The Iron Perspective

Nerf N-Strike Maverick - Apocalypse Paint Scheme

2012-01-18T18:35:00.000+11:00

After my successful repaint of the Nerf Longshot I thought I would give it another go and perhaps implement some improvements in the process.

For this gun I sanded down the whole surface and removed the logos. Sanding did give a better surface for the paint to adhere to however removing the logos did mean that the result was a little bland. This could be remedied by painting a custom logo or leaving some of the branding in place. Additionally I weathered the result with a brush which gave much better control of the detail.

Close up of weathering details

The Nerf Maverick is one of the cheaper Nerf blasters available and is a lot of fun to play with. If you are looking to pick one up for your own arsenal you can find them here.

Repainted Nerf Longshot

2012-01-12T18:06:00.001+11:00

Lots of kids love Nerf guns and there are plenty of adults too whom enjoy shooting targets whether living or imagined with little foam darts. I must count myself amongst the latter as an owner of a modest Nerf arsenal. Around a year ago I had an urge to try my hand at modding a Nerf blaster to improve the range and accuracy. However after over 12 months of looking at the disassembled Long Shot sitting on my shelf I decided to do something a bit different with it.

Finally after gifting a friend a new Vortex Vigilon Nerf gun, with some background gleaned from the internet and spray can in hand I proceeded to repaint my Nerf Longshot.

Nerf Recon Barrel with weathering effects

Stock showing dirt and metal weathering effects

The final product also incorporates the barrel component off a broken Nerf Recon which gives the rifle some length and a bit more detail.

If you are interested in painting your own Nerf Longshot you can buy them online in Australia here.

Arcanacon 2010

2010-01-30T15:36:00.000+11:00

On the Australia Day weekend each yeah a group of dedicated individuals run the biggest Warhammer 40k tournament in the southern hemisphere, Arcanacon 40k. About six months ago a good friend of mine asked me to come to the event with him. We had been playing Warhammer together on and off since the late 90s and we also attended ][con in November. I had tentatively agreed and after the great time I had at ][con was quite eager and excited. So on the 23rd and 24th of January I attended Arcanacon along with two friends, Tristan and Lauren.

Although I didn’t win very many games I had a blast playing them. I was extremely lucky to face six, happy, fun and relaxed players who were all, just as I was, there to have a great time. It seems like the overall attitude at the event was a relaxed one, there certainly wasn’t any raised voices or angry discussions and everyone I spoke to was enjoying themselves immensely.

Of the six games I played I lost the first four and then won my last two. Although I feel that I played pretty well in my games I did lose several based on silly tactical errors. It seems that the highly heroic act of dumping Fire Warriors out of their transports in front of a dug in Space Wolf Long Fangs or Howling Banshees, a Farseer and a Wraithlord is not tactically sound, especially if it means your troops get wiped off the objective in the last turn of the game. There were plenty of cinematic moments though like forcing a draw in overtime (we handed in our results and then kept playing) with gun drones against a Dark Eldar player.

There were two star elements to my army, the biggest and best were my two broadsides who blew up (no to be confused with destroyed, I’m talking explosions and disappearing tanks here) 12 vehicles. In fact they were so good at blowing up troop transports on two occasions they took out a transport, killing occupants in the subsequent explosion, and when the occupants jumped into another transport they took it out again, once more killing several occupants. It was very pleasing to see lots of craters where my opponents vehicles should have been. The other star performers were my Pathfinders; in all bar one game they were able to consistently mark threats for other squads to easily take out.

From the three of us who attended Aracanacon together Lauren did the best by far, making it into the top hundred and winning the “WATS Choice” award for her Tyranid Army. WATS Choice goes to the best painted/modeled army as chosen by the committee who organize the event. Her army was very deserving of the award with every model converted or added to in some way, delicately painted and beautifully presented on a desert themed display board. Sadly Tristan didn’t fare so well, although his army was also wonderfully painted it seems to be a lot harder to stand out with a Space Marine army. Additionally it turned out he went a bit soft with his list and got a rough chunk of really bad luck on his dice results.

The overall standard of painting and modeling was very high, I saw many stunning armies with excellent themes, phenomenal painting and gorgeous presentation. Terrain tables were of a similar high caliber providing a wonderful scenic surface on which to play. I had spent a considerable amount of time building a terrain table to take to the event which paled in comparison to some of the amazing club tables.

As an event with 200 participants the organisers must have been pulling their hair out at times, but it never showed. Bar a slightly late start and an overly long awards ceremony everything ran close to on time. As I previously mentioned, I have played Warhammer for quite a while, but I have never enjoyed the games as much as I did at this event. Not only did I have an incredible time but I came home re motivated to improve the painting on my Tau army, re-paint all my Imperial Guard which made up my first army and build another table of terrain.

So thank you to Mark and his team of organisers and to the players for such a great experience and see you again next year (if not earlier)!

Images contributed by 'Waggerz' on wargamerau, Viv of The Battle Bunker and myself.

][con Team Tournament

2009-11-27T17:26:00.005+11:00

Over the weekend I participated in a Warhammer 40k doubles tournament, Icon, held by the Ringwood Wargaming Club. I was invited to participate by a long time friend of mine who I have been playing Warhammer (and other games) on and off with for close to 13 years. Initially I was hesitant, I’m not the best tactician and I haven’t really been to any tournaments. However based on the assumption that as a team event it would probably be closer to the “Beer and Pretzels” end of wargaming and further from the “Hardcore Cheese Fest” of serious gamers I decided to go. Then came the grueling weeks of trying to make an army that was nicely balanced, effective and painted. But it was all worth the effort as I had a very enjoyable time.

Across the day we played four games, two individually and two as a team. Round one I fought a Space Marine player and so did Tristan. My game went very well mostly thanks to some really good luck on my part and my opponents inability to roll a hit on the scatter die. I took out his scout squad and Land Speeder Squadron taking almost no causalities in return. Tristan wasn’t so lucky losing to his opponent who was a tournament veteran with excellent luck.

My second game was against a Demon Hunters / Imperial Guard player. My stupidity turned what should have been a convincing victory into a draw. On turn five I had Crisis suits within easy range of the second unguarded objective. My opponent at this point had five models left on the table, 4 members of his platoon command squad and a Vindicare assassin. The platoon command was a good distance away and I didn’t want my commander, who had a single wound left, taken out by the Vindicare so I jumped back behind cover. Well the platoon command moved, used their “Move move move” order and ran landing themselves firmly on the objective. As luck would have it the game ended right then. Tristan fought a Space Wolf player and again didn’t fare so well, but with a clever maneuver he did manage to pull out a draw with his last few remaining models.

Our first team game was against a Space Marine and Chaos Daemons team. Our final result was a win but it could have go either way at one point. Thankfully the Chaos Daemons appeared one or two units at a time and we were able to take them out before they could cause too much damage. We could have improved our performance with a better deployment, but dice luck was average for both sides.

The final game of the day was against a Chaos Space Marine and Dark Eldar team. Another convincing victory, with perhaps a small chance of defeat, as we left our advance onto the objective a little too late. My small Firewarrior squad were defiantly the standouts in that round surviving not only a horrific volume of fire from Dark Eldar warriors and a chaos sorcerer but beating a Dark Eldar champion on a jet bike in hand to hand combat.

Overall we came 13th out of 42 teams which in my opinion was an excellent result. The two stand out things in my army were firstly my marker lights, they really made a big difference when used well. Also my Broadsides performed very well with most of my opponents underestimating the fire power they provided not viewing them with the same threat level as they would a tank.

There were a few detractors from the event, the hall was too small and had poor ventilation. They ran horribly behind time which was annoying, especially as they started 45 minutes late. On a positive note I thought it was an excellent idea to distribute the prizes across the whole field, even if we didn't get anything. Following this I will defiantly attend Icon again next year and will also try to get into some other tournaments in the interim.

Images were taken by myslef on the day and feature my own army and the amazing paint work Tristan completed on his Imperial Fist Captain.

BlizzCon

2009-08-21T09:06:00.001+10:00

BlizzCon is nearly here and i''m not going.

Small and Fragile

2009-07-12T16:38:00.004+10:00

Dryad - Photo and painting by yours truely

So when I was younger I played lots of miniture, card and other nerd games. For many years these games kinda sat on the side lines. I never got rid of my Imperial Guard army, my Escher gang, Battle Tech deck or Hero Clix. Recently I have had a resurgence of gaming desire. This has come in the form of starting to paint a Wood Elf Warhammer Fantasy Army and participating in a Dungeon's and Dragons game.

My intention is to try and post more pictures as Alassiel and I paint our way through the Wood Elf army and the characters my friends and I are using to play D&D. You can follow along with our D&D game at Ianis World.

Making Progress (Not Bacon)

2009-06-10T19:37:00.000+10:00

This week we made some great progress into Ulduar downing Leviathan, Razorscale, Deconstructor, Ignis and Kulgan. We also made a couple of attempts at the Iron Council where I discovered I can still get one shot under the right circumstances. Five bosses is a good start and I think the Iron council will fall eventually, especially when I stop letting him stand in runes of DOOM!

A primarily guild group did get this far a few weeks back but I was off in an alternate (and distinctly more nerdy) fantasy world so much of this was new for me. If I may say so myself Alassiel and I made an excellent team taking out the adds on Ignis with the help of some great healing by Farex, Ianthe and Nums. It was also very rewarding to down Ignis after failing last week and several times this week.

The end of CoS as we know it

2009-06-10T19:31:00.000+10:00

It is with a mixture of sadness and excitement that I announce to you the disbanding of the Children of Stormwind. With the guild master due to become a father and the guild growing beyond control into something far less organized and close knit than we had planned the leadership group unanimously voted to disband COS and form a new smaller guild, Focus. Saturday night was the curtain call with many members new and old gathering in Stormwind for the final group photo. Some celebrated with Champaign, others spammed trade with “OMG my guild disbanded LF Guild!” But I believe our new guild ‘Focus’ will be a fantastic step forward, the intention is to keep the numbers down and work towards making some progression through raids. We are off to a great start with three Ulduar bosses falling on the Sunday evening! Beyond that I see at least two more as achievable so we should start to see some solid movement.

Moving foward

2009-04-06T09:26:00.000+10:00

Many of you may have noticed my blog has been some what lacking again, additionally I haven’t giving Michelle over at Warcraft Outsiders for a couple of weeks. Firstly if you are an avid reader who checks this blog compulsively every day I apologise for disappointing you. There are a couple of reasons as to why my blog has lessened somewhat recently, mostly this is because I am moving jobs. A couple of weeks back a put in an application with another company and was very happy when it was successful. But aside from the turmoil involved in leaving one company and joining another I have found my enthusiasm for Warcraft somewhat lessened. Sure I have enjoyed logging on to do heroics and raids here and there but overall I am playing a lot less.

On a more positive note I have been thoroughly enjoying showing Ianthe (a friend of mine who just reached 80) through heroics and hopefully soon raids. We also finished off our 200 rate arena matches last night just in time for the cut off on Tuesday.

I think I will probably continue on this lessened play schedule until 3.1 comes out then it will be full steam ahead into Uldar!

For glory! For honor! For… a Murloc?

2009-03-16T18:08:00.001+11:00

In a genius manoeuvre clearly designed to make Blizzard piles of easy money the current arena tournament features a unique, desirable and achievable prize. All players who participate in 200 rated matches in the arena tournament will receive an armoured murloc pet.

Subsequently a large number of players who would never step into arena have paid their US$20 and stepped into the arena tournament realms. Alassiel with her insatiable desire to collect pets is one of these people so joined by Sellia and I, Triptych was reformed.

Although we have certainly lost our fair share of matches we have also won many of them. Typically against teams such as “Nom nom nom Murloc”, “Strip or Win” and “Murloc or bust”

As a team we are defiantly improving and I am confident in saying we suck less! Did I happen to mention I am playing a Death Knight?

Warriors in 3.1.0 - PvP and Stances

2009-03-16T10:39:00.000+11:00

You may have noticed my post a little while back about protection warriors in PvP. Well it appears we (by we I refer to all warriors not just tanks) are due for a buff in the next patch, a buff mostly aimed for PvP so all you Death Knights better watch out.Apparently all our stances will “suck less” with the penalties being reduced and a armour penetration effect added to Battle Stance. Currently of the three warrior stances one (Battle) is essentially a lack of stance with no bonus or penalty and the other two offer a bonus that comes with a penalty. So Berserker Stance gives you additional critical strike rating but increases the amount of damage you take and Defence Stance reduces the amount of damage you take but also reduces the amount you deal. The latest build is set to give Battle Stance an increase in armour penetration and halve the penalty of both Berserker and Defensive Stances.
Although these changes are squarely aimed at PvP where a warrior in Berserker Stance is easy prey with a nice big damage boost against them the changes to Defensive Stance will be fantastic for the tanks out there who will effectively deal an additional 5% damage.

We will also be getting a new ability; Shattering Throw deals damage, reduces armour and removes an invulnerability effect. It will have a 5 minute cool down, cost 25 rage and but will only be usable in battle stance. This will be a big deal for PvP warriors who will be one of only two classes who can offer some beat down to an ice blocked Mage or shielded Paladin. However It’s PvE effects will be somewhat limited as I highly doubt any raid bosses will be susceptible to this.

Last but not least there will be reductions to the cool downs on Last Stand and Intimidating Shout.

As a final note, I can be beaten by Death Knights.

You what Malygos?

2009-03-07T08:45:00.003+11:00

After many failed attempts at Malygos last week I wasn’t expecting great things when I joined a PUG Tuesday evening for 10 man Eye of Eternity. To say I was pleasantly surprised when we one shotted him would be an understatement. So I can finally say that I have downed all raid cont in Wrath of the Lich King. Unfortunately as I have yet to complete heroic Oculus (I really should get around to that) I do not quite have the meta achievement.

If anyone is interested as to how it was so much easier with the PUG it comes down to two things. Firstly a Death Knight that was pulling the sparks perfectly onto each other and a Mage that topped out at 8.5k DPS which is INSANE!

