As you’ve all probably noticed, I’ve not written much.  Mostly, that’s because I quit playing World of Warcraft.

No, it’s not a bad game.  No, it’s not a refutation or a complaint or anything else.  I just got tired of playing.  In fact the only reason I’d continued was that my daughter was still playing.  About a month and a half ago she decided she, too, wasn’t having fun and quit.

Will I play another MMORPG?  Someday, maybe.  I have more projects and things to do than I have time, however.  And one of the things I’ve discovered since quitting is that I’m getting things done - things that were lingering on either my wife’s honey-do or my wanna-do list.  That’s… pretty nice.  Do I miss the folk with whom I visited regularly?  Some.  But most of the ones I really liked?  I got their email, and in a couple of cases their phone numbers, and we still visit.

Will I complain of it?  Will I call others out for wasting their time?  HECK no.  If it’s fun, keep at it.

It just quit being fun.

I will be leaving this up for quite some time.  I figure parts of the blog posts I made will be relevant at least to WoTLK, maybe more.  If the hits approach zero, I’ll consider dropping the blog entirely.

If you think there’s an article or two that should be saved, you’re welcome to copy.  If you do, please attribute.  I’m not going to earn any money, but I do appreciate the credit.

It was a good time, folks, but, well-

Go have fun.  I will.

Yesterday I pointed out that for 70s, the only way to see pretty much all the nifty stuff not already seen is to be part of a raiding guild - which means 20 hours or more of WoW per week.  Note again, as I’ve pointed out in the past, that I did NOT say 20 hours of raiding.  I said 20 hours of WoW.  There are rare exceptions - as individuals, not as guilds.  And again, what if you don’t WANT to do 20 hours of WoW a week?

First, there is a LOT of content to World of Warcraft.  If you’re willing to set aside your level 70, you can level a few other characters.  I say a few, because in addition to the stories only accessible to horde or alliance, there are lines only available to certain classes - healing the land in the druids, the Organization in the rogues… you get the idea.

Second, while I don’t like PvP, a lot of people do.  And if that’s your bag, you’ll have a constant flurry of different foes, all with varying skills - oh, not the ones the game gives you, but how the player USES what the game gives.  Humans are just more varying than we can afford to program into games, so far.  So there’s a great of fun to be had there, which doesn’t require 20 hours of play a week.

Third… people.  I wrote some time ago how regardless of the guild, it’s still a volunteer organization.  Nothing ties it to you but your desire to be part of it.  And as a consquence, you’re going to have things in common with more than a few of the members — or you’re going to leave.  I know of very few guilds where members don’t converse - type-chat or voice-chat - outside the raid or other purpose of the guild.  All guilds are social - they’re a natural outgrowth of the nature of a MultiPlayerGame.  And Just Visiting takes as much time as you want to take.  And sometimes there are people you find in your guild who, if they lived nearby, would probably be the person you hung out with all the time.  $15 a month to have pretty constant access to friends you’d never have otherwise?  Cheap, really.

These are a few reasons why people hang on even when they can’t do 20 hours a week.  And if that works for you, great.  Do it.

Have fun.

I’m going to be exiting WoW soon, and find I have several posts to write because of it.  Yesterday’s was one - a base for several things yet to come.  so…

As some of you may have noticed, I tend to emphasize that this is supposed to be fun - if it’s not fun don’t do it, and go have fun being a couple of common tag-lines.

If you’re level 70 in World of Warcraft and you don’t raid, it gets pretty hard to have fun.  Oh, that’s not completely true.  You can arena and you can BG.  But for content, well, there are only so many times you can run an instance before it becomes “farm”.  Yes, you can have conversations with friends in your guild.  Who are in exactly your boat - trying to find quests and story and area that is new, or raiding, or pvp, or turning instances into farming.  That’s why most - not all, but most - guilds at the top are either pvp or raid oriented.

As I’ve already noted, I’m not fond of pvp.  Part of that is that I’m not a good fast-twitch player.  And part… personal idiosyncracy in that I like to play with adults, not /rude /spit /fill-in-the-blank players who are playing to prove something to someone.  It’s not fun, so I don’t do it.

