New zone, new level of awesome

So far, the sights in Northrend have been spectacular. Each time they've opened up new stuff I've gone and done some heavy duty exploring. So, when the new build came out last night and I found out it included The Storm Peaks zone being ready, I went flying up to take a look. All I can say is... wow.

From what I can tell, the vast majority of the zone requires a flying mount. The lower, southern parts of the Peaks can be accessed from Crystalsong Forest via a ground mount, but eventually you simply run into unscalable cliffs, and have to wing your way up instead. Plus, as you'll see, there are several places where you have to fly way... WAY up.

Then, there's Ulduar. That's what I'm flying into/around from the 5:30 mark of the following video onward. A Titan city like Ulduman in Khaz Modan and Uldum on Kalimdor, this one, unlike them, is fully intact and not buried underground.

Enjoy the video. If you can, download the full version (180ish MB). Fullscreen is worth it.


High Quality Download here!

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Suck it, paladins

WOO! New beta push. After having not downloaded the last one because it was so minor, and had absolutely nothing of interest for warriors, THIS patch is a very very welcome change. Both the Arms and Fury trees got major changes that redefine what they're all about, but I'll save that for another post.

In addition, 4 new instances were opened - Utgarde Pinnacle, Halls of Lightning, The Oculus, and Caverns of Time: Stratholme. Obviously the last of those is highly anticipated, but the other three are level 80 followups to lower level dungeons in the same hubs. Expect a near future post with lots of screenshots and impressions of each, assuming they're playable. I'll also give Azjol-Nerub another go and see if it's still crippled by terrible encounter bugs.

But these aren't the real superstars of this latest push. Oh no, instead it's something much more gratifying.

A little background. For several builds now, Retribution paladins have been doing insane amounts of damage. If I remember correctly, I believe it's because Judgement of Command is applying twice while the target is stunned, meaning doing double damage. I can attest to be three-shotted as a 77 warrior (albeit in PvE gear) by a 74 Ret paladin several builds ago. 2k melee crit, 7k JoC while stunned, 5k Hammer of Wrath.

As you might imagine, paladins everywhere sprinted to their trainers to respec so they could run around like morons ganking everyone in sight. Not ALL of them, mind you, but certainly a whole fucking lot.

In what was probably an effort to fix this bug finally, Blizzard inadvertantly made a very different change for paladins in the latest push.

All I can say is: karma is a bitch.

More posts later detailing some of the new changes once I get this monstrosity of a patch downloaded and get in game.

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FUCK THE OPT-INS

One thing that's been a real treat for the past few months is having the chance to participate in the Wrath of the Lich King Friends & Family Alpha and Closed Beta tests. While it does ruin the surprise of buying the expansion at release and seeing everything in its shiny finished state, I enjoy the opportunity to actively be a part of making the game better, even if it's something as simple as suggesting a flight path change so that the ride from Point A to B does not take less time than the wyvern trip.

I got my invite back in early Alpha, so it's been almost 3 months since I got started. I got to experience things in their very earliest state, such as Death Knights having spell graphics stolen from other classes and abilities that were broken, unimplemented, or bug-ridden. The best bug that comes to mind was having your summoned ghoul die or reach the end of its duration. The thing would collapse to the ground, and somehow manage to aggro EVERY HOSTILE CREATURE IN VISUAL RANGE. Yakkity Sax has never been more appropriate.

The cool part about the Alpha was the small community. As the name might lead you to believe, the populace consisted of, quite literally, the close friends and family of Blizzard employees. Consequently, the quality of feedback was high, the bitching was low, and constructive thread after constructive thread was made on the forums. OH THOSE HALCYON DAYS.

Now that the Beta's in full swing, in addition to more F&F invites from Blizzard employees, we've added people who got keys from the World Wide Invitational and those who were on the Opt-In list (ie: Blizzard randomly selects you, yay!).

It is, by and large, this illustrious latter group that bears mentioning. See, they're random people. They basically entered a drawing for a beta key and won, so really it's like the Internet versions of the Publisher's Clearing House.

Of course, not every new beta invite is bad - several of my guildies got in too, and for the most part they're not completely worthless (:V). The one direct consequence of this thinning of the player pool, however, is a marked drop in quality on the beta forums. Observe the following recent threads:

Blizzard should remove the need to farm money completely from the game!

Ret paladins are bugged FIX THIS NOW PLZ (spoiler: this is like thread #50 addressing this)

I am bored with this expansion btw I won't propose to my girlfriend til it goes Gold

My 50s reagent is TOO EXPENSIVE

and my favorite...

BAWWWWWWWWWWW MY DOWNRANKING

If you read all of that last one, I will be impressed.

Things are still moving along at a stately pace in ye olde beta, and good changes are happening (except for warriors thus far HO HO), but meantime having to wade through an ankle deep layer of shit coating the General forum is pretty fail.

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PvP vs. PvE

Not being an enthusiast for this blogging shit, I can nevertheless assert that the average lifespan of some random windbag's e-soapbox probably proceeds like so:

1. Dude gets idea.
2. Dude makes blog.
3. Dude posts like a fiend for about a week, because his mind is full of topics.
4. Dude posts sporadically over the next couple weeks, either because he didn't have a lot of material to begin with, or he is bad at thinking of ways to express himself entertainingly.
5. Blog lies fallow thereafter.

Let's see if I can sustain Step 3 longer than a week. I'll shoot for two for now.

Anyhow, on to the real topic of this second post.

