The End Of An Era, Or Is It?

I think, Just think, i may be done with my time in the world of warcraft.

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN

I love drama, cant you tell ? :)

Firstly - i know what your thinking, You cant write a warcraft blog, without playing warcraft - this has crossed my mind - i has plans, do not worry.

Secondly I havnt quit, YET. im still in debating, mostly with myself wether i should or not, now don't get me wrong, its not becuase im addicted or anything like that, I KNOW im addicted, and getting myself off warcraft will be a long slow and probably painfull proccess. i have been weighing up my options. On one hand it has been a really rough couple of warcraft months. A bad month with my guild has left me in [EPICS] but lacking the all important purple [FUN] add to that losing 5 close friends in wow, and i'm suddenly feeling rather alone in the big wide world of Azeroth.

ALSO. dont forget, i think TBC is a total failiure, and for one MAJOR reason, the culture that Blizzard seem to have adopted of giving the casuals everything that they ask for. Badge gear, specificly, i can attribute my quitting to.

Can you see where i am comming from here? i am ofcourse referring to the upcomming badge gear that is equivelent to the T6 raid set. How very VERY VERY ......silly, of them. Slapped in the face?, i feel humiliated that i evan bothered with tier 5.

So, thats why i SHOULDNT keep playing, lets take a look at why i should keep playing

1. My rogue is awesome, he has awesome gear that i am very proud of since i got it without badges
2. My bad streak with PL should end sooner or later right?
3. Soon i wont need vashj and kael and go see the t6 instances.
   

But for every point i could think of, i could think of counters to them

1. My rogues gear will be out shined soon by *RIDICULES* badge gear
2. But i'm no longer having fun, and without that i see little point in playing.
   
3. I can't no longer see the point in raiding the current level instances when badge gear will be released to outshine that soon enough.
   

I think the biggest problem with the game to date is badge gear, whatever moron thought that up needs his head looking at. SCALING badge gear as good as RAIDING gear, For repeating the SAME content.

How to nullify all effort put in by raiders, Step 1, Do the above.
The term "it's a slap in the face" doesn't cover it, "they pulled down out pants in the middle of town, pointed and laughed" is more accurate. There is absolutely no reason to raid at all anymore, we all know we shouldn'tEvan BE raiding, that time is better used doing 5 man EASY heroics, rather than difficult raids, its more efficient for getting the gear in the long run. And lets face it, anyone who says heroics are difficult needs slapping, wake up to reality, they are simple basic things that anyone with a shred of intelligence can pretty much do in quest reward blues and greens.

Tired of people better than you having great gear?
Not skilled enough for raids?
Don't really have the time to play the game?

The answer is simple, Badge gear! WOW! Its purple! its epic, and best of all, its FREE!
Thats right folks for just a simple downpayment of Heroic mechanaar 50,000 times you can be riding around in the same gear REAL raiders have! WOW! now nobody will be able to tell that you really cant play, they will be dazzled by your PURPLES!

Remeber, if its not purple, we don't want it!

*GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*

This is getting me right mad to Even just think about it! THIS person sums it up better than i could.

And that (see above) is my point, I'm getting angry and frustrated with the game, Really Really bad design choices in the expansion and add to that the loss of friends and reason to play - you can pretty much see why Warcraft is leaving a bitter aftertaste in my mouth can't you?

So what will happen to the blog if i do quit? Well, it won't be a wow blog anymore, that's for sure, but Quincey as a gamer? that is definatly for sure, maybe it will be changed, bit by bit, slowly but surely into a new gaming blog, maybe ill scrap it until i can think of something better to write about, but keep checking this space folks, you CAN rely on me being back, and soon, i haven't finished with blogging yet, hell, I'm only just getting started.

So, at least for now, Quincey - signing off.

Blizzard invitational

Umm, yeah, heres me stealing content...i mean...informing my readers of this awesome convention, heres a quick description found on Blizzard.com

"The fourth Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational is coming to Europe! The event will be held at the Porte de Versailles Exposition Center, Paris, France, over the 28th and 29th of June 2008. Open to gamers from around the world, the Worldwide Invitational will feature a wide variety of activities, including:

• Discussion panels with Blizzard Entertainment developers
• Artist and developer signings
• Professional eSport tournaments and casual tournaments for attendees
• Hands-on play with World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft II
• Merchandise and other products based on the Blizzard Entertainment game universes
• Silent auction
• Musical performances
• And more...

To attend the 2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational, you must purchase tickets in advance here on the Worldwide Invitational website. Tickets are limited and will go on sale in the next few weeks on a first-come, first-served basis until they are sold out, though Blizzard Entertainment reserves the right to sell additional tickets in the future. There will be a five-ticket limit per household. Further details on purchasing tickets will follow in the weeks ahead."

AWESOME, a blizzard event that is within my travel distance, the date tickets will be available for sale has not yet be announced but im watching the site daily. i.must.have.tickets.

