Thursday, July 30, 2009

"Blizz hates me"….Really ?

This isn’t QQ about Blizzard, this is a QQ about people that QQ !

In every guild I’ve been in, my current guild being no exception, there has always been 1-2 players who moan, about everything

Every patch something is happening that makes their class less powerful, every boss fight is bad for their class, every quest reward is better for another class, the set bonuses are bad, even the loot drop rate is bad….they just whine for the sake of it…

There is no way every single thing can be bad....its just not possible

These are the same players who moan that the game is too easy, is being nerfed too much, is catering for the “casuals”, there isn’t enough content, the emblem gear means gear will come too easily for others etc etc

Do these people think Blizzard should design a game with only one player in mind ???

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some Blizzard “fanboy”, I don’t like or agree with every single change they make to the game or my class but some people don’t seem to be able to see ANY good in the game at all…..

To these players:
Why on earth do you play a class that you obviously think Blizzard hates ? If its that bad, reroll to a class you like…
In fact, why on earth do you play the game at all if you hate it so much ? There are other games out there and also this fabled “real life” I hear talk of

I just don’t get how constant moaning can be fun !!!

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Friends......

A couple of months ago there was some discussion in a few blogs about how much peoples work colleagues etc knew about their online lives on WoW….there was some feeling that being a gamer, and a WoW player in particular was embarrassing and not something a lot of people “advertise” to none playing friends for fear of being ridiculed

I don’t disagree with people who experience that, but I have an additional point….a lot of my friends (many of whom I work with) are gamers, and most of those play or have played WoW….so I can talk to them about it in a meaningful way…BUT…..
Of all my friends, I’m probably the “most into it”, the “most hardcore”….I’m the one that spends a long time looking at stats, wowwiki, EJ, blogs etc etc…..
And in fact, I receive more ridicule from my gamer friends, and even current WoW playing friends for being so “committed” to it….having my own blog for example was the source of much “piss taking” when I started….which was contributory to my not posting for so long…..They posted comments that were basically troll comments, which I simply deleted…..

Back when I was a raid leader in my old guild, I would be ridiculed by my rl mates for any mistakes I made, and for the sheer amount of time and effort I would put into learning the encounters before leading the raid that night (no I cant join you for dinner, I need to read up on bossX etc etc)

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a rant about my mates….Its all gentle piss taking, and I have a sense of humour, I do appreciate that I’m pretty involved in all things WoW and I give back as much ridicule as I get…but I wonder if anyone else is in the same position….

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Long absence

Well…I guess one of the things I feared would happen, happened !
I wrote a post a day for a week or so, then stopped…
I guess there are a number of reasons for it

1. I genuinely have been unbelievably busy at work over the last month or so…it’s a horrible, horrible excuse to hide behind, but I do most of my web surfing/blog reading at lunchtimes etc and I simply haven’t had time to catch up with other blogs AND write my own

2. My rl friends found out I had a blog, and left some “amusing” comments that needed deleting…and I figured if they think I’ve stopped, they might stop looking

Anyway, a friend and guildmate Larisa gave me a kick up the ass while we were chatting the other night, so I decided that I’d better get my act together and write something….

Maybe I can keep going this time !

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Will I ever learn ?

I caught myself doing this again a few days ago, and I though “when will I learn ?”

I’m farming eternals in WG, walking between the elite mobs with guaranteed drops of crystallised, 2 normal mobs, one left, one right….I take a second to judge the gap, try to stand exactly in the middle, so I wont agro either…..start attacking the elite, and suddenly….BOTH normals agro to me because in my desire to “save time” by not having to kill either of them, I’ve misjudged the distance and pulled both, AND of course the elite that just got a fireball in the face !
Of course now I have to kill 2 normals and an elite, which is doable of course, but takes a while….

It would be quicker to just take out one normal first, clear a path to the elite I actually need !

I know this….yet I do it anyway !

Similar things happen when I’m on my alts who can either herb or mine….I go for a node knowing there’s a mob close that I might agro, but instead of killing it first, I get 0.5s from finishing the gathering, and THEN it attacks me, which of course means I need to kill it first, then start the gather all over again !

Will I ever learn ?

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Finally in the present

Well, if anyone is still reading at this point, we’re almost up to date with where I am today. almost 10 weeks on I’m still enjoying raiding with my guild, we’re making good progress into Ulduar andI’ve been present at a good number of first kills, and one of my real life friends is currently on trial with us too, which is even better.

From now on, I’m going to stop writing about the past, and join the rest of the bloggers and talk about current experiences, and my opinion on WoW issues, rather than just write diary style on my history

Is also ends the pre-written posts I had prepared before I started the blog, so now is the real test of how I will get on…wish me luck …

Sunday, May 24, 2009

New beginnings

If anyone has been reading my posts so far, you’ll know that the story so far was that I was about to move servers to join a new guild….

