I can’t kill priests

Where I get all of the QQ out of my system, right now.

I had originally intended to make a few comments about this topic as part of another post, but the topic threatened to drown out the rest of that post, so I’m making it a separate one.

I’ve been excited for awhile about trying out some of our new feral PvP mechanics/abilities: Skull Bash is supposed to be the long-awaited ranged interrupt that we’ve so desperately needed, while changes to the Predatory Strikes and Survival Instincts talents (among others) seemed to make for some interesting damage and survivability choices.

However, I’ve been pretty disappointed in my ability to make those things translate into “win.”

My number one problem is the same that it has always been: dealing with casters, especially Shadow Priests.

Specifically, here are my issues:

Skull Bash: While many ranged interrupts have a decent “range” at which you can use them, Skull Bash has a range of 13 yards. 13 yards. So if I’m being targeted with a slowing or fear effect, and my Feral Charge (8-30 yd range) is on cooldown (or I’m out of range of Feral Charge), I can easily, helplessly, watch my health go down the drain. This usually happens to me when my trinket and potions are on cooldown. Of course.

Health/survivability of clothies (?): I’ve done a couple of battlegrounds and a Wintergrasp since the patch arrived. I have killed, let me see here… ah yes, if my memory serves me well, I have killed ZERO cloth-wearers by myself.

The closest that I got was in Warsong Gulch, where I had a warlock stun- and spell-locked and down to just a smidge of health in the enemy’s tunnel. And then, along came a priest… and it was all over. Between the two of them, they chain-feared the crap out of me, and the priest divided his time between throwing heals at the lock and assaulting my mind. It was super-frustrating. I died.

At this point, I was not yet the fully discouraged kitty that I am now. I ressurected, ran back to the enemy keep, and stalked up behind a bubbled priest who was all by himself. I waited for the bubble to fade, checked my cooldowns (all available), and began my assault. The priest was helpless to combat my arsenal of stuns, bleeds, and general awesome powers. I looked up to see how close to death he was (since the nameplates are a mess right now – more on that in an upcoming post), and… he was still at about 90% health and ready to rock, while all of my offensive cooldowns were used up. Long story short, see the above paragraph.

The latest update on my ability to die quickly against priests happened late last night. There was a priest who was killing NPCs in Darnassus. I watched him, prepped for the kill, and went at him, claws-a-blazin’.

He promptly destroyed me.

* * * * *

I can’t kill priests.

It sucks to look at my screen, while being Mind Flayed (etc.), and see that I am out of range of Skull Bash and Feral Charge. It also sucks to see that physical damage that would seriously mess up a melee class is doing almost nothing against cloth-wearers.

The mechanics for kitty PvP don’t seem to have changed too much. We have our charge, stuns, bleeds and burst. We have our roots and Cyclone and so on. Unfortunately, I used to be able to take down priests. I don’t seem to be able to do so anymore, at least for the time being.

So… I’m, probably not going to PvP much for a while. It’s like “Kill The Hunter Pet” out there, except that I’m not supposed to be that bad.

* * * * *

Oh, and my the way, a feral blogger that I highly respect (I’m not sure which, and I’m not going to take the time to look) recently made a dismissive comment about ferals getting Skull Bash, saying (and I paraphrase) that it didn’t matter, because we should be up in the enemy’s face anyway.

Mmmhmm. Sure. Because staying up in the enemy’s face (or ass, as ferals generally try to do) during PvP is exactly like DPS-ing Deathbringer. Yep.

/end QQ session.

 

Being reasonable about heirlooms

A long post, in defense of the following: using heirlooms (and not using them), reasonable people making reasonable decisions about how they play their games, a blogger’s right to express opinions about how people should play, and the reader’s right to reject those opinions and play his/her games their own way. Some ranting involved…

I’ve written in the past (both distant and recent) about alternate toons that I’ve played, and in some cases, I’ve mentioned heirlooms that I have or have not used.

Heirlooms are a popular topic around the WoWblogospherenet. Over the past several months, I’ve read many posts about heirlooms, from “heirlooms are cheating/lame/ruining the game” to “I just spent 1100 million emblems and honor thingies buying 2 of every heirloom in the game for Cataclysm.” Each person who knows what they are has an opinion on them; they loathe them, or they feel justified in using them, or they just don’t know what to think, or they think heirlooms are the greatest thing in the world.

I first started really thinking about the issue in March. Gordon (We Fly Spitfires) wrote a post earlier this year about ways to cheat in WoW, and he included BoA gear on his list, specifically mentioning that it gives an unfair advantage at low-levels for PvP (twinking was also included on his list). It was a great post, highlighting several questionable practices that are not only cheating but are dangerous to account security, but I respectfully disagreed with his points about both heirlooms and twinking.

Since then, as I said, I have read the range of discussion about heirlooms. However, today I read a post by Adam (The Noisy Rogue) called Heirlooms or Endgame? that triggered my written response.

Now, I have to say that my post is not Adam’s fault – not by a long shot. His post is about heirlooms, but it’s also about endgame: specifically, how he’d rather play his max-level rogue, but he finds little value in doing so at this point, and how he feels that Blizzard is not ending this expansion very well compared to Burning Crusade.

However, for whatever reason, his post is what prompted me to say my piece about heirlooms. This has been building up within me for a while, and his article was just catalyst for me.

Regarding heirlooms, here’s what he has to say:

I don’t do heirloom items. It’s just not my thing. Maybe if they were a bit more bondage like, but probably not even then. The very idea of taking the same item through 80 different levels is anathema to me. Where is the discovery of new gear, seeing what it looks like when it’s on, seeing if the stats give you something more? There is no need to look at an heirloom items stats, it’s just ticking away as you level up. It’s not boring, it’s more than that. It’s not a game. Heirlooms reduce 80 levels of going up to drudgery. The gear upgrades are the only surprising thing that can happen to you now when you level up, if you know the class that you are levelling well enough that is.

. . .

I am back to levelling my priest. I would prefer to be on my rogue, I really would. But the sad fact is that levelling is more rewarding these days than the end game. That is, unless you deck yourself out in heirlooms. Then you will have cheated yourself out of that part of the game as well.

