Grimm noticed this first, but it’s hit me, too.  The Apothecary bosses are just horrible on pets. Grimm at least has a HoT heal for his (that also cleanses). Phil the Phelguard doesn’t have a chance. I was able to recover slightly by bringing out Iggy the Imp and, as long as he followed me, keep him alive.

What this fight does is highlight what someone else was saying elsewhere; Blizz is making it hard on our pets, and for those of us for which pets are significant (hello, BM Hunters and Demon Warlocks!), this causes a major drop in our usefulness to the team.

So much for “Avoidance is the answer”.

Moving on.

I’d like to introduce you to Squicky, isn’t he the cutest lil thing? His hobbies include eating rats, moles, mice, small cats, and beagles when he’s really hungry (and really big).  I like hanging out in the tram station with him just to watch him chase the rats.

Over the past 48 or so hours, there has been much trash-talking about the Ensidia world-first kill of Arthas (and subsequent fallout).  People are weighing in on both sides.

One prevailing viewpoint of the pro-Ensidia crowd is that Blizzard failed to test the software “properly” and thus, somehow and ergo, Ensidia is blameless in this situation.

What utter, profound crap.

Let me essplain.  No – it is too much. Let me summarize.

There is a rule of thumb in the software testing world, which boils down to this:  “to attack the software properly, you have to think like a criminal” – such as , for example, when dealing with things like credit card processing – the storage of account numbers and so forth, especially. The designer will tell you how it’s supposed to work under normal conditions. You get to figure out what he didn’t think of, the cracks in the shell that you can exploit.

So; this rule of thumb helps one find good testers, but it begs the question as to how to “catch a thief”! Until you’ve sat in the seat of an interviewer, you really don’t know how difficult it is to find a mediocre tester, much less a world-class game buster.  To “catch a thief” to work on your team, you kinda have to think like one, too.

So that’s one issue.

Another issue is what I like to summarize as “the view is really good from the cheap seats”. Really, until you’ve actually been put in the place of finding bugs as your bread and butter, you really have no idea what you’re talking about when you criticize the work done by the testers in this situation. You really, really, don’t. You have no idea what kind of guidelines they were given. You have no idea what level of knowledge they were given about how the encounter was supposed to progress, nor how complete the testing environment was. You have no idea, at all, how this was tested, or even if it was testable.

So sure, go ahead and talk trash all you want, but those of us that work in the industry know exactly how hollow and foolish your critiques are.

Walk a mile in my shoes, and we have common ground to talk.  You can make real critiques at that point, not a bunch of generalities that mean absolutely nothing.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Regarding Ensidia; Grimm said this elsewhere, but I will reiterate now.  You don’t play this game for five years, earn a seat in one of the premier raiding guilds in the world, and somehow not know that this was an exploit. Saronite bombs are to be thrown at the enemy, not collapsed portions of a platform, and the enemy was not standing on collapsed parts of the platform. No, this was deliberate. And anyone that’s been playing that long would know it.

To whine that they’re victims of faulty QA is disingenuous at best. That QA team didn’t make them toss bombs off where they would (theoretically) do no good.  That QA team didn’t force them to take the achievement. That QA team didn’t keep them from reporting the issue.The QA team didn’t make them crow at their achievement.

-=-=-=-=-=-

An analogy, and then I will shut up on this topic.

You are walking through a mall. Ahead of you, a woman’s purse has a broken strap, and the wallet has fallen out. When it hits the ground, a bunch of $50 bills spill out on the ground. She continues on, unaware of the incident.

If you take the money and toss her wallet, who’s in the wrong?  Sure, she should have fixed the purse, secured the wallet. But does that in any way excuse theft? I don’t think so.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Ensidia, I’m sorry that you didn’t get a nice set of steak knives, but maybe next time you will use your heads and not risk your reputation on something so obvious. Or if you do (and I suspect you will), I hope you can at least own up to your stupidity next time.

Oh, and gratz to Paragon, that did it without exploits.

Can you feel it? It is calling in the air.

I’m not naming names. I’m not even promising to be true to the gender involved. I’m not trying to start a fight. I am making an observation. Kapitch?

What happened to me this morning is that I was reading what is considered by all to be a well-informed, rounded blog specific to one specific class.  I have been reading that blog for some time. But, today, for whatever reason, I while I was reading it, I realized, of a sudden, that I had no idea – none at all – if the author was actually enjoying the activities described therein, or if it was just another notch, just another boss, just another data point.

And that got me thinking.

What’s your first-best love?

Do you play the class you love the most, or do you play a class or spec that is needed, for whatever reason, more than your favorite?

