You might see me back for Legion

Those of you who've read my last post in particular, will know that it has been three years now (in reality, six) since I gave WoW up for dead.  I don't know a lot about Warlords of Draenor, but what I have read has not given me cause for optimism. I of course saw how the specification system was gutted during Mists of Pandaria, and that alone is the main thing that has kept me away.

Yet I just came across Wowpedia's page for Legion, and I'm wondering if I can allow myself a small glimmer of hope. The main thing I'm excited about here, is the addition of Class Orders and a greater degree of individual identity for class specialisations. It appears that a long-held dream of mine might finally come true; that Survival will become a pure melee spec.  The division of abilities into PvE and PvP versions is something we've needed for a very long time, as well.

The two and a half year period, from mid 2006 to Febuary 2009, was a personal golden age for me, in many ways unequalled before or since; and World of Warcraft was a large part of the reason why. A genuine WoW revival would be a tremendous shot in the arm for me, both inside the game, and outside it.

It's funny. I remember reading about how Adam West was never able to move past his portrayal of Batman, or fundamentally re-invent himself as anything else. I'm the same. I am James Osborn, but I am also, and will always be, Mirshalak of the Horde.

Blizzard: You've lost the plot

So after playing Torchlight and Torchlight 2 over the last couple of weeks, and enjoying both of them, I've also been thinking about what a debacle Diablo 3 has apparently been.  My younger brother, who bought and played both D3 and TL2, has described TL2 as being, "everything that Diablo 3 should have been, but wasn't."

In addition to this, IncGamers had an interview with David Breivik, one of the founders of Blizzard North, back in August.  In said interview, he was extremely diplomatic, but underneath all of the couching and corporatese, the message basically confirmed the opinion of most gamers I've seen, exemplified by such forum posts as this; namely, that Diablo 3 sucks rocks the size of Gibraltar.

World of Warcraft is also still taking on water, and by all accounts, at an accelerating pace.  WoW lost two million subscribers last year, and has apparently lost close to another million this year.  From what I've read, the official claim is 10.2 million subs, while unofficial estimates are at 9 million+ and falling.  I've always believed that WoW's real playerbase peaked at around 7 million, in around August of 2007, six months after the release of TBC.  The majority of the other 5 million players are directly attributable to the Arena, and being the wrong demographic, for the sake of the long term health of the game, never should have been there at all.

This has made me think long and hard about the future of Blizzard Entertainment as a brand. Truthfully, I think long term, at this point the company is in very serious trouble.

I will be brutally honest.  I've always thought of Blizzard North, exclusively, as the "real," Blizzard.  They are where all of the company's best known games came from; and although I know next to nothing about the company's real structure, the material which they put out, and what little I was able to read, gave me a particular impression.  Namely that of something similar to a rock band; a relatively small, intimate, passionate, and highly intelligent and creative group of people, who seemed to be utterly devoted, in an uncompromising manner, to their art.

As an analogy, I often think of the central characters from the science fiction series, Stargate SG-1.  Blizzard North were the company's A-team, and I feel deserve to be regarded alongside the likes of id Software, and Maxis prior to that company's assimilation, by the demonic organisation known as Electronic Arts.

There is an equally strong sense, from the quality of Torchlight 2, that Runic Games represents a case of the proverbial band having got back together, (at least to an extent) and that that is where they ended up.  The level of polish is reminiscent of what we grew to expect from Blizzard North; and although the devs are clearly a little more concerned with balance this time around than they were with the original game, there is also a sense that they are actually passionate about the game they've produced.  Torchlight 2 does not convey the deeply insulting, pervasive feeling that I had towards the end of my time with WoW, of a sterile game produced by soulless, club tailed, bean counting suits, with the exclusive intent of making money, and also the belief that irrespective of how bad a product it was, the playerbase should simply pay for it, play it, and shut up.

Apparently, with the automatic talent point allocation, Blizzard have carried that same approach over to Diablo 3.  The same insufferable corporate arrogance is also on display with the fact that the game is server based, despite not being an MMORPG.

Allow me to offer you a clue, Blizzard.  Yes, we, the gaming population used to find WoW's routine maintenance and other server problems annoying and frustrating; and truthfully, we would not have tolerated them from anyone else, under any other circumstances.  We tolerated them from you, and the reason why, is that prior to patch 2.4 at least, with WoW, you gave us a superb, utterly peerless game.  You don't need me to tell you that World of Warcraft, at one point at least, was the greatest computer game of all time, out of virtually any genre, to the point where I am still largely obsessed with it myself five years later, to a degree where other people once regularly accused me of mental illness.  Your own prior numbers and feedback would have confirmed that by themselves.

I put up with routine maintenance.  I put up with the Warden.  I put up with the TOS.  I put up with the gutting of the addon system in 2.0, despite it being a move which I considered blatantly fascist.  I put up with Blizzard having a God complex in general terms.  However, here's the point.

You only get to dictate terms in that manner, when you are producing a game of that level of quality. 

You will not be permitted to do so, when you are selling us corporate-produced crap, purely on the basis of other people's past positive efforts, and then expect us to simply accept it and shut up. We are not under any obligation to do so, and we are not going to.  Give us quality of WoW's original standard, and yes, you'll get some latitude.  Give us rubbish, which is obviously designed primarily to fill a box and make money, and you won't.

I've already written extensively about what I believe has caused the systemic demise of World of Warcraft, primarily here, so I'm not going to repeat myself; other than to say that at the time the linked blog post was written, Cataclysm had not yet been released, and when it was released, its' only real effect was to make the situation worse, as predicted.

You've got two choices here, Blizzard.  You can either remain arrogant and unrepentant, and maintain the attitude that you know best, and that you are simply going to keep listening to your bean counting corporate overlords at Activision, and producing sterile crap that is purely focused on the economic bottom line, and to Hell with your actual playerbase.  That road will lead to further erosion of the Blizzard brand, more disillusioned gamers who feel that they have been betrayed, and eventually, the irrelevance of the company.

