Blog Posts from "Lower Bracket Underdogs" - Gameriot.com

The Life On The Outside, A Perspective From The Real World

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:21:32 -0500

Because I just can't take this **** anymore. There's no point. It's not even fun.

August 8, 2009. My last blog until this one.

I doubt anyone who read that thought I was being serious. Like everyone else, you probably thought to yourselves: "*sigh* Another one having an emo-rage after facing a prot-pally"

And yeah, that's what I had. But, things took a strange turn.

After this date, I just stopped logging into the World of Warcraft. And this is my story since. A story about IRL.

But let me start from the beginning.

So I once again started the university after failing due to WoW the first time. This time I figured "Currently I'm in a cool social guild with friends so I can keep it on a casual level and still handle my studies".

Well, Wotlk was ****, so I really had no excuse not to follow my plan, but just like you, I am a WoW-aholic. I just can't log out. I need to find that perfect partner for my PvP-teams and I need that gold to enchant that gear for the minor PvE-there is, so I don't have to focus on mana when healing, aka don't have to focus at all when PvEing.

But after that x.x.x patch something, when Prot Pallys was still viable, I just gave up. I wrote that blog and just stopped logging in. I didn't really think I would quit WoW, but I didn't log in for a while.

It hit me one day, about a week after I stopped loggin, when I was at my uni and noticed this familiar girl sitting at a computer close to me. She was asian, and I knew I recognized
her from somewhere... I thought to myself.. "Is it from WoW... MING!?.. No, can't be.. It's a girl.. or can it? no... ESTEL!?... Hmm, no, that doesn't seem realistic since I havn't seen a pic of her yet..."

Then it hit me.. Yes...!
It was sk-aNNa!

sk-*******-aNNa was sitting next to me noobing at a computer.

I immidiatly thought to myself "OMFG; this'll definatly win me those $500 for the top blog.". I could see it in front of my eyes. "Stalking sk-aNNa. +374 likes".

But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't give a ****. I didn't care about writing anymore, I didn't care about expressing my opinions about WoW (Yes, you can be sure I would put in some pala-hatred in that entry such as "She was as real as the Pala-3-key-2k-arena-point-method"). And I just realized that it was over.

The 4 years of prison had finally ended. I didn't want to log into my account.

Wow. WoW. Wow. It's over.

So what's IRL like?

Well, first off, I want to say that this is in no way an entry where I'm trying to say "I'm better than you, I don't play WoW, you shouldn't either, nerd!". I know just as well as you do that when I played WoW, that was what I wanted to do. That was what I thought was fun. I respect people that do what they themselves WANT to do, and even though I won't encourage it, WoW can surely bring a lot of fun. So please don't hate on me for writing an "IRL"-entry. I'm merely trying to bring a perspective. I know I won't get many likes since everyone will probably hate me for going all "Oh this isn't a blog about wow, it's a blog OUTSIDE wow", but... Well.. So be it...

If nothing else, someone will get something to waste their time on on a friday evening. Yes, I've quit WoW but im still here at 1:22 on a friday night, blogging. Well, it's because I have en exam on monday. These days I study. I can't go out/play wow the whole weekend if I have an exam on monday. That's the first lesson I've learned. If you have an exam, focus on it. I've went from a C/D-avarage to an A/B-avarage, simply because I choose to study these days. I never feel the "I need to raise my rating before reset" or "I need to get a flask before raid".

Some people can handle the "I can seperate my IRL from WoW". I couldn't. If you can't identify yourself with this, please don't put myself in your shoes, but rather keep reading just for that great joke you think might come eventually, since you've found one of my earlier entries to be somewhat hilarious.

So this opened a whole new world. As with every drug, you play WoW when you have nothing else to do. I think I've mentioned this before. No, when I played I never identified WoW with a drug, and I won't go into that discussion because I think its rediculous. But as with every drug some people might identify with a drug, it's something you do when you're bored. Instead of learning, developing yourself or making new social contacts, you spend that time enjoying your drug. And of course you're enjoying the drug. It's a drug.

In IRL you do what you have to do. You attend family-birthdays, sometimes when your used-to-be best friend has a birthday you might be there aswell unless you have a raid. When being out you make sure you get to point X, perform task Y and get home as soon as possible to get back into the real world, Azeroth.

Now, once again, I'm not saying WoW is anything like the "real" drugs, but depending how you identify a drug, it's still a drug. And no, to most of you I still don't call WoW a drug, it's just a reference point. There are similarities, I know you agree about that.

So it was astonoshing.
I read this article yesterday about this guy from Australia accidently getting lost with this car, driving 60 miles in the wrong direction.. The papers somehow caught up to it (Ask yourselves: How?) and eventually asked him why he didn't get a GPS.
He replied: -With a GPS you can't get lost. What's the fun in that?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I played WoW I was very well stuck in this "Get from X to Y as fast as possible and then back to Azeroth" that I forgot to enjoy the trip. And, yes this is gonna sound cheesy, I forgot about the travel, which is life.

I'm still shrugging about that last sentence but I'm gonna let it be and conclude it right here..

Btw, I know I owe you guys 2/2 of our guild-night-out, but... I can't currently promise you anything. I guess it depends on how well this one is recieved which I guess will be.. Yeah, pretty low odds...

And I'm sorry. No pictures, no jokes, no nothing. Just some reflections.

Now I just emptied the bottle, and this entry didn't really take the direction I though it would take. It feels more like a speech on why to quit WoW rather than what happened to me after I quit but.. The more I think about it the better... Because Blizz pretty much took the best 4 years of my life and turned it into a world filled with elves, ganks, unbalance, easy-mode and farming, and thus became my nemesis.

So tbh, this entry has turned into "Here's a fun read" to "******* god christ I hate you Blizzard for going so ******* commercial that if this ****-entry only inspires one person to quit WoW it'll be ******* worth it."

Well... I guess I'll see you in a year or so....
To hell with it...

World of Moneycraft - The Decline of PvP

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:17:57 -0400

Let me take a minute of your time in between my follow-up on our night out and talk to you some about the stupidity of mankind and what it has turned World of Warcraft into.

When and how did World of Warcraft go from a game to a money-making machine?

A picture for the feed.

But lets start from the beginning.

This struck me as I was checking out a .NET forum, and noticed how they had added a section regarding Windows Mobile.

"I wonder if I can do anything sweet in this" I asked myself.

I went to Google to find some development-samples and information about languages and packs, and typed "Windows Mobile".

First page. A page that sells/tells about phones with Windows Mobile.

Second page, a really bad Wiki-site.

Third page, a spamsite offering some free Windows Mobile software.

I sighed. At the 6th hit I actually found Microsoft own page for developing Windows Mobile.

I thought to myself: "How many know or knows what it means that they have Windows Mobile on their phone but developers?"

That reminded me of a while ago when I was asked to make this banner for an online-store that sells laptops.

(It's on my own server so don't worry about the traffic + please don't count this as advertising. These products doesn't even exist anymore, and it's f*n Swedish. I'm just gonna illustrate a point here.) Oh yeah, the banner isn't too hot but then again I'm not a flash-pro.

So as I know the guys owning this company I was casually asked "Hey man, can you make a 160x600 banner for us?"

"Sure", I replied, "How would you like it?"

"Uhm.. I don't know.."

I sighed. Developing something without specifications really sucks.

So the conversation continued:

- Ok, I guess I'll just slap 2 products up and add some specifications and a price then?

- Sure, sounds good.

- Ok, which products do you want then?

- Uhm, take these 2...

- Alright, what do you want me to specify about them?

- Just write "250GB HD, 2,0GHz cpu and HDMI"

- Really? You don't think they want to know what sort of CPU, how much RAM, RPM etc?

- No, no, no, people just want a computer with lots of CPU and some modern things to it, they don't know about those things...

- Oh... But.. I mean.. If you play RMP it's a damn difference if it's Hemo, Fire and Holy compared to Mutilate, Frost and Disc.. Don't you think?

- Wtf are you talking about?

- You don't play WoW?

- No...

- Oh...

- Anyways, I have this friend Celex who can use a new computer, you think you guys can hook him up?

So I started looking around. "He can't be right", I thought to myself. "When did people stop caring about quality?"

As I browsed around different online stores I noticed that everyone just kept flashing "X GB HD", "DUAL CORE PROCESSOR", "WEBCAM".

It's like describing a mage as "They've got frostbolts and firebolts that do a lot of damage."

I was disgusted. People don't care about how good their computers are. They don't need a good developer enviorment or a good gaming computer, or even one that will last a few years/is upgradable. All they want to do is Twitter and Facebook.

I kept looking around and the last few years this seems to have happened to every industry.

IKEA, H&M, Wallmart.

People don't care about quality, they want something cheap and fast. Kinda of makes life feel boring and endless.

But all of these companys are very successful, and unfortunatly it seems that the online MMO-companys picked up on these.