* * * * *

To me, the issue around heirlooms comes down to how you want to play the game. If you want to get all of your toons to level 80 as fast as possible in order to see what their classes can do (as well as test your mettle in the endgame content), then using heirlooms will benefit you. If you want to take the leveling process at a more leisurely pace, taking what the game gives you, seeking out rewards and completing the objectives to get them, seeing the world and digging into the lore as you go, then heirlooms are probably not for you, because even without heirlooms the leveling process is faster than it has ever been.

If you really want to fill those weapon, shoulder and chest piece slots with new gear as you go, then definitely forego heirlooms. However, assuming that the statement “Heirlooms reduce 80 levels of going up to drudgery” applies to everyone is a huge assumption, and, in my opinion, an errant one. It may apply to him, and that’s totally fine! But it does not apply to me.

* * * * *

My history with heirlooms has varied. Here is part of it.

• Bloodheim (R.I.P.), my first hunter, did not have heirlooms.
• Anacrusa, my first 80, did not have heirlooms. Again, she was my first 80. The elder of the family, so to speak.
• Abenadari, my paladin, did not have heirlooms until she was in her mid-40s or so, at which point I cobbled together enough emblems on Anacrusa to spare for a set of plate BoA shoulders to help with the leveling process. I didn’t like my paladin very much, and I still don’t, but at that point she was on her way to being alchemy-capped, and I needed to level enough to get to 450. Keep in mind, this was quite a while ago, and spare emblems were hard for me to come by at the time.
• Mydnas, my second druid, had the weapon, shoulders and chest from day one. My plan was to level her as resto, and I was scared to death – I had no confidence in my ability to be a healer – so I wanted the best gear possible. I also kept her highly medicated with potions, scrolls, magical little stat foods and anything else she could get her grubby little hands on for buffs. Call it cheating, but it gave me the confidence to try out healing dungeons as I leveled and do a good job with it. So sue me.
• Ghilly, my second hunter, has no heirloom gear, hand-me-down gold, or expensive BoEs. As I’ve mentioned before, he is a character that I am playing for reasons more related to lore, exploration and creativity than level-progression.
• Mushan, my third hunter, is the opposite. I am trying to get him to the level cap at a relatively quick pace, because I want to explore the hunter class capabilities at the level cap before Cataclysm arrives, and because I want to have a max-level alt that I will enjoy leveling from 80 in the expansion. Therefore, he has the chest and shoulders.

* * * * *

The purpose of the above list is to show a few things. First of all, (disregarding the massive Refer-A-Friend XP bonus, which is something I have absolutely no interest in) everyone’s first toon goes heirloom free, so everyone gets to experience that part of the game at least once. Secondly, having heirlooms is not ruining my game experience at all – in fact, it has enriched the experience in almost every case. Thirdly, I’ve made different choices for the toons following Anacrusa, and I’ve chosen to use heirlooms for different reasons on my various toons. With me, it’s not all about the heirlooms, and it’s not all about hating on the heirlooms.

 

Mushan with Tirion, Eastern Plaguelands

Mushan

In the case of Mushan, this is the fastest I have ever leveled a toon – 67 levels in 36 days so far – and so the heirloom gear, which I picked up before level 20, has certainly paid dividends. However, an interesting thing happened on the way to “face-rolling” toward “endgame:” over the course of the past month, I have done quests and seen places that I’ve never done or seen before. Two of these stand out to me, although there are several more:

1. I’ve quested with each toon in EPL before, but never liked it. However, this time I did a lot of questing there, and for the first time ever, I completed all of Tirion Fordring’s Redemption quest line, finishing it after I turned 58 (about halfway to 59, actually). While it wasn’t a spectacular quest chain, it was a huge piece of lore that will certainly be gone in Cataclysm, and I was extremely glad that I found and completed it. I will definitely be going back to do this one on my main very soon.
2. Similarly, in WPL, I had never done the Skeleton Key quest chain. I did most of it on my hunter, and then went back and completed it on my main, getting both that part of the Keymaster achievement and the achievement for Scholomance, an instance I had never set foot in before. I could have eventually looked it all up and done it anyway on my druid, but it was fun to find myself on the way there as part of the normal questing process.

These are not the only things that I’ve done differently than on previous toons, but they are two of the highlights of my experience playing my hunter so far, in spite of the fact that I’m using two BoA pieces.

I like playing/leveling my hunter. I’m getting to see some parts of the world that I’ve never seen before, and some that I’ve enjoyed on previous toons. Some quests are new and fun, some are old favorites, and some are jobs. I’ve run some dungeons, but I’m not missing the world in favor of LFD-leveling. Other than PvP, which I haven’t done at all yet, I don’t feel that I’ve missed out on a whole bunch that Azeroth etc. has to offer during this go-round. I’ve been playing for over three and a half years; I’ve seen a lot, and I’m looking forward to the new world that Cataclysm brings.

 

Lots of non-BoA gear here.

As for Adam’s “heirlooms make getting gear a drudgery” statement: I’ve got two BoA pieces, but that leaves me with over a dozen slots in which to see what kind of gear I can get. There has been plenty of gear excitement along the way as I’ve leveled, and the fact that I’ve gotten some pieces that I didn’t use in those slots does not bother me at all. I’ve gotten to play with bows and scopes and melee weapons, necklaces, rings and trinkets, and every mail slot except for the chest and shoulders. I’ve made almost a dozen pieces with Anacrusa’s leatherworking along the way. Trust me, I’m not missing out on anything at all.

In addition, I am not face-rolling toward endgame with the idea that I’m going to run ICC and “pwn” with my new hunter. The idea is to get to level 80, but it’s September 27th. If Cataclysm comes out in November, there isn’t much time to worry about squeezing as much gear as possible out of the remaining time. I’ve already written about being burned out by ICC anyway – we killed the Lich King months ago, and I’m happy with that. I’m working on other things, and getting enjoyment out of them. I’m working on earning gold, playing with friends, and finishing up achievements on my druid, and on leveling my hunter. I’m stocking up on gem transmutes on my paladin. I’m reading about the new expansion. And I’m doing other things with my life as well.