Or, you can swallow your pride, acknowledge that you've got a problem, listen to the criticism that is being given you by myself and other people, and start doing what it is going to take, to get you back on top.

That means, first and foremost, re-establishing a vague semblance of creative and artistic integrity, as you had in the past.  You perhaps do not understand this, but as it has most graphically been recently illustrated with Christopher Nolan and his Batman film franchise, there is a paradox where money and creativity are concerned.

Namely, that in order to make money, you actually have to completely relinquish money as a focus, and concentrate solely on exercising creative passion, and on the quality of your product.  If you have an uncompromising determination to make an outstanding product, then you need have no fear whatsoever of the market.  You will make money, and you will do so beyond your wildest anticipation.

This has been proven, time and time again.  Stop being fearful.  Stop listening to the suits.  Stop designing character skill trees and other mechanics in corporate board meetings.  That is not the place to do it.  The old way, the way that works, is for developers themselves to act as playtesters, and for game mechanics to actually be updated incrementally, while the developers themselves are playing.

It's your move.

Another Torchlight Update

I just got out of the game after playing for I think four hours.  The new build seems to be going well.  At level 16, I seem to have roughly 25% crit when Charged, with a theoretical max base crit damage of around 460.

My initial theory that it isn't necessary to stack Strength for the Outlander was apparently correct; it's a shame I didn't listen to my instincts before trashing two previous characters, but oh well.  Sometimes I have to learn the hard way.  You will need *some* strength, however, as occasionally you'll find the odd piece which you'll want to put on, which has Strength requirements.  I haven't needed more than 20 base Str so far, though; and I get a few more points from gear.

Torchlight's mechanics are deeply strange, compared to what some of us might be used to.  Dex doesn't give any base damage to Outlanders at all, even though it's one of our two main stats, with the other being Vitality.  (Stamina in WoWspeak, although apparently Vitality here adds armor as well)

The way we get base damage in TL2, seems to be primarily from the base our weapon does, and from the Charge bar.  The Charge bar seems to work something like the Rage meter from WoW, except it charges depending on when we hit something, rather than when we are hit.  As it goes up, my damage and crit rate start going up with it.  I only have around 10-12% base crit, but when I'm fully charged, I'm at around 25% or so.

The major downside with this game, as mentioned previously, is the targetting system.  The main reason why I've had to stop playing today, is because I started getting symptoms vaguely reminiscent of repetitive strain injury in my mouse hand and arm.  I don't know whether Runic could manage it in a future patch, but if they could, a targetting system similar to that of WoW would be greatly appreciated.

By flickering Torchlight

So it seems that I now have the opportunity for a rebirth, of sorts.  Two days ago I purchased Torchlight 2 via Steam, and perhaps four days before that, the original Torchlight.

I will admit that these games certainly do not have anything like the depth of WoW.  The lack of targetting in particular makes them somewhat tricky to play, as well; but that can be overcome.

It seems that the same people who developed WoWHead, have put together an Armory type site for Torchlight 2, complete with the usual talent calculator.  After discovering it, I put together an experimental level 100 spec to use, and I'm going to be slowly implementing it.  I've become a fan of the shotgonne, primarily because of the amount of utility it offers.

You might think that that build looks terribly hamstrung, but when I first got the game, the class I initially tried was an Engineer.  I was horrified to spend the next five levels running around mindlessly one-shotting everything that moved, even on Normal difficulty, before I finally deleted the character due to boredom.  The worst thing about it was, that at level five I was still one shotting mobs, and taking no real damage whatsoever, with the same wrench I'd started the game with.

So my intent has been to create something which is not overpowered, but is actually rewarding and challenging to play.  The shotgonne can still be powerful enough as an offensive weapon, but I find what makes it really enjoyable, is the added knockback, and the stuns and blinding which is available from the specialisation.  I was always a fan of offtanking and slows/stuns/control oriented mechanics within WoW, so I think this build is going to be a lot of fun to play.

Happy New Year

I am writing this from the Hemp Bar, a somewhat (I am told) internationally famous venue in Cullen Street, Nimbin; in central New South Wales. I still have not decided whether to return to Victoria. Melbourne is a dangerous place, these days. Not so much as America, apparently; but political conditions are not ideal for one as restive as myself.

World of Warcraft has not been forgotten by me; truthfully, I don't think it ever will be. I still feel the urge to resubscribe at times, although I have no idea what is happening with the game. If this post reaches any of you, I would be interested to know if any of you still play WoW, and if I am missing anything?

Paradigm shift

(Note: This is an entirely non-gaming related post. Sorry about that, but just to warn you)

So four weeks ago, I flew some 1600 km north of where I was previously living. I'm now roughly an hour south of Brisbane, Australia, in a town called Nimbin. Many of you will have heard of it perhaps; the town refers to itself as "the sister city of Woodstock," and is more or less the psychedelic/hippie/"alternative," capital of the country. Some of you may also remember the animated movie, "Fern Gully," from several years ago. That film was set in what is now the Nightcap Rainforest National Park near Mount Warning, an volcano which actually exists not far from my present locationl.

I've been here for two weeks now; and the two weeks previous to that were spent in a Permaculture Design Course, taught by Geoff Lawton, a man who a couple of you may have heard of. That was also an amazing experience; permaculture is a revolutionary system of agriculture and environmental management, but there is much there that was reminiscent of Survival for me.

Moving that distance was a large extension of my previous comfort zone, especially considering that I'm still not exactly rolling in money. I finally got tired, however, of only playing characters like Mirsh vicariously within computer games. It became time to take some real risks.

Three days in Eberron

I'm still playing DDO, and enjoying it. Although I've read in reviews that it isn't so much true later on, at the moment at least, this game is a solo player's dream. Every quest takes place in its' own instance, and as mentioned, the difficulty is fully adjustable; Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite.

I tend to go in on Normal to get the feel for a place, and then kick it up to Hard for a second run through. Depending on how I did on Hard, I'll then go for Elite. The rewards scale with the difficulty, as well; on Casual, XP/rep gains are 50% of Normal, while on Elite, XP gains are 8-10% more.

