The Calm Before The… Drizzle?

It’s looking increasingly likely that I’m going to be looking for a replacement for WoW (impossible though it may be to actually find).  Between the fracturing of my old guild, my general apathy about my new guild, and my disinterest in anything except for 25-man raids (and that’s only three nights per week) I think the end of the world (of warcraft) may be approaching for me.

Cataclysm?  If it’s going to be more of the same, it’s more of a damp shower.

It’s actually quite disappointing; for all the increasing polish the game has picked up lately, the increasing reduction in the difficulty level of the new normal mode content (along with the increase in difficulty of the hard modes) has left me increasing dissatisfied with Blizz’s binary approach to raiding in a much more nuanced world.

In TBC, the guild I was in was approaching readiness for Sunwell when the big 3.0 nerf/patch went live.  We actually downed Illidan before the patch, which was something of an accomplishment at the time, and managed to reach Felmyst (although not without much fuss and hard work, along with some strong words from our guild leader on occasion).

Sure, it was hard – I was playing a rogue at the time, and overcoming the Reliquary of Souls would probably be the high-point of my raiding career.  But there were concrete rewards for concrete progression, and it was clearly visible how well you were doing by the gear you’d acquired.

The changes Blizz have made which make it easy to farm for gear that will get a new raider into the latest raids have cut both ways, I think.  While it’s made it easy for new characters to get raiding-ready, it reinforces for more experienced players just how much of a treadmill the game has become over the years, and just how long we’ve been running on that treadmill.

The problem (for me) is that for a player who is moderately skilled (ie, can reach a competent level of HPS/DPS/TPS, can perform the tasks for their particular class and spec reliably, and knows not to stand in the fire) they’re either under-challenged in the normal raiding environment or they have a massive challenge (possibly too much so, especially if you’re carrying anyone) in heroic encounters.

I know that, personally, my skill level is definitely positioned between the two levels; neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring.  I’m aware that Blizz has picked their current raiding difficulty implementation to make the most of limited development resources, but after Wrath and the two content patches so far I’m just burnt out on the choice of too easy or too hard.  (The addition of too much and too little in the Coliseum didn’t help, either)

But you have to bear in mind that WoW has been around for years, and everything gets boring eventually.  It’s probably about time to move on – if it’s not fun now, continuing to play is unlikely to magically make it start becoming fun.

Personally, I’ve tried alts, different classes, and different roles, so there’s only so much more that I could try.  My own aesthetic biases prevented me from trying some classes (draenei and night elves are just…  ewwww, so no shaman or druid), and the logistics of starting over as Horde are equally unappealing (not to mention those aesthetic biases again – why can’t the dark-iron dwarves join them?).

Why so much effort on my part?  Mostly because of the people I played with, who are a pretty groovy bunch (no offence to the young folk reading), and who I’d rather not lose touch with (but, without the game to act as common ground, will).

For now?  Well, I’m paid up until the end of January, so I’ll get to see Icecrown (well, if I pass trial – with my current dissatisfaction, I’m tempted to end the trial early, still undecided), and maybe even kill the Lich King (guild willing).  After that?  Well, Star Trek Online comes out at the start of February doesn’t it?

My Own Worst Enemy

I’m sitting in vent as I write this, listening to my guild wiping progressing on the 2nd encounter in 25-man Trial of the Crusader (the not-really-PvP one).  It’s amusing to consider that last week I was grinding my teeth in silent fury because I had to wipe with them, and this week I’m sitting out and grinding my teeth in much the same way.

Welcome to Planet Irrational: Population, Me.

It’s actually quite silly when I stop and try to look rationally at my reaction; the phrase “Dog in the manger” seems quite appropriate.  But the discontent does feel quite real, for all it’s for a pretty foolish reason.  (I think dropping vent and doing something else for a few minutes while I got the worst of it out of my system was probably a good idea – I’d rather not say something on vent that would leave me guildless)

At it’s root, I think, is the thought that I’m missing out on the chance to upgrade my already pretty good gear – this is despite the fact that I haven’t been rolling on gear lately, while I try work through growing discontent with shadow-priest raiding.  (Like I said, I’m Mr. Irrrational)

(Actually, it’s probably because I complained to the caster officer about how –insert expletive here- angry the faux-PvP encounter left me, and that I never, ever, EVER want to do that fight again.  It’s embarrassing when you vent, and people actually listen to you…)

Anyway, a recent series of posts by Gevlon have been food for thought, in regards my gear-fetish and lack-lustre performance.  (This one, then this one and the latest on the theme here)  I think I’m going to try continuing to raid in my current gear (well, maybe other than my weapon, which I need to replace with a non-hit-rating one so I can juggle the rest of my gear a bit better) and pass on loot for the time being.  The reasoning for this is because I need to improve my ability, instead of just relying on gear upgrades to pull me through.