Warcraft Outsiders

2009-02-26T13:16:00.003+11:00

The kind folks over at Warcraft Outsiders have posted an article I wrote. I will be writing one or two each week with a focus on instances. To begin with I will be covering the basics but I intend to work up to some more advanced details about raiding and end game.

Warcraft Outsiders is a spin off from the Videogame Outsiders podcast. Both are a great listen!

Black Temple - Super Bowl of not Standing in Things

2009-02-23T18:31:00.000+11:00

After a moderately successfully session of wiping repeatedly on Malygos and some premade PVP on Saturday night we decided to set up a Black Temple run for the following evening. Sadly we didn’t have enough guildies on to make up a full raid and ended up PUGing about a third of the raid out of trade chat. The first seven bosses were fun with the fact that nearly half the raid paid no attention to what anyone said, refused to wait for people and need rolled on items we agreed to distribute at the end merely a mild annoyance. However once we hit the Illidan council things got worse! I really shouldn’t be surprised as the stupid things people say and do when they think they are anonymous but I am. The evening was saved for me by the following comment on Wowhead for the Illidan council

“Well My friends its time for all that experence to pay off because Illidari council is the SUPER BOWL OF NOT STANDING IN THINGS!”

Sadly we did not down Illidan as we were unable to get past the second (fire elemental) phase.

But it is all too easy to get caught up on things like how I will never raid or group with anyone from thanks their horrible attitude and miss the fact that we did get to see something that when I started in the Burning Crusade I never thought I would get to see. Perhaps when we are running around in tier 10 equivalent badge gear we will come back and hand it to Illidan. It will be a lot easier now I know what is coming.

Also thankyou very much to Samyell and Smeric. Sam for his very helpful information of what to expect from some of the boss fights and Smeric for handling the majority of the loot rolls. Oh and thanks to Strag for coming into Vent and keeping me sain.

Their cold dead faces - Death Knights and PVP

2009-02-23T18:02:00.001+11:00

There has been mounting complaints that Death Knights are over powered in PVP, I’m sorry but I just don’t see it. Perhaps it is that my PVP experience with death knights is too limited, maybe I have just been lucky and only fought bad players or it could even be that a protection warrior (especially a Dwarf with a racial that counters disease) is a good counter to a Death Knight. Sure they have a lot of interesting and annoying tools but nothing that can’t be overcome. You are welcome to take my post with a grain of salt because I haven’t actually played a Death Knight but just the other day I managed to kill a Shaman, Death Knight duo (Keep in mind this is essentially four kills including a shaman’s Ank and Death Knight’s “come back as a ghoul” thing), sure I didn’t have much health left at the end but I was still the victor.

My comment earlier about protection warriors being a good counter to a Death Knight may in fact not be too far from the truth. I can silence, stun, disarm and sunder them while introducing my shield to their cold dead faces. But until I can craft a PVP protection spec and get into some more battlegrounds and arena I wont know for sure.

Alassiel, Sellia and I are reforming Triptych on the Arena Tournament realm. We have all signed up and will be participating in the 200 matches so Alassiel and Sellia can get their Armoured Murloc pets. Alassiel will heal for us as a restoration druid, Sellia will stay as a frost mage and I will create a Death Knight. It seems like this is will be an interesting chance to try the class without the bother of leveling it. Worst case I realise I can’t do it and swap to a fury warrior or perhaps even a protection warrior.

World Events - The Good and the Bad

2009-02-16T11:24:00.006+11:00

Blizzard have made some great world events and some really bad ones. So I thought I would detail what (based on my opinions as well as those in other blogs and guild discussion) are the good and the bad points of these events.

Good
Achievements/rewards
The introduction of achievements made world events a great deal more satisfying. However this makes obvious the world events that do not have achievements and leaves them slightly hollow. Having some sort of reward to work towards is also good, I am a big fan of the mounts, titles and other fun items that are slowly filling up my bank space.

Special bosses
I love special world event bosses, this was a great introduction and I hope more are added and updated for each year. Something that would be really interesting would be the addition special bosses, similar to Prince Tenris Mirkblood in Karazhan for the introduction of Wrath, every now and again. I’m sure there are a few instances in Northrend that could house an extra boss when required.

Fun daily quests
Daily quests sit hand in glove with a token based reward system. Despite a couple of small bugs I really enjoyed the Brewfest quests, groups of us would complete them together each evening before heading off to Black Rock Depth to lay some Smack Down on the Dark Irons.

Token based rewards
As mentioned below having rewards based on a Random Number Generator(RNG) is not fun! So the introduction of rewards that are purchased with tokens acquired during the event is a great way to go.

Available to all levels
Okay so every part of a world event doesn’t need to be available to all levels but it is good when newer players can still participate. Winterveil is a good example of this, lower characters can still get some of the presents and complete many of the quests.

Bad
Random Number Generator
Tasks or rewards that involve random drops are no fun at all. This is especially the case for short events where your opportunities to acquire said item are limited. A great example is the recent “Love is in the Air” festival. Instead of having each item be randomly included in a gift of adoration why not have different type of NPCs give you different things as a gift. So for example male guards give you Love Rockets and female guards Love Fools, male food vendors give you a Bag of Candies and female give you a Box of Chocolates. As mentioned above, for rewards, a token based system when you receive token for completing tasks is a much better. I’m all for having power items have low drop rates but when there is a limited time frame it just gets frustrating.

Long travel for short task
There is nothing worse than having to travel to a far off zone to complete a task that takes all of 5 seconds. So although I enjoyed traveling around the world for the “Honor your Elders” achievements having to go all the way to the end of Maraudon for one of the elders as very annoying.

Imposed participation
People shouldn’t have to participate in world events, I believe this was the mistake of the Zombie Invasion (well one of them). There should always be an opt out, especially in major cities where most people just want to do their auctions in peace. If for story purposes a city needs to be involved then limiting the event to only one city for each faction would mean people can escape to other locations if they needs to.

Opportunities for griefing
I play on a PvP server but there is a difference between PvP and griefing. If a world event allows a level 80 to kill a level 10 over and over then that level 10 player is going to be a bit upset.

Overall I think that World Events are slowly improving. It is nice to have a purpose in world events, a reason to complete quests that is storyline or reward based. Hopefully some of the annoying RNG tasks will be removed as events are revisited. It would also be good to see some of the rare items have their drop rates improved or be acquired with tokens. Probably the most important thing will be to have events with special instanced bosses updated to the new level cap of 80.

Images thanks to Wowhead and World of Warcraft Blogger.

Weapon Enchants for Tanks

2009-02-09T18:34:00.000+11:00

In the last patch Blizzard toyed with adding an excellent weapon enchant for tanking. In the end they pulled the plug and no new weapon enchant was introduced. But what does that leave those of us who aren’t Death Knights?* Below I have detailed what is, in my opinion, the top three tanking enchants and a bit of detail as to why. There are other options (when isn’t there really) but based on my research these are you best bet.

Titanium Weapon Chain
My current choice and also the cheapest of the three, this is a blacksmith created weapon enchant which improves your hit rating and reduces weapon disarm time. In terms of threat, hit is a great stat for tanks and although not stunning a reduction in weapon disarm time is handy. I prefer this enchant because it is cheap, easily acquirable and effective. If you min/max your character this probably isn’t the tank enchant for you.

Accuracy
Similar to the weapon chain, Accuracy provides hit rating but it also provides some critical strike rating as well. This enchant is usable by a lot of classes and is probably thought of most as a DPS enchant. However for a tanking warrior the hit and critical strike rating do translate to increased threat. The downside is the cost, this enchant is quite expensive. In fact if you had to buy all the materials and then tip your enchanter this could run at almost 1000 gold. If you can afford this and you aren’t low on mitigation then it is well worth the cost.

Mongoose
Mongoose was the tanking enchant of choice in Burning Crusade. It gives the weapon a chance to provide you with 120 agility and a slightly increased attack speed for 10 seconds. For a level 80 warrior this translates to approximately 1.3% extra dodge (based off these calculations) as well a slightly increased critical strike rating. If your low on mitigation then this may be well worth it as apparently it activates pretty often but the previous two enchants are still superior in terms of stat allocation and thus result.

*Death Knights can place runes on their weapons which function as powerful enchants. For tanking DKS, these runes help to mitigate the face they don’t have a shield (like warriors and paladins) or an extensive health pool (as with druids).
Image from http://www.solware.co.uk/gadgets-toys/radio-controlled-tank.shtml

Victorian Bush Fires

2009-02-09T10:03:00.003+11:00

Image from http://www.abc.net.au

Over the last few days fire has devastated many parts of Victoria, over 100 lives have been lost, nearly a 1000 homes destroyed and the toll rises almost hourly. It is believed that these fires which have displaced thousands and effected almost every Victorian where, for the most part, deliberately lit. We are currently planning a donation drive around my office and I encourage anyone who can to donate to the Australian Red Cross and help out those who have nothing.

EDIT: Sadly the toll is expected to reach 200 today.

A special shout out goes to our family friends who lived just out side of Marysville. I spent a lot of time on their property growing up and have many fond memories of times spent in the bush around their house. Last I heard they had made it out alive with their photos, dog and one change of underwear but they do not expect to return to a home. Stay safe guys! Our thoughts are with you.

Three Mounts

2009-02-02T17:58:00.002+11:00

So you have seen all those people ridding through Dalaran on their Caravan Mammoths or flying over your head on all manner of strange and beautiful beasts. But when you mount up it’s just the standard Ram or Griffon. Perhaps it’s time you went out and got that upgrade? Well here are three mounts that almost anyone can get a hold of with only some time, their eightieth level and perhaps a few friends.

Green Proto-Drake

An easy option is the Green Proto-Drake, this is obtained from a Mysterious Egg purchasable for 3g at Revered from The Oracles in Sholaza Basin. Getting to revered with the Oracles will take you a few weeks if you regularly complete the dailies, providing good experience or a decent payout. However there is a catch, each Egg only has a small chance to contain the Proto-Drake and takes seven days to hatch. The other downside is that although it’s visually unique and not a common sight it is, in my opinion, butt ugly!

Deathcharger

This mount used to be a very rare sight in Vanilla Wow, it had a drop rate of less than one percent and required a group of five switched on players. But times have changed; the drop rate has been significantly improved and the majority of level eighty players can solo Stratholme killing Baron Rivendare with little trouble. Subsequently this is the perfect mount to aim for if you do a lot of solo play. There is also the added benefit that despite it’s age Stratholme can still be a profitable instance to run solo, plenty of items to sell of disenchant and large amounts of cloth. It is also a good time to start working on The Argent Champion achievement. A couple of tips for a level 80 in Stratholme:
Avoid killing what you don’t have to it will take you a lot longer if you clear the whole place out
Don’t stealth because the stealth diction mobs can see you more easily in stealth than out
Avoid the gargoyles they move quite fast and will bring lots of friends if you agro them

Bronze Drake

Of the three, the Bronze Drake is the hardest to acquire purely because you do need a good, well geared group. The Bronze Drake is a 100% drop from the Infinite Corruptor a timed boss in the Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme. You must reach and defeat this boss within 25 minutes of beginning the instance. He is located very close to the end just before the final boss Mal’Ganis. The 25 minute timer is achievable as long as everyone in your group knows what they are doing. Plenty of AOE helps because there will be no Crowd Control and don't bother looting the trash.

Of these three I have only acquired The Bronze Drake, so thankyou to Alassiel for providing the excellent screen shots.

Pimp your Authenticator

2009-01-21T17:15:00.001+11:00

A while back I bought an authenticator to add an extra layer of security to my Warcraft account. But since it travels everywhere in my pocket attached to my keys, the art work on the front is starting to look a bit damaged. Then while listening to Turpster on the Wow Insider Show offer to sign the BlizzCon authenticator they were giving away and idea struck me. Why not make my own sticker to attach to the front, with unique artwork!

Twenty minutes later I had myself two templates and a handful of custom artworks for my authenticator. These along with some simple instructions I share with you.

Buy an Authenticator from the Blizzard Store if you don’t already own one.
Visit your local stationary store and buy some sticky labels. The word template works perfectly with the Avery L7163 labels but with a bit of tweaking or if you use the Illustrator template most sticky labels will work as long as it is larger than 52mm by 21mm.
Find an image to use on your authenticator. You might want to use a screen shot of your character, some Blizzard concept art or even draw some thing yourself. You may need to revisit this step several times until you find a picture that fits well.
Open either the Word or Illustrator template and place your chosen image behind the overlay. Once your happy with the placement print your design onto the sticky label.
Using a sharp craft knife carefully cut out the blank spaces and then around the edges.
Peel your sticker off its backing and attach to your authenticator.

Download the Word Template

Download the Illustrator Template

2009-01-07T09:13:00.001+11:00

Did you notice something different when you swung by today…?

Yes I have another new banner only this one is good! Really good! The banner was created by a wonderful friend of mine who is an amazingly talented artist and graphic designer. If you would like to see more of her work, visit her Red Bubble page which has an ever increasing collection of t-shirts, cards and artworks which are all available for sale.

Now I know that I have been a bit slack with writing regular articles over the last couple of months but I am making a firm commitment to correct this and write more regularly. I also intend to write more specific articles such as guides and tactics.

Naxxramas Cleared!

2009-01-06T15:23:00.005+11:00

After only four weeks to Wrath entering Naxxramas, Children of Stormwind raiders have completed the instance with the death of Kel’Thuzad last Sunday. With the Vault of Archavon and Obsidian Sanctum already under our belts that leaves Malygos as our only undefeated raid boss. Should we be able to consistently recreate this effort with the addition of downing Malagyos regularly we should be in a strong position to begin the next tier of raiding as soon as the patch is released.

On a related note The Children of Stormwind stand at 66th in the WowJutsu rankings. I strongly believe we can improve on this, perhaps making it into the top 50 soon!

Additionally Ironarm now has four pieces of the tier seven “Dreadnaught Plate”. Considering that even after a year of Burning Crusades Ironarm only ever managed to get two pieces of tier four this expansion is going considerably better.

Tangent Time - Fallout 3

2008-12-30T12:10:00.005+11:00

Anyone who knows me online might have been wondering why I haven’t been playing Wow very much recently. Well it’s all thanks to Fallout 3 (and Christmas) a fantastic FPS open world RPG. I would suggest that this game is just as addictive, if not more so because it something completely different, as wow.

