WoW Comics: So Me That It Hurts

There's really no other way to describe this strip - this is me to the letter. When WoW first released, I played a hunter (as I had during the beta test period). I tamed cats exclusively as my pets, and trained leatherworking and skinning as my professions, along with fishing and cooking. My early days were spent farming bears and wolves in Ashenvale for their meat and skins. When my pet was hungry, I would fish up and cook fishies for it from the lakes and rivers.

When people heard this they were always a bit shocked to hear that I was running around cooking and skinning so many animals as an animal loving vegetarian. But working within the game's system, in which all cooked food was carnivorous I worked off this principle of using the whole "animal" - leveling up off the XP, profiting from the vendor loot, and leveling my skills of the meat and leather scavenged off the corpse.

Hunter vs Nature

WoW Comics: Dark Legacy's Valentines

I'm planning to dig into some of my favorite gaming cartoons as an ongoing post series when I get back from my vacation in early June. For now, I have to post these two holiday-themed Dark Legacy Comics because it's such a wonderful blend of accurate, cute and cynical.

http://www.darklegacycomics.com/177.html

http://www.darklegacycomics.com/175.html

Critter Glitter!

I found this among the many old screenshots from when Wrath of the Lich King first launched. Fun with arctic wildlife :)

Server Downtime

...more old school screenshots, this time going all the way back to the days of lineage 2. These shots are making me quite nostalgic for my dear old prophet Soribel, the Angel of Rage (formerly Rage Prophet or CrimsonWhale from my days in CG). Lazy Prophet! I was not at all surprised to realize that most of my old Lineage screenshots were humorous conversations/fights or pictures of funny titles.

Why I once had "Slow Badger" as the title for my Spellsinger I doubt I will ever remember, though I do remember wearing "AquaSquirrel" for a time because my late night lisp would always mangle my Aqua Swirl spell.

Server Downtime

...has me looking through some old screenshots, and I came across this humorous screenshot of my HK count.


It's really a shame - I lost at least a thousand L2 screenshots over the years as my old computers blew up on me, and I never bother to take screenshots in WoW since the game isn't beautiful like Lineage.

I did manage to find the shot below, though, from our very first ever successful bear run!

Spring UI Cleaning: Mission Complete!

I finally managed to get my UI back to a simple, condensed view similar to what I used when I raided pre-Burning Crusade as a dirty, dirty Alliance Night Elf Hunter. I've been holding off on a large number of add-on downloads out of lazyness and my deep mistrust of curse gaming's addons.

But, now that I have finally sat down and fixed everything up (except for my damn minimap, which has resisted all the addons I threw at it) I am much happier. I even went one step further than I have ever gone before in customizing my interface - I moved my self and pet portraits down to the bottom of the screen, directly above my chat box. Now I can monitor my health and chat without moving my eyes, YAY. Not sure if this bit will stick or not. I'm having a hard enough time getting used to having my target and target of target boxes at the bottom of the screen. It's convenient in that I can monitor whatever I'm healing or killing without looking away from my skill bars or too far from my own character, but it's inconvenient in that I keep SHOOTING SHEEP because I can't see my target as well when i'm selecting targets without assisting someone off a main tank list...

Ideally, all these changes will begin to feel normal soon and I will stop fumbling around trying to find everything. I'm pleased that I managed to fit nearly every hunter skill neatly on the screen (minus a few melee skills - lawl raptor strike - and unused aspects) as well as a small variety of mounts and vanity pets!

A streamlined but informative UI is one of the most important parts of an MMO. Lineage II managed to master the art of the minimal interface, forcing all users to make due with the same skeleton interface. It was awful, but equally awful for everyone. Unless you used mods (banable offense) that told you the hp/mana/level/location of players every player had the exact same amount of information on every other - even if you were in the same party. There was a small sliver of extra information available to "trusted players" such as the clan listing a character's level. Otherwise, every interface provided the exact same information - there was nothing extra to be squeezed out of the game and displayed to players so there was no need for things like recount. Fortunately, the interface for Aion seems to have taken some much needed cues from WoW's in terms of layout and design - whether customization will follow or not remains to be seen (aside note: I want my beta key now).