As I've mentioned before, there is a reason Activation merged with Blizzard, and it was not to improve the game. It was to profit from it.

And guess what? There is no money in PvP.

Back in the days WoW used to be challanging and getting good gear actually took an effort. Today people can get full t8.5+ by just running easily puggable heroics. Why? Catering to the casual. Offering low-quality cheap stuff like every other successful company does.

Server transfers are going down to 3 days and you'll even be able to cross-server transfer AND have alliance and horde on the same PvP-server. Why? Money.

Disregard the reason you couldn't in the first place, now that WoW is a money machine that reason doesn't seem to important anymore.

Trust me, it's just a matter of time before you can buy official gold online.

And I don't give a **** about PvE. There's not even any use running 25-mans anymore. It's not really too much fun compared to PvP, and there are no upgrades, since either you can just do the daily heroic and get top notch gear, or your ******* gear you've wiped over for weeks will be available 1 patch later.

Yes, the instances have become harder (well...), but instead you can get the gear through Heroics.. W H A T ! ?

What's the point getting new shiny gear when every scrub will wear them aswell? Oh and don't give me this casual ****. I know it's the 'cool' thing to be these days but who are you trying to fool? When you're blogging about a video-game, you're definately not casual.

You play this game for a reason, and wheter you like it or not, standing there in nice armor, owning noobs and being generally good gives you a nice feeling.

So they **** in our faces and piss in our mouths. Doing minor twitches to PvP every patch to keep us going 'just that extra little time' in order to profit the small ammount they can from us PvPers.

But have you seriously taken a look at the changes?

Improved size in Dalaran arena? LOL. The ******* platform is still just as small making it a ****** up ****-arena.

Changes to RoL? Who gives a ****, it was fine.

Removing the fires in Valor? LOL THEY'RE STILL THERE.

Resilience change? DIDN'T CHANGE ****.

New unannounced queue-rules forcing you to play RNG-games for 3 rating even at 2000?

SEASON 6 STILL IN PATCH 3.2!????!??!?!??????!?!??

They do absolutely nothing to make us believe they care about PvP. When designing new instances, making mounts 1.5 speed, casualing it all up for everyone, why couldn't they just put one, one single one, to have a look at PvP. Why couldn't they just call Kalgan and ask "Hey, can you write down a small list of changes for PvP and well put a programmer on it?".

Or are the employees of Blizzard such ******* nerds that noone cares about PvP? Lets ******* face it. Kalgan was good. And he has a hot GF. Thus, he was not the biggest nerd ever. And he cared about PvP. (Or is it GC that has a hot GF? Nah, can't be)

It's like. The PvE is IKEA, and PvP is Mazeratti. Just that Mazeratti developed one good car a while ago and now they keep making tricycles.

With the new changes I will probably never PvE again, and I will definatly not try to reach high in the arenas while getting my face all ****ted (****?) over.

It's come to the point where I don't even try to make this entry at least a little funny.

So I've had enough. I'm joining this new cool trend. Playing casual. Hi Bodi, Hi Ming, want to be friends?

I'll log in two, three times a week to play some casual arena, and that's it. If I'm bored.

Because I just can't take this **** anymore. There's no point. It's not even fun.

When a game comes down to money, it's just bound to fail...

Guildmeeting in thy holy spirit (1/2) + Applying Yiska's golden rules

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:05:38 -0400

Even though I hate writing multiple entries about the same topic, my recent entry about Druid and Priest night out (link) was fairly successful, and as we, only a couple of weeks after, decided to have a )

Blizzard to release DK-customized Keyboard

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:14:26 -0400

Today when I got home from 'what noone cares about' I figured 'Better check the guildchat to see what ***s was online at a time like this".

Turns out, quite a lot was online.

So I started talking... Profila was on his alt, so we chatted a bit, and then there was also a couple of others who seemed to be playing arena at the time.

As me and Profila got bored of trolling each other and random-scurbs in the WG-general we started trolling the arena-guys. After a couple of sentences without replies we went to the guild-tab and noticed that it was a Ret and a DK playing 3v3.

After a couple of minutes one of them wrote "Stop writing in the gchat, I can't focus".

We looked at eachother in-game. /shrug

Then the idea hit me.

How can a DK or a Ret read the guildchat while rolling their faces on the keyboard?

So I googled the matter, and apparently, there is a solution coming up:

Quote from GC:

Remove Personal Rating!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:14:27 -0400

This is just going to be a short entry about an idea/suggestion that just popped in to my head. No irony, no jokes, no sarcasm.

This should have been suggested before, but as far as I can recall, it hasn't.

Druid/Priest night out! Handling those russians with style...

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:09:27 -0400

So this is the epic tale containing everything from old-schools russian players on EU servers, to the diversity of 1800 vs 2k+ rated teams. It's a tale of WoWers in the clubs, and the finitive answer to the question "Are every WoWer really a nerd?"

), I hope you get my point that Bodi, our new WoM fav, is actually right when saying that you don't have to be a geek to be a serious WoWer. As long as you keep it in the closet.

Nights peeps...
- FOVhEalA (New druid nick, yeah?)

Patch Notes - Covering the Uncoverable

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:56:45 -0400

As everyone knows, up in the 3k bracket where the really cool players play it's all about min-maxing. Unless you're a DK you won't get there with random silences and button-mashing.

So, as most people don't play at this rating, they havn't really considered all min-maxing a true PvPer must make every time a new patch comes. Just like any pro athlete, a real player must adjust to any change made to his sport.

There's a lot of coverage on the major changes, so I won't comment those, today I will instead cover those minor, hard to see, hidden buffs/nerfs that we all suffer every now and then.

So lets get started.

The Greatest Blog In The World

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:40:40 -0400

people to run 5-mans to get Ulduar gear through marks? Other games? Windows 7?

None seemed to fit the profile of the direction I wanted to take the greatest blog ever in.

But eventually I knew exactly what to write about. Characters became words, words became lines, and jokes were lined up one after another, including everything from Ben Stiller tragic loss of humor (at birth) to Neilyos last girlfriend. What I wrote was so excellent at such magnitude that the first page of comments would be filled with 'first page', and the second page would all be Lusitania going on a picture spree in honor of the entry. Even Ming would come in with a comment going '53rd!'. The amount of likes would break Gameriots int-cap on their database type (Int, 2^32?), and my e-fame would be a fact.

The links to my blog would spread faster than the death of Michael Jackson, and during several occasions of the day Gameriot would crash due to the massive traffic. Facebook-groups would be created, and those that had Brüno booked in for the night would just skip going and read my entry over and over again. This blog would even inspire Rosie O'Donell to go on a diet. South Park episodes would be created and I would probably have gotten my own NPC in game.

I would've been called a mix between Chris Rock, Brad Pitt, Jack Black, Sarah Palin and Ali G (Doesn't that sound awesome?), and even Oprah would be in line to have me on her show.

But then the impossible happened. As I've been telling you earlier, my laptop is back from it's third repair and still get random bluescreens. Stupid as I am, albeit in the flow of true epic porportions, I forgot to consistently backup my writings, and as I was about to hit the 'Publish Entry' button and go to the history as The Dark Druid, my computer frooze, and I was informed I had a Bluescreen-code 124 at register 0x000FF23AB.

And I just can't recall what I wrote about...

So... Unfortunatly... This isn't the greatest entry ever written... This is just a tribute...
(Copyright Fovheala and Jack Black)
(+1 to any comment guessing what I listened to on my way to work today)

New VoA-Monster with new drops, Update on the Shoudlers/Weapon, Expack closer than suspected?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:23:47 -0400

So I got one of my Blizzard-sources really drunk yesterday, and he started to spill the beans.

Apparantly, for S7, Blizzard has some sweet plans for a new VoA-monster that will also make up for the loss of weap/title/shoulders from the 2v2.

Serennias promotion of DKs on Blizz behalf seems to finally have payed of as hes going to history as... Yes, you guessed it...

So those of you who have been following the patch notes should've noticed that all 5-mans will now drop Emblem of Conquest, and the new instance, both 10- and 25-man will drop the new emblem. On top of that, the Daily quests will now reward 1 or 2 of the new emblem.

See what Blizzard is doing here?

They want everyone to get Ulduar gear, so that everyone can fully gear next patch, to be ready to enter their grand finale, the instance with Arthas, top notch.

If my predictions are correct, we will see the next patch in a month, 3 months with that patch, then the last patch for 3 months and some scrub patch once again giving DKs and Paladins the ability to one-shot people for 1 month. Then expansion.

But at least I will have some fun with you guys saying "Level 90 will fix it!" and "Resilience will fix it!".

So 8 months til expansion. Seems reasonable.

Edit: Shoutout to my main man Profila for helping me getting that Blizz-contact drunk.

Death Knights - The Root of All Evil

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:22:24 -0400

Everyone knows that for millenniums, women have been the root of all evil. Equations, logic proofs and the church have all confirmed it.

