Weather

I find it interesting that it's warmer in my room, which is dark and at the east side of the house, than it is outside and in direct sunlight. I suppose it makes sense - my body heat plus my computer's heat plus the insulation of walls and closed curtains - but I just have this idea that it's supposed to be cooler out of the sun.

On a related note, summer sucks. Heat induces apathy, and with an already apathetic person like me, there's not much left that I feel like doing.

RAGE

Sinister Squashling drops from HH. Outrolled.
Do the fires quest for smash the pumpkin. Two other people in my group get a Squashling. I don't.
Do HH for a friend's achievement. Squashling drops. Outrolled.
In the space of like 3 hours.

RAGE

Brandon

Everybody loves Brandon. He is an Okay Guy.

Good few days

Yeah, had a good few days.

Wednesday I woke up sick - just a cold, but a pretty severe one, and I didn't want to go out into the cold morning like that. So I stayed home from school, getting back into bed. About midday I'm feeling better so I get up - got a sleep in and a day off, score.

Wednesday evening I go down to the dojo for training. Normal class, we run through some escapes and offensive/defensive combinations - sets of techniques that start from a specific point, usually the other guy grabbing a specific part of your body (for escapes), attempting to strike (for defensives), or with nothing going on at the time (for offensives). I remember all of them and walk out happy with how I've done. BJJ class, I learn two (2!) new techniques - one a grab that gets you from standing facing your partner to behind him holding his waist with one arm and one of his arms with the other, and one a series of transitions that lets you move through a couple of different positions while controlling the other guy - starting in a mount (sitting on their waist with your legs hooked into theirs), then going into a side control position (lying on their chest with one elbow pushing their head towards you and the other arm holding their waist, legs either out like you're doing a push-up or pressed into their side), then switching around them to be in a side control position on the other side, then coming back into mount. The overall idea is to keep weight on their chest the whole way, and it really works - you just can't get up with another guy's weight on you.

Then we have Chinese for dinner. I like Chinese.

Thursday, it's a student free day, so I get up as late as possible, whereupon I chat to a few friends and end up deciding to play some TF2. At about 11:30 AM I get an email from 'WoW Expansion Beta.' "Huh," I say, and open it up. Sure enough, it's legit, and within an hour or so I'm in the WLK beta (woot!). I spend the rest of the day playing, and end up clearing all the quests in Borean Tundra bar one that needs some engineer-crafted item to do, running the Nexus once, and then parking myself in Howling Fjord. At this point I'm about 3 bars from 72 and have stayed up later than I probably should have. Over the course of the day I eat what Chinese food didn't get eaten Wednesday night (about half of it, actually).

Friday, I manage to get up on time, to my great surprise, and make it to school with plenty of time to spare. It's an ordinary school day. I have more fun playing cards at lunch break than is proper, eat what is called a bacon-and-egg pie but is closer to a quiche, in my opinion, and do a lot of Physics questions in my free period - which puts me an exercise ahead of what's due in. Also, Physics questions can be quite fun.

Friday evening, I go down to the dojo for what's called the 'Teen Open Class.' It turns out that it's actually the 'Teen GO REALLY HARD AND GET EXHAUSETED Class.' After it's over I find that I'm mostly unable to stand. Looking forward to it next week.

So yeah. Good few days.

On-topic?!

Yeah, first martial arts-related post since I said I'd be posting about martial arts. *shrug*

Went back to the dojo yesterday for the first time in... almost twelve months, maybe? Not sure. Anyway, I get to keep my 3rd kyu belt (that's brown, 3rd kyu means 3 gradings from black - two are black stripes, the third is the belt itself), but I've been put in the 6th & 5th kyu class for a couple of weeks or so so I can find my feet, so to speak. That's somewhat advantageous because it means I can do the Brazilian Jiujitsu class that runs at the same time as the 4th to 1st kyu class that I'd normally be in. I tried out the BJJ class yesterday, after the 6th & 5th kyu class, and it was a lot of fun. Basically BJJ is about fighting on the ground; it's all grappling, locks, chokes, holds, throws and sweeps instead of strikes and the like. I might have to give it up when I go back to my normal class, but hopefully I can work something out so I don't.

But yeah. One and three-quarter hours of training yesterday, and now my lower back is a little sore and my shoulders kinda stiff. I have training every day except Tuesday and Thursday now, so I'm aiming to go hard and have my entire body aching by this time next week.

Recurring villains

Scene: Newnaxx-25.

"Minions, servants, soldiers of the cold dark, obey the call of Kel'Thuzad!" cries the archlich in a suitably dramatic fashion.

The raid turns and looks at the gates around them expectantly, waiting for hordes of undead to come at them.

A moment passes.

A voice comes from behind them all, laughing maniacally before breaking into a fit of coughing. "You didn't think you'd seen the last of me, did you? Fools! You may have destroyed Kil'Jaedan, but I serve a new master now - and I am stronger than ever before!" He begins laughing again.

Kel'thuzad facepalms. "God," he says, "shut up, Kael!" He hurls a frostbolt at the offending elf.

"Ack!" cries Kael, flying off into the distance. "I would have succeeded if it hadn't been for you meddling kids! And I didn't get to finish my monologue..."

Ping! he vanishes.

"..." the raid says in unison.

Sands of Ulduran

I think Sands of Ulduran sounds cooler than Strand of the Ancients.

http://www.wegame.com/watch/Jayde_PvP_Video/ - a shortish pvp video featuring a fbe DK in the new battleground. Looks really good, actually - the first WLK thing that I've seen that looks fun, as opposed to cool (Frostfire Bolt), bad (lots of stuff), or handy (Flourish). Plus it's a beautiful zone - reminds me of Azshara with its muted colours.

From what I can tell the battleground is very similar to the Assault style of maps from UT, with an attacking team trying to achieve a number of objectives (capture points, it looks like) and a defending team trying to stop them, and after either they capture the last point or the time runs out the teams swap. I assume that once both teams have finished the team that finished first, or had more points remaining, or something like that is the winner.

There were a couple of siege weapons (demolishers and turrets) and gates for them to knock down, but I didn't really see how much they impacted on the game. I assume that the gates can't be damaged without a tank, though. More importantly, though, the battleground was wide and open, the teams seemed to be moving mostly in tandem, and the battles seemed more balanced rather than one team running one-by-one into the other team's death squad and getting systematically slaughtered. It might be a fluke - the terrain and style of play might not actually promote teamwork more than the existing BGs - but I really hope not. It looks like fun. Of course, considering that as far as I could see the whole lot of them were wearing either TBC raid gear or WLK levelling blues and greens, the video's unsullied by resilience - so it's probably safe to assume that the fun will be sucked out of it in short order.

On a different note, the DK gameplay looks cooler than I'd expected. Being, of course, a longtime Inquisitor fan, the anti-magic side of the DK is what interested me in them originally, but I was put off a bit by how confusing the rune system combined with all their different kinds of melee attacks and diseases was. I could sorta see how they work from this video, though. Frost DKs look especially appealing - heavy meleeists with tons of roots, snares, silences, most of which are 30yard ranged, plus Death's Grasp for yanking, Anti-magic Shell for screwing over casters even more, and what seem to be the remnants of Shatter combos (which are awesome).

Even so, though, I don't think I'll be playing a DK in WLK.

...Heh. Funny, that. I assumed I wouldn't really be keeping up with what was happening with WoW when I quit, at least until Wrath's actual release, yet here I am getting all excited over a 10-minute low-quality movie.

I guess that while you can take the raider out of the raid, you can't take the raid out of the raider.

Surround sound

So my dad was moving house this week, and as part of helping him I found a large box. Inside the box I found a surround sound system.

"Hey," I said to him. "There's a surround sound system in this box."

"Yes," he replied.

"Can I have it?"

"Yes."

It took a bit to set up (basically I had to work out if my little external extension to my soundcard was compatible with it, and it was, but I didn't have the right cables so now it's connected directly to my soundcard until I can get some coax or optical).

Anyway, I now have rather a lot of volume controls.

1. Normal Windows volume. This is adjustable by using a knob on my external soundcard thing.

2. WinAmp/VLC/game/other application volume, depending on what I'm running.

3. Headphones volume.

4. Surround volume. I can adjust this using a remote, but I likely won't.

Sometime when nobody else is home I'm going to turn them all up and play something loud.

When I wrote that I immediately thought of the giant amp from Back to the Future.

In other news, my dad's new house is really small, but it has two storeys and three toilets.

Purge servers

Interesting idea I've been mulling over for a while. Basically, it's a server that purges itself every 3-6 months - all characters are deleted, world events are reset, etc etc. Reason being, well, rerolling's fun, and the game kinda stagnates after a time at the level cap - when you're done with heroics and in no urgent need of gold, you've got nothing left to do outside of raiding unless you're into PvP.

So the server resets to a) keep the game fresh, and b) add an element of urgency to progression. Everybody loves time trials.

Plus, 3-4 of these servers would fix the 'reroll locusts' problem that I hear about and contribute to.

Fact

Listening to the Caramelldansen on infinite loop makes you a better person.

Anime: Similarity

Somewhere deep in the lair of KyoAni, a few years past...

A man stands nervously in front of a large desk, wringing his hands slightly as his boss smokes a cigar while looking out the window. This man is in charge of art - you could call him an art manager, or a character design coordinator, or any number of things, but right now what he is is terrified.

"So," says his boss, watching the night city through the rain. A bolt of lightning strikes in the distance. "You wanted to see me?" He turns around and taps ash off the end of his cigar, eyes narrowing.

No, thinks the man, but "Yes," he says, making himself as small as he can. "It's... about the... character designs we were given. For our new project." What a terrible mistake this was, he thinks. I wish I were at home and in bed.

His boss raises an eyebrow and sits down in his big leather swivel chair. "What about them? I trust they are not... inadequate?"

"No, no, no, of course not!" stutters the man, doing his best to deflect the intense eyes of his boss. "It's just... I... Some of the team members, we..."

"Yes?"

"Well..." He puts a folder down on the desk. 'Ryou Fujibayashi,' it reads, and then another, 'Kyou Fujibayashi.' "Twins. Lavender hair. Kyou is older, more assertive, a bit coarse to her close friends, but a little emotionally insecure. She has waist-length hair and pointy eyes. Ryou is younger, timid, not particularly good at anything, but hardworking and faithful. She has short hair and droopy eyes."

The boss nods, leaning back in his chair. "Where are you going with this?"

"It's just..." The man hesitates for a moment. "Didn't our last project have characters... exactly the same?"

The boss's eyes narrow.

He stands, slowly walks around his desk to the man, and backhands him solidly across the face. The man falls to the floor, face screwed up in pain.

