T-Minus Five Days and Counting

Yeah, gonna hit a slump here. I hate announcing crap like this, because it gives me free reign to ignore my blog, which is dangerous. The only thing that really forces me to post here with any regularity is that I feel guilty for little Timmy who's visiting my page from some death camp. He sneaks across enemy lines, ducking under barbed wire, and chaffing his little inter-nuts on polyester carpeting as he crawls past reception into the internet lounge.

Brenda, the last line of defense to the company mainframe, is occupied with little Timmy's saved up rations, molded and pressed into the shape of a donut, and rolled along the floor past her watchtower.

While she huddles over her snack, Timmy logs in, only to find THE SAME CRAP THAT WAS THERE YESTERDAY.

Then he gets shot and dies.

So sorry, Timmy, but I need to run to the Japanese DMV today and handle some paperwork. If you're new here, go read my most favorite post I ever wrote!

http://www.notaddicted.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1093

If you're old here, you're probably sick of me telling people to read it, but I'm proud of it, and need to write more things like it.

In the meantime, I have 5 more days left until the big migration, so cut me some slack, and see you soon on the other side!

[continue...]

Where Ixo Invades the PTR?!

I really don't 'get' the PTR.

Actually no, wait... let me take that back.

Let's start over.

I think I'm the only person in WoW that 'gets' the PTR.


Why do I log in and see people LFM Gruul's Lair, or LF1M tank Heroic HoL Daily? Um, people. This isn't live WoW. It's the frigging test realm. Where you can try new things that aren't in the game yet. I'm already pretty sick of Naxx on live, so no, I really don't want to come tank it for you here on the PTR. Are these people brain damaged?

Speaking of idiots not understanding the test realm, what's up Blizz? Why is my tank fully loaded with 8 billion gems, 450 jewelcrafting, 3 full sets of gear (tank, dps, pvp), and then stuck with nothing but attack power enchant scrolls? I have 5x Berserker Weapon enchants, 5x +10 stats to chest, 3x resilience shoulder and head enchants, and a stack of Haste to Cloak scrolls. Leg enchants? Why, 5x Leg Armors of 75 Attack power and +crit, every tank's dream! Why give me 450 Jewelcrafting, and enough Dragon's Eyes to make a zillion Jewelcrafter exclusive gems (limit: 3 fancy gems on at once), but no Enchanting, not a single abyss crystal to enchant something with a piece of stamina, no Inscription, nor a single Peacebloom to mill and make a tanking glyph?

Oh, wait! I get it! Ha Ha! None of the tanking classes want to tank on live, so let's make it an uphill struggle for them to tank on the PTR, too. That will teach them to not want to tank. I filled every gem slot I could with +def gems, in full Tier Zillion, and barely managed to hit 541. I was at 28k HP. GG. With all this 'uber gear' I was actually worse off than my tank on live, that's run naxx 10 twice. There's tier 9 you can buy near the coliseum, but apparently there's no set bonuses, and without those, they're pretty minor upgrades. I'm serious. Plus I put my one (pvp) meta gem in the helm already, and there's no one to transmute new ones that isn't putting them on the AH for LOLOL 99999 GOLD?

Whatever. Apparently, there's not a whole lot to even tank anyway, as the Argent Whatever Event isn't up yet, and joining a raid for the 'For the Horde' Achievement (ON THE PTR) is pretty low on my list of priorities. Then I realized that VOA has a new boss! Oh hey! Here we go!

First of all, I get grilled on why I rolled a premade, instead of bringing my 'real tank' over. Then I get quizzed on who my main is, on what realm and in which guild? Um, seriously? You do realize that I could just pull ANY name out of a hat, because it's the PTR and we aren't actually ON our toons, right? Then I finally get in a group, and the DK OT is like 'I hope you faggots all know the fight already'... because it's the PTR and we've had him on farm for months? I'm like 'this is my first time in here, what do I do' and he just /sighs, runs in, grabs aggro, and proceeds to stand in a fire until he dies, then rage quits.

Did I mention the PTR part yet?

So I go thru about 8 different ten man groups, and over the course of them, I begin to piece together a strat.

***SPOILERS INCOMING?*** (lol, as if anyone cares... people read strats or watch videos before the content is even released)

Here's my basic understanding of the fight, that evolved over time.

1) He does a spinning AoE fire breath thing, that from what I see, just needs to be healed through.

2) He casts Meteor Fist, which then proceeds to kill Izobelle.

3) He cleaves.

4) He drops fire on the ground, a la Magmadar.

At first, I thought the Meteor Fist ("MF" from here on) was interruptable (has a cast time), or that it needs to be split among the tanks. Turns out I was half right. It isn't interruptable. Looking at the debuffs (after I died, and it was just the other tank taking it), it turns out Meteor Fist is a debuff that 'splits damage with another target withing 10 yards'. So it's like the Lynx Boss (or bear) in Zul'Aman. You need to have the tanks stack on each other the whole time (or at least for MF). I'm not sure if it will automatically choose the 'next closest target' to the tank, or if it will randomly gib a rogue... see, it's the PTR, and while I was trying to figure shit like this out, other people were posting DPS charts and rage quitting because their underwear were getting all bunched up or whatever.