However, it looks like we're coming to a new era in terms of evil.

Suddenly, when taking a closer look at the Death Knight, we realize that compared to women, women appear as pure as Kintt.

When the new millennium came, some, including Yiska, predicted the end of the world due to a prophecy told by Platon many years ago. Now the real word managed to survive, however, what Yiska didn't know was that Platon wasn't talking about the real world. He was talking about the World... of Warcraft.

On the millenium night, 9,5 years ago from now, a new Blizzard Employee, lets call him CG to protect names, was out grabbing a couple of drinks with Kalgan and Tigole.
He was a shy fellow, but very ambitious, and to him the end always justified the means.

It was on this night the new root to all evil would begin.

Kalgan (K) and Tigole (T) were in the middle of a somewhat trolly balance discussion when...

K: Only a couple of years to release now though Tigole, and imo Warriors are too OP in this alpha
T: Oh i don't know, Frost Mages should be able to own them quite good
K: Yeah thats true, but is that really how we want the game to be? A rock, paper, scissor type of thing?
T: Hmm.. Well, you're right... It has both positive and negative sides... Yo CG bro, why arn't you drinking your beer?
CG: It's a little strong and I don't want to get drunk.
K: Oh come on... How are you supposed to come up with great patchnotes if you can't drink beer?
T: Yeah, Kalgan's right. Are you a ***** or are you a man...? UD or Night Elf male?
CG: Stop being mean, I'm no Night Elf male! I will admit I've had some experiences with other men, but I'm not as gay as a Night Elf male!
K: Wtf dude...?
(CG finishes his beer)
CG: Hey guys, you know what would be really cool? To later, in like some ex-pack, add a super-hero class that can own every other class, and then like... (CG gets interrupted)
K: Hahahaha, yeah right.. Hey intern, maybe you shouldn't drink and come up with ideas after all!
T: Hahaha, yeah I agree...

Unfortunatly for all of us except Serennia, both T and K got a little too drunk this night to remember what they had discussed... But CG had played it cool. And set his plan in motion.

About 9 years later, in a very mysterious way, our CG was promoted and implemented his Super-hero class.

messages is that they remove the weap and shoulders from 2v2 because of the imbalance.

And who are the most imbalanced at 2v2?

Yep. DKs.

So essentially, DKs are the reason you can no longer get a good weapon in 2v2 in S7, and the reason you have to run some ****ty comp with players you don't want to play with in 3v3.

Now as I've stated in some comments I really don't care whether you can get shoulder, title and weapon or not in 2v2, as long as they still offer the S6 weapons for 2v2 rating, but I still think it's a damn sad situation. After all, 2v2 IS easier than 3v3, even if playing a DK is also easier in 2v2 than 3v3.

Aye, I'll just end this garbage here.
Damn I enjoy blogging when I'm forced to work 7am-14pm on Sundays!

Now flame me! Flame me like you've never flamed before!

Nab Healing Guide - Setting up a good Grid enviorment

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:24:54 -0400

So it's about time I posted something somewhat half useful here, and I figured, why not share something that literally made me win the healing-meters by 20% in every single 25-pug, and carried me to 2,2k+ rating in hateful gear. (Some may say the class helped here aswell, but w/e).

So if you're an addon-newb, have a new healing-alt or just want to opt your healing even more, this might be worth a read and a tryout.

This caters mainly to Druids and Priests, but could also be useful for Paladins.

I recently read a thread on the declining site Arenajunkies names "How do you target your team-mates", with replies ranging all from f1-f5 to mouse-scroll to clicking.

Noone seemed to mention a nice grid-enviorment, so I really don't know how many actually knows about this.

Considering Serennias revealing blog about how every fan of him is a scrub, I guess there's at least someone who can pick up something useful from this.

Everyone knows I can't write an entry without some comments on stuff I either hate or like. In this case it's actually like (First?).
The recent 2v2 change that you can purchase everything from 2v2 rating except shoulders and weap, and that you won't get a title, is actually damn nice, assuming Blizzard allows people to buy the S6 weaps.

With full Relentless and Furious weaps you are definatly ready to take the desired rating in 3v3, and as I've explained earlier, shoulders mean ****.

The title-loss simply means that 4 out of the classes that got an easy ride to Glad now doesn't and I approve of that. Facerolling a DK shouldn't be a free Glad-title, and anyone able to get it in 2v2 should be able to get it in 3v3 aswell assuming he actually is better than all enhance-shamans as he claims.

And if you don't have the time to find a 3v3 and put some time in to that I don't really know if you deserve the weapon. It should be about practice and skill, and not about playing lucky setups in 2v2.

2v2 should be about fun and learning, and I definatly think the current changes promote that. You still get gear, you still get points, you can still compete and learn, but in order to really compete you need to become a little better.

One thing I dislike though is that Blizzard doesn't just increase the PR gain for 2v2, or even set a rule that after 10 wins your PR matches your TR. Seeing as the 2v2 will matter less now, it's excellent for teamjumping and trying out some new partners/setups, however, it still sucks to have 200 games up to your TR even though you only play 2k+ rating no matter what mate you play with.

In my case my mate in 2v2 and one of my other mates in 3v3 is on vacation for 10 days which means I can't play seriously and improve at all during this time. Forget skirmishes and BGs, every decent player knows arena-play on a higher level is way different than the lower levels.

Oh thy sweet alcohol...

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:48:25 -0400

So I'm back writing another meaningless blog. Obviouslky drunk again so don't expect the quality to be good. (As if it ever has been).

I can't help feeling the world feels like a better place since Micheal Jacksons passing....
Somwhow I've had a really nice week IRL-wise, and somehow I found a premade on my alt actually able to 2000-0 all games we had on whatever BG we had. (Even SotA, even though all honor in there is for vein and all achievements are bugged for us horde).

Something just feels better in the world today.

One might argue that one mans fortune is another mans misery but come on...

Everyone knows the alliance is the Michael Jacksons of Azeroth.

I don't mind gnomes playing well (Sorry Paperkat, in my book you're not in this category) or nelf females playing superior druids (even though some might say we're overpowered... On the other hand, druid vs druid is all you play in 2k+ so who can cpmplain? That's ******* balanced competition) but I ******* hate those Melfs and Human males.... Sorry... Can't handle it...

I read some article glorifiying MJ on the train home today and, inbetween all [talent] and [achievemnt] spam in his name, i couldn't help feeling the world has a pretty ****** up view on this guy.

I mean, looking at all the facts of his life, how can anyone not see that this mother ****** child rapist is retarded? I really don't blame him for what he's accused of doing, because I really don't think he realized what it was about. I really believe he has a mental level of an 8-year old, and thus all his actions become forgivable.

Aye.

This si a WoW-site....

My head is really spinning right now but I'll add one last thing...
I promised myself never to do this but....

I've got half the article ready already...

Oh yeah, giving you some flirts on my upcoming entry on how to annoy a BG, do you remember how much i hate achievements?

*GM

I really havn't seen as much about the resilience change as I've wanted to...

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 11:18:56 -0400

One final thing to note is that after my suggestions on how to make all BGs the length of SoTa I was surprised to see that Blizzard actually lowered the max-points in AB and EotS and put a time-limit on WSG.

Now there's no way in hell any Blizz dev would be stupid enough to read my blogs (I certainly hope for the sake of the game), but at least this means I'm not always way off on what I think Blizzard should do to improve gameplay.

Sound-card drivers download complete.
Back to WoW.

Dualspec? I need ***** (selfscensored) pentaspec!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:39:30 -0400

So as I'm sure all of Gameriot has absorbed right now, I'm playing a druid these days.

This has 2 major perks.

1. I can actually team up with others than rogues to be successful in 2's.
2. There's a lot less whining from
I've also browsed the public PvP-forums today. A LOT of druid whining going on even though priests are higher represented in all brackets. (Data varies on 2's but even if druid overrepresents them, it's damn equal.)

The priest reply is of course "PRIESTS ARE SITTING ON THEIR RATIGN AFTER NERF "

Yeah right.

We had a mage saying it's hard to down a druid when his frostbolts takes 2.5 sec to cast and do 3.5k damage. REALLY!?
Well our single lifebloom only ticks for like 400 so how are we supposed to sruvive? ((

So we had this wise guy with a very good insight on how to balance things though.

These were his (The more I think about it, probably her) suggested druid-changes: (Lets see if I can remember them all)

* Improved Barkskin no longer gives dispel-resistance.
* You should be able to heal Cycloned targets but not damage them
* Changing forms should no longer remove snaring-effects
* Tree of Life should no longer improve your armor
* Every DPS class should have an ability to lower HoT-healing with 50%

Now how about them apples?
I don't even think he was trolling.
Man I love the public forums...
Sounds kinda like a reversed versions of what Serennia suggests for DKs every entry...

