It's the end of the world as we know it!

As the Mists of Pandaria expansion comes to a close, I'd like to take a bit of time to reflect on it.  

So over the entire expansion, we've had a lot of changes.  Pet battles, farms, new raid modes, scenarios.  Man, Blizz really threw a lot at us, especially the longest end tier ever, ungh, a year and a half Blizz?  Really?

On the guild side of things, holy crap a lot has happened.  We switched factions just before the expansion started.  We had a complete guild breakup mid ToT.  We ended up having three separate 10m raid teams.  We even dabbled early on in SoO with h25m, getting up to spoils if I remember correctly.

We've had some people come and go, and we've actually experienced guild and server growth at the end of the expansion when typically there is the exact opposite.

Cillie reformed the guild under her sole leadership.  Yes she'll say I help run things, but really we all know she does like 99% of the work.  And she's pretty damn good at it, since we all like being here.

Then we got the worst news imaginable.  Cillie has an as-of-yet incurable form of cancer.  When that could have caused rifts or drama, instead it brought us all even closer together.  I opened my big fat mouth about it, and how much we want to thank Blizzard for making these great games, which led to an outpouring of support from complete strangers over the internet than I could have ever imagined.

In the face of something horrific, we've found people that truly care for us, that are helping us live a dream that we've had since the first days of us playing WoW together, which is to go to Blizzcon together.  With everyone's help, both in real life and through WoW, we're getting to do just that.  And Chinglish, twitch streamer from Australia, is donating his hotel room to us!  I mean how fucking cool is that huh?!

It's been a hell of a year, in every way possible.  Becoming the front running horde guild on ET.  Midnight Reverence may want to contest it, but they really can't, kudos to them though, they're a solid group of people there.  

So we find ourselves in an amazing position.  We've got more members that have grown in skill together.  Cillie's gotten even better than before at keeping a guild full of crazies working together.  And me, well, I guess I'm still qualified to lead a team, hopefully that continues. ;)

I want to give a shout out here to all the men and women that have raided with me.  The group comp has changed a lot over the entirety of MoP, but the core philosophy, culture, and atmosphere has stayed a constant.  That's something that will stay as well as we move into WoD in just a few weeks.

While some of you have raided in the guild, but maybe not with me in progression, I look forward to having that opportunity with you in the 30m flex normal/heroics and in the 20m mythic mode.  For some of you who haven't done progression raiding, pushing server first type of raiding, it can be a lot of fun and extremely rewarding.  It's a struggle for sure, but those kills at the very top end of the difficulty are extremely satisfying.

For everyone looking at that type of raiding in WoD, be as prepared as you can be.  Blizzard is making tons of changes to every class, professions, all sorts of stuff.  Once raiding opens up after the first two weeks of WoD launch, be ready to hit all those bosses hard and fast.  We're going to prove to the entire server that we are the horde on ET.  Lok'tar ogar!

Most importantly, thank you all, every member, for being a part of our WoW family.  This isn't a guild without each of you.  I'm proud to play this game, spend my time, with you.  Thank you for making this game so fun for me!

Now let's get ready to beat up some orcs of lore, and show them what a real horde is like!  For the horde!

A new mode for WoD...

So I spent the past few days trolling the MMO-C forums like usual.  I came across what I considered a troll post about how Blizz is trying to kill off casual progression raiding, and it was filled with the usual suspects, people talking out of their asses and not making much sense.

It naturally started with how Blizz is making 10man guilds second class citizens.  The LFR crowd bitched at how they aren't getting real loot.  And the people that never raid complained at how their dungeon gear can't compete.

However, there were the shining few who explained the reasons why Blizz was changing raid size formats and stuff.  Mixed in between all of that, an idea sparked in my mind.

It’s a warm summer evening, circa 600 BC, you’ve finished your shopping at the local market, or agora, and you look up at the night sky. There you notice some of the stars seem to move, so you name them planetes, or wanderer.

Just kidding, but I love that scene in BBT where Sheldon tries to teach Penny physics.

So Blizzard has a lot of different types of content.  You have three man scenarios.  Five man heroic dungeons.  Ten to thirty man for LFR, normal, and heroic raids.  Twenty man mythic raids.  On top of all these, differing levels of rewards.

What if, maybe as filler content between raid tiers, they could develop ten man content.  This content would let them showcase other story lines away from the main raid content.  They could make the rewards equivalent to LFR, so it isn't required for Mythic raiders.  It would be something that is a higher challenge than heroic dungeons and LFR, allows them to explore more lore, and is completely optional.  They can periodically release new ten man content after each raid tier to give more stuff for people to do.  This could be very helpful at the end of expansions, where there are huge amounts of time with players getting bored.  They could release little zones, tuned at a slightly higher difficulty than LFR, so coordination would be required, but being twinked out wouldn't be needed, nore would it require everyone to be the perfect raider or have the perfect group comp to complete.

This would give the casual audience, the lore audience, something to do that wouldn't require set days or times, something that could be completed within just a couple hours if one-shotting.  You would have to be in a pre-formed group like our current Flex model.

I don't quite know what I would call this mode yet.  But that is my idea.

The love of my life, the reason I'm here.

Certain things happen in life that completely change your perspective on, well, everything.  Something can happen, some singular event, that spins everything in on itself.  You realize that what you worried about from day to day, things you planned for the future, the mundane parts of your life fall away, like leaves off a tree, and just the trunk of the tree stays, what really matters.

My life is like that tree now, stripped bare of all its leaves, small branches falling away, to show just a trunk, a few thick branches, but everything else has left, fallen, littered the earthen floor below.

I'm not the best at spoken word when I'm trying to convey emotions.  When my emotions run strong, my brain tends to shut off.  But the written word, when I have time to let my brain formulate what it wants to express, I do believe that I have a modicum of ability in this regard.

I've used this blog as an outlet to my passtimes.  Looking back now, I realize how fortunate I was to be able to spend my time on such things.  This isn't to say that my missives on that part of my life are being stopped.  I'm sure I still will in some way.  However the filter, the perspective, the frame of reference, has changed the focus of what I write about.

And now for the reason behind all these words I've strewn before you, my few dear readers.  On Thursday, July 31st, 2014, my wife, Tabytha Holland Armstrong, was diagnosed with cancer.  Initial tests show it to be aggressive, and the doctor's initial estimates give a year.

Yes, it feels like Wile E Coyote has dropped the Acme Anvil on us.

We aren't taking this lying down.  We're going to explore everything possible, different treatments, experimental drugs, anything.  But for now, realization is hammering home.  As I said, speaking can be difficult for me.  But I can write much better.

So many thoughts have gone through my mind.  The rage at how this...thing...this faceless monster can infect my wife and take her away from me.  The despair at how I'm given this finite amount of time with her.  A million other emotions.

My wife has cancer.  This woman, this glorious, beautiful, brilliant human, who loves her family and friends with a force of will that I've never experienced before, has something inside her that wants to consume and kill her.

You see this on tv, in movies, but real life?  It doesn't work out the same.  There isn't a montage of doctors working together.  There isn't a commercial break and then coming back to people working out a cure.  This is sitting in a room with her, her parents, as our emotions overwhelm us.

All that day I'd had moments of crying, of emotions taking me to very dark places.  But not a major breakdown, not then.  For me, my heart broke the early morning after.  At four in the morning, I woke up and got out of bed and began typing a message to a friend.  While trying to compile everything as I typed on my keyboard, my hear felt as if it would burst, and tears poured out of my soul.  My body closed itself, all my muscles tightening in unison, my voice screaming in silence as my brain wanted to scream in ways inhumanly possible.  I cried in a way that my body has never felt before.  This pent up rage, fear, hate, despair, it poured out of me, left me exhausted as it coursed through and out of me.

