Cataclysm Alphagate

At first I wasn’t really going to write about the whole Cataclysm Alphagate affair, but it got me to really thinking about it, which can be a bad thing. At first I was amazed at how long pictures were allowed to be left up as well as how they even seemed to be added to on a couple of occasions. The more I thought about it, the more questions I began to have:

• Was Blizzard unaware?
• Did they not care that this unofficial fansite had gotten stuff it wasn’t supposed to?
• Was their NDA so poorly written that they were stuck?
• Was it a clever marketing ploy to build interest and demand for a product that in all likelihood was still months away?

That last I thought initially was the most likely, but the more I think about it the more I think I was wrong. This is the conspiracy theorist in me I am sure. While it makes a great image in my head of smoky, dimly lit rooms in the Blizz headquarters with trench coat wearing men and women sitting around a small table lit only by a desk lamps “Bob, here is what you are going to do. You are going to take these pictures and leak them out to MMO-champion. Tell them you are part of the Alpha…” *winkwinknudgenudge*

Now the more I think about the whole situation, I suspect that it wasn’t any of my initial thoughts. More likely, based on my limited experience in the business world there needed to be several meetings to determine if there was a risk, and if there was one, what was the damage caused by it. After that was done, a risk register was needed. From there a Decision tree was followed to decide if it was a high risk/high probability issue (Since it already had happened I bet it was at least a high probability issue). Once that was all decided an email was sent to someone in legal to get their take.

The legal-monkey was in court that day, and his blackberry was turned off, so a paralegal got it, looked at it, yelled “Oh shit, we’ve got problems,” and promptly hid their head in the sane. After the legal-monkey returned he read the email proceeded to in his or her well mannered way yell “Oh shit, we’ve got problems”. From there they decided to send an email to say we need to do something about it, but were in email jail so had to clean out a bunch of things first, at which point a finance-monkey called saying that their foursome for golf had room for one more, and off the legal-monkey went.

At about two in the morning when the legal-monkey remembered what they were doing before hitting 3 hole-in-ones on the links, they are back at their computer cleaning out email so they could get out something saying “Take those pictures down, tell us who gave them to you or risk being dragged through a long and boring, completely counter intuitive back-assward court proceeding that will cost you lots of money and you’ll still pull the pictures down.”

Next thing you know we have Alphagate, and all of us bloggers have something interesting to write about for at least two weeks (which is about what it is now and I’m just getting around to putting fingers-to-keyboard).

Heroics, Have we come so far

So recently I was in a random heroic with a couple of guild mates. We were all trying to get our Frost Emblems for the day so it didn't really matter to us what we got. Now, as a bit of background, of the DPS (which was the three guild members) I was the lowest GS with 5104. I was also the newest to WoW, and the least experienced in general though I have been playing and doing heroics for well over a year. The other two folks I see doing ICC runs all the time, and when I glanced at their gear I could only drool at the amount of 264 and 277 stuff they were wearing. It makes my 232 and 254 stuff look sad.

Anyway, we didn't get one of the new WotLK heroics, we got Gundrak. A quick buff up and we were on our way. The tank began by taking a few seconds to mark the first mob to attack with a Skull. No big deal I thought and for the first couple I tried to kill that one first, but unfortunately I would get there just in time for it to die. The one time that I got there first I three-shot the skull and happily moved on to whatever monster was closest to me, never thinking anything of it.

After a few pulls in party the tank made a comment that took me at least by surprise. I am taking the time to marking mobs, DPS please take the time to kill them first. Wow. Umm, I thought we were. One of the other DPS made the comment quickly after this stating that the things were dying too quickly for him to hit the skull first. Anyway, I can understand why the tank wants us to kill what he says first, I suspect that he probably comes from a group of players not quite at the level of experience/gear that we are used to. Looking at his gear, I felt somewhat affirmed in my feeling. First his GS just barely broke 4100, and looking at it, the gear mostly comes from heroics, no raids or tier gear.

This got me to thinking, have some of us gone too far. With the obvious exception of the WotLK heroics (most notably the Halls of Reflection) just about every person I play with is hugely over geared and over experienced for the instances. Things that I have seen in other MMO's don't really apply right now.