It isn't all completely rosy, however. DDO's interface isn't quite as slick as WoW's. I have to have my bow and melee weapons assigned as different weapon sets, and use two hotkeys to manually switch between each. There can also be a noticeable delay when switching during combat, so if I'm going to initially kite or shoot a target, I have to time switching to make sure I've got my axe out when a mob reaches me.

The other major bugbear is the targeting, which tends to ping pong back and forth between targets, depending on what my mouse is hovering over. From memory there's an option to turn auto targetting off, though, and I also already have sticky targetting assigned to the F key, so I think I will be able to sort that out. That's just the usual sort of initial teething problem when starting any new game, really.

I only have two combat skills at the moment; Trip and Sunder. My spells apparently come much later. Trip is very useful, because it makes my character perform a foot sweep which knocks a mob's legs out from under them, and sends them to the ground. This makes them much more vulnerable, so I'm usually able to kill them in one hit after that. Sunder is like Sunder Armour for Warriors in WoW; it reduces a mob's armor class for a bit, so I can kill it more easily.

The Ranger Tempest is meant to be a dual wielding class as well, but I think I already mentioned that being a Half-Orc means I get initial two handed proficiency early on. This is a real lifesaver, because while I'm levelling up, before I get the full bonus from Two Weapon Fighting, I've still got a hit penalty to the offhand, similar to what I actually had when dual wielding as a Survival Hunter in WoW.

As far as shooting is concerned, my Strength is sufficiently high that I do almost as much damage with my bow as with my axe; but because my Dexterity is lower, my hit chance is only around 10-20%, currently.

More than anything else, I'm actually enjoying the feel of being low level again. It makes things challenging, and means that I really have to focus on what I'm doing, in order to survive; especially if I keep the difficulty on Hard or above. Kiting is a lot more tricky than in WoW, particularly given that I don't have auto attack, and have to click to fire as I freelook with the mouse; but I'll get it eventually.

It's a funny paradox, you know. DDO has all these funny little interface quirks that WoW had smoothed out at release on the one hand; but now, DDO also actually has enough real challenge that it can keep me interested in playing on the other. DDO is not homogenised in any sense of the word. I suspect that even if WoW does somehow manage to recover from its' current slump, that fact will mean that Turbine will continue to receive my money.

As one door closes...

...Another opens.

I've uninstalled WoW from my hard drive, and cancelled my subscription. In its' place, I've installed Dungeons and Dragons Online. I've been playing it for the last three hours or so as I type, and already I'm able to tell that with this game, although I loved Survival, I'm going to be able to get at least a good part of the playstyle that I'd always wanted from Surv.

My class in DDO is a Half-Orc Tempest Ranger. Rangers in DDO are a true melee/ranged hybrid. At the time of rolling, I had 17 base strength, straight out of the gate, and was also given a large two handed axe with a fire enchant during the starting quest, as well.

I'm now running through the early quests two shotting literally everything, and even though ranged combat is supposed to be the weakest element of DDO, I think I've figured out a way to get around that. Half-Orcs have very high base strength, and although Dexterity (the equivalent of Agility in WoW, roughly) is usually the stat needed for ranged damage, Tempests get a skill later on which allows us to use Strength as our ranged stat.

I do a little (though not much, truthfully, because I got a very nice repeating crossbow as a quest reward) more damage melee than I do at range, but I can shoot when I need to, for getting casters or other mobs that I don't want to get so close to, that they can damage me. So I have a lot of versatility. Rangers can even wear shields, although I am not going to do that, because as a Tempest, once I get the skills for it, I will be dual-wielding. Tempests apparently have two hand specialisation that is even better than what Fighters (the Warrior equivalent in DDO) get, but they're still quite a bit stronger than we are, as well. Still, I'm doing just fine as my own tank right now.

Rangers aren't a pet class in DDO, but I'm that much stronger melee, that I really don't need a pet; although it is possible later on to get spells which let me summon one for ten minutes or so.

DDO is a completely PvE oriented game; there's no PvP at all, at least that I know of. The instances can also be run either solo, with a human group, or with NPC hirelings, and the difficulty level is fully adjustable. Payment options are equally flexible; you can either pay a monthly subscription, (which I'm doing) or pay for Turbine Points at the DDO store, which seem to allow content to be unlocked on a per-transaction basis, although the initial content is free to play.

I've subscribed for an initial three months, as I said, and I much prefer subscribing than gated microtransactions, because a subscription means I immediately get access to everything up front, that someone doing the initial free-to-play would have to spend a lot more money for, on individual points. At $30 for three months, it's 30% cheaper than World of Warcraft, as well.

DDO's graphics might seem a little limited to some, but I like them. It uses the classic 70s style of fantasy art, as also seen in Age of Conan. They not long ago added support for DirectX 11 though, and I had to actually put the settings down to DirectX 10, because my video card started running at 85C.

If you've been upset about the direction WoW has gone in since Cataclysm, though, DDO is at least worth a try, I think. I'm very happy with it, and while it comes across as non-mainstream and a little old school, that is exactly what I was looking for. It might be your cup of tea; it might not.

(Almost) Zero focus farming

I'm currently slowly making my way through what I assume is the tail end of the Hyjal quests; one of my current ones is The Sanctum of the Prophets. During Hyjal I've started using an adaptation of my old, TBC/WoTLK farming rotation.

First, I use the current addons:-

Omen
Kharthus Hunter Timers
Range Display
OmniCC

I also use the following pull macro with Serpent Sting; although you'll want to swap this out with regular Serpent for instancing. This fires Serpent, but prevents a follow up autoshot, so I don't produce any additional threat. If you don't have any other mobs in the immediate vicinity, after firing, your target will go off, but immediately be reselected.

#show Serpent Sting
/cast [harm, exists] Serpent Sting
/cleartarget

1. Measuring with Range Display, get to 35 feet of your target.

2. Drop an Immolation Trap.

3. Fire Serpent Sting.

4. Backpedal, and while doing so, send the pet when the mob hits the trap. You may get melee hit once, depending on your lag; but that is no big deal.