Why her?  Why now?  I've only know her for seven years.  Seven.  When my life was planned around growing with this woman, taking her away at the age of 33 is cruel.  It's not enough time.  I barely know her.  We've just started our lives together, and now these cells want to end her.

There are so many things I want to do with her.  

I want to watch her have a career in nursing, somethin that she has just finished school for just two months ago.

I want to travel the world with her, visit other countries, try so many things, see so much.

I want to buy our first house with her.  Pick furniture.  Paint colors for walls.  Buy our first car.  

I want to celebrate a tenth anniversary, fifteenth, fiftieth.

I want her to see her niece that is about to be born.  Watch her grow up, get to know her, do things and go places with her.

Movies, tv shows, books, games, music that I know she wants to see happen, to share with her, that now may not ever happen.

We've shared ourselves through gaming.  Mario, Halo, WoW.  We've built this bond in WoW.  We've created something in it together.  We've built this digital home, where people have come, shared themselves with us, these people from all over the world, who have found my wife, who have decided that she, the atmosphere she's created, this world she's formed around her, they all want to be a part of it.  They are all a part of her.

This point in the world, that so much revolves around, that is the center of my life, my being, others even orbit her, there is this chance that it will end.  Soon.

It crushes me, like that anvil if it were to hit the Road Runner.  In the cartoons it doesn't.  It always misses.  But this isn't the cartoons.  This is the real world, where anvils fall on people all the time.

But I refuse to believe this is the end.  I hear all the time of how people were told they had months to live an they live on for decades.  I refuse to believe that my reason for living is going away any time soon. This can't, won't, be what ends my wife.  

This does change me.  In all sorts of ways.  Perspectives, outlooks, beliefs.  I hope that this is just a way for is to change together, and not something that seperates us permanently.

But maybe I found something.  I've been talking with others, her parents, friends, family.  Maybe there is a reason for this.  I feel like this isn't the end, just the start of something else for us.  Something we need, have needed for a long time.  This is how it is shown to us.

All of you who read this, I love you all, hold you all close in my heart.  Thank you for being in my life.

That's all I have for now.  I'll be writing more often.  This helps my heart.

2+ lane roads...

Okay, I'm going to get old school ranty on this one, like, Dennis Leery bitching people out.

Multi-lane freeways, that's where you have more than one lane going in the same direction, obviously a huge metric fuck ton of you out there have no clue how to drive on them.  At all.

First off, some basics:

"Slow traffic use right lane".  You don't have to be some CIA cryptologist to figure this out.  If you are driving slower than those around you, put your ass in the right fucking lane.  Don't sit in the left lane thinking it is okay, because it fucking isn't.  Put your blinker on, and get your slow ass the fuck over.

Side note, use your fucking blinkers.  None of us cab read your retarded minds.  Same with headlights at night.  You probably aren't wearing a seatbelt either, you lazy shits.

"Passing".  Now a good driver will be cruising in the right lane, no matter their speed.  When they come across a driver in front of them, they will singal their intent to pass them on the right, check their mirrors, change lanes and, once a few car lengths beyond the passed vehicle, merge back into the right lane.

If you see others that are moving faster than you and about to pass you, don't fucking cut them off because you think that if you don't get into the left lane right fucking then, then you'll be forever stuck in the right lane.  Let the faster traffic pass both you and the car in front of you, THEN you can pass.  Or, an alternative which is perfectly fine, is to speed up and pass at a speed that does not impair the speed of others.

Now, if you are "passing" someone, but you are going the same speed, or even so barely faster that it will take several minutes to pass the traffic on the right, then guess what, yer the fuck-tard.  That's right, you are the assclown that is fucking everything up for everyone else.  Get a little more speed and get the fuck around an over.  Trust me it's okay, you can slow back down again once you are back in the right lane.  You really can use your gas pedal a little bit harder for a few seconds, it's not going to kill you.

"Cruising".  I don't give a rats shitty asshole if you are in a fucking McLaren, it doesn't matter if you are doing 160 miles an hour.  If you aren't actively passing someone, get over into the fucking right lane you asswad.

In short, people, quit being inconsiderate clueless dipshits on multi-lane roads.  You should have been tested on this simple shit when you got your liscence, and it isn't like this shit is fucking rocket science.  And if you know you do this type of shit and you just don't care, then you, sir or madam, can suck a thousand dicks.

I'm a real wild one...real wild child

If you didn't get the hint, I'm considering Wildstar.  Pre-ordering has started, giving everyone all the usual shit, pre-order only items/mounts/housing/blah blah blah.

But yeah, I think I might just casually play Wildstar.  I need something else, something that I don't have to be so desperate to min/max all to shit.  Which I'll probably do anyway.  But maybe I won't be as compelled to.  Let that be WoW/D3 for me.

Short and sweet.

Randomness, no witty title here...

Some times I wonder about people, the decisions they make, why.  This is going to be me rambling for a bit.  Skip this post if you don't care about my inner thoughts.

I'm glad we switched to 25's when we did.  There is a lot of headache going on.  You'll read, maybe even reread those two sentences and think they don't belong together.  But they do.

Why am I glad for the headache?

Two situations.  Situation A takes place now, while we are stuck in SoO.  Situation B is the launch of WoD.  In both situations, a guild is restructuring from 10's to 20/25's.  People deciding to quit, take breaks, join other teams, other servers, all sorts of crap.  To me, situation A is better for that to take place, while the tier is old news, the 'race' is over, people are progressing at their own pace.  Situation B puts pressure on everyone, and any kind of slowdown is catastrophic.

Thankfully, we live in situation A.  Found out some people weren't actually interested in the larger raid size when they said they were.  Found out that people were already pushing their computers to their limits on 10's and 25's were unplayable.  Found out some people couldn't handle that we'd be in SoO for as long as we are going to be.  Found out some people are just dicks.

Also found out that there are a shit ton more people out there looking for a home.  Found out that some people are going to help simply because they like the people they are playing with and want their group to succeed.  Found who real friends are, even with internet anonymity.

I'm not upset at anyone.  Sure there is disappointment from time to time.  Disappointment at all that time spent with some people, and it means nothing.  I mean philosophy hasn't changed, guild is still being ran the same as ever.  So that means that other people's intentions have changed.  And that's fine, it's going to happen, unavoidable.  Just leaves a sour taste.

Anywho.  I'm enjoying the group we got, and look forward to the next expansion.  It can only be better.  

And I've seen what happens when I'm not around.

A little birdy whispered to me today...

Well, I can't exactly say what it is, naturally.  But let's just say that something I've been waiting for from a certain game company has finally happened.  Can't really go into much more, NDA and stuff.  But yeah, today is a damn good day.

Top ten all time days.

A feel a disturbance in the force...

Not in a good way, not in the "Luke coming to save the day" kind of way at all.  More along the lines of the "I have a bad feeling about this" kind of way.  Why, you ask?  Check out that time frame for posts.  Draenei Females first week of April.  All that other crap, no freaking eta at all.

AT.

ALL.

Before I get all Denis Leary rant on this, I'm going to at first assume that this means nothing at all.  That this tweet has absolutely not one thing to do with beta in the slightest.

But maybe...

Maybe if they are not getting these new player models posted until months and months apart from each other, maybe they are really fuck-all behind on WoD.  I'm going Mad Max on this train of thought.

They have had months, since September 2013 to be solely focused on WoD after the launch of SoO.  And here we are, the end of March 2014, only having shared a few of the new player models.  No Draenei, Tauren, Blood Elf, etc.