So I pieced this all together over the course of a whole evening, and the best attempt I had had him down to 50%.

Anyway, back to the fight.

It turns out (and again, this is just my observances), it's not anything that really requires taunting, or shifting aggro like I inititally thought. Just one tank takes a beating, while moving out of fire (and keeping HIM out of the fire, too... it puts a stacking buff on him that increases damage 5% per stack), and when MF is cast, both tanks need to take it (while melee *might* need to run out, a la Lightning Nova, not sure... that's if it chooses the second target randomly out of anyone within ten yards), then just continue to DPS the whole time.

There's no adds to deal with, and nothing spectacular other than moving while keeping the tanks stacked. In theory, it's a coordinated tanking movement intensive fight. That's pretty much the gist of it.

Now let's look back and c wut I did ther. Over the course of about 8 PUGs that fell apart because people are stupid and insecure, there was Izobelle, tanking a new boss, checking debuffs and combat logs after each wipe, and OMG FUCKING TESTING! Not running RFC. Not posting bullshit in the AH for LOLOLOL 7999 GOLD HAHA. Certainly not running for the instance exit like a fucking moron when a wipe was underway, and certainly not ragequitting when we didn't one shot the new boss that nobody had quite figured out yet.

I'm proud of myself for not instantly going to whatever.com and looking up strats, and for putting up with as much bullshit as I did. If I actually had a group of ten likeminded indivuals, I think we could have maybe got him down.

But then I get back to Dalaran, and what do I see?


PTR PVP GUILD FORMING. YOUR MAIN WILL BE ARMORIED. NO PREMADE TOONS. WE RUN AB/EOTS/WSG. NO SCRUBS ALLOWED.


/facepalm

[continue...]

Where Ixo Invades Europe!

Umm. Yeah!

Let's just say in my spare time I've been leveling a Night Elf rogue in secret! ON A EUROPEAN SERVER! And let's just say, for the sake of conversation, that silkworms are amazing animals that help provide humanity with all sorts of wonderful things that make the world go ROUND. LIKE IT'S A ROUND WORLD WE LIVE ON, AND WONDERFUL THINGS LIKE SILK ARE MADE POSSIBLE BY OUR FRIENDS THE SILKWORMS.

k? We all on the same page here? Did I lose a few of you? That's okay.

Now that that's out of the way, let's skip straight to the part where I tell everyone how much of a horrible rogue I am, and how much that class has/hasn't changed since I last really PLAYED (like PLAYED, not just LEVELED, see what I did there?) a rogue.

Yes, you still keep slice and dice up, while a rupture ticks, but now you also mutilate (from any direction! mutilating from behind is so 80's!) while keeping Hunger for Blood up, and you can forget about renewing your SnD stacks... in fact, a one point SnD magically becomes a 5 point one if you can envenom to the beat!

Ugh. I'm tired! I'm typing this up at 3am (3:54 as I hit 'publish post', time travel ftw! and yes, this honestly took me an hour to type up. read it slowly!), and I just finished a VOA where my dagger broke, mid-run... I suddenly noticed my unarmed skill climbing the pop charts and thought HUH... WHAT'S GOING ON THERE?

This is comical, because I was just chatting to my friend about how noob the run was because the attempt before my dagger broke, the MT apparently tried to hold all of Emalon's unbridled rage focused on him based on nothing but his charming good looks, since his sword and shield had both broke the last wipe (unbeknownst to us). So here I am, suddenly opening my character pane to see a little red ring of death enveloping my dagger in its deadly embrace.

Luckily, once I realized I was leveling my unarmed skillz, I swapped my OH to my MH slot (and then snapped off screenshots, lol), and began backstabbing like crazy. It's kind of funny that:

1) I still managed to pull around 1600 DPS with only one dagger (LOL WTF I STILL BEAT THE MAGE IN TOTAL DAMAGE DONE?! L2NOTDIE2CHAINLIGHTNINGPLX?)

b) No one called me on it

12) I already mentioned the whole "tank's crap just broke 5 min ago" so let's just move along... In my defense, I'm honestly just not used to wiping over and over on VOA.




Anyway... I passed all this info along to my Commander in Chief on the European front, and all she had in exchange was LoLs.

Who is that, you ask? Oh, perhaps you may recognize her from somewhere... ?


And here I was thinking I had an easy 'in' with Adrenaline, Larísa's guild, providing I could send tells from a level 80 alliance EUROPEAN toon! Turns out that she just takes out the trash after the guild is done raiding for the night! Don't be fooled, we are internet superstars only on these pages.... log into WoW, and that all goes down the tubes. We are but humble servants to the greater good of our guilds! Recently, I feel more of a slave to the whims of PUGs, but ALAS (!) that's a post for another night!