5. Fire Cobra Shot and Explosive Shot. I like getting the two off without an auto in between if I can, for old time's sake; I never quite got the 1:1.5 out of my system. <3

6. If you are impatient, fire Kill Shot when it lights up.

I finish with 95 focus, and 3-5 seconds left on the cooldown of Immolation Trap.

Better late than never

Although it might be four years late, I have finally obtained an Onyx Netherwing Drake. This marks the completion of the first of the two major tasks I have set myself, before I can leave World of Warcraft. The second is to obtain the Conqueror PvP title.

There has really been nothing else in my life, whether online or off, that having begun, I have completed to the point of real satisfaction. Even if there is nothing else after this, I am going to complete these objectives, and in so doing, according to my own terms, complete this character.

Upcoming Class Changes

A friend sent me this. Enjoy. ;)

http://www.thedailyblink.com/2010/12/patch-notes-from-my-happy-fuzzy-dream-world/

A new guild

So yesterday, after discovering them on the forum, I transfered to the Misha PvE realm, and joined a guild called Pay It Forward.

As the name might suggest, they're probably the single most positive group I've ever encountered in this game. The guild has over 400 people, with very active crafters, and a full to bursting guild bank, which I've already started contributing to as well.

I've already done a Normal Throne of the Tides run, and although I didn't have a meter running, they assured me that I was doing fine. It was chaotic, but we had a lot of fun, and a couple of nice blues dropped for me as well; after which everyone, including me, was repeatedly and profusely thanked for coming.

In other words, I feel like I've finally come home. I have no idea how much content I'm going to end up doing in Cata, but I'm not really focusing on that right now. I'm trying to focus on sharing whatever little I do experience, with an enormously positive, generous, and hospitable group of people.

I think the other important thing is that because they have the attitude that I can play however I like, I can focus on being competitive purely with *myself*, rather than having to think that I'm doing it purely for acceptance from others. So yes, Recount is being installed, and yes, I'm actually looking up the EJ approved spec and rotation for Survival; but I'm doing those things for *me,* not the guild, because the guild have already said that they are not worried about such things.

For me, that has always been the paradox. If I am told to do my own thing, I will still try and improve to the extent that I can, purely for my own sake; but the moment it feels as though anything is being done purely to satisfy other people, it will not happen.

Nether Portals and You: A Minecraft tutorial

My brother tells me that to some extent, Minecraft has become a tradition for a lot of WoW players during Tuesday night maintenance. I had been going to post an ArkInventory tutorial here tonight, but since WoW is down, I thought I'd go with this instead; it's an article repost that I wrote on the Minecraft forums late last year, on how to get Nether portals working. This seems to be something which a lot of people find difficult, so hopefully this information will help someone.

The thread also contains a link to a YouTube video, added just tonight, from a user who was able to use not only my post, but also the research of a user named Addicted, to get his portals working.

Enjoy. :)

--

I'm aware that there are possibly a few people who are still having difficulty with getting their Nether portals working. This was originally sent in a private message to someone who PMed me in response to an earlier offer I made last month, to help fix people's portals; but I figured that there are probably a number of other people who could still benefit from it as well, so I decided to also post it here.

One area where I'm a fairly incurable science fiction geek, is physics relating to teleportation or other unconventional means of transportation. That's meant Stargate, and it's also meant Sliders as well. So for me, the Nether portal has been the single most exciting addition that Notch has made to the game; I love these things. For a while, however, they frustrated the hell out of me. I had to satiate my hunger for the ability to do this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HWyAODVsQ4) within Minecraft, however, and so eventually I sat down and over a period of 12 solid hours of experimentation and tearing my hair out, assisted by this thread (viewtopic.php?f=35&t=93046) from Addicted, and the awesome contributions of uecasm and Mr. B, this is what I eventually figured out.

The portals (and Minecraft's geography in general) work via a Cartesian coordinate system. There are numbers on three axes; x, y, and z. Y represents elevation; the other two are length and width. The Nether and the surface world each use their own numerical grid; however both start from zero.

The Nether has a space compression co-efficient of 8, relative to the surface world, on both the x and z axes. What this means in English is that for every horizontal block of distance you walk in the Nether, by doing so you will have traveled the equivalent of 8 blocks in the surface world.

Another way to express this, would be to imagine a horizontal 10 centimeter line, drawn on a piece of paper, with a 2 centimeter line below it. The 10 centimeter line represents the surface world, and the 2 centimeter line represents the Nether. Because the 2 cm line is so much shorter, it can't contain references for literally all of the 10 cm, but by linking with the part of the 2 cm line that in scale represents the 6 cm point on the 10 cm line, you can get bounced back to that point on the 10 cm line, without having to move the whole 6 cm.

As an example, the Nether portal in my gateroom has coordinates of 9, 48, 308. What that means is that the portal is 48 blocks in height, distant from the 0 block, (the last layer of bedrock) 9 blocks distant from the 0 block in length or width, and 308 blocks from zero on the other axis. I usually have to try and remind myself what each one is every time, aside from elevation, as I don't always remember.

So if I have built a portal at that location in the surface world, if I want to find out the exact location that a corresponding portal should be built in the Nether, I divide both the first and third numbers by 8. I do not divide the second number, because elevation is the same in the Nether as the surface world; 132 blocks, from the last layer of bedrock, to the top of the sky.

So once I've divided those two numbers by 8, I go into the Nether. Now, if there is no other gate in the Nether at that time, there is a form of artificial intelligence in the game, which will try to automatically place the gate in the correct position for me. However, 45% of the terrain in the Nether is unsuitable for gates; it is either in midair, or in lava, or buried in hellstone. So if there is lava or hellstone in the way, or if there is no surface for the gate to be built on, the game will look for a close possible location instead, and build a gate there.