No, with the death of ICC drawing nigh, I am leveling the hunter for the experience of leveling it and in anticipation of having the complete set of abilities that comes with being level 80. I’m leveling it because it’s fun. I’m leveling it with the intention of taking it into Hyjal and Vash’ir and Deepholm when Cataclysm arrives. I’m leveling it because I want a new character to get some gear for, to gem and enchant it, which is a fun part of the game for me. I’m leveling it to have some adventures with it.

I’m not aiming to get as much ROFL-easy-gear as possible. I’m not trying to build a stud. I’m doing it for the enjoyment.

See, I play this game for fun. I certainly enjoy challenges – I’m attempting to solo stuff that I shouldn’t be soloing (with variable results), learning about the specs and abilities, playing around with pets, etc – but I’m also just enjoying the experience of playing a hunter. I’ve talked with several people who, upon learning I’m leveling a hunter, have said some variation of “ooh, hunters are fun!” That’s what I’m here to do – enjoy the game.

* * * * *

Adults, labels, and disagreeing with other bloggers

I’m an adult, and I don’t necessarily think that I fit into a popular label as far as WoW-players go. Some of the most popular labels that I see include “n00bs,” “facerollers,” “casuals,” “socials,” “hardcore players” (both raiders and PvP-ers), and “M&S.” As an adult, I think of myself as simply a person who enjoys different aspects of the game. There are many of us out there, but we don’t light up the internet like the high and low extremes we see out there.

As adults, we make rational decisions when it comes to game-play, and those decisions can vary from time to time, even for the same person. Sometimes that means devoting yourself to min-maxing and being as skilled as possible for top-end raiding or PvP. At other times it means enjoying the world and/or the leveling process, or concentrating on achievements or the AH game. In our experiences, we run into the highly skilled people, the teeth-gnashing masses, the fun people, the quiet-but-respectful ones, the terrible players, and so on.

What I don’t see is just one type of player out there. Or two types. Not all players are hardcore, or casual, or morons.

There are many different ways to enjoy whichever game(s) you play, because people are different. They have different views and values and real-life conditions that affect their abilities and playing styles. And those who blog about the games they play are most certainly entitled to their opinions. However, whenever a blogger implies that there is only one correct style of play, I have to respectfully disagree.

I feel no guilt about choosing to play parts of the game that I enjoy, and playing them the way that I like, even if someone considers that “lame” or “wrong.” In my opinion, things like heirlooms are not just for M&S and are not a form of cheating, and do not diminish my gaming experience. They are a part of the game that the developer has provided, and I make rational decisions to use or not use them as I please, to get the most out of my experience and reach the goals that I have for each toon. And I think that’s a perfectly valid way to play.

The incomplete songwriter: a self-critical look

the Previous, April 1996 (photo by Andrew Eckert)

Today, while I was playing guitar, I decided to fire up the old iMac** in order to see if I had any files of lyrics from the Previous, the band I was a part of in college. I had found a folder last week in the basement that contained some lyrics, posters, letters and such, and I wanted to see if there were any others on the computer. There weren’t, but I did have several years worth of my own attempts at songwriting stored there.

Sitting there with my guitar, I began opening files from as early as 2001. Some songs had chord notations, but most of them were just verse. I couldn’t remember half of the songs at all, and there were others where I could only remember how the chorus was sung. Most of the songs are incomplete.

* * * * *

Looking at those songs served as a painful reminder that, for me, songwriting has always been very difficult. I get a lot of pleasure out of being creative, but I’m rarely happy with the results. Off the top of my head, here is how I would grade myself on some random elements of the songwriting process:

• Coming up with guitar parts: A-
• Coming up with a melodic hook or two: B+
• Coming up with a lyrical hook or two: B
• Completing the first verse: C
• Completing the chorus: B-
• Completing the second verse: D-
• Song construction/completion: D
• Writing “good” lyrics: C-
• Intros/outros: B

There are some interesting issues that I’ve been thinking about, relative to the subject of my own songwriting. I’ve always said that I felt confident in my ability to write music, but that I struggled with lyrics. However, looking at the list above, it’s somewhat obvious that there are a lot of areas where I’m deficient.

One major issue that causes a lot of problems for me is that I have a severely overactive internal censor. The censor works overtime in a couple of different ways. For one thing, I’m always wary of borrowing too many ideas from another songs. Sometimes I think that I’m too wary of this, and I think that it stems from the fact that, in the early days, I wrote music that was completely derivative of what was popular at the time. My guitar-playing (and songwriting) was in its infancy, and I didn’t have many musical tools to work with. As I began to branch out, with regard to both what I listened to and what I was able to do with the guitar, the need to censor myself began to lessen, but the habit of over-censoring myself is one that has been very difficult to break ever since.

The problem with too much self-censorship is that one begins to kill off ideas before they can be tinkered with, reworked, or fleshed out. While many great songwriters and songwriting teams record their ideas and jams, in order to cull the good bits and use them to write a song, I tend to try to work linearly; that is, I come up with an idea, decide if it’s “good,” and then work on it until I reach a stopping point. That stopping point may be time, frustration, fatigue, interruption, or something else, but it’s rarely because the song is complete. Additionally, I usually do not record what I’ve come up with – regardless of what I think about it – free of judgment. Over the course of an hour, I might have ten musical ideas, reject five of them, forget two others, and run into a brick wall with the other three. In the end, I have a fraction of the material that I could have had. I’ve lost many potentially good ideas this way, and regretted it later.

Some of what I’m writing here is about not recording my ideas, and that is simply laziness and a lack of focus. However, it ties in with the self-censorship issue, because it’s all part of an even larger problem.

* * * * *

The major problem that I have with my own songwriting is a lack of confidence in my abilities. I also do not like my own voice, which has killed a lot of recordings for me. The lack of confidence leads directly to several behaviors that are detrimental to my songwriting process and my enjoyment of the experience:

• Over-censorship.
• Not taking the time to record my ideas, either through written notation or via a sound recording.
• Giving up on a work in progress before it’s finished (and never picking it up again).
• Periods of dormancy, where I don’t try because “I’m not a good songwriter anyway.”
• Attempting to write more interesting and challenging music to make up for my struggling lyric-writing skills. Most of the time, this only increases the level of difficulty for writing lyrics that work with the music, and usually ends with an incomplete song.