OH, I BET IT WOULD SOOOO BE DREAMY TO RAID WITH IXO! I BET HE TOPS EVERY METER; ALL THE TIME, ALWAYS!


More like: WTF, IXO. L2REPAIR AFTER WIPES.



friggin noob.



jeez!

:(

[continue...]

The Only Healing Macro You'll Ever Need.

Hint: You use it between pulls. In a pinch, it can also be used for tanks.








When pissy DPS start asking for meters, especially after a wipe, break this one out.


Immediately follow it up with "/raid OH GEE LOOK... LOOKS LIKE I DON'T CARE. LIKE, AT ALL."

Bonus points are given if you have 1st thru 4th place with the names of actual shitty DPS who always ask for meters (and hence, 'care a lot about them') filled in... but in a PUG, Billie and Scooter work fine, too.

Le Code:

MACRO NAME "CARE"
Icon: Spell_Holy_Silence (the "SHHHH" finger over the mouth)

/raid Recount - Caring Done for Overall Caring
/raid 1. Billie 2104161 (2043.2, 18.0%)
/raid 2. Freddy 1728345 (1723.8, 14.3%)
/raid 3. Scooter 145263 (1295.1, 11.2%)
/raid 4. Elmo 2156 (23.7, 1.8%)
/raid 5. Ixobelle 0 (0.0, 0%)


Enjoy.

[continue...]

Chinese MMOs FTW? (Aion)

So yeah, Aion. Um. It's pretty sweet. Like, really good. Bonus points for having hot asian pornstars show you how to set it up.

Wait... what?

I've casually heard about Aion in the news, as some up and coming 'next big thing' many times, but never really paid it much attention. The only thing that really gets my interest in a title is being able to download some (usually huge) client, and get my feet wet. I signed up for the Aion beta (I'm pretty sure), but never heard back, so meh.. Aion Schemion, right? Then I got some email from 'some random Matt' tipping me off to said asian pornstar's blog (nothing horribly unsafe for work on the front page), with instructions on how to get a ghetto english version up and running. I was intrigued to find out more about this half Japanese, half Chinese hot video gaming chick Chinese MMO.

There are basically two (1) links (2) you need to concern yourself with, don't bother digging into pictures of her wearing impossibly tiny underwear while picking up dropped items... it uhh... ahem... it won't get Aion installed any faster. Not that I would know. I'm just saying.

Anyway!

Aion!

So yeah. After downloading the client overnight, and not looking at any screenshots or anything before hand, I awoke in the morning to find the installer ready to go. What we're basically doing here is installing the full chinese client, and then borrowing a handy file someone graciously hosted on Rapidshare that's basically the entire English version language pack (hijacked from an install of the English beta, I imagine). So we end up in the Chinese version of the game, and everyone's name is kanji, and the only way to communicate with the populace is thru emotes (think: alliance/horde "communication" in WoW), but we can read quests and our interface! Hooray! It took me a while to actually get the client launched, but only because I was hammering some EXE int he folder itself, and not using the icon that was created for me on the desktop. I kept getting a Chinese error message, it probably said something like 'hey dipshit, WRONG ICON'.

Anyway.

At this point, the best thing to do is just show some pics, so this post is going to become a powerpoint slideshow here, with a few comments in between to illustrate what I'm showing. I've resized the pictures to 66% of my screensize (1650x1080 native, screenshots sized to 1109x693), but otherwise I'm not really going to bother cropping them or anything. You can click the 400px 'blogger' sized images for the full (well 66%) resolution images. Do yourself a favor and indulge one or two, the graphics are really frigging good.

So let's get rolling! First off, as I said, hot damn! This is what an MMO should look like. Darklol looked okay in certain areas, but Aion has every MMO I've seen thus far beat, hands down. It uses the fucking Crysis engine for chrissakes. Um, it looks nice. The client we DL and set up gives us 4 hours of play time, before it tells you you've run out of time and need to buy some. You're free to just make another account and play a different class or try the other race, whatever. This is, for all intents and purposes, a demo. You're getting a sneak peek. Be happy.

Let's start with the character creator, and let's make oh... I dunno... a cute girl? I'm sure tough guys in the audience are upset already, but suck it up. There are two races, basically the angels and demons. I rolled angels. The screenshots from the main prtion of the article are my preist, but I went back and took some SSes of the creator for you guys, so here's me making a warrior. The other two classes area mage, and scout (rogue). So like: tank, heals, melee, and ranged. Four classes, mirrored on the two factions. Let's go.

The character creator itself shows what you're eventually gonna look like, and everyone looks pretty bad ass! Once you select your class, it's into the customizer.