Fallout 3 is set is a post apocalyptic alternative earth where a world devastated by nuclear war is fought over by various faction of different moral standings. Throughout the game you level up your character and customize it to match your play style though skills and perks. Additionally your every action has an impact on the world, altering who you can talk to, how people will react to you and how the world appears. Overarching this is Karma a measurable indication of your actions in terms of good and bad. Karama has the most impact on how you experience the game, massacre settlements, enslave people and eat corpses and you will be unwelcome at towns and loved by slavers. However if you help out strangers, rescue people and kill slavers you will not only be rewarded by some of the townsfolk but a bounty will be placed on your head and Mercenary forces will start to hunt you down.

Combat can take several forms, you can fire all your weapons freestyle or you can enter V.A.T.S when essentially pauses the game and lets you allocate where your next few shots will land. This system is limited by your AP a regenerating value which determines how many shots you can fire in V.A.T.S at that time. The ability to sneak give you the option, to a limited extend, of back stabbing people or just sneaking past them and you can sometimes talk your way out of a fight. The mechanics also include the ability to critically hit, disable limbs and head shot.

The world is immersive, the game smooth and beautiful and the story engaging and complex but Fallout is not without its flaws. The worst so far has to be the poor AI, enemies seem to either charge straight at you or stand and shoot. Difficulty is only ensured by the toughness, damage output and number of enemies or a lack of ammunition. To make matters worse quite often enemies don’t path well around corners, obstacles and walls. On several occasions I have been able to take out Minigun wielding Super Mutants by trapping them in rooms and bouncing grenades in to them. I would have liked to see the enemy use cover, attempt to surround you and other simple but challenging tactics. My other annoyance was that upon achieving a new level you have to choose your skills and perk immediately this resulted in several very unwise choices that are irreversible. Allowing the player to skip assigning them immediately and return later and the ability to reset them (perhaps at a very high cost) would have been an excellent addition.

Overall it is a fantastic game well worth the asking price and the significant time investment. You can visit the official site with plenty of information about the game or visit the game Wiki which has details about all the skills, perks, quests, characters etc.

Images from the Fallout 3 Official Site

Patch 3.0.8 for Protection Warriors

2008-12-30T12:01:00.003+11:00

For the last few weeks a new patch 3.0.8 has been on the Public Test Realms, this patch includes a couple of notable (positive) points for Protection warriors.

Targets will now agro on the use of any spell/ability, this change seems aimed at Warlock and Priest damage over time spells which can take a moment to actually damage a mob, during this time it can be stolen by another player. However it also means we can now “tap” targets with Taunt and Demoralizing Shout which will make gathering up groups of mobs a bit easier in a competitive environment.

Two new enchants are to be added which fill some enchanting gaps for tanking classes. Enchant Weapon - Titanguard will add 75 stamina to a weapon and will be the best tanking enchant available. The second is Enchant Bracers – Major Stamina which adds 40 stamina to your bracers, this supplements the existing bracer enchants which add 15 expertise or 12 defense (Burning Crusade enchant that you might you if your desperate for defense).

An increase to the range of Taunt, from 20 yards to 30 yards, is the only ability change for Protection Warriors. This will be useful for a few fights where you are required to pick up lots of spread out mobs and in picking up mobs which have appeared from behind your party.

Presently there is no indication of when this patch will go live but considering it has been on the PTR for a while now it shouldn’t be too long.

Child's Play

2008-12-19T11:30:00.003+11:00

You may have heard about the Child’s Play charity, it was established in 2003 by the guys over at Penny Arcade to raise money for sick children. Now thanks to this charity gamers and industry organisations work together each year to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars (though this year they hit 1 million) which is directed to hospitals around the world. I would encourage everyone to donate to this highly worthwhile cause!

You can donate via PayPal by clicking the image above.

Sadly the Royal Melbourne Children’s Hospital was not added to the list of receiving organisations this year. Additionally I did not get an opportunity to run the fundraising event I had hoped to. I guess there is always next year.

Continued Raiding Success

2008-12-17T21:52:00.002+11:00

Thanks to some on the spot raiding The Children of Stormwind now have another two raid instances under their belt. Last night a brave band of ten took on the Obsidian Sanctum and The Vault of Archavon. Both bosses fell with only one wipe each and Archavon was only really due to an evade bug and some messy taunting from myself.

The ease with which we completed both of these encounters leads me to one of two conclusions. Either raids are easier or the guild has gotten a fair bit better. I am inclined to think that perhaps it’s more of the former than the latter as there were plenty of silly mistakes made throughout the raid. Additionally although people are working to improve their play I think we still have a way to go maximising our characters performance. However that said we have improved, the guild as a whole have already attempted and begun to succeed at raid content which is a big step. We are also helping each other with crafted items and instances runs more than I saw in the Burning Crusade. Most importantly I am seeing enthusiasm again, gone are the days of running Karazhan for the hundredth time for now everything is new and exciting.

Naxxramas - The Arachnid Quarter

2008-12-17T11:31:00.004+11:00

On the 15th of December the Children of Stormwind made their first foray into Naxxramas. The evening began with some minor trouble with the other tank and top healer being at a Christmas party but after some stumbling around we found a PUG healer and got started. The raid is made up of four parts which must be completed to unlock the final bosses. In the two hours we were there we downed the three bosses in the Arachnid Quarter, Anub'Rekhan, Grand Widow Faerlina and Maexxna. We had a few wipes on Anub’Rekkan and Maexxna as we sorted out exactly what we needed to do but the Grand Widow Faerlina when down first shot.

The six epic items dropped were all made excellent use of with Lil getting the best deal and winning two items. For a “stuck our head in and see how we do” attempt we did very successfully. We plan to try again next weekend, this time with more serious game faces and hopefully clear another wing in addition to the Arachnid.

PS Elfarol your going to hate the Arachnid wing, true to it’s name there are a lot of spiders and with you now insisting on this retribution business your going to be getting pretty close to them.

The Wrath of the Lich King

2008-12-03T15:39:00.002+11:00

It was a dark and stormy night when our car charged into the lot of the local Westfield. We escaped the cold outside into cavernous concrete and glass megalith where Electronic Boutique is housed. A short discussion with the staff and we emerged with the numbers 34 and 35. The wait seemed an eternity barely relieved by a call from fellow guild mates in the same situation 1000km away. Then a line formed, watched over by the local store manager dual wielding foam short swords. We were to wait as such until the appointed time. Meer minutes before our turn to collect that which we had waited so long for a sodden rider enters and removes his helm revealing a manly Duke Nukem esk head with metal band drummer beard. Tek finally appeared and in the nick of time; risking the wrath of the noob hordies surrounding us we snuck (as much as you can sneak a 6 foot guy in wet leather). We entered together, diverged our recepts then raising our fists in victory as we emerged with our copies of Wrath of the Lich King. A brief hiatus ensued as we had a catch up with a guy I had only ever seen as a cute night elf female promising the next meeting would involved alcoholic beverages of some variety.

The journey home was framed with brilliant lightning strikes almost as if mother nature was providing a backdrop to our upcoming adventures. Installation was smooth and provided an opportunity to source drinks, snacks and read the art book. Then finally the we were in, starting on our long path to the destruction (or redemption?) of Arthas.

First glimpses of Northrend revealed ice, penguins and the ominous spectre of Utguard Keep leering over Howling Fjord. Then as time passes, monsters and dragons are slain, Titans ridden, seeds pooped out, flags planted and levels dinged. Zones come and go and the trail of corpses lengthens. But from Utguard all the way to Icecrown the Arthas is ever present. Sometimes directly some times not and even once though a loop hole in time. The world changes around us as we participate in history. Assisting King Varian Wrynn take the Undercity, leading the spearhead for Highlord Tirion Fordring of the Argent Crusade and establishing a foothold in Icecrown for the Knights of the Ebon Blade.

Until at last in the heights of the Storm Peaks the final level is obtained eight has finally been reached. But still the end is not in sight, there are many more foes to vanquish, quest to complete and raids to clear. But soon Arthas, soon we will come for you.

Ironarm the Explorer

2008-11-28T11:59:00.003+11:00

At level 79 I sat down at my PC one evening with only 30-40 minutes to play. My internet was playing up so I knew questing would be frustrating. So I jumped onto my Nether Ray and finally got around to completing the World Explorer Achievement.

I was pleasantly surprised at how little time it took my to clear up a couple of missing areas and explorer the majority of Icecrown and Stormpeaks. The achievements rewards a title and an epic tabard. Additionally I received about 5% of a levels worth of experience.

Stormpeaks looks stunning, I am very excited to go and try some quests there. However I am not sure what the purpose of Crystalsong Forest is, there are two camps but no quests.

Open Apology

2008-11-17T09:22:00.001+11:00

Sorry I have not been posting, too caught up in Wrath. I have taken a lot of screen shots so expect some pretty posts to come.

Direct Download Patches from Bigpond

2008-11-13T12:20:00.002+11:00

I have had my problems with our Telstra Bigpond internet connection but they may be redeemed yet. Bigpond’s game section, Game Arena hosts all the World of Warcraft Patch files. Anyone who uses a Bigpond internet connection can subscribe to Game Arena for free. Game Arena host all sorts of patches, mods and map packs, all unmetered (ie it doesn’t count towards your download limit) and all at a very fast download speeds.

This is a great benefit for those of us who are cutting it close to our download limits and it means that if you ever need to reinstall wow you can get all the patches quickly and without maxing out our internet. Speaking as someone who has done this on at least one occasion, I am very happy to make this discovery.

Additionally you will need the 3.0.1 - 3.0.3 patches to upgrade to Wrath so if you deleted you can re acquire them here.

As an addendum I am cursing myself for not looking on Game Arena for World of Warcraft related content when I first got Bigpond.

A time goes by

2008-11-12T12:18:00.000+11:00

It seems that everyone, Blizzard blues included, are wishing away the time between now ans Wrath launch. Players are spamming trade chat, guilds chatting away about non nonsensical rubbish and Wow Insider is speed posting pictures and random mutterings. To help keep you entertained, please see the below picture of Ironarm posing in his Paladin Undead Killing plate armor of doom and such.

Arthas Attacks

2008-11-11T18:38:00.005+11:00

Arthas has made his next move running up to the Release of Wrath of the Lich King.

FOOLS OF STOMWIND! HEAR ME, NAIVE CHILDREN OF THE ALLIANCE! TREMBLE AND KNOW YOUR DOOM, FOR THE LICH KING'S GAZE IS FIXED UPON YOU!

Attacks have landed in Stormwind Harbour for the alliance and the Valley of Honor for the horde. The event lasts about ten minutes during which you can fight frost wyrms and abomonations. Neither enemy is perticually hard to vanquish and currently there is no rewards.

It is disappointing there are no quests linked to this event. The idea of fighting off attacks for your boat ticket would be amusing to say the least.

What i found most interesting was the appearence of Broll Bearmantle and Valeera Sanguinar who fight along side the king in the arena. I would recomend reading the comic book to fill the background of where the King has been.

Shield Block

2008-11-11T17:26:00.000+11:00

Reading a Wow Insider article the other day I noticed something quite interesting about the warrior ability shield block. Improved shield block used to increase our block chance by 75% for two attacks. With the removal of crushing blows and thus the need for crushing blow mitigation this was changed to increase out block chance and value by 100% for 10 seconds with a 60 second cool down. Initially I didn’t understand this change and perhaps others missed it too. This means that for 10 seconds every minute (talented down to 40 seconds) you are blocking every attack and your block value is doubled.

Now I have a block value of around 800 depending on which gear I am in so for a quarter of the time I can be reducing incoming melee attacks by about 1600 plus a 30% chance to double that again. In addition attackers will be hit for between 250 and 500 damage thanks to Damage Shield. Viewed from a damage/AE tanking perspective, if we add Thunder Clap, Thorns and Retribution Aura (do they still stack?) mobs should be sticking to us like we well... glue.

For you amusing reference please see the above image as to how useful this ability if to clearing whole instances with one pull. Here you can see everything in Wailing Caverns that didn't die on the way to the last room. And that is only the tip of the iceberg, thanks to changes such as these I can be second on damage charts in heroics, out DPS arms warriors in arena and well kill stuff. Sure I am not perfect and some times I get a bit big for my boots. For example pulling 3 shadows of doom as well as 5 or 6 non elites while your team mates are fighting off horde warlocks is a close call. Also 6 heroic elites is my maximum so far with the 7th (a Cobalt Serpent) wiping the group.

Playing a protection warrior really has got a lot more fun. You really feel like you are involved while tanking and you are no longer an easy target in PvP. A lot has changes recently and personally I am loving it.

New Children of Stormwind Site

2008-11-10T16:33:00.003+11:00

We have updated the Children of Stormwind website. The new site, based on my design, looks much better and has a great new application form.

A lot of people spent time making this happen and you should all be really proud of your efforts!

DIY - Wow Items

2008-11-06T12:11:00.007+11:00

Have you ever wanted to make your own spells or items? Well where there is the internet there is a way. Wow Item Creator allows you to do just this with the excellent Flash based item creator. You can make spells, abilities, weapons armor and other items with items stats, use abilities, restrictions and flavor text. In fact the final result can look so good you could easily confuse it for the real thing. The Luck Dragon you see above was made in response to a comment on our guild forums. But I originally found this when trying to make an example Spell Power item before any existed in the game.

I would encourage you to jump on and have a look at some of the items people have made, my personal favorite so far is the Illidan Cookie, and have a go for yourself. While you are at it you can rate my Luck Dragon, even though I want to change the use effect to “can only be summoned in Outlands, Northrend or Fantastica”.

Tangent Time - Team Fortress 2

2008-11-02T18:37:00.001+11:00

Welcome to my new weekly (hopefully) column ‘Tangent Time’. I have found that often a fair amount of time can go by without anything of significant note happening in wow. This column will help to round out this blog with regular posts. When there is lots of interesting wow news, say for example the Wrath Launch, then expect ‘Tangent Time’ to be temporarily forgotten.