If I am going to have any success with, and enjoy the process of, songwriting, I need to address some of these issues. I need to work smarter. (I also need to “lighten up” a bit.) It is my hope that having a dedicated workspace for writing and recording music in my home will make it easier to reverse some of my mental and behavioral inhibitions about the songwriting process.

* * * * *

** Note: I recently set up my old iMac (2006, duo-core processor, 150GB hard drive) again. It has been largely neglected since I bought my new one last December, mainly because it was suffering from terrible performance issues.

Earlier in the summer, I was toying with just wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the OS. However, a week or two ago I decided to try removing some files and programs, with the idea that it was simply bogged down with (what is now) unnecessary stuff. So I trashed World of Warcraft and all of my addons, about 50GB of music, and some other files that I no longer need. When I was done with that, I started up a couple of applications, Safari and Microsoft Office, that had been giving me problems. I didn’t expect too much – these are applications that had taken a minute or more to open previously, but lo and behold, they opened within a reasonably short time!

I would like to continue to record music with that computer. While my new iMac is in the main part of the apartment and gets the bulk of my attention, the old one is in a back bedroom along with my guitars and amps. It’s a relatively quiet area, and I am trying to get it organized so that the environment is more conducive to playing and recording.

Army of the (WE ARE DEAD)

Last night.

Heroic Forge of Souls.

• Tank: Anacrusa (me, top damage)
• Healer: Paladin (ok I guess…)
• Rogue: Roxlana (top DPS, my girlfriend’s alt, relatively new 80)
• Hunter.
• Deathknight: Noob? (bottom damage, DPS and overall effectiveness)

Devourer of Souls.

I pull.

Noob DK pops Army. Roxlana dies from Mirror Soul.

Mirrored Soul on me. Noob DK still attacking. I pop my cooldowns. Healer’s dog pulls keyboard off desk during fight. I die.

Wipe.

Hello? And we had to explain to you (several times), Noob DK, why you don’t attack during Mirrored Soul, so that you could finally understand why Army of the Dead is especially not a good idea on this boss? And this wasn’t even your first time in here…

…

* * * * *

We will now resume our regularly scheduled programming.

Moving beyond WoW: hobbies, and the power of suggestion

I pretty much hated Silithis, but it made for a cool pic.

Last week I wrote a post about how well I’ve been adjusting to life without World of Warcraft. For the most part, I have had far fewer cravings for the game than I had expected, and have even felt very uninspired with respect to finishing up the feral druid articles that I had been working on at the time I decided to take a break.

World of Warcraft… and the power of suggestion

So a couple of days after I published that article, a friend of mine posted a “come back to WoW” comment on my Facebook page.

And this is where the title of this post comes from. The simple suggestion by that person reopened my mind to WoW. The call of the game, and the corresponding opportunity to be with friends, made a stronger impression with me than either of us could have anticipated!

So, does this mean I go back? For the time being, no. I still need time away from the game, and if I do play again, it will be in a different situation, with a smaller time commitment and different objectives. I’ll mix some of the familiar with the unfamiliar, exploring parts of the game that don’t necessitate a regular raid schedule. But now is not the time yet.

Each day has felt like forever, and yet the past month has flown by. It’s interesting how that happens…

* * * * *

During this break, I’ve engaged myself in hobbies and activities that I had previously not taken the time to enjoy when I was playing. First and foremost, I’ve been reading a lot.

Books

Last week,  Franklin & Marshall held their annual used book sale, a three-day event. I went over with a friend on Monday (May 24), the first day, and between the two of us we bought around 35 books for under $50! I was able to pick up about a dozen Agatha Christie novels (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot), as well as three of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series, a Lord Peter Wimsey short story collection, and a couple of Sherlock Holmes pastiches. With paperbacks at 50 cents apiece, it was difficult to go wrong!

I’m a big fan of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (and those authors who lovingly craft tales that attempt to fill in holes in the Holmes canon), and other authors of mystery fiction from the last half of the 19th-century through middle of the 20th. I suppose that my interest comes partially from watching so much of the PBS program  ”Mystery” while I was growing up. At any rate, I can devour these books fairly easily, and if I get tired of one, I’m usually in the process of reading three to five books at any given time, so I eventually finish them all!

I’ve also recently picked up The Second Rumpole Omnibus, a collection which I had set down about eighteen months ago and forgotten about. I left off at a story that I wasn’t enjoying, but I am determined to power through it and move on to stories that I’m sure I will enjoy more.

Finally, I’ve recently started rereading the second to last book in Jack Whyte’s Camulod Chronicles, The Lance Thrower. I’ve only ever read each of the last two books in the series once, and I’d like to read them again in order to have a better understanding of what happened. For anyone interested in historical fiction and an Arthurian theme, the entire nine-book series is highly recommended.

I tend to read books multiple times, which I guess is strange. However, a book that I enjoy is almost always a book that I can read more than once, since I tend to get new things out of it on a second or third read-through.

There are some local bookstores downtown that I’d like to check out on one of my walks, so perhaps I’ll be able to pick up some more treasures in the near future.

Music

In addition to constantly uploading music to my hard drive, I’ve been playing more guitar lately. While my intention has always been that I would play my guitar every day, I had let it go this year to the point where I was almost never playing. As someone who loves to play guitar, noticing the callouses disappear from my fingertips was disheartening, and when I would occasionally attempt to play, both my muscle memory and fingertips were so ill-equipped that I would put down the instrument after a few minutes… And the cycle continued – disillusionment led to less playing, which led to more disillusionment when I’d try to play again, and so on.

Lately, since I moved out of my old place, I’ve gotten the opportunity to spend more time outside. I have, of course, been walking and taking pictures, but I’ve also spent a lot of time sitting on the porch, reading or looking at my surroundings. Being in a new place, and more exposed to the outdoors, has inspired me to pick up the guitar at times. As such, I played more guitar in the last three weeks of May than I did from January through April combined. I haven’t yet played a long session, and I’ve done very little as far as working on new material, but the simple act of sitting down with my acoustic and playing through some old songs and song bits has been gratifying. My callouses are slowly developing on my left hand again, and my picking hand is true more often than it had been.