There is the possibility that beta won't be delayed because of the player models taking holy fuck forever.  Maybe we'll get a beta drop, and they will just start filtering in the new player models as they get completed.  But if that were the case, that they would handle things like that, we'd have been in WoD beta months ago, testing out their zones, scripts, ferreting out bugs and crap long ago, with them  adding in completed player models one by one as the art team gets done with them.

But that's not the world we're living in.  We're on the threshold of being stuck in the longest tier of raiding in WoW history, if they just do their average time frame on getting a beta started and beta duration.  ICC?  That will look like the new normal if things keep getting delayed.  This time, right here, right now, is when Blizz needs to put their big boy pants on and get shit out the door, or else all that talk, for months, years, Blizzcon, dev blogs, all that bullshit gets thrown right the fuck out because they can't deliver on what they say they want so desperately to deliver on.  Shorter cycles between content launches.

Blizzard, you've been touting that line for a really long time now.  And you sure as shit aren't living up to it unless you do something amazing really quick.

It's the kind of relationship going on like when you are a kid, and your dad or mom or older sibling that can drive says that they are going to take you somewhere and do something that you've been dying to go/do for a really long time.  For days and weeks they get you hyped up, talking a big game about how they are going to have so much fun with you doing whatever it is you want to do with them.  And the day comes, they come up with some random excuse, and maybe it's a valid reason for adults, but when they spent all that time getting you hopped up about it, that all it turns about to be for you is a huge fucking let down.

That's how this is turning out Blizzard.

Yes, I know that Blizz is going to put out great games.  I've been with the Blizzard crew since Rock n' Roll Racing.  I got my entire bunch of friends at school hooked on WC2 when it came out on PC.  I've been loyal to Blizzard for over twenty years.  I've been more than patient.  But you really need to understand something about us gamers Blizzard, which you should know because you are us also.  We sit still for a fucking year or more, and we're gone.

My wife, our guild leader, is looking at ESO.  I'm staring at Wildstar (maybe not seriously but as a diversion until Blizzard gets their asses in gear).  Others are looking at being stuck in SoO for longer than a year and it does not look fun at all.

Do something Blizzard.  You should have done something a long fucking time ago.  You have been talking a big fucking game about having these shorter dev cycles, and all we are getting is updates on the fucking Heroes of the Storm alpha patch notes.

But like any good Dennis Miller rant, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

To be, or not to be...

...something something, shuffle off this mortal coil...something...<dead> fin.

Oh Blizzard...why do you do this to us?

Pre-Purchase: Game is expected to release on or before 12/20/2014

Time for a long rant.  I haven't had one in a while.



Disappoint.  SMH.  For real, serious, Blizz, WHISKEY! TANGO! FOXTROT!

Now, I'm not going to be the guy that goes all "red shirt guy" and links clips of videos from Blizzcon.  Unless I get real bored with this post and just save it and then come back and edit the ever loving hell out of it just to pass my time.

I remember Blizz peoples saying, often, that they were further along in the WoD dev cycle while the players were playing through MoP than they were for the MoP dev cycle in the same equivalent time frame as the player base was playing through Cata waiting for MoP.  It's a fact.  Anyone can look this up in no time at all.

Here.

March fucking tenth!

So at best, if their pre-purchase page is believable, then we have somewhere from twelve to fifteen months of Siege of Orgrimmar to live through.  That is a long fucking time.  Well, let's compare some shit:

WoW started Nov 23, 2004.
(11 month gap)
BC gets announced at Blizzcon on Oct 28, 2005.
(12 month gap)
BC beta starts Oct 13, 2006
(3 month gap)
BC release Jan 16, 2007
(7 month gap)
Wrath of the Lich King announced at Blizzcon on Aug 3, 2007
(11 month gap)
Wrath beta starts July 17, 2008
(4 month gap)
Wrath release Nov 13, 2008
(9 month gap)
Cata announced at Blizzcon Aug 21, 2009
(10 month gap)
Cata beta starts Jun 30, 2010
(6 month gap)
Cata release Dec 7, 2010
(10 month gap)
MoP announced at Blizzcon Oct 21, 2011
(5 month gap)
MoP beta starts Mar 21, 2012
(6 month gap)
MoP release Sep 25, 2012
(14 month gap)
WoD announced at Blizzcon Nov 8, 2013
(10 to 13 month gap)
Proposed release date of no later than Dec 20, 2014

Well, that's a lot of crap up there.

BC, from announcement to release, 15 months.
Wrath, from announcement to release, 15 months.
Cata, from announcement to release, 16 months.
MoP, from announcement to release, 11 months.

WoD, from announcement to release, 10-13 months.

Assuming, assuming, that their statement on their website of "Fall 2014" actually means the very fucking beginning of Fall, then break out the champagne, they'll beat their MoP cycle by one month.  But, something more important, time between raid tiers...

Starting from BC:

Kara/SSC/etc, 1/2007 - 5/2007, 4 months.
Black Temple, 5/2007 - 3/2008, 9 months.
Sunwell, 3/2008 - 11/2008, 8 months.

Naxx/OS/Eye/etc, 11/2008 - 4/2009, 5 months
Ulduar, 4/2009 - 8/2009, 4 months
ToC, 8/2009 - 12/2009, 4 months
Icecrown, 12/2009 - 12/2010, 12 months

BoT/etc, 12/2010 - 6/2011, 6 months
Firelands, 6/2011 - 11/2011, 5 months
DS, 11/2011 - 9/2012, 10 months

MSV/etc, 9/2012 - 3/2013, 6 months
ToT, 3/2013 - 9/2013, 6 months
SoO, 9/2013 - assumed release "Fall 2014", 12-15 months.


SoO will potentially have the longest time spent in that tier than other.  Me personally, I had a gap in time away from WoW from Kara to Ulduar, where I picked up a little time raiding in ToC/Icecrown briefly, then another gap from there to BoT, finally getting into WoW raiding again in Firelands, and getting into heroic progression from then on out.

Personally, I absolutely hate being in SoO for this long.  I'm already kind of bored with it, but the move to 25-man is keeping things a bit more interesting.  I'm ready for the next expansion already.  Blizzard spends a very long time in the final raid tier of each expansion, and for obvious reasons, they are creating a crap ton of new worlds and leveling content and dungeons and revamps and all sorts of stuff.

I guess my real beef with Blizz is them saying at Blizzcon that they feel like they are much further in their dev cycle for WoD, time frame wise, than they were along with MoP.

They started the MoP beta when they were only four months into DS, or another way to look at it is at five months from when MoP was accounced.  If their statement from Blizzcon was really true, then we should have been in WoD beta sometime around December last year to January this year.  We're at six months out from when SoO started, and no beta.  We're at only four months from when they announced WoD though.  If you look at that, you'd be inclined to think that they may be ahead of schedule.  But really, you have to look at time between raid tiers.  Time from announcement really doesn't mean a whole lot, because what company is actually working on matters.  In this case, SoO was already out for two months before we even heard about the next expansion.  So Blizz has had two entire months to pound away at development for WoD.

What does all this feel like?  Like way too long being spent in SoO without a beta for WoD.  Half a year has gone by and nothing so far.

Sunwell was out in 3/2008, Wrath beta started in 7/2008, a four month gap.
Icecrown was out in 12/2009, Cata beta started in 6/2010, six month gap
DS was out in 11/2011, MoP beta started in 3/2012, four month gap.

We're already tied with Icecrown to Cata gap in time, and there isn't even the tiniest hint of a beta starting.  Not a glimmer.  Not a tweet.  Not some random patch on the PTR that leeks out by mistake.  Nothing.