So onto this weeks topic, Team Fortress 2 (TF2). TF2 is an online multiplayer FPS which started it’s life as a player made Half Life mod. With the release of the latest Half Life (are we up to three now?) Valve redeveloped TF, gave it a graphic overhaul, made new maps and added some new game play types. TF2 is a class based game; there are nine classes, three offensive, three defensive and three support. Each class is quite unique both in terms of play mechanics, has obvious strengths and weaknesses and a distinctive character. My personal favorite is the Pyro an offensive class which uses a flamethrower. Pyros are a fast, low hit point class who at close rage (especially from behind) deal large amounts of damage. If you can pop out of a corridor behind a few enemy players you can easily wipe them all out but you wont last in a frontal assault (conditions apply).

There are two reasons that I have been really enjoying this game recently. Firstly is that it is fast paced and fun, you can power through a game or two in ten or fifteen minutes. Secondly is achievements; the achievements are really addictive and they are worse than wow achievements in that completing TF2 achievements will unlock extra weapons for your characters. Who wouldn’t want an axe wrapped in barbed wire!

TF2 can be purchased as part of the Orange Box or individually in stores and via steam. It’s a fun game and hopefully will soon become part of our regular LAN rotation.

In closing I provide a link to a fantastic Machninma Ignis Solus.

Images from in game and The Orange Box official website.

Blog Changes

2008-10-30T10:06:00.002+11:00

Over the coming weeks I will be making an effort to update the look of my blog. I never really intended to use the standard Blogger template for so long but have had trouble deciding on a new theme. You will probably see lots of alterations, colour clashes and weird graphics. Do not be alarmed.

2008-10-27T16:53:00.002+11:00

I have done a bit of forum reading, apparently we can expect a conclusion to this event pretty soon. There is a lot of fuss on Blizzards Official Forums, I would go so far as to say it’s the worst I have seen it. However there is light at the end of the tunnel, apparently both the King of Stormwind and Thrall have disappeared. and before the king left he talks about a powerful holy weapon. Happenings are a foot.

I can only hope...

2008-10-27T14:06:00.002+11:00

Presently I have a very narky and slightly QQ post sitting in my blog post drafts. At the moment the Zombie Invasion world event is causing me a lot of frustration. But there is a reason that I haven’t posted my angry article. I am trusting Blizzard to take this event somewhere good and quickly. The concept is solid, plagued grain is a nice reflection of what happened in Stratholme and the undead slowly taking over the world. But from this we need a climatic conclusion.

Hints are coming that the Alliance (and I suppose the Horde too) are working to retaliate. Elfarol posted an interesting transmission from a Gnomish Wireless Unit and Wow Insider has a few hints from faction leaders. Hopefully Blizzard will pull this off and there will be an epic conclusion which kicks Wrath off with a bang and swamps out the frustrations insured by rampant ganking zombies.

EDIT: People are getting really annoyed now, apparently there have been a lot of complaints in guild chat. Perhaps I should post my QQ article anyway.

The Evil Dead!

2008-10-24T13:59:00.004+11:00

Although I have not entered the world for a day or so, word is out that Arthas is making his move against the Alliance and Horde. Diseased creates of wheat have arrived around Azeroth those who catch the infection form them will, unless cured, turn into a zombie. Thankfully the Argent Dawn have healers in the major cities who can cure you of this horrific disease but it will only be a matter of time before even they are turned.

I plan to form a party of defenders to help contain this menace, concern remains that although Ironarm is tough and has a resistance to disease he will be turned by shear weight of numbers. We can only hope that a powerful force will appear and assist us as it appears that the zombies are getting stronger.

Roleplay aside, this could be an interesting and at the same time a very annoying event. I will need to investigate which NPCs can be infected and whether that will make them hostile. Hopefully the placement of Agent Dawn forces will help to mitigate this and ensure the game remains fun. Should the Auctioneers, Innkeepers and quest givers get turned life could get quite frustrating. The fact that people are complaining that paladins, priests and shaman are cleansing them surprises me. As far as I can see the main reason people want to be zombies is to attack others and cause havoc. Dispelling the disease seems like a great way to stop them from doing that.

Should you wish to join me, in the defense against the zombie infestation, then have a look at the guide on Wow Insider for some tips on staying alive. We will NEVER give up we will NEVER surrender! For the LIGHT!

The Straglethorn Vale Fishing Competition

2008-10-19T14:43:00.005+11:00

I might have a comtender for my best in game moment, today I won the Stranglethorn Vale. In fact I won it on my first try. With only a moment to choose a reward (you don't win untill you complete the quest)I picked the Arcanite Fishing Pole, reading all the text for the Hook of the Master Angler probabily would have lost me the competition and in retrospect the rod is a better choice anyway.

I must thank Elfarol for his assistance, explaining to me that I need to set my hearthstone to the Booty Bay, showing me a good spot to fish, scouting my next pool and generally hanging around to give me Crusader Aura and make me a less appealing PvP target. Really it was him and a lot of luck on pools respawing in good places that won it.

Patch Woes and Wonders

2008-10-16T09:21:00.003+11:00

Last night I should have finally got to dip my toes into the new patch and take Ironarm for a ride with shiny new talents. Sadly I didn’t, instead I spent all night looking at installer bars, downloads, scans and technical support forums. You see Blizzard decided that people with Vista needed to shift their installer directory to avoid patching problems, except that every time I tried to, I got an error. Apparently I wasn’t alone; there were a small number of other players with the same or similar problems. Out of 11 million players that’s not really all that bad, it’s just very frustrating it had to happen for such an exciting patch. Most normal people would have just uninstalled wow and started from scratch, great idea except my internet is capped until Saturday. It would take until Saturday to get all of the patches again. So after trying all the resolution steps I could find I raised a ticket. They will probably tell me to reinstall it but it’s worth a shot.

So the long and the short of it is I missed the best bit of the patch. I missed the jump on the early Inscription benefits, the guild chat as people acquired achievements and the discussion of awesome new abilities. Alassiel said she would come home tonight and let me play on her laptop, so I should get to see it tonight, but I will feel guilty for every minute of her play time I steal.

On a brighter note Alassiel completed the achievement Leading the Cavalry and I would be confident in saying she is the first person in the guild to get an Albino Drake (see picture above) congratulations!

Patch Incoming

2008-10-14T00:36:00.002+11:00

Did you notice the extended maintenance period tonight? Our server will be down from 8:00pm to 8:00am, Jubie’Thos server time, to implement the “Echoes of Doom” patch (3.0.2).

Included in the patch will be:

Access to the new profession Inscription
Two new arenas: The Ring of Valour and The Dalaran Sewers
Changes to the world including the Stormwind Harbour
Barbershops
Achievements System
New Talents, Spells and abilities
Changes to the buff system
The beginning of a world event…?

This patch is huge (1.17 gig to be precise), and contains some massive changes. If you haven’t looked at anything about this yet I strongly recommend you visit the Wowhead Talent Calculators, perhaps look over some of the coverage on Wow Insider or check out the official patch notes.

I was really looking forward to making it to the max Inscription level before work but unfortunately I will be lucky to even load into the new patch before work. Additionally downloading the patch four times (on my old computer, on my new computer, on Alassiel’s computer and for the PTR which I never even entered) has capped out my internet connect so I’m playing on what is essentially a dial up connection.

Image from: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/underdev/index.html

BlizzCon Blog Posts

2008-10-12T18:57:00.002+11:00

Thanks to the coverage on Main Event I have written a pile of blog posts over the weekend. You can find links to all of these via this post. They are aranged in the order I wrote them.
Day One
BlizzCon Begins
Mike Morhaime Interview
Class Discussion
Blizzard the Company
Starcraft 2
World of Warcraft World Design Interview - Alex Afrasiabi
Ghost in the System
The Contests

Day Two
World of Warcraft PvP Panel
Jeff Kaplan Interview
Interview with Felica Day
World of Warcraft Dungeons and Raids
World of Warcraft Gameplay Panel
Closing Ceremony
It's a Wrap

Because these posts are based on the Main Event coverage I don't have pictures to associate with the posts so my apologies for the walls of text.

It's a Wrap

2008-10-12T14:56:00.000+11:00

Well BlizzCon is over, the coverage anyway. I really enjoyed watching all of the coverage, there was plenty of great information on the World of Warcraft and Direct TV did an excellent job of the coverage. Sure I missed a couple of panels but even if I was there I would have missed tons of stuff. I was also surprised how much I enjoyed hearing about Starcraft and Diablo. I will defiantly be picking up a copy of Diablo 3, it looks like an excellent game. I get the impression that Diablo is like playing through a really good fantasy novel. I don't really understand how it works but it seems that you can play through it with a friend. Perhaps Alassiel will get a copy too and we can play through it together.

Starcraft also looks really worth getting; I used to play a ton of real time strategy games and really enjoyed them. The inclusion of a branching quest system and compelling story might just win me back into that area. Of course the best bit of all gaming is playing with a friend and the same will go for Starcraft so I’ll have to con my old RTS buddy to grab it as well.

The highlight would have to be Warcraft panels, I enjoyed them the most. Only one thing was completely missing, that was the 3v3 Arena competition. Watching professionals in the arena would have been quite a valuable incite. Hopefully I will go to next years BlizzCon then I can get to experience it all first hand.

Closing Ceremony

2008-10-12T13:55:00.000+11:00

Paul Sams closed up the evening with a farewell, video highlights reel and thankyous to the Blizzard guys who worked hard to put the convention together. This was followed by Kyle Kinane (comedian) who livened up the crowd with some humour vaguely related to the convention and Blizzard but just generally funny. Patton Oswalt, also a comedian, followed him with more humour. Less amusing, in fact much less amusing more inappropriate and annoying. Patton was the voice of Remmy, surprising because he didn't seem to be able to go for long without swearing or saying something really uncool. How this guy managed to score such a high profile gig is beyond me.

Thankfully the Level 80 Eilete Tauren Chieftains were a lot better, in an amusing kind of way. The band is made up from Blizzard employees; they certainly got an excellent response from the crowd. They played The Power of the Horde, Terran up the Night, Rogues do it From Behind, Night Fall, Diablo(Raise some Hell) and I am Murlock. Their show also had some semi stand up sketch stuff as well. Nice work guys!

To close up the days coverage was Video Games Live. Video Games Live is a live orchestra, band and choir which perform the music from video games. The performance included music from all the Blizzard games past and present and it was all absolutely fantastic. In fact I was taken by how much just the music stirred my emotions. A perfect way to close it all up!

World of Warcraft Gameplay Panel

2008-10-12T11:52:00.000+11:00

A star studded line up took on a barrage of player questions. Due to the huge variety of topics I have bulleted some of the most interesting points.

Deathwing will make an appearance at some stage in the future.
Wrath of the Lich King will ship with plenty of daily quests.
There will be plenty of interaction with Arthas throughout Northrend.
Tier tokens will be usable to purchase on tier lower PvP item.
In the first content patch after Lich King ground mounts will be able to swim.
Shadow Priests are due a bit of a damage buff.
Holy Paladins are deserved of some offensive abilities to match the offensive abilities of priests with mana burn, druids with cyclone and shaman with shocks.
Each of the crafting professions are intended to have a best in slot item similar to the engineering goggles.
They have written a story for the World of Warcraft movie, it is coming.
Mana regeneration and tuning classes to have a 'good' amount of mana may still be required.
Player skill should be what dictates who is doing the most DPS, not their class.
They are looking at ways to skip the long speeches some bosses deliver before you can engage them.
Achievement points will not be spendable for 'gear' only 'fluff'.
They would like to pursue more randomised dailies so stop them from being too receptive.
Hunters might get their aspects off the global cool down.
They do like the idea of PvE arenas, but there are a few issues which would have to be dealt with first.
Perhaps stances for warriors wont have a penalty.
They have a lot of great ideas for dungeon/raid encounters; we can expect some different cool mechanics that are completely new to us. There is a future raid which will use siege weapons and destructible terrain.

The panel did a good job answering the player questions, they also too some of the crap without breaking a sweat. One question which wasn't answered “why does it cost me $70 to have a tiny authenticator shipped to me?”, I guess I’ll have to ask that on the forums.

World of Warcraft Dungeons and Raids

2008-10-12T11:50:00.002+11:00

This panel opened with discussion about how they made sure that the dungeons tied closely to the lore of Wrath of the Lich King. Pushing the story is just as important as kills and loot. They also wanted to make shorter unique instances that still had a feel of being epic and important. They have constructed the dungeons so that they are in very large spaces but the actual playing space is smaller. There was a fly through of Halls of Lightning which showed some of the excellent detailed elements of the dungeons. One of which was windows which give you a view out into the surrounding zone and continue to give you a feel of space. Unique boss models will make bosses feel special and give them some importance.

Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, another five man instance, again works very effectively to make you feel like you’re in a huge space. There is a lot of background story which will be new to many players from this zone. This area is where Naxxramas was originally from, you can see this in the architecture. Also if you don't like spiders you really won’t like this instance. Phasing is also used in Ahn'kahet, the last boss fight will do some really interesting things with this technology where each player will have to fight their own group in a different phase. Once you have killed all your phases enemies you can then help others meaning your healer won't hate this encounter.

Moving to raids, they are learning from and building on Burning Crusade. The first raid they discussed, Chamber of Aspects, is an expandable raid. Depending on how many of the mini bosses you take out the main boss will be easier or harder and will have different loot tables. Then they looked at Eye of the Eternity, sadly they messed up triggering the event by attempting it real time while invincible, apparently the boss knew this so wouldn't engage them... opps. Well apparently when it all starts to go to hell the Red Dragon flight turn up and help you out.

What about loot? Well Heroics will have much better loot than standard dungeons not the current situation where most of it was the same. They are also working to tweak the badge system to have two different badges allowing for purchase of different tiers of gear and avoiding people well through the end game 'farming' badges. There will also be separate gear sets for 10 and 25 man raids but they will be interchangeable for the same set bonus and a couple of these set items will be purchasable with badges.

Interview with Felica Day

2008-10-12T11:49:00.001+11:00

Felica Day is the star and creator of the web series of “The Guild” and a big fan of Blizzard. She announced that they are working on a second season which will air in November. The Guild were hosting a panel but I believe that this is not included in the TV coverage package. You can find more information about their new series and join their community at http://www.watchtheguild.com.