You can display your body in beginner clothes, undies, or tier 72. It's kind of a nice feature. There are 5 presets to choose from... short with little boobs, thin with big boobs, you get the idea... or you can customize everything yourself. The body sliders are all draggable, and you can create some freakish tall chick with overweight everything, but a tiny little head, if that's what floats your boat.

Then you choose your 'head'. Again, 23 presets, or a buch of different pieces to mix and match...

You can choose from 30 hairstyles, about 20 different faces, and the color of your lips, skin tone, and hair (but not eyes, oddly). Or you can just make one yourself. I LOVE this kind of crap. Even though people will rarely stop and inspect you close enough to actually see how much time you put into making your face, it's THERE.



In game, I found myself stopping to swing around and watch my toon yawn, and there are emotes like /smile that actually have you smiling. The face creator (and body creator) are top notch. Going back into WoW, and being like 'female orc, green like the Hulk, with a nosering' just feels lame. Every single orc has the exact same body. You can choose the skin tone, and one of eight 'face decals'. Aion really drives home that this is what a character creator looks like now. WoW is like a billion years old, and it shows.

So I've made my girl and she's out in the world. Now, here's where things reach familiar ground. It's been noted, and I'm not one to say otherwise, that Aion fits the mold set forth by WoW pretty comfortably. We have to remember that WoW didn't invent the MMO, it just refined it, and Aion isn't breaking any huge ground here. That doesn't bother me.

The UI feels solid and, most importantly, tight. I click a button, and have immediate feedback that something is happening. Global cooldowns are visibly displayed on the action bar, and in general, the UI is uncluttered, and things are where you expect to find them. For a while, I just used the UI as it first appeared, then I began to poke around a bit, and realized you could have the minimap up at the top of the screen, along with your healthbars, etc... the first ten pics here use the default, and then I switched it after a while (right around where I first saw my "wings"). A little tinkering in the options panel had me disabling 'click to move', and rebinding a few basic keys (click once to keep running forward, etc).

Mobs are detailed, and while the first bugs won't blow your mind, they're good. They feel right, animate smoothly, and combat isn't ... like... strange at all. The timing flows. This is something I always touch on in any of my reviews, and Aion nails it perfectly. Conan was awkward, and LotRO felt sluggish, but I grew used to it eventually. Aion requires no 'transition'. It just works. Both melee and casters. It's your standard 'autoattack, and push specials' system. In fact, everything feels standard, so I'm going to stop pointing that out from now on.

My healer was able to do battle proficiently, and in many cases being able to heal kept me alive where I would have otherwise died horribly. In fact, I never died in the four hours I played, but I came across stones you can 'bind' to should you die, so I imagine it's similar to Conan in that regard (rezzing at a 'spawn point'). An NPC also explained that rez sickness cuts into your damage done (and XP gained). But yeah. I'm leet. I didn't die.

The emotes were my main source of communication with the world at large, so I dragged few onto my bar. Things like /point, and /beg would indicate that I wanted help killing yon monster. There are a ton of emotes, and they're all artfully animated. You can even summon a chair to sit on. Hm.

I'm not a huge fan of RPing or /dance commands, but it all just ties into the art level of the game. Everything is done right. WoW machinima has about 4 different 'moves' at its disposal, so you always see humans doing that 'the fish was THIS big' arm motion, or dwarves shaking their ass. Aion has a ton of animations, and when you character just stands idle, their facial animations change from bored to curious to whatever. Again, this just feels like a game released NOW, not a billion years ago.

I didn't try any crafting tradeskills, but the basic 'gathering' profession covers everything from plants to ore to whatever. You start able to pick basic flowers at level 1, and can skill up to 10 where you can harvest fruit trees, and then 15 where you can mine ore. Didn't see too much past that, but I like that it's all one 'bend over and pick shit up' skill, instead of being like 'oh herbs are cool, but no rocks for you'. There's also a fail meter incorporated into the gathering. Two meters fill up (pass / fail), and depending on which one reaches the end first, you pass or fail. Pretty straightforward. It's a change, but not interactive, which sucks.


The macro window, which I stumbled across just pressing random buttons trying to figure out keybindings looks pretty involved, and this seems a little scary at first glance. Timings are programmable, which means you can execute move A, then wait 3 seconds, and then input move B. Click the next screen for a closer look.

This is because combat eventually builds into chains (which I didn't level high enough to explore). Similar to a Rogue's Sinister Strike > Rupture, certain moves lead into others. It's actually more like Warhammer's Black Ork, where Move A unlocks Move B, which unlocks Move C, but you can't go from A to C, etc. This type of system is generally referred to as gated combat. So I imagine eventually you can make a macro that says 'do move 1, then wait 2 seconds for it to perform, then do move 2'. That sounds as exciting as pushing speed dial on a telephone, but I'll with hold judgement until I see it first hand. There are certain hooks that can't be called into macros, but I only briefly browsed the 'examples' tab, then closed it looking for my quest window.