We're going to be in SoO a long time, longer than any other, unless Blizz has been holding onto WoD being uber fucking polished out the ass and we have the shortest beta cycle ever and suddenly WoD just fucking drops on us.

Is that going to happen?  I have a better chance of giving birth.

I really hate sounding and being pessimistic of Blizzard.  I really do.  I love their games.  D3, with the revamp to paragon levels and loot and game play scaling, etc, they really know how to make something really good.  But I'll be damned if you tease us with what you had at Blizzcon last year, and then don't even give us a ray of anything other than a couple updates showing models for player races and buildings for the Garrisons.  You've spent less time creating entire worlds, classes, races, professions.  Why are you taking so long now?  Why is WoD looking like it's going to take the longest in Blizz history of expansions to create?

Beta durations:

Wrath, 4 months.
Cata, 6 months.
MoP, 6 months.

Even if Blizz starts now, TODAY, if they somehow manage to keep the WoD beta no longer than any of the others, that puts WoD coming out October this year, which means 13 months of SoO.  If by some insane miracle they have a Wrath type beta, they can actually keep SoO to just 11 months, with an August release.

Youguys and gals better have something real fuck-all epic coming out, to justify taking so long, or get the lead out and actually produce something real.  If PAX comes and goes and there isn't beta happening, I'm gonna feel like anything else, even something as newb friendly as Wildstar might be where I spend my time.  Keep me as a customer Blizz, I've been liking it so far, but damn if you aren't making it real difficult to stay.

Beta real soon, or else you are falling further behind than you ever have before, and that is a real bad sign.  Blizzard, you are not further along in development for WoD than you were for MoP, or else you are keeping all your cards real close to your chest.  And if that's the case, what for?  Are you afraid that a WoD beta will eat into D3 profits?  Come the fuck on.  You start this shit where you think your own franchises compete for customers, and come up with retarded staggering releases for expansions, betas, and all that kind of shit, and I'll start looking elsewhere to spend my money and free time real quick.

You've had more than enough time for a WoD beta to already start.  Time to put something out there.

When the going gets tough...

So, EQ is now 7/14 for h25m.  This week, fairly positive we'll bump that up to at least 8, maybe 9 or 10.

But, I need to back track.

Why is Equilibrium doing this?

I hope most of my raiders read my blog, or at least the few that do, can spread this to everyone else.  Blizzard has decided to completely change the face of raiding for progression teams.  Most of us should know by now that, soon, ten man raiding will be a permanent thing of the past.  Also, twenty five man raiding will be a thing of the past as well.  It is all changing to twenty man.  There isn't anything anyone can do about it.  Blizzard has spoken, so it shall be done.  All we can do is prepare.

And that is what EQ is doing, preparing.  That means we stopped ten man progression completely on both the ten man teams.  It means we shoved everyone into twenty five man progression.  We are doing that so we are prepared for the next expansion (yes, even though it may be well into 6-9 months from now since Blizz posted a fall release date, I'll elaborate more on that later).

So we prepare by being used to twenty five man raiding, since that is going to be the closest to what twenty man mythic raiding will be like.  It means we are testing out how well we use loot systems like EPGP which we've decided to go to, at least for now.  It means we know some people may not want to do twenty five man raiding.

If you don't want to do twenty five man raiding, be honest with yourself.  You won't want to do twenty man raiding.  I get it that some people only like ten man raiding.  I totally understand.  I used to raid twenty five's back in wrath, for a while.  I didn't like it.  I went back to ten man in Cata and stayed that from then on.  Until now.  Because if I want to progression raid, I have to be in a larger group.

So yeah, if you hate large scale size raiding, you won't want to do mythic raiding when 6.0 starts.  And that's ok.  They will have flex systems for normal and heroic raiding where people can do whatever size from ten to twenty five, and those people can do that content.

But if you want to do progression, this is the new future.  And we don't want to be stuck not knowing the ins and outs once it goes live like a lot of other guilds will be.  We don't want to be one of the teams that is frantically trying to recruit more people, or somehow merge with another guild to be able to do mythic raiding.  No, we want to come right out at the start and kill bosses.  Continue to lead.

You can't do that if you are playing catch up.  You can't do that if you are trailing everyone else.  It is a different kind of war.  We have to approach it differently.  This is the only way to prepare.  We need to find out, sooner rather than later, who's actually going to be willing to stay in the new format.  Who's computers won't even be able handle a larger raid size.  Who's willing to adapt to a little different loot format.  All necessary changes that we have decided to make now instead of when it could be too late.  Maybe too late isn't the right way to say it.  When others have already gotten past this point and are just cleaning out boss after boss.



Now...Blizzard calling a fall release.  Yeah, that's a lot of time.  Sure, I'm kind of disappointed at that.  I wanted a summer release honestly.  But this gives us time to really develop a large team really well.  It also gives us time to set up other things, like normal mode teams, ten and twenty five possible.  It gives us a lot more time to make sure we are ready, instead of a very short amount of time.

Could there be burn out though?  Yeah, but there is always the problem of burn out.  It could happen at the very start of a tier/expansion, just as easily at the end of one.  So that's really not a particular problem of a long release date.  It's always a problem, which is why large teams are almost always recruiting.  I sure as hell hope it's at the start of fall, and not the end of it, but ultimately Blizzard is going to do what Blizzard wants to do.

So everyone always has choices, stay with a team, move to another team, take a break, quit all together.  This is going to be the time for a lot of those choices to take place, and we're just giving ourselves as much time as we can to get through those choices and be better prepared for when WoD goes live.  Because that's the next goal.  Sure, we want to clear heroic SoO, but WoD is the real goal.  Being prepared for that.  SoO gets us prepared for that, so we have to do all we can.  Hopefully, each and every person in EQ comes along for the ride!

The pits...

...of HELL!  So D3 just had a ton of changes all over the place.  Bruno got me to check it out, and after all of five minutes having to redo my skills and check out my gear again, I like it!

I haven't had a lot of time to really dig deep yet.  Paragon levels kinda sorta feel like the AA system from EQ, EverQuest, and I really liked that system.  It lets you feel like there was some meaningful replay value post level cap.

If you used to play but took a break, you owe it to yourself to check it out again.  Lots of changes to play modes, gear, abilities, monster abilities, all kinds of stuff.

Respect

That's something that is almost impossible to have online.  Why?  Anonymity.  It's the internet, nobody really knows you unless they already know you in real life.  So...be a jackass online, no repercussions.  Unless you are in EQ.

If you are reading this, you either know me in real life or in game as a guildie.  And you also know Cillie, my wife, the gm of the guild.  You know how hard she works to get people into raiding, be it flex or heroics or normals.  You know she cares about her rep and the guild's rep.  She is openly friendly, puts together fun events, does give-aways, and is an all around fun person to play with.

You may also be aware of her kicking out one of our former members because they had a history of being very juvenile to others in WoW.  Or maybe you didn't, but you do now.  Or how she kicked someone for raging over the BMAH.  Both were good raiders.  But attitude and personality mean more than posting good numbers in a raid.

So it comes as a little surprise when three people from the top 10-man ally guild hop onto their horde alts and give her shit.  I'm not talking about trash talking.  I'm talking about abusive language.  Trying to instigate a fight.  Belittlement.  Slander.  Real fifth grade kind of crap.

And for what?  Yeah, our main 10-man team was only 2 bosses begind them.  Some would say that it's close, but not for the bosses that we were up against.  Siegecrafter and Klaxxi.  Fights that take a lot of pulls to figure out.  Harder for us when we had a tank that had the raid awareness of a toothpick.  We're close, closer than anyone, but still a ways off.

