Happy christmas and a merry new year

So, Cataclysm is now "live" near a month and everyone's had some time to explore all the "new" things. Plenty of new things to be annoyed at, plenty of bugs discovered and see them "not" getting fixed. And then there's Archaeology. A whole new kind of boredom in itself. Also, Wowwiki is DEAD. Don't use it anymore. More on that later. So, let's do some ranting. Archaeology If you're a fresh level 80 and want to try a new way of leveling then I'd encourage you to pick up Archaeology. It's the new secondary profession that every character on the server will get access to. Funny enough you get a LOT of XP from it, and within no time at all you'll find you've gained your very first level without even touching a single mob or quest. Personally I went from 82 to 85 using it, and found I could've easily started earlier. Now, a few tips if you want to get the most out of this. * First of all, buy the fasted riding skill that you can. Seriously you will need it. * Be a mage, or find a guild you can join that is at least level 8 so you have the -15 minutes of cooldown on your hearthstone. * Pick up engineering, and/or any other form of travel toys like the Dalaran teleport ring, the argent crusade tabard, the black temple necklace and the BRD mole machine. It all adds up, trust me. With that sorted, you'll want to just fly around and "do" the skill with as little flight time as possible all the way up to 100 skill points. Until you get there "do not" complete any projects. Once you've reached 100 skill points, put in whatever scrolls and tablets you've got and blow away to 120 or whatever. Stick to a single continent - Kalimdor for horde, or Eastern kingdoms if you're alliance. Make "sure" you check the town board and get the new portals unlocked so you'll have easier travel access. Especially for Kalimdor this is a blessing. Once you reach 300 skill you're able to go to outland. Don't bother, unless you're also after some of the achievements. Yes it's boring and you're looking for a new place to fly around in but just bear with it for now. At 375 skill you could go to outland. Again don't bother. At 425 things get interesting, now you'll have access to "potentially" getting some of the worthwhile rares and Tol'vir artifacts. There's only a 13% chance or so for a new dig site to spawn. At a great annoyance you'll mostly be completing common artifacts for them though, so you'll be spending a long time cursing them for not spawning more, and cursing the Night elves for having so damn many dig sites. At any rate, use whatever boosts you got, you'll be Illustrious Grand Master in no time. Though it won't seem that way. And yes it's a dreadfully boring and frustrating skill to raise. Player versus P...ractically nobody? Once you've reached level 85 you'll have access to Tol Barad. A new PvP zone in the same theme as Wintergrasp. One faction controls the island and some extra daily quests, the other does not. And this gets fought over every two or so hours. Most of the time this meant horde was defending and in control of the daily quests and raid instance with a single boss, and laughing at the alliance for failing to attack. That is, until blizzard in it's infinite (retarded) wisdom decided to give 1800 honor points to the "attacking side" if they won. Now, the defending side simply does nothing at all. Barely 10 people sign up if that at all, and the attacking side gets a free 1800 honor. That is, if you even get onto the island because half the bloody server is signing up for that 1800 honor, and the "battle" as it was before is now non existent. It's simply turned into a tag 'n turn pve content of which the only purpose now seems to be free honor. Way to go blizzard. Another successful "fix" that screwed over anyone trying to have some fun at PvP. Wowwiki is DEAD Indeed, it's dead. Don't bother going there anymore you won't find anything but advertisements, spam, goldsellers and the shell of a poorly updated site. However, WowPedia is now in place as it's successor. Looks familiar you say? Well, there's a perfectly logical explanation for that. In short, Wikia - the host, and now owner of wowwiki felt the site needed more advertisements to get a better revenue for the site. The site's admins and general userbase disagreed, then wikia claimed the site for itself and put up the advertisements anyway. The contributors and most of the staff of the original wowwiki moved to create a new site WowPedia, where all new updates etc are now being done. In short, WowWiki is dead. You can stop using it now. Squirrels! Yet more squirrels and other critters to /love. You'll need to be level 85 to be able to complete this one. Sorted by zone: * Alpine Chipmunk: Mount Hyjal * Grotto Vole: Mount Hyjal * Rock Viper: Mount Hyjal & Silithus * Rockchewer Whelk: Shimmering Expanse in Vash'ir * Sea Cucumber: Vash'ir * Highlands Turkey: Twilight Highlands * Yellow-Bellied Marmot: Twilight Highlands * Rattlesnake: Twilight Highlands * Oasis Moth: Uldum & Lost City of Tol'vir * Mac Frog: Uldum - In ramkahen as you teleport in. * Baradin Fox Kit: Tol Barad - contested island * Sassy Cat: Tol Barad - Rustberg village * Wharf Rat: Tol Barad - Rustberg village Some critters also exist in other places, but these are the easiest to get.

A hundred Glyphs and more

So, what should you expect to find in WoW if you've been out of the game for three months or more? Well, you probably have 7 days of free playtime waiting for you. (I did) So, I decided to use those and get ready in the next few days before Cataclysm officially starts and the race for the first level 85 begins again. Not that I'll bother going that fast, but hey, it's always fun to see a bunch of tools slave themselves half to death on trying to be first. Some will actually succeed too. Ah yes, Cataclysm. A time of great changes, some good, some bad. The first thing you'll notice upon "trying" to log in, is a series of patches. ~5 GB, another ~1.5GB, and one or two ~200MB. When you do finally get that done you'll encounter the new login screen. Deathwing himself. Don't worry though, you'll encounter him again soon enough... (Que ominous music here) Upon logging on, you'll notice the higher quality character selection screen as well as new backgrounds for some races. Quit messing around and get in there. Dalaran, which is where most people will have left their characters. Find the flight trainer and learn 310% flying skill if you didn't get it for free. Then visit your class trainer and learn the new skills. Most important of all will be "Mastery". Talents You'll also notice all your talents were reset. (Press "N") Heck, the game will probably have told you so upon logging on, but depending on your addons you might have a hard time seeing that message in between all the LUA errors. (Mapster and Routes were causing a lot here, about 20 per second) WoW works surprisingly well without addons nowadays, though bartender, fubar, shadowed_UF and Prat are still addons I'd not really be able to do without anymore. Luckily those seem to work fairly well after a quick update. Anyway, the new talent interface is awesome! No more cursing and respeccing due to a mis-click. The short trees are kind of sucky though... But I guess they had their reasons. Glyphs Next to the talents tab, you'll find what's left of your Glyphs. And, you'll also notice you now have nine slots instead of the previous six. All neatly divided into groups of three: Minor, Major, Primal Glyphs. There's also a scrolling list on the right showing you what glyphs you have learned and have not yet learned. So... That's where I'm at right now. 8x lvl 80 chars, all needing a few dozen glyphs to fill that nice and useful list. Need herbs, inks, etc. Then, I find out there are NEW glyphs that my mage hadn't learned yet. (even though he was all done a few months ago) So he has to start doing research again and read some books as well. The Rest Then, well, aside almost every city being changed. The landscape wildly different in areas, as well as completely new areas, more auction houses, and every single quest being reactivated. There's plenty to do for now. Just, be careful of Deathwing. He IS out there. And he WILL get you.

Just a month to go

And the countdown is on! ~31 days until Cataclysm will be officially released. I think Archeology is the one aspect that I'm looking forward the most. More skills to raise :3 And new areas to explore, easy old-herb farming, mining. More quests! After that, it's just another wait for Diablo 3! Yeah, not a great lot to report atm. Busy times :) Combat rezzing limited Bad news for those elite guilds who used a dozen warlocks and druids to bypass difficult encounters. Blizzard states: The design for combat resurrection effects has changed a good deal for Cataclysm, and we want to make sure players are clear on how spells like Rebirth and Create Soulstone now function. Rebirth has a 10-minute cooldown and Create Soulstone has a 15-minute cooldown. On raid boss encounters, you can only use one of these combat resurrection spells (so one Rebirth or one Soulstone) per attempt for 10-player raids. For 25-player raids you can use three forms of combat resurrection per raid boss attempt (so three of any combination of Rebirth and Soulstone). The count is incremented as soon as a player accepts a resurrection, so one can always choose not to accept if he or she wants someone else to get the resurrection instead. There is no equivalent of the Sated debuff (which tracks Bloodlust/Heroism usage), but you will get an error message if you try to resurrect too many players, and we might add tracking to our raid interface if there is demand for it. Outside of raid content, you can use as many battle resurrections as you have available. Cataclysm Login Screen Yeah, it's awesome.

