WoD Was Just a Time Loop

Well played Blizzard, well played.

As everyone is busy busting their nuts over patch 6.2.3; aka the "This Should Have Came With Launch" patch, we need to realize that this xpac is a beautifully perfect play on time-travel conundrums.

WoD's incomplete launch was on purpose. If we take all the patches combined.. "6.1", 6.2, 6.2.3 (what happened in between 6.2-6.2.3 I did not notice), we end up with a FULL launch xpac. WoD is now complete and whole and fresh and new. However this also marks the end of the xpac. The beginning is the end. Ultraxion had it right all along:

"I am the beginning of the end...the shadow which blots out the sun...the bell which tolls your doom..." (Ultraxion 2011)

But my dear Ultraxion, the beginning IS the end; WoD cast its own shadow upon the shining glory that is WoW; the bell which tolled its doom.

Will I play in 6.2.3? Well having been inactive for THREE months I am still rocking ilvl 700+ from all the freebie gear and now that there is a rare mount to be caught and personal gradual progression my answer is "Probably heck ya!".

I have not touched the legendary quest past the 695 (?) ring and I do not intend on jumping into LFR any time soon. So no ring for me but that's okay. Truny is rocking her old 4P from the Foundry so upgrading those should be good enough to the end of the xpac.

So they solved one part of the puzzle, but what shall we do while waiting on our queues? Ah wait I'll just play my druid for healer queues!

Will people come back in the MILLIONS to upgrade their gear? Assuming gear levels have remained relatively untouched, maybe not.

Turny the Time Tree

If You're in the Gaming Industry, Never Break This Rule

Is this even a contentious issue? No, because it has never really BEEN a major issue. Has it always been quietly on the sidelines, trying to dig into the core issues that players tend to rant/complain/report about? Hell yes.

The reason why regardless of your role in a gaming company be it the CFO, chief programmer, janitor, food supplier, contractor, everyone must be "with it" for whatever your gaming mission and vision is. This is where I love using the word "immersion" and getting people talking. Who DOESN'T want their players to be immersed in their game?

Ahh that is the golden question. I commend you my single reader for following me for so long *digital tree-branch druid high-five*. What we saw in WoD is what broke this rule, and why there has been an increase of discussion towards the mobile gaming market in my humble old blog. They are all related. Sort of.

Let's look at mobile games. Low development cost, but with the right setup, massive massive potential for immense profitability. Massive margins. Look at Candy Crush, they were making $300,000 a day? Now before you put on your judgmental glasses, that is totally fine. There is only so much "immersion" you can expect out of a mobile game, but it can be designed so that you never ever break this very important rule.

We can summarize that most mobile games try to churn out low development content to fish for the highest possible returns over time. Sometimes what they offer hit gold or become niche/clique eg Flappy Bird type games, Angry Bird where you can build a brand on top of it, etc etc.

Regardless, in the time that players are immersed, most mobile games don't break the golden rule. The ones that do tend to fail or stagnate.

We can skirt about this rule, but if your game is strong enough then players won't care. They'll find ways around it.

What exactly is this strange rule?

The answer: Players should never question your business decisions.

Now, business decisions differ from what we see as business model. A game may be set-up as a pay-to-get-ahead model, but players will adjust. WoW may be slowly shifting from an MMO with an in-game store type model. That is fine.

It's the business decisions where it gets dirty.

When players question your model, they visualize a model usually with charts and graphs and there are expectations and preconceptions and that's it. They go back to the game.

When we start questioning your business decisions, how you handle PR, what you are doing with your designers, why certain decisions were made, we start digging deeper in our visualizing. We picture your office, we start seeking out a target. Who made that decision, and why? The players are now TOO close to us. Get them back into the game, and out of our offices in their heads.

Uh oh immersion's coming back. When you completely break any sense of game immersion with questionable actions, the players have nothing to hang onto in game and we start seeking. Once we're in, you're going to need a lot to get us back out. We no longer see a game as just a game, but a product from a company who makes questionable decisions.

Tough decisions need to be made I agree but what I am trying to say is COVER YOUR ASSES. Make that link, get your decision makers to understand the implications of how they are affecting immersion. Have a back-up plan to keep us out of our own heads.

That is enough with free advice for one day, get the hell out of my office.

Turny the Angry Tree

FFXIV: Things I Miss From WoW

Not everything is all rainbows and sunshine in FFXIV. While FFXIV currently (as at WoD Hellfire Citadel Raid) trumps WoW in terms of character progression/development/immersion, profession, community, story, real player housing, there are a lot of cumbersome points that people tend to gloss over but I shall be the reasonable and balanced player here! But let's start with the complainy bitchy stuff first!

Truny's Top 10 FFXIV Pet Peeves

1. Storage space (or lack of bag management addon).

Storage space is horrible in this game where you are limited to 2 retainers who can hold 140 items each, and also your own bag. While this sounds decent, as there are NO JUNK items in FFXIV, you'll end up hoarding everything and eventually losing them. If you're leveling multiple professions, the constant upgrading of multiple gear-sets is bound to fill up your armoury which is an additional storage of all your gear.

The fact that we can't SEARCH for items and that a lot of items have similar icons make looking for a specific fish or berry that I stashed away ten levels ago a particular hassle.

While this is a great addition, the armoury NEVER sorts itselt to highest level item first, so this must be manually done EVERY TIME you go in. Makes it a pain to swap classes.

The guild storage space is a joke. 3 slots non-expandable. The total storage is probably LESS than what a normal person has in their bags.

2. Playing on Multiple Devices. 

I know this is FWP'y but for those of us with multiple homes and multiple computers/laptops FFXIV is a NIGHTMARE as your bars and gearsets and keybinds DO NOT get saved server side. And of course since there are so many classes on one of your toons, if you made any progress on one computer, you're pretty much focked. There IS a way to copy over the data files but that's such a hassle. Luckily my keybinds have been relatively standard in all MMO's, but still an ANNOYANCE.

This point exacerbates point 1 as there is SO MUCH gear clogging up your armoury when you're levelling up multiple classes/professions its just a nightmare to sort through and find your highest ilvl piece again.

3. Clunky Companion System.

Level 20 is a magical time for most players as they have most likely heard of having their Chocobo MOUNT fight with them! While this is an awesome addition, with stances and skills and gear and feather custom colors.....this "pet" system isn't exactly seamless since the Chocobo acts as an additional member to your PARTY.

So this means you can't queue for a dungeon with your chocobo, nor can you dismiss them, queue, then resummon. You also can't jump into a duty with your chocobo out. Why can't the game dismiss them FOR ME? If you're a squishy DPS who likes having your chocobo as backup, well..while you're queuing you're on your own.

4. Scattered Attunement Quests

Perhaps I'm inefficient without seeking out information but each of FFXIV's dungeons have a "hardmode" or even an "Extreme" mode and since I came back just at the release of Heavensward, a lot of the old content is just ...old, but to unlock certain hardmode features one must know where to find the proper quest. This also comes from materia desynthing, treasure map finding, how were we supposed to even FIND these quests? A lot of them are random NPC's in random locations. Locations I would not even think of going back to unless there was a specific resource or fishing node happened to be nearby?

Perhaps I should speak to EVERY SINGLE NPC? An Adventurer's Guide would definitely be handy here.

5. Gathering Success Rates Look ....Stupid

When you're out gathering the UI shows a % success for how likely you are to gather a certain item. Due to only getting 4 or 5 chops out of one node, an unlucky or multiple unlucky streaks could make that famous 83% seem like 20% or less. Which when you boost your HQ % to 50% you really then think, perhaps the universe is indeed infinite.

Take note at how these complaints are all part of having something to do to begin with to have to actually complain and nothing seems to really point at the core of the game. Nothing is breaking immersion yet. There's been so MUCH to do in terms of professions I have not touched my PVE class in a week and that is totally fine.

Strange no?

Truny the Complainer

Botany

I haven't been on WoW other than doing a brewfest dungeon for a mount I realized I already had? Still logging in every two weeks for my free ilvl 700 piece, then switfly logging out.

Thinking back to even Mists I had asked myself: "What would it EVEN take for me to quit? There's so much to do and progress in, and our guild was a thriving hub of activity and excitement".

The answer is: WoW is the WoW killer. Never before have I not even WANTED to log in but not even CARE to log in for weeks at a time. This usually happens for me during the extreme content droughts at the VERY end of an expansion. WoD had this feeling a few weeks after hitting 100 and realizing that other than actually raiding there was very little I could do to prepare for raids.

Instead, I have been putzing (this is totally a word no?) about in FF14. Our free company (guild) managed to sweep up a small house in Gridania by the waterfall and I am now in charge of the garden, trying to cross breed rare herbs and minions (such as the Garlic Jester).