Initially, you will have no way of knowing this. So you will go back through the gate into the surface world, expecting to land back in your surface world gate room. However, the reason why you don't, is because the Nether portal (portal B) was at the wrong linking location for portal A, (the gateroom portal) and so portal B is *now* trying to guess the ideal location of *its'* matching portal in the *surface world.*

It is this guessing which the game does, that is the source of the problem. In order to solve it, you must place your portals manually, and destroy gates which are automatically placed by the game, which do not match the correct coordinates.

So taking the 3 numbers divided from our example, would give us 1, 48, 38. If instead you were at coordinates 1, 48, 38 in the Nether, and wanted to build a gate there, and know the right location for its' surface world partner, you would multiply both 1 and 38 by 8, to give you the coords 8, 48, 308 again.

We then use something like the SignTags mod, or the MinecraftGPS mod, which will allow us to view the coordinate location of the map that we are standing on, and doing that, we walk to coordinate location 1, 48, 38 in the Nether. When we get there, we will place the second obsidian block of the 4 block wide base of our gate, at those exact coordinates, with the first, third, and fourth blocks placed next to it.

Most of the time when we get there, we will find something in the way, which prevented the game from automatically placing our gate in the right location. This can be either lava, a hellstone mountain, or empty space, as mentioned. You will then have to build a scaffolding and a walkway up to the exact location of those coordinates, in order to place your gate. This can sometimes be very labour intensive if your gates are in midair, and for that reason I use Fly mod to allow me to build whatever staircases and walkways I need to, for connecting gates in the Nether, rather than having to initially build dangerous scaffolding and risk falling repeatedly into lava, etc, before my walkway is built. Fly mod also lets me fly up to the ceiling of the Nether and bucket a lava flow, rather than having to redirect it closer to the base.

You also must make a note of which way the surface world gate is facing, and make sure you build your gate to face in the same direction (whether North-South, or East-West) as well. If you enter a gate in the surface world, and come out staring at one side of the frame in the Nether, then even if the second obsidian block was correctly placed at the right coordinates, you will still need to rebuild the rest of the gate in order to face the right way.

This may seem obsessive, but if you place your gates manually, with this degree of precision, you will find that they work flawlessly, every time, and you will even be able to do such things as having multiple gates in the same chunk. I have three gates within the same 16 block Nether chunk (corresponding with 128 blocks in the surface world) and they all work perfectly.

I had exactly the same problem that most people have, for a month after the Halloween update, in terms of the same Nether portals all linking to the same one in the surface world. It is because of the distance difference. A Nether chunk is 16 blocks in the Nether, but that corresponds to 128 blocks in the surface world. The guessing AI is good enough that if you get two of the coordinates right, it can still work around the third one being wrong; but it can't guess for all three, and if all three of your gates are in the same Nether chunk, and at the wrong coordinates, it will get confused, and simply default to linking with the first surface world gate that was made.

There is one other trick that you can use, although I would not recommend trying to use this until you have got all of your gates working, using the exact elevation coordinates.

The trick is this; because the gates require coordinates on all three axes, then as long as you get two of the numbers exactly right, the guessing which the game does for the elevation axis (the second number) will usually still allow it to work. So, for example, you can build a gate at level 5 (the first level of bedrock) in the surface world, and as long as the coordinates for width and length were perfect in the Nether, you could place it directly next to a Nether gate which took you back to sea level in the surface world, without having to dig down to level 5 to place the gate in the Nether.

I am confident that if people are able to understand this, and get your portals working, that even though they can be initially much more labour intensive, you will find them a vastly superior form of transportation to minecarts. Minecarts work by increasing the speed of movement over the same surface area. Nether portals, on the other hand, literally reduce the amount of surface area needing to be crossed, by 80%. As mentioned, although a minecart will get you from bedrock to sealevel faster than walking, a Nether portal will get you there almost instantly, because the elevation difference does not need to be travelled at all.

"That *annoying* Hunter."

So after making a few posts on the forum this evening, in response, someone replied to me with this:-

"wow, you were that annoying hunter with a blog on hunter forums in BC. What happened I dont think I have seen you post once since wrath?"

I realise that this, meagre as it may be, sums up my place in this game's history. BRK had a gun named after him; but apparently I still live in infamy on the forum as "that annoying Hunter."

I'm not offended by it at all, however; quite the contrary, in fact. I often used to write that I felt there was a thematic association between Survival and John McClaine. Given that, I think probably the highest form of flattery that I could be given, is to be known as a proverbial fly in the ointment. ;)

XP for old quests?

I'm not at 85 yet. I went through Vashj'r, and to be honest considered the experience very much a mixed bag. Some of it was really gratifying and enjoyable; but to be honest, some of it was so tedious that I found it difficult to remain motivated to keep playing at all.

As mentioned before, I've never been much of a raider, and that is not likely to change with Cataclysm. The two overall objectives I still have in this game, which I've had since BC, are to get a nether drake, and to finish getting the Conqueror PvP title. Another, more minor goal, is to completely finish all of the quests in Nagrand in particular, which was probably my favourite zone in the game. Once I've got those, I'll probably quit.

Anyway, to the point of this post; once I finished Vashj'r, I went back to Shadowmoon Valley to keep doing the Netherwing Ledge rep quests. I became very surprised, however, when I discovered that at level 82, I'm apparently now getting the full amount of XP from said quests, as well as getting 200+ XP per node when mining.

My initial thought was that this was fantastic, because it means that I can get to 85, while still doing purely what I wanted to do anywayz; which I'm assuming was Blizzard's intention. Then, however, I stopped and thought about it a bit more.

One of the things that I've been worried about since probably WoTLK, is that WoW seems to have become a game where the only thing that 90%+ of the playerbase care about doing, is getting to the level cap. For some reason, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the endgame contains the only content worth doing; and that means that for people like me, who actually tend to prefer doing pre-cap stuff, (mainly because I've noticed how much people's attitudes change, for the worse, at the cap) it's much more difficult to find people willing to do pre-cap instances etc, or if they are willing to do them, to see them as anything other than something to be got through as quickly as possible, on their way to the cap.