Saturday morning ranting / New BG / Old BGs / My beloved laptoop :(

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:12:40 -0400

I guess that's all for today. I can probably find some more **** to write so lets hope I don't regret posting just yet. (I mean, I don't want to be an Xaernath (or however he spells his name) and post 3-4 entries per day. (Thanks to Vir for this bashing-tip))

Nestled paranteshis = skill.

Blizzard are such ******* sellouts... But does it really work?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:48:24 -0400

So a lot of interesting changes has been made towards this whole 'leveling' experience the last couple of years.

I don't know how many of you played from early vanilla-wow like me, but didn't you just get a feeling that the developers back in those days wanted us to actually have a challanging and rewardful game?

There were no questions about lowering HS-time, majorly nerfing bosses every patch or lowering the mount costs.

Now I might remember wrong but I have a feeling most of the blues just wrote "Live with it" everytime someone whined, and if I'm not mistaken that wasn't too often.

Side note:
This is actually based on a real story, and all pictures are real. This time it ended well though, after quitting WoW our warrior-hero went on a diet and today he is... Yes, you guessed it.

Ben Affleck.

Tailoring other classes like DKs in the arena

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:38:06 -0400

Now there is no lie in the fact that the Death Knights has been optimized for a lot of situations in WoW where other classes have had problems. Including the arena.

Now I know most of us don't even bother trying to get changes in arena these days since the developers usually don't have a clue on what's going on, but looking closer at the DK, one can suspect otherwise.

Now I don't know if this is because Kalgan was still present during the DK development, or if there was some other persons that recently have left, but if the same dev team that developed DKs still develop, they actually have a clue on what's going on in the arenas. (Or this saying "put 1000 monkeys in front of 1000 typewrites and they'll eventually do something right) is true.

I mean, look at this.

Ever since people started drinking in the arenas, having drain-setups with pets as drink interrupters has been very viable. However, people soon adapted and figured out how to get a couple of tics of. Jump of that Blades Edge-edge, hibernate that cat and run away, or (well, recently), go up and down in Dalaran Sewers.

This obviously hurt the Warlocks and Hunters who earlier only had to hit the ctrl+1 and then DPS.

So what did the devs do with the DK? Well, first of all they gave them a pet, which was just stupid in the first place considering their ranged abilitied and slows, but this pet also got the ability to jump from pillars. Also the ability to jump in 300.000 km/h after you and catch up as soon as you tried to run for some ticks. They even jump over the fire in Ring of Valor.

The devs also seemed to realize that it was really hard to keep pets up if they were to buff the pala burst to 20k, so they figured "Hey, lets make that DK pet an instant respawn every 30 secs since palas will just one-shot it".

Smart indeed. The pet is an important part of some classes game. Well, part of Warlocks and Hunters anyways. A DK basicly has absolutely no use for his pet and a good DK can play just as well with his pet as without it.

Hated Pet

However, the hunter, which pet is supposedly "his best friend", and the warlock, who simply can't stay alive without his pet, and definatly can't get a kill against valid players without his pet, does not get this. They can spec one insta-summon, and yet their pets basicly go down just as fast.

But what the hell, they're part of the old WoW, so screw them. WE HAVE HERO CLASSES NOW!

I don't really wanna ramble about all the abilities that DK has, everyone has figured out that they bascily have 'what everyone else has but no MS' by now, and I really don't mind. Well, i wouldn't mind if it was an even playing field at least.

But if they're going to opt the DK like this, why not do it to the other classes aswell?

Why make sure every DK ability is suited for the arenas, while just ignoring the rest of the classes?

I mean, they basicly have 4 interrupts. Gnaw, Death Grip, and 2 silences (one blank, zzz).

On top of this they have the ability to AoE-CC, to control their distance to their target and tons of magic-shields.

Hated class with gay racial

Earlier they even ******* had a class-specific ability towards druids. Wtf was that about?

So back to my point.

DKs seem tailored for the arenas, but how come no other classes get tailored like that?

Why don't they make sure fear only runs in one direction so Warlocks doesn't have to get LoS'd by their own CC? Why dont they allow mages frostbolts to take a turn into a 1 meter LoS or so? Why don't they lower stealth detection so you cant get a lucky-random opening when seeing the rogues 15 yards away from you? Why don't they increase the HP on mana tide? Why don't they?

All of those are concerns that wouldn't affect PvE at all but would tailor the classes to fit the arena a little better just as they've done with every single DK ability.

There are tons of these changes that can be made that allows Blizzard to balance PvP better. Currently they have to balance the game when one is around a pillar and when one isn't. They have to balance around when a rogue gets taken in stealth and when one doesn't. They have to balance around when a warlock has his pet up and when he hasn't.

Caster-burst is too high when not LoSed, it's far to low when LoS. How are they suppsoed to reach a good balance there?

With DKs they solved it perfectly, there are no pillars since DK can just grip their target to where they want it.

They seemed to start adapting other classes a little considering warriors can basicly charge from under the bridge, around and up on the bridge on BE these days, but that's basicly all I've seen on tailoring other classes in the arena.

So when the hell are we going to stop seeing minor nerf/buffs like "DKs only burst 9,9k instead of 10k now" and get some "All pets can now jump off bridges" or "Spells will now determine LoS on where the target was 1 sec before the spell went off in order to balance casters in the arena".

I find it odd that noone in their hundred of hours spent in meetings around the DK raised their hand and said "But if we do all these optimized arena-changes to the DK, shouldn't we try to get some arena-specific changes into other classes aswell?"

And on that note, don't you ever find it odd when seeing changes like "[Random Name Level 40 Item] now had their graphic changed" or "[Random Level 10 mob] now have 10% lower HP", someone has actually summoned a meeting, and they have discussed and probably voted on wheter this should be changed or not?

I baffles me, it truly does..

(I know it may confuse some that I don't have any colors on the text, nor any +1 fishing, but it's time to faceroll with a warrior so... Sorry =/ )

"Basicly its just tank and spank and move from things on the ground"

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:35:57 -0400

Yeah, I'm not a hot streak right now. The reason I just said that is that I used to play mage, but since our guild, consisting mainly of IRL-friends, needed a healer I rerolled druid (No, this was before they got buffed).

Hot streak was nice. For you who don't know thats the buff you get as a firemage when you score 2 critical striker in a row and get a 'free' pyroblast. It's probably still nice, I wouldn't know.

But thats not the issue here. The issue is that Naxx-25 was an introduction raid to wotlk. Get people playing, get people some gear. I'll accept that. I dont mind having more warriors and rogues in the arena that cant pummel/kick but still make 2k rating due to form since its free points, but...

I'm PvE these days. I don't have the time to grind 500k honor for the gear. Sorry. So, coming from the arena to the PvE-scene is interesting. Except that i basicly heal 70% of the healing done in all the pugs i join (The healers in my guild are ******* good, that sux) I also recieve whispers in the line of "Wow man, you CR'd (combat ressed) me just a couple of seconds after I died, I've never seen that before" and "Nice warstomp/hibernate/cyclone/root there, why havnt any druid done that before?".

I don't want to be an ******* here, but thats natural play in the arena.. In PvE its 'exceptional'.

So after playing naxx for a while and sarth (3d), when joining ulduar, i started to relize that every (EVERY) ******* boss in wow has 2 things in commong dps-wise.

Do DPS and move from things on the ground. Really, 70% of the fights is just about that, or a variation about it. (Like Hodir, move to the 'new ground' when BDM tell you to).

And how ******* hard is it?

Every time i loose an arena game i think '****, if i were good enough i wouldve seen that situation coming and prehotted my warlock before the chain-CC'. In PvE that doesn't exist.

In PvE (Well a while ago) when i 'was a piece in telling people what to do' there was one thing i kept repeating.

"DONT KEEP STANDING IN THE ******* GROUND IF THERE IS SOMETHING UNDER YOU UNLESS YOURE TOLD DIFFERENTLY".

As a healer i make a mistake every 20th try or so. Half my grid are under 50% and i just tunnelvision and cant focus on where i stand for 5 seconds. Its up to me wheter we fail or get free loot.

I realise that its something i have to work on, that should only happen 1/500 when im hungover or drunk, but still.

The DPS, which usually have one, yes ONE thing to care about, which is making enough dps, keeps dying because they stand in a ******* big circle on the ground. How hard can it be? What are they looking at? The boss HP? That wont change.. Their own HP? Thats not up to them (Unless theyre a DK that basicly heal themselves up to 100% in one click ofc). So...

How hard can it ******* be?

I try to believe the best in people. I mean look at Affix. He keeps ******* the mages, but at least his intentions are good. Hes probably a nice chap IRL. Most of you Gamerioters probably are. But you cant deny, when trying to see the best in people, that 84.6% of the worlds population are ******* idiots.

"Yes, i realise you're used to clicking your ******* spells, and i realise that youre doing ok dps, but if im telling you that youll do more when binding your keys you have to ******* believe me...."

A lot of rage tonight.

