Daily Thoughts: Blind Faith

Have you ever wondered why exactly you need to collect 8 random flowers or kill 10 gnolls/troggs/wolves/etc? Do you know why you killed Malygos? Or the guardians of ulduar? Or all those orcs in Hellfire Ramparts over and over again? Sometimes I wonder about these things. For Lich King content, since that is when I really started raiding and doing instances, I’m pretty aware why I’m killing most of the bosses I’ve been sent to dispatch. On the other hand, while leveling or questing, I pretty much take the quest and read just enough to glean what I’m supposed to be doing and start doing it. I have almost no idea why I’m in most of the pre-70 instances. Most players probably don’t care the reason they are questing, the ones who might care that they are out doing “good” assume that the quest givers, being friendly NPCs, are good and want the best for the world. This isn’t the case everytime. Sometimes, the results of the meddling of we adventurers can cause pretty disastrous things.

I really enjoy the faction pairs that let us choose which side we’re killing and which side we’re helping. In Sholazar Basin, we get to choose between the Frenzyheart Tribe and the Oracles. At first you do quests back and forth between the two and are eventually faced with choosing. Although some may like to get exalted with both (and I hear there is some way of doing that, not sure how), I like that we at least get a choice. Elsewhere in Northrend we get pitted by the Kalu-ak against local wolvar. As far as I know, there isn’t an option. You either help slay wolvar and generally mess up their business (including stealing their pups) or skip the quest area. Who says those Kalu’ak are the ones deserving our  considerable services? You might have sided with a tribe of wolvar in sholazar and would like to be able to do the same here? No such luck my friends.

As I mentioned before, some of our deeds done through our relentless questing for knowledge, glory, and topping the meters can have dire consequences. There’s a series of low-level quests involving morrowgrain. *Minor spoils incoming*.  I can’t recall if it is revealed in-game what these quests do, but through reading about the Stormrage novel, I learned these herbs we were gathering we being used to poison Malfurion (the leader of the Night Elf Druids, general bad-ass, and savior of the world). Yet we blindly chose to gather and turn in. What else might our actions have cost us? One theory is that it may have cost us…the entire world (of warcraft). *Sort of spoilers incoming*. The titans that shaped Azeroth into a world of life an order battled the Old Gods and although beat them, knew they were too integrated into the world to be removed without harming or destroying it. Cosmic beings of immense power knew better than to kill an Old God, but what did we do? We killed Yogg Saron in Ulduar. Yes it was a Monster that has spread is influence and corrupted people, creatures, and even the ground itself possibly all over Azeroth, but maybe it was also part of the fabric of that world. Maybe killing Yogg Saron destabilized Azeroth. Are all these events going on in-game now with elementals invading caused by Deathwing just preparing to come out. Or is Deathwing taking the opportunity caused by the after effects of our meddling?

So be it kidnapping Wolvar pups, gathering deadly herbs, or killing beings integral to Azeroths survival, us players, adventures, continue to press on with blind faith that we’re fighting the good fight. Or maybe it doesn’t matter cause, hey, at least we got the lootz.

Red Shirt Guy, Meet Auto-Tune

If you play WoW or read about video games in general or even saw this MSNBC news article, then you probably have heard about the Red Shirt Guy who “out nerds every nerd ever“. If you haven’t yet caught on to this mini-net meme, read this The Girl Plays WoW post about it. I also have to have to give her blog credit for showing me this autotune version of the famous blizzcon 2010 event. It is far too catchy for its own good.

Daily Thoughts: Raid Healing

For those who haven’t read much of this blog so far, my main is and has always been a Paladin, raiding mostly as Holy. Also, my raiding experience is almost entirely limited to Wrath content. To summarize my credentials as a healer: Tank Heals. I’ve healed tanks through multiple pack trash pulls, bosses that could easily two shot the tank, and many other challenges. A Holy Paladin in wrath though, isn’t really expected to heal the raid. Of course as a good little healer, I help with raid healing when the tank isn’t in a high damage phase, particularly helpful when I had the Glyph of Holy Light that added a healing “splash” to nearby players. Last night I took my Shaman into VOA 25 and, as one of only 4 healers, discovered more toons than just tanks take a lot of damage.