As an example of things that don't apply. I don't think I've seen a Mage sheep a mob, a priest shackle a mob, a hunter trap a mob in a heroic in just about forever. The general process for heroics for me, and likely many others is tank grabs aggro in one of a couple of ways (run in the middle of a group of mobs, deathgrip a mob to bring him over, or charge a group of mobs, then dropping AOE as fast as possible). Then the DPS haul off with whatever they have at hand. Typically the highest AOEs that they have, or at least things that will cause the most damage. From there we burn everything down as fast as we can paying little to no attention to anything other than the amount of DPS being done. In fact, it's not unusual to see healers dropping Starfall, lightning totems, Smite, Wrath, Holy Nova or whatever offense they have (As a Resto-Druid, I know this is because it is a way for us to stay away from passing out from sheer boredom). This is then a rinse and repeat process with almost no interaction from the players running the instance until the end where the obligatory "ty for the run" party message as you hit the leave group option from the drop down.

Is this the way the game is going? No interaction required, just run and gun as fast as possible for anything other than the most end-game content? I hope not, and in fact I don't think it is. If you look at the WotLK heroics that were added with one of the 3.x patches they require something more than go kill junk fast. Particularly I point to things like the PoS hill of hell that has rows of casters behind rows of melee. Go ahead, next time you are in that instance and try to just burn those suckers down without paying attention to who is killing who/what. I suspect you will find you and your party dead, and probably not pleased with you. It is probably the first time I saw some serious thought and discussion on how to get through a heroic. Similar with other places such as the Halls of Reflection first room. The first few times I did it it with a random heroic group at least one person didn't believe or understand the idea of line of sighting that junk so they don't tool on the group. In fact it seemed to take about two months to really get the hardest of the hard heads to understand and not just wholesale kill us right off the bat.

That being said, it makes me wonder what is really in store for us with the Cataclysm roll out. All these things about class changes, pretty pictures of new zones, etc don't really tell me what the game will really play like. Maybe we will get more of the new WotLK type game, or maybe we will get more of the old WotLK game. either way I look forward to seeing what Blizz has in mind for us next.

WoWtiquette

Last night, while chasing a super annoying way over-powered Hunter on Michelenea in Wailing Caverns I got to thinking about etiquette and the rules we as players seem to agree on. Once in a while there is always someone who will wholeheartedly ignore these rules, and there is an uproar amongst some people because of it.

Instead of going through the "rules" as we understand them, I got to thinking about do they really matter and why do they matter.

One of those rules that I think people seem to all agree on is gatherers in instances. I'm talking about those of us who mine, herb, or skin. In a recent SFK run I was in for example, I noticed that the first time a wolf was killed one of the members of the group said "Any other skinners?" and proceeded to skin the corpse before anyone else said anything. When someone responded, "Yes, I'm one." they worked out between them to go back and forth between the kills so they both came out even, or as close to even as you can come. In fact I also noticed that they congratulated each other when they got something unsual or cool. Great camraderie between the two people which was nice.

This is the opposite of something I experienced myself in BFD. In thost first few rooms there are a lot of skinning that can be done, and on my skinner another person in the group was also a skinner who immediately been skinning everything in sight without asking. Being a bit outspoken I pointed out that I am also a skinner and would like some. This fell on deaf ears, and it became a contest to skin as many as fast as possible. It got kind of annoying to a point where even other members of the group were purposely not looting the the corpses until I got over to be prepared to skin. Eventually the other skinner got annoyed enough and left, allowing us to finish the instance without skin stress.

Why do we have unspoken niceties like the one I outline above? Why isn't it just a matter of every man/woman for himself/herself?

I know some people say that we have it because it allows us to have a more enjoyable experience. I don't know about that though. If you think about it, and there were no rules, wouldn't it be enjoyable to that guy who hauls ass and beats the rest of the party and get everything you want and need. For the record I tend to be the first guy in my example, not the second, but think about it for a minute or two. Wouldn't it be fun just for a day or two to truly be an anarchist and make it all for me?

The World of Warcraft Class and Race debate....In My Mind!

OK, I start this post warning people that this is an argument that I happened in my head last night. In addition, it is a sort of spoiler, so if you like the lore of WoW and haven't read Christie Golden's Rise of the Horde, or don't like hearing the voices in my head Stop Reading Now!

For you guys who either have read the book, or don't care, and aren't afraid of the voices, thank you. And here we go....

