Ran it for the second time with my guild, again on my healing priest. This time I better appreciated its virtues, I think. It’s a fun, interesting, and relaxing instance, perfect in length. It runs like a greatest-hits version of Burning Crusade boss-fight design.

Of course, both times I’ve healed it have been with a very talented protection paladin doing the tanking. Protection pally tanking everything is easy-mode for everything but boss fights. I haven’t had to heal the group with a protection warrior yet, which I’m guessing would be (cough) a bit harder due to the aoe encounters. The sad state of warrior tanking is well known. We had a mage, rogue, and hunter, which gave us ample crowd control. The hunter was one of those lovely people who like to put an ice trap in front of me instead of him. Just a nice run from start to finish, and the reason I like the game. Group up with guildies, laugh through an enjoyable instance together, where effective teamwork matters.

I forgot that someone gets a zomgepic just for completing normal mode. Last night that someone was me, when I lucked into [Kharmaa's Ring of Fate] off Kael’thas Sunstrider. The socket (on a ring, whee!) goes perfectly with the quest reward gem ([Teardrop Crimson Spinel]). I’m not sold on priest healing with spell haste yet because priest healing is a mix of instant/non-instant spells, but I’ll experiment to see if it’s better than my [Band of Halos]. Not that you can actually tell most of the time. More on that later.

An interesting healing note is that in both wins on the Kael’thas, two dps’ers died. It actually got much easier after that, when you have only three people to keep alive instead of five. Most of the time when someone dies, that means that the full damage of that part of the encounter then turns to someone else. This event has constant global damage, so the group takes 100% damage with five people, 80% damage with four, and an easy-to-heal-through 60% with three. I’ll shoot for four teammates alive at the end of the next run.

This is a very fun instance. I’m looking forward to trying this on heroic.

There was a time in the last six months when my wife and I needed a break from the World of Warcraft. I keep up on the gaming internets and came across news that a former project leader (Bill Roper) had left Blizzard and went to found his own company (Flagship Studios). This company’s first game is Hellgate London (HGL), a top-tier online multiplayer game in the spirit of Diablo, by the producer of Diablo. It’s post-apocalyptic, magic-using, gun-shooting, demon-fighting. It’s leveling up and getting better gear. When I list it here, it STILL sounds like a no-lose prospect.

After trying the beta, we were skeptical due to the amount of bugs. We didn’t have a lot of experience with beta versions, so we believed the company’s constant reassurances that they were ironing those bugs out. We figured this must be how it’s done. So my wife and I each got the Collector’s Edition of HGL, because the CE came with a minipet and we’re suckers for minipets. My best friend did, too. We’re all gamers, we were looking forward to dive into a new game that we could all play together.

Unfortunately, HGL sucked.

Read the rest of this entry »

My wife loves games as much as I do, and luckily we love playing games together. We laugh and cheer when we do well, we groan when we can’t get past a certain point. Playing together is the most fun part of video games. It’s a great social thing that we can do.

Read the rest of this entry »

When I was raid lead in vanilla wow, I arranged and lead many many runs on Molten Core, a few on Blackwing Lair, and many in Zul’Gurub and AQ20. When news of The Burning Crusade’s reduction in raid size came out, that the new raids would be 25 and 10, I cheered. My guild thought I was being sarcastic (a reasonable guess), but honestly I was thrilled. I still am. Larger raids are for masochists.

Read the rest of this entry »

So let’s say you have a guild. Some of the people are good friends, you’ve known them for a long time. You know what they do in their lives, you know a little of their family life. You know about their pets! They raid with you, quest with you, arena with you.

Then there are other people who have been in the guild for a long time, but never make the list of people you think of when you want to explore new stuff. They don’t particularly care about knocking over challenges, but are glad to come along to raid or pvp as long as their real-life connection is going to be there. These people are the other half of a “package deal”. They have played enough to get to the max level, and they do like the sight of zomg epics. Who doesn’t? So they volunteer to come with you, whether it’s for your new arena team, or your raid. Some of these people evolve into actual gamers, people who get good at their role in a group, who understand the game and what they can do in it, and who socialize with the others. The others become SPHOs: sub-performing hangers-on. (Pronounced how it looks, rhymes with show.)
Read the rest of this entry »

Like I said earlier, my guild is casual/raiding pve. People in-game often ask me, “What is casual/raiding?” So I thought I would answer on my anonymous blog and then never link to it.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll start by saying that Magister’s Terrace (MrT) is wonderful from start to finish. It’s beautiful to look at, the music is great, the bosses are fun, and the gear potential makes me want to bring all my characters there. If it were none of those, it’d still be a new place to go with my guildmates. But it’s great, so kudos to Blizzard.

(Also, the in-game cinematic should be something that they do ALL THE TIME. Not just in instances, but quests. ALL THE TIME. When you create a soulwell, or a ritual of refreshment. You should get an in-game cinematic when you click your hearthstone. Just get that world of warcraft narrator talking, and you feel epic.)

The game mechanic corrections and tweaks are all welcome, as always. New crafting rewards are welcome, new faction, new zone. New combat log, new portals coming. New zomg epics. I was glad to see the excitement of my guildmates as they purchased Nether Vortexes (Vortices?) and upgraded their crafted gear.

All good fun.

Maybe I’ve been following the game’s development too much, but I’m still underwhelmed. Not by what’s been given, but by the long barren months between here and the next expansion, which is presumably six or more months away. The new 25-man raid instance is going to keep the high-end guilds happy for a while, but it means absolutely nothing to me and my wife, as well as our guild. I’m guessing that it took Blizzard a while to make.

The dailies? Well, they’re mostly kill X quests. Yes, the quests eventually open up new parts of town, and it’s fun to progress as a server and feel actual community with all these people I’ve been bumping shoulders with for a couple of years. But the Ogrila quests themselves were more fun: you have a roping quest, a bombing quest, a portal quest. Here, you have a bunch of kill quests and one bombing quest. I’m just saying, we could have some story quests mixed in with the unlocking of phases.

Oh, a note on the Sunwell bombing run: get a partner. Otherwise I don’t see how you could do it in one pass (it’s taken me three tries every time when I’ve tried it solo). With my wife, we did it in one pass.

I’m really looking forward to Wrath of the Lich King. It’s a long way away. In the meantime, I’ll be doing the dailies and enjoying Magister’s Terrace.