? Is it ever okay to park your toon at a flag and turn your attention to the television program that had been running in the background, essentially "waiting it out" until the pain ends? When do you throw in the towel?
Obviously, this is going to vary from BG to BG, but an easy one to look at is probably WSG. For me, there is a point where we get down by two flags and the opposition is quite clearly toying with us, that I alter my strategy. Where before I had been trying to actually play the BG, now I retreat to the area of highest Allied concentration in order to score a few HK's. If that doesn't work, if we're still getting our butts kicked, I'll play a little game of keep-away.
You see, normally when you're getting thoroughly trounced (and we've all been there), four rogues, a DK, and a really badass healer will camp your graveyard. Maybe they'll throw in a Mage for flavor, just constantly AoE'ing your spawn point. Good times.
In that case, I'll figure out a way to rez away from the GY, perhaps by a body run, and then play hide and seek. At that point, the game becomes denying these farming bastards of as many HK's as possible. I find that I derive intrinsic amounts out of such a cat and mouse game.
I guess I should point out that I rarely, if ever, desert. It's not that the buff bothers me, it's just that I feel it's the cowards way out or something. I mean, I know sometimes it's not even worth the measly honor you gain by sticking it out through a loss. It's the principle of the thing.
Generally, the breaking point for me is when you've been beaten down to a point that it is extremely unlikely you'll stage a comeback. And, in any case, the rest of the group has already degenerated to such strategy "fighting in the middle" and "blaming others" and "de-identifying with their faction while advocating re-rolls." I guess I find I'm generally one of the last ones to throw in the towel. Usually this means I've tried to get to the objective on my own, and utterly failed. Probably because the opposing team just happens to be really good, or at the very least, operating cohesively. Or in the case of most of my Alliance trouncings: they had several healers and we have none.
What is your breaking point? What do you do to pass the time and get to that next BG? Is it ever acceptable to desert?
Obviously, this is going to vary from BG to BG, but an easy one to look at is probably WSG. For me, there is a point where we get down by two flags and the opposition is quite clearly toying with us, that I alter my strategy. Where before I had been trying to actually play the BG, now I retreat to the area of highest Allied concentration in order to score a few HK's. If that doesn't work, if we're still getting our butts kicked, I'll play a little game of keep-away.
You see, normally when you're getting thoroughly trounced (and we've all been there), four rogues, a DK, and a really badass healer will camp your graveyard. Maybe they'll throw in a Mage for flavor, just constantly AoE'ing your spawn point. Good times.
In that case, I'll figure out a way to rez away from the GY, perhaps by a body run, and then play hide and seek. At that point, the game becomes denying these farming bastards of as many HK's as possible. I find that I derive intrinsic amounts out of such a cat and mouse game.
I guess I should point out that I rarely, if ever, desert. It's not that the buff bothers me, it's just that I feel it's the cowards way out or something. I mean, I know sometimes it's not even worth the measly honor you gain by sticking it out through a loss. It's the principle of the thing.
Generally, the breaking point for me is when you've been beaten down to a point that it is extremely unlikely you'll stage a comeback. And, in any case, the rest of the group has already degenerated to such strategy "fighting in the middle" and "blaming others" and "de-identifying with their faction while advocating re-rolls." I guess I find I'm generally one of the last ones to throw in the towel. Usually this means I've tried to get to the objective on my own, and utterly failed. Probably because the opposing team just happens to be really good, or at the very least, operating cohesively. Or in the case of most of my Alliance trouncings: they had several healers and we have none.
What is your breaking point? What do you do to pass the time and get to that next BG? Is it ever acceptable to desert?
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
The Elder Statesman
Labels: Hope, Shout Out 15 comments
Larisa wrote a rather emotional article on Friday that just happened to coincide with something I'd been noodling around for a while. She's previously written a couple bits about her age, but if you missed it, suffice it to say she feels she would fall on the upper end of the WoW-age curve (were it mapped out somewhere). However, I would not term her an outlier. That is to say, I do not think her being a bit... wizened and playing a video game is all that odd. Perhaps my own experience is biased, but I suspect there is a significant portion of the playerbase that is comprised of folks over 40 years of age.