My experience of raiding in wotlk up to then was only 10 mans, with the exception of 2 runs in Naxx to make up the numbers in an old guild (and even then not all bosses), and I was now in a guild that had everything on farm except the absolute hardest encounter in the game at that time
If I remember correctly my transfer completed on a Monday, and my first raid with new guild was the day after….
First raids when on trial at a new guild are always interesting, you’re never quite sure what the style will be like, will the connection to a new vent server be ok ? will I be able to understand the raid leader ? and what’s more, this was no ordinary, easy gentle lead in to a new guild…..this was a “wipe night” on Sartharion with all 3 drakes up !!!


Talk about in at the deep end….I don’t mind admitting I was nervous, very nervous….I wanted to perform well of course, I wanted to register decent dps values, and mostly, I didn’t want to be the one that always died to the void zones


The leadership of the guild clearly saw something in my application they liked, because they put a lot of faith in me that night, I didn’t even get so much as asked if I knew the tactics for Sarth3D, it was just assumed I’d know….luckily I did know, at least from reading about it, so other than getting answers to specific questions I had such as at what time the raid leader wanted me to take portals, when do you want me to start using AoE to take the adds down etc, I wasn’t given any instructions at all…..

Well…if I remember correctly, on the very first attempt I died pretty early (though I wasnt the first) in a flame wave, which I attribute entirely to my graphics settings, which for the 10 mans I’d been accustomed to, I had on maximum……and as anyone that has done it I am sure will agree, 25 man Sarth3D has a lot going on in it graphically…..my computer just didn’t handle it very well at all…


That didn’t help my nervousness one bit ! I felt like such a noob….

Anyway, one tweak of graphic settings to something more suitable and one restart later, I was back for the next attempt, which fortunately, went much better (for me at least, at this stage, I honestly didn’t care how the fight went as a whole, I just wanted my own performance to be good enough to not fail a trial period at the first hurdle….

Thankfully, with a proper frame rate, I was able to avoid silly deaths (mostly, I’m still human and did make some errors of course)
And much better than that, after only maybe 10 attempts, the big dragon fell….thats right, my very first raid in my new guild was the guild first kill of Sarth 3D…..not only that, but I was alive at the end, and my dps stats were decent…I wasn’t the highest, but I certainly pulled my weight….I was happy enough that I hadn’t just been boosted

It was a very very weird feeling……pretty much my first proper 25 man raid in wotlk, and I’d beaten the hardest encounter the game had to offer…..how’s about that for my first raid with a new guild !!!!!

Friday, May 22, 2009

The Lich King Era

About a week after launch, I heard that some friends on the server (mostly ex-guildies from my first guild, the people I’d been alt raiding with at the end of tbc) were forming a new guild, just a small one, with a view to being “focussed on end game progression in the 10 man environment”, with a schedule of 3 nights a week, 3 hours a raid
I thought about it, and at that time, it was perfect for me, provided they would actually do what they said they would…

Me and the same friend that had always been guilded with me applied and got in there, and before I knew it, yet again I was an officer and raid leader….
This guild was amazing to start with…yes Naxx was easy, but even so, within a few weeks of starting raiding, we had all the standard level content (including Malygos) on farm, and were regularly doing Sartharion with a drake up and some of the Naxx achievement style kills….we were going great, at for a few weeks it was about as close to “perfect” as I’ve ever felt in a guild…. BUT….it was short lived…

The success of the guild had given some people a taste for what successful, focussed raiding was like, and the guild developed into two camps…some people started wanting to do 25 man stuff….more and more people started pugging them, and a few members left to a 25 man raiding guild. Other people decided that even a 3 day a week 10 man only schedule was too much for them and they didn’t want to raid at all, they wanted to concentrate on levelling alts etc….eventually we got to the stage were so many people left (or stopped being available to raid) that we couldn’t even get a properly balanced 8-man team together to do the 8 man achievements, let alone a strong 10 man team…even WITH using lots of alts….

So…the guild collapsed as I guess so many others have in the past…..it actually still exists, a couple of my alts are there and we run the odd 5 man together in our free time, but all our mains have gone to other guilds…

Personally though, I found myself in a guild that was surely going to collapse, with no plan of where I would go next…and the only thing I knew I didn’t want to do is go back to the 5 night a week guild I’d been in before (even though I was pretty sure they’d have me back, and I’d been raiding a bit with them when they were a man short)

It was in this short period, when on my regular lunchtime blog reading session, I read this post on Larisa's blog....a chance to join the same guild as a blogging celebrity….a proper raid guild, with a good history of decent progress, but on a relatively relaxed schedule with times that suited me…sounds good…..they weren’t recruiting my class, but what the heck, I was encouraged to apply anyway, and lucky me, they liked my app enough and I got in…..this was a big step for me though, I was about to change servers, on my own (my last remaining friend I was guilded with had decided by now to quit WoW altogether)…..how would I get on ? would I like it on another server, would I hate not knowing anybody at all ? Would I pass my trial ?

Answers to all these questions in the next post…