If you blog about this silly game, do you blog about what you do, or what you want to do?

I’m reminded of the blogger that most influenced me at first, the guy that taught me that it was good to be enthusiastic and happy and, well, maybe even gush a little about how much fun he was happening.  BRK may be gone, but he is not forgotten, and the post that most reminds me of the outright fun he brought to the game would be the time he had Hobbes tanking the adds in the Moroes encounter.

He was analytical. He was helpful. But, most of all, he was having a hella good time.

He not only helped me enjoy the game … he got me to start playing the game again. I had quit. Deleted all my toons. I was just reading because WoW was, still, interesting in some way¹.  But this guy’s enthusiasm and joy in what he was doing drove home an important lesson to me – It’s a game! Have some fun, FFS!

When I tanked one of the Four Horsemen in Naxx, I had that in mind. This is how we huntard, babee! Bringing you Pewpew and RAWR in one handsome package! If I had Megan’s soul², I’d even do a song about it! Alas, the best you get from me is fish puns, and links to people with actual talent.

Contemplate, for a moment, this post’s titular question.

Frustration and sadness arise when you are kept from what you love. You may have a sense of duty, or loyalty, or something else, that drives you to do that which you do not enjoy as much.  Sometimes, we all have to be “grownups” and do what needs to be done, indeed! But if you don’t recognize that which makes you tick, and embrace it, and nurture it … what kind of experience do you believe you will get from this game?

I firmly believe that if you aren’t having fun, it’s not a game. It’s a job, and probably one with no pay.

Now that this love has overcome me …
Now that this fire is burning bright …
All of these words seem just beyond my reasoning.
Be still my soul …

1. I actually found him via wow.com, so let it never be said that they don’t have their moments. [↩]
2. No, not the ones in her shard bag! [↩]

It’s wonderful¹  that a week after you write up a post about how wonderful your guild is and how proud you are at the accomplishment of your guildmates … a couple of divas screw it all up.

Coming off a successful run, we were plodding through Naxx a bit slower this week, nowhere where we wanted to be, and stalling in odd places. Spider wing went smartly, but Gothik gave us fits.

We picked up Saturday, and one-shot Gothik, 4 horsies, Noth, Heigan, Loatheb, and Patchwerk. I had noticed that our off-tank was getting a little happy with chain pulls but figured somebody in charge was dealing with it.

We started on Grobbulus and the OT got aggro on the boss. The MT … stepped aside. “Well if you want to MT, then MT.”  The OT basically says “I don’t need this shit” and DCs. Then the MT leaves the raid and logs.

Leaving two healers and six DPS locked up in a room with one very angry … thing.  With a hypo where his hand should be.²

So this one’s for you, my passive-agressive tanking pals: GROW THE FRAK UP.

Thank you.

1. In some alternate universe [↩]
2. Afterword: Sunday we downed everything up to K’T. Same MT, different OT. No further comment. [↩]

It’s happening everywhere. One blog after another is dropping off the face of the planet. In many cases, the people are still in the game, but they’ve lost interest in blogging about it. In other cases, they’re dropping out of the game, and why blog about something that you don’t do any more?

I’m starting to feel like I land somewhere in between “done with blogging” and “done with the game”.

Looking back, even when our guild was being torn apart by drama and we were failing one attempt after another on Maiden, it was fun and interesting. Now, when similar things happen, I can’t even bring myself to blog about it. Our guild did go through another upheaval, and we’ve been bashing against our first Naxx bosses, and I haven’t said word one about it. In fact, we downed our first two Naxx bosses two nights ago, as a guild, and I haven’t said squat. Jasra got a belt and everything.

I started to blog about the big bruhaha around Curse and WoWI’s blocking of WoWMatrix (and also WUU, by the way). It’s still in draft form. I realized that no matter which side you fall on, that’s the side you’re on and you won’t see reason either way. They’re either evil or they’re justified¹.

I have a mostly complete How to Huntard entry on Pets. It’s still in draft form, for at least a month. Even then, though, there was a voice in the back of my head. Why bother? Nobody will care about something that isn’t a cookie-cutter recipe they can follow.

So many topics, so many aborted posts.

And then there’s Noble Garden.

I started to blog about that, too. About how Blizzard has taken something that was fun, and used it to give satisfaction and justification to people who have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.² The other day, I went to one of the lowbie towns just to watch. You should, too. Watch your fellow players. Just watch. I’ve seen behavior like that before, but it wasn’t from a group that would flatter the people that I was watching, I can assure you. Selfish, grabby, rude … adjectives fail me. Adverbs too. I’ve rarely been so ashamed to be with a group of people as I was just being logged on in that place at that time.