Back to a classic

With Cataclysm still a month or two away, and Diablo 3 at least a year more... I figure I'd try having a poke at another old game I used to play. Namely, Diablo 2. Yeah it's old, about 10 years or more, and it's at LEAST 7 or 8 years since I've last actually played it. But heck. It's a time waster for a bit. I'll start from the beginning. I've played D2-LoD for about 2-3 years, after that 2 years of UO (As a certain reader might remember), and then about 5 years of WoW. I quit because, well, it was time to try something else. The general attitude of the community (or lack thereof) was poor, at least half the players were using bots to farm, trade channel was a spammy nightmare, and most my friends had quit already. That was during patch 1.11 Now, there's been a patch 1.12 and 1.13 since then. Some new "content" for the high end players, some buffs, some nerfs, a respec option and some new runewords. Ladder has reset a week or few ago so the economy is fairly blank. However, the bots. Yeah... Where to begin. In short, you do not want to create a game that allows level 1 characters to join. Within 5 minutes you'll have had 10 spambots join it, and basically FLOOD your screen with crap. Yet still players make games that allow lvl 1 characters to join... Oh the pain. On another note, the trade channel is completely dead. You'd be lucky to find a single person in there, and even then it's probably a bot that'll whisper you it's scam site url. Player activity is understandably low as well. And, all my old characters (not to mention accounts) are all gone. The game has no achievements, no connection to your regular battle.net account, barely any other players who care for anything other than their own greedy fingers. So why am I even bothering? Well, I don't know. Nostalgia if anything. See the new changes, try something "other" than wow for a bit, before jumping into Cataclysm again. Or to get into the diablo "theme" a bit in order to dampen the ever rising urge to play Diablo 3. Either way, let me know if you play on the Battle.net EU realm. I could use some people to talk to :P Finally sold! Remember that Camera? Well, I finally sold it :P 40 euros, about half it's market value. Not bad at all. And good riddance to the thing.

Television

So, I was sitting behind the PC just now, with the TV on in the background. "According to Jim" just finished, and the commercials were starting. The coming next block was just stating "Next we continue with the Matrix trilogy"...

*BAM!*

The Tv died.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

W T F kind of timing is that?

Scales of Bore

So, The Cataclysm is looming BIG over everyone's heads and people simply stop giving reasons for their absence after a while. Add in vacation time and raid-days-per-week go down from 4 x 25man to 2 x 25 man "if lucky" and some 10 mans. Well, pre-ordering (Yeah that's a dutch site, just note the price and date) "has" started, and is signed for this November. Things to keep playing for: * Fun. The primary motivator for anyone playing games obviously. * A sense of achieving things. Fun alone is one thing, but fun comes from many things. Knowing you "did something" rather than just logged on, walked around and hit something, then logged out gets dull real fast. * Character progression. You see your character get better, higher level, more stuff, more recipes, more gold, more kills, more honor, more achievement points. You name it. * Raising alts. Alts, the other white meat. Or rather the mains that you can keep on creating again, and again. * Friends. Doing all of the above is nice, but doing it with people you enjoy hanging out with makes them twice as fun. * Loot. Also see: Character progression. Things to consider doing other things for: * Drama. Too much is a bad thing. More stress, frustration, angry people doing silly things. * Boredom. Repetition. The same bosses again and again. It's the bane of endgame really and everyone gets hit by it sooner or later. Most keep going in the hope of finding something good for their character, or just because they've not got anything better to do. * Lack of progression. As above, with raiding days reduced progression slows, more people get bored, more quit, more new guys to recruit and gear up. Which in turn causes more boredom for the veterans as it's harder to progress, thus more players quit. It's a common issue in a lot of raiding guilds. Some players try to escape it by applying to greener pastures, but in the end they too find out that they can't escape it that way. * Lack of raiders to play with. As above, people you've played with for over a year or more get bored and quit or find other things to do. You might recruit replacement raiders, but it's just not the same as playing with the same people who you've learned about over the last few years. * Repetition of old things. See: Boredom. * Other things are free. Yes WoW actually costs money every month. While some other games only require a one time fee. * Other things being fun too. Indeed, greener pastures some may call it. But some of those pastures actually "are" green. Even if the color might be a shade different green, it's still grass and it's still green. * Need time for other things. Other things cost time, which results in less time available for WoW. In the end, if you're not playing WoW as much as you used to anyhow why not just take a break? Right there Well, that's where I am right now. Doesn't mean I'd stop posting obviously, I just like saving stuff up and tossing out a page long rant ;) It doesn't mean I quit playing either. Heck I'm looking forward to Cataclysm as much as the next. But doing two more months of Icecrown Citadel to kill time and primarily farm items for the dozens of new recruits that may or may not show up in the meantime... No, I'd say right now is as good a time as any to look around a bit and relax. Without paying for my subscription. Other Games 'n Stuff Play some Alien Swarm. Hey it's FREE! And awesome at the same time. Good luck getting the "Insane Campaign" achievement. 6/7 here, damn it's hard with pugs. But hey that's not all. Recently they also added "Brutual Campaign" to the mix. I can't imagine what sort of masochist you'd have to be to try that... o_o Digging around youtube is always fun as well. I've had this song in my head for ages, much like earlier, but this one's been a bit harder to find. Well, I found it. It's a good theme too. Be sure to run it more than once. Woodman's theme is kind of linked to it as well. Where have the days gone when video games had catchy music like that eh? BvS I still play BvS as well obviously. Level 193 currently. Level cap is 225 bytheway. Just did 7 Million damage to a worldkai. Up to 52 achievements, over 200 permanent items. It won't tell you much unless you're also a player though. Just take my word on it that's pretty good, or come try it yourself ;) And then there's Newgrounds! Everything by everyone! Which means fuckloads of spam and other shit. But also some seriously A W E S O M E stuff. Listen to this thing, great industrial music by Elfire. And if you're feeling competitive, I've currently got 17485 achievement points. Care to try and beat me? Just note there's some sick dude with over 48K points as well... Nostalgia and amazement AnyCraze is still "alive" to some degree. The forums are all but dead, but the site's still up. It's almost creepy. I wonder how the magic "scene" is doing. Cards still selling for crazy numbers? I doubt Wizards of the Coast is about to stop making new things. If only I had bought a black lotus when it was still cheap. :P Still got plenty of cards hidden in a dark dusty drawer somewhere though. Download boatloads of Anime to watch Just finished watching Lodoss (as last!), Bastard, Devil Hunter Yohko, Diebuster movie, Elfen Lied (omg blood, gore and violence), The Cat Returs (Studio Ghibli is absolutely masterful), Evangelion 1.11 and 2.22, Grave of the Fireflies (Ghibli again), Origin: Spirits of the past (Quite nice as well, I'd recommend looking it up), Steamboy, Paprika and a bunch of others. My HardDisk is getting full.. .. .. T_T Tic Tac Toe Lol, I know what you're thinking. But really it's not like that. Well, maybe it is. Yeah I was bored one afternoon and felt like it. So... I made my own version. Indeed, a fully functional Tic-Tac-Toe game with Human-vs-PC support as well as Human-vs-Human. Some color options and best of all it's multilingual. Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish AND EVEN Russian! Let me know what you think. Or rather, you can't win against the CPU anyhow, but feel free to try ;) I realize mediafire isn't exactly fast. If you've got a better suggestion for hosting Zip files though, feel free to let me know.