I haven't been doing much in FF either to be honest. I do not run dungeons much other than out of necessity or to help out a guildie, but I HAVE been keeping very busy levelling up my profession classes.

By default I chose to play as a Black Mage, but I haven't touched my "PVE" class in weeks. I have been playing as my gatherer and crafter: Botanist & Culinarian. Otherwise known as "Disciples of the Land/Hand".

You see there are 'daily' missions where you create or gather things from your different professions and they give you massive amounts of exp, double if you turn in high quality items. You are also able to make decent but not mind-blowing money on all the peripheral items you gather on the way.

No there are no free gil handout missions like in WoW.

I am still far from end-game of any sorts but am enjoying flying around doing my gathering, seeing the rare proc material nodes, ephemeral nodes, seeing my gear and skills slowly improve. Good times.

Truny the Botanist

"I Started in Warlords"

Let's look to the future. Just like how I am seeing the youth of today as my employees of tomorrow I must start adapting business processes to eventually be a "fit" for them while transitioning everyone on board for a smooth ride as well.

Obviously Blizzard did not have this vision with WoD, but what will be of the players who started their WoW adventure in WoD?

Will they be jaded Vanilla elitists?
Semi jaded BC elitists?
Entitled Wrath Babies? (That's me)
Immature Pandarian Panda Children?
??? Warlordians?

*Yes I skipped Cataclysm cause let's be honest we all wish that didn't exist right? Or at least Blizzard does.

I actually have very little idea/discussion of this.

1. They'd expect beautiful art.
2. They'd expect amazing cut-scenes at the end of all zones to tie everything together.
3. They'd expect beautiful and intricate dungeons.
4. I THINK they would be slightly confused as to why their professions disappear at level 90. Unless they PAY to start at 90...
5. They would have five expansions worth of content fresh in their heads.

But so do we all.

Truny the WTF

Forced: Flying

I saw an interesting comment the other day that was along the lines of:

"Blizzard is forcing me to do content that I do not enjoy in order to fly".

Uhh. Ok wait let's look at the Pathfinder achievement required for flight:

Explore Draenor: Run around and explore all areas. Ok so you don't like exploring.
Securing Draenor: Doing the major apexis quests. If you didn't care for the original quest or used these quests to obtain your first 4,000...I could give you this. Almost.
Tanaan Diplomat: Pretty much means play 6.2.
Loremaster of Draenor: Most people would have 3-4 zones completed at max level. Play through the story. Oh you don't enjoy story, or questing.
Master Treasure Hunter: I guess the rewards are boring and you don't have natural curiosity to click on an interesting purple box.

Now I get that we used to just be able to buy flying and be done with it, but no one is "forcing" you to essentially "play the game". If you don't enjoy the game you won't enjoy flying? Am I missing something here?

Truny the Confused and Forced

FF14 vs WoW: How Dare They!

In the current lull of WoW I have moved over to FF14 (Famfrit). Other than raiding I have "nothing" to do. DONT tell me to go farm mounts or pets, I already got my 250 mount achieve and have all the pets that I have already wanted so there can be no more joy that can be wrangled until the 300 mount achieve is active.

I've been playing my Black Mage in FFXIV (BLM) on and off for a LONG time since when WoW is good, its really good and takes precedence. But as of late I have progressed a lot on my BLM and I'm looking forward to completing all of the 2.0+ content patches to be able to start in Heavensward (HW).

So in my push to finish off the main story quests (MSQ) that drive the game from level 1-60, I thought I would have been in HW content last week, but there's just so much "other" stuff to do that I actually want to progress in that I sometimes end up doing those instead of just power questing through the main story.

I understand that I am in two completely different places currently:

WoW: Full end game, have all classes and professions and have collected everything in game. It is difficult to appease a player like me with fun filled activities. I get it.

FF14: At level 50 but STILL working towards the story, no maxed professions, 1 high level class, all other classes open for trial.

However, with my current time in FFXIV I have encountered some serious issues and I am personally offended by FF14 for doing the following:

1. How dare they have an MSQ that FORCES me to do content. Why are they TELLING me what's going on in each zone and trying to connect me to characters? And how dare they give me something to look forward to as I progress through the game! Ugh.

2. How dare they put professions as individual jobs. You have to change gear to swap to say Botanist, Goldsmith, Miner, etc, and how dare they have such an intricate crafting system where the professions are intertwined, requiring materials from other classes. And how DARE they have daily supply/provisioning missions FORCING me to either craft or gather certain items from all the professions I've learned, and FORCING me to get HQ items for double the exp and company seals. I actually had to GO OUT into the world and gather. What is this a play on immersion in an MMORPG? Oh wait...

Also how dare they make professions so lucrative for earning gil, FORCING me to play a profession. Why not just hand out gil via our retainers everyday.

3. Also, how dare they have retainers. Two to be precise. They act as our personal storage, AH sellers, and also have their own class and personality and can be sent on "Ventures" using "venture" coins which you earn through doing leves or trading them via company seals. How DARE they force me to do leves and farm seals to get ventures! You can choose what type of venture based on retainer class and they come back with random FUN treasures. How dare they be fun!

4. How dare they have scenarios that aim to teach the playerbase how to play and to deal with mechanics at an EARLY LEVEL. This allows low level noobs to understand the game and prevents me from judging them. These are scenarios that teach how to handle adds, staying out of bad, handling certain color adds, avoid boss thresholds/spells. Why are you so useful? Just make a proving grounds where someone ALREADY needs to be good to pass it. Pah. And then only gate content that doesn't even require proving grounds.

5. How dare they make old content relevant! At high level, there are a variety of dungeon roulettes that queue you into old dungeons/trials/leves and reward you with current tier equivalent of valor points. Also how DARE they have a reward token to reward players for doing content. Just make all loot RNG. There are old level 50 world "hunts" that also reward current level 60 prizes that FORCE people to do old content. Ridiculous!

6. How dare they make Black Mage feel like such a nuke compared to others, and it is very easily distinguishable. They should balance all classes ASAP!

Have you tried out FF? What else do you think should offend me?

Kwuppy Turby the Offended

You Don't Matter in WoW If..

Trend Report

According to the extremely extreme elitists, you don't matter in WoW if:

1. You didn't start in vanilla, preferably beta.
2. You didn't personally open the gates of AQ.
3. You're not in the world first guild. Close seconds do not count.
4. You liked any aspect of MoP (Gross, Pandas = Automatic Bad Game)
5. You aren't in the top 10 arena teams.


End.

Truny the WTF

World of Warcraft: Legion - Semi Knee-Jerk Analysis

This was the game everyone has been waiting for and wanted and what Wrathion had predicted back in MoP: The Burning Legion returns!

As a warlock I am supposed to be ultra-hyped for this new xpac, as I adore everything demonic and with the introduction of Demon Hunters, what will happen to the Demo Warlock spec? 2 classes that can turn into demons? If so I demand we get to become more "castery" demons while the Demon Hunters be melee demons and we can all have demon dance offs!

Due to the lackluster taste WoD left in many of our mouths, my initial reaction to this xpac announcement was:

"Hey all you 'I started in BC' folk, come love us again"

Artifact Weapons

Aka: We don't need to design/animate for weapon models for the entire xpac. This saves resources on the business side yet I do commend the team for adapting what I loved about LOTRO and that is a weapon that grows with you.

It appears WoW's weapons are not as indepth in terms of customizing them with runes but there are talent trees tied in, hopefully not as shallow as our own "every 15 levels "talents"".

Even with the multiple skins, as long as one other person has it then it is not "cool"/unique and if everyone is wielding an artifact of Legend.....is this a single player game or an MMO?

Artifact weapons immediately gives every single person "something to do", though how they manage how far/fast you can grind up your weapon may become a concern. Eg. People who play 24/7 may have their weapon maxed before we've even downloaded the game.

I know personally this would already make me want to run dungeons since there's a slow stream of "progress", perhaps this will fill the Valor Point void as WoD certainly lacked any sense of external character progression outside of the RNG based raids.

Are there meaningful caps to how fast weapons can be ground out? Are they tied to our level? Could be interesting but need more info on how the weapon progression works.

Also I expect a HUGE release of all the warlock info especially how Demo is changing.

Demon Hunters

Sounds cool I'll make one but what of Demonology Warlocks? Dat double jump tho.

Honor Hall

As a warlock, why would I want to hang out with other warlocks? I hate them they steal my cloth gear, heck fewer people should play warlocks.

Seriously though, I hope we get demons as our champions. You know what just copy what FF14 does with retainers a lot of issues would have been resolved if LOTRO had been copied many years ago.