I am not the majority, I think.  But I also suspect I’m not alone.  Some weeks, I only want to play about 4 hours.  Others, maybe 8.  That isn’t enough to push a raid upward.  Well, it can be if the raid is casual about it.  But I’ll gradually be less useful to the raid, eventually being a drag instead of a help REGARDLESS of how skilled I am, because I’ll not really have the gear and supplies.

See, I have multiple interests.  And multiple obligations.  I have two days off.  And I have two weekday evenings that don’t have a couple of hours killed by karate (to include travel time).

So if I were to ask WoW for something else, it’d be some means of adding content for upper level players besides raids.  Something besides the 10/15/25 high-cooperation activities.  I understand why they do - these are MMO, after all, and if I’m going to solo everything anyway then why be online?  (Answer - because even the most extensive solo game I’ve ever played has a crapload LESS solo content than WoW or its peers.)  As it is…

That’s a major contributor to burnout.  Same old grind, forever.  Or, to explain the title, Same Old Same Old.  You can take a vacation from WoW, but your guild can’t really take one in the game.

Next post I’ll kick about some of the reasons to keep going anyway.  They do exist, you know.  In the meantime,

Have fun.

One of the discussions I see round the area is in regard to raiding.  Non-raiders say something to the effect of, “I have a life, or want one, and can’t spend all my free time on the computer.”  And the raiders typically respond to the effect of, “Only the bleeding edge need to be wedded to the computer - I have a life.  Just get a group that only raids a couple times a week.”  I’m going to insert myself into this mess.  Before I do, let me reiterate where I’ve been.

I’ve done hardcore - five nights per week of raids.  That, by the way,didn’t last long, but I’ve been there.  I’ve also done several casual - three, two, and even one raid mandatory per week.  So I think I’ve got a round value enough to have an opinion - and perhaps a bit of a reality check.

The casual raiding did not eat up as much of my life as the hardcore raiding.  It still eats up a lot of my life.  Let’s reality check, shall we?

The raid itself requires four hours - more is not atypical, but when we see these discussions that’s the amount of time that shows up, so we’ll use it.  Add one hour for pre/post work - picking up the last few reagents, purchasing the gems for the most recent drops, etc.  Add four hours - at least - for mat or money grinding.  Add another four for badge run - instances or kara if that’s on farm - to supplement your gear.

And we’re up to 13 hours for the single raid.

I am a black belt.  I go to three hours of class a week, and do at least an hour a day most days of maintenance.  I do LESS for my martial arts work than is “minimal” for the LEAST casual raid.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.  But it is a reality check.  Quite simply, most raiders I’ve met - even the “causal” - do at least 20 hours a week on the game.  20 hours with a select group of acquaintances and friends every week.

In other words, both sides of the discussion are “right”.  Yes, it’s only four or eight or 12 hours of actual raiding - a piffle.  But it’s 20 (or more) hours of WoW a week.  If you’re planning on raiding, congratulations - it IS a part-time job.

Dear Raider - a casual player is probably playing 12 or fewer hours per week.  When he tells you raiding would take up too much of his life, please do not belittle this reality.

Dear Casual player.  20 hours per week of convivial association is not every waking minute.  When the raider tells you she can do other things as well as work and play wow, she is right.

Dear both - it is, as with all things, a matter of subjective preferences.  13 hours of physical labor is nothing for some, and jawdropping for others.  The same goes for just about everything.  An hour of fishing bores me to tears, while for others it can be done for days on end with no difficulty.  You may take that as in game or “real world” play, the truth remains the same.  Please do not belittle others for having a different priority of what is “fun”, and how much they’re willing to devote to it.

But, go have fun.

Heck with WotLK - THIS is obviously the Big Thing for Blizzard.

[edit - I see Sid saw it earlier than I did.]

It’s a WoW blog, I suppose I ought to throw in a WoW post. (grin)

Over in hunter land there’s been much talk of an almost minor change in spell process that’s having a HUGE effect on shot rotation macros. And I think that the change matters to priests, too.

Let’s start with the minor change and its effect on hunters before we go to priest work. Once auto-shot is started, casting a “command” shot won’t interrupt it. AND, during that last half-second of cast time, any button pressed will start immediately after the auto-shot starts. If you pressed many buttons during that half-second, the last one pressed is the one that takes.