"Back to work," the boss says coldly.

"...Yeth thur," the man slurs sadly, and crawls out of the office.

Huh?

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53993

Achievements? Unified 'Blizzard Account?'

I mean, I already knew about WoW's achievements, and I knew about them eventually moving to account-based rather than character-based, but an account shared across all Blizzard games?

I liked it better when my games existed in a vacuum, I spose.

Wikipedia

"This gesture was discontinued after several doves were burned alive in the Olympic Flame during the opening ceremony of the 1988 Summer Olympics."

Ahh Wikipedia, how we love thee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games

And...

Yay, I'm not as out of shape as I thought!

So.

I quit WoW.

I've enjoyed writing this blog, so I'm gonna keep doing it, 'cept the occasional on-topic post will be about martial arts rather than about WoW.

Talents

I miss the 3X/2X builds of classic WoW. I think a lot of the game's problems with hybridisation could be fixed by increasing the amount of talent points available while reducing the amount of talents to spend them in. As it stands, it's often punishing to branch out into other trees at all, because of how bloated some talent trees are becoming.

As an example, I recently mocked up a PvE Feral WLK build - http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=0ZxhGsfrzVhoAkAo0Eczb - and it took me some time to choose what talents I wanted to lose from the Feral tree to pick up the core talents in Resto - Omen of Clarity, Furor, Naturalist, and the new Shapeshifting talent. I ended up losing 2/3 Infected Wounds (hopefully the 33% chance is enough to keep a 5-stack rolling), iLotP, Nurturing Instinct, Savage Fury, and Brutal Imapct out of the talents I would have liked to picked up in Feral, without even considering Primal Tenacity or Intensity because I just didn't have the available points.

Problem is, a lot of talents are just too good to consider skipping. Time was, you could get everything you wanted in your tree of choice and everything you wanted up 'till the 20 pt mark in your second tree, and what you wanted changed depending on how you were specialising within your spec. There were only a handful of talents that you really had to take - i.e. the +10% damage talents. Nowadays all the top-tier talents are as good as that or better, so you can't afford to skip them. So specs are more cookie-cutter past the first 3 or 4 tiers, especially in the hybrid classes.

*sigh* Maybe the game's just evolving and I can't get past it. Oh well.

The Dark Knight

Wow. Just wow. Incredible movie.

WLK beta open

Yarr. https://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/expansion/

From the looks of it, people are already receiving their keys. Hopefully I get one soon.

Reckon I'll bring the mage out of retirement for the beta, at least at first, 'cos I miss playing cc/dps in 5-mans. Then I'll take the druid through so I can give some feedback on the new stuff for them, since I'll likely be playing druid again.

Assuming I get in, of course.

Travel

Okay, my sister is using the bathroom and I remembered what I was going to talk about, so.

Sometimes I hear people talk about spending a year travelling around the world between leaving highschool and going to uni, or after uni but before starting a career. The notion's never really appealed to me, though. I can see why they'd want to - see new things, meet new people, stuff like that - but if you really wanted to see the world you couldn't really spend more than a couple of weeks, at the most, in any particular spot, and you'd also likely have to have an itinerary planned out for the entire trip. Not really my cup of tea.

But there are a few places I would like to travel to, perhaps more to live there for a time rather than to be a tourist. Japan, of course, is a big one, since I watch a lot of anime and play a lot of video games, and I've just sorta... soaked up a bit of their culture, I suppose. But it's second-hand, so I'd like to see it first-hand, to actually walk through Harajuku and Akihabara and speak to the people there - oh, and to learn conversational Japanese. Their cuisine is something else that appeals to me - did you know that in some places you can buy crepe pancakes from street vendors? That you can walk down the street eating a pancake and nobody will look at you twice? Oh, and of course, to learn a traditional Okinawan martial art is something else I'd like to do.

Europe is another place I'd like to go to, specifically, Scotland, Germany, England and Ireland, and a place I'd like to tour rather than to live. Castles, really, and the lands surrounding them are my pull to Europe, rather than culture.

America, perhaps, to see how different our cultures are, but it's a tenuous desire. (Can you use tenuous with desire? I'm not sure).

One day, perhaps. But not today and not tomorrow.

Shower time now.

Regrowth?

I planned a post out while I was in bed last night, but I completely forgot it. All I remember is that I was going to talk about Regrowth before talking about something else.

I've been using Regrowth more, especially on Illidan phase 2. Generally I'm healing the first tank in that phase, so I keep lifebloom and rejuv on him, tossing regrowths or swiftmends if he gets in deficit and then spamming lifebloom or regrowth on the raid, depending on how low they are. Once his target dies I'll keep rejuv on the second tank so I can swiftmend it off if necessary, and apart from that keep raid healing. When dark barrage comes down, I regrowth the target and then swiftmend if necessary, but it's usually not because our shamans have some funky NSHW rotation worked out to keep the barraged person alive. Saving swiftmend for my tank is annoying, though, since it's more effective, mana efficient, and faster to rejuv + swiftmend than regrowth. Ah, well, such is life.

Now it's time for a shower. With a bit of luck I'll remember what I was going to write about, 'cos I'm positive it was absolutely fascinating.

Kalecgos!

So we killed Kalecgos. Leet. Now we're a Sunwell guild.

We went and tried Brutallus right afterward. Cutscene was pretty cool - well, the breaking ice bit was, anyway.

Brutallus hits REALLY FUCKING HARD. My god.

Creativity: Insomnia

Thinking about writing, I realised I'd written this awhile back and let it rot in my writings folder, so I pulled it out and put it here.

Insomnia

Late at night, early in the morning, in the hours when most sane people are asleep, a certain few are not. While many of these people are forced into this pattern by their schedules, their work, their family and friends, others are not. These are those who are simply sleepless – the insomniacs of our society, who lie, awake, staring at their ceilings, until fatigue drags them under the warm blanket of sleep. They walk the streets at night, away from the harsh judgement of the sun, or stay awake until the grey hours of dawn, working at their desks until their vision blurs and their focus slips. They read, they eat, they find some way to pass the time, waiting until, at last, exhaustion catches up with them and they fall into blissful oblivion.

Ding-dong.

The doorbell rings.

It was three in the morning, and Keith couldn't imagine who would be at his door at three in the morning. With a sigh, he rubbed his nose, pushed his glasses up a bit, and left his computer running at his desk as he went downstairs.

He lived alone, working as a programmer; he built and maintained database programs for large companies. He was contracted out at the moment, a lucrative deal with a shipping firm – he had built them a program (well, taken a similar program he had written a few years back and tweaked it to be up-to-date), and now he was getting paid to come in twice a week to back up data and assure the bigwigs that yes, everything was working fine. So he had a lot of free time on his hands – but he was one of those people who manages to bring their work home even if they don't have any. He was trying to create a more efficient sorting algorithim at the moment.

Scratching his chin – he needed to shave, he reflected - he shuffled through his living room, blinking owlishly at the familiar furniture. His house was comfortable, if a little small, and over the few months he had lived in it had become home. An outsider, looking through the room, may have noticed little things that spoke volumes about the occupant – books, some novels, some weighty coding tomes, stacked in neat piles on the coffee table, no dirty clothes or dishes strewn about the room, the television covered in a layer of dust, and a small analog clock, quietly ticking on the table. Keith liked the ticking sound it made. Little things, little familiar regular things, like the warm hum his computer made, were the stuff that, he thought, kept him sane. Without them, he would snap like a popsicle stick, snapped in half a giant's hands.

He rubbed his eyes. That was a bad simile, he decided. Perhaps he needed to sleep. Shrugging mentally, he pulled open the door, preparing to greet whoever it was.

He blinked. “Lucus?” Almost the last person he had expected to see.

Lucus and him had been great friends throughout primary school and highschool. They had both been geeks, getting together at each others' houses to play video games, striving to best each other or overcome challenges together. As the years passed their friendship had been tightened – they had done everything together, closer than siblings – but as college began and adulthood loomed, they had slipped apart. Keith planned his life out and followed through – hence the comfortable house and healthy bank account. Lucus, on the other hand, had just let life wash over him, enjoying himself thoroughly while he wasn't tied down by a career or a relationship. He had breezed through school on his smarts alone, never working, sometimes learning an entire topic the day of an exam, and managed to score above average in every subject. He was the kind of person who made life seem effortless – and perhaps for him it truly was – always with a pretty girl on his arm, well-built and fit without ever excercising, flashing a grin as he solved maths problems he'd learned the concept behind minutes ago like he had been doing it all his life. Keith had always been a little jealous of him. Nevertheless, despite being almost the polar opposite of a stereotypical gamer, Lucus was very much into video games, playing them well into the night, often entering into competitions and leagues. He was always bugging Keith to play online with him, but Keith hardly ever had time any more, even for just a few rounds.

“Hey man,” Lucus greeted him. “What's up?” He walked in without asking, yawning as he did so.

“The hell are you doing at my house at this time of night?” Keith asked bluntly, too tired to make small talk. Lucus wandered over to a couch and flopped onto it, draping himself over it rather than sitting in it.

“Oh, y'know, couldn't sleep and I was bored. Figured you'd be awake, so I walked over. Why weren't'cha online?”

“You walked from your house to mine at three in the morning because you were bored?” Keith said, deliberately not answering the question.

“Yeah, why?”

“It's a thirty minute walk,” he said, crossing his arms.

“Nyeh,” replied Lucus, waving his arm dismissively. “Not that long.”

Keith blinked. “Well, shit,” he said. “Want some coffee?”

“Mh, tea'd be good, thanks,” Lucus said, sitting up and yawning. “Damn, I'm tired.”

Keith sighed, shaking his head as he walked into the kitchen and started the kettle boiling.

“Oy, Kiko!” Lucas called out from the living room. “You gotten any new games for your PS2 yet?”

“Don't call me that,” Keith replied. “No, I haven't had time for games recently. I've had a lot of work.”

“As if you have,” Lucas replied. “I know you, you finish everything with plenty of time to spare. Bet you're just making extra work for yourself.”

Keith began to rebut, then realised Lucas was right and shut his mouth. The database was satisfactory to his boss, he didn't have any other work, he didn't really need to make that sorting algorithm. Lucas knew him far too well. He made his coffee – black, no sugar – and Lucas's tea – white, two sugars – and brought them back in to the living room, to find Lucas looking at the case for the newest Final Fantasy game.

“You finished this yet?” he said, looking up from the case.

“No, I haven't,” replied Keith, passing him his mug.

“You should. Good game.” He took a sip from his drink, then looked thoughtfully at it for a moment. “Hum.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “What now?”