But no, i wont go back to just PvPing because even though the difference between skill is the comparisation between Aristotoles and peter jackson (I didn't use capitals there on purpose), its just way more comfortable to live irl and neglect that social propaganda from peter than it is studying and understanding all of Aristotoles (If he played WoW) thoughts.

So back to the issue. I've always had this idea about 'arena' PvE. Every person in the raid had to own a person 'of their own class'. Obviouslt it would be easier for certain specs, etc, etc, but a good PvPer would have no problem owning his 'opponent' no matter what spec.

So i kept brainstorming about this idea until i came to Ulduar. Again. Nothing new. Move from the ground, and do DPS. Honestly, the difference between Ulduar and Naxx is the graphics of the things on the ground.

I realise my idea will never happen because, as youve probably figured out already, Blizzard knows people are idiots. Im sorry, but thats the truth. Im not calling you an idiot, even though you probably are (84.6%, i have a bigger chance being right calling you an idiot than not) but Blizzard knows that if they made a boss where each and every individual had to perform, noone would down him until he got nerfed as any other boss...

So, the 'new' Blizzard decided that PvE should be easy, and I'm fine with it, but please. Give me a challange in some aspect of the game without having to farm 500k honor every other month. PLEASE.

Im so tired......

So what about those shoulders?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:41:32 -0400

Do you remember the good old days? Back in season 1 and 2, lasting for so long that anyone could pick up the shoudlers. They had beautiful design indeed. Man, if you had the shoulders you immidiatly got invited to anything. You were the ******* ****. Well, this was S1 anyways. Before people realized 'Maybe its worth getting some PvP gear'. S2 came and every newb picked up the shoulders. THEY LOOKED ******* AWESOME.

Then the whine came.

WHAAAA, even though i know how to play (to some extent) and are the current fotm other players look as cool as i do! ((((( WHAAA i have ******* rolled lock (remember, S2) to ******* 70 and everyone can get the shoulders i have QQ :'''((((

"Yo Kalgan, I have an idea. Obviously the WoWers dont really give a **** about balance, they just want to make sure theyre the niftiest ******* out there. Shoulders are prett nifty m8... Obviously people thinkg theyre cool if they have em.. LETS ABUSE IT M8:D:D Want another beer btw?"
So, ok, some nawbs whined, but everyone was pretty ok with it. If you wanna look badass you better ******* deserve it. Shoulders became status and, when trying to get a new team, or setting up a PuG, you REALLY knew that the guy with PvP shoulders could play.

So they came up with the idea to put rating on shoulders. Now I didn't mind, i mean, i thought it was a ****** up idea considering i didnt have any problems kicking ass whatever gear i met, but i can understand the developers thoughts. Why try to solve a complex solution with anything other than putting a reallyh delicious worm on the hook? Meanwhile they also implemented the achievement-system. GG.
(PvE-section, skip if youre only PvP). I used to go up to peeps and they'd invite me without even asking me hoping i'd press yes. Yes, i hat the shoulders....
These days you walk up with your PvP gear and they say "WHat is that, lvl 18 gear?"

Life was ******* good.

Then came Wotlk. I mean, I'm obviously not going to complain about all the fail Wotlk meant, but seriously. This is where the game went downhill.

But to stick to the subject. Kalgan (The 'oh so hated'.. On a side-note, i really hate you for hating him) left and some random dudes came. Fun! ... ..... .... .... ... <- These four section of dots speak for themselves. That is the whine about PvP in Wotlk. I just CBA.

SO!

Back to the shoulders. Yeah, the team figured "WELL OBVIOUSLY THIS KALGAN GUY REALISED, AFTER MANY TESTS, THAT IT WAS ******* GOOD TO HAVE THE SHOULDERS AT 2200 RATING".

I'm really sorry about the caps, but i try to reflect my opinion on the current developers intelligence and that is only possible using caps.

SO!

Everyone is currently thinking "lol i hate these newbs, this fovea guy is a ******* druid whining about shoulders only costing 2200 rating LOLOLOLO".

NO!

I dont even want the shoulders! And here is what this ******* entry is all about.

Really.
REALLY.
WHY THE **** DO YOU CONSTRUCT A ******* UGLY PVP SET AND DECIDE THAT THIS DESIGN SHOULD RUN THROUGH ALL SEASONS!? ARE YOU ****IGN RETARDED!?

I'm sorry, but this just makes me a little upset. Im not the guy saying "you make 100 billion a month fix AV lag QQQQ" but.. Come on. It's not hard hiring a designer, and any ******* nitwit can say "No, this looks like ****... Really".
But these new shoulders are really ugly, and people dont even want to wear them. Theyre the worst upgrade and you look like ****.

So what is the point with shoulders these days?

Im honestly (Really.. Im not ******* trolling here) skipping T8.5 parts because theyre so ******* ugly. T8.5 shoulders dro pfrom Yoggsaron. Im happy because theyre so ******* ugly that i hopr our summer-raid will never take him down. I really hate deciding between look and stats. But... Well, i mean, i could wear it.

BUT THE ******* PVP GEAR. REALLY!?
I havnt really done the proper research to defend this entry tbh, but i havnt seen a good looking set yet. I really havnt. I'd rather have T8.5 (Well, Id rather have T7.5 before T8.5) before i would wear those ****ty child-rapist looking ******* bastard micheal george looking shoulders.

Really. Who would want to wear them?

Why even take them?

Its the worst upgrade, it looks exactly like the deadly shoulders with no requirement and noone is gonna give a **** about you wearing them.

This, in my opinion, is the problem with World of Warcraft today. Developers are on different levels and they arn't communcation. I have no doubt one of the brightest minds are programming for Blizzard, but the prople in charge are ******* idiots.

And I'm sorry but.. What the **** fo we have now? I dont even want to wear PvP gear and I'm so ******* glad I'm a tree..:. I dont know why the rest of you keep playing...

Its just... Ridicoulus.
Its not even worth trolling "QQ WHERS YUR SHOIULDS !? " anymore...
******* sux..

So im just gonna hit 'send' now, i really cba checking for errors/typos.

Honestly i really **** this ****enrtry aswell...

YERS!!!! Updated patchnotes!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:33:04 -0500

'

I might've had a tad too much to drink. But I'm trying to rottect my messages as we go....

Updates!

* Gift of the Naaru now also removes 2 harmful magic effects from the friendly target.
Justified. People complained about this spell..

* Auto Shot now gives 15% haste to all attacks fired by a Hunter.
DEFINATLY VALID! THEY WERENT GOOD NROUGH!

* Pummel (Gorilla) cooldown has been increased to 30 sec (Up from 10 sec.) and silence effect duration lowered to 2 sec. (Down from 4 sec)

WHYT MAKE IT EITHER 30 SEC or 4 SEC WHEN YOU CAN FO BOTH ^^ BLIIX WWEEERRRUULTZX!

Divine Protection cooldown has been lowered to 3 minutes. (Down from 5 minutes)
VALID! RETRI NEEDED MORE BUFFS WITHOUT GETITN GKILLED! AYAYAYYYYYAYYAYYY ;:D:D:D

Hymn of Hope has been re-added to the game.
How else would priests survive Ring of Valor?
HOW!?

Oh, btw, did anyone read my last troll-post?

Uncommon Drop 03/02/09 - Exclusive interview with Greg Street (Aka Ghostcrawler)

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:42:42 -0500

So my PR-trick for the new and uncommon Uncommon Drop worked excellent, and thus I will produce my first news here.

Why I picked that name?

I think it was new, unique and interesting.

So I managed to get a hold of Greg Street, more commonly known as Ghostcrawler, during a convention on how to impress women, and in exchange for some secret tips (I was working at the convention), he agreed to an honest interview.

So, Greg, a lot of players are worried about the direction World of Warcraft is heading since you took over, care to comment that?
Of course, and I'd like to reply with a counter-question. What the hell are people expecting? WoW has been out for over 4 years now, with 2 sequals, and EVERYONE knows the first sequal is always bad, and the second sequal isn't even comparable to the original. I mean, in every movie, once it has came to the third sequal, the whole cast and management are usually replaced, while the story remains exactly the same. You profit from the name. That is what's been happening here. We're currently developing a new Starcraft and a new Diablo and of course we've had to transfer all 'productive' resources to those projects. People can't really expect us to keep focus on WoW after 4 years, can they?

Actually I think they do.. Or, I mean, I understand the original SC and Diable developers went back to work on those sequals, but surely you must've had some good people to replace all the transfers?
No. Not really. Lets face it, Activation Blizzard is a french company, and the french are cheap. Most people still working on with WoW are temps and some people left over from nixon's 'A job for everybody!' project. The world is in great need of labour, and most of it come cheap, and there is no reason we shouldn't be able to profit from that. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying only junkies and fatties decide what's to happen with WoW, but we mainly develop it and handle the Q&A's. Before Jeff (Kaplan) left he implemented this great random buff/nerf-random generator. Basicly it has some built in buffs/nurfs, and whenevery we have a new patch going on we simply roll it a couple of times and it autogenerates the Patch Notes itself. It's actually a great machine and it does save a lot of time. No, I'm not saying the communitys voice goes unheard, we do have the option to add our own buffs/nerfs into the random generator, and I'm pleased to say that a lot of our DK buffs has been chosen since the system was implemented, so it's WAI.