Making friends in pugs

I'm sure everyone's done (or tried to do) Pit of saron "normal" once or twice. Perhaps even a bit more than once. Perhaps you've even run into the situation where suddenly players have to "leave" after having killed a boss. Most likely, that person was your tank. Most likely, your group then fell apart, and you didn't even get to try Ick or Scourgelord Tyrannus. Well, my shaman reached level 80 last week and has been gearing up quickly. (That's 8 characters at level 80, for those of you interested) I've not had much luck with weapons sadly, so while all other pieces were a mix of mail and leather ilvl 200, 219 and 232 items he was still stuck with hierloom maces. That aside, he was saved to the heroics and Pit of Saron seemed a good idea. So, you guessed it, I signed up and waited and waited. Around 19 minutes later the familiar "you got a group" sound came up and it was onward to slay some undead. One of the members remarked early on "Gee I hope the tank stays this time"... Yeah, the tank stayed pretty quiet at that, and we all knew what time it was. The group consisted of me, a dps DK, a warrior tank, and then two others. Think it was a priest and a warlock. As we reached Garfrost the tank spoke his first words: "If I get the axe I'll tank whole instance". Not exactly in proper english like I just wrote, but yes, he did write "axe". Does this look like an axe to you? At any rate, we killed Garfrost without deaths and obviously no Axe dropped. He did drop the MACE however, and it soon became clear that this was as expected the object of our tank's prime desire. Unlucky for him however, both the DK and myself also rolled on it. (I know, it's junk to an enhancement shaman but like hell I'll let that fool get it) Now, the funny thing was, that I actually won the roll. The first thing the tank does was whisper me "trade me :)" like he already owned the item. Hum, no ragequit, no cursing, but no "please" or anything of the sort either. The Deathknight didn't have anything to add, nor did the other members as everyone but the warrior proceeded to move on to the next mob to kill. His next words were something along the lines of "give me weapon and ill finish run". Meaning, if the mace hadn't droppped he'd be gone already. Rrrrrrrrright. How many of you here, would actually believe this guy at his word right then and there? Ok, so he might be honest, but being realistic, I suspect he'd just bugger off as soon as he received the item. So, I tell him I'd like to try it out for dps a bit, since my weapons suck. If it doesn't look good I'd still be able to give it to him when we finish. Again, I'm aware that two-handed weapons for an enhancement shaman is pretty pointless, and my weapon skill at that time was about 348 so it wasn't going to go anywhere really. He must be desperate though, as he actually agreed with something like "ok, trade after ick", and grudgingly continued to clear trash at a breakneck speed, moving faster than any tank you've EVER seen before, and pulling 3-4 mobs at the same time. He must be in a hurry or something. Meanwhile, I come up with an idea and after a quick inspection of his gear decide to whisper the deathknight. He was using a blue two-handed sword, so the mace should be a massive upgrade to him, rather than the offspec of some greedy tank. I inform him to "stick around" as I'll hand him the mace later on. He happily agrees and the run continues. We kill Ick, I get a nice belt to replace a leather one and my shaman is totally happy. Until the tank whispers again. "Trade now". A man of few words apparently. I inform him we've gotten this far, and we may as well continue. This time It took a bit more persuading, and he comes up with the idea of "trade before boss, or I don't tank". Which is fine with me, as I've now got a deathknight willing to help out the cause. I inform him he may want to switch to frost presence at the last boss as the tank probably won't be tanking. Clearing the fire packs, frost packs, and the tunnel of undead lovin' went smooth and fast like you wouldn't believe. Heck, it IS normal after all. Once we exited the cave the DK immediately switches to frost presence and proceeds to pull. Apparently he informed the healer, as he doesn't seem bothered by this strange behavior. (or the healer was just good at rapid switch healing) I mounted up and proceeded to position myself to the other side of the boss, where the warrior followed me, opened a trade window about three times in a row and plainly spoke the words in party chat "ok I no tank boss". If the healer had any doubt before, now was his confirmation. I stuck the regular tank on ignore to kill the trade screen spam, and we all went into the fight as normal. The "tank" proceeded to follow me around for another five or so seconds until he decided he should probably tank the boss after all. Meanwhile the boss was already at 50% of his health and we'd probably have finished the run with or without him either way, but blackmail in any form has a way of annoying me. Once the boss was dead I beckoned the deathknight over and handed him the mace. Happy as a squirrel who finds a stash of nuts he was. The boss even dropped a pair of legs for me, to which I won the greed roll. Good times. So you see, it's easy to make a friend in a pug. But, just as easy to make enemies. I suspect that warrior won't want to pug with either of us ever again. I can't really blame him either, but seriously, if you're a tank and join an instance for one item from one boss please think of the other four people in that run. Just because you got two second queue times doesn't mean everyone else does.

Blizzard forums - RealID

This is just too much fun. Blizzard has recently announced they'll be showing player's "real" first and last name on their forums instead of just the player's character name. One cheerful blue poster made the mistake of giving his name to a pack of ravenous players, and was subsequently investigated in every which way. Say hello to Micah Whipple. Post number 16. WoW Riot lists a scary amount of information about him. His address, his parent's names, a potentially functional phone number, plenty of pictures of him. Enough to make you wonder, would other players be able to find this information about YOU as well? Most likely, yes. Google is a powerful tool after all. According to WoW.com, blizzard is already considering a change to the original plans. Blue posters will no longer have their names displayed because they "cannot risk having their personal lives compromised by in-game issues.". Oh, ok. That makes an awful lot of sense right? You'd think they'd just see off the whole thing then, right? You'd be wrong. Apparently it's A-OK for players to get their personal lives compromised by in-game issues. Good sides as well? Now, you might be thinking OH EM GEE that's awful! Well, it is. But, I think the whole RealID thing does have some merit. You can talk to your battle.net friends while they're playing Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, or World of Warcraft, whether they're on a different server or different faction. You get to choose who you allow to contact you in such a manner, rather than any moron who happens to know the email you used to register to battle.net to. Incidentally that whole "using your email to login" thing is an additional layer of security that they've now opened up and allowed hackers to exploit in trying to take over your account, or spam you with fake beta invites and other scams. As a player, you're either going to end up paying the stupid tax Ironically, those shouting at the blizzard forums about this change are most likely the ones who enjoy trolling the most. You know, those level 1 characters who always seem to disagree with you, and always agree with certain "other" posters? If people have their real name displayed, you might go hunting for them in the regular world, harass players like you've never been able to do before. But, why would you if they don't give you any reason to do so? Obviously, blue posters are "special" as they are of a limited kind. But the average Joe and Bob players, they'll just be another face in the crowd. Unless they go crazy and behave like complete dicks on the forum, why would you go after them? If it's a chance to harass a random person that you're looking for, you could simply open up the phone book at a random page and look up that person. Chances are you will be able to find their facebook or hyves, and it'll even list a working phone number that you can use to call them with! I'm sure you've all seen Bart calling Moe in the Simpsons? * Phone call for Al...Al Coholic...is there an Al Coholic here? * Wait a minute... Obviously the first thing some "troll" or griever is going to do if he wants to harass you, is post your address, phone and email on a public forum somewhere. But, aside that this will now also display his own name for the world to see, most forums have an instant delete+ban policy on anyone doing so. Could Blizzard's new RealID "Idea" really solve the giant cesspit of trolling that their forum currently is? Could it really? Only time will tell. Maybe you could fly over and kick some ass? For source and related info, see: * Mmoc * Tweakers.net (Dutch) * wowriot * wow.com / wow.com 2 * PCGamer * Examiner * about.com * IncGamers * australiangamer And so many many more. Search and you shall find :) Update: Aaaaaaand, it's been canceled altogether.

Contest winners

Contest winners have been drawn! The following three entrants will receive an email today. * Herman H. * Logan E. * Zachary C. If your name is on the list, but you don't get the email within a day or two kindly let me know. Enjoy the reading :) ps: Cataclysm beta NDA lifted! Lots of crazy stuff here.