Now, that's an arbitrary number, but that's when we tend to say someone is "over the hill," so I believe it makes sense to draw the line there. What line? Well, on our ten man raid team we have two gentlemen who I believe to be post 40. It's not really something we've ever asked or discussed, but we've known them long enough to know that they've been around the block a few times (so to speak). We lovingly refer to them as the "Elder Statesmen" of the guild. Thus, for the purposes of this post, I shall refer to people over 40 as Elder Statesman/woman.
To give the large picture of our raid age break down, most of us are in our mid to late twenties. We have a few that have slid over into their 30's, but they won't admit it yet. Our Elder Statesmen most certainly trump most of us in terms of life experience. Life experience that they're will to share ad nauseum.
In reading Larisa's post, I felt a bit of anger rising within my youthful chest. (We youngins do tend to be more driven by emotions, do we not?). Reflecting on losing our Elder Statesmen in such a manner woke the retired, cranky raid leader in me. It is important to note that Larisa chose, on her own, to leave the guild after her performance was called into question. Since she is both humble and realistic, she realized that, despite her best efforts (and she would never give anything but her best), she just couldn't keep up with some of the other raiders. I dropped the term "age discrimination" yesterday, but I do not mean to say that her guild discriminated against her, but rather she may have discriminated against herself. Or, more accurately, I think a lot of times our Elder Statespersons of the world fail to give themselves the credit they deserve. You could even go so far as to say that performance based judgment in WoW is inherently biased against older gamers.
You see, I feel it's important to note that I would take either of our Statesmen any day over younger, faster fingers. Like Ben Franklin in his guidance of Thomas Jefferson, our elders provide a calming influence and a point of focus for the scattered musings of us younglings. Being prone to passion, we benefit a great deal from the firm grounding provided by the more experienced personas around us.
I feel that at this juncture it is important to note that our Elder Statesmen are hardly basement dwelling slouches. They both have very colorful lives outside of the game. One is a prolific trombone player, while the other is accustomed to spending time on a race track. Point is, they're both sharp guys, with a variety of experience under their collective belts that have nothing to do with gaming. They know their way around computers as well. Much like we could say about Larisa if you've read anything from her. Being old most certainly does not equal slow or simple of mind.
Why, then, do the old folks get discriminated against? Why does the stereotype exist? Especially when there seems to be some truth behind it, were one to look only at numbers.
After all, our Statesmen would readily admit, as did Larisa, to not being as quick on the uptake as the rest of us young guns. They pay more attention to things like gear and stats, preparing harder pre-raid, in an effort to make up for some of their self-perceived slower learning curve. Yet, I do not believe that they lack the mental acuity or vitality necessary to preform well in Azeroth. It's certainly not that they don't put in the same energy, either. What is it then?
In my opinion, what we see in the case of Elder Statesmen is just the basic psychology of learning. Studies have shown that it tends to be easier for people to learn new things while they are young. This is especially true in the case of languages. A child raised in a bilingual household will pick up nuances of both languages that can serve them well in a quest to fluency. An adult attempting to pick up a new language later in life will almost certainly struggle a bit more. Not that that they cannot master a second (or third, etc) language as well, just that it is more challenging. The learning curve is forced a bit steeper.
I would argue that familiarity with computer gaming is in the same vein. If there is a marked difference between folks over 40, and folks under 40, we could look no further that the advent of the computer. In the early 90's, home computers were just starting to catch on and ramp up. That is the time that the majority of my mid-twenty year old brethren could call our "formative" years. People who are now 40 would have been in early adulthood.
So my theory, very simply put is that we grew up with it and they did not. Computers and gaming hit us in stride.
While many of them were contemplating things like mortgages and kids for the first time, we were trying to figure out how to properly jump get that blasted last piece of heart. Or the proper combination of buttons for a Shōryūken. Fact is, we've been playing games our whole life, having been inundated with electronics. Where they can still probably tell me stories about their first scientific calculator in high school, I was playing pong on my calculator in middle school (and getting kicked out of class for it). Is it any wonder that pressing buttons correctly comes more natural to the younger crowd? It's like a second language to us.
Still, raiding is not all about pressing buttons, a concept which seems to elude some people, especially on the hardcore end of things. In football, you can have an extremely athletic bunch of kids, an all-star team if you will, and you can still struggle. In basketball, you can assemble a group of extremely talented players in, say, Miami, yet still lose to the old guys in the Boston. Why? You hear about it all the time in the sports media: intangibles . Teams, to be successful, need to work well together on many levels, and in WoW there is more to that than simple button presses.