Which really makes me wonder why the malicious trolling?  Yeah, we showed up all of a sudden with 4 heroic 25-man kills.  Big woop.  The other 25-man guild is at 12/14.  Why all the hate for us?  Why all the hate against Cillie?

Maybe they were just being little kids?
Maybe that's how they have fun?
Maybe they actually feel threatened by us?
Maybe they are salty when we turned them down for a merge for Mythic 20-man in WoD?

At the end of the day though, they are strangers over the internet.  All I can do is control myself, and to an extent my guild mates.  I won't ever tolerate anyone in my guild treating others how they treated us.  Like I said, Cillie has cleaned people out for crap like that.

But you better understand that I'll defend any of my guild mates, from a recruit to the gm, against anyone being an assclown to any of us.

I'm going to call back to some of my earliest posts, where I talk about 'coming out, guns blazing!'.  I'm getting that feeling again, like it won't be that hard to do.  We're always recruiting, we're always looking at how we can improve ourselves.  Watch us, you might see us get further than anyone else some day.  And it's going to be a great day.

You're the reason I'm a travelin on!

We've all been there, in a random dungeon, or LFR, where you get matched up with total clowns.  People you seriously wonder how in the world they ever managed to turn their computer on, much less go through the complex series of inputs to get a character to 90 and qued as your tank/healer/dps with you.  People that, if the human race depended on them for survival, you are fairly sure that our species would be, in totality, fucked!

Well, Blizz has heard us.  Hopefully.  With some of the info coming from the french and korean press events, it looks like Blizz is planning on making people get through at least a silver proving ground for a role on each character before queing up for the random dungeons, unclear yet whether it will be for all dungeons, or just the heroics, we'll have to see for sure about that.

Blizz, I'd kiss you all if I could right now.  Please don't make silver proving grounds face roll through, mkay.  Also, put in that kind of gating for LFR too while you are at it, maybe even a gold for getting into that que.  Yeah, it might be a hassle for the individual, but then you don't have the Benny Hill episode that some LFRs turn into right now.

There is already an ilvl requirement for dungeons and lfr's, might as well give everyone a skill check to complete also.  I don't think it's too much to ask, quite the opposite.  I think it's been needed since the beginning, and I can't wait to see it implemented.

On another note, one day away from when EQ goes 25man!  I know that Cillie and I, and all the officers, are really excited to see what we can all do together.  Hope everyone else is too, core and new comers.  Man it'd be a kick to get 25man Garry killed!

Those were the best days of my life!

And now the times are changin'
Look at everything that's come and gone



Group one ended their raid week last night.  More importantly, it was the last official 10 man raid that the core team, that has existed in part since around the time when Firelands tier came out, will ever get to do.  Because EQ is officially going 25's until WoD puts us into 20man Mythic.

The raid comp has changed over time, people dropping out, leaving, reforming under a different banner, struggles to find the right person at times to fill key spots here and there.  It's been a hell of a run.  Getting our first heroic kill in Firelands.  Me walking off heroic gunship just before spine, which we got our first heroic kill on Blackhorn that very pull.  That feeling when our raid team starts off an entire expansion at the very start together, all of us playing, leveling as fast as we can, chatting on Mumble while we play.  Then getting our first dogs kill in Mogu Palace.  And then later killing the Disco Dogs.  Making a hell of a run through ToT where we decidedly took the lead as the number one horde raiding team on Eldre'thalas.  Then SoO, where we stomped all our competition, and even made a second 10man team that also stomped the competition and is the second best horde team on the server, not that far back from ourselves.

To the ones that have stuck with us, those that have had to leave and have been able to come back, and to the newer members that have joined us in MoP, I want all of you to know, it has been a pleasure, an honor, fighting by your side.  We've done some truly heroic deeds, shared in the glory, taken down some of the toughest stuff Blizz has ever thrown at it's players, and we've beaten them.  You are all amazing players, true raiders, and I feel privileged to have been able to play with you.

Thank you.


Oh, when I look back now,
That summer seemed to last forever.



We go to 25man starting next week.  There still are things to iron out.  Still some decisions to be made.  We grow, become bigger, stronger, meaner, faster, all those things.  Before long, I'm predicted maybe three months from now (feel free to call me out when Mythic doesn't hit around the end of May*wink*), we'll be seeing stat nerfs, and what their vision of 20man raiding will be, and then not long after that, they throw us into WoD.  But until then, the Equilibrium banner will fly a little higher, as both cores add in a few more, and we see how the team works with a lot more people going at these bosses at once.

It's been a really fun past few months, getting our second team ready, for this very purpose.  We've had a server merge with Korialstrasz, and that has been pretty fun too, picking up a LOT of really good players from that server that, frankly, were not being utilized at all.  Which leads me to my next bit.

Leadership.

This is something that I think Korialstrasz and Eldre'Thalas have been missing.  I see other servers where there are many many progression teams, and I see these two servers where there are very few, almost none horde side, and a small handful on alliance.  Well, we, EQ, have proven that there are leaders out there.  We can get a group, several groups, together, and do some serious work with them.  But it goes beyond that.

I'll tell you what it takes to make a real progression minded guild to work though.  It takes someone that can foster relationships with everyone.  That can take time to get to know people, not just raiders, but general gamers, people that you want to play with, spend your time with.  Cillie, and our officers, you are the most amazing people finders in the world!

The meat and potatos.

When you are looking for solid raiders, you aren't looking just for those types of people.  You are looking for everyone, good personalities, friendly, sociable.  You are looking for people that want to just fly around and hunt rares, who like to farm crafting mats, people that play the AH, the BMAH, people that pet battle, people that pvp, rbg, people that theory craft, people that play other games even.  A raiding team is not built out of just raiders.  It's built out of everyone.  Some of our best raiders are friends of friends in the guild.  We absolutely never would have had the teams we have right now if it wasn't for all the cool, fun, "non-raiders" that we have in our guild.  That's all you "fill ins", members, etc.

All of us, not just the "raiders", make these teams.  You are all part of this experience.  Any of the achievements, our progression, our kills, we owe it to youguys and gals as well.  Every person in the guild contributes, daily, to it's success.  All of you, from new members to our GM, are the reason why we're where we are today!


WoD is going to be coming soon-ish.  We're supposed to be getting an info dump fairly soon, which means beta access starting to filter out to the masses not too long after that, with a quick road to launch behind it.  I'm going with about a three month time frame from when beta starts, to launch of WoD.  That's when a new era of raiding starts, and I know we're going to have some of the best people ever on our raid team, and in our guild playing a game we all love.  Here's to you, my guildies, my friends, and our future together!

For the Horde mon!

So, you want to be a Mythic raider huh?

It's coming close, closer every day, when Blizz will flip the switch and turn on Mythic rule sets in SoO.  We, Equilibrium, have been getting ready for it in a big way.  But we've got a lot of people that may be new, either to the guild, or heroic raiding, or maybe even both.  And some of those people may not know what raiding culture is like.  Maybe I can give some insight.

First off, this is a team sport.  Sure, you have your individuals; tanks, healers, dps.  You also have your raid leader, callers, assists, and other people giving out orders or calling mechanics out to the raid.  And while each individual needs to be the best they can be, the group needs to be better than the sum of the individuals.  At first glance, reading that sentence, you may be inclined to think that it's a really dumb statement.  I can break it down for you.

Our competition, Midnight Reverence, has highly skilled players raiding over there.  Arguably some of the best on Eldre'thalas, able to put up numbers better than almost everyone playing in our neck of the woods.  However, the group, has been very far behind in progression.  Now, I don't know all the particulars, but when one team beats another, and then gets a second team going and that second team beats them as well...there's something to notice there.