Ok, well, this is a little.. Worrying... So there's no chance of the 'pro-developers' coming back for some balance fixes?
Haha, no. Do you see Carekoala going back to carry Paperkat? Do you see anyone still wanting to play with Zilea? No, they just arn't good or interesting enough. Same situation. I'm sorry that I have to tell you this but it's simply how the world works.

So none of you has even considered it a little unfair that DKs have double -75% magic protection shields, 20-30% armor mitigation shields, pets that hit for 2k and stuns, another pet that hits for 3k, able to ress allies, able to port home, got ground effects to protect against stealth, got plate, do amazing DPS both in melee and ranged, got unlimited mana, a death-grip, basicly spammable ranged movement-slowing effects, ranged silence that doesn't even have to hit, starts at 55, AoE 10-sec CC, hot removal etc?
But they don't have MS, do they?

I guess not... So is there any other changes going on to sort the balancing and damage issues in the arenas?
Yes there is, but as I said, it's up to JKRBNG (Jeff Kaplan's Random Buff/Nerf Generator). I for one am very exciting to see some of the more interesting changes win the roll. To make sure some of the earlier less represented specs can enter the arena we've amongst others, included these changes: Reimplement reckoning bombs, give prot warriors a 10% stackable increased damage buff for 10 secs every time they block/parry/dodge, raise the ferocious bite/eviscrate crit chance to 150%, remove the CD of combat ress for boomkins, make the paladin bubble a passive talent, MS to DKs (Obviously), shield and shieldwalls to hunters (either that or making BM a passive effect, we havn't decided), making PoM a passive talent in the fire-tree, and the ability to spec 80% chance to stun the target for 5 secs every time a Sw:P tics for Shadow Priests.

They are all interesting changes to make specs that hasn't previously been OP in the arena more interesting to play.

Ok... One last question. About Jasi's Gameriot post long time ago, do you actually plan to 'dumb down' the arena and the game in avarage?
Hahaha, no, we don't really 'plan' anything. We just go with it man! We're no conformatists...

Ok, thank you for your time Greg.
Ah, you're welcome. I'm glad we put it out there, after all, communcation is my game. I don't think we'll see too many surprised faces out there anyways though...

Blizzard vs Glider discussion. An ethical view on botting.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 20:11:13 -0500

So as it now passed 00:00 in Sweden, aka new day, I'm going to post another entry somewhat based on my last entry regarding the Blizzard vs MDY verdict. If you don't know anything about it, read up.

I am not going to discuss the actual issue that got MDY convicted, but rather the aspect that got them in trouble in the first place. Botting. I'm going to try to stay objective, some of my thoughts may seem to lean towards the botters side, but that hsould only occur in case you don't understand the specific point I'm trying to make.

This is mainly written as an arguiment to all of you who really hates botters.

So lets face it. The Glider trial wasn't only about copyright laws. That's what Glider fell for, but I'd very much doubt that a user creating for example a swastiska in Photoshop would get convicted of breaking copyright laws if Photoshop would have an EULA saying it's prohibited to create provoking images. If you're not buying this, then lets say for the sake of argument that the main reason Glider fell against Blizzard was because they in the end offered "cheating" in a game.

It was up to judge Campbell to decide wheter it was right or wrong of Glider to offer a way to cheat in the most popular mmo as of today.

Campbell sided that Blizzard, the 'good guys' had spent many years creating an entertaining and fun game in an all honest spiritual 'american dream'-fashion, and as such should be treated with respect, and anyone violating this respect should be punished. Again. For the sake of argument.

I know many of you out there hate botters. What I've never understood is why.

I know that people are different. Some activly reports if they find a schoolmate of theirs cheating. Some force the cheater to share his cheats. Some minds their own business. Some grow up to be policemen. Some policemen ignore minor crimes as long as it doesn't hurt any other person. Some enforce the laws as written in stone. Some see the world in beautiful colors. Some see it in black or white.

So, again, for the sake of argument, say we see the world as black and white. There is right or wrong. And judge Campbell decided that Blizzard is right, and botting is wrong.

But how can you really agree with this?
How can you hate botters that much?

I'm going to make a dangerous comparement with marijuana here. There may not be any conclusive studies that marijuana is more dangerous than ciggaretes, but we have all heard of the people turning out bad because of it. We've also seen Weeds on tv and probably know people that can smoke marijuana every now and then and enjoy it without getting addicted.

How do you differ that from WoW?
For years ew documentaries about game-addiction has been popping up, institutions for game-addicts has been created, and the general consent out there today is that too much gaming is bad. Too much marijuana is also bad.

WoW is a great game and when playing it casually it can be really productive, fun and creative. However, playing it too much harms your social life, your sleeping habits, your work/school-performance and can even cause death.

So who's to say that WoW is such a wonderful and honest world?

Marijuana, which has similar effects, but is illegal, and cigarettes, although not illegal but well frowned up and does certainly not affect your life in the same aspect as WoW, gets a different treatment. Surely no judge would convict Nicotinell that creates nicotin patches of copyright infringement against Big Tobacco? I'm sure there are similar supplements to marijuana aswell that is actually sactioned by the US to help drug-users get rid of their bad habit.

Botting is, while of course somewhat different, the same thing. When you're a WoW-addict you feel the need to grind a certain ammount of gold for enchants, to buy that epic ring, or to get that epic shoulder enchant. You need the rush of becoming superior. Glider helps you with this.

Now keep in mind that I'm talking about personal botting here. I'm not talking about chinese gold farmers or account trading. I'm talking about using a bot yourself to make the computer press 1 1 1 2 wwwwwwwwwwwwwww 1 1 1 2 for you.

How can you ethicly feel that is wrongful? Or are you so stubborn in being a proud countrymen that you have to agree with every law your government crafts for you?

Disrespecting laws and keeping an open mind is what social evolution is all about. I don't have to explain to you why we're here in the first place. Why america is the 'new great free world'. Every judge and every policemen isn't always right. According to you guys the englishmen certainly weren't back in the 1800's. If you're that volunteer sheriff in your little county I can understand why you disagree with me, but I ask you, please try to keep an open mind.

As much as WoW can be a fun pleasure to spend a couple of hours with, it's still a drug to many people, and botting may just be somewhat of a cure to that.

I know I sure would have lots more time on my hands if I we're botting.
Too bad Glider is shutting down, no point to start now....

I do realise this sounds as much as a text witten to legalize marijuana as it is a text written to convince people that botting ain't that bad, but keep in mind that the point I'm trying to make is that while WoW can be considered fun and relaxing, just as cigarettes and marijuana, an addicition to either of these isn't a good thing. Why is botting, which is basicly the only cure to a WoW-addiction, so much worse than going to a drug-clinic or going with nicotin patches?

Please don't comment with "If WoW takes up so much time, then quit!" because when you consider that that argument has been made for 50 years towards drug users and smokers, you'll just feel dumb. Also remember that I'm not actually comparing WoW to drugs and cigarettes, I'm merely pointing out some similarities.

Sorry for the essay.

Did everyone stop PvPing? Anyways.. So the final stroke to PvP came today. | Blizzard vs Botters. Trial ended!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:31:04 -0500

I've noticed that the ammount of blogs produced regarding PvP has diminshed a lot here on Gameriot lately. Perhaps it is because every issue is overwhined, or perhaps it is because everyone has just stopped playing. I'm guessing the latter.

As Blizzard removed PvE competition in Wotlk, they also removed PvP competition. We already knew this though so I won't go any further here.

So we have some interesting new updates about 3.1 today. If you havn't read yet, head over to mmo-champion or worldofraids.

And... Well.. I'm not upset. Actually I'm quite happy. I stopped PvPing 3 weeks ago since I just redeemed it useless. As a mage I barely even need any deadly-gear, and considering the current.. Well.. Lets not go there.

When I read these changes, all I basicly see is "increased damage output". And... I... I'm... Speechless. I really don't know what to say.

Damage in both PvE and PvP is already a joke, AND THEY'RE GONNA ******* BUFF IT!?

I do realize that some are just minor buffs, and some are just buffs to trees that currently arn't competable, but seriously.... THEY'RE BUFFING DAMAGE!?

Now seeing this I can only assume that Jasi's gossip-blog was right-on-spot. Every single word. PvP is in an emergent need of change to the damage output, and now Blizzard is buffing most classes damage. Let me say it again, I don't care how little, I'm saying they didn't nerf it. They buffed it.

You shouldn't whine that much about Jasi btw, some of his posts are actually amusing and right on spot, no matter where he got his info or how much is made up. You can basicly see from a Jasi topic if the thread is going to be interesting or not.