Now how this works for hunters is that it beats the crap out of clipping, and encourages button-spamming. First, you set up a macro, of which the critical line goes something like:

/castsequence !Auto Shot, Steady Shot

Now there are many permutations and improvements, but that’s the basic deal. What it says is “Alternate between toggling Auto shot on and casting steady shot.” A couple of peculiarities in that exclamation point make a useful digression. First, since auto shot is a toggle (press it’s on, press it’s off) it’d be frustrating to keep starting and stopping it. The ! says, “if it’s on, leave it on,” no turning it off. It also, due to the odd way macros work, means the macro skips that if it’s already on. (”Can’t do that” in a macro automatically moves to “do the next thing.”)

So the hunter starts pummeling this macro - two or three times per second, even. And what happens is that autoshot goes and doesn’t get clipped, but the steady shot goes off as soon as it can with no particular delay. Lag is practically eliminated. Yeah, wow. Hunters using this sort of thing are seeing significant boosts in DPS.

But I said this matters to priests, not just my hunter alt. So… huh?

Let’s start with interrupt casting - a classic healpriest skill. You’ve probably already noticed it just Doesn’t Seem to Work. You need a /stopcasting line. Something like:

/stopcasting
/cast Greater Heal

OK, that’s pretty simple and probably obvious. But… I’ve run across a couple of other situations. There are a couple of boss battles where, if you’re the tank’s main healer, you want back-to-back heals. Even an instant of lag is potentially fatal. So… yeah, you can see where this is going. I’m recommending button mashing. Not one click and hope. Start fast-tapping while the cast is going. And if you’re planning to do something in the middle - say, a frisbee in the midst of chained greater heals - just start mashing the appropriate button, and jump right back when it goes.

I’ve not respecced to test this with mindflay. My guess is that you can still interrupt it, but I don’t know. It makes a difference, so if there’s a spriest who’s tried and wants to mention, I’d appreciate it. But for the non-channeling spells, this has the potential to be VERY useful, as it goes a long way to negating lag.

Go have fun.

TJ has a post about locking keys in the car.  I didn’t laugh because I’ve done it far too often myself.  While I mentioned my solution to this problem in comments, I’m going to post it here as a public service announcement.

Get a dead credit card - one that’s for an account that no longer exists.  Get some packing tape.  Tape a car key to the front of the card, and put it with the rest of your credit cards in your purse or wallet.  It’s still possible you’ll leave keys AND wallet/purse inside when you lock up, but the odds drop way, way down.  But wait, there’s more, learned the hard way.

I had a friend doing a project with me.  We carpooled a lot during this project.  One fine (rainy) day (evening) we got to my residence, and in the midst of juggling all the stuff, picking up and setting down and sorting, I managed to put my keys down.  Arms full, doors closed, five steps later he drives away - as normal.  I get to door, and… cannot get in.

Look at that credit card with a key.  Notice that it has room for two, maybe three keys.  For those who cannot make the intuitive jump, put another key on the card.  Same side - its easier to fit.  I happen to have three keys on mine - my car, my wife’s car, and the house.  The tape is on one side, not wrapped around two or three times.   Umm, yes, another lesson.

Packing tape is TOUGH.  And most of the time when I’m going to cut it, I’ll use… the keys, or the small pen-knife that’s on the keychain.  Which if I’m needing the key on the card is, yep, locked away.

And I’ve never had to call a locksmith or pick the car lock with a coat hanger since.

The other night, my daughter was expressing amazement at how she’s racing through lower levels.  Not just in comparison to her main (a Paladin) but MOST of the things she’s played over the past few years.  I told her I wasn’t surprised, and then realized I had a blog post.

Azeroth is rich and full of detail - and boring as sin to a level 60 player, much less level 70.  Oh, not because it isn’t still rich and full of detail, but rather there’s no challenge.

When Wrath of the Lich King comes out, I have some expectations - not necessarily up front, but certainly not too much later.  I expect leveling to get even easier.  Remember that most of the action for most of the players will begin in Outland, and then move north.  The predominate reason for leveling will be learning your class — attuning your self for the higher levels.