So what can make a team so good?  Well, I see a lot of different things.  The very first thing is leadership.  And it starts at the guild leader position.  To be very successful with a progression guild, you need to be able to lead people.  Now that goes beyond just telling someone "do this or else".  No, your guildies need to want to see the group succeed.  That takes work, finding those types of people.  Sure, everyone wants to be successful, but not everyone wants to share the glory, or put in more effort in return for less personal recognition.  Finding those types of players can be daunting, nigh impossible feeling sometimes.  However, a good leader finds those people, either directly or indirectly, and fosters relationships on many different levels.

But it also goes beyond the guild leader.  In our case, I'm just the raid leader.  I engineer fight strategies, take a look at comps, strats, mechanics, watch videos, read forums, look at logs, and come up with a play book.  But then all those strategies need to be communicated to the group.  That communication can make or break teams sometimes.  If the group is just banging their heads into walls for weeks on end without any new kills, people will leave.  That job falls on the raid leaders shoulders.

Officers have a part in this as well.  The guild, and not just the raiding teams, should have a particular type of culture that makes everyone there feel like a part of something great.  This is a social game, with all the "really cool stuff" taking a group of players to do.  As such, the general environment that everyone shares should be one that everyone enjoys.  If people aren't having fun, they won't stick around.

Beyond that though, there needs to be consistency.  Sure, people are going to get upset over things, sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not.  The great guilds will have some sort of system of consequences for dealing with those that want to ruin the fun for everyone else.  And that isn't limited to just inside the guild itself.  Really successful guilds will have a "presence" on their server, or even cross server.  People will take notice, and when one or many from that guild lash out, or otherwise tarnish the guild's reputation, well, they better be dealt with.

This may seem like a lot of nonsense for someone just looking for a raiding team, but it's not.  Each player in the raid team, even the guild in general, need to fully understand that they are part of something beyond themselves, that all of their actions, and even inactions, matter.  Once your team realizes this, you'll start to see some really amazing things happen.

Sure, your dps need to have their rotations down, healers able to keep everyone vertical, tanks perfecting boss positioning and cd usage.  But everyone needs to get along as well.  Sometimes that's much easier said then done.  It takes a lot of hard work, constant vigilance, and dedication to make happen.  For some teams/guilds that are going to try to make the move from 10man to Mythic 20man, I hope they are ready.  It's not going to be something that you just jump right into on day one of the next expansion.  It's something that a lot of people have to get used to.  Remember, not everyone agrees on everything all the time, so doubling your size is going to be a wild ride.  Hope you've been working on some good shocks for your guild when it starts growing.  It's going to be a real rough ride for most.

So when you are out there spamming for a team, or getting ready to suit up and slay bosses for the first time with a new group, keep those things in mind.  Yeah, you should be good at the game, but you also need to be good at life.

A few tips, be coachable.  That may sound real dumb, as if I'm acting like some highschool football coach that thinks he's still in the NFL.  But it applies to things other than sports, or games.  It applies to every part of your life.  There will be people that can provide tips for being a better husband or wife, for being better at your job, how to study better, or take tests better.  Be able to receive those criticisms and apply them to yourself.

Be agreeable.  That doesn't mean to let people walk all over you.  But at first glance, when someone asks something of you, and it just feels like it's an imposition upon yourself, sometimes there may be a reason for it that isn't perfectly clear, but there could be benefit for the group.  Example, having your raid leader sub you out for a fight for someone else.  They may want to try certain comps for a fight, and people need time to experiment and discover.  They may end up scrapping that idea, or you could learn the idea and work with them on it, even though you may not be the one to execute it.

Be aware.  Know what is going on around you.  I'm not just talking about "don't stand in fire", although that is very important.  But know when to communicate to others, and when to be quiet and listen.  Understand all the information being presented to you and manage it intelligently.  If your raid is dieing, and you are just a pure dps class, figure out why.  Sometimes you might be the one with the answer.  I can't tell you how many times someone in a different role will look at what is happening, and after a wipe, have what seems like a crazy idea at first, but when later implemented, gets us through something that was road blocking us before.  That isn't to say that you should just throw any retarded thought into the mix.  Instead, be able to make use of information and use it correctly to help others, and yourself.

At the very least, be friendly.  Most people aren't going to enjoy playing these games with total assclowns.  Even if you aren't the absolute best at something, as long as people enjoy spending their time with you, they'll want to do more things with you.  You'll get to experience and enjoy far more of this game with that type of mentality, I guarantee it.

So, each of us needs to be very well rounded people, in general, in life, to succeed, and that includes success in WoW.  That's what we look for, and when we find it, well, we do some pretty cool stuff.  Come join us if you fit what we're looking for, we promise a great time!

Knee deep in the hoopla sinking in your fight, Too many runaways eating up the night.

We built this city!

So, the devs have released some of their thinking behind the artwork for Garrisons.  Honestly, how much thought Blizz has put into this feature, I can't freaking wait!

This takes me back to something I heard Lore talk about quite often during one of his videos during Dragon Soul, where he was talking about how the story wasn't about us, but about how we were the sidekicks for Thrall and the Aspects...that sounds like a band name....  We get these cut scenes, bits of story, and it features a bunch of NPC's, and not any of us that are actually fighting these bosses.  It makes you feel like you don't matter.  And yeah, we all know we are never going to be as strong as Thrall, but our group is at least!

And I've noticed how Blizz has realized that desire in the player base.  All through MoP, everything is focused on us, the player.  Garrosh, and Wrynn, during the quests that came mid expansion down in Krasarang, the "pvp area", relies on us, the player, the super agent that has been out in the field.  The scenarios, the pandaren rely on us to free their beach of the Hozen menace.  Even the cut scenes in ToT and SoO feature us, our actual characters, making the charge at Siegecrafter, or Tortos's bridge.

And in WoD, we're going to be the one that builds the forward outpost, the city, the stronghold out in the wilderness.  The story, while still having lots of Alliance vs Horde, is going to be even more so about how we, individually, shape the world, literally.

I really like where Blizz is going with this.  And they aren't just doing stock building artwork for this stuff.  Which they totally could.  They could make it the typical Stormwind/Orgrimmar building look, just slap the same textures/models down in the wilderness, and solely focus on what the buildings do for us.  But they aren't.  They are making it, while still being true to the Stormwind/Orgrimmar, unique.  There are tons of detail in just the tiniest of things, like the book cases, the random bits of crafting mats on the floor, and then as the buildings "level up" they get cleaner, classier, bigger, badder!  It gets pretty fucking cool!!

If you haven't seen any of what I am talking about, go check everything out on MMO-Champion.  Do it!  DO EET NOAH!

Seriously, this game is going to let us design our own freaking town.  We get to build it all how we want.  We're freaking rock stars!  I've never been more excited about something in my entire gaming life as this.  And I really do hope that Blizz puts it in so that if you group with someone, or raid with people, everyone can go to the group leader's city, that'd be really cool.

This makes me think of stuff I read in the book "Ready Player One", where you have your own planet, or asteroid, stuff like that.  Or the private chat room that Aech ran where you could invite people in to hang out.  It's those types of things that I find very cool.  Where you can show off what you like, your interests, and just hang out, immerse yourself in what you enjoy.

You can go the distance...do it for your name...be a champion...on the walls of the hall of fame

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk48xRzuNvA

It's a good song, if you need something to get you going.

So, this morning's thought was sparked from a conversation going on at MMOC about how, at four months out from the start of SoO, how less than a quarter percent of the major raiding player base have killed heroic Garrosh.  http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1436187-0-23-of-Players-Defeated-Heroic-Garrosh

A low number.  Sure.  So what?