Back to Blizzard..

In their earlier efforts to keep us in wotlk, they've tried to convince us that Naxx is so easy because it's an introductionary raid-instance, and people will be happy with Ulduar. They've basicly said that classes and healing are a little overpowered for Naxx, but they wanted everyone to be able to see the content and healing should be fine in Ulduar...

And now they go out saying healing is too easy and that there's nerfs incoming. Seriously?

Not a single word about PvP as usual (I'm saying as usual because I don't count GC's bull**** posts about it). Someone may think that would be somewhat of a priority instead of changing 9 classes, but who knows.

-----------------------------------------------

In other news, the trial between Blizzard and MMOGlider, one of the most advanced and accessable World of Warcraft-bots (run by MDY Industries), has finally ended after 3 years. The verdict: MDY Industries will pay compensatory damages in the ammount of $6,000,000 dollars to Blizzard. I don't know if anyone has written about this earlier since I don't really read that much here anymore, but in case noone hasn't I'll give you a quick write-up.

MMOGlider, from now on refered to as Glider, is a bot that plays the game for you and as such counts as a third party software. (Obvious matters first). If a user decides to use Glider he therefore breaks the Blizzard TOS and EULA. So far, so good. So you say "So what, Blizzard can ban a user botting, sure, but they can't ******* sue them, can they?".

And the short answer is, no, they can't. There is no american law (Dunno why the **** MDY Industries act in a (Sorry to say it) ****-face coorporate country like USA anyways) against botting a videogame.

There is however a copyright law invented back in the Napster days. Can't remember the abbrehevation (? cba spell-checking) right now (DCMA something?), but basicly this law says that you can't have anything copyrighted on your computer.

Now, since Glider actually bypasses Blizzard's security system Warden (Yes, it search your computer for anything it wants to and you've agreed to it) by copying some elements of WoW in to your ram memory, you are actually copying Blizzard-copyrighted material in to your computer. This is legal as long as you've agreed to the Blizzard EULA. At the first sight of breaking this EULA however, Blizzard provokes the right for you to copy their game in to your RAM, and thus you are breaking a copyright law defined by the DCMA (At least this is what the judge thinks). So when using a third party software you are breaking Blizzards EULA and thus break the US copyright-laws. The US also has a law saying that if you infringe (?) (Help other people commit a crime) other people to break this law, you also commit a crime. And this is what Glider fell for.

This means that you could basicly choose a nickname that breaks the Blizzard EULA, and be charged with copyright-law-violation.

Way to go US!

The $6,000,000 is for disturbing the in-game balance economy... Or something... (Ok, I don't want to go to hard against the US, but seriously?). The in-game balance disturbance is, according to Blizzard, the fact that botters lower the current price of a certain item so that other people grinding that item won't get the same ammount of gold for it. (OH WAIT. DOESN'T OTHER PLAYERS ALSO GET THAT ITEM CHEAPER, AND THUS BALACING IT OUT!? WHO KNOWS!)

A last fact about that $6,000,000 is that Glider is approximated to have sold about 100,000 copied at $25 a piece. So. Basicly Blizzard wants that money. When you think about it, considering at least 500,000 of Blizzards current subscribers are chinese farmers or other bots, you could basicly say that 1% of every account uses Glider. That's pretty sick.)

But that's basicly the full story. I'm sorry for the somewhat long and pretty bad write-up.

Several big news-stations report further on this matter, and Googling something like "Blizzard vs Glider", "MMOGlider trial", "MDY industries vs Blizzard" etc, should give you plenty of results.

This is actually a really big case. Not because it's about WoW and botters, but it's because basicly any company that offers a software will be able to claim copyright-violation against users in certain situations. Now I'm not too informed on the impacts of this matter, but you can easily find out more. Some have said that this entire case could change the way software companies acts.

Last and least, in my latter exploration of the english language I've started using "in to", "at least" and "a lot". Earlier I used "into", "atleast" and "alot". What is the correct spelling?

I don't have a dream.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 02:29:40 -0500

I know some of you americans really live for this "I have a dream"-speech crafted by Martin Luther King a while back. The whole world has been watching while your nation has been flooded with paparazzis photoshopping pictures of your favorite idol so that you can "pretend to be in their shoes", and the rest of the world has unfortunatly caught up as well. "The American Dream". So lovely. That motto practicly sells a movie alone.

This motto of course applies to WoW as well. The problem is... In WoW, there is no dream.

I've followed you guys from the beginning of arena up until present day.

I've seen you hoping for a change..

I saw you blogging about how OP druids are, but that you'll keep playing since you know druids will get nerfed soon. I saw you in the win-trading debate. You were gonna keep playing because you knew Blizzard would come up with a good fix soon. I saw you in the pre-wotlk patch. "I'm gonna keep playing because damage will scale out a 80". I saw you during wotlk-beta. "Palas and DKs sure are OP but they're gonna fix it, so I'll keep playing". I saw you after the wotlk-release. "I'm gonna keep playing because resilience will sort the damage out". I see you in PvE. "Naxx is easy because it's introduction! Ulduar will be challanging". I look at you now. "I'm gonna keep playing because Blizzard can't possibly keep this new ****ty arena-system".

How can you keep dreaming?
How do you do it?

We took Malygos down yesterday and of course our priests were making jokes on vent about how they now had to actually put in half an effort to heal as they had a CD on CoH. Then when we wiped at Malygos one of the Priests said "It's so strange, Blizzard promised to change the AoE-damage encounters. This whole encounter is based around CoH."

He actually believed Blizzard would've tuned Malygos for the CoH nerf.
How does he still believe?

Almost every single patch released by Blizzard lately (Read: Post-Kalgan) has ****** the game up another notch, while always adding a crowd-pleaser to their patch.

Win traders rule and boosters sell points. Some get banned as a pleaser, while a a bad PR is put in the game not allowing you to play with different friends on competetive level unless you want to grind those 500 rating first.
Druids are op. They get a tiny wheeny nerf in S4 as a pleaser. Still op though.
Palas are OP. The nerfs are spread out as to ensure more crowd-pleasers for less effort. They're still (kinda) OP.
I'm not even gonna mention DKs.

You actually believe, that after all of this, Blizzard is gonna come out with a patch making the game somewhat balanced, restoring the faith in the arena system, offering a challange in PvE and lowering the damage in PvP?

ARE YOU ******* SERIOUS?

Now, in most of my later entries I've whined some. I usually do whine when I get los'd (I'm a mage, we're quite known for whining.. Or used to be at least). But am I not right to do so? I mean, look at it. Blizzard can't get one thing right. I type some whining out, and then I get 10 comments against me pointing at some crowd-pleaser in the next patch that you dreamers think will magicly "Fix the game". No crowd-pleaser so far has EVER fixed ANYHING.

So when I see you making your commens to the WoM blogs, posting your entries about 'How to fix X' and replying to that troll comment from Yiska, I ask you:

Why do you keep dreaming?

I personally have no plans on quitting WoW atm, although on my side of the fence I have quite a lucrative business going on that I can't talk further about in here. I've completely stopped playing the game though. Sometimes I raid just to enjoy some conversation on vent, and sometimes I arena just because I'm bored.
Question is. Why the hell do you keep playing? Do you seriously still have faith in Blizzard?

Mages; At least we had a good run... [Edited]

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 04:43:18 -0500

So, in Blizzards new 'attempt' of balancing the arena, mages gets screwed over as usual. This has happened so many times now that I just can't help feeling that there's not a single developer playing mage over there, or the only one is some fat nerd too shy to express himself in charge of safeguarding the mage interests.

Blizzard listening to their new poster-child Serennias redicoulus suggestions of hidden DK buffs spread out between all classes doesn't make it better either, since mages were the only thing able to stop DKs in 2s and 3s, and thus is getting hit the hardest by the Serennia-club.
(Edit 1: I felt a little guilt there, a lot of Serennias ideas were of course valid and would improve the game, but there were also some that felt very dictated to make DKs better against certain classes)

[Edit 2: I've had some discussion with the common troll that has called me stupid and an idiot. I would like to warn you before reading further that this entry is about mages getting an unfair treatment seeing as we can't protect our CC to the same extent other classes will be able to]

[Edit 3: The simple and obvious solution to the problem with 'Protecting your CC with dots' is not to have a priority system that always dispels CC first like some people think. It is to rework a failed dispel to, instead of getting eaten, dispel an effect that is considered 'movement impairing (Aka, all effects a trinket removes). This will make sure you still dispel a random thing, but removes the protection of a CC by making sure that while a protection-dot is on the target, a dispel will always remove a movement impairing effect or a magical debuff. That is the intention Blizzard has with the new changes, and there is really no other way to balance this.]

Blizzard has now effectivly killed the arcane mage and I'm not even sure that was their intention.