Quests! there are three varieties. Quests (basic), Missions (longer, usually span the course of a few quests), and Work Orders (which I didn't find any of, perhaps they're tradeskill based). Quest and Mission givers use different icons over their heads so you can see who's giving what, and all NPCs that you need to see are clearly marked on your map (no need for Quest Helper, hooray). The star below is a Mission giver, quests use little chevron shaped arrows (a blue one can be seen in the far right of the below shot).


You can see the various tabs in your quest log...

The World map is pretty nicely done, and is shown with the M key.

One nice feature that reminds me a bit of Diablo is the ability to show a semi transparent version of the same map by pressing N instead. It's handy when running to turn in a quest.

Here you can see mme looting my first ZOMG epic drop, a green sword (that my priest can't use /cry)

Overall, the armor and gear stuff looks really well done, but I didn't see enough to really get a chance to see many variations. The stuff I did see was very detailed, but I hope there aren't like 3 different 'level 10 jerkins' that everyone is wearing. That sucks when everyone looks the same. Here's my first actual gear upgrade, a new pair of boots (before and after):

I had those in my bag from a quest, but had to wait to ding to wear them. About every piece of gear has sockets, and you can equip managems with various stats in them. +Hit, +MP, etc. Pretty basic. Training is done in the form of books, and you can actually buy the books beforehand and have them in your bag to read the instant you ding, which is kind of nice.


Vendors also have a single 'buy all my junk' button, which makes emptying bags a painless affair. I bought a larger bag from some cat guy in town that just looked really cool. You can see he has a quest for me as well. And aha! I've changed my UI... unit frames and minimap up top from here on out.

The NPCs (again, this is getting old saying it) just look really cool! Speaking of cool, one quest I did had a flashback sequence where I was shown my wings...

Now, I wasn't actually flying, this was just a cutscene on a rail, but as I understand it, at level 10, you earn your wings, and can pop these out at will. The animation of the wings is everything you could hope for, they look awesome. Apparently in some zones you can't fly (lame), but even in those zones you can still glide... just double jumping pops your wings out and allows you to coast to far away levels. I reached level 7 before my 'trial' ran out, but at one point I just got up to go do something, and the game didn't kick me out for a while, so there was a good chunk of my trial wasted (it's 4 hours total). I think I could grind out 10 if I wasn't soaking it all up, but I really don't care at this point.

Another set of wings is given for the taxi service... flying between towns has some bird spirit lift you up and fly you to where you're going...

A few extra random shots... me grouped with two Chinese guys, clearing out a strip mining area... they were both melee, and I healed. I had a HoT and basic heal, plus two buffs (fort and kings, kinda). Healing felt responsive, and grouping felt solid. One thing to mention is that I was constantly bombarded with group or 'alliance' invites, only to have something spammed, then the group fall apart. I imagine this is like gold selling or something? No idea what any of the messages said, so yeah. I eventually just enabled the 'block invites' option and invited people myself that were visible in my surrounding area.

Idle pose / animation...

..and out of time :( You get reminders every so often how much time you have left, so it wasn't a huge shock when it finally happened.

Conclusion:

Here's the big wrap up, although it's pretty basic. I like Aion. I like it a lot. If it was available in English full time, I'd sign up right now. I won't subscribe to the Chinese client, but may give another 4 hour spin on one of each class. I still haven't even tried the other faction. I'm not sure how deep the end game is, or how deep the dungeons are. I have no idea if there's any kind of PvP, but here's the BIG thing for me: In the first five and ten minutes of playing, I was having FUN. That was what initially got me hooked on WoW. The sense that 'here's a game that's fun to play, I want to see what's over there, and what new spell I get when I ding'. Many recent games feel like the starting zone is just a chore, and I don't feel like I'm interested in slogging thru some bullshit area, hoping the game will get fun later.

Aion isn't some huge revolutionary thing. It's WoW, but updated graphically (a lot!), and with brand new classes to learn the ins and outs of. Yes, you've played a warrior or priest in WoW, but this is a variation on the theme, at least... it's not Mortal Strike and Smite. I've said before that I wish WoW was like Unreal, and that they would just release their engine so companies could make WoW-mods. This is as close to that realized as I've seen. The combat feels tight like WoW, the UI is solid like WoW, but the graphics are light years ahead, and everything feels different enough to be interesting, while not being alienating. I'm getting old, so the familiarity is welcome. I don't need to learn a whole new game. That isn't a horrible thing. People will turn up their nose, but fuck those people, basically. I can enjoy the game whether they like it or not.

I think you'll find, if you give the game a chance, that it's a well executed vision. That, to me, is what counts. They know what they wanted to do, and they've done it. How the game lasts one week in or one year in remain to be seen, but I think it's safe to say I will see, when it's finally released over here.

Again, the links mentioned way up in the second paragraph will get you running an english UI on the chinese client, which means you can basically check it out right now. Signing up for the beta means you might not get picked, and even if you are, the beta is being done in lame 'weekend events' where it's only open for two days, then closed for another 3 weeks. This option is infinitely more accesible to those of us who take their gaming time when they can get it.