This may, of course, have the opposite effect, because now that getting Loremaster would apparently assist people in getting to the cap as well, I might actually see more people in the levelling zones. I will mention that I actually did see one other person doing the Skyshatter flying quests at the same time I was; and that gave me cause for optimism. I guess we'll see.

"You have to focus, Trinity."

So over the past 24 hours, I've been considering my opinion on the shift to Focus, from mana.

I offer the following disclaimer; I'm not even doing Heroics any more. My sole two objectives in WoW at this point, are getting a Netherdrake, and the Conqueror PvP title. The 80-85 quests have been sufficiently boring up to this point that it has even been difficult to motivate myself to get to level 85, but I will probably need to if I want sufficient Resilience gear to finish rep farming for Conqueror.

I'm also completely solitary. I made the mistake of transferring back to Jubei'Thos in order to play with my brothers, but they have since moved to Saurfang themselves, ironically; and the community on Jubei seems to be largely non-existent at this point. I tried getting into a guild earlier on, when doing Vashj'ir quests, but got the usual "go go go!" type doing them with me, which I really do not want at all.

My other two activities in WoW will consist of old quests (Nagrand primarily at the moment, for interest's sake) and possibly gold farming for a tundra mammoth, as well. I considered WoTLK's quests to have been the best released so far, and so will probably also finish any of those that I've left also; although due to how much I enjoyed them, most of them were done during WoTLK.

Considering what I use it for, then, most people will probably say that the difference between mana and focus is not all that great. There is a noticeable difference, however. Given that I only used to put Viper on while travelling, (or if I was in really low level areas, where it made no difference) mana meant that I had to drink anywhere between every 10-20 mobs, depending on how much I was trapping.

Now, it really depends on how I play. If I'm not feeling in a hurry, and am happy with simply using Serpent, alternating between Immolation and Snake Trap, and auto shot, I can literally keep going forever. If I use Explosive Shot, however, I will often get down to 50% focus between kills, and so may have to use Steady a few times to get it back up.

Without knowing for certain, I'm idly guessing that will throw a bit of a spanner in the works for those who are doing Heroics or raids, simply because during long fights, there would likely be periods where you'd be stuck doing nothing but Steady (at least for a few shots) with precious little else to do until you caught back up; although given you'd only need 3 Steadies or so, it probably wouldn't be that bad.

The thing I loved about mana in particular during TBC, was the fact that in a 5 man or raid, if I had pots or runes, I could get it back when I really needed it; although I'm guessing that is what Ghostcrawler primarily wanted to prevent us from being able to do, as well.

The really positive side where focus is concerned for me, however, is that with it, traps are completely free; the cooldown itself is my only constraint with using Immolation now. I've removed the Glyph of Immolation Trap which buffed its' damage, as well; at my current level, Immolation has actually become a bit too bursty with the glyph on, and if I'm critting, I can have difficulty keeping threat on the pet.

If I was still doing 5 mans, then, something tells me I'd probably be feeling nostalgic for mana; but for what I do, the occasional per-mob delay is not a big problem, particularly considering that I'm often waiting on Immolation's CD anywayz, if I don't alternate with Snake Trap.

A slow re-awakening

"Mirshalak!"

An unknown voice violated my unconsciousness. I moved away from it, mentally; I didn't want to wake up, yet. Oblivion was warm, safe; peaceful.

"Mirshalak!"

The voice called again. I had no idea whose it was, but somehow I realised it would not leave me alone.

I opened my eyes. There were what felt like tree branches stuck in my back. I didn't know where I was; I couldn't remember how I'd got here, or even why I'd ended up unconscious in the first place. I didn't know how long I'd been out, but something told me it was a long time. The land was barren; a few dead trees, but not much else.

I struggled up into a standing position. I'd been lying in the open; my tent wasn't far away. My first thought was to whistle for the boar. It took a few minutes, but he came running. He was thinner than I'd almost ever seen him, and mangy; but he was alive, and thrilled to see me. For the moment, that was enough.

I got to my feet, somehow packed up the tent, found a nearby track, and began to stumble along it. I'd need supplies; fortunately I still had a bit of gold, somehow. I didn't know how it hadn't been stolen.

I wasn't sure how long I walked for; I was still in something of a daze, but eventually I came to what looked like an inn, of Orcish architecture. I was glad; I needed something familiar, and was in no shape to fight.

I went inside, to find an old Orcish woman tending bar, and occasionally fussing around the fire. Nobody else seemed to be around, but for that I was glad.

"Ancestors, you look like the walking dead!" she said to me. "Where did you stumble in from?"

"I woke up at a camp site up the road," I pointed vaguely outside in the direction I had come.

The woman's eyes narrowed briefly, but then she shrugged, and gave a gutteral laugh.

"I'm guessing you'll want some boar meat," she suggested.

I nodded wearily, and reaching into my old pouch, brought out a couple of gold coins. "And some hot cider."

She laughed again at that. "Yes, you look like you could use it!"

A few minutes later, I took a couple of halting mouthfuls of the cider. The spices were welcome; the heat felt like it was literally bringing life back into my body. As I ate, I asked the old woman for recent news.

"There's all kinds of chaos going on," she answered. "Most are still trying to find our feet and get things back together, after the Cataclysm."

"The what?" I asked.

She narrowed her eyes again, for a longer moment this time.

"Where have you been, that you don't know about that?"

I shook my head. "I wish I knew. But what can you tell me about it?"

She sighed, and began to talk. My eyes widened at some of the details, and as I listened, I realised that things had apparently become very interesting.

Feeling conflicted

So like I said last post, I reinstalled WoW, ostensibly only to play it with a cousin while he was staying here. He's still staying with us, but he went somewhere else for the last 24 hours, and so I'm on the computer alone at the moment.

I confess something; I feel like playing WoW right now. I've bought a new web domain, and was in the process of setting it up yesterday, and that combined with the heat has left me feeling a little brain fried at the moment. So I feel like vegetating; doing something anti-intellectual. Shutting off my brain while my fingers move, for an hour or so.