“I just had a good idea.”

“No you didn't. You just had a bad idea. Your ideas are never good.” Ignoring him, Lucas reached into his jacket pocket and fished around, withdrawing a mangled Caramello Koala. Grinning at Keith, he unwrapped it and dropped it into his drink. Keith sighed and sipped his coffee.

“And now...” Lucas said, taking another sip. He swilled it around his mouth for a moment, then swallowed. “It tastes like tea and chocolate,” he announced.

“Amazing,” Keith said dryly. “You'll make millions.” Lucas stuck his tounge out at him, then took another, larger sip.

“Owfuck!” Lucas said loudly, putting his mug down sharply and leaning back. Keith raised his eyebrow again. “I burnt my tounge,” Lucas said by way of explanation, making a funny face.

“Correction,” Keith said. “You scalded your tounge.”

“Shaddup you,” Lucas said dismissively. Leaving his drink aside for the time being, he returned to rummaging through the stash of games in the cabinet below Keith's television. “By the way,” he said, “was I right?”

“Hm?” asked Keith, momentarily lost. “About what?”

“About your work.”

“I-” he began, then “Oh, yes, damn you.” Lucas grinned triumphantly as Keith glared at his back.

After a few more seconds, “Ah-hah!” and Lucas emerged, triumphantly holding a game. Keith didn't even get to see what it was before he was had the game in the console and was turning everything on.

Keith sighed and stretched, yawning widely. He did need to get to sleep, and he did want to work out that damn algorithm sometime soon. He opened his eyes just in time for a controller to hit him in the chest, luckily didn't spill his coffee, and sat up, guessing that he wasn't going to get out of this.

“Alright,” he said, looking at the screen of his dusty television. “It's been a while since I kicked your arse at Tekken.”

Lucas grinned. “And it'll be a while yet, Kiko-old-pal.”

“Don't call me that. How do you even get Kiko from Keith?”

About an hour later, Keith was taking his empty mug to the kitchen. He put it in the sink and came back in to the living room – Lucus had fallen asleep in the minute he was out of the room. Keith shook his head with a smile. Walking over, he turned off the television and the PS2, picked up Lucas's mug and took it over to the sink. He glanced at it with a sigh; the inside was covered in partially melted caramel.

Turning off the lights downstairs, he trudged up to his bedroom and looked at his computer. The lines of code somehow didn't seem that appealing anymore. Sighing, he shut it down and prepared to go to bed.

He would play Final Fantasy instead of work tomorrow, he decided.

What time is it?

It's Bacon o'clock.

I sometimes wish I were a webcomic artist, or at least knew someone who was webcomicartistically inclined, because I occasionally have excellent visual ideas that can't quite be expressed in the realm of the written word.

Exhibit A:

Panel One (topleft) - Black. White writing center: "I'm faster than the average bear!"
Panel Two (topright) - Me fleeing from a bear, going stage left. Speed lines in the background. Bear: "Damn, I can't catch this guy."
Panel Three (bottomleft) - Black. White writing center: "I'm hungrier than the average bear!"
Panel Four (bottomright) - Me and a bear sitting at a table (in that order, left to right) with a white tablecloth (the kind that you put on the table at a 45 degree angle so the corners droop from the sides). Both have forks and knives held in hands, upright, and empty plates in front. Me: "Damn, I'm ravenous!" Bear: "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry, I guess."

I'm sure that that would be hilarious when drawn.

On a different note, I read over Epilogue a couple of times and made a couple of minor changes, but I'm still not happy with the way it reads. Possibly might rewrite it in the future, change the way sentences are linked, pad the last part out a bit.

Creativity: Epilogue

I write things in strange orders sometimes.

Anyway, this is the epilogue to the unwritten epic novel that's contained mostly in my head. It spans three books and thousands of years. One day I may actually write it.

Right now it's about 1:45 AM, so I may have to proofread this tomorrow when I'm awake. At any rate, enjoy. Criticism - constructive criticism - is, of course, welcomed.

Epilogue

It was summer.

A gentle breeze blew across the lawn, neatly cut grass waving softly. The leaves of the great oak trees that shaded the garden rustled gently, the flowerbeds rippled softly, every plant, every petal enjoying the fresh air and warm sunlight.

There was a statue in the middle of the garden, she noticed. It was large and grey, and very worn, as if it had been there for a very long time. Six figures – three men and three women – stood or sat on a long block of stone, each of them intently watching something that she could not see. Beneath them, on the long side of the block, was a small metal plaque.

She crossed to the statue, enjoying the feeling of the grass between her toes, and knelt down in front of it. She ran her hands over the plaque - it had words written on it, just nine lines, but she had long since forgotten how to read. She carefully traced each letter with her fingers, then sighed and stood up, reaching for the hand of one of the stone figures. It crumbled to dust at her touch.

"It must have been very old," she said, drawing her thin cloak closer about her shoulders. "Older than me. Maybe older than the whole world." She knelt down again and caressed the earth; it failed to crumble to dust at her touch. "Maybe even older than the sun and the moon and all the stars."

She stared for a spell at her hand, wondering at how the warm earth clung to her fingers.

Behind her came a little noise; a little peeping sound, the sound of something very small. She turned, and then smiled, for a tiny yellow baby bird had come up to her, twittering inquisitively.

"Hello there," she said, reaching out to it. It hopped into her hand and chirped, turning its head to look at her in the manner that birds had. She reached out and gently tickled its chin with her other hand.

"You know," she said to the bird, standing up and starting to walk. "I think I used to love this place." She cut her feet on a sharp, rocky outcropping as she crossed the lawn, but she had long since forgotten how to bleed.

"But I forgot." She stood under a tree and looked up, searching for the sun between the leaves. "I think that was a long time ago. A time that I don't remember any more."

Looking down at her hand, she realised she was talking to a shard of rock and sighed. "It's cold," she said, forgetting it was summer. She turned her back to the tree and leant against it, staring at the statue again.

"I think... that I knew those people," she said. "A man with a sword, and a girl in white." She picked them out from their fellows with her finger. "But they couldn't stay here, so they had to build a statue so we wouldn't forget them."

"I think I forgot them."

Sadness rippled through her, but she had long since forgotten how to cry.

"...It's so cold."

She lay against the tree for a while, staring at the bleak sky.

"Do you think that the clouds will ever come back?" she asked the bird, forgetting that it wasn't. "I miss the way they caught the sunset. Pink and gold and orange, too many shades to name them all, and every one of them beautiful." She looked to the horizon, searching for the sun – but it was dark and cold now, and she had long since forgotten how to see.

She shifted, trying to get comfortable on the cold, hard ground. "I wonder how long it's been since I last ate." Though she didn't know, it had been millions of years – she had long since forgotten how to eat. "I miss eating. I miss the wind, too."

She moved her hand through the space in front of her, feeling nothing but cold numbness – there was no air here, but she had long since forgotten how to breathe.

"...I'm so cold. Cold and tired." She slid down the rock she was leaning against, tearing her cloak and her back in the process, until she was lying on her side. "Perhaps I'll go to sleep here."

Her eyes slowly drifted shut, and the last speck of warmth in the universe winked out.

And that is how the world ended, with a woman who had only dust and forgotten memories to see her through her final hours.

Getting ever closer

Shockwave Truncheon [x]
Rod of the Blazing Light [ ]
Shard of the Virtuous [x]
Nightstaff of the Everliving [ ]
Exodar Life-Staff [ ]
Light's Justice [x]
Crystalheart Pulse-Staff [x]
Ethereum Life-Staff [ ]
Staff of Dark Mending [x]
Dark Blessing [x]
Lightfathom Scepter [ ]
Gavel of Naaru Blessings [x]
Hammer of Atonement [ ]
Staff of Immaculate Recovery [ ]
Crystal Spire of Karabor [ ]
Apostle of Argus [ ]
Archon's Gavel [ ]
Hammer of Sanctification [ ]
Golden Staff of the Sin'dorei [ ]

In this context, my collection seems pretty small. But I'll get there eventually.

...maybe.

News from the front

Browsing the internets in boredom, I come across this.

Though whoever mocked that up did it a little shoddily, it's a pretty cool idea, especially if it's dropped rather than bought. Perhaps from hUtgarde80, a rare drop from the last boss - seeing as Valkyries go with vikings, which is sorta what the Vyrkul are.

I think properly it'd read something like this:

Reins of the Valkyrie's Steed
Binds when picked up
Requires Riding (150)
Use: Summons and dismisses a ridable spectral horse. This is a very fast mount. Only usable while in ghost form.

I'd pay it.

Also:

"imo if you want to pay the $25 you should be allowed. not allowing pve->pvp xfers is an outdated idea from the first era of wow, where people actually cared about the horde/alliance division and so sought out pvp for the purpose of fighting the other faction, rather than for honor, points, or fun. the people who arena for the sake of arena don't care about killing the other faction, they care about beating the other teams - sportsmen rather than patriots, I guess.

since then, 60s and later 70s have found better things to do with their time. ganking is mostly a thing of the past." - me on the Oceanic Alliance PvE realms -> Thaurissian thing, taken from a thread in the Cael forums

Funny how the game's evolved over time, eh.

Homogenization

from http://wotlk.wikidot.com/patch-notes

# Hit Rating, Critical Strike Rating, and Haste Rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.
# Spellpower: All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant “increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization. For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording. Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power.

wtf. blizzard can stop wrecking my game now kthx

Best Idea Ever

A sandwich that's bigger on the inside. Like the TARDIS. Just imagine... you could bite into it and have an UNLIKELY amount of food pour into your mouth. Just think of all the tomato, onion and mayonnaise you could eat at once!

*salivates*

Illidan down.

Woot.

Looking forward to SWP, but apparently we're gonna focus on clearing T6 weekly for loot before progression for a while. Even so, I can practically taste the Kalecgos.

Three things

One, Enchanted was an awesome movie (we rented it on the weekend). Brilliant dialogue, stunning acting. Highlights include the line "You were made / To finish your duet," anything the evil stepmother/queen/witch did, and the musical parts. The way the animated and live action worlds intersected was absolutely fantastic. Top marks.

Two, last night my sister told me that my dress would be bright yellow, because "yellow is the colour of self-confidence." *makes funny hand motion expressing helpless confusion*

Three, today is the first day of winter! That's right, six weeks until the coldest day of the year! *huddles in a jacket in a heated room and grumbles at Melbourne's weather*

Attunements

Let's look back.

ZG: No attunement.
AQ20: No attunement.
MC: Attunement requires a run through BRD.
BWL: Attunement requires a run through UBRS.
AQ40: No attunement.
Naxx: Attunement requires a donation of gold and materials which can be easily purchased; decreases with Argent Dawn rep.