I also expect to start seeing Very High events in Azeroth.  There are nooks and crannies that have been blocked off which could suddenly open to Very Interesting Events - just as Kara opened Deadwind Pass.  And in some cases it’ll be a retooling of what Was Before.  Of this latter, I’ve a guarantee, as Naxxramas is being retooled.  Oh, sure, it’s a big nasty 40 man and it’s “only” going to be, well, less.  And yet… in reality I suspect it’s MORE challenging.  All that’s necessary to prove that to yourself is to take a 25-man of level 70 players to AQ40.   Or to note how many Kara-farming guilds “take a break” by killing Onyxia.

We’ll see many laments at the low-level stories and chains that linger un-noticed.  But I suspect we’ll see new stuff taking us to old locations, and for those of us watching for the story we’ll get more glimpses.

For what it’s worth, I think the expansion AFTER WotlK will be the real challenge for Blizzard - I mean Activision-Blizzard.  At level 70 we began taking on demigods - at level 80 near-gods will fall.  Integration is already being stretched.  And if it weren’t for the ‘bleeding edge’ problem of so many of WoW’s competitors, I’d expect this to be the end.

Oh - no, WoW won’t die this time.  Yes, there’s a lot of pull with WAR and AoC and several others.  They all suffer from the same problem, though.  Basically, the fact that most of the people who would play it if they could, can’t.  And aren’t going to buy a new computer just to play the new MMORPG.  I’ll keep watching the challengers, of course, but I’ll tell you that until somebody remembers to plan for the 3d generation player, Blizzard will stay on top.

Oh, wait - 3d generation.  OK…  Cutting edge is first generation.  It’s replaced in a year to 18 months by the next cutting edge, at which time it’s an Upgrade.  When the NEXT cutting edge comes out, the second generation is now the upgrade and our original - now the 3d iteration or generation - is the new “good entry” machine.  Not quite the cheapest on the block, but a couple of generations below the cutting edge.  WoW, when it was released, would play on that.  The expansion wouldn’t have, but by the time it came out most folk had improved - at least slightly - and Outland would play on that third generation.

When somebody makes a fun game, even with its little problems, that will run on a third generation at the time of its release, WoW’s dominance will end.  Unless Blizzard kills it all by itself.

Not WoW related, not really, so those of you not interested can move along now.  For the rest, I want to recommend a game - a NON-COMPUTER game.  But… let me get there my own way.

I’ve been playing wargames - pencil and paper, board and pieces - since 1974.  (Well, earlier if we count chess. But I’m going to exclude that for a moment.  And yes, I’m that old.)  Avalon Hill, Games Research, SPI, Yanquito… wait, some of those won’t mean anything to you.  OK… Third Reich, Diplomacy, Air Wars, Ironclads (among others from them all)… I played a lot.

Now in addition to a bunch of other things, these games are models.  And one of the balances that exist in game design - games of this sort - is the balance between accurate modeling and playability.  Bluntly, it is HARD.  Sometimes, though, someone figures out a trick that makes the complex reality easily graspable - or at least easier than the original.  As one example, so many of these games now use hexes for positioning.  It’s… not as flexible as miniatures, but more “accurate” than squares.  Now it’s worth noting that tolerance of complexity differs - what’s “fun” for some is “an accounting nightmare” for others.  Case in point — Star Fleet Battles.  I THINK Advanced Squad Leader finally has more rules, but I certainly won’t swear to it.  There are people who play - competitively, with near-memorization of the rulebook - both.  There are people who look at either rulebook and back away slowly, never letting the fear show on their face lest they be charged and mauled.  Yes, I tend toward the former - I have large sections of both rulebooks.  shrug.