Within our own guild, I see the same thing. One player the other night refused to come to the instance with the rest of us, but instead insisted that we summon him when we were all there. Wasn’t my run, so I didn’t kick him, but in retrospect I wish I had walked out of that run right here. I was part of the problem, that night, but I failed to live up to my own standards just to avoid more “drama”.

A feeling has been building, permeating my gaming experience since the release of the expansion. Blizzard has gone to what seems to be extraordinary lengths to make the game less interesting and less satisfying to those that like to work for their accomplishments. They have implemented a lot of great stuff, such as phasing, and yet time and time again they have opened the game to griefers and slackers, making any accomplishment you might achieve meaningless, except in how much asshattery you might be willing to tolerate (hello, SoH dailies!).

Finished Naxx? Did that in a PuG. In one night? That too. Ulduar? Give it time. Didn’t get the drops you wanted? Go buy them. It’s all about the benjamins, baby. People don’t matter. Loyalty doesn’t matter. Effort is overrated. All you have to do is click faster than the other guy.

Even the armor is homegenized. I can’t believe that I actally miss the clown suit days of BC, but I do. There is nothing in the armor I wear that is any different than any number of epic drops from any number of bosses. It all looks alike. How can you be proud of what you’ve done when there is no visible indication at all of it? Unless they /inspect you they have no idea if what you’re wearing is PvP gear, Naxx gear, crafted, quest item, or welfare.

Little by little, the fun is being sucked out of the old game.

It hasn’t reached the point where I’m dropping out of blogging or the game just yet. But the day may be closer than ever before. Maybe you feel the same way; know that you are not alone and that it’s OK to be pissed off about it. Your perceptions aren’t skewed – it really is that bad. Too many people have said as much. Too many people have given up on this game. More people every day are looking at the  login screen and saying “Meh. I think I’ll go play Civ 4 today, that sounds like more fun.”

There is nothing I can do to stem the tide. Blizzard only understands the bottom line, and me leaving won’t be noticed if another million people start playing between now and then. As a group, yes, we could make a dent, but it’s obvious to me that most people in the game now are the kind that do not care, as long as they get that title and that drake and whatever else that the game owes them. Chances are, people like us are already leaving and nobody can notice. We are insubstantial to the bottom line viewpoint.

Thus, leaving the game is less a form of protest than it is a funeral service. It has a sense of finality to it. If that analogy holds, then perhaps I’m starting the mourning process. Maybe this is the time between when the corpse is on the slab, and in the grave.

The good news is that there should be a wake between those two points. I hope it’s a good one.

On the other hand, once I get this out of my system, perhaps I’ll be ready to go on, delusional or not.

WTB fun.

Nota bene: comments are disabled. I’m not looking for sympathy or justification, nor am I interested in a debate.

1. I would also add: bad programmers, but that’s just how I roll. [↩]
2. That big purple drake? Meaningless. It’s a welfare epic as far as I’m concerned. [↩]

The game is still changing, and I wonder sometimes if it truly is for the better. Well, probably better for Blizzard, but for the game itself? I wonder.

A few years ago, when Grimmtooth Mk 1 (the warrior) was around, the night sky was dark, and the day sky was blue, and that was that. Then we got weather, which made both more interesting.

And then they … nerfed … the night.

Instead of making it dark at night, it got dingier – and later on, that, too, was considered to be too hard-core for casual players or something. So now, the sky gets starry but it doesn’t get dark.

In one way I appreciate it, because nothing annoys me more than someone sacrificing playability at the altar of “realism”.  In another, I regret it, because it hinders immersion.

Over the years, Blizzard has been hard at work nerfing things.

• Can’t be bothered to explore for quest givers? No problem, we’ll put happy exclamation points on the mini map.  Nerf exploration!
• Weather effects got you down? No problem, we’ll turn that sandstorm into a mild breeze. Nerf the weather!
• That grind to 40 got you down? Now you can get that mount at level 30! Nerf persistence!
• Warlocks and Pallis feeling put upon for that epic mount? Well, let’s make it trainable! Same for you, Druids! Nerf uniqueness!
• Can’t be bothered to read text telling you where the next trainer is? Fine, all the trainers can train everything¹! Nerf reading comprehension!
• Creating poison a burden for your rogue? Here, you can buy it at Wal*Mart. Yep, an entire crafting profession was eliminated. Nerf the whole darned poison system!
• Envious of those engineers and their unique mechanical mounts²? Here’s the chopper, they can sell it to you. Nerf uniqueness, again!