BM: Attunement requires a run through Durnholde.
Kara: Attunement requires runs through SL, SV, Arca, and BM; lifted.
Heroics: Revered reputation with the associated faction; dropped to Honoured.
hMGT: Requires a run through MGT.
ZA: No attunement.
Gruul: No attunement.
Mag: No attunement.
SSC: Attunement requires runs through hSP, Kara, and Gruul; lifted.
TK: Attunement requires a lengthy quest chain with two 5-man parts, and then runs through hSV, hSL, hSH, hArca, and Mag; lifted.
Hyjal: Attunement requires runs through TK and SSC; lifted.
BT: Attunement requires a lengthy quest chain with 5-man parts, a run through Arca, a run to FLK in SSC, a run to Al'ar in TK, and a run to RWC in Hyjal; lifted.
SWP: No attunement.

So we can see that TBC was a real nightmare attunements-wise. I'm in favour of attunements, sorta, but I don't mind no attunements - the real fail was attunements being lifted, leaving first Mag (until his recent nerf), and now Kael and Vashj by the wayside, as content is skipped. Had no attunements existed in TBC from the start, you can bet that there would be an definite increase in difficulty, or at least not a significant decrease, from the end of T5 to the start of T6.

I didn't keep track of it much preBC, but I do believe that you didn't touch BWL until you could kill Rag. You didn't touch AQ40 until you could kill Nef. You perhaps cleared 3 bosses in Naxx, but after that you killed C'thun before moving on.

At least, as far as I know.

Why? Because attunements didn't exist in the form they do now.

They were a little nod to say 'you put the effort in, here's your room number and there are mints on the pillows for you.' You ran a blue-level instance or put some gold on. Anyone could be attuned to Naxx, no problems.

TBC attunements are different. They enforced linear raid progression through artificial walls, despite TBC apparently being all about non-linear. So when you killed Mag your raid could waltz through most of T5; when you killed Kael your raid could waltz through most of T6.

So I say bring back attunements. Make me farm up 100 Icecrown Key Fragments from soloable mobs. Make me clear hUtgarde-80 to get into Utgarde-R. But don't make me kill Malygos to get through to Ulduar. Just make Ulduar Boss #1 harder than Malygos.

And keep the quest chains simple, single-step. Vials of Eternity was perfect (apart from the fact you had to kill raid bosses). Oronok Torn-heart -> Trials of the Naaru was not.

Side note: Hard heroics with Trials-like quests? Yes please. Just not as part of a super-long chain or something that everyone has to be rushed through to get a raid together.

Lolindy

*crescent kicks George Lucas in the chin*

Dialogue didn't flow well. Whole premise of the movie was pretty ridiculous. I liked Mutt, he was cool.

Don't regret seeing it, would not see again.

Perspective

Writing down my thoughts to get myself in order.

I went with one of my friends to his brother's house in the city yesterday. Four of us, all up, 'round there. Had Mcdonalds for lunch, pizza for dinner, played Smash Brothers and weird card games and chatted and laughed and stuff. Best time I've had in months. Better than when Kael died - different, yes, but I think better.

I'm beginning to realise now that WoW isn't really fun. I like raiding well enough, I suppose. Sure, nothing frustrates me like spending a night on Gorefiend as Those Guys get constructs, but I've enjoyed building my character up, experimenting with and mastering different styles of healing, and applying them to a boss fight. Looking forward to Essence of Anger this week; reckon I know how to do better on that fight.

Thing is, though, it doesn't really matter how well I heal there. As long as the DPS kill him before his aura ticks too high, we win. WTB a healing check.

Sitting here, I think that I could perform any role in any level of raiding. I don't know that; I've never been in SWP or Naxx-60. But I'm pretty sure I could pull my weight in either. So I've 'finished' PvE. WoW's PvP is a big 'meh' to me - I'd rather play TF2, or ToB, or maybe try WAR. Only thing left, really, is leadership.

I've been a GM before, briefly - old guild on Barthilas, the mantle got passed down as more and more GMs, officers, and raiders left until I ended up with it. I wore it about a month before I quit that guild.

I've been an officer before, a couple of times, only once when I was actually doing any officering. We cleared 5/6 3/4 before I burnt out, partially from healing, partially from leading, and switched to feral. That guild rebuilt from not raiding back to 5/6 3/4 a few times; I was one of the last people to leave after it collapsed for good.

I've never been a real GM, a raid leader, or a main tank. Dunno if I want to, though. From all I've heard it's basically the least fun ever.

So I'm thinking maybe I'll quit raiding. Maybe I won't reroll; maybe I'll just take my druid through to 80 and then do heroics every now and then. Maybe I'll quit WoW altogether.

Thing is, even though I can make 100% of our (now) 5-night raiding schedule at the moment, it's looking like that might stop being so in the future. And, hell, I dunno if I want to give up all my weeknights. I like sleep. I'm planning to get back into martial arts at the end of this year, 'roundabout October - and it'll be a real trouble to get from the dojo to home in time for the raid, twice a week. I have to get around to getting my Ls. I might actually have to study for exams this year. I want to move out of home sometime next year. Etc, etc, etc. But even in the face of all that, I think I could fit raiding in. I read somewhere once that the difference between a casual and a hardcore is that a casual rearranges the game to fit around their life; a hardcore rearranges their life to fit around the game.

But maybe I shouldn't keep raiding. Maybe I should spend my evenings hanging around with mates, eating takeaway and playing Smash Brothers.

At any rate, I need to farm up some gold to get the shadows for my +15 SR to cloak enchant - it'll push me to 369 buffed SR. Sharhaz soon.

Perhaps one of the remaining nine bosses in TBC will rekindle my passion for raiding. We'll see.

Burst Time

Well, just as I was speaking of benchmarks for the various classes...

Avoidance Article

Interesting article. I had an idea sort of similar to that once - I called it 'estimated time until death' rather than burst time, and had rather unwieldy ideas of how to calculate it. I still think that EH gearing is the way to go - since as a tank, I feel that being able to handle the worst-case scenario is more important than reducing its likelihood, and as a healer I vastly prefer my tank to be taking heavy, steady damage rather than light damage with heavy spiking. But this article has confirmed the idea of balanced gear choices for tanking - putting Regal gems in red and Enduring gems in yellow, perhaps?

A tidbit of information to be filed away for the future.

2t6...

isn't really a noticeable difference.

I mean, those two seconds are huge, but I never notice if a spell's just come off cooldown. Either you can cast it, or you can't and you cast something else.

In other news, I'm trying to raidheal more aggressively - rejuv -> swiftmend and regrowth spam instead of lifebloom spam. Looking forward to trying it out on RoS phase 3 this week. (Hopefully I remember to HS and then barkskin/tranq to keep myself up at the end this time, though. Last week was... embarrasing).

I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with my healing. It's somewhat frustrating that a healer's worth isn't quantifiable. I mean, a DPS class can put out 800, or 1200, or 2800 DPS. A tank can put out 1500 TPS, never take a crushing, and have 60k effective health. A healer... you can say you have 2200 +heal and 400 mp5 while casting, but that doesn't tell anyone how good you are. A healer's worth is measured mostly by the people they keep alive; but that's something that's shared between the entire healing corps.

So I can say that I'm a good healer; I can say that I can heal BT; I can say that I reckon I could heal SWP. But all I have backing that is words. No numbers.

On a different note, I'm moving closer towards my perfect pre-SWP set. Hat, neck, wrists, hands, belt, pants, rings, one trinket, idol - all best in slot, barring the facts that a) I'm using 11 healing 2 mp5 gems instead of 11 healing 5 spi gems since the recipe's not available Caelside yet, and b) I have a blue gem in my belt. Cloak, I'll get from Gurtogg. Shoulders, from Shahraz. Chest, from Illidan. Second trinket, from Illidan. Boots, well, technically Leo's boots are a slight upgrade for me, but I don't expect to ever be going back to SSC so I'll probably be wearing these until Felmyst.

Then we have weapons.

Should I take Apostle of Argus for the mad regen and availability? Or should I hold out for Crystal Spire + Archi OH? If I can't get my hands on a Crystal Spire, is the badge mace + Archi OH better than the Apostle?

I'll probably end up taking an Apostle for Shattrath and regen and the badge mace for business (so much +heal). With any luck, I'll be sporting that mace from Twins before too long. Maybe I won't end up having to take the Crystal Spire over a paladin or a shaman.

WTB a healing check. Brutallus perhaps? We'll see.

The communists have stolen my fabulous hair!

The bastards!

They took my fabulous hair!

My heart goes out to a friend of my sister, a man I have never met by the name of Elijah. The one thing I do know about him is that he has also fallen victim to the loss of fabulous hair. To that I say, us men must band together! In a close, loving, yet entirely platonic manner! And we must sing songs to commemorate the loss of our fabulous hair!

On a more serious note...

"So why'd you cut it off?"

"Eh. Felt like it."

"Must be a giiirl."

*eyeroll*

"No, really. Why'd you cut it off?"

"'Cos I felt like it."

I realise now that I'm going to have to have this conversation with everyone I know.

*sigh*

Hungry...

It's 6 am. I decided not to sleep last night. Silly idea, yes, I know, but that's me.

It occurs to me that I'm simply ravenous. Huh, I think. Odd. I ate recently, didn't I?

Had dinner. It was pork.

That'd be at about... oh, 6?

Oh. Right. That was twelve hours ago.

Damn the passage of time feels weird sometimes.

Hope

Day or so later, after a few conversations with my mum (the quintessential casual raider) and my handful of WoW-playing friends (of which only a couple have ever raided hardcore) and I'm seeing the 10-and-25-cloning stuff in a bit of a different light. Don't mean I like it any more than I did afore, just means that I've seen the point of view of the so-called casuals. And as much as I hate to admit it, we're the minority here. I'd reckon that under a tenth of the ten million subscribers Blizzard caters to are raiders proper.

Even so, I don't reckon it's what should be done.

So I'm hoping that Blizzard leaves us something. Looks. Titles. Differences in the encounters. I mean, how do you translate 4HM to a 10-man fight? Gothik? Thaddius? Sapphiron? How would you downsize Kael or Vashj? Archimonde? Kalecgos? C'thun?

Fact of the matter is, the 25-man fights that are really strategically challenging couldn't be just taken directly and plopped into a 10-man. So either a) all of the boss fights in 25-mans lose their depth so that they can be the same in the 10-mans, or b) Blizzard designs twice as many encounters.

I know what I'm hoping for.