In baseball, teams will often keep an aging pitcher in their lineup, even though he's not nearly as effective as he might once have been. They do this to nurture the younger pitchers. The new guys can learn things from the experiences of the old guys. How they approach the game. How they prepare. How they deal with adversity. How to take joy in the small things. How to brush off unwarranted criticism. All of this comes from experience.
In the same way, I feel that our Elder Statesmen are an integral part of our raid team. We would not be as successful without them. They provide the team with a terrific balance. They bring numerous intangibles to the table that most people (including and especially themselves) would not give them credit for. Recount does not have an intangible pie graph.
In the same way, I felt like Larisa had failed to give herself credit for what she brought to the table. Fortunately, she was not deaf to the pleas of her guild. How she tells it, there were many people that recognized losing Larisa would equate an overall loss to the team. To them, it wasn't just about button presses. Perhaps, though she may be a few "k" short on DPS, she brings more than that "k" in intangibles to the table. (The trouble with intangibles, of course, being quantification).
Yet, she fell into the trap that the rest of us do at times and listened purely to the numbers. To forget the human side, to reduce this game to simple charts and graphs, is to do it a disservice. Team play, in any fashion, is so much more than that. The best players aren't necessarily dictated by the stat line. One should instead look for the person that makes everyone around them a better players. The person that brings the intangibles. DPS are, after all, a dime a dozen, right?
As a long time reader of the PPI, Larisa most certainly leaves the minds of the people she touches a bit better than when she found them. In the same way, the beloved Elder Statesmen of our guild provide a healthy share levity and help us to keep the game squarely in the proper context. They also tend to come up with some of the best tips, looking at the game in ways that only a non-native "speaker" of gaming might, and provide some of the funniest moments. Similar to Larisa's guild, ours would be worse off without them.
If us young folk are supposed to be learning from our elders, what, then can we learn from Larisa's tale? Don't underestimate the power of intangibles, obviously. And, also, though pride may have caused you to leave in the first place, don't be too proud to turn around when you hear their cries and run back into the arms of those you love and who truly love you in return. You may be doing them a disservice. Teams and humans are much too complicated to be analyzed by a line graph or bar chart.
But most of all, don't ever doubt the impact you can have on those around by simply being big of heart.
Now, that's an arbitrary number, but that's when we tend to say someone is "over the hill," so I believe it makes sense to draw the line there. What line? Well, on our ten man raid team we have two gentlemen who I believe to be post 40. It's not really something we've ever asked or discussed, but we've known them long enough to know that they've been around the block a few times (so to speak). We lovingly refer to them as the "Elder Statesmen" of the guild. Thus, for the purposes of this post, I shall refer to people over 40 as Elder Statesman/woman.
To give the large picture of our raid age break down, most of us are in our mid to late twenties. We have a few that have slid over into their 30's, but they won't admit it yet. Our Elder Statesmen most certainly trump most of us in terms of life experience. Life experience that they're will to share ad nauseum.
In reading Larisa's post, I felt a bit of anger rising within my youthful chest. (We youngins do tend to be more driven by emotions, do we not?). Reflecting on losing our Elder Statesmen in such a manner woke the retired, cranky raid leader in me. It is important to note that Larisa chose, on her own, to leave the guild after her performance was called into question. Since she is both humble and realistic, she realized that, despite her best efforts (and she would never give anything but her best), she just couldn't keep up with some of the other raiders. I dropped the term "age discrimination" yesterday, but I do not mean to say that her guild discriminated against her, but rather she may have discriminated against herself. Or, more accurately, I think a lot of times our Elder Statespersons of the world fail to give themselves the credit they deserve. You could even go so far as to say that performance based judgment in WoW is inherently biased against older gamers.
You see, I feel it's important to note that I would take either of our Statesmen any day over younger, faster fingers. Like Ben Franklin in his guidance of Thomas Jefferson, our elders provide a calming influence and a point of focus for the scattered musings of us younglings. Being prone to passion, we benefit a great deal from the firm grounding provided by the more experienced personas around us.
I feel that at this juncture it is important to note that our Elder Statesmen are hardly basement dwelling slouches. They both have very colorful lives outside of the game. One is a prolific trombone player, while the other is accustomed to spending time on a race track. Point is, they're both sharp guys, with a variety of experience under their collective belts that have nothing to do with gaming. They know their way around computers as well. Much like we could say about Larisa if you've read anything from her. Being old most certainly does not equal slow or simple of mind.