Enjoy.

[continue...]

A Server By Any Other Name...

...is still just a server.

The bank in Dalaran and the AH in Ogrimmar are the same no matter where you go, it's only the names in Trade and General that ever change. But I found myself with an itch to scratch, and found Cho'gall wanting recently. I came to Cho'gall following my friend Tragedy, having never heard of it before he told me that that's where the crew was headed. Many of the people I've played WoW with over the years have come and gone... gone to a new server (Scilla), come back to the old server (Daggerspine), then even gone back to Scilla again in a strange twist that just gives me a headache even thinking about it. I went Oceanic for a while after having moved to Japan, and met a few cool kids on this side of the ocean (Aussies and New Zealanders, for the most part), and for a short while I was the only native English speaker in a guild called Band of Hawks that was all a bunch of folks from Singapore. I've spent close to (maybe over?) 500 dollars on paid character transfers alone... there's a statistic for the Blizzard Microtransaction crowd to chew on.

My old account with three end game 70s got banned, but I've built up a new stable of end game 80s. I fill the trinity nicely (prot tank, healing priest, warlock deeps), and enjoy being able to send "relogging, brb" tells to anyone in LFG regardless of what role they need filled. This tends to be a problem with the transfer costs, though, because that's 75 bucks to switch servers. That's 5 months worth of WoW. Then I get to my new destination and find it's the same as it ever was.

Plus I need to figure out how to go from this:

to this:


...on a number of toons, because bank alts are effectively disposable (minus the soulbound bags and/or purchased guild bank tabs, ugh).

At any rate, my priest has struck off to a new home, but I'm weary this time, and have sent her off to scout ahead. What has she found? Well, damn... medium pop PVE servers are dead as hell during my primetime. Oh yeah, and PVE to PVP transfers are doable now, so there's that, too. Kul Tiras, new new home away from home, is pretty... ummm... how can I put this lightly? "Noob". Cho'gall is pretty "OMFGLEETZ" which means you get told to GTFO of VOA10 if you're caught dead wearing an iLevel 174 trinket, god forbid it's green. My warlock pushes around 4700+ DPS on Emalon, but that seems normal to me. The three times I've tried VOA10 on Kul Tiras, the top DPS was a hunter pulling 2100, and needless to say we died. The attitude displayed was a fresh breath of air, though... here was a group willing to brush themselves off and throw themselves at it again, where the instant a tank dies on Cho'gall, rogues are vanishing and sprinting for the door, already out of the raid, before the wipe even begins in earnest. I was awestruck by the group of people that had no idea just how much they failed, and we tried it two more times, but to no avail. Wtf is going on here, I wondered.

The intersection by the Dalaran bank features never before seen [Tumbleweeds] rolling by, but the people you do bump into seem genuine. This could be something nice, but I'm still holding off bringing the warrior and warlock over for now. For one thing I can swap servers and find a zillion runs going on Cho'gall at any time of the night. When Kul Tiras sleeps, it SLEEPS, and I remember how 'in Japan' I am.

July 6th I head back home, though, so maybe everything will slide into place. Then again, in that case, I'd be back in Cho'gall prime time too... 7:1 Horde:Alliance ratio be damned. I've finally gotten Tenacity in Kul Tiras, even though it was only two stacks. On Cho'gall, anything less than 18 stacks on Alliance is cause for celebration. Horde will NEVER get Against the Odds on Cho'gall. Ever.

At any rate, we'll see how it pans out. I've been curious to poke around and meet other people in the WoW since Trag quit playing and GOT ALL EMO AND ONLY PLAYS FACEBOOK NOW. LIKE A BIG DUMB LOSER. Anyone else got a server worth checking out? I wanted to hijack Larísa's guild, but alas, Alliance side European was a bit too much of a hurdle. Any of you other noobs got a server that's worth a damn?

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How to Get Shot in America

Actually, I doubt very much that there needs to be any sort of guide on how to get shot in America, you can probably get it done fairly quickly without much trying. I think this may speed up the process, though, if you're feeling particularly lazy.

In Japan, guns are rare. The cops have them, but never use them. Homicides in Japan are pretty rare (well, compared to suicides, anyway), and they usually involve knives or blunt objects. The nightly news shows someone robbing the local 7-11 with a steak knife. I think in America you might get laughed at for trying to rob a joint with a pointy object.

The homicides over here tend to be pretty weird, too. Just locally, here in Okayama, we had an incident a decade or so back (before I got here), where a kid was getting bullied at school. This is a typical practice, but the Japanese school kids take it to psychological extremes (rather than physical). Also, while anywhere kids just want to 'fit in', it's especially pronounced here, and when Ijime rears its head, it's usually pretty harsh. One kid finally flipped the fuck out, killed the kid that was bullying him, cut off his fucking head, and stuck it on a post on the school gate, so everyone could see it as they filed into school the next day. Another child recently murdered his mom, cut her body up, spray painted each piece white (???), and buried them in a tub on the family balcony that had been made into a planter box.

wtf...