We all know that 10-man bosses can be technical and difficult. Zul'jin is a perfect example of this. He's not a 25-man boss though.

So please. Make 25-man Kel'thuzad Kel'thuzad. Make 10-man Kel'thuzad Zul'jin.

Fuck you, Blizzard

Raids & Dungeons

All raid dungeons in Wrath of the Lich King will have both 10-person and 25-person versions. So at level 80, every major encounter and every big boss fight can be experienced with a group of 10.

25-person raiding progression is not dependent on 10-person raiding progression.

There will be no attunements or keys to obtain, and you won't be locked out of a 25-person instance if you decide to attempt the 10-person version, and vice-versa.

25-person raids will earn more, higher-level rewards, in what should be the equivalent of one "tier" of loot quality.

Taken from www.mmo-champion.com's compilation of the Gamespy and Curse WLK info.

Fuck.

What the hell is the point of being a raider now?

Loot, I didn't care about. Looks, I didn't mind. Now they're taking the dungeon and the encounters away, taking our exclusive domains and extending them to the slobbering masses.

I like 10-mans. 10-mans are good. They fulfill a different role to 25-mans. They can be equally epic and cool. They can be serious content for some guilds and random afternoon badge runs for others. That's fine! Put more 10-mans in! Put hard 10-mans in! But for god's sake, leave me a motive to RAID! Leave me my prestige, my reward for wasting my evenings in the game. Leave me my Hand of A'dal, my Medallion of Karabor, my Band of Eternity.

A raider is DEFINED by the encounters he wipes to, learns, beats, and farms.

When we lose our exclusive rights to those encounters, we lose everything that makes us raiders. It all means nothing.

Fuck.

On a different note, the DK has been confirmed as being a superior anti-magic tank. It's the Inquisitor. Exactly what I had hoped.

But, hey, what's the point of that if I'm not raiding? Not like any heroic or 10-man raid is going to require specific types of tanks for specific encounters. Hell, if I wanted to tank small instances I'd roll a prot paladin.

...Fuck, Blizzard. Just fuck.

Gulf on Warriors

To [Gulf]: I'm thinking about rolling another warrior for WLK
To [Gulf]: On one of the servers they'll release with the xpack
[Gulf] whispers: I wouldn't
[Gulf] whispers: playing a warrior is like punching yourself in the balls repeatedly
[Gulf] whispers: except you can't unless you spend $50 on special ball-punching gloves first.

Band of the Eternal Restorer

We cleared 5/5 Hyjal tonight, the first raiding night after downing Archimonde. Was most excellent. I picked up Exalted SotS on the way there, which netted me the little jewel of [Band of the Eternal Restorer], which also happens to be best-in-slot for rings pre-SWP. Leet.

Dear Vaiyl

Heroic Aeonus is srs bsnss.

There.

Archimonde

It wasn't as good as Kael.

But it was fucking ARCHIMONDE.

We're four bosses from Sunwell.

ROS. Mother. Council. Illidan.

We're coming for you.

Out of Retirement

I transferred my warrior from Barthilas to Aman'thul a while back, the intention being to help out my mum whenever she needed a tank. So every now and then when I wasn't raiding she'd call me online and we'd do a heroic together.

About a week ago I decided, being pretty bored with my druid right then, that I'd bring my warrior out of retirement and start properly playing him again. It's been pretty fun so far, pugging heroics again and stuff. Though I don't have the gear to run everything without CC yet, places like Underbog are fine as long as I have a competent healer behind me. I haven't tried the hard heroics yet, either (namely MGT, SH, Arcatraz, and SL), but I expect I'll be able to do them before to long.

Once I find my sea-legs again, I expect I'll be trying out the SS/SS build (about 8/21/32), despite it missing some top-end prot talents that are important to threat; namely, two points of Focused Rage and three points of One Hand Spec. Until then, though, I'm doing SSO dailies and farming badges. Fitting everything around my already-existing raiding schedule is a bit tricky, but with a bit of luck I should be able to get in maybe 4-5 heroics and a Kara run every week.

On another note, I'm wondering if there'll be servers released alongside WLK, like there were with TBC. If there are, and they're non-transfer servers, I might reroll there. Seems kinda silly, since I rolled my druid to be a WLK character, but then again I expected WLK about five and a half months ago. And I suppose it wouldn't really be fair to the friends who I seem to drag from server to server, who are mostly close to or just hitting 70. But even so, a theoretical male orc warrior named Lolicon beckons me. "C'mon," he says, his [Dreadnaught Pauldrons] gleaming. "Your chance to be part of a new reroll server! Levelling to 80 among the first wave of hardcore players, rushing for server firsts, perhaps even being a main tank!" And I chew my bottom lip and make an indecisive noise in my throat.

I learned, a long time ago, that I'm never satisfied with where I am in WoW. So I'm constantly on the prowl for new opportunities and fresh starts - a new spec, a new class, a new role. Tight-knit social guilds have never worked for me; although I end up good friends with everyone, the slow progression and casual attitude frustrates me. And so I want to quit, but I can't bring myself to, since hey, they're my friends. It's the same, I suppose, with a server - though I may want to reroll, my ties with both the people I brought there and the people I met there will keep me there.

Another thing I learned a while back is that if you're not willing to step on other people's toes you're not going to get anywhere.

I sigh. At times like this, I hate the game. At times like this, I want to quit.

But I know I won't.

For now, I'll keep raiding on my druid, keep farming badges on my warrior, and then I'll see what the wind brings me between now and WLK. Perhaps I'll still be Pappas, perhaps I'll be Darakinel again, perhaps I'll be Lolicon. Whatever.

Good times

Digging through a couple of boxes of old CDs today, looking for a copy of the original Myst to lend to my grandmother. I not only found Myst, but also a couple of Starcraft discs, half of Total Annihilation, Tyrian, Transport Tycoon, Theme Park, and some other gems.

Good times.

Bear tracks

It was cold today.

Standing at the train station, huddling over for warmth as the train arrived, it occurred to me that the screeching sound the wheels sometimes make doesn't bother me anymore. Y'know, the nails-on-the-blackboard, tearing metal sound you sometimes get. When I first started highschool, it was akin to physical pain - I would wince every time a train screeeeched past. Now, five and a half years later, I just kind of watch impassively and then get on. Funny how you get used to stuff like that.

A little bit later, I'm sitting in my Legal class, rubbing my hands together and not paying as much attention as I seem to be, and I realise that I'm sleepier than usual. This in itself isn't particularly unusual - I generally sleep from midnight until seven, which is a fair bit less than the ten hours I'm apparently supposed to get, and I often miss a couple of hours or a whole night of sleep anyway - but I'd been sleeping better and longer than usual the past few days.

It dawns on me that the cold is making me sleepy. I must be a bear.

I really wanted a hamburger then, too.

Stuff

Man. We are absolutely BREEZING through T6. It's ridiculous.

Supremus? Shade? Kaz'rogal? Azgalor? Gorefiend? A resounding 'meh' to the lot of them.

Tonight I got two pieces of loot - pants from Akama and spellhaste (=.=) gloves from Gorefiend, on our first kill at that - which pushed my +heal up to a hefty 1950 unbuffed. I'm reallly low on DKP now though. Even so, I'm considering building a spellhaste set - mostly I'll be losing out on regen, and a touch of +heal in some places, and it's not like I have competition for leather healing pieces anyway. I won't be using spellhaste pieces in most slots in my main set, though, for now at any rate. On the downside, though, my regen is hurting. Buuut... I have 80 mana pots on me, so it's okay.

Bloodboil tomorrow. Looking forward to healing that.

I'm wanting to play a warrior tank again, but not wanting to level a warrior again. I seem to jump around with what I want my alts to be. Like, I miss playing my mage, and I miss playing my warrior, and I want to try playing a warlock, an eleshammy, a holy priest, a shadow priest, a protadin, a rouge, the works. And I know from past experience that alts make my main suffer.

Man, I'm all over the place today. Oh well.

VCE is SRS BSNSS

Year 12 English class. People are being called up to do their orals - something I, of course, haven't prepared.

I get called up. 'Okay,' I think to myself, standing up and grabbing a couple of whiteboard markers on my way to the front of the room. I draw the axes of a graph on the whiteboard, and label them - the X axis is 'whaling,' and the Y axis is 'good.' I then draw a straight line, diagonally up from one corner of my graph to the other.

"Whaling," I say, pausing ever so slightly as I turn to face my classmates, "is good. Mkay?"

I step back slightly, allowing them to see my graph. "As you can clearly see," I explain, gesturing at the relevant parts, "the amount of Good is directly proportional to the amount of Whaling. Thank you."

I cross the room and sit back down in my chair.

A beat.

The room erupts into laughter.

Lolt6

So... yeah. Went into Hyjal tonight.

Oneshot RWC. Nobody even died on the trash. [Rejuvenating Bracers] woot.
Oneshot Anetheron. Trash was still easy. Netted about 3200 rep in there, too, which is nice - I'll have my Honoured ring next time we're here.

'Woot,' we say, and head down to BT. Naj'entus trash is easy. I get to sleep a turtle. We wipe once on Naj'entus because someone threw a spine at the wrong time, then kill him the second time. Fun fight to heal.

We wipe once on a pack of about ninety little green guys, then invis pot/stealth past them and summon the rest of the raid. Then we spend about three years clearing Supremus trash. We only attempt Supremus twice, then call it 'cos the raid finished a while ago and everyone's tired. I die to a volcano. T_T.

After the raid, a group of us heads over and does the Distraction for Akama quest together, netting me a nifty title.

All in all...

LolT6?

Band of Eternity

So... yeah. Despite my whining about it, and despite the fact that yesterday's raid and the start of today's raid were both pretty shit... we killed Kael.

Fucking woot.

My new ring's good. The badge ring is better than most of the SOS rings, but I think I'll be spending badges on actual gear before the ring. Will have to see. Exalted SOS trumps all rings I currently know of, anyway, so... yeah.

Seeing Kael die was, well... fucking awesome. Even though I think it's a relatively easy fight for healers, phase 5 was a rush, especially since it only was the second time we'd gotten to there.

I feel like I've solidly graduated from T5, and I'm looking forward to T6. Goodbye SSC, goodbye TK. I won't miss you, but I'm sure someday I'll look back and think I do.

Focus

I don't has it.

I've always prided myself on being a good raider. I know how to play. Previous to my current guild, I've always easily outperformed 75% of people in the same role as me. The fact that I'm only a mediocre player now is a good thing, because it means that I don't sit there being frustrated because people aren't doing their job.