Why, then, do the old folks get discriminated against? Why does the stereotype exist? Especially when there seems to be some truth behind it, were one to look only at numbers.
After all, our Statesmen would readily admit, as did Larisa, to not being as quick on the uptake as the rest of us young guns. They pay more attention to things like gear and stats, preparing harder pre-raid, in an effort to make up for some of their self-perceived slower learning curve. Yet, I do not believe that they lack the mental acuity or vitality necessary to preform well in Azeroth. It's certainly not that they don't put in the same energy, either. What is it then?
In my opinion, what we see in the case of Elder Statesmen is just the basic psychology of learning. Studies have shown that it tends to be easier for people to learn new things while they are young. This is especially true in the case of languages. A child raised in a bilingual household will pick up nuances of both languages that can serve them well in a quest to fluency. An adult attempting to pick up a new language later in life will almost certainly struggle a bit more. Not that that they cannot master a second (or third, etc) language as well, just that it is more challenging. The learning curve is forced a bit steeper.
I would argue that familiarity with computer gaming is in the same vein. If there is a marked difference between folks over 40, and folks under 40, we could look no further that the advent of the computer. In the early 90's, home computers were just starting to catch on and ramp up. That is the time that the majority of my mid-twenty year old brethren could call our "formative" years. People who are now 40 would have been in early adulthood.
So my theory, very simply put is that we grew up with it and they did not. Computers and gaming hit us in stride.
While many of them were contemplating things like mortgages and kids for the first time, we were trying to figure out how to properly jump get that blasted last piece of heart. Or the proper combination of buttons for a Shōryūken. Fact is, we've been playing games our whole life, having been inundated with electronics. Where they can still probably tell me stories about their first scientific calculator in high school, I was playing pong on my calculator in middle school (and getting kicked out of class for it). Is it any wonder that pressing buttons correctly comes more natural to the younger crowd? It's like a second language to us.
Still, raiding is not all about pressing buttons, a concept which seems to elude some people, especially on the hardcore end of things. In football, you can have an extremely athletic bunch of kids, an all-star team if you will, and you can still struggle. In basketball, you can assemble a group of extremely talented players in, say, Miami, yet still lose to the old guys in the Boston. Why? You hear about it all the time in the sports media: intangibles . Teams, to be successful, need to work well together on many levels, and in WoW there is more to that than simple button presses.
In baseball, teams will often keep an aging pitcher in their lineup, even though he's not nearly as effective as he might once have been. They do this to nurture the younger pitchers. The new guys can learn things from the experiences of the old guys. How they approach the game. How they prepare. How they deal with adversity. How to take joy in the small things. How to brush off unwarranted criticism. All of this comes from experience.
In the same way, I feel that our Elder Statesmen are an integral part of our raid team. We would not be as successful without them. They provide the team with a terrific balance. They bring numerous intangibles to the table that most people (including and especially themselves) would not give them credit for. Recount does not have an intangible pie graph.
In the same way, I felt like Larisa had failed to give herself credit for what she brought to the table. Fortunately, she was not deaf to the pleas of her guild. How she tells it, there were many people that recognized losing Larisa would equate an overall loss to the team. To them, it wasn't just about button presses. Perhaps, though she may be a few "k" short on DPS, she brings more than that "k" in intangibles to the table. (The trouble with intangibles, of course, being quantification).
Yet, she fell into the trap that the rest of us do at times and listened purely to the numbers. To forget the human side, to reduce this game to simple charts and graphs, is to do it a disservice. Team play, in any fashion, is so much more than that. The best players aren't necessarily dictated by the stat line. One should instead look for the person that makes everyone around them a better players. The person that brings the intangibles. DPS are, after all, a dime a dozen, right?
As a long time reader of the PPI, Larisa most certainly leaves the minds of the people she touches a bit better than when she found them. In the same way, the beloved Elder Statesmen of our guild provide a healthy share levity and help us to keep the game squarely in the proper context. They also tend to come up with some of the best tips, looking at the game in ways that only a non-native "speaker" of gaming might, and provide some of the funniest moments. Similar to Larisa's guild, ours would be worse off without them.