Busy weeks

Doesn't mean I'm dead or anything silly like that. Though I suppose if I WAS hit by a bus you'd not hear about it. Anyhow, don't forget about the free books post. You still got a few days left to enter. BvS! Season 48 reached! Taken me about a year and a half so far. Considering the season cap for this game is 100, this is one game where you won't be "done" with very quickly. Good ninja times :) Lots of things to achieve. Cataclysm snippets Patch 3.5.5 is coming this wednesday(eu). No, that's not cataclysm, but it does have the ruby sanctum in there which includes some ilvl 284 loot. And the battle.net "realID" stuff. And will break the AVR addon. Some random snippets which may be of interest to you: * Note that there will be level 85 heirlooms that will not stop working at 80. However, you'll have to get at least one character to 85 to purchase them. * You will get a stat bonus of some kind if you wear "your" armor. You can still wear cloth, mail or leather of a lower armor type if it's a big upgrade, especially if it would get sharded anyway. But the days of Holy paladins in cloth or warrior wearing leather are probably behind us. * We're actually working on restoring the epic feeling to epic items in Cataclysm. Epic loot should be epic, and something to be very proud of. Our plan is to try and get the Heroic -> Blue Gear and Raid -> Purple Gear balance back. * In any event, we have no plans to add another class in Cataclysm. We don't want to saturate the game with new classes if they start to feel and play way too similar to existing classes. * Cataclysm Beta Opt-in : It will be coming "soon". (anything you have in the mail is a scam, delete it) * Nice sexy wallpaper. Oh wait, that's not cataclysm :P * It's here! * We're going to try instead offering more rewards (which includes loot) in the 25s, especially for the heroic modes. The heroic 25 will drop more armor, weapons and tier-piece tokens per player than the heroic 10. The normal 25 will drop more badges per player than the normal 10, and it might drop more armor and weapons as well. Legendaries would most likely be both 10 and 25 * Reforging - Spirit will be a reforgeable stat - We don't want players changing Agi, Str, Stam or Int (or armor!) on items for probably obvious reasons, but converting Spirit to something else or something else into Spirit shouldn't be a problem. * Cataclysm Raid Gear Requirements - I would expect a little more gearing up from 85 quests / heroics / crafted materials before jumping right into the raids this time around. * Lotsa screenshots. * The only difference in the way we are handling the guild talents is it will be possible to get all of them instead of having one person in your guild pick and choose which ones you got. The feature has always focused on leveling your guild to unlock new perks. In fact, you're getting more perks this way than you would have if the decisions had been exclusive. * The whole Path of the Titans idea has been removed from the game. It will no longer rely on Archeology or on any kind of PvE/PvP progression and instead Blizzard will just introduce a new type of glyphs: Medium Glyphs. * With the Path of the Titans gone, Archeology will become a "true" secondary profession and you won't really have to level it anymore. However it will still be used to let you get cosmetic/optional items, get more information on the game's lore, and ultimately it looks like we can expect rewards similar to fishing. (Nothing mandatory, but you'll be happy when you actually find something) * We have some end-game plans for Archaeology. I would compare it to Cooking, which isn't mandatory, but useful enough that nobody is surprised at the appearance of a Fish Feast. Fire Festival Ahune is silly easy. Tank the big frost spawn, then go catform, or even just tank the trash as a clothy. Any range that's available should nuke the boss (even though he takes less damage). Easy ilvl 232 cloak for your alt.

Read, something

Been a while since that poll got refreshed, I figured it's a good time to swap it out for something related to the contest. You got about 27 days left to send in your answer, for a chance to win a free copy.


Poll results

Your opinion on the new LFG system?
* It's great ! - 25 (64%)
* It's ok, I guess. - 9 (23%)
* I still don't like pugs. - 5 (12%)
* What? Where? - 0 (0%)

New poll up! - Do you read "books"?
Well? Do you? And if so, what kind?
Fantasy, sci-fi, romance, detectives, horror? Heck, even comics count in a way.

SC2 Book contest - this June

The second contest! As you were informed last week. However... There isn't just one book available. There's a whole three up for grabs. It's pretty simple, and all you need to enter is an e-mail address. And, there's the added need to be living in the USA or Canada as well. Or knowing someone reliable with a USA/Canadian postal address. In order to make you put in a "little bit" more effort than the last contest we'll start you off with a question. It shouldn't be too hard to find out if you've done any reading up on the Starcraft background story. Q: What is the original name of the Queen of Blades? Just mail your answer to bbr_tkihotmaildotcom . And please make sure to put "SC2 Book Contest" in the subject line. The deadline is June 30'th 2010. Any emails beyond that date will be quite simply too late! The book As an added bonus, and to get your reading tastes ready you may enjoy some of the teasers: * PDF snippet. * Audio snippet. If you don't believe in contests, or simply down on luck regardless. * Premium edition hard cover. * Paperback edition. Tell your friends So, to reiterate. * Mail me the original name of the "Queen of Blades". * Have a USA/Canadian post address. * ? * Profit! Win one of three free books. Pretty straightforward right? Winners will be randomly picked using /roll 1-X like last time. I think that worked pretty well. If you win, I'll ask you for your postal address info so no need to send it over on the first mail. If you don't win, better lucky next time. Entrants attempting to sign up using multiple email addresses will be disqualified ;)

Great news everyone!

The slime is flo... nooooo. Man, if there was ever an addon that allows you to disable specific boss sounds I'd be all over it. Sindragosa would be at the top of the list. "As your mathetic magic betrays you", ugh. Anyhow, busy week, lots to tell. Fun Stuff Pacman turned 30. One of the early few video (arcade) games known to mankind. There's an achievement for you, WoW won't be getting close to that anytime soon. Although StarCraft has already marked it's 12'th birthday. Also, female worgen screenshots to be found here. Until May 24'th Valve is giving away the popular puzzle game based on the halflife engine "Portal". GO GET IT, IT IS AWESOME! All you need to do is install steam. Not so Fun stuff Depends on your point of view really. AVR is going to be disabled by Blizzard in the upcoming 3.3.5 content patch. If you're not sure what AVR is, then this link explaining what this "Augmented Virtual Reality" addon does should help. Basically, it draws big red circles around players and in your WoW raiding environment. Which, anyone will easily understand, is a very big advantage to learning and mastering a fight. If not simply making it redundant other than your gear requirements. Imo, it's a good thing. Raid warning addons, Grid helpers, healbot and decursive is one thing. Bigwigs telling you you're standing in the fire with a big red blinking text and marquee enabled will still require you to look for a better spot to move to. But drawing circles in the room, displaying in full high res red blue and green who what and where it's safe or not is just pushing the thin gray line into the dark black. It couldn't last. Upcoming Stuff Aside cataclysm, which, is of course great and important news that everyone is and has been following. (with the alpha and beta and all that) There's something else upcoming as well. REAL CANADIAN VIAG... no wait that's the wrong email. Sheesh, spam seems to be picking up lately. Ah here it is. It turns out I'm allowed to give away another book! If you've been visiting this blog for a while (and hopefully a good while to come yet), you'll remember this here post where you could win a nice book about Arthas, written by one Christie Golden. Since then, I've read the book myself, and can recommend it to any dedicated WoW players. If you're not a WoW player, or at least have read some of the other warcraft books you will probably find it somewhat confusing though. Anyhow, about that other book. It's called StarCraft II: Heaven's Devils, written by By William C. Dietz. Which is obviously not a world of warcraft book but, if you're anything like me and enjoy reading english fantasy and sci-fi then this should certainly keep you entertained for a good few hours. Books are good, but free books are quite simply better. Right? At any rate, that's "soon". So, sign up for the RSS or just manually check back once a day or so. Tell your friends, tell your family, inform your guild, the usual. More on that later.

Oh hey, Cataclysm leaks

So, as you've probably heard, the WoW Cataclysm Friends + Family Alpha / Beta has started. Which means it's leaky time again! Seriously, even with a NDA, there will be people who get their hands on the data files somehow. And thus tiny leaks and plenty of screenshots will slowly start to show up on forums here and there. Like this image of DeathWing. It's "meh", quality. Hopefully it'll get updated and edited still. That image has been all over the MMOC forums though and you came here looking for more, right? Some juicy Cataclysm alpha leak maybe? Well it's still early, there's just not that much to be found yet. If I do run into anything though... Ah, and there it is! Lets hope their site holds out under the onslaught. Check page 3+4 on this site otherwise. (Warning, image heavy)

Authenticator 1.0.0

If for whatever reason you've not yet bothered to get yourself an authenticator yet, then here's a good tip.

Get one.

HA! You may think, can't be bothered.
Well, the number of "hacks" (key-loggings rather) has been increasing again. (Does it ever decrease?) Either way, there's never really any harm in the old saying "Better safe than sorry". Plus, you get a free core hound pet to boot ;)

Either way, I can see people not being too keen on paying the 10$ shipping, or simply not having the correct model phone to use blizzard's free download.

So, reading around, it seems there's an alternative!
For PC, and Mac users alike. It's called... *drumroll* Android!
And the good part, you do not need a phone for this to work.