The game has seriously lacked class identity with the culling of skills and all that jazz. Class halls may bring meaning back to the various classes and it is a great concept to have all the different classes united under one single purpose.

Maiev is Back

She was my favourite hero in WC3 and I occasionally visit her in her prison in old Outlands so it'll be nice to catch up again.

My Most Hyped and Hence Bolded Point

TRANSMOG SPACE! See as a warlock, I NEED every single 1H sword, 1H wand, Off-Hand, Staff for myself, and every 2H mace, 2H sword, 2H axe, polearm for my Wrathguard.

Depending on how this plays out this may open up all 160 of my void storage slots and at LEAST 200 of my bank slots! HYPE!

Unanswered Questions

1. What of professions? Are they still gimped?
2. Are factions meaningful?
3. New spells/abilities? Talent tree revamps?
4. Can we start flying at 110? I don't mind the grounded content though.
5. Why Dalaran again? Oh well.
6. Any intent to change the "drop in drop out" attitude of the community?
7. Any new battle pets?
8. New mounts that will blow our minds?
9. Scenarios return?
10. Honor hall invasions?
11. Remove x-realm zones???
12. How's exploration?
13. Is gear going to be not bull-shit RNG with crap secondary stats? Where an ilvl 640 may be better than a 665?

Overall

Hype Level 4.5/10

I have a borderline skeptical good feeling about this expansion but due to the blah that is WoD right now I bet the hype won't hit until actual game play. We also need more info.

Truny for the Legion

How to Use Damage and Healing Meters Properly

You know I don't think this is talked about enough considering the ubiquity of meters in WoW.

While a lot of players may use meters simply to confirm their existence and dominance over others, the real benefit of meters is to act as a tool to down difficult encounters. Meters are also PUBLIC to your group assuming they have a meter, and hence they can see how efficient or effective you are at managing encounters.

Just as a preface: Meters Do Not Matter for ANYTHING That is Trivial
(But they do help if someone fails at something that is trivial to find out WHY)

For me that is anything including and below heroic (normal aka the old flex aka fake) raids. The difficulty is just not there to even care. And seriously why is it called "normal"? Stop it. Just don't even. Do you EVEN even? UGH.

If running time-walking or a regular 5 man, just turn the damn thing off, nothing drastic is going to happen because someone did not do one of the trivial mechanics.

Damage Meters Example:

P1: 65,000 DPS
P2: 30,000 DPS
P3: 28,000 DPS

If you're just using throughput gauging, it may seem that P1 is the superior player. But it all depends on the encounter.

Example 1:

True: If this was a single target, no movement no encounter Patchwerk type fight.

Example 2:

False: If this encounter required DPS to manage adds. Further details reveal:

P1: 98% Damage on boss. 2% damage on adds.
P2: 75% Damage on adds. 25% damage on boss.
P3: 80% Damage on adds. 20% damage on boss.

You can now see that P2 and P3 have contributed more to the encounter, assuming the adds were a critical piece of progression, if P1 had helped perhaps the encounter would have been more smooth. It all DEPENDS. Perhaps they were ASSIGNED as the boss nuker. In that case, just compare P2 and P3, and you'll see everything was fine.

So the next time someone tries to flaunt their amazing abilities, maybe see if they even helped with any critical components of the encounter.

This is also why classes that can simultaneously blow up adds AND the boss seem to always do better than those who can't. If your class can, figure it out.

Healing Meters Example:

P1: 40,000 HPS
P2: 35,000 HPS
P3: 30,000 HPS

Hard to say right? It all depends on the class and the role. If someone is assigned to solely heal group AOE damage, they'd have a bit more heals than the healer assigned to perhaps a very geared tank.

Example 1:

P1: 40% pure heals. 60% overheals.
P2: 80% pure heals. 20% overheals.
P3: 50% pure heals. 50% overheals.

Looking from this example, P1 was probably healing inefficiently or wasting a lot of mana. P2 was on spot and P3 may be under-geared and trying to over-compensate by being inefficient, hence the overheals. If P1 was being a bit more efficient, P3 may also have been able to save mana. Without BEING a healer you can already see the synergy of the three healers in my imaginary raid here.

I found healing meters to be more of a personal measurement than anything. We are interested in total uptime of all heals including HoTs, which is important for resto druids. You should be aiming for 99%+ uptime of Lifebloom and Rejuv. Unless you need the bloom, NEVER let it drop off EVER. If you're out of range, cast it on yourself. Internalize its timing so you don't need to watch those silly heal helper addons.

Mana management also used to be a fun side-game. There are some who prefer being at full mana all the time, and those who prefer to deplete it all. I like both. Make it move with the boss' HP. If things are going well then keep it cool, as the fight progresses, step up those heals a bit, get a little bit less comfortable with low health. Whatever floats your healing boat.

Numbers Lie

Ok, don't, but they definitely do not paint the entire picture unless you are using all the correct numbers. I personally apply a mental metric that weighs all of what I have mentioned above to give "real" performance relative to everyone else.

You're undergeared, but did relatively well for your ilvl AND stayed out of bad? Well I will rank you as someone who pumped out more damage but died before execute phase. EXECUTE PHASE is what you live for why are you dying before it? Go out in a blaze of glory AFTER!

TL;DR

NO F*CK YOU GO READ IT!

1. Use meters more smartlier.
2. Damage TAKEN and mitigated and overall utility factors into performance (just like real life).
3. Have a layout of how the ideal [Role] would perform in any given encounter. And then gauge your performance by adhering to that vision.

If anything, if you're staying out of bad, you KNOW so you don't need meters to tell you that. If you interrupted or dispelled, YOU KNOW. Use a meter if you wish to gauge your progression, see if any tweaks made any improvement.

USE IT FOR IMPROVEMENT. Not dick measuring. Learn to read the different metrics and the next time someone pulls out that obnoxious 10 person list, retort them and tell them to pipe the fuck down no one cares.

Truny the Unmetered

Human Interaction a Core Issue of WoW?

I'm not sure if this entry will end up being a WoW post or a real-life post. Let's see where it takes us.

Just like in human life, things aren't fun without the struggle. A lot of the struggle points of WoW have been removed and padded as quality of life improvements. Some examples include:

Dungeon finder: No need for manual human interaction, if this remained on the local realm, we may still have a reason to talk to each other.

Solved: Long wait times.
Removed: Human interaction.

CRZ: Implemented to "revive" dead zones but I still think this is the single worst decision of the game. More people = more competition, and it also perpetuates the idea that people from other realms are acceptable (eg via Dungeon Finder, except we'll never see them again).

Solved: ??? (See the issue is why do I even care if there are other people since quests are so easy anyways)
Removed: Ability to find any rares. Ever.

LFR: This was implemented well. The fights were still challenging and mechanics still needed to be adhered to. The gear stealing and kidnapping was toxic at best, but it did feel like a mini-raid. Now it has devolved to just existing.

Solved: Allowing more players to see end-game content.
Removed: All common sense, the innate sense of accountability, and human interaction.

Profession Changes: We no longer have to grind useless greens to be DE'd to level up, but now we don't really get to craft ANYTHING but epics which are gated through gated materials so most people just don't. Garrisons also allow you to take on the role of any other profession you may not have. Do you even even?

Solved: Useless greens making?
Removed: Professions itself. Human interaction.

All of those points DO make the game "easier" and when dripped in slowly we don't realize how it is affecting the entire game as a whole once they all come together.

The trend I am seeing is that manual human interaction is a burden that needs to be resolved within WoW. Perhaps if this was the core issue, then we should have designed for improving human interaction, giving richer experiences (whatever that means), rather than try to push them under the rug.

If We Start Fresh

We need to remedy the "pop in pop out" attitude that has shown a massive increase since the inception of LFD and LFR.

Even with the group finder for a RAID we see people just leave group when things aren't going their way. We've seen people stealth leave to repair without letting anyone know. Is the excuse that they are REALLY uncomfortable typing? This is the perfect place to start practicing!

I usually try to thank everyone for good times. This still exists luckily. Even so, I know I'll never see these people again UNLESS they were in our realm!

We have been running dungeons in complete silence for far too long. No longer do we need to explain mechanics. I used to have copy and paste mini paragraphs for each and every Cata heroic dungeon boss. It may have been excessive but people were learning and questions were asked. There was some "rich interaction" going on up in this bish.

If you remove the struggle as I was saying before, there's nothing really to talk about. We no longer see endearing progression posts about struggling on a raid boss or trying to gear up or learning to excel in our classes. I am part of the problem.

Just with the latest raid, I could care less what the bosses are called and all the mechanics are "seen this done that", our only struggle is not one-shotting the encounters going in blind.