If us young folk are supposed to be learning from our elders, what, then can we learn from Larisa's tale? Don't underestimate the power of intangibles, obviously. And, also, though pride may have caused you to leave in the first place, don't be too proud to turn around when you hear their cries and run back into the arms of those you love and who truly love you in return. You may be doing them a disservice. Teams and humans are much too complicated to be analyzed by a line graph or bar chart.
But most of all, don't ever doubt the impact you can have on those around by simply being big of heart.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Fake Post -or- As the PvP Turns
Labels: Reflections 21 comments
I'm working on a "real" post for tomorrow. Wanted to get it done this morning, but alas, time continues to be uncooperative. The preview is that it's a response of sorts to Larisa's post on Friday where she basically talked about being "forced out" of her guild for being older. Lot of emotions, and that's probably a poor paraphrase, because no one really forced her out except for herself. In particular, I want to lay down my views on age discrimination in WoW and how I feel like we over-simplify things sometimes. Heavy stuff, I know, but it needs to be said.
Unfortunately, it needs to be said tomorrow since I can't do it properly until tonight (and I don't like putting posts up at night since I think most of us read at work or right after work). As such, I'll leave you with one completely unconnected thought:
Is it just me or has Alliance gotten significantly worse at PvP since I posted that article last week? Seriously, I can't get a win. Period. When I wrote that article, we were still sort of competitive. Sure maybe we only won 1 in 4, but we still won that one. In the last week or so, I can't come up with a win to save my life. Weekends, early nights, late nights... it doesn't seem to matter. TB or BGs. Ugh. Either I've just hit the worst slump of my PvP career, or something is going on that I don't quite understand. How can we be so bad? Why do there seem to be so many afk's and bots? How is it that the Horde seems so well coordinated while we're going the opposite direction?
And don't tell me: "shoulda rolled Horde." I get it, Alliance is notoriously worse at PvP. This goes beyond that though, and I'm not willing to re-roll. I maintain that it isn't fun for ANYONE if there is ZERO competition. It can't be as simple as "Alliance sux," because we've always "sucked" and this is markedly worse.
Anyone else out there notice anything like this?
Unfortunately, it needs to be said tomorrow since I can't do it properly until tonight (and I don't like putting posts up at night since I think most of us read at work or right after work). As such, I'll leave you with one completely unconnected thought:
Is it just me or has Alliance gotten significantly worse at PvP since I posted that article last week? Seriously, I can't get a win. Period. When I wrote that article, we were still sort of competitive. Sure maybe we only won 1 in 4, but we still won that one. In the last week or so, I can't come up with a win to save my life. Weekends, early nights, late nights... it doesn't seem to matter. TB or BGs. Ugh. Either I've just hit the worst slump of my PvP career, or something is going on that I don't quite understand. How can we be so bad? Why do there seem to be so many afk's and bots? How is it that the Horde seems so well coordinated while we're going the opposite direction?
And don't tell me: "shoulda rolled Horde." I get it, Alliance is notoriously worse at PvP. This goes beyond that though, and I'm not willing to re-roll. I maintain that it isn't fun for ANYONE if there is ZERO competition. It can't be as simple as "Alliance sux," because we've always "sucked" and this is markedly worse.
Anyone else out there notice anything like this?
Friday, March 4, 2011
Meanwhile, Back at the Manor...
Labels: IC Fridays 1 comments
"We have got to get them to stop running off!" All eyes turned toward Decedereful. She fidgeted. "I mean, it's just not right, letting them run around and create havoc."
Fuubaar nodded. "How much time has been wasted by them not simply checking with us first?"
"They don't respect our intellect, I tell you," Minerva added.
The Death Knight and Paladin bobbed their heads vigorously from across the table.
"I'm not sure I understand," Abigora spoke up. She quickly found herself the center of attention and blushed deeply. "I s-suppose inquiring after your collective wishes is polite, but doesn't it make for an inefficient system?"
"Wait until you have a boyfriend," Decederful scoffed.
"Or a husband," added Fuubaar.
"Or a double husband."
The room was silent for a moment.
"What's a double husband, Mom?" Fuubaar asked.
Minerva chuckled. "Well, you know how they say: 'Til death do you part?' In our case, death wasn't the final stop. So I had your father swear new some new vows on top of the old ones."
Fuubaar and Decedereful nodded comprehension.
"You mean you didn't want your freedom?" Abigora prodded.