Maybe it's because I've moved from being an officer to being a member, but I seem to be... focusing less in raids. I mess around a bit, especially on trash. Sometimes I go bearform and taunt mobs - I've been oneshot a couple of times because of this - but, y'know, it's just trash, nobody cares! It's really come to a peak, however, on Kael'thas. The absolute low point of my raiding experience in this guild has to have been when I was jumping in circles around Telonicus - in phase one, no less - since I had no healing to do, and yet! I managed to get myself oneshot by dynamite. Kael is supposed to be one of the hardest fights in the game, and here I am messing around dying to stupid stuff.

I think I perform at my best on fights like Vaelestrasz, or Kazzak, or how I imagine Brutallus or Patchwerk to be. Fights that aren't about controlling gimmicks like adds or phases or move-out-of-the-fire. Fights where you have to play HARD. Fights where the tank dies, where the boss enrages, where the healers run out of mana. I'm not jumping in circles in those fights. I'm pressing my Frostbolt key really fucking hard, or frantically cycling my tanking rotation, or rolling lifeblooms across two tanks and raid healing when I can. Where avoidable damage is basically 'do not get cleaved, firebreathed, or tailslapped,' and all the rogues are standing under a wing and popping their cooldowns. If the fight requires me to play at 100%, then I'm good; I can focus; I can stare at my raid frames and wish my GCD was shorter for the whole ten minutes, and then I exhale in relief and realise how tense my shoulders are.

But... healing Kael isn't challenging. I pretend to DPS Thaladred. I put three lifeblooms and a rejuv on Sanguinar's tank and watch his green bar stay put. I put hots on Capernian's tank and occasionally swiftmend. I... jump in circles around Telonicus. I give it a second then put lifeblooms on the weapon tanks. I catform-dash to the other end of the room and then heal Capernian's tank. I put hots on the phoenix tank and raid heal.

It's really fucking boring. And so I lose interest, lose focus, and make stupid mistakes.

I suppose being a resto druid contributes to this - since I heal proactively rather than reactively, I just have to lifebloom once every seven seconds and can spend the rest of the time jumping around. Maybe I should go back to DPS.

Real healers...

...cast every heal out of their spellbook.

Last night. I somehow managed to swap my main action bar to a different one right as we pulled Hydross, so my nice, familiar Lifebloom, Swiftmend, Rejuv, Tangle, Regrowth, NSHT, Starfire, Wrath bar got turned into... uselessness. I think I had a trinkets macro for cat, Alchemy, Jewelcrafting, Panda Collar, Sprite Darter Egg, Hearthstone, and Golden Fish Sticks there.

So I go, 'shit. uhh... right!' Then I open my spellbook with P, target the tank, and start clicking lifebloom. I actually managed to do my job relatively well just by clicking people in my raid frames, clicking lifebloom in my spellbook, and repeating.

It was pretty intense.

World PvP!

Okay, so, doing my 2.4 dailies for gold - in Nagrand, collecting those firebubble things. I ride up to a bubble, dismount, stare at it for a moment (I'm still waking up), go 'oh right,' click my goggles. In this time a flagged eleshaman has already come up and taken it.

'Gr!' I say, but continue to get the bubbles.

Last bubble I need, I'm going to it. Off to the side I see the shaman riding his netherdrake towards the same bubble. He dismounts and starts to get it.

'Oh no you don't!' I think. NS -> Cyclone. I pick up the bubble, go travelform, and run. A little bit of shifting out of Frost Shock later, I'm in flight form on my way to Telaar.

He chased me back and killed me at the flight master, but it was worth it!

Creativity: Not Together

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction about fictional situations involving fictional people.

"I don't know if I lied when I said we're not together..." ~Unsent Letter, Machine Gun Fellatio

To hell with it all, I don't know.

She's been my roomie for pretty much as long as I can remember. We moved in together as total strangers - needed to get a place near our uni, she placed an ad in the newspaper, so I got in touch and here we are - and now everyone I know is talking about us like we're an item. I don't know if we are or not. I don't know what I think. I don't know what she thinks. I haven't the foggiest fucking clue.

We act enough like a couple at times - argue over stupid things, finish each others' sentances, little stuff like that, y'know? But we don't sleep together, don't have sex, don't kiss, aren't a couple. We play video games together. We help each other with essays and crap. When she broke her arm I brought her flowers and homework in the hospital. On my 21st she took us out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. She cooks dinner, I clean up after. We split the bills and groceries.

Hell, we're comfortable enough with each other. I'll be eating cereal on the kitchen table in my boxers, she'll walk in dripping wet in a towel, tell me that the shower's free, get herself some breakfast and sit down across from me. Happens every morning. She usually just wears a big shirt at home - I usually don't wear a shirt at home - and that's more than once caused someone at the door to blink and ask if it's a bad time.

For once I'd like it to be a bad time, y'know?

She's the most damn reliable person I know. She drove an hour either way to pick me up from a wild party at a friend's place once. At three in the morning no less! Boy was she unhappy about that - at least I think, I was off my fucking face - but she was there, and I still haven't paid her back for that one. She's always our designated driver, and hell, I don't even have my Ls.

The one time she wasn't driving, I'm told we made out like animals in heat. God, do I wish I wasn't drunk for that. Don't remember that night one fucking bit.

Maybe she's gay.

Man, that'd be rich, wouldn't it?

I 'spose it doesn't matter if we're a couple or not. My dad always told me to put my mates above my woman. Damn bastard, my dad was. And hell, she's closer to being a mate than she is to being 'my woman.' Fucking lot of good your advice is doing me now, Dad. But I feel a lot... safer... with her around, y'know? One of those spiritual things, I guess. Like she's one of those buttress things, and I'm the house she's holding up.

Man that sounds stupid. Fucking stupid. I hate metaphors.

It doesn't matter. It matters. I don't know. I don't fucking know, and I know it doesn't matter, and I stay awake at night wondering if it matters or not, and wondering if we're together or not. I don't even know the word to describe that! Fucking stupid, that's the word. God damnit.

I don't know. But I wish I did.

And I don't think I'll ever find out.

Frustration

Knocked back from a serious raiding guild because of my age.

Again.

Gear, gems, enchants, attunements, raiding experience, whatever else I can work on, I can change. But my age? Hell, I don't have a time machine. I can't change that. I know I'm at least as mature and skilled as many people over the 18 mark who I consider good players - and hell, what difference do those two years make? A guild's age requirement should be a guideline not a rule, and the final decision should be made on a case-by-case basis. Although, I guess I am biased for obvious reasons.

This is the reason I've lied about my age pretty much since I stared playing. It's pretty hard to get people to take you seriously if they think of you as a child.

Damn it all.

Risk vs. Reward

This post is a followup to posts made by Nihilum, Risen, Ciderhelm, Satrina, and several other people and guilds. (some posts and some links can be found at TankSpot). Basically, the gist of it is that, with the new gear from MGT and h-MGT, the new ridiculous badge gear, the new rep gear, etc etc, the value of epics in general, and raiding epics in particular, is becoming devalued. Y'know, who cares that you slogged your way through the toughest encounters in the game to pick up your [Glory of the Defender], here's a tanking chest that's as good or better, and all you have to do is run a weekly kara and a daily heroic for three weeks. And, oh, you get badges from just about EVERYTHING now. And you can get pvp gear through pve. Etc etc etc.

In addition, raiding is becoming fundamentally easier. No more farming thousands of gold worth of consumables for every attempt. No more wiping a handful of times and having to clear through an entire corridor of trash. No more spending all your free time farming millions of twilight texts in Silithus. All you have to do is show up to the raid, do a half-assed job and walk away with dkp and epics. Ever since the 'alchemy nerf,' (which I do think was a good thing, btw), consumables have just become flask, food, potions, which are really quite easy, especially compared to the flask, food, potions, world buffs, multiple elixirs, etc required to be fully buffed in days of yore.

Let me say that casuals do NOT deserve epics. Before you begin flaming me, let me elaborate.

Casual and hardcore are mindsets. You can run only a nonheroic 5-man every week and still be hardcore. Likewise, you can clear BT weekly and farm heroics on your offnights and still be casual. It's all about the way you approach the game.

The real difference is a casual expects, while a hardcore gets. Passive versus active. A casual expects to be able to farm badges and lose arena games for all his gear, while a hardcore looks at his options, finds the best for each slot from everything he has available to him, gets them, gems them, enchants them, and most of all, works for them.

A casual uses green gems in epic gear. A hardcore does not.

A casual uses Silver Spellthread. A hardcore uses Golden Spellthread.

A casual whines about difficult instances. A hardcore craves the challenge of a difficult instance.

I could go on forever.

Now we come to the kind of people who run heroics and 10-mans, who by choice or not cannot run 25s. I don't think that they should be excluded from epics just because there's not as many of them. While a 25 on the same tier of difficulty as a 10 or a 5 should give slightly better loot simply due to the organisational challenge of getting twenty-five people online at once and all doing their job properly, this should be a, say, five itemlevel difference at the most.

I think ZA is a great example of this. It's on the same level of difficulty as SSC and TK, drops less loot relative to its size but resets faster, and has good loot. One might argue that it's better than the equivalent 25 man gear, and they would be in many places correct. However, ZA is hard compared to heroics and Kara. Malacrass especially.

Another awesome example of a way non-raiders could get epics was the old Tier 0.5 quests. Back in the day, not many people had their 8/8 0.5 set. It was a real mark of prestige. Those quests not only required an obscene amount of gold, but were hard. 45 minute Baron runs and Lord Valthalak were brutal for their intended audience - people geared in tier 0. And tier 0.5 was awesome for where it was placed at.

So what I think is that in WLK, there should be a progression in heroics similar to what there is in raids at the moment. Everyone starts in nonheroics and the easy heroics, which don't drop epics at all. Then the raiders move away to the first 25-man, which does drop epics, and the first 10-man, which drops half blues, half epics. (Think ZG). The non-raiders move into the difficult heroics, which have a chance to drop an epic from the last boss, and into the first 10-man if they can. And so on and so on, with a 10-man and 2-3 heroics corresponding to every tier of difficulty of 25s. 10-mans always drop half blues, half epics. Heroics never drop more than one epic. The badge system is revamped so that instead of having one lot of badge gear for the entirety of the game, each tier has again its own separate lot of badges, and 2-3 heroics drop about the same as one 10-man or as one 25-man. The blues and purples in the 10-mans and heroics should be 5-10 ilvls apart (a la current heroic epics vs. blues), however everything will scale up with difficulty. So a nonheroic might drop 195 blues, an easy heroic might drop 200 blues, a T1 heroic might drop 210 blues and 200 epics, a T2 heroic might drop 220 blues and 210 epics, etc. A T1 10-man under this model would drop 210 blues and 200 epics, except for the last boss which would drop 210 epics. A T1 25-man would drop 205 epics, and 215 from the last boss. Badge gear gives loot with ilvls equal to the ilvl of the loot from the majority of the 25-man in that tier.