Photography

As I mentioned, I’ve gone on a few walks where I took some pictures, and have posted photos from those walks on two occasions in the past few weeks. I’m about as fledgling as they come when it comes to photography, but I’ve concentrated on taking pictures of things that I find beautiful or interesting. I’m still learning how to use my camera, and it is my hope that as time goes by and I gain experience with it, I will be able to post a greater variety of quality photos. Most recently, I’ve concentrated on nature photography, but I would like to expand my horizons!

Video Games

Ah, this is where it gets tricky. In lieu of WoW, I’ve spent time with a half-dozen games over the past few weeks: Portal and Half-Life 2 for Mac, Dragon Age: Origins and Tiger Woods 07 for 360, and Scribblenauts and Professor Layton and the Curious Village for DS. Portal, Half-Life 2 and Tiger Woods have each gotten more than 90 minutes of play from me; the others did not hold my attention for long, for various reasons.

There is a common reason that none of these games has become my “go-to” game at this point: simply, I am still wired for WoW right now.

However, there are other reasons. In the case of Dragon Age, while the game seems to be very interesting (and I’m loving the music!), I don’t like the control scheme at all. I need to put some more time into it before I decide to scrap it and perhaps pick up the Mac version, but my first impression was frustrating… I’m not a big fan of using a console controller for these types of games.

In the cases of Professor Layton and Scribblenauts, I’m probably just not feeling puzzle games right now. I like them both, conceptually, but I’ve only put about 30-40 minutes into each in the past month. I’ll put them down and pick them up later if I feel so moved.

I have many other games to try, and so I’ll continue to throw a few against the wall every so often and see which one sticks.

Conclusion

I’ve had mixed results with not only finding other hobbies to get back into, but having the discipline to keep at them. With books, it has been easy – in fact, I’ve had to pace myself at times. Playing guitar has been more of a process (albeit a rewarding one), and finding new games to latch onto has been a challenge. We’ll see how June goes!

Half-Life 2 (OS X); of mice and Macs

Half-Life 2 (OS X)!

I read on gameinformer.com yesterday that Half-life 2 (OS X) would be released today via Steam – an idea that excites me, as I played Half-Life on a PC, but only got through some of Half-Life 2 on the 360. I was particularly curious to see what the price point would be, and if they would make the episodes available as well.

As of early this afternoon, all three games are available, and at acceptable prices.

Half-Life 2 – $9.99 (on sale for $6.99)

Episode 1 – $7.99 (on sale for $5.59)

Episode 2 – same as Episode 1

Yeah… I’ll totally be downloading them!

Anyway, I was reading about it on GI.com last night. It’s a short article, so I watched the trailer, and then began to peruse the comments.

Comment QQ (by me)

It’s interesting to see the comments that people leave sometimes. It seems that, with more attention being paid to Mac gaming these days, every time new titles are announced for Mac, there’s an asshat who says something like what I read yesterday:

“All you Mac users out there, have fun playing an FPS with only one mouse button.”

Which irritates me to some extent, because… in this particular instance, I checked the guy’s GI.com profile. He lists his occupation as Contract Game Tester, and game design as one of his hobbies. He has a few blog posts and a game review, which are written fairly intelligently, and describes himself as a hardcore gamer.

So why would someone like that assume that all Mac users are using the mouse that Apple provides (and make derisive comments to that effect)?

Is that type of comment motivated by the desire to ridicule Mac users, due to a perceived elitist attitude that all Mac users must have? Is there a maturity issue here? Or do people really think that a Mac gamer who is interested in playing an FPS would fumble around for hours, trying to play a game that they just spent their hard-earned money on, without a) trying to make adjustments in the Preferences section, or b) going out and getting a new mouse?

A short history of my experience with mice and Macs (super boring, btw!)

When I started playing WoW, I immediately ran into problems with the Apple mouse. So I went out and got a wireless Logitech mouse, which worked, but not too well. At some point I got frustrated with it, and borrowed a Dell mouse from a friend… and that worked alright, although it never satisfied me.

Early last fall, I plunked down $50 or so for the Razer DeathAdder 3G for Mac. I ordered it from Amazon, and when it arrived a couple of days later, I was in heaven. Here was a mouse that was smooth and precise, comfortable, and allowed for very high tracking speed if desired. It also came with two mappable thumb-buttons, which I found very useful at times. As someone who never mapped all of his abilities to his keyboard, like I apparently should have, this was great because it gave me much better control with minimal hand movement.

And the mouse didn’t fail. Ever. The network or server would fail occasionally, but never the mouse. It has been a dream to use, to this day.

In addition to gaming, this mouse works very well for everything else that I want to do on my Mac, for all of the same reasons. It’s apparently not available anymore, but in reality there are several excellent mice, even those that aren’t made specifically for Macs, that would perform similarly.

Conclusions

• I think that the Apple mice, which have always been somewhat gimmicky, would suffice in many casual gaming situations, but any Mac user with a need and an opportunity to pick up a more appropriate mouse will probably do so.
• If nothing else, owners of MacBooks will pick up a mouse if they plan on gaming or doing other mouse-heavy tasks. No owner of a Mac made in the past five-plus years is limited to only buying an Apple mouse.
• I suppose that the source of my irritation is a low tolerance for derisive/unconstructive dialogue, which is admittedly one of my personal failings.
• On the other hand, while I prefer to use a Mac, I respect those who use PCs. There may be a Mac vs. PC war that’s been going on for years now on TV, but it doesn’t mean that using one or the other is indicative of a person’s intelligence.
• Half-Life 2 for Mac! Woo hoo!

Is WoW broken?

I read a lot of blogs, many of them WoW-related. Some of the bloggers, and some of the commenters, are people who don’t play WoW anymore for one reason or another – they feel the game is monotonous and not worth the time or money, they’re just bored with it, they don’t like how it has changed or has not been fixed, they’ve found other ways to use their time, they miss the good old days of Vanilla or TBC, etc.

All of these are completely valid, good reasons not to play. It is a game, after all, and games serve to entertain, to captivate one’s interest. I’m not going to go into the definition of game, because this isn’t a thesis. It’s just commentary.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of research into feral PvP in WoW lately, and it has led me to read some interesting comments by people who say that PvP (or other parts of the game) are “broken,” or that WoW as a whole is broken. It sparked some interesting emotions from me, because my gut reaction is to feel put down by those who feel that I, Russ, am playing a broken game.