The argument is "If you don't need LFR, leave it alone and let the people who do utilize it be". But my argument is that the current LFR does not exactly perpetuate or support a high-skill-base requirement. I'm not saying everyone needs to be extremely skilled, but if there isn't any content that ENCOURAGES stepping up one's game (which is what raids are here for right?) then what's the point of the game (which you and I just lost dammit).

What confuses me is if you aren't coming out of any encounter, be it a quest or a dungeon boss or raid boss asking yourself "how could I have improved, or what could I have done differently" then what is even the point?

WAIT!

This is interesting: Has recount ruined WoW? Recount is the issue!!

If you down a boss, that's good right? No! You have to be the person who contributed the MOST with the lowest burden to healers. OH MY GOODNESS. It IS recount!

Why must we derive "fun" out of "winning" against our own companions? This is gross!

I've always asked "why do people even play if they aren't top DPS/HPS?", because I AM THE PROBLEM!

Perhaps It's Too Late

Just find a good guild and hide and don't utilize anything that takes away your ability to manually interact with others. And uninstall all recount/Skada type damage meters. I shall uninstall it the next time I log on.

Turny the WTF

Patch 6.2 A Month Later

Let's get right into it. 6.2's been out for about a month and a lot of people are already done with the island content. This is scary.

Shipyards

I apologize to the shipyard. The thing is, the old command table set such a bad precedent that I say that the shipyard SHOULD HAVE been what was released at 6.0. A side-activity that requires a bit more thought, not the MAIN attraction. I don't mind it, except why is the boat command table now down by the docks? We are lazy. Come on.

Timewalking

I did one, healed it with Valany'r. Seems easy peasy and yeah it's for alts who need 660. Which means this is for 2nd tier alts.

Mythic Dungeon

Did it once as a 663 Boomkin, it was rough. Then we did it again on our main raiding team of 690+ and it was fairly cake-walk. But it rewards 685-700 so, not that great vs raid. They are "challenging" in that there's a lot of damage everywhere and you have to follow mechanics....which is what heroics SHOULD have been??

The Dailies

Honestly I don't mind them now. They are a bit repetitive but its better than nothing. I hit exalted with the bird and faction faction, just waiting on this week's Saberon quest to reset and I'll be ready to fly. But why?

Apexis

Going into 6.2 I started to hoard apexis crystals about a week prior. Only ended up with 10k so as of this weekend I finally saved up enough gems to buy the pretty bird. Now what? It was definitely easier than grinding out Emperor Shaohao's mount?

Hellfire Citadel

Actually I should do a quick guide on it even though I barely pay attention. We are I think five or six bosses into flex and progress is progress so we can't ask for too much.

So here's my mini guide on what I remember:

Boss 1: Lots of Stuff
Kill the thing, then the dude, then the machines and do it for like 45 minutes and try not to fall asleep and you randomly will just win.

Boss 2: Metroid Prime
Kill it and dodge things. Lasts for like 20 minutes, put on a good show you like.

Boss 3: Dodge Rune Stack Hands AOE.
Name says it all. Fall asleep until you get to cast your amazing AOE.

Boss 4: Council of Trolls or Something
Kill the big one, bring others low, kill the blade one then kill the caster one. And dodge things. Pet classes are nice, make your pet do all the work as you clean the house.

Boss 5: Adds Bloods Go In
Kill adds, go when you are marked and leave a clear projectile path, and go in if you have to go in. Look for the adds spawning by the side and the debuff on you and the bloods. Dodge the green thing. Ezpz.

Boss 6: Adds and together and stack and drop it good and tank add 2-3 seconds get out.
And also dodge the swirl while doing all that.

That's about it for this patch.

Truny the That's It

Obvious Gating is Obvious: Two Bonus Objectives

On the day of patch 6.2's launch I logged in with awe and wonder and was excited to tackle all that has to offer in Tanaan Jungle. We were getting quests to go here and go there and do this and that and in the confusion I thought something felt a little strange but couldn't really figure it out cause I tend to miss exclamation marks that are right up in my face.

So I worked out a battle-plan on how to tackle our new "daily" quests:

1. Get the kill 20 demon/Iron Horde quest.
2. Get the bird quest for 10 things. Look out for rares and treasures.
3. Get the thing in the building to do an apexis quest.
4. Fight the Tiny Terrors if I run by them.

Ok. So I'll start with #3, cause apparently you come back, THEN your faction person gives you a quest to go do two MORE apexis bonus areas.

On the first day I thought I was missing some rep or requirement so didn't think too much of it, but I realized it only shows up AFTER the first apexis quest is done.

Why didn't you ask me to go earlier?

Obvious time gating is obvious. There's no narrative to why he has to give this quest out later. It doesn't add to the immersion of "invading the Jungle", why are we running back and forth? Why not merge the two quests and then add in an extra one where we go pick up extra armaments/supplies on the way?

I don't know what else to say.

These are no good stinky poo tactics.

Turny the Stinky

Mandatory Patch 6.2 Launch Post

The Story

The Promised Patch, the Resolver of Woes, the largest content patch in the history of WoW has been released and we have been sent to infiltrate and invade Tanaan Jungle. The Iron Horde has been broken and Gul'dan is up to no good and has erected Hellfire Citadel as his bastion of destruction.

The Narrative

What narrative? We are first sent to the Iron Docks to embark on a thrilling adventure to recover shipyard plans from the now disbanded Iron Horde to build our own fleet in our invasion of Tanaan Jungle.

This quest boils down to running around and clicking things until you are done, then in about five minutes you hearth back to your garrison.

We "invade" Tanaan jungle by building a boat which we can't interact with and literally running past mobs until you are told to create the foothold.

That was a pretty simple invasion I'm sure we could have done it sooner.

The New Factions

There are three new factions: Birds, Faction, Saberons. The birds just magically appear beside you once you've opened up your Tanaan base. No story, or lead-in, just exists and you automatically go and do some grindish treasure quests for them. Interesting enough but I'm not sure how I feel about wandering around the entire island for an hour waiting for treasure/rares to spawn to finish their quest.

Faction specific faction, Vol'jin's Headhunters: where did they come from and why do I care?

Saberons: Why is a Saberon telling me to kill other Saberons and where are the rest of the Saberon when one guy is dolling out all the weekly quests?

Factions are...weirdly handled in WoD, they kind of just...exist as a means of grind.

Think back to the Argent Crusaders and Knights of the Ebon blade. Their story line was amazing.

Demons and Pets and Immersion

The new island is fun to explore, except when I see treasure I wonder if I should wait for the bird faction daily to click them? I'm pretty sure most contain crappy 655s anyways? Our demons got prettier, gear looks amazing out of HC, and the new Legendary pets are a "challenge" but most boil down to spamming Sleeping Gas or using the Pandaren Water Spirit + Chrominius Combo.

See, it's nice that there is SOMETHING to do, but this is all based on the fact that there was almost NOTHING to do for current progression. Then again, the factions and rep grind don't really help us out save for the world boss dropping 705. Baleful gear can proc as 675 but I'm already 692 and I refuse to do this grind again on my alts.

The Shipyard

Another command table. Hate it.

Mythic and Timewalking Dungeons

Eh we almost already out-gear mythic dungeons so this is possibly an event for alts. Timewalking dropping what 660s will probably never be touched?

Demo Nerfs?

The buff to mastery makes our non-25% reduced spells quite potent, but I'll update you again on how crappy we do in HC "Heroic" this weekend.

The Short and Sweet

Beautiful jungle, look forward to exploring it more. Not sure how long it'll last except for the raid content of course.

Truny the Cautious

Demonology in 6.2: Dev Q&A Responses

Don't Play Demonology: We're Changing It!

*Note: I do see on the current patch notes that our benefits from mastery are going up, so this would just mean that our scaling has been pushed back 25% until we obtain enough gear to come back to par. It isn't really the nerfing I am concerned with but just strange and poor decisions being made as a whole.

My initial reaction to the nerf data back in April for the Demonology spec was "well, I better play Demonology if they are actually that great".

I'm going to try to make my comments on Ion's response to why "Demonology is being nerfed to the ground".

The reason Demonology is receiving nerfs is because it is the current "go to spec" since the other two specs do not feel as flexible and well-rounded. However, they also say that Demonology also feels too complex and requires add-ons to play (uh, no, unless you are blind and can't count the tick-down of your corruption on 3+ targets in your head?).

This feels contradictory. Sure, Demo is better well rounded for multi-target damage and your demon makes up for some of our sub-par single target. We aren't THAT great for single target.

So Ion is basically saying "The Affliction and Destruction spec are currently non-optimized, with players feeling pressured to play the more clunky class which turns out to be more balanced in all fights in general".