And lastly, there should be a quest exactly similar to the tier 0.5 quest. A lot of gold and time must be invested in it, along with some special tasks that are particularly difficult. However, instead of immediately upgrading your gear when you finish a section, each section will unlock the ability to exchange a piece of your class's (8-piece) dungeon set for a specialised piece of tier 7.5 or w/e it ends up being, a la the TBC specialised sets. And this goes up the tiers, so you can upgrade your 7.5 to 8.5. At the end of the quest for each tier of difficulty, you're also given a weapon or shield.

And then, at the end of the day, the hardcore raider is decked out in his full Tier 10 gear, and the hardcore non-raider is decked out in full Tier 9.5 gear. The difference between the quality of the two sets is slight, and the raider and the nonraider can meet in Dalaran and respect the gear that they've each accumulated, though the raider might have never tried Heroic Azjol'Nerub because it's a real bitch to get attuned to and he'd rather raid on his raid nights and relax on his offnights than try and slog through learning genuinely hard encounters. Likewise, the non-raider can look at the raider's gear and respect the fact that he has both overcome the massive organisational block that is 25-man raiding, and that he's been progressing through difficult content. And the non-raider will never get attuned to Icecrown, but he'll be satisfied in the fact that he and his tight-knight group conquered instances that are on the same level as the ones the raider is clearing.

And where are the casuals? The ones who slack in raids, 5-mans, and pvp alike? Simple. They're back where they belong, scraping the bottom of the barrel for what little purple they can get without doing difficult instances, or (unfortunately) piggybacking their way to epics with a more talented group. Sad but true.

There is, however, a problem here.

How do you make 5-man fights truly challenging?

You can't simply make mobs stronger, have more hp, do more raid damage, etc. All of these can simply be overcome with gear. Likewise, you can't transplant mechanics from 25s or even 10s into 5s, because the group makeup of tank, healer, three dps limits what can be done. So complex tank transitions, splitting the group up, Saber Lash, etc, etc are all out.

So now you have to come up with some really crazy ideas.

Like, for example, you're fighting a pair of bosses on a pair of platforms, which are on rails in an active volcano. One of the bosses is a caster and the other is a meleeist, and dps must be swapped between them rapidly - however to get to the other one you must jump across a gap above a massive drop into a lava lake. Stalactites on the roof get in the way of line of sight periodically, and the caster tosses people (other than the one tanking the meleeist) randomly back and forth between the platforms. Both platforms are periodically engulfed in flames one at a time, forcing the entire group to leap from one to the other, with the provision that the tank must get back to the meleeist before he, say, breathes fire on everyone for ten million damage because nobody's in range of him. And the rails end in the middle of the volcano, creating a natural-feeling hard enrage timer. Once the bosses are defeated the lava at the end of the rails cools, making a platform and a bridge to the next part of the zone.

And there. The outline of a 5-man boss with a raid level of complexity.

And good god, I really went off on a tangent there.

/sigh

NonWOW: Tales of Symphonia.

ToS is one of my favourite RPGs of all time.

It has an upcoming sequel.

I did not know this until now.

So this makes Fire Emblem 10, the new Tales of Symphonia game, as well as of course the new Smash Brothers game, very high up on my list of Console Games To Buy.

Shwoot.

NonWOW: Brawl

SSBB = good.

I'm playing Pikachu this time, it looks like.

Also a bit of Kirby.

Sonic's smashball move is RIDICULOUS.

World of Warcraft II

While it's almost certainly a long, long way off, WoW 2 is something I'm really looking forward to. It's not going to be new, fresh, innovative, anything of that sort - it's simply going to be WoW, rebuilt on the foundation of three, five, ten, whatever years of experience.

I often say to myself, 'what would you do if you could go back in time to when WoW started, but with your current knowledge, skill and experience?' I think that I'd roll a warrior as my first main, get onto the first oceanic server as soon as it came out, and be a main tank in a bleeding edge guild - BWL, AQ40, Naxx, and I'm there in the forefront, tanking first kills. /wistful

But WoW 2 will be, I think, very similar to that scenario. The playing field will be completely reset. Sure, a few guilds might carry over, but the ball will be in my park so to speak - with entire servers full of unattached potential raiders, I'll be able to be one of the founding members of a proper, hardcore, raiding guild. And I won't be held back by my timezone, timetable, or attitude as I was in vanilla WoW.

But aside from the whole 'clean-slate' aspect, the game itself will be... better. More polished. More complete. Blizzard will know exactly what they set out to do in each individual facet of the game. Lowbie instances now are just a mess of mobs in seemingly random positions, as if they were outside. Not in WoW 2. Instances will have defined trash pulls and interesting bosses. Many levelling zones now lack centralisation, which is annoying, and feel bland, which detracts from the overall feel of the game. Not so in WoW 2. Quests will be found in logical and clear clumps, and every zone will be rich and cohesive. Compare Desolace - uh, there are... kodos here. Some Twilight's Hammer, I see, but what're they doing here? - to Hellfire Peninsula - There's a war going on here, and you'd better step sharply to keep alive - and you can see just how much Blizz have improved since they began their masterpiece back in whenever it was.

And, of course, you have to wonder - will MC be in WoW 2? AQ? BRM? CoT? Kara? Naxx? Will there be Scourge? Burning Legion? Illidan? Kael'thas? Arthas? Ragnaros? Black dragons? Trolls? Dark Iron dwarves? Murlocs? Silithid? Naga? Green dragons? C'thun? Kazzak? Medivh? Tirion Fordring? Scarlets?

With Sargaeras killed by Aegwynn and later Khadgar, Archimonde destroyed by a lot of fireworks, Kil'Jaedan (presumably) dying in SWP in 2.4, Tichondrius killed by Illidan, Mannoroth killed by Grom, and Kael'thas dead (again), the Burning Legion is pretty much leadershipless. So unless a minor character is promoted to top dog (Kazzak head of the Legion? I mean, he's killed all the time, but that didn't stop him from opening the Dark Portal for TBC... maybe world bosses don't count as dying lorewise O_o), a new character is invented, or one of the previous leaders ends up not actually being dead, that rules them out of the running for the Bad Guys.

With Illidan killed in TBC, the Illidari blood elves and demons look likely to collapse as well. The only other real candidate for leadership of the Illidari was Varedis, and he's 5-mannable. So they're also pretty much out of the running.

The Black Dragonflight is a strong possibility, with Deathwing still at large somewhere. Even though Nefarian and Onyxia, both his known children, have been dead for quite some time, he could easily have more children and lieutenants - and, indeed, in the fel orc camp in Netherwing Ledge a dragon in the guise of a blood elf talks to the overlord there, and they refer to 'the Master' and 'continuing the work of Nefarian,' as well as arranging for Netherwing eggs to get back to this Master. So it looks like Deathwing's getting ready to do Bad Things. (On a side note, he could already be doing Bad Things - he could very well be in charge of the Infinite Dragonflight).

Speaking of the Infinite Dragonflight, they're evil enough (want to destroy time itself) and mysterious enough (we know nothing of their leaders, etc) that they could make a good Bad Guy in the future.

Continuing on, although this is all wild speculation, I assume that by the time WLK is over, Arthas, Anub'arak, Sapphiron, and Kel'thuzad will be dead for good, leaving the Scourge leadershipless - and indeed, without a Lich King they're mindless.

Keeping with the undead theme, Sylvanas and the Forsaken could make a good Bad Guy (engineering a plague to destroy the Scourge and, oh, every living thing) - however if that happened people wouldn't be able to play Undead.

The Scarlets could be a Bad Guy I suppose... but as awesome as they are, they don't have what it takes to be a real major thing. They hate the undead, yeah, and so they kill the undead, yeah... but they don't want to, for example, conquer Outland or summon the avatar of a dark god. There's no reason to go and attack their fortresses or w/e. Apart from that, a fair amount of their leaders are alive, and they're of the nature that a new leader could just spring out of nowhere without feeling wrong. Plus they're awesome and they're related to the whole Ashbringer storyline.

The Qiraji, well... They were all in AQ, and that got pretty badly pwnt by players. C'thun with them. The Silithid, well... without Qiraji they're pointless.

Azshara seems like a prime candidate for a Bad Guy sometime in the future. Zin-Azshari could be large enough to be a raid instance, or a four-wing instance (three 5-mans, one raid, a la Coilfang), or a zone containing a couple of instances, or, hell, the setting for an entire expansion - it was a pretty damn huge city as far as I know, bigger than any modern Warcraft city. And the Naga are pretty cool, and they hate everyone, which gives them motivation to be Bad Guys.

And the other big thing which I think will be coming in future is the stuff happening in the Emerald Dream - Cenarius is there, and Malfurion is there, and Ysera is there, and apparently when they exploded Archimonde he broke it or something, making everything evil (hence the four Dragons of Nightmare). This has been explored a little - world green dragons, Sunken Temple and Eranikus, the whole Green Scepter Shard bit - but we've been dealing with the symptoms, not the problem. Of course, the Emerald Dream is supposed to be not exactly another world - more a sort of dream where druids and animals go - so unless they just decide to make it a proper, solid world it'll pose some problems.

At any rate (back to my original point), looking forward to WoW 2.

'Cos of stuff.

Instancetalk: SV, UBRS and MGT

So, just having caught up on reading Ciderhelm's blog at www.tankspot.com, I got to thinking. One of his entries was about how he learned tanking - the general gist of it was that UBRS taught it and Naxx refined it.

Personally, I think I learned to tank in Steamvaults. I wasn't a good tank pre-bc at all, nor as I levelled to 70 (I still remember joining a Slave Pens pug at level 64 or something, pulling a group of six lobsters, and them running over and killing the rest of the group. Everyone left after that, leaving me feeling rather inadequate). Right as I hit 70, a rogue in my guild asked if I wanted to run Shadow Labs with him, so I said 'okay,' specced prot and regretted it when I slogged through the Kara attunement prereqs the next day. But we cleared Slabs fine.

Steamvaults, however, was pretty much my instance. My small group of RL friends ran instances together every now and then, most usually SV and BM. When I started tanking SV the first time, I basically knew that I had to make the mobs not hit the others. Now I know all my tools - thunderclap, taunt, concussion blow, and intervene first and foremost - inside and out, as well as how to use line of sight, how to mark, what kinds of mobs to prioritise for CC, about how long I can leave mobs before the healer drags them off me, et cetera et cetera.