That means not just getting a better grasp on my character’s abilities, but also putting some work (and thought) into my UI and keybindings.  It also means challenging myself to do better, and not just relying on macros and panicked key-mashing.

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get something more out of this challenge than I would out of /rolling on ToC25 loot.

/wave

(Amended edit:  maybe I’ll try discipline healing instead – I’ll see what the healing officer says…)

Shifting The Goalposts

As I’ve previously mentioned, I’ve been dissatisfied with raiding lately (especially 25-man), and this week I decided that it was time to make some changes.

I really enjoy WoW, both the game itself and the social side of it with my guild, and the thought of becoming so disenchanted with raiding (and the pressures that are surfacing with the hard-mode bosses in Ulduar) that it taints the game as a whole is something I want to avoid.

Of course, the tricky bit about making changes is working out what changes are to be made.  My idea currently is to cut down a lot on 25-man raids (with the exception of coming in if there’s a shortage of dispellers or ranged dps in-guild), and maybe do some 10-man raiding if I can get an invite.

This means Mingle will be getting demoted (probably to casual raider or possibly just to member), which also means less loot (as full raiders get priority, and casuals aren’t eligible for tier loot) but as I’ve been passing on everything lately that’s not a concern.  But it gives me the chance to change my main

Any what will I be doing instead?  Well, I’m considering my options.  I’ve spent a bit of time playing Kringle and Pringle lately (and took Pringle into Naxx-10 with quite a bit of success – she came out with 7 epics, but sadly no tier items), and there’s always my anorexic horde hunter and lonely night elf druid (the latter is tempting, considering the new druid bear and cat models coming in the next major content patch, which means probably in 3.2).

There’s also a few other interesting games that have been underappreciated due to the time I’ve spent in WoW, such as Fallout 3 (which has had three new content patches of it’s own since I played it, the last of which is supposed to fix the rather abrupt end of the original game) and Mass Effect (which was fun to play through originally, and is proving fun to play through again).

So I’ll continue posting here, although not quite as much as I was when I was so enthusiastic when I started.  And I intend to continue playing WoW, and hopefully write posts consisting of more than lists of upgraded loot that my characters have managed to accumulate.

Speaking of writing, this post from World of Matticus is well worth reading if you’re a blogger:  The Purple Kodo: 13 Points of Blogging

Anyway, I’m still fishing.  For all that some things change, some things are still the same.

/wave

Contemplating Change, Leveling, And A Meme

Well, 25-man raiding is slow and…  not really fun, to be quite honest.  I’ve had a chat with an officer about my dissatisfaction raiding on Mingle, and have decided to take a couple of weeks (while I continue to raid) to think about what I want to do next.  (I’ll be passing on loot in Ulduar as well, as it wouldn’t be right to take loot that other people can use if there’s a chance I may be not raiding on that character)

Unfortunately there’s no openings for another tank, with one of our old guildmates returning his gnome warrior to the game.  (He’s a far better tank than I am, and a nice guy, so I’m not complaining about it)  I’m trying to come up with ways I can get raid time (in some capacity, probably outside of the guild) on my warrior, but options are pretty limited.  I might have to go raid-hunting, and see if there are any guilds who’d be willing to take a tank from outside their guild, and who raid on nights I’m not raiding on Mingle.  Possibly a bit of a reach, but I’ll see what I can find.

Speaking of Dingle, she has ventured into 10-man Ulduar again, and has another boss kill under her belt.  Most of the raid members are from another guild, and we managed to kill FL, Razorscale and XT-002, but Ignis and the Iron Council proved too much for us.  Sadly, Dingle has no shiny tank loot to show for it (although she did pick up a dps helm that would otherwise have been sharded – I really need to gem and enchant it at some stage).

My tanking inexperience showed itself with two bosses during the raid, both bosses we couldn’t get past.  First was Ignis, where I finally realised my taunts were ineffective if I hadn’t first damaged the target – I was on construct duty, and at the start had trouble keeping aggro on the constructs long enough to get them into the scorches.  I also caused one wipe when I wasn’t tanking the construct far enough into the scorch, so it wasn’t picking up the debuff that turned it molten.  By the end, though, I’d worked out what I had to do (and was doing it correctly, as best I can tell).

With both of these issues worked out (to my satisfaction, at least), we were left with issues with dps (we only had one character capable of enough burst damage to kill the molten constructs, who was unfortunately very attractive to Ignis, and kept getting hot-pocketed) and main-tanking (a DK who was having problems getting positioned correctly, and kept getting the scorches positioned either too far from the pools needed when killing the constructs, or positioned too close to the healers/dps who died pretty rapidly when accidentally scorched).  Eventually the raidleader threw his hands up in despair and we moved on to XT (who we one-shot).