I'll definitely be revisiting the topic of interfaces when I finally manage to weasel my way into Aion. I might even have to dig up some old footage/screenshots of older games to really make a broad analysis of the differences. After all, my ultimate passion will always be semantics and semiotics. MMO's are virtual worlds where every pixel is created for a reason. Every symbol and sign communicates buckets of knowledge to those who can interpret it, making each gamer into an unknowing semiotician. My last treatise on the topic ran a whopping 64 pages (hey, there were pictures too) and was for a research methods course for my master's degree. Hopefully I'll be able to speak more succinctly on the topic when speaking for an initiated audience (nothing like having to explain what a "mana bar" is to a bunch of professors...).

Pearl Jam Rocks!

I knew there was a reason Pearl Jam was my favorite band that went beyond the awesome music and lyrics, laid back attitude, local roots, liberal politics and extensive non profit work!

Reading that Rock Band will have a Pearl Jam track pack with its setlist voted entirely by fans was a great way to start my Monday! Now if they only manage to include my favorites...it's such a long list. Here's hoping tracks like Red Mosquito and Do The Evolution sneak in among the concert/fan staples like Given to Fly, Corduroy, Rearviewmirror, et al. There's such an amazing breadth of songs that it's tough to imagine any setlist doing the band justice. Perhaps we'll be lucky enough to see a setlist the length of a PJ show....3 hours worth of music! It will also be interesting to see if covers are included - PJ's versions of Rockin in the Free World (Neil Young), Fortunate Son (CCR), Baba O'Riley (The Who), and a whole load of other songs would be awesome additions if they can get permission. The song I would most like to hear is PJ's "Little Wing" cover (video here, from Georgia video here from Washington - with added bonus Star Spangled Banner). I like it better than the Hendrix original (/ducks) or the Stevie Ray Vaughn and Eric Clapton covers.

For the record, I recently made a casual "rough estimate count" of the number of Pearl Jam songs, and the tally (before cover songs of which there are dozens) of album tracks exceeded 100. I included b-sides and soundtrack songs (studio recorded) that were played live and did not include all of the fan club Christmas singles, so the tally really is a rough estimate.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/05/11/pearl-jam-returns-in-new-rock-band-project-with-fan-voted-set/

In The Cards: Part 3

Today is the day! I finally get my Darkmoon Card: Greatness.

/rejoice!

Best Messy Boss Kill Ever

I should've screen shotted it, though what made this Mimiron kill so epic was really the early "wipe the raid" call on vent. When the tank went down and the raid started dropping in phase 4 due to dead healers, it looked like the fight was over. Everyone thought we were crazy to keep going, but we were so close! It was crazy pew pewing down the last few percent of each part of Mimiron's toys and then attempting as best we could to "full burn" with...what, 2 hunters a feral druid and an elemental shaman alive? According to most of the raid, it appeared that the body repaired itself in spite of our valiant effort, but then miraculously, combat ends and the body becomes lootable. I honestly had no idea what was going on I was just mashing buttons as hard as I could...

/profit!

The Tuesday raid was pretty awesome as well, clearing out 2 full areas and all the Keepers except Mimiron. Zoom!

Spring UI Cleaning

My apartment may be a totally lost cause these days, but by the time I'm done with my WoW UI it will be sparkly and clean! I spent a good deal of time last night finally rolling around to fixing some of my out of date add-ons and relocating some of my interface elements. It's definitely a work in progress. I'm still trying to figure out how to condense the elements a little bit further - I've got too much dead space atm and it's inefficient and distracting. I'll post some screenshots when I'm done. This has got to be the 5th or 6th major UI overhaul I've done since I first started using add-ons and I always forget to document a successful layout.

Finally, Finally....

Via Joystiq - At long last - Starcraft 2 beta.........

/swoon!

I'm so there...I just hope I get a response. I signed up for Aion testing almost a year ago and have yet to hear anything back yet. I haven't been in any beta testing since Lineage II's Taiwanese beta (quite illegally) and WoW's later stages of beta.

I can't wait for a shiny new time-sink. Protoss for LIFE!