Jeff Kaplan Interview

2008-10-12T10:48:00.000+11:00

This interview was more of a recap of some of the panel information and information released during the beta. He also discussed upcoming content patches, of which there will be plenty relating to Wrath of the Lich King and that we could expect siege weapons in PvE. They have also started planning work on the next expansion. He also gave a very clear indication of how fast the levelling from 60 to 70 would be, currently it takes about 5 zones to get to 70. When the level change is put in place on Tuesday it will take only 2-3 zones. For players still fighting through the last few level this will really help them make it before November 13th (14th for us). I have mentioned Jyade and Bhoni before, well they are in their mid 60s at the moment so this change is for you guys, you can make it!

World of Warcraft PvP Panel

2008-10-12T09:46:00.001+11:00

This panel launched straight into it showing off the new arenas. There are two new arenas in Wrath of the Lich King both of which have some very different elements from the arenas we see at the moment. To begin with both have dynamic elements. The Ring of Valor will have four moving pillars which will block line of sight and can be stood on to get out of melee combat. There is also two fire strips which damage you breaking up the arena floor into three sections. The Dalaran Sewers also has dynamic element, a pillar of water in the centre of the arena. A few people expressed concern about these dynamic events when this was originally announced. However a lot of the concern related to the randomness of them triggering, which has been changed to a static timer. I think it will be interesting even if it is somewhat tricky. Dalaran Sewers had a couple of other points, it's really quite small and the majority of the arena is on a platform accessible from two points, that could make it tricky for melee who get knocked off. Additionally you can't mount in this arena, although you can use travel and ghost wolf form. Both of these arena are also interesting as they will force players out into the arena. The Ring of Valor, via the lift which drops the teams really close to each other and in the Dalaran Sewers if you try to stay in the starting pipes you will get knocked out on to the floor.

The coverage stopped right after the arenas section but Strand of the Ancients was discussed in the following short interview. In response to player feedback it will be a 15v15, as opposed to 10v10, battle field with an assault and defend scenario.

There was another later interview about PvP, Cory Stockton talked about the new content for PvP. Lake Wintergrasp will offer a raid instance for when you win the zone and the rewards have been improved from the BC world PvP rewards. The improved rewards and the raid instance are designed so that players will continue to return to Lake Wintergrasp. Rewards includes mounts, gems and items you can hand down to your alts. The raid boss will drop a piece from any of the armour sets excluding head and shoulder items. Lake Wintergrasp will also include NPC aspects similar to Alterac Valley and daily quests.

Starcraft 2

2008-10-11T20:40:00.000+11:00

I know this is a Warcraft blog but I feel it would be valuable to mention one of the other major announcements from BlizzCon. The Starcraft game play panel began with some nice game cinematic and story background. This was followed by a short game play demonstration. The game looks quite nice and fun to play from the small amount I saw and it is backed up by an excellent storyline. They have also steered away from a linear sequence of missions toward a system where you have choice of different missions which can be taken in your own order.

The big announcement is that Starcraft 2 will in fact be a trilogy of games. Each will have a campaign for one of the factions and each campaign will be an epic story line.

Oh and they showed a new cinematic! I like Blizzard's cinematics.

The Contests

2008-10-11T13:30:00.000+11:00

At BlizzCon they have several fun stage contests, costume, dance and/silly. To begin there was the costume contest. There were some stunning and extravagant costumes, obviously a lot of people have spent a great deal of time working on them. Some of the Draenei costumes were very effective also by picking a simple armour participants were able to craft them really well. There were some very cleaver costumes such as a paladin bubble hearthing and a tauren hocky player and a few good double entries such as a hunter and their pet.

The entries were overwhelmingly Warcraft related, with only a couple of Starcraft and Diablo entries. Additionally most of the entrants were female.

My favourite and the winner was the female Draenei shaman in season three arena gear on a full size animatronics riding turtle complete with shield and weapon.

Original song and movie contest presentations were also made. Neither the songs nor movies were shown so I can't judge them. The only exception was the over all winner Snacky's Journal 4. I have seen some of the Snacky's Journal episodes and they are quite good. Hopefully they post all the songs and movies on the Blizzard site for us to see.

Sorry I was enjoying the jokes too much to dictate them into this blog. Well except this one “what class in World of Warcraft do women like the most... male enhancement shaman”.

These were followed up by the 'profession' comedian Jeff Lewis also know as Vork from 'The Guild', You Tube, TV show. Finally the day was closed off by the MC presenting the winners of the /silly (the shaman joke got 2nd). The only contest remaining is the dances; the footage appeared to cut off as though there was more about to happen so I can only assume that will be broadcasted tomorrow.
1:30pm

EDIT: A very short dance contest package was aired Sunday morning, a girl doing the undead dance won but there was plenty of other great entries.
EDIT 2: Snacky's Journal was show later on the second day of coverage, it's very well put together, amusing and very deserving of it's overall winner status.

Ghost in the System

2008-10-11T11:44:00.000+11:00

Well I’m up to 40 minutes of “Normal programming will return as soon as possible”. Occasionally ill get thirty seconds or so of coverage and then it drops. Hopefully it's will solidify up again soon.

It's getting better but I am still missing bits here and there. A bit disappointing for a paid service.

World of Warcraft World Design Interview - Alex Afrasiabi

2008-10-11T10:31:00.000+11:00

Questing has evolved from Burning Crusade. In Northrend there is more involvement from the big bad (Arthas) so even if you never get to raid you should still be very aware of his presence. They have learnt from their mistakes in the Classic and Burning Crusade games. The use of phasing is also making a difference to the world and to quests. This is most visible in the Death Knight starting zone. Some things to do with changing the environment are now possible thanks to this revolutionary technology and we should start to see these in Northrend. However they have had to be very careful with this as bad use of phasing could really confuse players. For example if players on different steps of a group quest chain can't see each other they would be very annoyed.

An interesting note which arose from viewer question was that there are no world bosses in Northrend because of some of the player collision (PvP and Griefing) issues that have arisen with them in Azeroth and the Outlands.

Alex also revealed that there will be a world event attached the patch next Tuesday. In Alex's own words “All kinds of craziness is going to happen... your going to have a reason to go to Northrend”.

Blizzard the Company

2008-10-11T07:39:00.000+11:00

Something I noticed from the walk through of the offices, sure they are showing off on international TV, but they look fantastic. The look and feel of the complex was wonderful and it had a strong sence of branding. There was plenty of pictures on the walls, statues relating to their games and it was obvious the staff loved their jobs.

Blizzard now have nearly 3,000 staff, for having that many people Blizzard do a pretty impressive job keeping secrets. That’s says something about the commitment and loyalty of their staff something that would be the envy of many other companies.

An addition motivation to stay with Blizzard is their 5 year service award a sword, ten year service award a Lordaeron shield and fifteen year service award a ring. From an HR perspective Blizzard's massive popularity and peoples desire to work there is a double edged sword, they must get some excellent applicants for every job but they probably have to sift through thousands of applications.

Class Discussion

2008-10-11T07:37:00.001+11:00

The class discussion, conducted by Greg Street (Ghost Crawler) and Tom Chilton, for the World of Warcraft started with Death Knights. Some explanation about where the class has evolved from and touching upon runes and runic power. The starting zone for Death Knights will be a zone worth playing through just for the experience, even if you don't want to level all the way to 80. Something that was very interesting is that the talent trees are less task specific. Apparently you can use any tree for either DPS or tanking.

Greg then started to go through some changes to the classes. There were some excellent explanations about how and why they had made certain changes; i'm not going to detail everything as there was a lot of information. He touched upon shadow priest DPS, discipline healing ability in raids and the removal of racial talents for priests. Mind sear is apparently a popular new ability among Blizzard staff. Moonkin were covered, discussing mana and crowd control and DPS issues. This brought a smile to Alassiel's face. There was a huge reaction to Paladins by the audience; in fact they got their own slide in the presentation.

Warriors have been the main tank for a long time, they wanted to make sure that warriors were still desired, but not the exclusive tank, after the removal of crushing blows. They also wanted to make sure that there were “fun things” to take in the protection tree in addition to the mitigation abilities. A desire was expressed by the designed to maintain a very clear difference between the different tanking classes while ensuring they all have the tools they need.

In terms of groups, flexibility was addressed. Ensuring that more different class/talents were viable in raids, focusing on the idea that you were bringing the player not the class. They didn't want the game to be about buffs and potions but gear and skill. Player skill will be the most important reason to chose someone for a group. The implementation of spell power will make life easier for healers when soloing. The same goes for threat generation based more on damage, for tanks, as opposed to high threat abilities.

Yes, they are working on a dual spec system. They want you do be able to swap talent spec mid raid but they don't seem to have too many details yet. Obviously not a system where you can swap from arms to prot and back again I the middle of an arena battle but they don't want you to have to head into town every time you need to swap. On top of that they want to improve the UI to support different gear sets. Implementing something like outfitter or item rack where switching gear sets easily while still keeping these sets in your bags.

Mages, rogues and warlocks were the source of the most questions. Lots of points were mentioned, I started tuneing out sorry, making mages do more DPS isn't at the top of my priority list. Sadly no questions were asked about warriors or priests.

Mike Morhaime Interview

2008-10-11T06:36:00.000+11:00

Direct TV interviewed Mike shortly after the opening speech. A fair amount of focus was placed on Diablo 3, but there was also some discussion of the upcoming film, apparently there is a script. Mike gave no strong confirmation to anything, which isn't too surprising. There will be another BlizzCon at some stage and yes there is another MMO in development but, apparently, we won't be hearing much about it for a while. We can also expect more ads along the lines of the ones staring Mr T and William Shatner, one of the celebrities has the initials OO, could that be Ozzy Osbourne? There was also a video of his office; it was touching to hear how the company was founded on a loan from his grandmother.

BlizzCon Begins

2008-10-11T05:30:00.001+11:00

Time counts down, fifteen minutes to go. It is 4:45am and I haven't really slept all that well. The excitement builds as the coverage hosts banter back and forth about the upcoming day. It seems like this weekend should be a coffee drinking, sleep lacking, marathon.

Finally the opening ceremony begins, and a humble Mike Morhaime apologises about the ticket debacle, apparently they sold 15,000 tickets in 15 minutes, and welcomes the audience. Its a tough crowd and even getting a sentence out is tricky with repeated interjections of cheering. After his opening spiel there is a highlights reel from WWI earlier in the year in Paris. This is followed with a replay of the Wrath cinematic. Then some Diablo news, another class is announced for the third game, The Wizard.

Mike did a great job, gamers are a tough crowd and without a massive ground breaking announcement he was somewhat unarmed. Sure a new class for Diablo 3 is nice but that only satisfies a portion of the crowd. This is however only the introduction perhaps the panels later in the day will hold more Warcraft information.

Welcome to BlizzCon

2008-10-10T13:56:00.001+11:00

“BlizzCon is a celebration of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises and the communities that surround them. This two-day event will contain Q&A panels featuring Blizzard Entertainment developers, social events for players and developers to meet one another, and hands-on gameplay featuring your favorite Blizzard Entertainment games.”

This weekend BlizzCon will be held Anaheim California. In fact as I write this Blizzard fans are swarming around the area collecting entry badges, checking into hotels and stocking up on energy drink. I was shocked to discover last night that not everyone knows what BlizzCon is, well, it’s the place I wish I was right now. There will inevitably be major announcements, excellent displays and most of all, thousands of people who share my passion. All entrants will also receive goody bags with some excellent items in them. Sadly BlizzCon didn’t coincide with when I was in the US so it will have to wait until next year before I get to go.

However, I am lucky enough to be able to watch the live coverage on Main Event (Pay TV) thanks to Alassiel’s mother. There is no internet connection there but I will be writing posts to put up as soon as I get home. Expect to read about all the major announcements as you brew your coffee Monday morning.

Ask a Question Rules

2008-10-10T12:08:00.002+11:00

So there is a competition at Blizz Con to have your question asked to the developers. 20 people will get their question answered as well as a cool prize. However there are some weird restrictions as to who is eligible to enter. Normally it is restricted to only the US, so to see Australia listed at all was nice. However if you live in the sates of Queensland, Victoria or ACT you are not eligible. Firstly who ever wrote this need to revisit their geography, the ACT is a territory not a state. Second why are Qld, Vic and Act not eligible. It just makes no sense!

There is a reason I’m annoyed about this. Alassiel and I have purchased the Blizz Con coverage on Main event (pay TV) and I wouldn’t have minded getting a question answered. Also the purchase of this coverage is supposed to entitle you with a cool in game mount and I am worried this will set a precedent of my state not getting our mounts.

If you are wondering my question is “What is the next gen MMO you are working on?”

Why

2008-10-10T10:48:00.001+11:00

I would like to preface this post by say this is not a justification for playing the World of Warcraft, I have no desire to justify what I do with my time. It is instead an explanation as to why many people enjoy this game so much.

Throughout my life I have never been the center of social circles. I am not the person who is at the top of everyone I knows party invite list. This isn’t a case of being left out but instead relates an innate need to be important. Essentially it is the desire to be popular.

In major contrast is my life in the World of Warcraft. As a protection warrior and one of the top tanks in my guild, a list of desired party or raid members will often start with my name. The very nature of the game means that a tank is required in every group and although I am most certainly not the best tank in the game, I have built a reputation within my guild as a good player who is friendly, fun and reliable (well I hope I have anyway).

The World of Warcraft is essentially a club house; you can log on at almost any time of day or night and have a chat to one of your friends. People are there when they have free time and want to do something or when they are just hanging out. If you feel like it, you can organise an event at the drop of a hat. Subsequently you can avoid the scheduling and time conflicts that always seem to occur when planning to go out for lunch/dinner/drinks with friends or family. You can also avoid situations where none of your friends don't answer their phones and you are bored or lonely. Flexibility and freedom are they key here and they exist without upsetting or annoying anyone.

The nature of my job also means that any feedback I get relating to my work tends to be negative. In addition, involvement in my projects by other members of my department and my manager is very low. So essentially I work alone with very little positive reinforcement.