Some people want to make issues out of it.  Things like 'the game is in decline, less people even caring to raid', 'not enough incentive for people to try', 'it's too hard if only 0.23% of the players can finish it on the hardest difficulty'.

For me, being a heroic progression raider, I say all that is total bullshit.  People whining, making up excuses, crying, wanting things handed down to them.

My wife takes pride in having played almost all the Halo games through the campaigns on the hardest difficulty levels.  All of them.  I can't do that.  Sure, I'm pretty decent in pvp on that game, not great, but my wife, Cillie, our guild leader, in the campaign, she makes me look absolutely stupid.  She's good.  Zen-fucking-zone good.  She memorizes the games subconsciously.  She knows the stories, all the characters, everything.  She gets into that entire series like nobody else I know.

And that is bad ass on a level most people never experience.  My wife is amazing at that game, and I take ridiculous pride in that.  My guy coworkers brag about gaming, and I get to knock them all way down by telling them that my WIFE can smoke all of those games.

Now if she and I were to play something like WC3 or SC2, yeah, I'd roflstomp her like crazy.  Love you honey, but yeah, I own RTS's.

But back to the point.  Game difficulty.

Let's go back, old school.  You idiots today think you know game difficulty and beating a game completely?  Oh man, kids these days.  I'm like...giddy!

May 22, 1980.  Pakkuman gets released to the public in Japan by Namco.  October it finally hits the US, as Pac-Man.  Now, Pac-Man isn't hard, by today's game standards.  Not hard at all.  Little yellow guy, move in four different directions, up, down, left, right.  Eat pellets, dodge ghosts, get power up pellets to go apeshit on the ghosts for a brief time.

Easy concept.  Sure.  It has a finite amount of levels, and a maximum score.  Three million, three hundred thirty three thousand, three hundred sixty points.  3,333,360.  THE perfect score that all old school gamers know.

From when it was released, to the year 2009, only six confirmed people have "beaten" that game.  TWENTY NINE YEARS PEOPLE.  You want to talk about game difficulty, you start there.  Complaining about how somewhere between 5,000 to 17,000 players have been able to beat heroic Garrosh in four months, oh come on.  Grow a pair.  By Pac-Man's standards, we're all a bunch of mouth breathing idiots spending our time running into padded walls without the full use of all our limbs trying to play WoW, and still "winning".

And don't even start on me about differences in how people and gamers think today versus 1980, or any nonsense like that.  Records, and achievements in human history, are there for a reason.

So only a tiny fraction of the player base have "beaten" the raid content for this expansion so far.  So what?  It's funny, people's opinions and perspectives.  If that number had been ten times higher, people, probably the exact same people bitching about it being "too hard" or "a waste of game resources on something only a tiny amount of people get to do", would be bitching that the devs made the game too easy that anyone can finish.

Get your head out of your asses.  One of the other posters in the thread said my same thoughts quite well, and quite simply.  "I don't feel like I'm entitled to the kill.  If we get it we earned it."

I really feel like more and more people are starting to lose the inherent value of earning something.  Of working your ass off, a long time, with a lot of failure along the way, to finally get to a goal.  I really do feel like a lot of gamers, and expound this beyond gaming into the "general world", that more and more people fully expect certain things they do, or want to achieve, to be really easy for them.  That the idea of failing, over and over, for a very long time, at the same thing, be it a game, their job, a hobby, and working your ass off to finally get it right, is lost on a lot of people.  Like it's been chemically bred out of people by the government through our water supply, or it's in the air we breath, the meat/cheese/bread we eat.  You are all turning into a bunch of crying little whiny bitches, and it's gross.

Six people in twenty nine years share the hallowed spot of completely beating Pac-Man.  Six, out of BILLIONS.  Those are some fucking gamers right there.  The rest of us are just the spectators, eating our cheetos and drinking our beers while we watch the gladiators perform.

Just like major league sports, or entertainers, or doctors, lawyers, politicians, a very small fraction of the human race is able to perform at that level, and an even smaller fraction of that percent are going to be considered "the best".  It's how our entire race has been since the beginning of time.  Work for it, trust me, whatever it is you are really looking at and thinking, "man, that's so cool, so hard, I wish I could do that", work for it.  Struggle with it, fight for it, have the fucking will to fail over and over and still keep trying and learning and adapting and working new ideas and thinking about it constantly, every day, until you get it right.  Because when you do get it right, and see yourself at the top, with very few people around you, they'll know, and you'll know just what it takes.


And it will feel glorious.

New years is a horrible time sometimes.

A wonderful family member died around four in the morning on New Years day.  My father-in-law's nephew's eighteen year old daughter was shot by another college student, presumably on accident, as a party was winding down.  My cousin, her daughter, they both were the happiest of people, able to lift a room up just by showing up.  They are the type of people that always have a great story, a fun life-loving approach to the world, people that you want to be around and have in your life.  The thought that this has happened, that such a bright, energetic, fun person is gone, that she won't get to add any more to this world is horrible.

I won't go into any details here, it's not the place for stuff like that.  If I get around to telling, I'll come to you personally and tell you.

I have all these thoughts in my head, like how will the judge actually sentence this guy, the killer.  I wonder how the town will react to everything as they hear and learn about it.  I wonder if people will use the situation for political reasons.  I wonder what my own views about gun laws and stuff like that will change.  How does the saying go?  Something like "it's always different until it happens to you"?  I'm missing the actual wording of the saying, but it gets close to how I'm feeling right now.

This isn't the first time I've lost a family member.  I've lived through one of my grandparents dying to old age and Alzheimer's  and my mother having to travel across the whole country and Canada to take care of things.  I've had to live with my wife losing her grandmother just a day after New Years to cancer.  I had to live with a close friend in my high school band dying in a traffic accident.

But this, someone dying to another person's hands, this is new to me.  I see so many people come together because of this, all of us heartbroken, some of the people that were actually there unable to speak because they are so distraught that all they can do is cry when they came to visit the family, and it tears me up.  She had a big impact on a lot of people's lives, and that won't ever happen again.  Ever.

And then I think about how I would feel if that were my mother, father, my wife's parents, any of my brothers and their families.

My wife.

I have to force my brain to think of anything else, do anything else, because if I let that thought stay, I break down.  And it's just a thought.  I can't handle the thought of this happening.

But my cousin, his wife, his two other kids, both boys, they have to deal with this right now.  This impossible thing.  It isn't a thought.  It's now their lives.  They have to deal with this unimaginable pain.  There isn't any way we can take this pain away.  It stays, it washes over all of us, them most of all, in ways we never thought could happen.

This changes lives.

Forever.

That's something that I hate most of all.  Will my cousin no longer be the wonderful, happy, life loving man he always has been?  Will I ever be able to joke around with them?  Or will we just see each other and know that the brightest of us isn't around anymore?

And this is just my side of things.  The kid that shot her, his family, they have their own level of pain and suffering to deal with.  To know for the rest of your life that you took something that can never be replaced out of this world, how does that change a person?  To know you've caused so much pain and suffering in the world for so many people, how does that eat away at you from the inside, out?

I don't know what else to say or do, so I'm just going to stop here.

Old habits die hard, Harder than November rain...

No, I don't have moves like Jagger.

I've noticed two things recently that I'm doing, and I know why.

First, when I become bored with certain games I'm playing, besides looking for other random games to fill my time, I pick up and reread Ready Player One.  I started reading it last night.  This will make for reread number four.

Second, I irrationally disappoint myself by hoping, every single day, that Blizzard will stealthily start doing a WoD beta, and that if I log into my account on the website, or even the desktop app, that I'll have a WoD test server to download or log into.  Just sitting there, waiting for me, with open arms, just for me.

It hasn't happened, and it saddens me.