Here is what you do:

* Download the Android SDK.
* Select the Android version for AVD. (2.1, 1.6 or 1.5, doesn't really matter)
* Download the Blizzard authenticator package. here, or here. Or just use google for it.
* Install the package by running "adb.exe install [path]" from the AVD emulator. ([path] is obviously the direct path to wherever you downloaded the auth package)
* From there on you should simply be able to use the authenticator from the AVD emulator.

Source: link.

Once you log in, you should find yourself a puppy in the mail.

New levels of annoyance

Ah yes, and then there's the nostalgia that you wish you didn't remember. I hooked up my old pc and finally managed to map a network drive to it, so that I could copy some old files, images and other nonsense over to my current PC. Among which some WoW screenshots from way back when my rogue was still lvl 60 :) More on that later. I also found an interesting file called "Revenant crack.zip", which was apparently all that I needed to get the 2 Iso files for the game running. The game... wait... let me rephrase that. The Bugged, unpatched (1.22 actually, but still bugged to hell and back), poorly maintained, frustrating, not worth spending a dollar on, piece of shit that eidos interactive DARED release and ignore, (I don't see how this company can still possibly exist if they produce shit like this!) "game" called Revenant... It's been version 1.22 for the last decade or so, yet they never bothered to fix some substantial bugs like black textures under certain video cards, game freezing when talking to a shop owner, game locking up if you defeat the dojo master, and a horrible death, load, save system... Anyhow, let's look at how old this game really is. Minimum Specifications: # Pentium 233 Processor or Equivalent # Windows 95/98 # 32 MB RAM # 400 MB Uncompressed HD Space # DirectX 6.1 or higher (included) # 8X CD-ROM # 100% DirectX 6.1 or higher compliant 8 MB Video Card # 100% DirectX 6.1 or higher compliant Sound Card # Keyboard and Mouse Right, P233 processor or higher. No problem there. Even though I did have to modify the ini file to disable hardware rendering and a bunch of other stuff to even get it loading. "Way back when", and that would be around 7, maybe 8 years ago I rented this game from the local library, installed it and played it for about two days. At the time it was one of the first "3D" rpgs to come out somewhere after Diablo, and before world of Warcraft was even talked about. It was decent enough in terms of gameplay, it looked nice, it had potential. And... It had bugs. I gave up on the game out of sheer frustration somewhere halfway through the second day because a same game got corrupted somehow, and the last "other" save game was where I had just gotten myself locked in at the dojo master. (whatever you do, do NOT kill him or the dummy, the game will get stuck in an endless loop) Basically, I'd have had to go back and start pretty much all over to 8 hours of gametime back. Which in terms of this game would be 4 hours of progress and 4 hours of loading and saving because of bugs where the game freezes or crashes. A simple word of advice. Do not ever play this game. While it may seem a decent distraction, you'll wish for those hours of your life back and curse Eidos to die in a fire. Bloody idiots can't do shit right. I mean, these are the uninspired guys that made the Tomb Raider game series. How much more proof do you need? At any rate... Finding said .zip file on my old pc I figured I'd give the game a try and see what it was like. Oh woe is me. Started the game, talked to some npcs, got out of town. Get frustrated at the shop owners for having the memory of a gold fish and constantly giving you their LONG welcome AND goodbye speech. Get even more frustrated the first time the game freezes upon talking to one of said shop owners. Get even more frustrated when you find out your latest save game was half an hour ago. Threaten to bring down a fiery meteor onto Eidos headquarters when you find out (belatedly) that dying to some damn monster that hits you for 200% of your health and thus kills you does not mean you can run back to your corpse, but you have to actually go back to another one of those save games which you made 15 minutes ago, or longer. Yes I know everyone was "used to that" back in the days, but in a game like this, it REALLY adds up to the frustration. After spending another half an hour of running around, exploring, and slowly gaining xp, it's time to dig out the walkthough because the directions in this game are poor as hell. You'll end up running in circles (thank god for the run button, at least they thought of that) and going nowhere. Encounter monsters you should not even try to get near, curse at the poor equiqment, curse at the silly small resolution (for most old games it's a charm, but here it's a limitation), and curse as you get two shot by a dragon and have to go back to yet another 15 min belated save game. Finally, after another shop owner freeze or two (at this point I was saving every time I even tried to enter a shop) finally give up and rant about this piece of shit of a game on a blog and wonder what sort of morons Eidos Interactive ever hired as programmers and testing department. If you simply resurrected in town on death (would make sense too) it'd be much less punishing for not saving often enough. And if they could at least have tested their own game and fixed the retardedly common freeze bugs, it'd at least be playable. But no. Seriously, What the fuck. Total waste of time. Screenshot source: Activewin reviews. They must not have played many good games, because they gave it a 82% in their own review. Huh, what? Makes you wonder how long they actually spent on playing that piss of a game, or whether they simply received the screenshots from Eidos with a bag of money and got told to write a smooth review.

More stuff dead

With LK being dead on 25 man (for our guild that is), we went and killed Marrowgar, gunship (hard not to really...), festergut and rotface (of which festergut was a decent challenge), lady deathwhisper (-2 seconds on enrage timer kills ftw!), and not least of all variwhatsit dreamwalker got healed up. (They should really give these dragons easier names...) Heroic difficulties are giving everyone better loot, more dps, more healing, and in a few weeks we'll be cursing at people for not moving out of fire/shadow or other circles again. Still, it's just the same fights again, but with a twist. We also went back and finished off Ulduar and poked Algalon in 3 or so tries. I'm sure he was difficult before, but with ICC gear... Everything is easier ;) Speaking of Mounts This, thing will cost you 25$ in the blizzard store. It caused SUCH a silly riot. Here, look at the QQ and laugh. It's sad people, that you can get so worked up over pixels. It doesn't make you a better player, doesn't make you hit others harder in pvp, it's not 310% speed by itself, and it's fucking ugly. What's the big deal? If you're so eager to play with a flying horse, then Nerf Now has a good tip for you. Go play Robo unicorn. So, until Blizzard sells gold, or actual epic items that you can use on your twink or raider... Guess where you stand. Cataclysm The class previews have been posted, and you can find most on MMOC or WoR somewhere. For here, I'll link to the Rogue one. We get: Redirect (level 81), Combat Readiness (level 83), Smoke Bomb (level 85) Redirect basically gives us back an ability which we already had way back in Molten Core and was taken away from us at some point before TBC. Indeed, we get to "transfer any active combo points to the rogue's current target". Pretty lame indeed. On a good note, "self-buff abilities like Slice and Dice will no longer require a target". Which, is also something we already had way back in Molten core. Combat Readiness is some junk you'll mostly use in PvP. As it only gives you 10% (stacking up to 5x) damage reduction when you're hit. Something you'll generally wish to avoid in PvE, as most stuff hits you for 80-300% of your health pool. Best of all, it's got a 2 minute cooldown. On a side note, Cloak of Evasion will become a 100% effect, instead of the 90% it is now. Smoke Bomb and the mage's Wall of Smoke are the "slightly more interesting" abilities which we'll have access to. It basically puts you out of line of sight for most effects. Meaning enemy NPCs will have to move closer and start to melee you. AoE spells are unaffected, so don't get too sure of yourself on boss fights. You will still need to move out of that fire! Some further changes "may" include the ability to poison our ranged throwing weapon. Sadly it'll also mean that abilities like Fan of Knives will use the ranged weapon. Thus no more dual poison application by spamming Fok... Ambush will also be available for sword, axe and fist using rogues. Though with a slightly reduced % of effect. Blizzard is also planning to provide us with a new low-level ability called Recuperate, which would be able to convert combo points into a small heal-over-time. Should be nice for solo grinding. ps: Warriors are getting Heroic Leap from Diablo 2. A lot of the recent ideas seem to be coming from there. Titan grip anyone? Other stuff Winamp has had this annoying bug for at least three years now, where it loses it's "always on top" property after going alt-tab from WoW or other games. If you know any data that may help the Winamp Devs find a solution, by all means drop by on their forums and tell them how to do it. Older ideas revisited I've been playing with the idea to make a sort of link/bookmark database which would be available to the whole world to see. Yet I can't quite find the necessary click in my head yet to get it actually rolling. Here's a few rough lines. * Primarily it'd be for linking and sharing comics much like the Belfry has, but with a far superior interface. And, it'd allow comic owners to claim their link and adjust the description. * It'd have a link rating, sharing, "you'd like this" and personal link lists much like AnimePlanet has. You'd be able to keep a personal list of comics you've read and enjoyed, and show this list to others. * You'd be able to import/export your personal list to third party sites like FoxMarks, or simply bookmarks. * It'd combine any RSS feed a comic may have to give an up-to-date overview of new comics to read. Would make for a good list on the front page. Adjustable to include/exclude your favorites. * As a second phase, it could implement and expand to linking games like Armor games, NewGrounds and many more. Since it'd mostly just be links, walkthroughs and reviews the hosting space should be able to remain fairly small. Though I'd want 3-4 preview images of each comic/game linked much like anime planet does. Now, the problems.... * Hosting, what's cheap, how much would you need initially, and how easily could you upgrade if it proves to be needed? * Advertising, how would you get a site like that running once it's finished? * PHP, ASP, or, other languages. I'd guess PHP as it's pretty common, but I've let myself be told that sites like youtube and google are currently working with Html 4.0 * Apache, or no apache? Is there even a choice other than apache? * What database to use? Firebird seems a good (free) choice, but does that even work online? * User login, editing, submissions of new content, admins to keep everything running, capthas to stop bots, etc. * I've worked with C, C++, Java, Delphi, some Cocoa, some Html and even CSS. But, my SQL and PHP skills are,,.. well, let's just say they're not quite up on par with the ideas I'd like to implement. * Finance! Setting stuff up big requires money. Start too small, and you won't get anywhere. Start too big, and you lose the money if it fails. Investors will want to see results, and time is always a pressing issue. So, ideas aplenty as always, but time and the know-how. Yeah... That'll take a while. Fun stuff It's a MF SHAAAARK! Go kill stuff dead! And, BvS is still awesome, and now has an actual and proper Chinese Mahjong mini-game implemented. That stuff is hard! You'll also have a hard time catching up on me though. Currently I'm season 24 :P There's a free trial version available of Cortex Command. Be sure to check it out. It's a kind of worms / tankx clone. Just way more awesome.