With 3.1, more nerfs are incoming. Here are the highlights I am currently aware of.

• Cooking recipes – spices and other reagents won’t be required for most recipes. Nerf buying things!
• All secondary skills requiring books for advanced training no longer require them. Now you won’t ever have to set foot in Ashenvale again, I guess.  Never more that trip to Stromgarde to get the first aid books³.  Nerf effort!
• Never again “fail” at gathering skills. Hello? I think it’s hysterical that you can fail at picking flowers right now. What’s not to love? Nerf the RNG!
• Flint and Tinder no longer required for campfire. First they made it so you didn’t need wood. Now you don’t need fire. Nerf physics!
• Fishing time reduced. Fishing is no longer fishing, it is a manufacturing and harvesting process. Nerf patience!
• You can now fish anywhere, you just won’t get good stuff in places that require skill. Meh. Kinda neutral about that one, though overall I think it’s a good thing. Nerf artificial level barriers!

They seem intent on removing all the challenge from the trade skill mini-game, and overall anything even remotely deemed inconvenient to people that just can’t stand to spend even another day in Old Azeroth, much less Outland. Or to stifle the bleats of all those people out there that feel entitled to something without doing anything to earn it⁴.

It makes me a little sad to see this come to pass. There are places now that nobody will ever visit. That vendor in the lowest level shanty in Booty Bay. That obscure vendor on the lake in Ashenvale. That warlock guy that used to give out the mount quest. That poor reagent vendor in Stromgarde that sells three first aid books.

They join the ranks of all the specialty trainers scattered around Azeroth. Who can remember where the three Leatherworking specialty trainers are, as an example?⁵

I wonder if they’ll further nerf first aid by removing the quest in Theramore and just make the guy sell you the trade skill⁶.?

I wonder if they’ll actually put a JC trainer in every capital city?  Wanna nerf something and be appreciated for it? Do that for us.  Ku will thank you.

1. With very odd exceptions here and there. [↩]
2. Given the difficulty of skilling up engineering, I always thought it was an appropriate reward for sticking with it for that long. [↩]
3. And fewer opportunities to profit from others’ ignorance [↩]
4. Watching the achievement system closely? [↩]
5. Azshara, Searing Gorge, and Ferelas, if you’re curious. [↩]
6. Apparently, the answer may be yes! [↩]

Dear Event Drama Llamas,

“Achievement” means it’s supposed to be hard. While the random number generator does not favor your little nook of the world, that does not mark the Love is in the Air event as a “fiasco“, nor does it justify petty name calling¹.

If you insist on working my side of the street, please be aware that we have standards. While whining about Warlock nerfing or Ret Palli OP are barely legitimate, we generally require better subject matter and, well, skill on the part of the whiner² .

Since skill is probably not possible to fix, please limit yourselves to something that matters, at least within the limited scope of a fantasy RPG in a client-server configuration based on a RTS from the 90s. I mean, if you’re going to crai about things not dropping, how about a little Flora love with regard to Tier drops?

Love,

Flora

PS: Try to have fun. I know that’s an alien concept to some people, who view WoW as a second job, but please review Yahtzee’s comments on that subject if Unclear On The Concept of Recreation and Fun, for I share similar if not identical views³.

PPS: I’m too lazy to post the Angry Baby picture. But it belongs here. Oh, yes.

PPPS: I’m very proud that I avoided all references to “big purple drake-shaped strap-on”.

<.<

>.>

1. BTW: WTF does “Wang Blue” mean outside of the Watchmen movie, anyway? Your guess is as good as mine, but looky looky, we got scatalogical, ain’t we special. [↩]
2. Note: memorizing the names of certain Blizzard employees and spewing them in a blog post does not constitute actual Skill, nor does merely generating page views. Thanks for playing, stick to the SEO career track, kiddo. [↩]
3. WoW Insider worker bees are not excused since part of the job is understanding the difference. [↩]

“Raiding guild”.

What constitutes a raiding guild? Does it welcome new players and help them come up to the level that they can raid? Or does it exclude all but those that are a certain level, and a certain spec, and have certain equipment already?

Over the past year I’ve seen our guild torn asunder by an alleged “raiding guild” and it’s starting to come home how much these people are … parasites … on the rest of the server.

Here’s an example.

Summertime, we had a new feral bear druid join the guild. He was sub-70 at the time. He quested with us, we helped him get his epic flight form, and when he made 70 we helped key him, and then put up with his inability to reliably tank anything in Karazhan because his gear was sub-par. We hung in there with him, and he grew into a major tanking terror. He asked if his wife could join the guild, and we started to gear her up.