Children's Week!!! (Don't Be A Dick)

I am getting seriously annoyed with the attitude of most WoW players these days, and here is a prime example, in story form:

I clear my way through a tower in Alterac Valley with my Children's Week orphan in tow - capping a tower in AV is one of the 4 goals for the "School of Hard Knocks" PvP achievement for this world holiday. Another player follows me up, also with an orphan out - I know he/she is also making a bolt for the flag and this is a slight annoyance, since I was there first, put in the effort of killing the guards that were aggroed, etc. However, a rogue without an orphan zoomed in, beat us both to the flag (as I was still getting pelted by arrows) and proceeded to cap it even though both of us with orphans out tried to petition him to stop. I would've been a bit annoyed if the other achievement seeker had snuck by me and stolen my opportunity, but to have someone blatantly block our efforts was just plain rude. This experience was followed by several other failures on my account - getting stuck in combat so that I couldn't summon my orphan (while another rogue capped the flag without an orphan despite the protests of yet another person trying to actually do the achievement), trying to get credit for recapping a tower on defense (that should really count), getting my face smashed in by a ret paladin intent on interupting my flag cap. Fail, fail, fail. People seriously need to learn how to SHARE in this game.

Thanks to Alliance players making an extra effort to kill players attempting to cap towers with their orphans out, and thanks to other Horde players being dicks, it took a number of AV games before I was finally lucky enough to sneak into a tower with my orphan and cap without anyone noticing.

Achievements like this would be a total blast if people were not so dead set on cock blocking other players for fun. I know a lot of other people had nice cooperative experiences with this set of achievements, such as teams allowing opposing players into their Warsong Gulch base to pick up a flag, drop it (without being killed or attacked) and repeat until the team completed the achievement. It reminded me a little bit of my favorite pasttime when WoW first released - cobbling together simple phrases from numbers, symbols and punctuation in order to bypass the linguistic filter meant to keep Horde and Alliance players from communicating. It was hilarious and entertaining to see gamers put forth the effort to think their way around the game's intended social system. I wish I knew where I put the screenshots I took long, long ago of my Night Elf hunter chatting with some random Horde player as we assisted each other with a difficult group quest...

Children's Week!!!

It's finally time for one of my favorite World of Warcraft holiday's - children's week! With the addition of holiday achievements, holidays have become a lot more tedious but also rewarding. In the past, there was no true incentive to participate beyond the goofy and often temporary rewards, but Children's week introduced a great permanent tangible reward - pets! I am a big fan of Speedy the turtle - he is adorable and has the cute ironic name so I always select him as my companion reward for completing the questline on every character. But this year has flown by, and it's my second Spring on Spirestone - I get to select a second pet! I'm torn between the adorable Mr. Wiggles the pig and Whiskers the rat. I wish I could have them both without waiting another year! Also available to me this year are Peanut the baby Dranei mount thingy, and Sleepy Willy. What to do!

As for actual achievements, those for Noble Garden had a slightly desperate "we couldn't think of anything so go pretend to be the Cadbury bunny" feel. Children's week's achievements seem more logical and humorous - Bad Example, Home Alone, Daily Chores, etc.

One Track Mind

Wow, now here's an embarrassing admission:

I was scrolling through my google reader today, when the following headline jumped out at me:

New Grid May Be Needed, But So Is Smarter Use

"Aha!" I thought, "this is so true! Add-ons like Grid and Xperl are essential for good raid healing (we were just having this discussion last night on vent with a dirty default UI using tree), but a good healer they do not necessarily make!

And then I realized the headline was from NPR, and actually referred to the United States' electrical grid....

Mimiron Down

Last night was my very first Ulduar 25 man raid since my lazy ass has been sitting on standby, doing dailies and picking flowers. And what a fight to begin with - Mimiron is pretty crazy! It reminds me a bit of Vashj plus C'thun plus Kael (kiting "striders" and avoiding bad spots on the ground, avoiding eye beams, separate parts coming together in one phase for chaos).

I'm not gonna lie - I was clueless about what to do for the first few attempts. My "follow the chicken and do what she does" strategy panned out pretty well, though, and luckily for me the fight isn't particularly complicated for ranged dps. I was able to learn through trial and error without any major incident until failing to escape the evil cone of death on phase 4 on the second or third attempt. Fiteacat was not so lucky....poor kitty. The fight is pretty evil for hunters - sending the pet in causes high likelyhood of death, but if you get targeted by the fires in phase 1 and your pet is with you it's also dead. At least there's time to rez between phases!

The fight was chaotic but fun as hell, and a pretty crazy way to get introduced to the 25 man. Now I just fear how this encounter will play out on 10 man... /cower