PvP vs. PvE has been a long-running debate that has, at times, degenerated into the kind of stupidity usually confined to 9/11 conspiracy theorists or religious nutjobs. Without rehashing the long, sorry history of this neverending argument, let me sum up the salient points that both sides make.

PvE sez:
"I'm harder because I require you to recruit, organize, and direct 25-40 people on an almost daily basis. I require you to tackle encounter after encounter full of random elements while maintaining a balanced raid group, sometimes expecting changes in raid makeup from fight to fight. I require you to not only get over the hump of defeating this content once, but also to continue to farm it thereafter in an efficient fashion while I throw fights of ever-increasing difficulty at you. PvP ain't got shit on me."

PvP sez:
"I'm harder because I require you to recruit, organize, and direct 3-10 people on an almost daily basis. I require you to tackle arena match after arena match full of random elements while maintaining a balanced arena team, sometimes expecting changes in team makeup from match to match. I require you to not only get over the hump of defeating other team makeups once, but also to continue to defeat them in an efficient fashion while I throw brackets of ever-increasing difficult at you. PvE ain't got shit on me."

I know, I know, "I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE." Honestly though, has anyone with half a brain not figured this shit out by now?

"lolz pve is all scripted pvp is different every time you do it" - Is it really? As you're riding your S4-equipped MS warrior towards an equally geared frost mage, are you thinking, "Fuck it, this time I'm going to use RETALIATION!" No. He icelances to burn your Charge, you Hamstring him, he frost novas, you trinket, etc etc probably the frost mage wins. Point is, PvP is scripted too. The only time it ISN'T is when your opponent makes a dumbfuck mistake and you capitalize. PvE bosses just don't make those mistakes.

"rofl pvp is free epics if you do it long enough you can have exactly the gear you want" - Now, I'll allow some leeway on this one. Prior to Season 4, with the exception of shoulders and weapons, you could buy any piece of arena or PvP gear by virtue of nothing more than time spent. Do 10 arena matches a week, someday you'll have enough points for a hat. Daily BG every day? Eventually, here's a ring for your trouble. Now, however, the vast majority of pieces require SOME amount of arena rating. Meaning the more gear you want, the more skilled you have to be. JUST LIKE PVE.

"nobody cares about pve but pvp is an E-SPORT its more popular so it wins lmao" - Please, no. I watched a few minutes of the live broadcast of the 2008 CGS WoW Arena Championship. I honestly felt like punching myself in the dick. Seriously, watching an arena match while two dudes commentate, pretending that this makes video gaming legitimate? Aspiring arena TV stars, don't kid yourselves. People will watch anything competitive. Take curling. Or truck driving. Some people even go head-to-head (wait for it) over oral sex. The point is, you are not special because someone else is watching. Also, PvE guilds broadcast their shit too.

These are three of literally TENS of ways hardcore PvPers and PvE junkies find to put each other down.

Honestly, has a video game come to mean so much to some people that not only must they be REALLY REALLY good at it, but anyone else taking part in a different facet of the game than they are is essentially slumming it?

I ran on BG teams filled with High Warlords-to-be back in the day. I've played at a respectable (2100+) level of arenas. I've cleared every major raid in the game except Naxxramas and Sunwell (C'thun doesn't exist, shut up). I've tanked, healed, and dpsed throughout my PvE career. Is one harder than the other?

Answer: Who gives a shit?

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Months Behind

Or so they tell us.

Welcome to my blog. People who know me will know that I love to hear myself talk - whether it's explaining a strategy for a boss, "yelling" at someone who's fucked up, or simply yammering about some stupid shit that I think is hilarious and everyone else simply humors me for. I was told by someone very near and dear to me that the natural extension of this would be to put together someplace where I can blabber my jaded little heart out. At the same time, while I've got this space reserved anyhow, I can attempt to be informative and opinionated; the latter, I have extensive experience with; the former might take some work.

So, who am I? Well, insofar as this blog is concerned, I am Ekera. I've been playing World of Warcraft since approximately January of 2005. I was an officer and raid leader of a small, severely drama-ridden guild on the Silver Hand server for a few months in mid-2005. Once that fell apart, I rerolled on the Maelstrom RP-PvP server as an orc shaman. I joined what would eventually become Kor'kron Warband in Dec. 2005 and started raiding with them soon after. By early April 2006, I was promoted to officer - primarily because, according to the one and only guild leader we've ever had, Xavier, I was the guy who explained the fights in Ventrilo. I've been helping to lead (I use the term very loosely) this misbegotten, raiding-challenged pack of mongrels ever since.

Who am I personally? Doesn't really matter. Some personal details about myself might slip out from time to time, but only as they pertain to game shit. To 90% of the people I've met in Warcraft, I am some dude on the Internet who talks a lot. So to anyone reading this blog who doesn't already know me, I'll be roughly the same.

How about the purpose of this blog? Well, the blurb at the top sums up what my general aims are, but to go into a bit more detail, this blog will:

- Catalogue some of the more interesting/humorous/inane events from my time playing World of Warcraft.
- Present my own perspective as an officer of a guild that has, against all odds, persisted for 2-1/2 years.
- Explore the term "casual raiding." What does it really mean? Is it really possible? Or are we just kidding ourselves?
- Examine changes in the game, both through patches and expansions, that have changed the face of raiding and the game over time.
- Allow me to run my stupid fucking mouth about shit that is meaningless and/or of very little tangible benefit to anyone.

So, I think that covers most everything. I'm still not sure whether this is a good idea, whether it'll run for a week or a year, and whether it'll be of interest to anyone. However, as the Joker put it so succinctly, "I believe: That which doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger."

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