So if anyone is going and wants to meet with me, just drop me an email, i will be there!

World of Jumpcraft indeed ;)

Howdy guys, this post was written in response to a whisper i got taunting me that i cannot jump as well as the guys on the world of jumpcraft . Now don't take this the wrong way, I'm not saying I'm BETTER than those guys, they are excellent at what they do, but i would like to think i can do everything they can, pretty much as good as they can.

Jumpcrafting is all about patience and practise, nothing more, there are no special skills, no sneaky hidden tricks to it - so here is a collection of some of my more favourite screenshots (bundled with a few descriptions)

Lets start with some of the older, and more obvious ones, places you have probably either seen first hand, or in some commonly seen screenshots.


This is the very top of Ironforge mountain, surprisingly enough there is an alliance patrol that goes all the way up here, but still, its a nice place to sight see once in a while. (Sexy Tier 1 :D )



This is the top of the valley of honor, i love sitting up here when i just feel like /gchatting, or just chilling out, plus its an easy one to get to.


Again, pretty bog-standard, Top of Orgrimmar wall. /yawn, i know, better ones are coming.


i actually don't see this one very much, but refuse to believe that people haven't done it before, top of Northshire Abbey.


The Greymane Wall, from the TOP of Graymane wall i may add. for those of you who don't know, open your maps, go to Silverpine forest, look in the very south, that landmass that you can't get to? thats Greymane, you cant get to it thanks to this rather big wall :P


this isn't actually one of my favourite screenshots, but this is quel'thalas, pre-tbc, I'm not sure if this dock Evan still exists.


Feralas, more specifically DM, outside, underneath, nothing more to explain really.

OKAY OKAY

i know these are the fairly bog standard jump screenshots. but here is something a little bit more special. I was saving these screenshots for a rainy day, as they are the ones i was more than a little bit proud of.


I give you, Nefarion's window. from outside the instance.

This one took me a LONG time to get, and i do mean a LONG time, much time, frustration, falling and death. But once i was here, i figured, why stop ? so i logged for that day at the top of Nefarion's window, and started again the next morning.

More than a little time later, we had....

BLACKROCK MOUNTAIN

Past the clouds, past what anyone on my server had ever done, past my draw distance to the ground (pretty facking far) This is the highest point in Azeroth, there is no way to get higher without flying, and for that you need to be a GM.

Don't believe me? This could be any old mountain? lets look down shall we?


Look carefully, can you see the start of the flow of larva? the one you see falling all the way down BRM, that's right, i was there, i has the screenshots, it did happen :)

So, can nobody else log on Eonar just to wind me up? im not a fake. I CAN do this shit.

(This post was in no way meant to embarrass, show up or put down the guys from the world of Jumpcraft videos, they are awesome, they have done stuff i haven't dreamed off, truly epic guys, and i one day i hope to do a jump video with them)

Jumping on the bandwagon

Hurray!!!

Finnally the new design is working, and i have to say, im rather proud of how it has turned out- it will probably need a new header, one that fits the top of the page properly but i want your comments / feedback, what do you like or dislike?, is there anything that doesnt work in your browser? Any comments are greatly apprechiated either by email or by comments.

So! onto the real point of the post. Jumping onboard the Patch 2.4 bandwagon that so many bloggers have.

For those azerothians who have been living under a rock for the past month and a bit Patch 2.4 is nearly upon us, The PTR is up and bosses are already being killed at an alarming rate.

Now the patch notes have changed about 7 or 8 times since they were released with bits being added and taken away, so i figure ill show you the bigger points (in my opninion), the ones that matter to me the most, and maybe give some opinions here and there.

the full patch notes can be found Here

Lets start off with a biggie

The Sunwell Isle

• The Sunwell Isle is now available for play. This area includes a new quest hub and 5-player and 25-player instances. Join the Shattered Sun Offensive in shutting down Kael’thas’ nefarious operations. This new force is comprised by both the Aldor and Scryers and is led by the Naaru. Players will take part in claiming Sun’s Reach and setting up a larger base of operation to stop Kael’thas and the Legion.

Hurray! commonly known as the last major instance of the burning crusade exspantion pack, with 2.4 i imagine we will start to see a torrent of information being to flow about Wrath of the lich king, and the big guilds get something new to brag about, since Illidan is getting a little old now :)

• Resilience: Now reduces the magnitude of mana draining effects by the same amount that it reduces critical strike damage. The Tooltip has been revised to reflect this.

Awesome! an exellent and welcome change to fixing arena that doesnt affect pve, Good Job Blizz /pat, lets continue...

Ooooooh Shiiiiit

We interupt this news broadcast to give some BREAKING NEWS
England just felt an EARTHQUAKE, i felt it as i was sat here writing this, That was ace :D, ive never felt one before, but yeah that was great :D

anyways...errr. yes, ive lost my train of thought now, this post might have to wait till the morning folks

Quincey - signing off to see if there is any damage

Something funny :)

This thread has sprung up on my Guild's forums, thought i would share

Before and after screenshots

here's my contribution

BEFORE AFTER

Damage meters are killing my guild.