Enter the game I’m shilling.  It’s called Attack Vector: Tactical (AV:T), produced by a company called Ad Astra Games.  OK, let’s stick the disclaimer in here.  While this game was in development, I was part of the design team.  Very, VERY tiny part - I felt myself a child in the presence of geniuses more often than not.  So yes, there’s a bit of pride.  Still…

What AV:T does is effectively model 3D newtonian space combat, simply enough that 11 year old kids (with a bit of the space bug) can master it well enough to be serious threats to adult players.  I know, I’ve taught some of those then-11 year olds.  Now I’m going to admit that in some ways learning this game was a bad idea.  A host of SF books I loved suddenly had their seamy sides exposed once I saw how it’d “really work”.  On the other hand… for those David Weber fans out there, this game is the engine he selected for “Saganami Island Tactical Simulator” - also produced by Ad Astra.  (If you ever run across the “great ship resizing”, it was the result of David meeting the AdAstra guy, Ken Burnside.  And if you’re curious of that digression, ask - I’ll tell, and point.)  Anyway, I want to tell a bit of how this system works, just so you can get an idea of how “hard” becomes “easy” - and then I can add a couple of other things.

The first genius point comes from another game.  Tony Valle is an air combat enthusiast - and aeronautic engineer, and…  Anyway, he came out with this idea for 3D positioning while playing on a 2D surface.  Basically, he’s got a diagram that you have for each aircraft that is for the most part a big circle divided into three concentric rings about one circle.  Each of these rings is divided into sections.  You represent your pitch and attitude simply - mark the nose, mark the cockpit, and mark the right wing.  Each must be 90 degrees from the other.  When rolling or pitching over to dive or, well, any 3D movement, you move the nose, then the cockpit, and finally the wing.  If you’re an air combat enthusiast go pick up Birds of Prey just for that alone - though I’ll tell you that the real strength of THAT game comes in the effective modeling of flight performance at various altitudes.  I’d tell more, but this is already getting long for a digression.

So, Ken got permission to tweak the globe for AV:T.  And he added a rather nifty little display on the board so that you didn’t have to translate what was on your sheet to what was “really there”.  (They’re called pitch stands.  Brilliant.)  And he added other stuff.  Such as…  well, such as my small contribution.

If you’ve ever played SFB, you’ve seen the nightmare.  Fire off a bunch of missiles, and suddenly you’ve got what seem like hundreds of little counters all over the map, moving at different rates on different courses, and you have to track each and every one… Aaaaarrrgh…  no.  I read Clarke and Heinlein, I know the “real deal”.  Quit looking at it as God, look at it as the target.

If you’re the target in space, then you know whether the missiles or kinetic slugs or whatever are going to hit or miss.  It’s easy, really.  Look at the object - put a reference mark if you need to.  If the object stays centered even while it’s closing, it’s going to hit you.  If it’s going to miss, it’ll slide to the side.  The sooner it starts sliding the wider the miss, but quite simply any miss is enough.  And this brings the (pat on back) nice touch.  I hand you a reference card that tells you what’s coming (number of objects in the volley) and the necessary info (three numbers) to work out whether it’s staying centered or slipping to the side.  Oh, and in case you intend to change your vector, which side they’re slipping to.  And, of course, how long till the earth-shattering kaboom - how long do you have to do whatever you need do so the stuff starts slipping to the side.  Man, looking at that it’s complex.  It takes about minute to fill the card the first time - as little as 10 seconds once you’re practiced.  And reading it is easier.  Oh - I didn’t design the card.  I had the “aha”, and those bright people I mentioned did the hard work.

Some things that went bye-bye in my SF reading include… formations.  Oh, dear goo how I miss formations.  “The frigates arced by overhead, following the lead of the Challenge.”  snicker.  Yes, I can keep a formation.  But if my ship is off your port side as we head north, then the only way for me to maintain that relative position as we bend course to the east is to speed up then slow down.  Which… slowing down requires me to point my rear against direction of travel.  So while you’re coasting, I’m burning with my nose pointed the other direction.  Oh - and the important thing is… I burn a LOT more fuel.

Another thing… heat.  I really hadn’t paid attention to the problem of heat in space.  AV:T ships do.  Extend the radiators and keep the reactors on low and you bleed heat - but you don’t have much power for weapons, and the radiators are fragile.  Pull the fins in for combat and you get hotter as you wait.  Bump up the reactors to charge (and recharge) your lasers and…  Ever been in a room with a bunch of electronics and a dead air conditioner?  You get the smallest idea.  In the game, it’s a simple track.  And you better win or disengage before you cook your crew.