Um. Wut?

Now if I remember correctly, demon form used to just make us flat out stronger, with the same spells. You were literally just x% stronger.

Then came demon "form"/stance. There were extra spells that allowed us to become a bit more mobile, and modified our existing spells.


Is Demonology Clunky?

If you're talking single target then we are pretty basic and almost boring. Get your basic dots up, pop demon form for Doom and then build up your energy bar and wait for your CDs and the stars to align and pop demon form again and unleash terror. Now this is all single target.

I found multi-target fights such as Triple Boat Bitches to be very fun and engaging. I'm doing more or less the same on 2-3 targets, but instead of wasting my Hand of Guldan, I am popping in and out of demon form to use Chaos Wave (which, sure is pretty strong but has limited use) to more damage. I do agree to Chaos Wave MAYBE drawing back a bit, I mean it is a very powerful AOE that one can cast while jumping around like a chicken with its head cut off.

I would use JUST this time to use Chaos Wave to refresh any running corruptions on targets (I don't specifically pop into demon form to refresh corruption, I think Noxxic is crazy?).

Why would I need an addon? What am I looking for? Why do we need addons for anything anyways? Just ignore me I'm one of them no-addon snobs, sure they're helpful but not necessary unless you're going for world firsts.

Every fight has a pattern, every mechanic has its trigger, and those that are timed happen at the exact same time so why is there even a reason to have an addon tell you? You pull, pop your potion and you know EXACTLY 1 min after your first CD something happens and you deal with it.

(Tips to developers: Make encounters where addons CAN NOT track mechanics. Your in-game warnings are awesome and sufficient).

Ok I'll stop now. Back to rant.

Sorry I'll Stop Ranting About Add-ons!

So class balancing is a dud, and can I blame the removal of rain of fire ember regen on this? I feel this would have helped a lot for multi-target fights?

So what I am hearing is: "People feel they must play Demo, so we must push them away from it. They are too lazy to learn the semi-clunky rotation, as it is not 1-dimensional like how we have pushed a lot of the other classes to become in WoD. And BTW, we are also going to redesign the spec so when said lazy people see a change in Demo AGAIN, they do not bitch and cry and moan".

Did I Feel Forced to Play Demonology?

No I did not. Usually if Destro isn't workout out for me I will defeault to Demo and then if Destro still doesn't work I will drop it and become Demo/Affliction.

Demo has worked so I haven't had to go the latter route yet.

I also don't like the word forced.

Early on when I was still sitting at a mere 630 ilvl worth of stats, ANY spec was just horrendous. What would I have been "forced" to do. Gear up, but slowly and horribly. So I stopped playing.

I am quite excited to see how Demo will turn out to be. Perhaps they'll remove Hellfire, and our imps, and the Felguard, and Hand of Guldan gets a cast time.

Throughout the expansions I have followed how our talents and spells have evolved and have obtained a general sense of what should be done to maximize the output of each tree so switching between the three specs isn't really a big deal to Truny.

WoD however was different. Having been almost exclusively destro in MoP and only coming back to Demo for current raids, I found my numbers to be significantly higher (over 10%) simply for being in a different spec.

Is This a Real Solution?

I get it. It is Demo's turn to be bottom of the pack again. But you HAVE to look at the big picture. Warlocks aren't that great to begin with now. I had to actually hit 690 to catch up and exceed my 690 peers, while I was eating their dust at 680. This is a fundamental error. Make us godly again (please.).

But seriously, take a look at the spec as a whole. If people were compelled to move away from 2/3 of the specs and now you're going to make the one they moved to less attractive, it doesn't solve the fact that perhaps all the changes have made the entire class feel unattractive. Sure maybe Affliction will be the new top dog within Warlocks, but how about compared to OP Fire Mages?

One thing I despise about WoD is that it has turned my blog into a pseudo gaming and corporate strategy and planning rant-fest. All I want is to be excited about random stuff, not complain about EVERY SINGLE component of the current game.

Uh Oh, Rant Mode Unrestrained

My question to the team that took over WoW: Have you ever PLAYED WoW within the past five years? Or an MMO? I feel there were a lot of grandiose ideas put into place where the expected result was "Let's see what happens".

I get it, the industry needs a change and WoW is the perfect catalyst to hold this change. And here I go on again about mobile mobile mobile.

Mobile gaming is a finicky princess, the retention and revenue models are completely different than what can be provided in an MMO environment.

I also get that integrating SOME parts of mobile gaming, such as quicker updates, weekly/occasional events can keep things fresh with minimal development time. But you have to be careful.

Garrisons could have been this feature, a side feature, not the main feature. Where is your mission/vision for the game? I feel that this has either been lost or is being concealed from the public.

Were you guys on a vendetta to single handedly destroy gold sellers? Were you trying to give us more immersion with our main character?

Ok I'll stop.

I also want to add that I am one of those cash-cow players where I could care less about $15 a month and when there are content lulls or I am bored, I'll just go somewhere else and come back later knowing things will be great.

WoD was the FIRST TIME ever since my subscription started in WOTLK that I had considered not even contributing to the revenue stream of the game, and this was only a few months into Highmaul! It wasn't that I didn't want to play, I just didn't want to. Period. And I'm surprised that there wasn't foresight put into a LOT of the quickly made redundant features such as Apexis gear and ok ok I said I'll stop.

Let's wait for 6.2.

Truny the Still Going to Play Demonology Probably

Battle Pets for Warlocks: 3rd Installment

With all the craziness that WoD has brought upon us I have massively delayed a lot of my "fun times" posts. I also haven't posted a lot of screenshots for you guys. So without further ado: Warlock Battle Pets 3rd rendition!

Raiding With Leashes 3 sends us into the long anticipated pet collecting raids of BT, Sunwell, and Hyjal Summit and since these were core BC raids we are sure to expect a lot of demonic pets.

First and foremost is Abyssius! I have waited for a long time to be able to bring this amazing blue Abyssal around with me. It will occasionally tense up and break apart, and put itself together again. He is a drop from 2nd boss in Black Temple, so get cracking if you've just started your hunt!

Next is the Eye of Observation. Remember Durumu from ToT? Do you like hanging out with your Eye of Kilrogg? Well fret no more for now you can have your very own eye as well. This dude drops off a "rare" mob and you'll encounter him in Shattrath (maybe go during an Apexis daily if anyone still does those).

Next we have the Servant of Demidos. This guy is a rare spawn who respawns every few hours in Shadowmoon Valley. You can only claim a true loot once per day per toon, so if you feel like it you can camp a toon by his spawn point and hope for this amazing looking voidwalker to spawn!

Finally, we can't talk pets without talking about puppies amirite? One of the drops in Sunwell is the Chaos Pup. He occasionally runs around all puppy like as well, aww demonically cute!

Did I miss any? I purposely skipped the Imps and Grells cause we get enough of them helping us out as Demo as it is!

Until next time!

Truny the Needs More Demons

Garrisons are Breaking Immersion

Before I hop onto the flying/no flying debacle one of the major arguments that requires a bit of backing up is in regards to gaming immersion within World of Warcraft. Pretend you're a time-traveler and you've read this information AFTER you read my future post.

We need to first analyze what provides a sense of rich immersion within WoW? You would think the developers have this as a check-list by their desks when they design content, but let's not go there yet.

Here is my quick and dirty.

What Provides Immersion in WoW

Our toons are the starting point as they are the digital representation of what we would like to be as heroes in a fantastical world. We need to feel involved and invested in their progress (take note of the word "progress") through their adventures and how they live their story as they grow up in Azeroth. Their gestures, dances, transmog outfits, all the customization bolster character-side immersion.

The world of Azeroth plays into immersion. The physical world in which we traverse needs to be fantastic and interesting. That sense of awe when a new player first discovers how BIG the world is, that the zone they are playing in is merely a fraction of what they can discover.

However, just a beautiful zone with no substance is not enough. The story of how we traverse this world, through quest text and story-telling also play a part into immersion. WHY are we doing this? Other than the tangible rewards, it all has to tie back to the grand scheme of things that the developers are driving us towards. Give lore and history to the zones. WoW has done a great job of building up a complex network of stories and backstories giving each and every zone a lot of depth and breadth.

Next we can add on the complex layer of social interactions within WoW and this is where we start crossing lines. Now if everyone was on board and was fully immersed, that is everyone believes the stories, believes the lore and respects the world that they are in, we're gold. A lot of the tools that allow us greater convenience to connect with others may start breaking down game immersion. Instant grouping, instant teleportation, no need to communicate or share stories. We're heading towards the Ephemeral World of Warcraft.

What Actually IS Immersion?