Ok, so I was aware that there can be plenty of incoming raid damage, but as a Paladin it was never really my responsibility. I probably floundered a little on that first raid on my Shaman. Fortunately it was VOA and not really difficult for a raid with today’s gear and talents. As a first time raid healer, I had a little bit of trouble prioritizing the people to heal. I also spent a decent amount of time on the tanks since we didn’t really have healing assignments, not helping my overall certainty of what to do. Essentially I went with a priority healing target rotation of tanks > everyone with low health > everyone else. Since I’m sure the other 3 healers probably operated with a similar plan in mind, this caused a lot of overhealing. I suspect the healing assignments during a progression raid would limit a lot of those wasted heals. Even in a more organized 25 man raid though, there could easily be 3-4 raid healers. I usually don’t see specific group assignments so I wonder what limits that wasted overhealing?

Overall it was pretty fun. There’s really a lot more going on when I’m personally worried about 23 players as opposed to 1 or 2 of them. I especially enjoy not wasting globals on the guy who absolutely won’t move out of the fire, particularly when the boss is dead and the guy stands in the fire from 100% health to dead. I just stood there, watching. Is it that hard to get out of the fire?

Daily Thoughts: WoW Blogging

I’m really bad at making sure I get a Daily Thoughts out each day. I considered changing it to “Almost Daily Thoughts” but it doesn’t flow quite as well that way. I tend to get distracted with playing WoW that I forget to write about it or, equally as often, if I’m too busy on a given day to get much playing done then I don’t have many thoughts on that days play. Yesterday was another busy day without much WoWing done, so today I wanted to focus the post on blogs themselves. This should be a good read for people interested in WoW blogs, both for writers looking for resources or ideas and readers looking for something new to read about. Join me after the break for a handful of great blogs and blogging sites along with a tip or two for writing and finding new blogs. (more…)

Daily Thoughts: The Resto Shaman

If I were standing in front of a crowd of WoW players, instead of writing a blog, and posed the question, “Who here likes getting Halls of Reflection as a random queue with a pug?”, I’d probably hear crickets. Except maybe the one masochist of a player near the back whose cries of agreement would quickly be snuffed out by lamentations of those around him. I’ve heard of those who suffer from severe flash backs of wipes cause by people who physically are unable to understand “line of sight” or those who still believe if you just wait behind the Lich King, he’ll leave without killing you. Maybe I’m being a little over dramatic with the description, but most players, myself included, at least groan a little when they chance into one of the hardest and least pug friendly of WotLK instances.

Then here’s me. Fresh resto shaman rocking a mix of cloth/leather/mail instance drops (very few from ICC 5-mans) and a PVP shield. My gear sports sparkling green quality gems and is completely void of enchantments. Go ahead and cry ‘cheap’ all you want, but I’ll be upgrading every piece within a few hours of playing. You’d think perhaps the gods of WoW and RNG might have some pity on this noob shaman, but no. Halls of Reflection will be my very first test of healing…

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Daily Thoughts: Fears of the Cataclysm

I must admit; I’m a little bit afraid of the coming end of the world.  No, I’m not afraid of 12/21/12. I am though, somewhat, of 12/07/10 – the Cataclysm release date. Although the recent patch 4.0.1 brought about most of the major mechanical changes, Cataclysm will see the effects of those realised along with a host more. I going to talk here about healing/mana regen, sky rocketing health totals, and a couple other things.

I probably should add potential spoiler disclaimers to my posts, so here’s one for this. If you don’t want to risk spoilers for Cataclysm, you probably shouldn’t continue.

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