Perhaps it would be more correct for people to state something like, “For me, it’s broken. I’m disappointed, but I didn’t like it / I’ve lost interest.” Or something to that effect.

People have divergent interests, and therefore are not all looking for the same thing in a game. Within WoW itself, we have people in our guild who are interested primarily in raiding. There are others who get excited about collecting pets and mounts, or earning achievements, or acquiring titles. Some enjoy PvP, others have no interest. Still others enjoy the social aspect, and are sometimes online for hours, chilling out in Vent with other players. Some people enjoy everything about the game.

As I said, people are different. They like different kinds of games, different combinations of kinds of games. Different games within a certain genre. Different game modes within a game.

Some games review well, but do not sell well. And sometimes, the opposite happens. I remember when Hitman: Blood Money came out on the 360 in 2006.  Game Informer, which we sold at my store, reviewed it at 7.75/10, and the Metacritic “metascore” for it is 81/100. Interestingly, Metacritic lists the user average at 9.1/10, which fits right in with my memories of the situation. Now, the Hitman series is not something that I’m interested in playing, but two of my employees, Mike and Greg, talked about how awesome it was for weeks after it came out. They admitted that the game was glitchy at times, but they found the game play to be fun and exciting. They would often regale us at work with tales of how they managed to pull off certain missions without being caught, or how they blew things to hell when they had no other choice. The general impression that I got from them and others I talked with was that the critics were too harsh on the game, and it was ultimately successful both commercially and as a game, by definition.

Perhaps that’s not the best example to use, but it’s one that has stuck in my mind over these past few years. And it reinforces the general attitude that I have about games, music, movies and TV, books, and any other form of entertainment. I may not like a game/song/show, and I may even think it sucks. I may even have unfavorable views about its reflection on society or its moral value. However, my thoughts and opinions are just thoughts and opinions. Everyone has their own interests, and that diversity is part of makes the world interesting.

So, is WoW broken? I don’t think so. Is it imperfect? Yes, it is! Do I still enjoy it? Yes, I do, and so I still play it.

Are there many former players who don’t like WoW anymore because it doesn’t interest them anymore, or has changed or not been “fixed” to their liking, to enable them to get what they want out of the game? Absolutely. And I have the utmost respect for that.

However, the game still works – it just is the way it is. It changes the way it changes. If I don’t enjoy the game, I play something else. Others have done the same. But it doesn’t mean their old game is broken. At least, not necessarily for others.

Mini-milestone for the blog

On Sunday, April 4, this blog had its 1,000th page view. It’s a tiny blog, a mere spec on the interweb, but I never could have imagined that anything that I’ve done (cumulatively) would get 1,000 hits.

I guess it has probably happened with my MySpace and FaceBook pages, but those are sites that have high traffic built in as sort of a mechanic, and I actually intentionally leave my FaceBook page devoid of much content at all at the moment. I’m considering putting the URL on my FaceBook info page, but I’m… still thinking about it.

You may think, “Yes, you must put the URL on your FaceBook page! It’s a no-brainer!” But it’s not like I have a ton of “friends,” like many of my other “friends” do, and so I’m not convinced that the exposure would change too much. In addition, I kind of enjoy the anonymity of my blog, and by publishing it for all of my friends to see, I’m putting it out there for more than just the greater interweb universe (plus the couple of friends that I’ve told about the blog), which is, interestingly, further from my comfort zone than my current, “semi-anonymous” status.

However, I am leaning toward doing so. The major issue has been whether I feel I can write at a high enough level that I am not embarrassing myself in front of friends or family, but that’s just an internal issue that I think I am getting past. Dipping my toes into the blog waters indeed, but only when no one’s looking.

Another issue has been content. While I started this as a casual blog where I can publish whatever I feel like publishing, about half of my posts have been about World of Warcraft, and my header, title, side bar content, avatar, and list of tags all reflect that. However, I never set out to make this a WoW-specific blog, and I guess that, here at the six-month mark, I am still somewhat disappointed that I haven’t written on the breadth of topics that I would like to. However, perhaps that’s part of growing as a writer. And I DO enjoy the game!

Anyway, given that I have done very little in the way of promotion for this blog, I’m proud of it. It looks nice, thanks to WordPress and the WoW screenshots. It’s fairly well-written and -edited, and contains a minimal amount of L33T-speak/lolcat and emotes. It has some nice screenshots, and some nice photos (although not enough of those). It has changed a lot in 2010, as I’ve tinkered with simple things like how to arrange widgets (and which widgets to use).

Above all, I think I’ve proven to myself that I can write for a blog, which was my main goal when I started. Thanks to all who have visited or who have my blog in your reader, and thanks for those who have left comments. And please, feel free to comment as well! If you like what I’ve written, or think I’m totally off-base, let me know! I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Snowy Saturday odds and ends

*Note: Some of the information in this article is outdated, as it was written prior to Patch 4.0.1 or the launch of Cataclysm. Please do not take the following info as gospel, as it is not current!

Since it has been a few days since I’ve posted anything, and since I’m not going anywhere tonight due to accumulated snow footage, I thought I’d make this a general post where I ramble a little bit about what I’ve been up to…

World of Warcraft

Fishing & Cooking Achievements

1. Old Man Barlowned
2. The Fishing Diplomat
3. Outland Angler
4. The Cake Is Not A Lie

While “completing Fishing and Cooking achievements” was one of the items in my recent post, Things I’d like to accomplish before the Cataclysm, that I thought I would probably not be able to accomplish, I’ve found myself drawn to them over the past few days. With a little time on my hands here and there, I’ve decided to knock out some of the easier ones that I still need, and it has been a nice change of pace to fish for fun rather than with the purpose of farming for Fish Feasts or Agility food.