Lich king, and on old games

Booyah! He's dead! But, lives on in... nah, he's dead as can be. Took a while, but totally worth it. Onward to hard modes next. And now, on another note You know, I HAVE played other games ya know? Back before "internet" wasn't Adsl with no limit to bandwidth. Back before dialup even. Back before that whole "MMO" thing came along and claims a part of your soul and keeps it forever. Who needs to play outside, when you got a computer, right? Just remember, you can "see other games", even while you've got a subscription to one. It's not like you're married to it. (And even then, /wink) Recently I've picked up Torchlight. Which turns out to be quite an interesting game. It's much like Diablo but with a vast array of improvements. Go Check it out sometime. You can get it through Steam if you got that. Just use the search function and download the free demo. Yes I said FREE, no strings attached. Annoyances You know what annoys me? Game producers raping a completely fine game and making it "balanced". Or adding features that nobody is waiting for. Settlers. It used to be an awesome game. Simple, but amazing. Back when it was simply "settlers", and not with a 2,3,4,5,6 or 7 attached to the end it was all down to earth. Build stuff, gather resources, send your guys somewhere, build more stuff, conquer the world. At some point, around settlers 4 or 5... dunno. I lost count after 3 or 4... They decided to make your Minions have needs. NEEDS?! What on earth? I rather liked the game the way it was thank you very much. Why do I suddenly need to keep restrictions in mind? Settlers 6 was awful. It looked fine, but as half the world has been shouting out for ages: Gameplay is more important than graphics. Settlers 6 is just shit and 7 looks to be more of the same. You make a woodcutter, who gets hungry. You make a hunter who gets meat, who also gets hungry. You make a butcher and a fisher, who get "food" so everyone is no longer hungry. Fine so far, right? No, wrong. Next they want clothes to wear, water for bathing, soap and brooms for cleaning, and the list goes on. And every house you make has another settler that wants more of the same. Gone are the days of having 100 farms all farming grain to feed your soldiers. Alas. Settlers has turned into the fucking SIMS... If I wanted to play that (And I most certainly Do NOT) I'd have sent my money to EA. (Who deserve to be paid in lead instead) They ruined a perfectly good game. Old things I'll share some of my childhood with ya. In case you care. And even if you don't, you'll still read this anyhow right? I've played Settlers 1 for hours and ages, left my computer on for days so they could continue their building overnight. Resources stockpiling as my hundred farms all had miles and miles worth of grain. Woodcutters and planters, mills and bakeries, gold, coal and iron mines. And it was good! Settlers 2 came along. It was good as well, though it lacked the "2 players on one computer" option that settlers 1 had. Yes you can install settlers 1 on the PC still, but it doesn't support 2 mice. Seriously, don't get me started on what a ridiculous throwback in technology the "new" pcs were over some of the later commodore models. Both graphically, sound, and OS wise. I tenfold pity and curse the retard who came up with the idea that PCs were the better machine to use. However the fuck that happened. My commodore was doing THIS (plenty of vids below), while your PC was doing BLEEP, and painting monochrome graphics in a 16 color DOS. While I had stereo, awesome vga, and an OS that some might describe as a predecessor of Windows 3.11. Stick that up your arse Bill Gates. Heck, even Apple had a GUI before most PCs did. Some Grand names from the past: (May they be remembered forever) * Team 17 - which is still active today, and the creator of a game many will know. Worms. Alien breed, if you don't know it, shame on you. * Bitmap brothers - Made the chaos engine, Xenon, gods and many more. Now eaten by evil overlord EA. * Rainbow arts - Responsible for Turrican 1 and Two, logical, rock 'n roll (And I do not mean those stupid snakes on the Super nes) and many more. Now "eaten" by EA as well. * Psygnosis / DMA Design - Lemmings, Lemmings, Lemmings!, LeMMings!!, LEMMINGS!!!! (You get the idea now right?), Hired guns. DMA Design is now Rockstar north, yes those guys who made Grand Theft Auto (aka. GTA). this tune seem familiar? There was a vid out there with the HR Intro music that showed the awesome screen where the game detected "extended" memory worth 358 KB, and it was using that for improved sound. Classic. Also, for some reason I've had this odd tune in my head for years thinking it was some fiddle from a megaman 5 level or such. Turns it it wasn't. What song? Wolfchild. Track 7. Silly me. Though technically it's possible It was megaman 5... perhaps the megaman designers snitched it from the above game. But, I can't seem to find the actual track in any of the megaman soundtracks that matches it. Also, if you've never played Moonstone, like ever, then seriously dude, you missed out on the most bloody game ever made before Mortal Kombat. And THAT one caused a riot like no other. I'll tell you this, the game had atmosphere. Playing it at 11 PM at night, the few hours befor mightnight on new year's eve. It sticks with you forever. Ever heard of Monkey Island? Sure you have! It all started way back when, along with king's quest, Leisure suit larry, and so many others like it. Monkey island was the master above them all. (Though opinions may vary) It had comedy, it had violence, it had innuendo, swordfighting. It even had undead! Not to mention a three headed monkey! There were more games of course, I could go on for hours (and have, by now in writing this), but I need to press that "Publish post" button sometime so you lot don't think I've been hit by a truck or anything silly like that. Look em up, youtube, google, whatever. * Lotus challenge II+III * Super Cars * Super frog * Swiv * Speedball * Dogs of war. * Spin dizzy * Lemmings!!! those poor little creatures, i have murdered so many. * Theme Park, even with all it's bugs. * Syndicate * Cannon Fodder * Alien Breed Undoubtedly I've forgotten a few of the other rare gems. They don't make games like they used to :/ Honorable mention, Fairlight. While not a game, is a very memorable group for various cracks and demos. Look on youtube for 64KB demos by fairlight. Yeah, that whole thing is under 64KB. How's that for compression and coding eh? No silly libraries and DLLs that cause a giant overhead. Just pure awesome writing. This one's nice too. But not fairlight. :P Disclaimer: * Historical accuracy may vary based on perspective. So, don't come crying to me about your pc having been better than the junk I got saddled up with back then.