ANYWAY!

This isn't some analysis of Japans homicides, it's a guide on how to get shot! It's pretty simple, actually:

Step one: Buy a toy gun in Japan.
Step two: Go wave it around in America.
Step three: Dial 911, because you just got shot.

See, over here, nobody has guns, so the 'toy gun' industry is pretty realistic. You can buy anything from a Tec-9 to an MP5 to a Desert Eagle or Glock at the local hobby shop, and hot damn if they don't look like the real thing. For 20 bucks you get one that, while real-looking from a distance, it obviously plactic and feels pretty cheap in your hand. But for 100 you get a full metal version with removable clip, cocking action and the ability to honestly pistol whip someone upside the head and leave a gash. In America, toy guns need to be bright orange or somehow indicate that they aren't real from a distance so police don't shoot you dead on accident.






I'm tempted to buy one, just because I can. I bought a stilleto when I went to Italy, but that was a long time ago. The sad fact is that I could probably buy a real gun in America for even less. Then again, I'm not exactly Clark Kent, mild mannered reporter, and I imagine if anyone pissed me off, I'd just go home and get my gun and shoot them before I could talk myself out of it. I imagine a lot of people are in the same boat, emotionally, and that's kind of a reason why we have so many shootings in the states. Better to not even have the avenue available in the first place. This can turn into some big discussion on gun control, but it's my blog, and I think the amount of guns in the hands of stupid people in America is ridiculous. There's a reason having a pipe bomb is illegal, but for some reason having a Glock with a 20 round clip is A-OK, because in 1492, Christopher Columbus signed the Declaration of Independence with Abraham Lincoln, and The Right To Bear Arms was included as a side note. Or whatever. It's all very silly.

People don't like being told what they can and can't do/have, and if they want to dual wield Big Macs with a bandoleer full of claymores strapped to their chest, it's their Rite as an Amaricun (goddammit!) to do so. Cold dead hands, etc etc etc...

/sigh

A toy gun, on the other hand, can't kill anyone, but could still be used to effectively rob the neighborhood 7-11 if desired, and who doesn't want THAT option available to them at a moment's notice?

: /

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Where Ixo RPs Being Black

/sigh

Oh, World of Warcraft. Why must you remind me every so often why I don't bother even trying to get my wife to play you? That, were she to log in and find trade channel flooded one day about Those Fucking Japs and Their Slanty Eyed Bitch Women, she might question what it is I find engaging about the game in the first place? Oh, honey, don't mind Moxxi, he's just a white guy, and when white people get on the internet, they use the internet cloaking field in a unique way... they become anonymous, but they insist on letting everyone know they're anonymous WHITE PEOPLE, and proceed to drag themselves back and forth in the shit trough of Trade, trying to outdo each other in complete and utter foulness. There are things I like about WoW, but a lot of the time, I'd be embarrased if anyone I knew read what I read day in and day out in Ogrimmar trade while trying to get a group together for whatever... HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE A BLACK WOMAN TO TAKE A SHIT? 9 MONTHS LOLOL GET IT? You stay classy, Trade chat. Ugh.

So here's me, proving a point. Moxxi, a paladin on my server is especially... um... ignorable. I usually get him on there pretty quick, but today I was on my rogue, leveling around the mid forties. Out of nowhere, he (or apparently, someone on his account, see below) calls someone out as "being a nigger IRL", and suggests that we should lynch said person. I reply with '...' and for some reason he decides to take it into tells at that point. Just to try and illustrate a point, that not everyone on the internet is a white male, I tell him I'm black. Maybe it will give him pause.

(I've tweaked the color here a bit to help distinguish tells to and from)

As I said, I usually have this guy on ignore. So within an hour of logging on my rogue, I come across this. Lord knows how much he's doing, day in and day out while I'm on my priest or warlock or warrior, all which have him muted.

Again, I'm not trying to rescue WoW, or even say anything is going to change here, but I just don't understand

1) the NEED to be as much of an offensive asshole as possible (yes, the internet dickwad theory, blah blah, it's not new)

2) Blizzard's complete disregard in cases like this.

Just for kicks, I opened a ticket, explaining that I was black, and that I found this offensive. This is purely for the point of this article. Nothing will happen. That's the only point I'm trying to make. I don't usually report people, because I know this to be the case.