Defining what provides immersion is easy. But what exactly IS it? Is it being so involved that you lose track of time? That you mistake Azeroth for reality?

At the very least, we should feel involved with the current story arc, that our characters feel involved and have a solid sense of progress (yet again) throughout the various expansions.

Despite the lack of current content and very little sense of personal progress in WoD, nothing yet breaks immersion as much as garrisons.

Garrisons are Breaking Immersion

Now Garrisons from the get-go did NOT break immersion since we were immersed with the world while leveling. The saving grace: amazing questing stories.

Once we hit end game and maxed out most of our buildings, the garrison breaks down into a few things:

1. Command Table: The main crux of the issue.
2. Mines and Herbs: While this in itself was a great idea, how they killed off professions creates a disconnect to the profession part of immersion.
3. Buildings that just feel like gating.

They tried to implement a system based on the very finicky mobile gaming philosophy of "checking in every once so often". Now we have to ask: "Who is checking in? Us the HUMAN playing the game, or our characters?".

The answer is us, the human. Garrisons are breaking the 4th wall of gaming! There is so little interaction and "immersion" with how garrisons are setup in every aspect be it how it has broken down professions to an ugly gated mini-game, but also how our major source of gold and gear (I got 2 700 ilvl gears back to back, that's pretty major).

As I have mentioned before, the garrison system is a very poorly implemented bastardization of a mobile model/town-builder/player housing. It just isn't good in any aspect so don't you go blabbing on about flying breaks down immersion. Even if we CAN fly, where is there TO FLY TO? I am not making an argument for or against flying, but that is my major observation as of right now.

Let's go back to what we setup earlier.

Immersion basically starts with us feeling connected to our character.

We log in and click things FOR our character, but I doubt they are having any fun at this command table.

The STORY is that we are commanders, but all we do is dish out commands player-side. Our character has no involvement, it doesn't even animate their HANDS pushing the buttons for us. Along with the fact that character progression boils down to "Hit 100, raid", there's no REASON to do any of the side-content (*Cough*VP/JP*Cough*)

We need to connect to the world. We (the human) send our non-immersive "followers" out into the theoretical world to explore...but that is it. We rescue/aid them out in the world and recruit them. That I feel was a good starting point but it just becomes bland once they live within our menus.

Lastly, we have social interaction. As of now, garrisons isolate us within our own little bubble and any interaction with others outside of organized raiding is simply clicking a button and completing your encounter in utter silence.

Now take all this coupled with a lack of world content, no wonder players are starting to slowly dissolve the 4th wall of gaming. We're not even on our own toons, the game has boiled down to the human player behind the monitor clicking on menus.

Why Didn't This Happen in MoP?

MoP had its own issues but one thing that is glaringly different is that the game never broke immersion within itself.

We had our personal farms, which was our CHARACTER's farm. They made friends, worked to build friendships with the various farmers, and physically harvested stuff from a farm you physically tend to. Sure, the herb garden and mine are also physical, but they act to negate a profession rather than complement a profession.

MoP was rife with dailies. Everyday you would log in and feel like you were behind the curve. Gotta do all the dailies and all the reputation things, get in your daily heroic for VP, perhaps scenarios for VP. It was overwhelming and I had hoped to see something SIMILAR, just toned down. Now while all those activities were overwhelming they all acted as a font of progression for our characters, something that WoD severely lacks.

Collecting a bazillion apexis for an out-dated piece of gear by the time you earn it? No thanks.


So in short: Fix this now. Don't anger your investors. Remember, some of your gamers are also investors and some big investors are also gamers. This is 2015.

Truny the Non-Immersed?

Truny's LFR Guide to: Blackhand

Since I may need to run Blackhand LFR ONE more time for the free elemental runes, here's a quick quick Blackhand guide for all roles. There IS a "5 Second LFR Guide" posted by some BlizzardWatch site here, but holy moly it is way too long, they expect people to read all that? If you want to be fancy and understand the mechanics a LITTLE bit more, check it out!

Otherwise if you just want to boss people around:

There are 3 phases, if the ground breaks a phase change has happened.

P1.

DPS: Kill. Dodge ground circles. Run behind thing when targeted by thing.
Healers: Same.
Tanks: Kite around. Taunt on smash. No touchy bomb.
Bonus: Melee, no touchy bombs. Don't stand between targeted person and boss.

P2.

DPS: Kill. Run behind vehicle when targeted by thing.
Healers: Same.
Tanks: Kite around. Taunt on smash. No touchy bomb.
Bonus: Melee, no touchy bombs. Don't stand between targeted person and boss.

Melee Bonus: Melee can stand in smash and get knocked up into the balcony to kill adds that rain destruction. Jump back down when your health is low.

P3.

DPS: Kill. Don't get knocked off when targeted by thing.
Healers: Same.
Tanks: Kite around. Taunt on smash.
Everyone: Bomb, go left side, targeted go right side of boss. Don't get knocked off. Don't stand between targeted person and boss.

That's it! Collect your gold and cry because he didn't drop any of the ugly LFR gear. And what's the deal with that? LFR used to drop replicas of tier gear, but now there's only a "fake" LFR set that doesn't even look like the flex/reg, which also doesn't look like the mythic?

Anyways, let's just wait for this xpac to end then shall we?

Truny the Ender

Diminishing the Garrison for my own Sanity

Yadda yadda, the theme of this expansion is to rant about the garrison and how it has consumed most of the peripheral gameplay within WoW. Professions and exploration come to mind.

We've all said it again and again, garrisons were a great idea but how good an idea is versus the actual implementation and expected results is a whole different ball-game.

The only caveat to that is that within the MMO environment, anyone with a level headed mind should have been able to "play out" what today would be with the current garrison system.

People would find professions useless after a while, rewards for managing followers is more in depth than the amount of time players spend on their OWN gearing, etc etc.

Blizzard, what are your core values? Fun? Immersion? Engagement? I thought it was to provide your player base with highly polished, fun products.

It seems that somewhere this has shifted and focused so much on a weird retention model that all immersion and "fun" had been sidelined. If you're going to be delayed or need training, let us know. The gaming community is fairly intelligent, heck some of us specialize in corporate strategy. (Hence for some raiding is not difficult at all as there are already multiple solutions within our means, but that's not even a topic for this blog).

Now I've been actively staying away from my garrison, and yes singular garrison. I do not play my alts anymore, and when I do they are out in the world.

Turby: Timeless Isle to get tokens, Nalak Hunting. ICC/DS/Ulduar mount farming. MoP Archaelogy for Uldum shards (Turby has a higher chance as he's found the most items)
Turny: Currently MIA. Some believe he's converted to the alliance.
ICC/DS/Ulduar mount farming.
Runy: Farming Vortex Pinnacle mounts.
Torby: Herbing. Yes I miss herbing. I still make Potions of Illusions so he has lived in Vash'jir for over 3 years.

What Have I Been "Doing"

There actually is "lots" to do, but not a lot involves being on Draenor, and if it IS on Draenor I try to stay away from the garrison, even though I currently have an ilvl 700 mission waiting for me:

Draenor:

Caging animals every 3 days. Maybe look for Nagrand rares for rep.
Demidos. (Completed, got its pet!)
Raid. 2x a week.
Occasionally check if the blue hippo is up.
Sometimes check for Void Talon portals.

Old World:
 (Weekly)
ICC
Ulduar
DS
Mogushan Vaults - seems the breaking point for DPS to solo this is around 660?
Timeless Isle Rep and Nalak.
MoP Archaeology for Uldum Shards.

(Daily)
Not much.

Notice how only 1.5 of my items is actually focused towards "progression" of my character? Am I progressing my profession? No. Am I working on rep? Yes, kind of, one, hit revered with Steemwheedle! Was I gold farming? No. Saving up for gear? No.

Raid is where its at. Even then, if nothing drops, nothing drops and we're screwed. Except I am now boycotted from complaining since returning back to raiding in 3 weeks I am fully 5-pieced with a weapon and shiny new multi-strike trinket which I will talk about maybe tomorrow!

Turny the Missing Druid

Epeen Wreckers

Oh gosh I do hope this title does not get parsed with obscene sexual search terms.

This is a PSA and a call to arms for all those who would join me in just bringing a sliver of light into the dreadful, dark void that is: Shows of Epeen

This is not a new issue, but I have been relentless in my fight against excessive Epeen Flauntage.

The most prevalent example include the extremely over-geared and over-eager players in random dungeons. Sure they do tons of damage and pull fast, but they see everyone else as inferior and holding them back.

Now, I have been observing this for MANY years.

A NANO-second after the boss dies, they have left the group. They have no time for your bullshit, nor shall you waft in their glory. They are gone and you were just a mere tool for them to accomplish whatever it is they are doing. They won.