Again this is a large contrast to the World of Warcraft. Most of my time there, is spent working in teams or at least five and although criticism is often dealt out it is generally balanced with praise and congratulations when goals or targets are met. Almost every raid or group is ended with “Thankyou everyone great run” and although for some people this is a hollow statement they feel obliged to write, within our guild as well as for many pick up groups it is sincere. This leads to a situation where the rewards, in this case emotional, are greater when achieving goals within the game than when achieving goals in real life.

There are other hobbies which create situations very similar to this. When compared to other aspects of your life, you might get more satisfaction from playing in your local football team; receive a bigger emotional reward from your progression in a martial arts club or a more significant feeling of belonging at a war gaming tournament.

In a situation where I got more of these things from my work life then perhaps I would find less value in the time I spend in the game. This may mean I should look for a new job or change the approach I have to my current one. However that would not change the fact that my presence is often more desired in the virtual world than the real world. It provides an excellent platform and venue for casual, convenient, social interaction which fulfills my desires to socialise. Finally, on this platform we have built a community to which I have a strong sense of belonging.

Welcome to the fold

2008-10-09T16:35:00.003+11:00

This week saw Elfarol, whom I have mentioned many times on this blog, start up his own blog. Welcome to the wonderful world of random thoughts on paper or should I say screen. I would encourage everyone to check it out, he is a great writer.

Nothing to see here

2008-10-03T11:24:00.001+10:00

My wow life has been pretty boring of late. I haven’t had a huge amount of time to play and what time I have had has been spent on getting my new computer running. Re-installing Warcraft from scratch and then getting all your addons macros and key binding right takes a surprisingly long time. When online I have been working on completing quests i’m aiming for the Seeker title) and getting my fishing up to scratch.

Sadly all my fishing time has been a bit of a waste. If I had waited until Wrath apparently I would have needed significantly less catches. However once Wrath hits the last thing I want to do is level fishing from 250.

Finally I put in my annual leave from for the 14th of November in today. Alassiel has moved around her shifts so we will both be able to get in there for at least day and work as leveling nice and fast.

Draenei on a Kodo

2008-09-29T21:07:00.004+10:00

I finally managed to get one of my characters a Great Brewfest Kodo! Squiggle received this drop after having downed the boss about 50-80 times between both characters. The mount fits perfectly with Squiggle’s size and overall looks really good. I have included a picture without shadow form active because semi see through purple haze really doesn’t do it justice.

Sadly I had just swapped over to Squiggle so a guildie could have a go tanking it, so I didn’t get it on Ironarm. I guess I will just have to find Ironarm his own unique mount… perhaps a polar bear complete with murloc?

Protection Warrior Talents in Wrath

2008-09-26T11:54:00.002+10:00

when the happened before Burning Crusade I was caught by surprise (I was a noob back then) and wasted this great opportunity. I do not plan to let this happen again so I have been working on some nice talent specs for Ironarm (and to a lesser extent Squiggle). Now that I am reasonably confident no massive changes are on the way to the protection warrior talents I going to outline my choices so far.

I have looked at two specs, one to go with at level 70 and one to aim for at level 80. These specs are based on many assumptions, mostly I am assuming that with an increase in the damage output of protection warriors that generating rage will be less of an issue. In addition I do intend to take the Glyph of Heroic Strike which will also help with rage generation.

These talent specs are also based on the assumption that I will be running a lot of high level dungeons and raids. I have had to balance the need for AOE tanking and utility that is great in dungeons with the survivability and single target threat generation of raiding. I also do not intend to PvP with these builds even though it would be fun to try.

The future of gaming interaction?

2008-09-25T15:24:00.004+10:00

One of the major newspapers in my city reported on a very interesting new technology today. The Australian founded company Emotiv has designed and constructed a wireless neuroheadset.

Called the EPOC this headset will allow a computer to interpret your facial expressions and your emotions as well as you cognitive actions. Essential you will be able to interact with objects inside a virtual world without a keyboard or mouse and these worlds will be able to no only react to you interaction but also you moods, emotions and expressions. This is done by 16 sensors mounted in the sleek white headset which will apparently be available for sale to the public later in the year for the small price of $300.

Currently this technology works best with their in house game (untitled) but it does come with software that allows you to use the headset with other games. This could mean that in a few years instead of pressing “2” on your keyboard to cast a fireball you just have to imagine casting a fireball and your in game avatar will start casting. The concept can be quite hard to get your head around but it all comes down to controlling something that happens on your computer by thought. Without having tried the system I can’t speak for is quality, for example it might actually be quite slow to respond, however now new technology is perfect.

Implications for people with disabilities is huge, a device such as this could allow people who struggle to use a computer because of a physical disability complete free access to what is these days an essential part of life. In five years time will everyone be using a device like this to control their computers? I don’t know, but I would tip this a technology to watch if only because it would be really fun to try at least once.

Inscription - Accessing good information

2008-09-23T12:22:00.003+10:00

I am happy to see that the Inscription profession is finally taking shape. Just recently the skill levels and reagents for Inscription items/spells have been fixed so they fit with the levelling of other professions (for example every Glyph is no longer made with Moonglow Ink). Subsequently Inscription levelling guides are starting to come out giving an indication of how many herbs you should be farming/saving. Based on rough calculations you will need at least 50-60 stacks of herbs to take your inscription from 0 to 375. Although this seems like a lot, it is about what I expected it to be.

As Blizzard still have not seen fit to give me a beta key my information is based on what I can find from internet guides and wow head. During these investigations I have found one excellent website, El’s Inscription. This gives really good explanations of Inscription abilities, spells, items, glyphs etc. There are a lot of other guides out there but many are incomplete and inaccurate. I had hoped to put together a leveling guide for Inscription but unless information from reliable sources become complete I don’t think it would be worth the time. I will however be on the lookout for more excellent sources of information as I am planning on leveling up Inscription as soon as I possibly can and want to be prepared.

Gruul's Lair - The Dragon Killer is Dead

2008-09-21T21:30:00.008+10:00

Despite the new expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, being less than two months away The Children of Stormwind are still making some progress through content. Over the weekend we achieved another guild first by Downing Gruul the Dragonkiller. Despite lacking our raid leader Skyer, the run went off very well. Our only major hold up was replacing a couple of players who DCed just before Gruul and didn’t re-appear. The group wasn’t entirely from our guild, we did have a few ring in whom we are very grateful to for their assistance. The full list of participants is included below.

As the expansion approaches it seems that the Children of Stormwind is getting larger. It is a rocky time for many guilds, most are not making any progression and in many cases have completely given up on raiding. The focus for a lot of players is getting ready for the expansion. In line with this The Children of Stormwind are working on forming a progression raiding group. This team will be made up of players who consistently perform in raids. The idea is to form a core group who work well together to forge the way into Lich King ten man raids. It will also be something members can work towards if they are interested in raiding. Last week we had two great groups running side by side, this generated some amusing banter as comments were made back and forth in guild chat about their groups progress. This seemed to push people to work harder and subsequently my group got all the way to prince only skipping Nighbane, Illhoof and Netherspite.

I appologise for the quality of some of these screen shots, uploading them to Blogger seems to make them very dark and hard to see.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

2008-09-19T10:14:00.005+10:00

Have you seen a lot of pirates wandering around your capital city? Well it is International Talk Like a Pirate Day (TLPD) and to celebrate Blizzard have added NPCs to Shattrath as well as all the capital cities, who will turn you into a pirate.

They can be found in front of the portals in the center of Shattrath or out the front of the bank in a capital city. I understand there is also a party on in Booty Bay featuring Dread Captain DeMeza.

This discovery made my day; I only remembered it was TLPD when the announcer on radio mentioned it. Thankfully the radio is my alarm clock to I was reminded before the day was over. At first I thought the pirates I saw wandering around were just fans of the day with spare Hallows End wand or Deviate Delight. Then, thankfully, I was in Stormwind to do the daily fishing quest and for some reason wandered over to the bank. Seeing some pirate NPCs a small spark of hope flared, this bloomed into a raging fire of joy when I talked to them and got turned into a pirate.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day was invented by a couple of guys in a racket ball court in 1995. They explain the whole story on their website if you are interested. I have followed if for a few years now but I am still working on getting my co workers to answer their phones in pirate voices.

Authenticator

2008-09-17T09:25:00.002+10:00

So authenticators are now available to Australia, you too can protect your account from hackers for the low price of US$6.50. So I signed up to the Blizzard store, selected myself an authenticator and a second on for Alassiel put in the payment information and then just about fell off my chair. Shipping and handling for two tiny authenticators is US$77.81! How could two authenticators cost so much to send?

I mentioned Authenticators in a previous post. They are intended to provide an additional layer of defense against hackers by requiring you to enter an additional code generated by the Authenticator every time you log in.

Achieveing Something

2008-09-16T10:34:00.004+10:00

With the pre-content patch download at home while I work away and the release date for Wrath announced I think it is time to have an in depth look at a couple of things. Achievements were announced quite a while ago to mixed feeling from World of Warcraft players.

To a certain extent achievement keeps a record of things you have done. You can keep track of how many quests you have completed, how much of the world you have seen. This might encourage you to go back and visit somewhere you have never been before. When I looked at “The Keymaster” achievement I realised I had never been to Dire Maul and subsequently I don’t have the key obtained there. Completely bizarre things will also be tracked for example /loving critters and reading different books.

For some players this might be an additional time sink they don’t need, feeling they have to go back to Straglethorn Vale to complete the Nesingway quests might be something they really can’t be bothered doing. Well the great thing is they don’t have to. Achievements do not reward anything you “need” just things you might want. In fact at the moment rewards are limited to titles and a vanity (non combat) pets. Many players will enjoy the time sink aspect, achievements provides many goals that all players can reach, even if they can’t raid, compete in high level arenas or log in for large blocks of time.

One thing you may want is a title, Ironarm still clings to his old “Sergeant” title and Alassiel invested a lot of time getting her new title. Achievements is bringing several new and exciting ones. You could be “the Seeker”, “the Explorer” or the “Flame Warden”. With enough time and dedication any of these could be attained. Blizzard are introducing new ones too> Personally I would like to see “the Drunk” (rewarded from It’s Happy Hour Somewhere) or “the Coward” (for declining duels).

Some achievements will be easy, some hard but Warcraft is all about filling in time, making and reaching goals and having fun, achievements is just building on this and providing some new paths to take.

The 13th of November 2008

2008-09-15T15:32:00.003+10:00

What will you be doing on the 13th of November 2008? Well I will be popping over to EB Games to collect my copy of Wrath of the Litch King. Yes you got it the date has been announced! Well that or Wowhead are playing a really cruel joke on us all.

Will it be enough time? Will Priest still suck in November? Stay tuned to find out.

Neglected no more

2008-09-08T16:07:00.003+10:00

Poor Ironarm has been feeling neglected, all my efforts to get some nice (read decent) gear for Squiggle has resulted in Ironarm only emerging when desperately needed and even then pretty much only for raids. Well now that Squiggle has his epic flyer, setting him up for Wrath of the Litch King, I have switched my focus back to tanking.

I started off with a run though Heroic Magister’s Terrace; I really want that nice trinket. Not my best performance, but we did make it the whole way through. As per usual I was having trouble tanking the group pulls where I was holding three plus mobs. I noticed over the course of the run that if the crowd control was pulled off right at the very start of an encounter I was fine because I could take a few steps back use thunderclap and cleave without fear of breaking anyone’s spells. I didn’t always pull it off resulting in a few “you broke my polymorph” comments. The trinket didn't drop.

The following day off I went to Heroic Shattered Halls. I was concerned with how this would go because I had struggled with the multi mob fights the day before and I knew Shattered Halls would be harder. Sure we had a few wipes here but there were defiantly more successes than failures. Through some of the areas I was holding five or six mobs without too much difficulty. The highlight had to be the last boss, through both attempts we lost two of our DPSers very early on thanks to some unlucky cleaves (I think I should review placement for next time). This left Elfarol healing, Alassiel trying to Kill Bladefist and myself tanking both Bladefist and the adds as they streamed in the door. Sadly we failed the first time because I wasn’t able to pick up the ranged adds who would mana drain Elfarol and Alassiel but the second time we pulled it off. It was very satisfying to watch all those adds run back out the door after Bladefirst went down and think to myself “wow I was holding ALL of them”.

After our Karazhan group fell apart on Sunday evening, a tired and still sick Ironarm agreed to tank Heroic Blood Furnace. Certainly not a performance as stellar as Shattered Halls the previous evening, but another success. Credit has to go to Clinn whom on the second boss did some excellent blinding, kiting and stunning to help control the waves of angry orcs who precede Broggok (the eye of doom).

In summary I acquired 13 Badges of Justice, several shards and a pile of junk shoulder high. I am completely unsure what to do with the badges, there is defiantly more tanking gear I could get with them but it seems a waste with Wrath of the Litch King so close. Perhaps it would be better to turn them in for gems which I can sell on the auction house? Then again some new gear might help with Zul’Aman.

Images from Wowhead

Inscrption - Pigments & Inks

2008-09-05T10:56:00.004+10:00

Slowly but surely more Inscription Information is coming out. One of the core components of Inscription is the process of milling. This is where you take 5 herbs of the same type and crush them together to make two to three pigments. There are currently fifteen pigments on Wowhead with each coming from a different group of herbs. Each of these groups of herbs has a common and rare pigment that can be obtained by milling them.