I had a brief positioning issue with the Iron Council, where I was tasked with tanking Steelbreaker at the start, and didn’t pull him out of his damage-amplifying rune quick enough on one attempt, but in general the group just didn’t perform well enough get any further (although it was getting pretty late at that stage).

Other than that, I’ve been putting some time (and gold) into leveling Kringle over the last few days.  He’s currently about a third of the way through 79, and should be 80 today if I don’t get distracted (which is pretty likely).

Some time fishing on Kringle yesterday means he’s now officially a fisherman – which by my standards means he has the 200 points of fishing skill required to equip and use his Fishing Pole.  That gives me 6 characters I can do the fishing daily on, which is about the only daily I’m doing regularly currently (apart from the cooking daily for Fingle and Kringle, who are both working towards the 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards achievement – they’ve both passed the 50 awards part, and are on the home stretch now).

But before I get back to my leveling, here’s a meme that caught my eye.  (Snagged from Mend Pet)

The instructions:

1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random… Read More”
   or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random quotations”
   or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
   or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.

And what did I end up with?

The first album from BNS Turag.  Brought to you by random wikipedia links, a quote from Socrates, and a photo that felt surprisingly appropriate (well, to me it did).  I’m not going to do the ‘name people to continue this meme’ thing, as I’m just not really into that, but if anyone reading this wants to give it a try, put a link to your results in the comments.  (I’d love to see what other people come up with)

Time’s passing, so I guess I should log on and get Kringle to 80.  (That Nesingwary 4000 he has in the bank is waiting to get brought out and equipped)

/wave

So, What’s New With You?

It’s been a quiet few days, with just the usual raids and a couple of nifty new toys for Dingle to play with.

Yup, this is 3 Tournament pets worth of chopper.  And I have to say, the appeal of the tournament dailies wears off quick when you have multiple characters doing them – Fingle, Mingle and Dingle are all champions now, with Mingle and Dingle champions of four of the five alliance factions.

Dingle has also ventured into Ulduar at last, downing Flame Leviathan and tanking Razorscale.  The zone has been nerfed substantially since I first ventured in there – I suspect it’s actually within my ability to tank it now, provided the raid is geared enough (and 10-man Naxx gear may be good enough, if the players know what they’re doing).  Sadly, she didn’t get any gear from those bosses, but hopefully next time will be more profitable.

Anyway, I’ve cut down my playing time lately because it’s currently just so unsatisfying; Mingle is doing 25-man Ulduar, Dingle will be tanking 10-mans (whenever we can scratch up enough players (which has been once since 3.1 went live), and what’s left is basically just the fishing dailies plus whatever other dailies I can be bothered doing.

I’m deliberating whether or not to put together some gear lists from Ulduar – a list of tanking gear from 10-man Ulduar is appealing, albeit mostly out of curiousity about what there is in there for Dingle to work towards.  I’ve also roughed out a quick guide to setting up Power Auras to display on-screen when Mingle’s flask has worn off while I’m raiding. (it’s happened so often that it got quite annoying).

But for now, I have a little fishing to do (and maybe a handful more dailies) before I head out this afternoon for my second viewing of Star Trek.

/wave

Sometimes Less Is Enough

I went to start doing my Tournament dailies yesterday, and I realised they’d crossed that invisible line from “just another daily” to “sheesh, is it finished yet?”  Time to cut down, I think.  One character’s round of tournament dailies per day, or something like that.  (I currently have three champions, so you can imagine how much time I could put into it if I was of a mind to)

The two tournament pets I listed on the neutral AH failed to sell, so I reduced the price a little, and put them on the Alliance AH instead for 4000g each.  They sold that night.  Can you say Ka-ching!?

Dingle’s chopper is getting closer to fruition – I’m just girding my loins before transferring painfully large amounts of gold to her, in order to buy the remaining mats she needs to make it.

25-man progression is slow but steady – Thorim threw his hands up in despair and gave us his loot last night.  10-man progression is…  Well, I’m sure it’ll start for the second group any day now.  (It’s getting quite frustrating – we almost had enough people this week, just had some scheduling hiccups and a shortage of healers who weren’t saved to the first group’s run)

Fortunately my week has Star Trek to look forward to; it might alleviate my disappointment over the PvP Children’s Week achievement that I’m refusing to do.

Also stumbled across this thought-provoking item: Players > skill > gear?

Not in a hurry to log on today, so it’s time to watch a movie before logging on to start some dailies.

/wave