Shortly after WotLK came out, when he saw that the mains in the guild were not playing night and day to get to 80 as fast as him, he went off and joined “a raiding guild”, and took his wife with him.

This scenario has played over and over again.  And it’s finally dawned on me that these people contribute nothing to the overall experience. They use other guilds as incubators from which they pull the most talented without any recompense or even thanks to the hapless rubes that just gave them their newest Arcane mage or what have you.

They are parasites.

They could not survive without us. And they leech our health away, every day they exist.

I’m sure there are exceptions. But I think this is the general rule.

So now you know. When you hear that extra contempt in my voice when I say “raiding guild”, know where that contempt comes from.

I think we need to find some way for “raiding guilds” to contribute back to the ecosystem that they are exploiting.  This is not a WoW issue, though it is raised in bold relief in WoW because of the number of players, number of raiding guilds, and the amount of endgame material there is to exploit. What’s really needed is some form of embedding of toons into the social groups they become part of that would apply real consequences for what, in the real world, would be a major upheaval if you did it yourself.

Right now, though, loyalty is not rewarded nearly as well as sheer disloyalty and underhandedness. If you play it right, you can get leveled up in no time, and then make a break to join one of your server’s “premier” guilds that care not a whit for loyalty or honesty, but merely that you show up at the appointed time with what you said you were bringing, and follow the instructions given to you without fail. That’s it.

Call that a “gaming experience” if you want. I call it “a second job.” Sorry, got one, and I play WoW partly to relax after all that. You want two jobs? You should get a second one that makes money.

No wonder our GM shows all the signs of burning out. She’s had to put up with this crap for four years. I’d eat my own soul under those circumstances.

If we get back into raiding, I’m gonna suggest that all raiders be required to put up a 500 gold “security deposit”, nonrefundable.  If we’re doomed to gear up raiding guilds, at least we can get repair costs out of it.

Think she’ll go for it?

ORLY?

YA RLY.

Is that what you meant by “the Quality Assurance System”, Mike?

For some reason, Grimm thought I’d be the perfect person to write this article. I have no idea why, but I’m always willing to do my part, especially considering the lack of DPS Warlock love in the recent patch.

The unthinkable has happened. I totally agree with Tobold. A recent article published at WoWInsider is completely out of line. I could have posted my rebuttal there, and really wanted to, but one voice in thousands, as opposed to one voice with few readers, the latter is still the better deal. Hi.  /wave

I enjoy reading WoWInsider, especially Guild Watch – O teh drama! – but there are times that they rub me the wrong way. Mike Schramm has done so, in spades, this time around.

In short, patch 3.0.8 has been a disaster. If Blizzard feels that this patch lives up to the quality of content they released in Northrend (or if they, unbelievably, somehow though this was meant to be a bugfix patch for Northend, that ended up screwing up more things than it fixed), then they need to take a long, hard look at their quality assurance system again.

“Mike, you ignorant slut.”

Why is it, when people want to act like they know what goes on in software development, start trash talking QA? Whenever software crashes, “it’s always QA’s fault”, as far as they’re concerned, and they ponder – in a superior tone of voice – at how anyone could have possibly missed such an obvious bug.

It’s like watching a monkey, throwing poo at the wall, until one sticks, at which point the monkey gets excited.

Did it ever occur to you, Mike, that it wasn’t missed? Did it ever occur to you that maybe someone knew about it and decided that schedule trumped quality, once again?

I’m sure you are thinking by now, “well, Miss Smarty Pants, how do you explain this fine mess?”

Don’t mind if I do.

Purveyor of FAIL for over 25 years!

First, some bona fides: I have worked in the industry for over 25 years; 10 spent in the area of hardware reliability, a field that allows for very little in the way of error (you can’t patch a hardware failure). The next 10 have been spent in software quality, first at a mid-level position (planning etc) and later in a senior position.  Prior to those I spent 8 years as a technical supervisor in a high-pressure environment that tolerated very little down time, and did so with a great degree of success¹. In short, I know my way around the swamp.

This is what it sounds like when code cries

Having gotten that out of the way, here is my theory, based – in large part – on actual working knowledge of the process.

First, you need to understand something: QA is not the gatekeeper. QA rarely, if ever, has the means to prevent software from shipping.  This is acceptable to everyone because QA prefers to be testing software, not participating in launch planning meetings with upper management.

QA’s primary job in the software industry is to measure the quality of the software, and to inform the project manager as to that quality. They may also be required to “sign off” on the test results.