7 x 80

And another character up to 80. Does it ever stop?! No, but anyway, I got the warlock up to 80 now. So that makes 7 in total. Why? Because I can. Or rather, the altitis itch was getting the better of me again. It's like, the char needed to be level 80 to get certain patterns, and it'd speed up farming for the older patterns. So eventually the itch got the better of me and I figured heck, onward to 80! Next on the line is my level 70 shaman probably. A few hierlooms here n there and he shouldn't take too long. Alternatively is the level 20 priest, but her way is a long longer before 80. Ah well, the list of patterns is still building up nicely. * Tailoring - Elrath: 294/401 Pugs And in the badge-runs you get to do after you meet such interesting... (idiots)... people. From paladins who're using their off-spec for the very first time, and thus "forgot" to put higher rank spells on their button bar, to druids who "tank" trash using mostly lacerate AND use growl to pull AND don't bother with Faery fire because his lacerate ignores armor anyway... Now I'm asking you... WHY? And then there's the usual tank who leaves after the first boss in Pit of Saron (normal), and then we spend 10 minutes waiting for a replacement. Now, I can understand to some degree why they do "that", and admittedly I've done it on my druid when I wanted the ring and belt (Though I gave up on that as they never dropped in a dozen runs). It's still pretty annoying for the people who sat in queue waiting for 15 minutes for the group even to be formed, while the tank jumps in without a queue, kills one boss, and then repeats the process. Off-spec bug Anyway, as for the off-spec spell thing. If you reach the proper level, and activate dual spec for 1000g it copies your interface at that time. If you switch back at around 60 or 70 to add a few spells to the list, and then completely forget you had said dual spec until level 80 or so.... In theory you should then have a mainspec with all the highest level spells on your button bar. Your "dual/alternative" spec will however still mostly have the same spells as you had at the time you bought the option. Now, since a lot of people level their character as DPS, they'll likely have their basic buttons set up from way back when. If you run a certain addon called RankWatch (GET IT!) you'll notice some frightening things about most of your healers and or tanks. Initially you might have thought they were simply bad players, or badly geared. But in reality a lot of pug players simply forgot to update the spells on their hotbar. And thanks to this addon, you can let them know! And even automatically spam them in whispers. Don't miss out, you'll save yourself and others a lot of repairs due to bad heals or poor aoe threat tanks. Some time in Cataclysm blizzard is planning to completely remove spell ranks, so the issue will automatically be fixed. But until then... Before I forget The awesome comic Treading Ground is updating again! I was somewhat pessimistic about it starting up again, but last week I did a quick check, and 'lo and behold, it was updating. Go check it out! And, Oglaf is as always still funny. (And only suitable for 18+, be warned) Also, some other good classics for you to enjoy. Check this little game out as well. It's a masterpiece in it's own right.

More recipes!

I've been farming some things the last few weeks, and O M G, blizzard is quite malicious in the drop rate of some of those things.. The updated stats: * Enchanting - Zurgat: 280/296 * Engineering - Zurgat: 240/275 * Cooking - Zurgat: 169/169 * Blacksmithing - Geshrat: 315/464 * Leatherworking - Targash: 343/517 * Inscription - Arthul: 419/440 * Jewelcrafting - Arthul: 264/554 * Tailoring - Elrath: 288/401 * Alchemy - Neruhe: 186/248 Still a long long way to go either way. And not stopping anytime soon. Reputations to raise, old dungeons to farm, vendors to pillage. Oh yeah. It's the world drops that really are the biggest pain to get though. Occasionally theres a noob that puts up a recipe for cheaps, but those are almost as rare as the recipe itself. Warning! Supposedly there's a new virus generation which specifically targets WoW users with the battle.net authenticator. It'll catch the code you type, send it back to the hacker, and send a false key to blizzard. Thus, giving hackers half a minute to log in using your credentials, while you will be told that you're typing in the wrong key code. It should be obvious that the authenticator will still keep you a lot more secure than you would be without it. But as always, if you got a virus, bad things will happen. Also see: this link. Nerfed some more I'm sure you probably noticed the +5% damage +5% healing buff "hellscream's warsong" when in ICC. Which makes most of the encounters a LOT easier. It's said to go up to 10% in a few weeks, 20% later, and ultimately supposed to go up to 30% a month or few before Cataclysm is released. To ensure everyone gets to do hard modes and get easy gear. But, that's not all! The 4 March update according to MMOC added a few more nerfs: * In the Lord Marrowgar encounters, the boss will no longer reset threat after a bone storm and will now wait a small amount of time before attacking at the end of a bone storm. * In the Deathbringer Saurfang encounters, the boss is now less likely to cast Blood Nova on targets affected by Mark of the Fallen Champion. * In both normal and heroic versions of the 10 player Rotface encounter, the mutated infection ability will not be cast as quickly while the fight progresses. * In the 10- and 25-player heroic Festergut encounters, the malleable goo ability should no longer target pets. * In the Valithria Dreamwalker encounters, the duration of Emerald Vigor and Twisted Nightmares were slightly increased. * In the Sindragosa encounters, the duration of the instability debuff was slightly reduced. Some of these seemed really unneeded. Ninja powah! Also my Billy char just finished PizzaWitch on Crazy hard mode. Time to re-get the last two lost weapons and loop to Season 19 for great awesome points (Trophies / achievements in warcraft terms). There's less achievements to be had in total, but currently on 40, looping should get me another two at least, and unlock two more (for doing PW easy mode). Fear the ninja :P Fantasy village also needs more ninjas, come and join us! Also, my yummy r00t stats on the right. They're yummy, because I've just consumed 16 yummy pizzas. Hence the duo level is so high.

A new kind of achievement

Sure, I'm on like, around 8000 achievement points now, but whatever. There's people with over 10K, even one or two over 16K. Silly numbers. And for what? Achievement points don't do anything at all. Just E-Peen. Sure there's the occasional one among them that gives you a title, pet or mount, but those are separate from the whole achievement "point" system. Which is mostly a waste of time. So, in the hopes of blizzard ever adding in account-wide achievements, I've started on a different kind of feat. To get a shit ton of crafting recipes! I've already mentioned before that I was working on cooking on all my alts. Well, I figured I'd take it a step further and get their primary professions "completed" a bit as well. In the meantime, while they're now all 445+ in their professions, I've started gathering the recipes that are attached to those. Digging around BRD, UBRS, LBRS, Scholo, Winterspring, getting various reputations up, (ugh furbolgs again...) and farming random mobs in the hopes a specific BoP recipe will drop. It's a daunting task for sure! But anyhow, the stats for now: * Enchanting - Zurgat: 274/296 - 92.6% complete. * Engineering - Zurgat: 240/275 - 87.3% complete. * Cooking - Zurgat: 169/169 - 100% complete. * Blacksmithing - Geshrat: 281/464 - 60.6% complete. * Leatherworking - Targash: 332/517 - 64.2% complete. * Inscription - Arthul: 405/440 - 92% complete. * Jewelcrafting - Arthul: 264/554 - 47.7% complete. * Tailoring - Elrath: 285/401 - 71.7% complete. * Alchemy - Neruhe: 185/248 - 74.6% complete. * Fishing: What? This is all done on six level 80 chars, and two level 70 chars. Using the ARL (Acki's recipe list) addon to show how my progress is for each character. (No I'm not so crazy to do this on one character.... sheesh) But really, it's just another excuse for me to troll about in BRD. Also, while individually it's not all that much, your main char probably has a lot more recipes right? In total, that's a LOT of recipes however. Especially leatherworking and jewelcrafting are rather silly... Cataclysm is underway, slowly. Hopefully those rumored account-wide achievements will include silly ones for all the other professions, much like cooking already has. (collect 160 cooking recipes) Patch 3.3.3 Speaking of professions, the next patch seems to hold a few changed for us. Such as: * Transmutation cooldowns removed on Titansteel, and the cloths: Ebonweave, Moonshroud and Spellweave. * Various ilvl 226 craftables (ulduar recipes) have gotten their material cost lowered. Also, this contains some data for the new instance: "Ruby Sanctum". No no, don't go crazy yet, that instance will be available in 3.3.4 or 3.3.5 at the earliest. But there's a loading screen and map at least.

Busy busy

And most certainly not dead.
I should really be posting at least once a week, and had that as a habbit for a while.