Alabaster Pigment - Commonly obtained from Silverleaf, Peacebloom, Earthroot and Mageroyal
Dusky Pigment - Commonly obtained from Bruiseweed, Straglekelp, Swiftthistle and Briarthorn
Verdant Pigment - Occasionally obtained from Bruiseweed, Straglekelp, Swiftthistle and Briarthorn
Golden Pigment - Commonly obtained from Kingsblood, Wild Steelbloom, Grave Moss and Liferoot
Burnt Pigment - Occasionally obtained from Kingsblood, Wild Steelbloom, Grave Moss and Liferoot
Emerald Pigment - Commonly obtained from Goldthorn, Wintersbite, Khadgar's Wiskers and Fadeleaf
Indigo Pigment - Occasionally obtained from Goldthorn, Wintersbite, Khadgar's Wiskers and Fadeleaf
Violet Pigment - Commonly obtained from Ghost Mushroom, Groomsblood, Arthas' Tears, Blindweed, Purple Lotus, Sungrass and Firebloom
Ruby Pigment - Occasionally obtained from Ghost Mushroom, Groomsblood, Arthas' Tears, Blindweed, Purple Lotus, Sungrass and Firebloom
Silvery Pigment - Commonly obtained from Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage and Plaguebloom
Sapphire Pigment - Occasionally obtained from Golden Sansam, Dreamfoil, Mountain Silversage and Plaguebloom
Nether Pigment - Commonly obtained from Outland herbs (not yet specified)
Ebon Pigment - Occasionally obtained from Felweed, Mana Thistle and Netherbloom
Azure Pigment - Commonly obtained from Northrend herbs (not yet specified)
Icy Pigment - Occasionally obtained from Northrend herbs (not yet specified)

At the moment Milling herbs will not give you skill points however these pigments are used to create inks and this process will give you skill points. Currently there are 17 inks which use a variety of these pigments.

Ivory Ink - Made from 1xPeacebloom
Silver Ink - Made from 1xSilverleaf
Moonglow Ink - Made from 1xAlabaster Pigment
Hunter's Ink - Made from 1xVerdant Pigment 2xDusky Pigment
Midnight Ink - Made from 1xDusky Pigment
Lion's Ink - Made from 1xGolden Pigment
Dawnstar Ink - Made from 1xBurnt Pigment 2xGolden Pigment
Jadefire Ink - Made from 1xEmerald Pigment
Royal Ink - Made from 1xIndigo Pigment 2xEmerald Pigment
Celestial Ink - Made from 1xViolet Pigment
Fiery Ink - Made from 1xRuby Pigment 2xViolet Pigment
Shimmering Ink - Made from 1xSilvery Pigment
Ink of the Sky - Made from 1xSapphire Pigment 2xShimmering Ink
Ethereal Ink - Made from 1xNether Pigment
Deathletter Ink - Made from 1xEbon Pigment 2xEthereal Ink
Ink of the Frozen Sea - Made from 1xAzure Pigment
Snowfall Ink - Made from 1xIcy Pigment 2xAzure Pigment

These inks are combined with Parchment to make Glyphs and Scrolls however all of the one listed at the moment use Moonglow Ink which I am assuming is an error. So the specifics of making the Glyphs remains a mystery.

5200 Gold

2008-09-02T10:34:00.003+10:00

You may have noticed a lull in articles over the last week. I apologise, I have been busy working on earning all the money to get Squiggle an epic flying mount. Well I finally made it! Despite offers from Alassiel and Elfarol (who are loaded with about 15,000 gold between them) I farmed all of the gold myself with the only assistance in the form of Quest help and exclusive skinning rights. Part of the process was completing as many of the Shattered Sun Daily quests on “The Isle” as I could fit in before I had o go to work. I could easily make 100 gold a day and also a good amount of reputation. Subsequently I am now revered and soon will be able to get the nice necklace rewarded at exalted.

I am however quite over the Shattered Sun Dailies so I might go old school and try out the Netherwing ones next. I hear that they are more profitable and well why would say no to flying around on a dragon.

The Downside of Downunder

2008-09-02T09:53:00.001+10:00

There is a definite downside to playing wow as an Australian. We get horrific latency which makes split second reactions a bit tricky. We get lag spikes that mean you stare at nothing moving for 5 minutes and then find your dead. But worst of all is we aren’t eligible for any competitions nor can we get those cool Figure Prints.

I can only see one way to compensate, release Wrath of the Litch King based on local time, that way we will be 10 hours into the game before the US players get to even buy it.

Arena in WotLK

2008-08-27T11:20:00.003+10:00

I was looking at Squiggle’s arena point the other night after we had finally got back into the swing of arena and realised that I have quite a few (over 2000) and was wondering what to do with them. At that time it occurred to me that I had no idea what would be happening to arena points once we got into Northrend. This morning my question was answered by Wryxian on the European forums, once you hit level 71 your points will be reset to zero. Therefore spend away because in a couple of months they will be gone!

In addition to this there will be skirmish brackets for 71 - 75 and 76 - 80 with Arena teams to be implemented at some stage post release for level 80 players. I hope we will be able to reforge Triptych at level 80, perhaps as a ret paladin, holy priest and mage team?

In the coming weeks..?

2008-08-26T15:12:00.004+10:00

I was so busy writing my previous article on multi boxing that I only just noticed this doosey. In preparation for Wrath of the Litch King Blizzard will be releasing a pre expansion content patch.

New class spells and talents
Stormwind Harbor
Barbershops in capital cities
Zeppelin towers outside of Orgrimmar and Tirisfal Glades
Two brand-new Arenas featuring challenging new layouts, terrain hazards, and moving obstacles
Guild calendar
Hunter pet skill revamp
New profession: Inscription

Those of you who were around for the release of Burning Crusade will remember the pre-release patch which introduced some of the talent changes and lead into Burning Crusade. I am joyous to see the same for Wrath which will let us get a head start on talents and abilities along with an in game guild calendar (ours seems to break all the time). I am absolutely ecstatic that is will include Inscription. The hours I have spent collecting herbs were not in vain. I will be prepared! Oh wait wrong expansion…

The Key point here and I quote Eyonix is

"we will be issuing a new content patch in the coming weeks"

Your best friend and you - Multi boxing

2008-08-26T12:30:00.004+10:00

A couple of weeks back Blizzard released their new “Recruit a friend” program. By recruiting a friend you will get a free mount, bonus experience (300%) when questing together and be able to pass levels to the lower level player. If you can find a friend to recruit or have a someone lined up to join you in your gaming this is a great offer which should help you really speed though the levels.

However arising from this is a lot of discussion about multi boxing. This is a completely legitimate way to alter your play experience that can be as simple (well not that simple) as running wow twice on your computer and leveling two characters at once or as complex as controlling 46 characters between two people. Motivated by a desire to get myself a cool mount and some curiosity I decided to look into what exactly was entailed in multi boxing and how/why you would do it. In the process I unearthed some interesting examples.

The 47 computers you see in the picture to the right are used by two people to control 26 characters each. These two could field a whole AV team, two raid groups or just dominate any zone they wanted. It appears that he started multi boxing in Everquest and only when his girlfriend started multi boxing did decide to go all out. The pair have put a serious amount of cash and time into this setup. The articles I found about them if you are interested in more pictures and info are here and here.

There is also the story of the 5 shaman controlled by two players that are taking the arena by storm. This very successful team is run with one player controlling 4 Elemental Shaman and a second player keeping them alive with a restoration shaman. This season they seem to be doing reasonably well (from what I see on their Arena team page). They gained fame when Wow Insider did an article on them, you can view it here.

What about two of you multi boxing five players then running Karazhan with two people? Apparently it's possible, these guys managed to down (at least some of) Karazhan between the two of them. The again I suppose successfully coordinating all the characters in a raid is only as hard as actually building your setup by hand. Another example of a dedicated couple with what appears to be too much spare time; then again I am using my spare time to write this article.

One thing that seems to come up a lot is “why?” Well I can see several reasons, firstly, is the challenge, it’s quite a project to build and successfully run 4+ characters at once. It requires skill, knowledge and patience. Along with that is the bonuses for leveling with your ‘friend’, 300% makes for some speedy leveling and means you can get to endgame easier and faster. The third thing would have to be ownage, in PvP a multi boxer can make a big impact. Communication will win or loose a battleground and a multi boxer is the pinnacle of communication and coordination. When played right they are a force to be reckoned with. If you do the maths, 5 chain lightings cast exactly at once on the one target are pretty much guaranteed to kill what ever was targeted and seriously messed up anyone near by.

An ironic twist to multi boxing is that it is only legit if all the accounts are yours. If your mate stops playing and gives you his account then you are breaking the rules and you can bet that warrior who just got double POM pyroed will complain.

Personally I thought it would be new and fun, and when I eventually get a new computer might look into trying it. I don’t think I have the coordination to track and control 5 characters but I could manage two especially if they were the same class.

Wow Podcasts

2008-08-25T15:24:00.002+10:00

I have recently discovered, and become slightly addicted to, Wow related pod casts. Personally I’m sick of radio and their contrived stories which always lead to call ins. I used to listen to Triple J all the time then I switched to a combination of News Radio and Hamish and Andy, but I’m getting over American politics and wars and it seems like Hamish and Andy are just rehashing old material. So podcasts burnt to CD are making the perfect drive time listening.

So far I have three shows that I have enjoyed plus the official Blizzard pod cast.

Wow Insider – May favourite so far this is basically an amalgamation of the stories posted on the Wow Insider website along with some extra discussion and fluff. It is well balanced as the presenters come from different aspects of the game and topics are varied. There is however some very lame wow based songs which make you cringe. It airs weekly on a Saturday afternoon (in the USA) but can be downloaded from their archives here or you can subscribe to it via iTunes.

Casually Hardcore – Runner up this show is a lot of fun, I have only listened to one episode so far but it was full of tangents, amusing discussion and laughter. Quite similar to Team speak in a typical Ch8ildren of Stormwind raid. The best thing is that it is targeted to the casual player, the presenters themselves typify this with one of them trying to quietly occupy her toddler (guessing) son while doing the show. The topics are also focused on casual players which is nice for those of us who work full time or are trying to finish their Phd. The show airs once a week on a Sunday, you can view their archives here or subscribe via iTunes.

The Instance – This is a podcast produced by the team at Extra Life. I stumbled upon this one after looking at their comic strip (which is quite good). Content wise this is very similar to the Wow Insider show, it is amusing and well balanced with some good discussion. I haven’t listened to a huge number of these but entertaining if you have some extra time. I couldn’t find a show schedule but you can view their show page here or subscribe via iTunes.

Blizcast – This relates to all of Blizzards franchises so includes news and information on Starcraft and Diablo as well as World of Warcraft. The biggest pull of this podcast is their access to guest which no other podcast would easily get, Blizzard staff. It’s a good production and worth a listen, the transcript is also available if you just want to read about it. You can find project homepage here or you can subscribe via iTunes.

Image from http://thats-china.com/?m=200703

Holy cow I just saw this on Wow Insider!

2008-08-22T14:17:00.001+10:00

After my small hissy fit earlier this week it seems like Blizzard are buffing warriors in Wrath to their rightful(read overpowered) state.

Heroic leap has moved from Tier 11 to Tier 9
Titan's Grip has been shifted to the bottom (Tier 11) of the fury tree
Titan’s Grip will only have one rank and doesn’t have a speed penalty
Shield Mastery (in the protection tree) will increases block value by up to 30% instead of increasing the amount blocked by 30%
Furious Attack, has been added to the fury tree. This two point talent will have a 50%/100% chance to reduce healing done to the target by 25% for 8 seconds. It will stack up to two times

So warriors will get access to Heroic Leap at level 50, will have a passive mortal strike debuff and dual wielding two handers has never looked better. At this rate it will be hard to stop me from swapping to fury, I better start looking for a couple of nice two handed weapons to get me started. The shield mastery changes which on the surface look pretty ordinary are actually quite impressive, 30% more block translates to shield slams that hit 30% harder!

I saw this at the Wow Insider Page here.

Title Screen Music

2008-08-21T10:22:00.003+10:00

Are you tired of the old TBC music when you open wow? Well i just found out how you can change it, this was part of "The Instance" pop cast who got it from their forums.

Locate your wow folder
Open the folder named 'Data'
Create a new folder inside the 'Data' Folder, call it Sound
Open the 'Sound' Folder and create a new folder inside it, call it Music
Open the 'Music folder and create a new folder named GlueScreenMusic
Get a song you want to use as login music, it must be in a .mp3 format.
Rename the song to bc_main_theme
Copy the song you just renamed and past it into the GlueScreenMusic folder as you just created, Close wow, and bring it up agian, There you go a new login music

Please be aware this is not my own work I have copied the tutorial from here and edited it slightly.

Warriors in Wrath - Mitigation

2008-08-20T10:14:00.002+10:00

On the surface it seems like warriors are getting the raw end of the deal for Wrath of the Litch King. After the initial excitement about Titan’s Grip and Heroic Leap calmed down and people had an opportunity to try it out revealing that neither was all it looked to be. Titan’s Grip by many accounts yielding lower over all DPS than dual wielding one handed weapons and being prone to period of rage starvation. “But that’s all DPS stuff” I hear you saying “you’re a tank get to the relevant parts”. This is where my mixed feelings kick in. Previously warriors have had it good as tanks, we had the easiest road to becoming uncrushable. Well with crushing blows removed that era is over.

To be completely honest despite Ironarm’s best efforts I constantly look at the Druid and Paladin tanks with envy. Paladins almost seem to be able to tank whole instances at once while AFKing to make a coffee. Druids have dodge, amour and health so high they can switch to caster and battle res mid boss fight and on top of that when not tanking they rip things to pieces in kitty form. So sure I have spent hours looking through warrior information from the Wrath beta and I’m still confused but I don’t mind because it seems like Warriors, although not being given massive buffs on the protection side, have been shaken up some what.

But enough of the whining lets have a look at some talents. The most interesting things so far is the talents that lead to rage generation from mitigation. Shield Specialisation now gives 2 rage on a successful block and Stalwart Protector gives you 2 rage when your dodge or parry. Using the rage formula on Wowwiki a hit for 500 damage generates around 5 rage, considering in my current state I have a combined dodge/block/parry around 65%, across 20 hits I will generate about 41 rage (6 blocked hits yielding 6 rage, 7 dodge/parried hits yielding 0 rage and 7 connecting hits yielding 35 rage). Assuming I take these two talents in WotLK and keep the same gear I will generate 61 rage(13 blocked/dodged/parried hits yielding 26 rage and 7 connecting hits yielding 35 rage). Across 20 hits that is an addition 20 rage to play with. This does however neglect the damage and thus rage generation from a blocked hit or anger management but it is still a massive increase.

What does all this mean for a warrior? Well to start with more rage means we can use more abilities, but most importantly it means if you dodge/block/parry 13 attacks in a row you won’t be left with next to no rage and loose agro.