But if they don’t, and upper management wants to ship … it’ll ship. Somehow.

I’ve seen the big picture, and you’re not in it

Management is infamous for this sort of thing, both in my personal experience as well as by reputation.

We have seen Blizzard’s commitment to software quality in the past. Heck, the game itself was delayed so that they could get it right. Entire instances and features have been held back until they can be done right.  The software has been of consistently high quality and usability for years. And QA, once it finds a process that works, will hold on to it with both hands AND a full set of teeth. QA loathes change, especially when it comes to a working process².

On the other hand, this patch has all the hallmarks of Management on it.

Sudden, apparently unplanned deployment? Check.

Incomplete? Apparently.

Undocumented? Sorta.

Not staged as patches usually are³? True dat!

All hallmarks of a manager deciding that getting “something” out was more important than getting something GOOD out.

Professor Plum with the Monkey Wrench in the Library

So why might that happen? Well, look at how long 3.0.8 was in testing, and look at the continuing issues with lag that were laid at Wintergrasp’s feet. I can see some PR or marketing flak hitting up the project manager with a dozen emails a day over how imperative it was to get a fix for the “Wintergreen issue”. I can see the project manager pushing back, saying they hadn’t met testing requirements or something. I can see a more senior exec being drug into the dispute to “facilitate” this little misunderstanding⁴ . Not that I’ve seen it before or anything.

My conclusion, therefore, is that this patch was willingly rushed out before it was ready, and that management knew full well that it was not ready. However, management was getting beat up about something, pressed until the correct “key words” were spoken by someone, and then proceeded to push the software out the door.

And here we are.

In cyberspace, no one cares if you scream

There are many reasons why this could have happened. You can come up with a fantastic theory about how a system that is designed to prevent oversight of obvious stuff (QA), broke down and failed anyway (missed several obvious bugs). Or you can explain this away as plain human nature (bad managerial call).

In the end, it pays to remember one of the many Murphy’s laws, because the simplest explanation is almost always the right one.

To err is human.

To really screw things up, requires a manager.

1. Medals were involved. [↩]
2. Of course, a change to the process might have been made “to improve our time to market”. Yep, you smell it too, I bet. A manager. [↩]
3. You will usually see the patch in the downloader a good week ahead of release day. Not in this case. [↩]
4. ”Facilitate” being a euphamism for “explaining to the project manager who signs his paycheck.”" [↩]

All right. The bitter cries of warlocks is starting to reach a crescendo of FAIL.

Not fail on Blizzard’s part, though they rightly deserve our ire for rushing changes to production that shouldn’t have gone past beta.

No, I’m talking about the people that have taken it on themselves to quit, kill thier warlock, or otherwise react in a completely unreasonable  manner to issues that I am confident will be corrected in due time.  “If Warlock isn’t the best class, it’s not worth playing.”¹  WHAT? Are you kidding me? Am I being punked? Is anyone really capable of being that lame?

Wait. Scratch that. I forgot who I was dealing with here.

You know, I’m really sorry they aren’t the king or queen of the DPS roost now². I’m sorry that their e-peen is wilted. That their robes lack that starch they had in BC.

Pffft. I kid! I’m not sorry at all. I’m a warlock. I like seeing people suffer. QQ moar, basement dweller. I need your tears to brew a cup of Tea of Despair to wash down my Scones of Damnation.

Anyway.

There are plenty of warlocks out there getting things done. They are the proof that, even gimped, the Warlock can be viable. So it’s not EZ Mode any more. So you have to work, and research, and – Mammon forbid! – learn something about the dynamics of the new talents and spells. Right here, right now, it is not easy. But it can be done.

Will we end up on top of the charts? Hells no. We’re gimped, baby! But you can continue to pull your weight and be part of whatever team you’re in. Group effort, people.

If one busts one’s evil ass, one will be appreciated as a contributor³ .

At this point, my biggest concern is that the changes that are needed may force us to re-learn – and maybe re-gear – all over again after whatever patch it is that things get fixed in.

Meanwhile: suck it up and deal with it. Wait it out. All will be put aright in its time.

And Blizz? Get on this. Seriously. Somebody’s going to die if all those tears hits a high-voltage circuit. You want that on your conscience?⁴

You know what? I think this is a crucible. A crucible is used in smelting to rid a metal of impurities, of undesirable elements. This is what we are seeing. All the e-bayers and babies that can’t be bothered to apply themselves to the class, are leaving. For a while, we as a class will be better off because all the EZ Mode kids will be off on their DoucheKnights playing Yoink and Lawl.