Or a Wildstar beta invite, that would brighten me up a little.  That has also been disappointing.

But I do these things when I become kind of bored.  Now, nobody needs to break out their 'jump-to-conclusions-mat' any time soon.  I love my WoW, my guild, my raiders.  I look forward to that all the time.  But the other stuff, I just want new things.  New story.  New landscapes.  New levels.  New stuff to play with.  The old toys are getting...stale.  I need a new spice, a new flavor, to make the meal wonderful again.

Anyone have some interesting games that can fill a lot of time?  I'll play almost any genre.  If you have something interesting, drop me a line in game or here or facebook or wherever.  I'm looking for some new filler toys to kill some time.

Logs, meters, and parses, oh my!

Follow follow follow follow,
Follow the addon-laden road!



The natural progression of the focused, goal oriented, min-max player through the years.


Through the life of any game, especially MMO's, the player base will begin to understand the nuances, the ins and outs, all the little nitty gritty details about the game.  For the ones that like being "the best", it's a very natural, fluid ordeal for them to achieve everything they possibly can out of their game.

Shit, people study Chess their entire lives to be better at that.  Why should video games be any different?

They aren't.

Since the beginning of thought for man, we have always spent time asking ourselves, "What if?".  What if that rock would help me cut open this dead animal easier?  What if figuring out how to smelt down this stronger rock and shape it into some other shape would make my life easier?  What if we could leave a message for each other somehow?  What if we could fly?  What if I could stop sucking at healing on my druid and keep the raid alive?

Now, what are the key ingredients to all these questions?  Information.  Experimentation.

You are going to have to fail a lot before you find out what works "best".  We live in a very finite universe.  There is only so much matter on this rock that we can use for different purposes.  Any game developer will only program in a certain maximum amount of combinations of things into their games.  Eventually, and sooner rather than later with the help of technology, those combinations will be discovered.  We are a curious species, we want to just "know" things.  I want to know why all of a sudden I'm a moron on my hunter, but I'm playing better on my mage.

Let's talk Ultima Online.  Not sure if everyone reading this (if anyone still does) ever played that game, but it was the first major "theme park" kind of MMO.  At first, players don't have a freaking clue what they are doing in it.  Use a dagger on a tree?  The hell for?  Oh, I can get kindling for fire?  But if I use an axe on it, I can get wood and make a shield?  Oh hell yeah!  Let's do other shit!!

Extrapolate that to years later, and players have figured out that if you are trying to raise a particular skill (which normally took years and years and years to do in that game), if you got on a boat, and figured out this exact pattern to sail in, you could almost completely automate rapid skill gains.

Or that each "tile" in the game had a certain amount of skill point resources that could be depleted and replenished over time.

Or that they actually programmed environmental habits for wildlife, migration patterns for food sources, and how to handle predators and prey.

Neat, but what does that have to do with WoW, Dave?  Well, your average WoW player, that is super casual, may might LFR once in a blue moon, but just levels up, does quests, maybe crafts some, but nothing too major, for them it doesn't mean anything really.

For the player that says "How hard would it be to kill that dragon over there?  Oh it killed me in three hits?  Hmmm, would my buddy who's a protection warrior do better?  Oh he died in eight hits?  Hey let's get our druid friend to heal us.  Oh he ran out of mana after forty seconds?  Crap, okay guys, let's think this one out.  Let's get another guy who can take a lot of hits, that paladin guy over there.  And really this will take me like twenty minutes just with the amount of damage we're doing, what if we got like eight more people to shoot this sucker.  And the druid may need some help healing that many people, let's get him a shaman and a priest to help him out.  Okay, NOW let's go take that dragon down.", then this is exactly for them.

Trial and error, that is how most of the things are learned in this game.  Even for the developers too.  Test, change some code, retest, change more code, tweek something here and there, test it, more tweeks, etc. etc. etc..

But people also hate wasting their time.  So we invent things to save ourselves time, energy, resources, etc.  Now we have tools like skada/recount, those dreaded "dps-meters".  Websites like World of Logs with all sorts of information hosted there for people to sift through and make use of.

What do all these things do?  Give us access to information.

Where does the stigma, the social cry against these come from?

Well, to be honest, bad players.  Bad players that get called out for being bad, and it makes them feel bad.

But I'm over simplifying an issue.  Both sides of the argument will, until someone like me comes along.

What is the actual point of those "dps meters"?  It isn't to brag, it isn't to make fun of other people.  It isn't to let someone yell at someone else.  The actual real goal of that piece of programming is to display information in a fashion that is both easy to comprehend what it is showing, and provides the information in as close to real time as we can get.

What a human being then does with it...that's a different subject.

God, for the longest time, I would see forum post after forum post where someone would get all cry baby because someone in their random dungeon queued group called them a bad player because their dps was too low for their tastes, and got the group to kick them out.  I'd see it every single day on the forums, majorly rampant during Wrath for some reason, maybe because I just spent way too much time on the forums back then.  So they would go on a freaking crusade to get the devs to ban "meters", because THAT is what was making players caustic in WoW.

And then this would be the point where most people would ignore them, or just call them butt hurt, and people would move on.

But it isn't the "meter" that is at fault here.  Those types of players making those posts, they really just hate the jerk who was a total dick to them and got them kicked from their group.

But what if someone nice, like me :D, were to come up to them, and using that exact same meter, would have them spend some time at a training dummy, and then figure out what they are in fact doing wrong, and work with them on improving it?  They'd probably then go download it themselves and see what this world is all about.  The player obviously cares about their performance in this game, otherwise they would have completely ignored the incident with the caustic player and just kept doing whatever they feel like doing.  If they are going to take time to complain about it, they'll take time to make sure it NEVER happens again.

Another reason for needing this information, besides to better ones self, the devs keep making harder content!  I mean, really, if they just keep pumping out easy mode dragon after even easier easy mode dragon, one after another, eventually nobody bothers, because it's too easy.  There isn't any accomplishment.  There is no knew challenge to try to overcome.  Players leave.  So...game gets a bit harder and harder, naturally, or it dies a horrible death, and the devs don't make any money, and they go on welfare, and they rape and pillage the countryside in real life to then make ends meet.  And really, I don't need a dev looting my actual house, so let's keep having them pump out more content that keeps our interest peaked so we pay them...and it's a cycle of fun for everyone.

Oh and I really would enjoy the "well people will just pad meters to make themselves look good" or "but they don't show the people that are avoiding damage" or other such nonsense.

Shut your mouths, these people.  Stop your fingers from moving, and just read.

Our meters show us everything now.  How much damage you take.  How much damage you deal.  How much healing you do.  How much wasted over-healing you do.  Abilities you use.  Sources of damage you take, or deal to enemies.  How many times you interrupt enemy abilities.  How many times you use crowd control abilities on enemies.  How many times you BREAK crowd control abilities on enemies.  How much threat you pull.

We see it all.  And the good raid leaders, and class leaders, and officers, and other people in charge of interpreting that information, we know what they mean.  I know when, on a fight like Paragons in SoO, if someone is just multi-dotting like an idiot (the bosses heal to full whenever one of them dies).  I also know when a shaman that is glyphed to let flame shock ticks heal themselves are actually spreading that dot to all enemies to help keep themselves alive better and give the healers an easier time of things.

Stop making the argument against information.  You had bad experiences with real shitty players.  Trust me, there are waaaaay more good players, using the exact same programs and meters, etc, out there than those bad players.  Find them, and enjoy the game like you never have before, playing with people that don't suck at life.

Why I bothered to bring up this subject again?  Hell I don't know, but maybe it was just to have something to point to whenever the topic comes up again.  Enjoy yourselves people, as best you can!