However, usually if I am actually on a main, it is rare to be out-damaged and you will see that that person will NOT leave right away but wait for YOU to leave first

So now I call upon those of us who are CONSIDERATE and DECENT humans who have the means to ALSO pump out L337 DPS to take a moment to thank the group, do a dance bow, whatever, then leave. You also need to completely DEVASTATE their numbers and make it look completely effortless.

You would have confounded them, gone against their very being, what makes them l337.

Then leave the dungeon and cry, because all you got was garrison resources and a 630 that didn't drop a year ago.

Truny the Sad.

World of Transmog: Glyph of Felguard

Ever since this amazing glyph was introduced back in...Cata (?), Truny has been on a relentless quest to collect not only cloth pieces and staves/wands for herself but also exquisite two-handed weapons for Blagroon the Felguard.

If you've somehow been an avid reader many years ago you'd remember Blagroon the Felguard. Truny's trusted companion ever since becoming available as one of the high end talents in the Demonology tree when talent trees were still in style.

We've been making fast progress in "heroic" Blackrock Foundry for the past couple of weeks and what do you do when no one needs a 691 warforged 2-hander?

Give it to the crazy warlock that's what!

For whatever reason, the weapon shows up as the demonic green 670 ilvl color variation, which is actually a GOOD thing because the heroic version is actually sort of blue/aqua and clashes with my outfits!

Truny the Needs All The Gear Types

How to Progress and Escalate Your Gameplay

Up until the very horrible gearscore vortex of hate and shame in Wrath, I had no idea what my DPS was nor what my HPS was nor did I really care but realized a lot of "elite" players DID care.

Today, I will walk you through the time when I was just a mere "casual" player, who found "raiders" intimidating cause they had some innate skill that I did not have (a group of raiders to raid with, I found out later), and how I honed myself to be a "good" player.

My history doesn't go back very early; I started in Wrath so I can already see some readers leave this page since I don't have the endearing street-cred for being a vanilla or BC child. Whatever.

My main was my hunter, and my goal initial goal was to explore every corner of Azeroth as I was in awe the very first time I opened up my map and kept right clicking out, seeing the GIANT land-masses. I would also attempt to make gold through mining to upgrade my pretty bows every few levels and ultimately acquire some dinosaurs and devilsaurs (this was when stable slots only had 3, or 5 slots!)

Now in this time, we had no LFG, nor did we have LFR, everything was manually pugged. As a new player to hit end-game, it was very intimidating to join a group for a "real" raid. You hear of things like the Heigan dance, Flame Leviathan (who was not a leviathan at all) and all these fancy terms that sound so elite and intimidating, that this was the time where we would need or be compelled to watch raid videos.

I wonder, HAD THERE been LFR back then what would my take be. The environment was extremely elitist back in wrath and still persisted to "LFR inferiority complex" when it was actually implemented in Cata. I most likely would have still revered "real" raiders. Yes.

My first jump start into actual "real" raiding was being asked via friends list to tank Onyxia 25 on Turny the druid. TANK? WHAT? I SCARE?!

I knew my basic cooldowns and the group did inform me of the things to look out for, basic positioning. It went well and I thought to myself "that wasn't so bad, but Onyxia is a pretty simple fight".

Though it wasn't this Onyxia fight that eliminated my doubts. It was after, a few stragglers decided to run ToC! ToC was current and was all the rage. I said I DID have a healing spec, but this would pretty much be my very first "legit" current content raid. Note ToC dropped 232 ilvl and I was probably packing lower than that.

My normal activities as a "casual" would be to run heroics, get my valor tokens, and I would save up for the shiny new 226/245 ilvl gear. The "welfare epics" that everyone hates on. Hey, now there aren't any and there's no- no I will not rant on WoD today.

This was a late night ToC and I was intimidated as heck. I was so nervous that I was simultaneously watching youtube videos and healing at the same time (this was actually really great for multitasking I later found out, and that I would soon raid while multi-tasking).

The raid leader explained the fights very well, though I did get killed by the charging Yeti and I was so ashamed. Though my first death to the yeti would have been my last. The worm fight went well, as did the demons and the PVP fight. Twin Valkyrs was serious business but being a resto druid I was at an advantage of having high mobility.

We also downed Anub'arak and the very very nice raid leader Warlock (if you read this, I am so sorry I have forgotten your userid!) passed to me my very first legit raid item: Perdition!

Wow, my very first real raid weapon!

I was also recruited into my first guild shortly after and we would eventually raid Ice Crown Citadel weekly and it was all uphill from there. I swapped to my warlock, bringing in my hunter or druid on occasion.

If I had to leave a legacy for my characters, I would say I had done them proud. I have ranked at least in the top 200 for: BM Hunter, Destro Warlock, Resto Druid. This would have been during Cataclysm and MoP when people cared, though my druid would have had the highest ranking when Heroic Dragon Soul was current. Still I don't consider myself a pro since I have not participated in any world-firsts, then again the ONLY fights that actually matter ARE the world-firsts so anyone clearing content after is meaningless in my mind.

I believe our guild was in the top 20 in the realm for one brief moment, but then again that's the 19th loser, and again, not world first so who cares.

So why would you want to listen to advice from someone who has heroic raiding experience but no world-first experience is beyond me but if you're interested then stay tuned.

Before We Begin

I assume you are able to do the bare minimum basics such as:

1. Move out of bad looking things.
2. Dodge things.
3. Having appropriate output vs. your ilvl vs. your secondary stats (because of WoD)


Truny's How2Pro Raid Tips:

There are a few over-arching methodologies that I utilize to:

1. Maximize my output/throughput.
2. Maximize my utility.
3. Maximize my survivability.

"DUH" you say. Not only do you need to do (you don't NEED, but you SHOULD) the maximum amount of damage/healing, you also need to try to RECEIVE the least damage. But, how?

Internal Timing

Whoa, whoa what's going on? A lot of what I do is all about timing. Timing of your spells, knowing the "feel" of your spells, knowing roughly the timing of when your CDs are up without even looking, knowing how long they last and also knowing how long they are in relation to each and every single encounter.

One thing I do when going into a fresh encounter is seeing when is the optimal time to use my Demon Soul CD, and getting a feel of when it comes back up based on boss mechanics. If the boss has a mechanic that requires moving a LOT I may shift my demon soul accordingly to maximize my damage. Next time we do the encounter, I won't even have to look at that spell.

For the first few encounters, work on recognizing the "best case scenario" timing situation. For example, if the boss puts a target on you or a debuff that breaks your pattern, try to either work that in right away or ignore it until you're comfortable.

If your guild makes you watch videos, pretend you are actually playing IN that encounter to get an actual feel rather than just seeing the encounter, then getting hit by what you were trying to avoid.

Learning the timing of encounters saves a LOT of brainpower, and also means you don't need the ridiculous deadly boss add-on, as I believe the game's default messages are sufficient. One of the best examples is the train boss in BRF, as long as you know to start at 2, then 2, 2, 3, 2, fast 3, 4, 2, 3, etc., you don't even need an add-on or even look at the track doors. It's not just knowing the order, but getting the internal TIMING of these doors and also all of your CDs that saves you a lot of brainpower so you can possibly do other stuff while doing these boring encounters.

This is what it means to be "good at your class". Just knowing the simple rotation you should be monotonously droning out is simply not enough if you're not maximizing your utility and taking opportunities to squeeze out that extra slaying power.

It is easy to tell someone to learn their rotation but to actually train someone to make that rotation 2nd nature, learn the synergies of their spells and timing their cd's is all up to that person!

Team Awareness

This is where LFR tends to fall apart and almost needs to be designed to under-tuned. If you're with a constant raid group, you'll soon get a feel of everyone else's timing and tendencies. I found this to be more relatable as a healer, since all you're doing is keeping everyone alive and are actually looking at where people are standing.

The only example I can readily relate this to is driving.

Yes, with a vehicle. Bear with me if you don't drive.

So say you're on a three lane highway. What are you doing? Scanning the environment. Who is in front of you, behind you and beside you.

How fast are they going? How fast are YOU going relative to them? What is the optimal safe speed for you to follow the person in front of you vs. the relative speed of the person behind you?

Add in the fact the intended speed of the people beside you and also the vehicles in front and behind THEM, if you should adjust your speed should they need to change lanes.

Now, how fast is the person TWO cars in front of you? Are they driving safe? If not, then the person directly in front of you, are THEY adjusting their speed safely? If not, you'd need to adjust your speed.

The point I'm getting at is that to work on being more effective is to know where everyone is at every given moment and also predict WHERE they will be going in case a mechanic hits them and they try to run away so you can throw heals on them if the other healers are going to be out of range, or if a big mechanic is also going to hit the tanks. See how it all ties? Timing, and awareness to the next level.