Go ahead, boys. Yoink all you like. I think that sums it up pretty well, in fact.

Meanwhile, Auntie Flora says that Affliction and SL/Felguard are both excellent levelling specs. The hardest part of Affliction is keeping tabs on 5-10 DoT-ed mobs running around crying about the pain behind their eyes. The hardest part of Demon is not pulling aggro off your Felguard⁵. Both are viable and survivable, so go out there and kill things. As with anything that is not EZ Mode, you need to practice in order to excel.

1. In comments [↩]
2. To be honest, I don’t think they ever were. But I’ll assume all the hunters around them sucked. [↩]
3. And not to put too fine a point on it, but if you didn’t bust ass before The Nerf, you can count on one thing – everyone noticed. Thus now they’ll have no loyalty to you at all. I’d replace you, too, and maybe I wouldn’t wait for a nerf as an excuse. [↩]
4. Don’t look at me – I thought the sparks were pretty! [↩]
5. Some things never change. [↩]

As much as I hate making obligatory “still alive” posts, I probably should since I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been jotting down random stuff but not posting it.

My main job has been to stock Jasra with enchantment materials. As of yesterday, she officially broke 350, so my services in this capacity are no longer required. I managed to even solo a few Outland instances with my trusty Gorilladin. Ramps and BF both fell before me. Underbog fell other than the final boss, and I probably just need to tweak my strategy for him. Slave Pens, no problem. Steam Vaults … maybe later.

Of all the Classic instances, Strat and Scholo seem to be the best sources of items that DE to Eternal Essences. I decided to camp out at Light’s Hope Chapel and do the Dead side of strat over and over again in the hopes of also getting Rivendare’s mount. Alas, it was not to be. After ten tries, it didn’t drop. I did get the Dwarven Hand Cannon, and passed it on to my sweetie.

One thing that is important to remember on Baroness Anastari is that she will Mind Control you and heal back up if you are in a group, but will not if you are solo. What this means to Huntards, Dork Kinnigets, and Locks is: put yer pet away and pew pew.

I also managed to pop Exalted with the Argent Dawn. Yay.

I would be more effective on these solo expeditions if Saiph, my Gorilladin, was higher level (currently 76, but was 75 for the bulk of this adventure).  At the same time, I need to gather Northsea Pearls for Jasra’s tailoring. Unfortunately, I only have two choices: go after the murlocs and gorlocs in The starter areas, which give Saiph no XP, or go after the gorlocs in Sholazar, which are, you know, Oracles. Unfortunately, since I am of Oracle faction, option #2 is out of the question. So I’ve been also going after Jormungar Tunnelers in Dragonblight, which is good for my leather skilling too.

In the process of getting Jas some more Arcane Dust, I managed to ding Exalted with Cenarion Expedition, and am now the proud owner of a Cenarion War Hippogryph. Jas is not amused since the 1600 gp required came out of her Epic Mount fund. Sorry, Jas. I’m pulling rank.

Aside from that, it’s been quiet. Jas has been hogging the limelight and may have big news soon. I’ll give you a hint: she’s 79 now.

Our guild has pretty much fallen apart. We had a couple of high-end defections, including one officer’s alt, to the usual suspect’s guild, and I think that broke the GM, or initiated events behind the scenes that accomplished that – though the ennui itself is cleverly disguised as “burnout”.  But one can draw lines between cause and effect pretty easily if one keeps one’s eyes open.

So – we are back to pure casual, not “casual raiding” as we were before. Things have panned out pretty much in a predictable fashion. We’re right back where we were when Grimmtooth Mk I quit the game in disgust. I think I might “heal through” the drama right now to see what is on the other side. I suspect, however, that there are at least five other people that will leave before it is all over.

Richard Bartle has written what I consider a necessary piece on one of the new quests in Lich King, and I recommend reading it through – it’s short, so the short attention span crowd should be able to handle it.

Basically, he is commenting on a quest that is a vital part of a vital chain of quests that lead to The Nexus. If you don’t complete this quest, you don’t go to the Nexus, or at least not under your own power¹. The quest in question is The Art of Persuasion. Go ahead and read the quest text.

As you can see, the goal of the quest is to extract information from a prisoner. The process to do so is to torture the prisoner. And the most galling part of this is that the Kirin Tor mage right there is asking you to do so because he finds it morally wrong to do so himself, as part of the higher ideals of the Kirin Tor.

Isn’t it ironic that in order to gain faction with the Kirin Tor, you have to do things for them that they themselves find to be morally reprehensible. Hello, Blizzard? Alannis called. She wants her irony back.