Currently on 6 level 80 characters, farming some Jewelcrafting recipes, and Leatherworking recipes. Going to raise my warlock (lv70 atm) to lvl 80 next! So, More on that later. Ackis recipe list is being very very helpful.

The 25 man raid killed professor, working on the blood queen, and the dreamwalker.
Interesting fights, that, have a tendency to wipe the raid a lot xD

S18. Level 155 on BvS. Need 3 more lost weapons.

Project Wonderful changed their ad program, and imo, it's pretty poorly done now...
I'll send them an angry mail about that later I guess.


Short post, I know.
Got a new job though :P

Fake emails

A short post, just because I can.

I seem to be getting some emails from:
* WoWaccountAdmin@blizzard.com - mxykenneth@hotmail.com
* X-Originating-IP: [222.231.60.129] (Korea)

And:
* wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com - pagarzz@hotmail.com
* X-Originating-IP: [119.114.101.14] (China)

Feel free to abuse the above information in any way you see fit.


They wish to inform me of the following

Greetings!
This is an automated notification regarding the recent change(s)
made to your World of Warcraft account. Your password has recently been modified through the Password Recovery website.

Well, the "automated" part is probably correct, the link they give to said website however, points to some url that only vaguely resembles a blizzard site. Seriously, if anyone is stupid enough to fall for crap like that, you probably deserve it.

Also, since the originating email address seems to be hotmail, (check the full mail header when you get one of these) you can forward said email to abuse@hotmail.com and they should get deleted. Sadly such addresses are generally free/temporary addresses, but still. Quite silly.

It's about time Blizzard made those security tokens mandatory, and ship them for free with the Cataclysm box or something. That should make life a good bit harder for those scammers.


See?

Quick update from hotmail:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for writing to Windows Live Hotmail Compliance Support. I am Victor and I gather that you are encountering an issue with your account. I understand how important it is for your concern to be addressed immediately and I am here to give you the most consistent resolution for your concern.

I have closed the account that you reported, in accordance with our Terms of Use (TOU).


Alts!!!

Also, I'm currently working on my fifth level 80 character.
He's currently Level 79.77 so, coming up soon :P
*Pets his snake* (Not like that you pervs! It's a hunter...)

The end of the world!

Of Warcraft... nah that joke is getting old. However, some tanks in random groups make it out like it is. Ok, so in raids we generally either mark up the kill order like Star, Orange, Pink, Green, etc, etc. At other times there's too much messing around and only a single target to kill anyhow, so we mark up the tanks instead. Easier for the healers to see where the important players are, and easier for the melee to see what's the front or back side of a mob. Since I'm so used to the tank having a mark for trash, I prefer to mark up my focus target in 5 man random groups as well. This seems to lead to plenty of funny situations. Seriously, not just funny, but absolutely hilarious how some kids get their pants in such a knot that they fake disconnect, or start pointing a finger at the poor healer for "targeting" them. Here's a situation: I join the random 5 man heroic dungeon queue thing for the daily frost badges. A group is found, and we're teleported to Violet Hold. I look for the player with the most health and check whether he's using some defence gear to determine whether he's indeed the tank. Some times it's rather obvious, some times it's not. Then, I do "/focus". Now I have the tank on focus target so my tricks of the trade macro can do it's job. Feel free to copy it, it's nice. #showtooltip Tricks of the Trade /cast [target=focus, exists] Tricks of the Trade; Tricks of the trade It basically shows the tricks of the trade tooltip, and casts tricks of the trade on your target if you have a focus, otherwise it just casts tricks of the trade and you can use it as you normally would. Next I mark the tank up with a green triangle. Not the old fashioned way, no way, using a macro that also uses the focus target. Again, feel free to copy it and annoy tanks with it later. /script SetRaidTargetIcon("focus", 4); Next, one of a few things may happen. #1: The tank ignores the mark and the run proceeds smooth and fast. #2: The tank comments about the mark, asking what it's for but does not remove it. I'll tell him it helps us see where he's running off since random tanks all look different. Also, that it helps the melee with positioning. Thus ensuring more dps, and a higher survivability rating for himself as the healer can find him more easily as well. The run takes a few seconds longer to get started, but after that it's generally a smooth ride. #3: The tank removes the mark, after which I re-apply it, after which he removes it again, after which I re-apply it, after which he gets frustrated and starts cussing about it in party chat and removes it, after which I re-apply it, etc. Eventually the tank will either randomly start pointing fingers or simply quits the group. The first two situations are generally fine. After all it's not the end of the world to have to run through a 20 minute instance with a mark above you. Right? Funny enough, it seems situation three occurs more often than you'd think. Gundrak I made a screenshot. I'm quite sure of it, but sadly I can't find it again right now. So, you'll just have to take my word for it. We went in, and it was a classic situation-3. It was a plate user, quite a few weeks ago now, so the memory of the exact event is slipping somewhat. We had a druid healer, poor guy. Anyhow, we went in and I did my usual thing, focus, mark, start dps. Sure enough the tank didn't agree to my methods, but I wasn't about to tell him that I was the one that was marking him up. It took about ten minutes of him threatening to leave if the marking continued (I do SO love it when they claim that, after all we can just get another tank in his stead, and he gets no marks and can't sign up for the next 15 minutes), obviously I keeps marking him. My favorite disclaimer is always "I'm not even targetting you", which I obviously don't need to since I have a focus target, but I wasn't about to tell him that EITHER. After a while he started getting really paranoid, looking for whoever was targeting him. He noticed the healer (Druid sorry, seriously, but it was fun to see him squirm so much) was targeting him pretty often. Well duh, he's HEALING YOU you mongul. And he proceeded to threaten to kick the druid if he kept marking him. After which I happily continued doing exactly that. After the giant dino boss the poor druid got frustrated with the tank, (I think it was a death knight actually) and switched to bear form and refused to heal any longer. Death knights being overpowered don't need that much healing anyhow, so we continued on to the last few packs while the druid lagged behind calling the tank names and the tank calling the druid names. Right after the third before last pack the tank vote kicked the druid. (I did vote no, but alas, he still got kicked) Some priest replaced him, and we killed the last boss. I'd have re-marked the tank after the priest came in, but that'd mean I wasted 30 minutes to get the two frost badges, can't have that :P Pit of Saron Not so much a Situation-3, but I still felt like naming and shaming these two idiots. Comedy either way. A tank and a dps left after the first boss in the Pit of Saron (normal mode) while I was on my alt DK (Geshrat). I figured we'd complete the run, but the tank ran off. Two other players joined, and left, and joined, and left. You'd think when the PoS confirmation menu shows up people read the "1/3 bosses killed". Axidd and Alnadr get the big finger for the world to see. Enjoy. I'd name and shame the mong tank that left after boss two, but I sort of forgot his name. *Beats himself on the head* It was a paladin at any rate. Idiot had a big mouth and ninjapulled both of the two packs after Ick to try and wipe us and then ran off. He died, I did not. The Nexus Stormchief from Arathor was another classic Situation-3, though. Sadly he didn't go completely mental, but simply exited the run right about after boss two. He was feeling all big and mighty with his "leet gear", and started pulling no less than 5 packs at once, with a boss at the same time. We had a good healer and survived, but a bit later he decided to pull half the zone near boss three (the tree boss, with slowing trash), which resulted in the healer getting slowed and thus being out of range of the tank. I vanished and survived, but the rest of the party didn't fare too well. My props to Bryte who was totally cool and as amazed at the tank's immaturity as I was. We then got three replacements and proceeded to clear the instance as normal. With a tank that didn't care about having a green mark on his head. Violet Hold Today, a paladin and a druid. (See screenshot below) Both from the same realm. It didn't take more than a few seconds before the Paladin tank started making trouble about having a mark on his head. Surely the game must be bugged, for there was a mark on his head in a 5 man dungeon. O M G, the world would end. He fell for the classic "I'm not even targeting you" excuse, and we proceeded and killed boss one while he was removing the mark, and I was re-applying it to him. Right around wave 8 he "disconnected" and the druid took over tanking in bear form instead. Just before the second boss we finally managed to kick him out so we could replace him, but the druid who was apparently a real life friend of him left right along with him. Some people, seriously. It's just a green mark, not the end of the world. I do SO love messing with their minds though. :)