The undead Mage snorted. "You live with someone long enough, freedom just doesn't mean what you think it does."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"You will someday, dear."
Fuubaar sighed loudly. "What a mess. Those men had us all running around like trolls with our heads cut off. They're probably having a good laugh at our expense over a mug of ale right now."
"They just sort of fall over," Decedereful noted, sipping the bright red drink in her hand.
"What?"
"The trolls. They don't run if you cut their heads off."
Eyes returned to the Death Knight. She was apparently more comfortable on this topic, returning an even look to the Paladin and using the glass to mimic decapitation. Fuubaar giggled after a moment. Abigora paled.
"I'll take freezing to beheading any day," Minerva pointed out.
"Why does everything have to end in violence?" Abigora wanted to know.
"Men," the three other women announced in unison.
"I'm not sure I see h-"
"Just trust us, Abi. They're the deeproot of all evil," Fuubaar advised.
"Then why don't you all just stay away?"
The other three women all sighed. Faraway looks glazed over each of their eyes. Abigora looked from one to the other in confusion.
Finally, with a grunt, Fuubaar reached down and snatched the set of die in front of her. She gave them a shake and then a roll. The polished bone cubes clicked across the table to land face up. Three threes.
"What round were we on?" she asked.
Abigora answered immediately, "The third."
"Ha! Put me down for twenty-one then."
Fuubaar nodded. "How much time has been wasted by them not simply checking with us first?"
"They don't respect our intellect, I tell you," Minerva added.
The Death Knight and Paladin bobbed their heads vigorously from across the table.
"I'm not sure I understand," Abigora spoke up. She quickly found herself the center of attention and blushed deeply. "I s-suppose inquiring after your collective wishes is polite, but doesn't it make for an inefficient system?"
"Wait until you have a boyfriend," Decederful scoffed.
"Or a husband," added Fuubaar.
"Or a double husband."
The room was silent for a moment.
"What's a double husband, Mom?" Fuubaar asked.
Minerva chuckled. "Well, you know how they say: 'Til death do you part?' In our case, death wasn't the final stop. So I had your father swear new some new vows on top of the old ones."
Fuubaar and Decedereful nodded comprehension.
"You mean you didn't want your freedom?" Abigora prodded.
The undead Mage snorted. "You live with someone long enough, freedom just doesn't mean what you think it does."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"You will someday, dear."
Fuubaar sighed loudly. "What a mess. Those men had us all running around like trolls with our heads cut off. They're probably having a good laugh at our expense over a mug of ale right now."
"They just sort of fall over," Decedereful noted, sipping the bright red drink in her hand.
"What?"
"The trolls. They don't run if you cut their heads off."
Eyes returned to the Death Knight. She was apparently more comfortable on this topic, returning an even look to the Paladin and using the glass to mimic decapitation. Fuubaar giggled after a moment. Abigora paled.
"I'll take freezing to beheading any day," Minerva pointed out.
"Why does everything have to end in violence?" Abigora wanted to know.
"Men," the three other women announced in unison.
"I'm not sure I see h-"
"Just trust us, Abi. They're the deeproot of all evil," Fuubaar advised.
"Then why don't you all just stay away?"
The other three women all sighed. Faraway looks glazed over each of their eyes. Abigora looked from one to the other in confusion.
Finally, with a grunt, Fuubaar reached down and snatched the set of die in front of her. She gave them a shake and then a roll. The polished bone cubes clicked across the table to land face up. Three threes.
"What round were we on?" she asked.
Abigora answered immediately, "The third."
"Ha! Put me down for twenty-one then."
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Shout Out Thursday
Labels: Reflections, Shout Out 0 comments
Life has been uncooperative lately in terms of both providing WoW blog fodder and affording me time to write. I suppose you'll have that. Thus, today you're only gonna get a few quick links and blurbs from me.
Larisa mentions the general slow down today, attributing some of it to folks off playing Rift. I've seen scores of Rift articles, and pretty much every one of them says at some point "it's sort of different but not really." I don't really have any friends that were pulled away by Rift, so I'm not planning to hop in at all. Pleasant rifting to those of you that are.
THEN, she goes and drops a cute "piggie" on us all. Granted, B cubed coined the term with regards to Larisa's annual awards, but then Tesh took it to the next level. Check 'em out here. Yep, I totally want one now. Gonna have to stick around for another year it seems and turn last years nom into a win :-). I could use the non-award one, sure, but where's the fun in that. I'm a competitor!