Now, Bartle has been pretty thoroughly flamed over this post, but I am going to completely agree with him on this. Like him, I went ahead and did the dirty thing, but in the back of my mind I was not believing what was happening.

You may ask: Isn’t this just a game? Is this not merely the actions of an avatar in a virtual universe? Surely, you jest. Your avatar did not make the decision to use torture to advance a cause. You did. I can’t make that more direct. It doesn’t matter that the “prisoner” in this case was imaginary; it’s the fact that you, as a person, are asked to make this moral decision – torture, or no cookie. As far as I am concerned, saying the prisoner is just an avatar is the final step in dehumanizing one’s enemy. That chain starts with “They killed innocent people in an office building, therefore it is OK to torture them”.

You may disagree here, but in your heart you know that Bartle is right, as I am.

We have resigned ourselves to the fact that we are “heroes” regardless of how many times we effectively steal, murder, assault, and otherwise damage our pixilated adversary. We have come to terms with the idea that we are somehow more righteous than our adversaries even as we kill them and loot the bodies for prizes. The shores of Azeroth are awash in the blood of troggs, demons, dark iron dwarves, cultists, and other ne’er-do-wells. But in this expansion, Blizzard has notched it up a bit.

• Torture of prisoners
• Killing an adversary’s mothers and stealing the babies. And delivering them in a bag.
• Killing people in retribution for them killing game animals.

I have to say, Blizzard has started down a slippery moral slope with some of these. DHETA was especially galling, but it doesn’t come close to the torture quest.

As Bartle noted, it’s unthinkable that there wasn’t at least the option to opt out of the torture scenario explicitly. Instead, such “losers” should just abandon the quest. There is no way to take a principled stand against these things, in such a way that truly declares your values.

Would a Paladin or Priest of the Light truly be OK with this? I can’t imagine either would. In my past AD&D campaigns, a paladin choosing such a path would suffer extreme consequences. I realize that WoW is no AD&D clone, but there are certain core design principles for the class that define the term “Holy”, and the power of Paladins especially flows from that source, and that source alone.

I applaud Mr. Bartle for voicing this concern, and hope that Blizzard will listen and make this right in the long term. Given their love of griefers, though, I find that to be unlikely.

There are two very excellent book series by a fellow named Stephen Donaldson – The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant and The Gap Cycle – that a lot of people will not read because both have a non-gratuitous rape occurring early on. A lot of people are sensitive to that sort of thing, and given my druthers I would have rather not seen them in there either. Yet, some of these people would defend the torture quest as “it’s only pixels.” OK, I’ll play along. Would you feel the same way if there was a quest in WoW to go rape someone, and you were given no choice to make a stand? If it’s morally OK to make the call to torture, why wouldn’t it be OK to make the call to go rape somebody?  What about children?

Hey, it’s your immortal soul or whatever. Tarnish it as you will. But I think you should have the choice to demur in a positive way, rather than take the lame “turn a blind eye to it” approach and “just decline” the quest. That’s the easy way out.

1. i.e. if you can endure the shame of being summoned, you’ll be fine. [↩]

I like the idea of the daily cooking quests in Daleran.

What I don’t like is the cheese platter one. This quest rewards bad behavior – camping, ninja-ing, and outright jerk-like tendancies.

I won’t do it.

Way to go, Blizz. You guys seem to have a real blind spot towards the fact that people in your game, left to thier own devices, tend to generate a healthy population of sociopaths.

Either that, or blizz likes it that way.

Well, at any rate, gratz on finally making the Og’rilla bombing run look like fun.

As the MC Frontalot song goes, anyway. Had me a charming encounter today with a charming night elf named Melerra¹ .

I was in Rachet getting Halloween candy – candy! – when these zombies pop up and attack the honest, hard-working shopkeepers. Being ever the helpful sort (especially since I hate zombies – I mean, with parts falling off and all? Disgusting), I set out to put them down.

I didn’t expect a parade, but what I got instead was this² . Oddly, that “lol” seems to have frozen him/her up. Who knew? I recommend it.

So to quote the Front:

If you’re dissing on my homos
then this censure’s what you’re risking
(I’m insisting on containing my temper but listen up):
you shouldn’t ought to be intolerant about who queers like to fuck!

Anyway, I’ll try not to get fag germs on y’all.

1. Ooo, nice PvP gear there (wow, what a big surprise!). You might also wanna gem your gloves, sparky. [↩]
2. Note: some editing done to remove lines containing unrelated text [↩]