Raid Happenings

1. The Ashen Verdict – I now proudly wear the Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance!
2. We finally downed Rotface in  Icecrown Citadel (10-player), the first time in four weeks of attempts! We made several attempts on Professor Putricide on Thursday, and made some progress, but let it go after eight or nine attempts.
3. After taking a week off from ICC while we disassembled and rebuilt our guild’s flailing 25-player ICC team, we regrouped last night for a new attempt on Lord Marrowgar. Not only did we succeed in killing him for the first time, we recorded kills on the first four bosses, including an incredible one-shot of Deathbringer Saurfang on our first ever attempt! This earned us the Storming The Citadel (25-player) achievement, with a little I’ve Gone And Made A Mess (25-player) to boot. On a personal note, I won a Vanquisher’s Mark Of Sanctification, which allowed me to upgrade my T10 chest piece to the Sanctified Lasherweave Raiment. It’s the first time I’ve won a trophy in a 25-player raid, so I was very excited to be able to make that upgrade.

Questing

1. Veteran of the Wrathgate – Thursday, while doing some reading online about some of the history that leads to the final boss fight of ICC and its aftermath, I came upon an event that I had been sure I would not be able to do, since I had long ago dropped the questline somewhere along the way. The event is called Battle for the Undercity, and from what I had heard, it is one of the highlights of the current expansion. After letting it the idea simmer for a while, I just had to see what I could do about it. I set out to trace the quest chains back to the beginning, and followed them all from NPC to NPC until I picked up the trail. It turned out that I had left off only two quests away from the Angrathar: The Wrathgate cinematic, which is itself pretty epic. Naturally, I completed those…
2. …which led me to the quests leading up to and including the Battle for the Undercity. This was indeed an awesome event. Going into the Undercity, the ruins of Lordaeron, with King Varian Wrynn, Jaina Proudmoore and a small army of grunts to kill Apothecary Putress was totally fun, and I am still pumped that I was able to actually experience it on my druid.

Highly recommended article for feral druids

• Vallen at Feral Aggression posted an article this week, Understanding Hit, Exp & The Attack Table, that does a great job clarifying how your attacks work, and helped clear up a couple of questions that I have had regarding how Critical Strike Rating works. Personally, I worked for a long time to get my unbuffed Crit above 50%, and then I started stacking Armor Penetration while maintaining or increasing my Agility/Crit with each gear piece that I added. I wanted to have my Crit above 50% in order to facilitate my rotation, which requires keeping the [Savage Roar] buff and [Mangle], [Rip] and [Rake] debuffs up as close to ALWAYS as possible in most encounters. Critical yellow hits (from special attacks) equal double combo points, which help conserve energy, so that was my priority. As my Crit approached 60%, I started wondering if there was a cap for it. This article paints a clear picture of how far I am from the cap (I’m at 65.22% in cat form right now), which isn’t a bad thing. It means I won’t make any stupid decisions about new gear because I mistakenly think that increases in Agility and Critical Strike Rating have less (or no) value at this level.

Real life (also known as “my little adventure in and around the snow storm”)

Last night, large portions of the Northeast were hit with a snow storm, the likes of which I have not seen here in a while. Perhaps I am incorrect, but I’m pretty sure that this is the largest snowfall we’ve had the past five years. As such, we got crushed at the store until about 8pm last night, and then the rush died off quickly. This morning, while everything else in town was closed, I had to go in to work because my store is not in a mall, and our company is all about maximizing sales…

Of course, after digging my car out and sliding around the sheet of ice that currently serves as the surface of the parking lots around here, I got to work… and promptly got the go-ahead from my boss to NOT open my store. This was fine with me, in spite of my troubles, because the parking lot was so bad that I had to park in the neighboring grocery store lot in order to ensure that I would be able to get my vehicle back on the road later in the day. No reason to encourage customers and employees to brave the weather.

So I put in a couple of hours getting some work done and fielding several phone calls from people who actually wondered if we were open today. It’s amazing when someone calls your store during a heavy snowstorm, and you answer, and they’re surprised that you’re “open.” After too many years in retail, nothing shocks me anymore, but that doesn’t mean that stuff like this lacks noteworthiness.

I was out of there by about 12:45pm, and as I headed across the parking lots to drive home, I slipped and fell… twice. Fortunately, I was able to make it home on the treacherous roads with no major incidents. It has been an otherwise uneventful day, which is something much-needed in my life right now.

** Note: I originally had more topics in mind here, but after writing about them a bit, I decided to pull them out and make them into separate near-future posts. Hence, the intended general catch-all post turned into a largely WoW-related post. Again. Sorry about that!

It’s been a long long time… and the beauty of silence

Not-so-extreme make-over: sweet new title, killer new staff (Fordragon Blades), blue hair, 2 Tier-9 pieces, and a newly designed guild tabard!

So here I am, after about five weeks of inactivity where this blog is concerned, and looking to make up a little bit for it. There have been a few times over the past month where I have told myself I was going to make a contribution, but due to a combination of distraction/exhaustion/indifference, I’ve never actually made it back here.

What have I been up to? For starters, the retail holiday season is in full swing. I’ve been spending a lot of my time at work preparing for the holidays, dealing with busy crowds, opening at midnight for big new releases, etc. Additionally, the added stress comes with me when I’m at home, so I’ve been dealing with that. Retail during the holidays can swallow up your soul if you’re not careful, and each year I try to retain my sanity through it all.

The Druid

Secondly, I have been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. After ten or eleven hours on my feet all day, it feels good to just sit down and enjoy myself for a few hours. I’ve been raiding 10-man Onyxia, Vault of Archavon, and Trial of the Crusader each week, along with our weekly try-and-fail of the Northrend Beasts portion of 10-man Trial of the Grand Crusader. We actually got them down the week before Thanksgiving, but usually we don’t have the combination of firepower and coordination (read: we need five people at around 4k DPS, and we usually have two or three around 4k and two or three at 3.3k… makes it tough when you have approximately 150 seconds to complete each phase before the next boss(es) come(s) out). In addition, I have made it to a few of our guild’s 25-man Onyxia & Trial of the Crusader runs, although I am pretty much done with those for the duration of 2009 because of my work schedule on Friday nights. I have gotten a few pieces of sweet gear, although I still have no trophy gear, and I am still able to be a dependable top-end DPS-er in our guild.