First off, Shhhhhh, I'm posting this post from my college computer, I’m bored and bogging is a good distraction from work, but I've had this planned for sometime, something that is annoying me greatly.

Damage meters, I used to love them, in fact I still do, they are an excellent source of information for a dps class to know if he is getting the most out of his character, and since I’m usually in the top 3 you might think that I would absolutely love them. However. (This has been building up for a while, can you feel the tension?)People and aggro, more specifically their aggro control, people seem to see the damage meters as a race rather than a meter and seem to pay more attention to them rather than omen and KTM or whatever threat meter your guild happens to prefer. (If anyone mentions the Morogrim video, ill kill ya, how’s that for dps :P). But I don’t blame this purely on the damage meters, oh no, as the horde I have noticed a distinct lack of regard for aggro since we gained the blessing of salvation. We now seem to be dependent on this buff, without it we have about as much control as an enraged cleft hoof, myself included (see Morogrim video), This is something we as the horde need to sort out, we used to be so good at controlling our aggro pre-tbc, how much can possibly have changed?

That’s not the end though.

This again is something I'm guilty of, but marking raid skill, or personal progression on the damage meters alone is possibly the most stupid thing I have ever heard, and yet I often catch myself doing it, this is the main reason that spamming the damage meters has been banned in PL raids. it causes too much in house competition, witch again leads to aggro ( I'm not mentioning any names here *coughobliviocough* and why once I have written this post I'm going to suggest to our raid leader that we ban having them showing mid boss fights at all.

The positives, Lets face it, damage and raid meters were not made for us, the general raiding public, they were created for guild leaders to gauge how each member is progressing and to help weed out and help anybody who is slacking in a particular role, and in this aspect they do their job amazingly, wow web stats gives comprehensive reports that allows raid leaders to know exactly what everyone was doing the whole raid, helping spot those undeserving, unworthy or in need of help members.

*****EDIT******

The following is a rather excellent post, by one of my guildies (<3 you adagar :D), its relevant, so i figure ill post it up :D

"Since i've noticed this weird trend lately on raids, where people pull aggro and wear it like a badge of badass, i thought i'd put in a note about aggro. If you're perfectly aware of how aggro works, and how to manage yours, read this post anyways, if nothing else just to agree / disagree with something i write.

Kenco did extensive research on threat, and although the research is old, it is still very much valid:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Kencos_Research

If you can't be bothered to read it, i'll sum up the most important stuff.

When someone (a tank, preferably) has aggro, it takes more than just passing him on the amount of threat to actually get aggro yourself. You must pass him by a certain amount.
- For melee distance, you must pass 110% of the tank's aggro
- For out-of-melee distance, you must pass 130% of the tank's aggro

A common misconception is that if you use ranged attacks, the 130% applies to you no matter what. It doesn't. What matters is your distance relative to the the mob you're attacking. The important thing to note here is:

If the mob moves, so does the melee range of the mob.

This can cause horrible problems if people are pushing the dps, which in some
cases are necessary to get a mob down.

Let's say that all the ranged are around 120%, and then suddenly Mr. Badass the ranged dpser gains aggro. Now, if Mr. Badass is not very fast at responding with whatever aggro reducing abilities he has available or very very quickly move towards the tank, the mob is coming for him... and it's taking it's melee range with it. If the mob has a large hitbox, it also has a large melee range, and if the casters stand together, you now have Mr. Badass standing in a group where everyone has 120% aggro, and they're all within melee range... so they're above 110% and they are going to die. Fast. Sure the tank can taunt, and the other dpsers can use their aggro reducing abilities if they have any, but still.

It's up for debate what to do in the situation where mob gets to the ranged group and starts oneshotting people. However, it should never come to this, not even on trash mobs.

To sum it up:
- Be mindful of your threat (this should be a given) - Be mindful of your distance to the mob (this apparently is not a given) - Remember that the size of the hitbox, and subsequently the melee range, can be different from mob to mob
- If you take aggro from the tank on a straightforward mob (like VR for example, or the bog thingies in SSC), you might have high dps, but you're still a very poor raid member"
Adagar - on the Phoenix Legion forums

Morogrim Downed

To continue on this nice little streak we seem to have got going, Pheonix Legion down Morogrim Tidewalker, bringing our totals to

5/6 SSC
3/4 TK

thats right, vashj and Kael await us, this is going to be one hell of a fight :D

So this week i decided to test just how good my new spanking computer was and recorded all the attempts on the new boss morogrim, i recorded attempts ALL night, it was sods law that made the attempt that we kill him on the ONLY attempt that i pulled agro and died.

Ah well, enjoy