I'm honestly trying to figure out whether it is really wrong for me to want to play the game every so often. I think the main issue is that, even at level one, the cap and the concept of endgame, and guilding, and all those things that I really don't want to do, but which I feel that Blizzard really DO want me to do, are always there, looming in the background, like the proverbial bogeyman in the closet.

I think if I just log in, get a level of XP, or a couple of LFD instances (say 30-60 mins worth) every now and then, that that is not so bad. I'm going to still focus firmly on the alt game, but there's plenty of room for me to do so before I run out of content; the Alliance zones are still largely unexplored for me, for the most part.

I've rolled an Orc Shaman. His name is Kragar. I'm finding Enhancement with a large 2h axe to be a lot of fun. The class's survivability is also amazing; I've died twice on the way to level 10, less than I ever have with any class before, including the Paladin.

I've also realised that even if I do keep playing, I'm going to leave Mirsh deleted. I might even, eventually, roll another Hunter, (although that is looking doubtful at this point; I've seriously burned myself out with that class, at least for a while) but I'm going to leave Mirsh deleted. I think even more than anything else, even if I was going to keep playing the game, I needed a fresh start. There comes a point with a character where there's too much baggage, and too much weight, and I needed to just throw it all away, wipe it all away, and start fresh.

Anywayz, back into the game for an hour or so. ;)

World of Warcraft:- An autopsy.

My main is still deleted, but a cousin of mine arrived today, and is currently staying with me for ten days, before he goes overseas, possibly for several years. He is someone who I have traditionally played Blizzard's games with, and so I have relented to reinstall the game, and temporarily resubscribe in order to play with him.

It is still, however, highly questionable as to whether I will remain after he leaves. This post, and a deluge of other similar ones, which are showing up on the forums on a daily basis at this point, more or less echo my current feelings about the state of the game. There was one other fairly insightful one the other night, which I might have to try and track down; it goes into more depth.

Although I know that none of these will happen, much less even be listened to by Blizzard, for the sake of argument I will outline the changes which would need to occur, to genuinely reignite my enthusiasm as a player of World of Warcraft.

Brigwyn said in the comments of my last post, that he missed having people around who were willing to speak the truth about WoW. Brig, this post is for you, because a lot of truth (at least from my perspective) that I've been sitting on for more than 12 months now, is about to get spoken.

1. Class balance would need to be reverted to the state of around patch 2.1, and ideally, most of the restrictions that were added to the addon/macro system in 2.0 would be removed. Hell, an easier way of doing this would probably be to simply revoke/invalidate WoTLK entirely. I truthfully don't know anyone who doesn't think that this expansion has been largely a mess. The only part of it that has really been good from my perspective, was the questing. The 5 mans were bad, and I've hardly been able to raid at all, thanks to GearScore.

Let BM be our main damage tree again. I only had a problem with that because of how some BM hunters treated people socially, but in game, there was literally nothing better than having a BM Hunter in the same 5 man group with me as Survival. I trapped, they did damage; which freed both of us to do only that which we were specialised for, and allowed the other person to take care of the other half of our class.

If the Steady Shot nerf was repealed, it would be much easier to make Marksmanship sufficiently competitive to make Rilgon happy, as well.

2. The comic would need to be cancelled. It has trashed the game's lore. I would want it out of print. I would want Thrall reaffirmed as Warchief of the Horde, with Garrosh maybe as his second, but with him behaving. I would want Jaina as leader of the Alliance, with Varian Wrynn retconned out entirely. Have him fall through a crack in the universe somewhere; I don't care. He is a mistake, and he should not exist.

3. The Arena would need to be removed from the game entirely. This probably wouldn't stop the flood of FPS/console gamers, but it would probably help somewhat.

4. Character name change and faction/sex/race change options would need to be removed. These have done possibly irreperable social damage to the game. These days, reputation among players no longer means anything, so it is possible to behave like a profane, sociopathic, entirely anonymous FPS gamer, and then if necessary change your character's name the next day, with zero personal consequences.

5. Heirlooms would need to be removed. These have destroyed the levelling game entirely. As an alt Rogue in Razorfen Krawl a few days ago, I was generating 60 DPS without heirlooms, and a Hunter was generating 80 with them. That's almost another 25% overall damage, and the original 5 mans were not designed for those numbers.

6. The Death Knight would need to become a single target, rather than AoE class. Over-reliance on AoE has killed any requirement for tactical co-ordination within instances.

7. The Paladin's class role would be repealed back to that of the defensive hybrid, per the original design, and its' abilities (in terms of the bubble, etc) would likewise be returned to their previous state. Some of the improvements that have allowed Protection to be made viable as a tanking spec would be kept, albeit with a fairly substantial nerf to damage, and corresponding buff to threat generation if need be. The Retribution tree would be heavily nerfed, and it would be stipulated as a DPS tree for levelling/soloing only.

8. The horrific scenario with stat inflation and the destruction of the colour coding system would need to be repaired/reversed. Gear/stat scaling would need to be made much more conservative, and given sane, conservative rates, made on the basis of analysing the numbers of the original (pre-expansion) game, and extrapolating on that basis.

There would also, correspondingly, need to be a massive reduction in the number of available, epic quality items. The colour coding system only meant something when it was applied judiciously and with genuine care. 85-90% of the items available even to level cap players should be blue; the epic item class should be reserved for genuinely top end raid gear ONLY. The vast majority of the current epics should be made blue.

This change wouldn't just benefit raiders; it would make everyone happier, because it would re-introduce the feeling that everyone's gear was actually worth something.

As a corrolary of this, gear needs to stop being seen, both by players, and by developers, as an end in itself. Gear is not an end reward in itself. All it is for, is to allow you to get past the next level of content. If there is no next level of content, gear is worthless.

The purpose of gear is not to be able to idly stand around capital cities on your mount, seeking to have people stare at you in awe, as a source of narcissistic supply. Anyone who views this game in this manner, needs to seek urgent professional psychiatric help.