Anyway, tanking UBRS at level 60 was, I found, great fun, because you would run with two tanks. I think working co-operatively with another tank is a lot of fun, and it teaches skills you need in raid instances. It was always a great feeling when the second Warrior in the group worked well with you, and you found a nice balance of when to grab loose mobs, when to leave them to be re-CC'd, and when to let your co-tank get them.

So one of my hopes for WLK is a 10-man of UBRS's level - no lockout, blue loot (two items per boss, four from the last one), no more difficult than, say... Arcatraz. Trash that comes in numbers of two to eight, bosses that encourage more than one tank (saberlash kthx), and a good reason for people to run it a lot - say, trinkets in the vein of the [Bangle of Endless Blessings] or [Quagmirran's Eye], or a faction with awesome rewards.

On a side note, I recently brought my Warrior out of retirement and ran Magister's Terrace on the PTRs. I can really feel the difference between then and now, so to speak - I was tanking fairly badly the whole instance, I los'd mobs wrong, I lost aggro to healers, and I lost track of mobs. I think one main factor for this was the fact that, when a Druid tanks, they ideally keep their mobs all in a cone in front of them (swipe). When a Warrior tanks, although it's better to keep mobs in front of them, thunderclap is a 360 degree ability so they can generate aggro on stuff directly behind them. I think, once I'm finished with farming badges for my feral gear, I'll start playing my Warrior again while I'm not raiding - running heroics aplenty for all the delicious badge loot that's been and is being added.

Of course... I need 95 badges to finish my bear gear, plus more come 2.4, and then I need some ridiculous amount for my cat gear, and THEN I can start looking at my Warrior (if WLK's not out by then).

MGT, btw, was a fun instance. Trash was varied and interesting, although it did feel kinda funny at times - why are there ethereals and naga in the Sunwell? - and casters seemed more predominant than was neccessary. The Warlocks seemed slightly too powerful - their Immolate ticked on me for ~1.1k in def stance, on normal mode - but not entirely unreasonable for the difficulty of the instance. There wasn't very much trash anyway (plus!).

Bosses were mostly the same - the first boss is pretty much Kalithresh, except when you don't kill the thing in time he just hits everyone in the party a bunch of times for about 800 fire damage. Even if you do, he still does it once or twice, but if he breaks his crystal before you do it's a lot more. The second boss, I wasn't really sure exactly what was going on - he seemed somewhat similar to Curator, but he hits for arcane damage and the sparks seem to latch on to whoever kills them and make them deal more damage or something. I just tanked him and hoped the rest of the party killed him in time. Third boss is somewhat like Moroes - four adds and a boss. I dunno if the adds come from a larger table of possible adds or not. We had a naga who feared and meleed, a shirtless male bloodelf demon hunter, an ethereal who seemed to heal, and a gan'arg who threw bombs, I believe. The boss is a red shivan, who might also have healed. All of these adds and the boss are humanoid, despite shivans and gan'arg being demons, and the adds can be sheeped, iced, etc. They are all, however, immune to taunt - I lost control on the pull and was unable to get it back, so I basically ran around frantically trying to generate aggro on whatever was near me at the time, being mostly useless. Fourth boss is Kael, and he's somewhat simple. In his first phase, he fireballs (reflectable and interruptable), summons phoenixes which should be killed (you then have to kill its egg or else it'll respawn), and flamestrikes, which is really easy to avoid - a huge spinning yellow thing appears and basically screams 'GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE' for a few seconds before it hits. At 50%, he goes into his second phase, where everyone is thrown into the air and you get to swim around - he apparently turns gravity off. This deals about 500 damage per 3 seconds. He also summons five gigantic pink balls which fly around, and they hurt you if you get hit by them. If you swim down to the ground you get thrown up again, which means you can't really melee him, however every now and then he says something to the effect of 'arrrrgh' and falls to one knee, turning off the gravity lapse and the big pink balls for a little while.

The highlight of MGT was definitely the questline. (lolspoilers?) I got a quest from the Aldor guy who accepts marks to go talk to a guy on the Isle of Quel'Danas. Said guy told me to find someone in the Magister's Terrace. In the room of the second boss, we find him dying on the ground, hand the quest in to him, he tells us that 'they're feeding the sunwell' and to use some orb on a balcony, then dies. So we clear through the second boss, and there, hey, here's a balcony. We can see a different part of the Sunwell with a bunch of demons from here - perhaps that's part of SWP? There's void terrors and shivans and doomguards hanging around. Anyway, the orb (looks like the BWL teleport orb... teleporb?), so we click it, and are treated to a nice little cutscene which is basically just the camera flying through the bit of SWP we could see. It goes in a door, then we see M'uru (hella cool looking), then it goes a bit further and pans around and we see a few eredar channeling into... well, the Sunwell I guess. Looks like a pool of lava. Then the camera pans up again and zooms in to a closeup of Kil'jaedan's face, which is on the wall for some reason.

Okay, that's pretty cool, we say, and we turn around to go further into the instance - when all of a sudden a dragon flies out of nowhere! 'Wossat?' we cry in suprise. Well, it's Kalecgos, and he's pretty cool - he turns into a human with blue hair, lets us hand a quest in to him, and gives us a quest to kill the new Kael'thas. Awesome. Rewards are Crimson Spinels - the choice of a Bright, a Teardrop, or a Runed (no subtle? tch). These are special Crimson Spinels which are bind on pickup. Also rewarded from the quest is being attuned to Heroic MGT. Awesome, no repgrind. (Although... Seeing as I want jewelcrafting recipies and an epic neck from exalted on my Druid, and enchanting recipies and an epic shield from exalted on my Warrior... repgrind. Awh).

All in all, I'm really looking forward to running MGT on live, with a group of guildies that work together better than a pug. I'm also looking forward to getting the 'Of the Shattered Sun' title - but not looking forward to having to shell out 1000g for it. Awh.

WLKtalk: 4HM

Well, again I'm thinking about stuff and writing it down. 'Spose that's what this thing's for.

Anywho, I was thinking today about how the Four Horsemen encounter will translate to a 25-man raid. I reckon it's extremely unlikely that it'll still require eight tanks to do, as five tanks in a raid is about the limit these days. So, how will it be toned down? I'm thinking that the marks will stack more slowly, so you can have one tank running between horsemen at any one time, letting tanks switch one-quarter as frequently as they did at 60. Or perhaps with the advent of DKs, six tanks will become standard for a 25, making it half.

At any rate, there is something that's (almost) certain about 4HM.

[The Ashbringer...]

And with Ashbringer comes Scarlets! Yaaaay!

Speculation

So a couple of nights ago a few guildies and I were chatting in vent about World of Welfare, as it's rapidly becoming, and WLK. Our general consensus was that WLK was closer than people think - all this new badge loot (see www.worldofraids.com), nethers and vortices becoming unbound, 25s dropping badges, extra tier tokens, and more gold, pvp gear being purchasable with tier tokens, new awesome craftables, and the new easy epics from Magister's Terrace all seem remarkably similar to patch 2.0, when people dropped raiding to get all this awesome new pvp gear. I'm anticipating a lot of trouble in guilds that aren't already in T6 content when 2.4 comes out - people who raid for loot are gonna say, well, I could spend all this effort raiding, wiping, learning bosses, buying consumables and paying for repairs... or, I could run heroics and kara, pvp, and make craftables, and finish with better gear. Then they're gonna not show up to raids, and when they get called out about it, they're going to leave and join a guild that doesn't care if all they want to do is pvp and farm badges. Despite what I think is going to happen with this, Blizzard seems to want to rush people into BT/Hyjal - lifting attunements, making awesome gear easily obtainable - before WLK, which is fair enough, they don't want this stuff to be the Naxx of TBC, where only one or two guilds per server even get inside. And honestly, I think that guilds that can survive losing people to welfare epics in 2.4 will be the better for it. If you have a large core of extremely dedicated people, who raid for progress not loot, then if you lose a few fringe members you can recruit some more who will likely be more dedicated.

Anyway, I think that the fact Blizz seems to be pushing for guilds to get into T6 stuff means that WLK is close.

So this got me to thinking about DKs, in respect to tanking. What specialty role are they going to fill? All the other tanks have a role, so to speak, that they fill in a raid, so I wonder how the new class is going to fit in.

Warriors - Best all-round tanking class. Somewhat superior anti-magic defenses. Can interrupt, is easily uncrushable on most bosses, and has several 'ohshit' buttons.
Druids - Best offtank or hybrid. Can switch roles midfight. Superior physical mitigation; is completely crushable but makes up for it in raw hp/armour. Cannot parry but high dodge makes up for it.
Paladins - Best AoE tank. Can pick up a theoretically infinite amount of mobs, although too many and they start getting behind him and stuff. Can pick up large groups of mobs that have recently spawned by healing (see: morogrim), can pick up groups of mobs that are being bottlenecked through a small doorway (see: dragonhawks in TK), et cetera. Also has higher threat generation and can generate threat at 10 yards instead of melee to an extent, and has a ranged Taunt spell, which makes the paladin tank suited for bosses like Leotheras. On the downside, has very strict requirements for being uncrushable (but has more charges on their Shield Block), and is extremely gimped in fights that don't deal them a high amount of damage, because Spiritual Attunement is inferior to rage.

So where do Death Knights fit in? Perhaps they have better anti-magic tank abilities than the Warrior? (Heavy-armour anti-magic tank class... INQUISITOR! *hearts in eyes*) Although, for a boss that deals mostly magic damage as a general rule a Warlock or Mage (on gimmick fights like HKM or IC) tanks it, sometimes in resist gear. They won't have the bluerage problem as they have the rune system, but at the same time they won't have the benefit of rage. Managing runes while tanking will be an interesting task - like, perhaps, you need to save one Unholy rune every 6 seconds to keep yourself uncrushable, and at the same time you need to manage your other five to maximise your threat generation. Perhaps they will have superior threatgen to any other class, making them a good MT for bosses with enrage times or the first add to go down. It'd be interesting to see guilds with two primary main tanks, a Warrior for the ones that hit really hard and a DK for the ones that hit less hard but must must must be killed before X time is up. Perhaps they will be immune to stuns, fears, knockdowns, disorients, etc, to a lesser extent. Who knows.

What I do know is I'm looking forward to seeing their abilities and talent trees as the day of WLK draws closer. And, if I like what I see, I'm looking forward to socketing Solid Eyes of Northrend in my offhand Blade of the Frozen North as I prepare to tank Malygos next Saturday.

(Disclaimer: I made that all up. Except Malygos, he's in).