Speaking of B cubed, he talks a bit about his creative process today with regards to his PBeM series. I've enjoyed the stories since he's started, and creating readable fiction from a game/rolling perspective fascinates me. It's really neat to figure out how the choices and rolls were woven in, and he hits it spot on when he talks about how sometimes the fiction just won't come out. You can read it for yourself here.
My solution has always been to write within the realm of one of my other projects for a bit, letting the other stew. I've read where a lot of authors have this experience, where the subconscious needs to chew on the idea a bit before it comes out right. Realizing that, it makes a bit more sense how someone could be writing two books at once, for instance. That was something I'd always wondered about and understood better once I embarked on my own endeavors. It's really odd to realize even when you aren't actively doing something, your mind is still chomping away.
And apparently, as far as blogging goes, my brain needs to chew a bit more. Wouldn't want to choke!
Finally, saw a post about a neat little idea for a Community Map. Post is here, and there's apparently a poll at a later post I'll need to check out. (Blocked from work).
We swapped raid nights to tonight, so we've had over a week off. I'm anxious to get back into it because we're way behind. We've had a lot of organizational issues getting this thing going, but I think we've finally been work out a good time. /crosses fingers.
Larisa mentions the general slow down today, attributing some of it to folks off playing Rift. I've seen scores of Rift articles, and pretty much every one of them says at some point "it's sort of different but not really." I don't really have any friends that were pulled away by Rift, so I'm not planning to hop in at all. Pleasant rifting to those of you that are.
THEN, she goes and drops a cute "piggie" on us all. Granted, B cubed coined the term with regards to Larisa's annual awards, but then Tesh took it to the next level. Check 'em out here. Yep, I totally want one now. Gonna have to stick around for another year it seems and turn last years nom into a win :-). I could use the non-award one, sure, but where's the fun in that. I'm a competitor!
Speaking of B cubed, he talks a bit about his creative process today with regards to his PBeM series. I've enjoyed the stories since he's started, and creating readable fiction from a game/rolling perspective fascinates me. It's really neat to figure out how the choices and rolls were woven in, and he hits it spot on when he talks about how sometimes the fiction just won't come out. You can read it for yourself here.
My solution has always been to write within the realm of one of my other projects for a bit, letting the other stew. I've read where a lot of authors have this experience, where the subconscious needs to chew on the idea a bit before it comes out right. Realizing that, it makes a bit more sense how someone could be writing two books at once, for instance. That was something I'd always wondered about and understood better once I embarked on my own endeavors. It's really odd to realize even when you aren't actively doing something, your mind is still chomping away.
And apparently, as far as blogging goes, my brain needs to chew a bit more. Wouldn't want to choke!
Finally, saw a post about a neat little idea for a Community Map. Post is here, and there's apparently a poll at a later post I'll need to check out. (Blocked from work).
We swapped raid nights to tonight, so we've had over a week off. I'm anxious to get back into it because we're way behind. We've had a lot of organizational issues getting this thing going, but I think we've finally been work out a good time. /crosses fingers.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Wherein I Refrain from PTR Excitement
Labels: Death Knight, Hot Topic, Patch, warlocky 15 comments
If you've been reading around here for a bit, you probably know I have a long standing tradition of trying very hard to completely ignore the PTR. Well, maybe not completely, but I certainly try not to waste a whole lot of e-ink on analyzing what is most certainly going to go through umpteen revisions before hitting live. Not that analyzing the PTR is "bad" or "wrong," just that I don't always see the value in it. At best, you can only get a general idea for where the devs want to go, and sometimes not even that.
Still, there has been a lot of PTR buzz in the last couple of days, and a lot of it is directed at the classes I write about. Thus, I wanted to touch on a few of them and conjecture about where we might end up.
For DK's, the news is simple: we're going to get a b-rez. I'm sure they'll have to hotfix cooldowns and play around with stuff like that before it goes live. There's not really a whole lot to a b-rez as far as scaling though, mostly how long before you can use it again and what other classes it shares a cooldown with. Like the growing family of Heroisms, expect the devs to follow the patterns already set by the Druid b-rez.