You'll notice that my only public response was '...', and that our mutual friend here immediately went into 'niggers are inferior' mode in private tells without breaking stride. Maybe he has Nigger Macros™. Blizzard won't take any action against this account, though, because that's a lost subscription. The most they'll do is put a 3 hour ban on it (probably while he sleeps), and Moxxi will be right back in Trade after a healthy, balanced breakfast, and ready to take on the Jews or the Chinese. Yes, mother Blizzard doesn't wish to lose Moxxi's 15 dollars a month, but is there just NO precedent for someone that just gets tired of their inaction and quits the game because they're sick of seeing it? How must it feel for someone that's actually black, to know they enjoy the game, but just have to ignore all the dipshits tryign to look tough for their e-thug pals (ironic that they're acting like tough ghetto youth, the same thing they're demonizing)? Maybe black people are just used to Internet Whiteboy Syndrome already?

Leave trade chat.

There's a solution, except why should we as consumers need to limit our exposure to the full game, when we aren't the ones crapping all over it? I don't enable the 'Mature Language Filter', because I don't care if someone says fuck (there, I just said it myself), but Fucking Nigger Bitch That Should Swing By The Neck is kind of another story. Plus, I'm mature. I'm an adult. I think of that toggle switch as something for your 8 year old son, but who wants their son playing this garbage?

I just had a birthday, and I've just managed to reach the far side of that oh so coveted 18-34 year old demographic. I'm old. Like dirt. I think this is one of the reasons I'm more interested in thinking of formulas or systems for MMOs. Playing them is wearing a little thin, but it's something I enjoy doing. I'm not sure how much longer I can go on 'just playing' them, though. The first M is starting to grate on me, and I'm running out of patience to just wade through the bullshit looking for a reason to enjoy my time in Azeroth. With the genre getting bigger (or having gotten this big, even if its growth is slowing), there are just too many idiots to trip over on the way to check my mail.

When does a new version of Halo come out? Isn't anyone working on that? Jeez, hurry it up already. The last version that came out left WoW a ghost town for a week or so.

That was nice. : /

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My Wife Plays Facebook

I think I finally get it. Facebook isn't a website, it's an RLMMO with horrible framerates. The graphics engine is so bad, in fact, that you manually have to press the 'display new frame' button yourself (default keybinding: F5). I'm horrible at these games, and generally tend to log in to find myself surrounded by strange quest givers asking me to pinch or wink or do something strange to a bunch of other people on some ingame friends list I've never heard of, then I get frustrated and log off. My wife plays Facebook all the time, though, and doesn't understand why I don't join her online in her digital pasttime of choice more often. I just really don't see the 'fun' buried among all the crap.

Now let's take a hypothetical step back: My husband plays some dungeons and dragons game called World of Warcraft with a bunch of people he's never met face to face. Looking over his shoulder, it looks so horribly complicated that I can't imagine how he derives any sort of pleasure from such a 'game'. He even has a separate, extra little keyboard he needs to use to play it. Two keyboards? For a game?! On top of that, the people I hear on the speakers are always shouting or cursing at each other, and my husband is usually frustrated after he logs off, because something didn't go well, or some person was angry about something or other. How is this a 'fun' activity at all?

I mean, right?

Different strokes for different folks, but in many ways, Facebook and WoW are two slices from the same pie: online entertainment. The internet is so... weird... when you think too hard about it. It has so many different sides and angles to view it from. Of course each person is going to approach it from a different direction, and take what they want from it. Your grandma may use it exclusively for apple pie recipes. She has an apple pie forum she moderates, and in her own little corner of the internet, she's a superhero. Some people have no idea whatsoever how a web browser even works. I saw my sister in law trying to register some new virus software she bought as part of the install process, and she'd hover the mouse over a link and hit enter on the keyboard. Twice. Like she was double clicking it; never mind that links only require one (mouse) click.

When we roll our eyes at Twitter, or turn our noses up at Facebook and it's ilk, it's healthy to take a step back and realize that we're Twittering ourselves every time we link a drop in guildchat for the guildies not in the raid. Is a friends list or guild roster any different than belonging to a 'knitting' group on a social site?

The first thing I did when I logged onto Facebook for the first time was delete everything I saw. This comic nailed it on the head so perfectly it was a little eerie:


My wife is just used to all that extra stuff, but then I look at my UI for WoW. Is Grid any different than SuperWall? MonkeyQuest tracks my quests, I'm sure my wife has some notification system for who's logged in and what they posted. I imagine the best way to get my wife to play WoW with me (not going to happen, but hey) would require starting with the vanilla UI, just like I did for the first time.

When the kid goes to sleep, and we're catching up online, it's easy to forget we're both essentially playing our separate little games, it's just that hers has god awful graphics, no epic drops, and although I've played her little game, and have an account there, SHE'S NEVER PLAYED A SINGLE SECOND OF WORLD OF WARCRAFT AND IT BURNS MY SOUL TO KNOW I'VE TRIED REACHING OUT TO HER IN HER DUMB LITTLE GAME AND SHE NEVER WANTS TO PLAY MINE. GOD! I THOUGHT RELATIONSHIPS WERE ABOUT SHARING. FUCK THIS I'M OUTTA HERE.

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