I’ve gotten some nice achievements in the past few weeks as well. I finally started the Argent Tournament dailies, and got my Exalted Champion of Darnassus achievement last week, which comes with the “of Darnassus” title, my new favorite! I have this thing where I enjoy the lore of WoW, with some special interest in the history of druids and the Archdruid, Malfurion Stormrage (I’m really looking forward to the book on him next year). Since he was the first druid, and Darnassus is the capitol night elf city, I have this silly affinity for the new title… oh well, what can I say? Anyway, I also got the Less Is More (10-player) achievement for killing Sartharion with 8 players, Onyxia’s Lair (25-player), Knock On Wood (10-player), Cheese The Freeze (10-player), Shutout! (25-player) and Nerf Gravity Bombs (25-player) from Ulduar, Salt And Pepper (10-player) and Upper Back Pain (10-player) from Call of the Crusade, and some other silly-fun achievements. I didn’t really participate too much in the Pilgrim’s Bounty stuff, because after completing all of the cooking dailies the first day, I realized I didn’t A) have the time, and B) care. I am looking forward to Winter Veil, however. Christmas in WoW. Good stuff.

The Paladin

Finally level 80, rapidly gearing up!

In addition, I spent a significant amount of time leveling my alt, Abenadari, my dranei ret paladin. In about three and a half weeks I got her from 72 to 80, which is ridiculously fast for me leveling-wise. I just started having so much fun with her, and decided that I had changed my mind about her. I had determined a long time ago that Abenadari, who is my alchemist, existed solely for the purpose of supplying my druid with potions and elixirs. Of course, with Wrath of the Lich King, that became flasks for raiding purposes, and so leveling began to happen naturally so that I could farm the herbs I needed for that. I finally got on the horse with that in November, and started to love how invincible she seemed. I could take on multiple level 76-77 mobs at level 72, without losing much health or mana, which was awesome fun! Leveling commenced, and last Wednesday the 25th I dinged 80.

Since Wednesday night, even with the Black Friday chaos and regular raiding on Friday and Saturday on Anacrusa, I still managed to run regular Trial of the Champion a few times, Heroic Violet Hold (3 times) and Drak’Tharon Keep, 10-man Obsidian Sanctum and Vault of Archavon, and would have run a 10-man Naxxramas today, but it didn’t work out. In 5 days my wow-heroes.com gear score has shot up about 1050 points, so I’m pretty happy with that. It’s definitely easier to get the second toon to 80 and get gear for it than it was the first time. My girlfriend wants to take her into Ulduar, but I kind of want to take her into Naxx first. I’m excited to see what she can do in a mostly-Undead instance, and I’d like to get some Naxx gear and Tier-8 stuff before I go to Ulduar and get carried through, or whatever. I like to contribute, and I like to think that I have some talent and can hold my own, so I’m going to sort of do it the proper way. Besides, Naxx is fun, and I almost never go there with the druid anymore because it’s virtually pointless.

One thing that made it easier to level when I got to level 77 or 78 was the ability to start the Knights of the Ebon Blade quests, which lead to the dailies. I did them faithfully, and within 3 days of turning 80 I was revered with them, so I’m already rocking the Arcanum of Torment head enchant. It’s great that you can get XP from dailies. The whole experience was great – reputation, XP and gold – the trifecta, just for doing those quests repeatedly. I’m still wearing the tabard and doing the dailies, because when I get Exalted with Ebon Blade, there’s a pair of (I think) boots that I can buy that will help me out.

Overall, WoW has been a fun diversion from real life. There has been a lot to enjoy over the past month or so from playing, with the only problem being that it can be difficult to get to bed at a decent hour when there’s so much fun to be had!

iMac

As sort of an update to my earlier post about the new iMacs, I had been checking weekly to see if they had any updated shipping info on the 27-inch quad-core equipped iMac, and they finally did a couple of weeks ago. So last Monday I ordered mine. I’m hoping that I receive it by next weekend – it will be fun to set it up with WoW, configure it with the add-ons I need, and test it out in Dalaran and some raids. It’s time for it – everything, from the internet to applications and games, has gotten so much heavier in the three-plus years since I bought this one, and the computer is starting to rebel. It seems like every day it will lock up, requiring a reboot, and I’m looking forward to not having that frustration. I’m also excited to see the amazing graphics, although I’m a little anxious about the 27-inch screen. It’s a full 10 inches bigger than my current iMac, and I’m worried that it’s too big, but it was the only way to get quad-core processing from Apple without paying way more than I wanted to (by getting a Mac Pro). If I play WoW in a window, which I do anyway, I should be able to adjust it for a more comfortable view.

Music

I’ve been listening to a lot of music – it is my constant companion when I’m playing or otherwise occupied on the computer – but I’ve barely been playing my guitars lately. I just feel too tired. Unmotivated. However, the love is still there – I dug out my Strat today and played a song I’ve been working on since the beginning of the year, called Dead Wolves. I played it a few times, very poorly, and let it go after 15 minutes or so – I don’t need to add carpal tunnel to the list of things that stress me out, so maybe I’ll pick it up again tomorrow and jam for 15-20 minutes.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to lots of Christmas music. It helps me stay grounded, as far as the holidays go, since I’m so involved in the commercial side of it all (money! money! sales! sales! etc.). I loved Christmas as a child, loved the decorations and the music and the atmosphere and the smells of the tree and the food. I have fond memories of our family on Christmas Eve, when we had our big dinner and followed with Christmas stories and cookies before bed. I never want to lose the respect for that time of my life and the memories made back then. Christmas music really resonates with me, and that’s one reason why I really enjoy it.

…the beauty of silence

This week was a big week, and sleep was hard to come by. I can never sleep well the night before Black Friday, and this year it was particularly difficult. I was really nervous, because it was the first Black Friday where I wasn’t managing a mall store. I was panicking  - “I didn’t schedule enough people for the morning shift! Oh my God!” It ended up being fine, but before Saturday night’s raid, I had decided that I was going to wear earplugs to bed that night. I went to bed at around 1 am this morning, and all I could think was how amazing the sound of relative silence was! It was so peaceful, and I was so ready to sleep well. And I did. Other than the fact that somebody called my cell phone at 8am today, I slept in until 10am, which is really late for me. It was so… I’ve worn earplugs before, but I’ve never felt so wonderfully grateful for the peace and silence that I experienced last night.

That’s about it for this update. I expect that it will NOT be another five weeks until I write again. To anyone who reads this, I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving, and I wish you the best this holiday season. Thanks for reading my ramblings. Cheers!