For Warlocks, we get a bit more involved, especially for Aff'locks. Rumor still has it that our soulstone is going to join the b-rez family as well. I'm not sure whether or not it's going to happen in the next patch, but it seems to loom ever closer. Expect it to follow the same pattern as the proposed DK rez and druidric rebirthing.
The other scosche of news seems to reaffirm my initial misgivings during the last patching. Namely, I felt nerfed. Now they're talking about giving a substantial buff to Haunt. In addition, our Felpup's Shadowbite might get a boost. Theses are more Affliction oriented changes that should bump our DPS as well as entice us away from the Succubus.
For Warlocks at large, the Doomguard is likely going to get a buff as well. We all knew that they wanted Infernal to be for AoE and DG to be for single target, but they'd fubbed the design along the way. They'll fix that in the next patch I think, and we should see a re-emergence of big red.
It seems to me that they're struggling to make mana an issue for 'locks. They're talking about increasing the effects of Mana Feed, the low hanging fruit of the Demo tree, presumably to entice us to take it for free mana returns. I still don't see where the tipping point is going to be that I'd rather choose a mana talent over a stamina talent. Theoretically, it would mean we'd have to Life Tap less, but I'm not tapping a whole lot as it is. Unless the redesign of Mana Feed eliminates the need to tap altogether, I will likely continue to pass on it.
It's worth noting that the redesign is only planned to include the Felpup and Felguard for now. Thus, Destro 'locks really only have the DG change to look forward to. I think the take home here is that they want each tree to use different pets and are trying to tweak things to keep them even in terms of damage but slightly ahead for each tree... no easy task when you consider it. The DG and Haunt buffs are a lot more straightforward and are likely just a matter of "what percent goes live."
Stay tuned, it seems, as they continue to muck around with stuff. It's been quite some time since we've received so much attention. I supposed I'd grown used to seeing only one or two relatively minor Warlock patch notes. Now I'm starting to feel like a Pally.
Still, there has been a lot of PTR buzz in the last couple of days, and a lot of it is directed at the classes I write about. Thus, I wanted to touch on a few of them and conjecture about where we might end up.
For DK's, the news is simple: we're going to get a b-rez. I'm sure they'll have to hotfix cooldowns and play around with stuff like that before it goes live. There's not really a whole lot to a b-rez as far as scaling though, mostly how long before you can use it again and what other classes it shares a cooldown with. Like the growing family of Heroisms, expect the devs to follow the patterns already set by the Druid b-rez.
For Warlocks, we get a bit more involved, especially for Aff'locks. Rumor still has it that our soulstone is going to join the b-rez family as well. I'm not sure whether or not it's going to happen in the next patch, but it seems to loom ever closer. Expect it to follow the same pattern as the proposed DK rez and druidric rebirthing.
The other scosche of news seems to reaffirm my initial misgivings during the last patching. Namely, I felt nerfed. Now they're talking about giving a substantial buff to Haunt. In addition, our Felpup's Shadowbite might get a boost. Theses are more Affliction oriented changes that should bump our DPS as well as entice us away from the Succubus.
For Warlocks at large, the Doomguard is likely going to get a buff as well. We all knew that they wanted Infernal to be for AoE and DG to be for single target, but they'd fubbed the design along the way. They'll fix that in the next patch I think, and we should see a re-emergence of big red.
It seems to me that they're struggling to make mana an issue for 'locks. They're talking about increasing the effects of Mana Feed, the low hanging fruit of the Demo tree, presumably to entice us to take it for free mana returns. I still don't see where the tipping point is going to be that I'd rather choose a mana talent over a stamina talent. Theoretically, it would mean we'd have to Life Tap less, but I'm not tapping a whole lot as it is. Unless the redesign of Mana Feed eliminates the need to tap altogether, I will likely continue to pass on it.
It's worth noting that the redesign is only planned to include the Felpup and Felguard for now. Thus, Destro 'locks really only have the DG change to look forward to. I think the take home here is that they want each tree to use different pets and are trying to tweak things to keep them even in terms of damage but slightly ahead for each tree... no easy task when you consider it. The DG and Haunt buffs are a lot more straightforward and are likely just a matter of "what percent goes live."
Stay tuned, it seems, as they continue to muck around with stuff. It's been quite some time since we've received so much attention. I supposed I'd grown used to seeing only one or two relatively minor Warlock patch notes. Now I'm starting to feel like a Pally.
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