Or another thing - stealth in space.  sigh, I really miss this one.  If your ships have ENOUGH SEPARATION, they might be able to hide.  But…  Space background is very cold - single digits kelvin.  Ships that are carrying people are AT LEAST as warm as the inside of the ship.  Relatively speaking, they’re HUGELY more hot than the background.  As in… Picture being in a pitch black empty warehouse.  Every ship is a 20 watt bulb while it’s sitting still.  If it turns on the torch - thrust from the engine - it lit up the arc welder.  If your warehouse is big enough, these can’t be seen.  Relatively, though, if your warehouse is “only” everything inside the orbit of Jupiter, it’s about the size of your high school basketball gym.  Sure, you can hide.  Just radiate all your energy “thataway”, and hope he doesn’t have a detector over there.  Expensive, tricky, and clumsy.  Like hiding that 20 watt bulb behind a basketball and hoping you keep it in the right place.

One last “wow” of the game: Damage.  I can, with a quick succession of rolls, end up with (in such fashion that ALL of us playing see):

“The lasers strike and punch through the facing armor.  They take out one of the nose slug-throwers and the forward quarters, and punch on into the core where they blow up two batteries and a control system in the bridge.  There’s enough oomph they’re still passing into the far side where they pop some more quarters and a fuel storage tank, and punch a hole on the far side going out.”  heh - I’m keeping it simple.

So you look at this and say, “great, another encyclopedia game.”  No, not really.  As I said, I’ve taught 11 year old children to play.  four of them.  The hard part is the flash of insight that this really isn’t aircraft using lift/drag/thrust/gravity and airform interaction, it’s spacecraft.  Which is why if you go to a convention where the game is demoing, you’ll see what’s become the trademark demo - racing for chocolate.  We toss a bunch of chocolates on the board (Hershey’s Kisses, usually, though sometimes we go a little overboard), using altitude markers under some so you can worry about 3D.  We give you a basic ship.  We walk you through one turn that drives you through your first chocolate buoy, and then the turn through your second, then cut you loose for two turns.  Turn four you get to start using your beam weapons (lasers and particle beams).  Run over a chocolate and it’s yours - unwrap and eat, or keep for later.  Shoot one for enough damage, and again it’s yours.  If AV:T is demoing and you’re needing a chocolate fix, drop on by.

WoW isn’t realistic.  But it’s fun.  If you’re a space combat fan, I’m going to recommend a game that’s not only fun but quite realistic.  Enjoy yourselves.

(another disclaimer.  I get zero money or (as far as I know) recognition from your purchase of AV:T.  I’m just recommending something I enjoy, that I happened to have had a small part in helping create.)

The hardest thing about writing this one was deciding upon a title.  Pardon, please, that it doesn’t fit.

See, Zingiber did her first visit to the Isle yesterday, and did another today.  And two absolute truths came out.

First, the next time I hear a level 70 whine about no money, I’m going to laugh in their face.  Second, the reason Blood Elves are so nuts is that they can’t sleep with all the bright colors everywhere. Sheesh.

Yeah, the second thing was kind of silly.  But even for Blood Elf areas, the Island is BRIGHT.  Even the scar seems well-lit compared to, well, just about everywhere in Outland.  That said, it’s the first thing that really needs attention.

Holy crap, people.  We are now allowed up to 25 Daily quests per day.  You can do a dozen in an hour or two just on the isle, and they’re so easy… I, a holy priest, knock out that dozen in an hour or two.  120 gold an hour is NOT chicken feed.

Those dps sorts could probably do pretty close to all 25 (assuming they don’t do the fishing and cooking quests) in a couple of hours.  That’s about 250 gold all by itself, every day, rain or shine, with surprisingly little effort.  Oh, and one shouldn’t forget that along the way you’ve the normal trash and green and cash drops from most of the mobs you kill.  Probably enough to pay for the armor repairs for most of us and have money left over.

Out of money?  It’s your own darn fault.  I don’t think there is any grinding spot - nothing anyone wants to buy - that will produce as much money as swiftly.  if you’re needing mats and such, well, that’s going to be different.  But if it’s money, this is your first route.

If you are level 70, quest.  Then and only then, farm or craft or play the AH or…

Money for nothing, indeed.

Have fun.