So, lately the Rise of the Horde has become my bathroom book (sorry Christie, it isn't TP. I like it!), and I have been reading about how the Orcs came to be on the Horde side. Knowing that I'm only 130 or so pages into the book so far, I don't pretend to know it all yet. But! I got to thinking about how Orc's have Shaman, and it totally makes sense. I liked the idea that they could talk to their ancestors and they give good (mostly) advice. It sort of reminds me of the Taurens and their whole close to nature, almost Native American feel. I suspect if I looked around I could find the story of Shamans and Taurens being a similar story.

That got me thinking then about the Draenai and their ability to having Shamans. Now, I know in the game, it was added either with BC or WotLK at the same time that Blood Elves got to be Paladins. I know it was a mechanic thing, but being the kind of person I am, I decided there needs to be a reason for things like this.

Now, back to Christie Golden's book: There are some scenes early in the book about the Draenai's city, and how the inhabitants are old and wise, even their young ones. No where in the scenes that I've read does it sound like they are good at communing with nature. In fact, almost the reverse seems to be true since the book talks about the city being made of rocks and crystals and stuff.

So why is it that they have Shamans? Why not Night Elves, or Humans, or even Dwarves for heaven's sake? Why the Ancient Squid Faces?

So, I started to try to justify it to myself why Draenai are Shaman. So, maybe in their old age they figured out a way to talk to spirits, or maybe the abilities that they have that allow them to work with stone and crystal gave them some weird connection to the spirit world of rocks. That might explain why they can create stone elementals. Though this idea is probably toast since they can also do water and fire elementals.

Also, healing Draenai Shaman? How? Rock Healing? Crystals! Yeah that's it! There are those people out there who believe that crystals can  heal them. The Draenai have now validated their belief! Forget that there is no empirical evidence anywhere that says healing is done through crystals. In fact, if you sat on a crystal, I am pretty sure it'd hurt you, not heal you.

Ugh! Why oh why Blizz did you give it to Draenai? You are now to blame for late nights tossing and turning trying to figure this out.

Why are you a girl?

So, someone asked me why my character is a girl. There could be a lot of reasons why I chose the female model instead of the male one. Let’s see: Practical: Female models are smaller, and I have a small monitor so it won’t block too much of the play area. Psychological: I believe deep down inside that I’m a woman, and am trying to get in touch with that female side. Pathetic: They just look hotter (OK, I feel dirty trying to justify that last statement to myself). Sadly it is none of those things; I am much more pathetic than even thinking the female models are hot.

It actually is a funny story. It dates back to a long time ago when I was new to playing WoW. For those of you have ever created the game on World of Warcraft, you might remember that there is a "randomize all" button in the interface. Also, you will notice the little circle with a + under it and the circle with the diagonal arrow coming off of it.

Initially, I went through the effort of making my character "Tyzach" and even messed around with the different things I could do as far as looks go. Deciding I didn't really care that much since they all looked kind of the same to me, I got the bright idea to "randomize all". Well, it definitely randomized everything, and I thought it changed my sex. I saw that the Circle with the diagonal arrow was clicked. For some reason that is beyond me, I decided that this means female, and hit the circle with the + under it. OK, yes for a moment there I became an idiot. I made my character a female. Poof out I come into the world and standing in front of me is my friend who talked me into this iteration of playing WoW. His comment to me over Ventrilo? "Dude, you're a girl."

Two things sped through my mind. Admit I'm a moron, or try to play it off cool. Be cool. Yeah, that's it. So why'd I do it? OH! Yes! Because the models are better....Yeah, that's the ticket, Yeah! So I relay this to utter silence. Then, someone else on Vent who I didn't know pipes in telling me I'm full of crap, and everyone starts to laugh. Good Job, I think to myself, two minutes into the game and already I've made a fool of myself. Usually it takes me at least 5. When the hilarity subsides, someone else on Vent says, since you screwed up once, you might as well carry it forward. Every one of your characters should be a girl. And so they are.

In fact, Mich is a transfer from that original server, she was originally Tyzacha the death knight, along with her big sister Tyzach the hunter, and her little sister Tyzachb the priest. There would have been Tyzachc, d, e etc. if I hadn't given up that very lame idea long ago. Now I am more creative with my names even though I have never left the idea of only female WoW characters.

Oh, and for the record, Randomize All does not change your sex.