It seems daunting at first but don't worry: it gets worse. Not only should you be comfortable with your OWN timing for spells/encounters, you should be familiar with your team's cool-downs and what could possibly be available if an "oh crap" moment arises.

Examples?

I'm not sure if just rambling on works, so here are some examples:

1. I know player X will almost always die to mechanic Y, therefore I will prepare my soulstone and also position myself AHEAD OF TIME to resurrect them in a safe place, which also enables them to transition to the next encounter phase. Because of this I will not pop any offensive CDs since it will be wasted in the time it takes to prepare this.

2. A certain mechanic is JUST owning you every single time? Break all convention and work on JUST countering that one mechanic. Even if you have to stop and WAIT for it, just wait for it and look at your current state, how could you have prepared for it better? And how can you be doing your thing and preparing for it?

Conclusion?

Wtf is this a report?

Ultimately, there are only so many mechanics happening at once and are not impossible to deal with. If they were, people would have noticed. If you have to dodge three things while kiting another thing and damage two other things, you can do it, maybe not effectively but it is doable.

Ok I'm going to stop ranting now, bye!

Upcoming: Battle Pets for Warlocks Edition 3, or 4?

Truny the Annoying

The Good Points of Warlords of Draenor

How many months has it been since I first saw the sort of a let-down teaser trailer to the announcement of our latest expansion? For whatever reason I was not as excited for WoD, Draenor, as I had been for Pandaria.

*Warning: Pandaria Nostalgia incoming in 3, 2, 1..*

I signed up for MoP Beta and the moment I got my confirmation I hopped in was amazed at this new world for us to explore. I rode straight across the new continent and my best memory would have been impeding upon the farms of the Valley of the Four Winds and being assaulted by giant mushan.

So you say: "But Draenor is a new world!". Yes, but it is within a different time-line, it isn't "our" Draenor. Pandaria was a true "expansion" of the known world which our actions had an impact on.

When I saw the Draenor trailer with Garrosh's annoying face I thought "Oh god, I hope we get to kill him this time".

6.2 gives me hope that there will be some sort of demonic influence? My warlock would be completely thrilled. Except all I read was related to some stupid shipyard aka more missions.

Anyways, back to topic. There's been a lot of...disdain and bitter after-taste upon the tongues of many since the release of WoD. I haven't really heard of anyone ENJOYING any of the new "content", or raving about what floats their boat.

So I shall attempt to. This won't be pretty. And the list probably won't be long. And the good points won't be definitive.

1. Pet Menagerie: This was actually sort of a letdown. I thought we would be able to breed pets as a side-thing that we do. Then again, I thought ALL the activities of the garrison would have been a "side" thing to do rather than the ONLY thing there is to do.

I AM a fan of how a select group of our favorite wow-Pokémon will wander through our garrison and follow us around. Bonus to immersion points.

2. Removal of flying. Sort of. I am a proponent of exploration but I believe being land-locked is just a conspiracy of "forcing" players to socialize to camp and track those annoying rare mount spawns that pop up throughout the world. Being ground-bound enables players to actually look around and find paths and actual routes up to locations. Good and bad.

3. Our own mine and herb garden. Actually don't even get me started on the Pandarian farm. I remember saying back in MoP, how cool would it be if our farm would be just a slightly more immersive mobile type game WITHIN the current game. It doesn't have to be super in depth, just like how we had a plants vs zombies mini-game in EK.

Garrisons SHOULD have been like that. A small mini-version of the greater game, not the ENTIRE game itself. One could argue that it is, but if you look at it, our followers do MORE exploration, dungeons, raiding, treasure hunting, you name it than we do!

And don't even get me started on how WRECKED professions are. Who even needs gathering professions anymore unless you're leveling from 0-600? Once you hit the dreaded WoD gating it's just boring and feels like you have no control of your own progress.

I am still keeping my gathering professions in hopes of WoD ending very soon.

Ok Truny, stop. Keep things positive!

No! Go away!

It is HANDY to have our own gardens and mines but you've pretty much killed of a core component of the game no? I personally enjoy flying around herbing in my off-time (Taurens FTW). Wouldn't it be cool if we could find rare or interesting reagents or materials through gathering and augment our mines and gardens with the cool stuff that we found?

Mines and gardens should complement the profession that it supports, not outright replace it and make it more or less redundant?

Ok I'll stop with that here.

4. They tried to implement housing?

Ok this all depends on the intent of garrisons. If they had originally designed it as a cool place for us to reside on this strange land that we could customize and share, then yes. At least they tried.

Most likely the decision was: let's make it a horrible version of a phone game, where players will want to log in x hours later.

See, even THAT I would have accepted if it wasn't such a large component of how we acquire pretty much anything in game. Treasure hunting missions = all the gold we obtained via dailies before.

Sure, MoP had a bit TOO many dailies but it got us out and about and god forbid, sometimes we'd just skip some factions.

Should I save this for another post? See, MoP dailies sometimes took so long that it would have consumed our entire evening to be able to run heroics for valor, or do fun extraneous things. I do see why the lack of dailies is tolerable but...there's gotta be a fine balance right? Yes, let's talk about this next time.

5. Ok I am sure I can think of 5 things.

Let's see, did gameplay get more fun? Not really, hunters are still fun to play, warlocks are a bit gimped but I make do. Healing is just healing (though I am a resto druid luckily).

The raid encounters are fun I guess? But seriously THREE tiers (not including fake LFR and I almost want to exclude the "fake" normal aka old flex. Yeah no can't count those unfortunately.

Ummm, the new dungeons are actually very detailed and fun, but with the lack of VP or an interesting "daily incentive" to run a heroic other than the inn quests, there's very little reason to revisit them. See, there isn't even sense of progression for the things we don't need to do.

Hear me out. Back in Cataclysm and MoP we would run the same dungeons over and over because of VP. VP was a viable incentive, but there's also a bit of psychological and actual progression going on in that the first time you stepped foot in Grim Batol vs the last time you stepped foot, you were face-rolling and half-solo'ing the bosses like no tomorrow.

There we see a sense of progression for something we don't really care for but can easily be seen throughout the entire expansion just because we're running it over and over. Also seeing the community evolve (some people don't and still sucked).

So no, dungeons don't make the cut unfortunately.

When I think of #5 I'll get back to you.

Truny the Rantful

I Was the Dirty Carry

Since the release of Blackrock Foundry, I had declared my raiding hiatus and stopped logging in to do anything substantial but my weekly ICC and Ulduar runs in hope of a shiny mount.

Two months of missing out on collecting Elemental Runes. My guild had already progressed to doing regular (base ilvl 685 drops) BRF (I call this new "Heroic" you people call "regular", cause that's what it is").

I came back, and did LFR. And....it was....fun! Seeing Kromok do his rune thing and people actually follow mechanics in LFR jump-started the immersion ignition for me. I must raid! I decided: "you know what, I don't need to be #1 in DPS all the time to have fun. I must explore this raid zone!

Except I was frozen in time at ilvl 668 since February. I did log in and attempt my garrison gear missions, but that was it. I joined my warlock's old guild's (the one I've always been in if you're an avid reader) flex BRF, and her current guild was willing to accept me with open arms the next week into normal (heroic).

Everyone else was in their 680s approaching 690, I'd have to be the dirty carry. I went from 668 to 675 in one night. It was a good start.

Let's see if I can remember what I saw:

Gruul: Sidestep, move away on that other thing. Boring.

Guy With Animals: Kill spear, don't stand in spear, kill things. Boring.

Rolly Ore Halls: Move when he throws up, then don't get ran over. Decent.

Arnold Schwarzenneger Converyor Belt Steam Presses: Use your portal, and stop casting to live. Fun.

Train Tracks: Don't get hit and kill the cannons and stay on the periphery. Annoying. (Why can't we fight him at the spot right before his spawn point?)

Fire Lady Stack Kill Wolves: Exactly what my description of her is. Fun.

Did this re-ignite WoD? No. I logged off IMMEDIATELY after raid so I did not have to deal with the drudgery that is the rest of the expansion. There was nothing I won that needed enchanting or reforging, nor was there any other substantial "path of progression" to compliment all the shiny loot I won. It was raid or GTFO. So I GTFO'd...

Actually everything I said above was a lie.

See, a couple weeks ago I did Naxx 25. And inside the 4-Horseman's chest I received [Damnation]! My druid had been using this staff for months, and I guess my warlock had been slowly resenting the game out of envy.

I swapped my transmog to the Sha Skin set, slapped on this staff and thought "AMAZING. I MUST SHARE THIS!".

Truny the Liar