I have also heard a rumor (which I have been unable to confirm) that the formula to convert strength to block value has been significantly improved. This will not only mean larger shield slams and more absorbed with a block but with an emphasis on strength on tanking gear equals an over all increase in attack power and thus damage improvement. I will be on the look out for more on this front including some hard evidence if I can find it.

So despite Titan’s Grip not being all that was expected from it and paladins and druids being the envy of my world I think warrior tanks will be okay in WotLK. Even if only because all the Paladins will switch to retribution, Druids to restoration and well good luck getting a Death Knight to tank.

I missed you to :P

2008-08-20T09:47:00.001+10:00

Evidently a certain mage who will remain un named (Mudoken) missed me while I was gone. As recompense for my absence I have composed a haiku in his honor.

Triptych asunder
A gulf divides mage and priest
Now back at long last

Haikus are becoming a bit of a theme on this blog ever since the post on wow-kus. Then again I think my fascination stretches back a lot further than that, we used to make them in High School for some indeterminable reason.

Inscription - The Glyphs begin to flow

2008-08-19T16:01:00.002+10:00

There has been plenty of information from beta testing flying around of the last few weeks but for me none has been as interesting as the details on the new profession, Inscription. Sure people are getting new talents and abilities and I’m watching that but I have always found professions to be one of the most interesting and entertaining aspects of the game.

Inscribing seems to be shaping up to be a pretty stunning profession. Along with some basic entry level items including the Scroll of Recall which allows you to hearth every 15 minutes, some of the Glyphs are showing up on Wowhead. As previously mentioned there are three types of glyphs, and a mixture are appearing for Paladins, Priests, Druids, Shaman and Mages. At last count I saw over a hundred with a few over laps. Sadly they do not yet have their own section but I have been able to find them with a key word search.

Discussion is emerging about the pros and con of certain Glyphs with many being written off as next to useless and some seen as over powered. A good amount of testing will hopefully iron out these bugs and yield a fair and balanced system.

Two fun ones are Glyph of the Red Lynx and White Bear to give druids a little variety.

I'm Back!

2008-08-18T11:31:00.001+10:00

Well I am back from my extended holiday. I hope you all didn't miss me too much.

It appears that while I was gone there has been plenty of new information about Litch King from Beta testers. Please keep tuned for new posts appearing shortly.

A Haiku for Kaith

2008-08-01T08:04:00.001+10:00

Our long time member and dedicated raider is taking a break for the birth of his child.

Kaith I have composed a Haiku in your honor

Kaith heal bot for life
You have kept us all alive
now making new life

Best of luck my friend and we look forward to seeing you back soon.

Away From Keyboard

2008-07-26T17:00:00.000+10:00

Howdy folks, just wanted to let you all know i will be AFK for three week, we are going on a holiday!

Expect more posts from me after the 18th of August. Hopefully I don't miss too much critical WotLK information.

PS yes I do use a G15 Keyboard.

Don Carlo's Famous Hat

2008-07-25T10:19:00.004+10:00

Scratch that, this post should be called Squiggle’s New Hat.

The poor guy he must be getting really annoyed that people keep chasing him down and killing him, and his pet dog, just to steal his hat. It is a nice hat so can you really blame us?

The fight that was quiet easy for Alassiel and Squiggle but we failed twice with Ironarm. Oh well Alassiel got her hat and I got one too. We were surprised to discover the summoned wolf can be buffed with Papa Hummel's Old-Fashioned Pet Biscuit resulting in a giant wolf.

Non-Combat Pet and Mount Changes

2008-07-23T12:23:00.001+10:00

If you are anything like Alassiel, and to a certain extend myself, half you bank if filled with non-combat (or vanity) pets. They there is your mounts, I only carry two but I know some carry several more for variety purposes. All of this adds up and, if on top of that, you are a Warlock or Hunter and have a whole bag slot taken up by arrows or soul shards or even a druid with 5 sets of gear (yes I’m talking about you Skyer) then every spare slot counts. Blizzard have decided to help you out, starting in Wrath of the Litch King non-combat pets and mounts will count as spells and subsequently not take up space in your bag or bank. Better yet it means in a single instance you could cycle through every one of you 50 different “favourites”. To make this work each non-combat pet or mount will actually be an item which you consume to learn the spell. Hopefully you will get an extra tab in your spell book to accommodate all of these new spells or the general tab could become very cluttered.

Wrath of the Litch King - WTF!?

2008-07-22T19:32:00.000+10:00

Wrath of the Lich King - WTF!? from Justin Gedzus on Vimeo.

This amazing video was created by DG-Productions, you can view the Warcraft Movies page here.

This video shows previews the vast continent of Northrend, some of the areas appear unfinished but over all an excellent preview.

Inscriptions - The Herbalists Best Friend

2008-07-22T17:31:00.000+10:00

Finally some solid details about the new profession, Inscription. Based on the inscriptions spells on Wowhead and the information on Wow Insider Inscribers will defiantly be using herbs in their profession. There are also some examples of the Glyphs that could be made including one that allows mages to polymorph into a baby penguin. However Glyphs won’t be the only thing they can make. According to the WotLK Wiki they will be able to make the following:

Inks and Parchments which are Reagents for other Inscription recipes.
Scrolls which enchanters can use in a new process allowing them to sell enchants on the Auction House.
Scrolls that increase stats (similar to those that can be looted).
Glyphs that improve spells and affect minor cosmetic changes.
Runewords which are temporary armor enchants similar to Mana Oil.
Runes of Power which are reagent based spells similar to engineer’s grenades.
Card items the purpose of which is unknown.

For further information you can refer to my previous posts on Inscriptions, look at Wow Insider, look at the WotLK Wiki or do some searches on Wowhead. At the moment the spells for creating Glyphs and other Inscription items and all over the place, ass soon as I find a good list I will link that too.

In the mean time I’m off to collect me some Peacebloom.

The Virtual Team

2008-07-21T22:49:00.001+10:00

Every night groups of people join together with a common purpose. Small or large these groups, although never really knowing each other, work as a team to achieve an objective. Some succeed, some fail and some devolve into arguments about noobs and riding turtles. But through all of this is the fact that we are all on the one side (well on of two technically). These virtual teams work with people from a broad ranging background, young to old, new to experienced and eager to apathetic. Rarely are there leaders and more often than not people will openly confront or debase anyone who displays an opinion. Yet these groups made from a random pick up of players will mostly function successfully as a team. But why do these teams work?

I am referring to the pick up groups that participate in dungeons, raids and battlegrounds and I find it fascinating. Pick up groups are the real world equivalent of randomly selecting a bunch of people from a recruitment company, putting them in a room/office with a task or project. Then telling them that if the succeed they will each get a voucher they can spend at K-Mart. Such a team would have huge difficulties such as clashing personalities, lack or overabundance of skills, motivation issues and communication difficulties. In a real world situation people will be quick to judge each other according to how they look. A virtual world is a level playing field and discrimination is much less likely. To a certain extent even insults land less of a blow as they are directed at a players avatar not them selves.

I have of course over looked some major factors here, to start with a pick up group, in a five player instance example, isn't completely random. Who ever starts the group has a set of roles in mind and will select players according to these. All the participants have a common goal in mind and for the most part have a good idea what needs to be done to achieve this. Even in a battleground which is a much more volatile environment everyone knows what the goal is (to beat the other team) and what the conditions are to achieving this. In addition to this battleground groups which are formed before entering the fray have an increased chance for victory becuase once again the group or team has been formed with a make up in mind. On top of this in a lot of groups where someone is acting completely out of place, whether it be under performance or harassment, a group leader can simply remove them from the group.

There are a few important lessons here which can be learned for both areas. Firstly a virtual world team shows that clearly defined roles should be highly valued. In addition to this a clear and easy to understand objective is also critical. In many real world organisations this is not the case. Communication is an area where a virtual team could learn from a real world team. For example a virtual world team using voice chat will perform significantly better than one only using text based chat. In conclusion when you are forming your next group think carefully about the roles of those involved, set clear objectives and communicate with your team mates.

What is wrong with our server?

2008-07-21T10:17:00.001+10:00

The tragic situation of our server, Jubei’thos, doesn’t seem to be coming to an end. Not that it is limited to just one server but seems to be an issue for Oceanic servers in general. It probably all began back when everything slowed down to a snails pace while honour rolled over, then we had the constant disconnections and lag spikes with patch 2.4 that went on for weeks. Now it seems to be happening again, with large lag spikes and the server crashing.

Last night we had two wipes in Karazhan because of this and not long ago the same thing happened in Gruul’s Lair. But that wasn’t the worst of it, last night we experienced something completely different, which led us to calling an early end to our raid.

At first we just though it was another lag spike but it when on and on, I sat and watched Gothicminx casting Flash of Light and Stragoth running in place for well over fifteen minutes. We could type in chat but couldn’t control our characters, log out or even raise a ticket to a GM. A couple of players forced the program to close (Alt F4) but then couldn’t get back on their character in the raid even though they could log onto other characters. The GM ticket issue was by far the weirdest, I would write a sentence and then it would disappear and I would have a blank page again. I eventually managed to raise one by typing it in note pad and copy pasting it into Wow. An early end was called to the raid and I went to have dinner, when I got back I was disconnected and have yet to be back on to see what happened.

This is just the tip of the ice berg, there are a large number of posts on the official forums including Stragoth’s petition and as people experience the pre expansion slump this is really not helping.

I’m not an expert in the area but there is one very obvious thing which might be part of the problem. If you look down the list of US servers they all show up as mostly medium populations, when you look down the oceanic list it’s all red with High, Full and Locked. In fact we only have one which isn’t. Perhaps over population is part of the problem.

I am sure Blizzard are well aware of the consequences of lag, crashes and technical glitches. They would see the anger and annoyance on the forums that people have died or can’t progress in raids because of raids. Hopefully they understand that they have created a huge immersive world that people get very involved in and when this virtual word doesn’t work like it should the consequences can go past a few gold and some lost progression time.

Finally I wonder what Wrath of the Litch King will really give us? A great expansion with heaps of new content or just worse lag in a different location.

Beta is on it’s way

2008-07-18T16:30:00.002+10:00

Blizzard has created the Beta Test page (beta.worldofwarcraft.com) indicating the Beta Tests are close. You can also see patch notes as published by Wow Insider here.

The Beta Forums are also live here.

It appears that some invites have already gone out to European players. Invite codes are not account specific so if you get a beta code and you want to give it to me please let me know via comment, in game or through our guild forums.

A Sense of Achievement

2008-07-18T09:48:00.002+10:00

Blizzard has just announced another feature for Wrath of the Litch King, Achievements. This is, in essence, a statistics and records page that rewards you based on meeting certain objectives. To begin with there will be around 500 different achievements that fit into one of three types and about eight categories. Each achievement will yield you points and in same cases a title, tabard or vanity pet.

The three types are:
Simple – a one off task
Progressive – a staged achievement that has rewards at 5,10,25,50 etc
Meta – may require you complete a set of achievements

The categories include:
PvP – There could be a lot of variety here from winning specific numbers of matches in a row to loosing duels to Rogues
Dungeon and Raid – Rewarded for downing instance/raid bosses
Professions – Based on reaching each new tier of a profession, perhaps also the ownership of patterns I can see it know “Squiggle – Supreme Shirt Maker”
Quests - Completing a set number of quests and hopefully also completing significant quest chains
Events – Achievements relating to events such as All Hallows
World exploration – How much of the world have you seen?
Reputation – Based on your faction reputations
General – The fun and silly ones

There will also be a Feats of Strength section that shows old world achievements such as old PvP ranks and acquisition of rare mounts. This will yield no points and as with all the achievements will be rewarded retroactively.

Achievements looks like an solid and highly entertaining addition to the game. Being able to see what percentage of the map you have explored, how many arena matches you have won in a row or which instances bosses you haven’t downed yet is probably just the tip of the iceberg. There are all sorts of statistics, relevant and otherwise that Blizzard could track and it would be interesting to know. Then we could do things like have guild competitions on who can kill the most rats/blood elves/etc or all roll a new toon and see who can explore the most of the world in 10 minutes. If they include PvP kills by race I can already see the gnome hunting score boards now. The really fun ones like giving out ten hugs will be the best; hopefully they have some truly absurd tasks there like taunting opposing faction leaders or killing sheep.

I do have a couple of concerns, mainly what they are going to do to clearly differentiates achievements from quests and what the points will be used for. These will probably be answered in beta testing so we will have to wait and see.

Zul'Aman and Gruul's Lair

2008-07-14T10:08:00.003+10:00

Another successful venture was made into Zul’Aman on Friday night, the first three bosses down again. It would have been more successful with perhaps at least the first of the timed chests however two of the group members (including one of the healers) were plagued with disconnects one of whom eventually had to be replaced. In fact the majority of our wipes were because of the panic that enviably occurs when the main tank healer disconnects.

We also revisited 25 player raids on Sunday night with our second attempt at Gruul’s Lair. It seemed that the latency gods were not favouring us this weekend. After clearing to the High King we all sat and stared at each other running on the spot for ten minutes before the whole server restarted. Once it had we needed to reform our group, survive the large number of horde killing people out the front and then reclear. A couple of attempts later the High King fell Protaa, Myscha and Mudoken were rewarded with tier four shoulder tokens and Lililthelle with a new helm.

Sadly Gruul himself was not so easy; our best attempt got him to 5%. Once again I couldn’t seem to stay alive where Skyer managed to with Gruul pushing over 200% damage increases. The decision was made to let Skyer main tank Gruul but we ended up calling it when a mob respawned right as the pull was started. I believe there is a very good chance we can down him next time though.

A group of us also created a guild premade Warsong Gulch which was quite lucrative. We flattened several teams three to nil but our best effort was in one game were we messed up the start and let the horde capture twice only to come back with three straight captures of our own. It seems that a 19k hit point druid tank makes an excellent flag carrier.

Officer’s meetings are now being held weekly on every Monday evening, this allows us to address new and ongoing issues and generally keep in touch.

A Tinge of Blue

2008-07-09T21:31:00.003+10:00

I just noticed another indication Wrath of the Litch King is approaching. In the picture below have a look at the colour behind the logo. Where it used to be a complete green glow it is now half green half blue.