9. Blizzard need to stop mindlessly, shamelessly pandering to the lowest common denominator, in the name of myopic corporate greed. In response to a thread made in the DPS forum by someone quitting not long ago, Ghostcrawler implicitly made his priorities clear, by talking about population numbers and how well WoTLK was still selling.

Caring purely about short term player population growth above all else, while entirely neglecting the quality of individual player experience, class balance, and virtually every other element of the game, is not a good recipe for the game's long term wellbeing. World of Warcraft is being hideously mismanaged, in all of the ways listed above.

Ghostcrawler and the developer team are also now fairly clearly allowing their direction to be dictated by the chronically mentally ill 5% of the playerbase, that inhabit the forums. The single main reason why this is so disastrous, is because the forum's most vocal inhabitants (who are also among the smallest minorities in the playerbase) are dedicated Arena players.

In particular, the train wreck that is the philosophy of, "bring the player, not the class," must be abandoned if this game is to survive. Needing to bring individual classes, is the very defining essence of a Role Playing game. Virtually all of the individuality between classes has been stripped, and whenever he is asked about this, Ghostcrawler invariably responds that this is by conscious design. As has been commented on by other players, the fact that Blizzard wanted to remove the class forums, and replace them with three class role forums, only underscores the point.

There are only really the three roles now; tank, healer, DPS. There is no really appreciable difference between the classes in these three roles. Crowd control is dead. If you have either a Paladin or Death Knight in a group, any form of tactical co-ordination or execution order are redundant, as well.

This isn't a true roleplaying game; most implementations of Team Fortress have greater differentiation between class roles. WoW used to have an extreme level of diversity and asymmetry between classes. The level is rapidly declining, and again, whenever Ghostcrawler is notified of this, his response is to almost sound proud of it.

The game has degenerated into a mindless grind for gear. Other than raid hard modes, there is no challenge whatsoever, and any difficulty left from the pre-TBC game is ruthlessly nerfed by the developers as soon as it is found. It really is not a sarcastic exaggeration to compare WoW with Hello Kitty Island Adventure any more.

Socially, the game has collapsed. The addition of the battlegroup LFD tool, and all of the paid transfer and race/sex/name changes etc mean, as described above, that you are now entirely anonymous and invisible. There is no need for anyone to moderate their behaviour for the sake of social reputation at all, and so as a result, people's treatment of each other, outside pre-existing guilds, is utterly abominable.

Guild formation has been made much more difficult, because of the fact that it is possible to level characters entirely within the random LFD tool now, without needing to ever set foot in the non-instanced environment, after level 15. There thus isn't a scenario where you initially meet people any more while questing. Even if you make friends with people during LFD sessions, they're on a different server, so you'll never see them again after the current instance ends.

My problems with this game, as you can hopefully see from the above, are not minor, and are not due to any one single, isolated element. World of Warcraft is, at this point, showing very real signs of a large scale systemic collapse. The new expansion being named Cataclysm is deeply appropriate; but in the end, the cataclysm is going much deeper than simply the non-instanced terrain of Azeroth, and it isn't being caused by Deathwing.

Ultimately, it's being caused by Activision themselves. If I posted this in the DPS forum, I would expect Ghostcrawler's sarcastic response to be, "I assume you think you could perform my job better."

At the moment, my reply, quite seriously, would be, "You're damn right I do."

Stepping into the Light

I recently transferred Mirsh, my main, back to Jubei'Thos, the PvP server where I originally levelled her to 60. I strongly disliked that server, (and still do) but went back because I have two brothers who both play there, and very occasionally I am able to interact with them, when their raid schedule allows.

However, that still left me alone for the majority of the time that I play, and forced to deal with the extreme elitism and toxicity of that server. Seeking a solution, I browsed the forums, and discovered a number of glowing reviews of player experiences on Moon Guard, a non-Oceanic RP realm.

I'd already had a previously deleted Horde alt on Moon Guard before, and found it a very positive experience. (If a little intimidating; I've written a lot of rp pieces here before of course, but being continually in character for more than probably 15 minutes at a time can be a little strange)

I had, however, grown tired of elitism and playing WoW primarily alone. I had read that one of the differences of the Alliance as a faction (and certainly this was always my observation of them in game as well) was a much higher degree of social cohesion and community than the Horde, so despite what I've written in the past, I decided to try it.

The decision was made much easier by a strange coincidence; during my first night on Moon Guard, in the Goldshire inn I actually ran into my guildmaster on Jubei'Thos, who it turned out had a casual roleplaying, but Druid only, guild on the server.

So that decided my new class; a Night Elf Druid. I'm only at level 9 with him at the moment, and it's been close to 10 hours /played, I will confess.

I think it's partly because I really don't know the ground at all as Alliance, and also because the genuinely fascinating conversations I've been having are a continual distraction to levelling. You might not believe this, but I entered Darnassus, to discover a conversation about chaos theory, quantum entanglement, and whether or not the human race was going to survive the next century, being held on Trade. I was amazed, and this was followed by probably an hour long private conversation with someone who'd been on Trade after I left Darnassus, as well.

I'm in the process of reading levelling guides in order to discover the most rapid way to level this character. I'm not levelling it fast because I am planning to raid, at all; but the main reason why I want to get a fair amount of levelling out of the way is so that I can both spend most of my time at the inn, or in Darnassus or Stormwind, but also catch up in order to run at least a 5 man with the guild occasionally if they want to.

Doing an instance partially in character could be a lot of fun, too, although I don't really know anything about this toon yet; all I do know is that he is, of course, very different to Mirsh.

I'm planning on levelling Feral, and then being Resto at the cap, with Balance as farming/offspec. I don't particularly like cat form, (due to the comparitive lack of survivability, primarily) and would prefer to level Balance, but I've read Feral is usually considered fastest.

I'm also currently reading about something which I'd only recently started to experiment with on my Horde alts; multi-zone quest stacking. That is, going to one race's starting area, and doing all the quests there, then going to a second zone and doing all of them there, etc.

In the Horde territories it had a major, positive impact on my speed, but with the Alliance I think it's actually going to slow me down, simply because the Alliance zones are generally so remote and far apart. We will see.