Let me explain. Arcane mages will of course still be viable with rogues and perhaps a paladin that knows how to play, but playing with any class where you actually need to do anything else than pop pom/pyro as a mage won't generate as much chance of success as it used to since you're now basicly unable to keep any sustained CC up against any team with dispel. "Fair enough" you think, "Everyone got hit by that dispel change".

No, everyone didn't. Let us take a closer look. The only difference in the new spell mechanics is basicly that CC will be easier to dispel. Your own buffs will still be protected, but your CC that is vital to some classes gets hit in Blizzards recent attempt to simplify the arena and make it look like a 'fix to players concern about RNG'.
Fear, Hex, HoJ, Chains of Ice are all dispellable CCs that now doesn't get protected by 30% dispel mechanics. Alright. But they'll still get protected if there's just the slightest dot on them. A magical debuff (Say from fireball) that does 100 damage over 8 seconds will provide those CCs with a 30% (Well, 15% to be fair) dispel protection right there. Slap some of those up and you'll still have your CC protected.

The sheep, both the best and worse CC of all pending who you ask, will of course not get this opportunity. Sheeps break on damage, so there's no possibility at all to protect your sheep at all while playing arcane. Basicly what Blizzard is saying with their recent change, that dispel protection will only protect your own buffs and dots, is that mages shouldn't be able to CC.

Not to mention that slow will also be instant dispelled considering arcane mages doesn't have a single dot (Except for RNG ignite) and considering mages are basicly forced to play with another melee, pref. rogue, you'll have a hard time producing dots to protect your slow there aswell. Hopefully your priest has a mana pool big enough to throw some SW:P's on that slow, while you've picked up the Poly glyph.

I mean, it's probably fair, we don't have MS, LoS affects us more than any else, we're basicly still the only class together with rogues that doesn't have any way of self-heal and our mana-pool, even if improved lately, is still, in most situations, the most limited of all casters. BUT HEY; WE HAVE POM PYRO FFS!

I urge you Blizzard, make it fast for us mages and just kill that tree completely already! There's no reason to drag it out and torture us!

And as I just said, these dispel protection changes won't change any RNG. You'll still either dispel that bubble the first or the fifth time, you still won't manage to spellsteal that BoF before it's too late half of the games and you'll still be able to purge every single hot some game even though you didn't even expect it. People never considered not being able to dispel that sheep the first time game-breaking.

All this change did was basicly to force players talented with 30% dispel protection playing with any CC-class but a mage to pick up some glyphs/talents that can produce a dot and voila, you force some dots onto your CC'd target and there's your protection.

Anyways, whoever has a list of changes where mages got screwed over (Kinda like where it took 2 months AFTER Blizzard discovered that the mage S2 set actually had lower itemlevel than the warlock to fix), please add this.

Fortunatly I'm not too upset, I already specced frost yesterday, and out of the ashes of my shattered arcane mage those dispellers will feel the wrath of Winters chill. This also further motivates my decision to pick up some haste-gems.

Fovea introducing 'real' blogging on Gameriot!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:40:39 -0500

Good day rioters!
As I was looking for inspiration for a new entry, knowing that most of Gameriot are americans, I decided to go visit some american IRL blogs to see what was on the topic this week. Browsing through wordpress, blogspot, and some other common blog-sites I realized that here at Gameriot, we have absolutely no idea on how to blog.

It turns out the point apparantly is to write down exactly what you've done lately, preferably with pictures (Well, we've got that one right), and hope that someone cares. Here we seem to think it's about analyzing, writing down thoughts or even being funny.

Inspired by blogs such as:

http://baburgess.blogspot.com/
http://anna.smithlings.com/
http://tulips.fluidnature.com/

Here is todays entry....
I'm sure you have all seen blogs like these written by girls, being flamed all over your msn/facebook/whatever. You probably hate them as much as I do. Pushing their uninteresting and meaningless lives into our faces... So here we go... (Btw, I'm gonna throw any kind of punctuation, etc, out of the window here. It doesn't seem popular in america anymore...)

When i logged in at 13:58 i was standing in Dalaran next to a talking tree. It was a druid!!! hahehe.. . i thought did i really log out in Dalaran or did my guildmates use my mage to boost??

haha im probably wrong, i think i logged out in dalaran since i did some arena last night (WHICH DIDNT GO SO GOOD THOUGH () we only played few games.........

i decided to go do the daily cooking quest at 14:05, and awilo asked me to get him some infused mushroom meatloaf. SURE THING i said after all chef title doesnt come free haha

i dont like the sewers there are very creepy things there.... except my mushrooms i also found a crocodile (which scared me, but it was just a baby aaaw) a frog a rat and 4 turtles! it would be cool if someone like made a movie with them amirite??+:D:D

when i was done i cooked my stew and went to turn my quest in, and i didnt get a very friendly welcome from ajay, so i just turned it in and run straight out of there humming counting crows for some reason! :S:S odd yes

But look at what i got from the bag!! BEST DAY EVER!!!!!!DD

Now, this isn't as much of an attempt to be funny (reading up I realize I didn't really succeed with that, on the other hand, nor was I given a lot of material to work with. Would I have been funny I would also have failed with my attempt to make this similar to the teenage-blogs) as it is an attempt to provoke a discussion regarding the new (well...) "teenage look at what i did today!"-blogs compared to the blogs with insightful opinions and ideas (Which I thought was the original idea that seperated a blog from a diary?). What's your personal view?

Â

Achievement-hunting, Oh thy misery!

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:33:56 -0500

In Blizzards recent attempt of winning the paraolympics gold of game-mechanics I'm sure all of you are aware of the new achievement-system. This is a system that gives the slightest nerd a chance to become e-celebrity for a day. Forget nerd-rage a la Celerex, RNG-tournaments with 'random' disconnects a la teenage Paperkat and Kellie Pickler and her failed attempts to identify EU as a country, now even YOU can become admired for running around on your favourite fiction-mount in your favourite game in front of your computer.

Who gives a **** if Kellie finished top 10 in Idol and made a fool out of herself by proving that the avarage B-celebrity isn't smarter than a 5th-grader, when you have a chance to become the "World First Loremaster"! MAYBE YOU'LL EVEN GET MENTIONED AT MMO-CHAMPION!

When Blizzard designed content for their new expansion they figured "We've already implemented all content possible, why not just let people complete it again? OH; I HAVE AN EVEN BETTER IDEA; THIS TIME WE'LL COUNT IT!!!!!!!!!11". "You sure about this Ghostcrawler?" Kalgan said. "Of course, what's the worst thing that can happen? Jasi will post a GR-post on how I don't have a clue about balance? LAWL! People won't buy that **** after the nazi-drama anyways!"

****, I got carried away and got deserter while AFKing SoTA ((

GC continues... "In our failed attempt of actually creating interesting content that not even 95% of our playerbase can apprehend to finish, we'll ******* create a system that noone can complete, but still award the players points that doesn't matter what so ever, except to brag to their e-girlfriends about". "This'll certainly give your e-friends something to talk about as they're getting pissed since you can't step out of the fire. AFTER ALL PEOPLE HAVE TO PRESS 'W' FOR LIKE 6 SECONDS AND THATS ******* HARD!". "I don't want to sit here and get payed to create content that you actually have to press 2 buttons at once to complete. It feels like a scam". "Everyone didn't play warlock in BC after all...". (Here he laughed at his own irony)

IF YOU'RE NOT CAPABLE OF STEPPING OUT OF THE FIRE AT LEAST YOU CAN COMPLETE 3000 QUESTS , AND IF THAT'S TOO HARD FOR YOU WE'LL EVEN EVEN ADD SOME GAME MECHANICS SO THAT YOU CAN SEE LOW-LEVEL QUESTS ON THE MAP!

Loading screen on deserter again. ****!

I still can't let this go though. Here's another thing they probably convinced themselves while designing WoLK: (I'll continue with the caps because it's powerful) WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THE CASUALS KEEP PLAYING OUR GAME, SO INSTEAD OF HAVING RANDOM DROPS WE MAKE SURE EVERYTHING IN OUR ******* GAME IS ABOUT GRINDING THE SAME **** FOR EITHER 4 TIMES EVERY DAY, OR 15 HOURS STRAIGHT! THIS IS A GOOD IDEA! IT'S ******* CASUAL!

Seriously. Back in vanilla-wow, as I've already explained, casuals actually had a chance of getting items on random drop. NO BLIZZARD, A CASUAL ISN'T A PERSON THAT IS DUMB ENOUGH TO ONLY BE ABLE TO GRIND ONE THING FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES, IT'S A PERSON THAT DOESN'T PLAY AS MUCH AS THE 'ELITE'!

It wouldn't surpise me if Blizzard soon started to award arena points for the ammount of Achievement points you had tbh... "You can't buy this Super Gladiator weapon, you don't have any achievement points! We wan't people to play all aspects of our game!". ****... I shouldn't have written that, now they probably will...

Enough with the drama...

Personally I'm just waiting for the avarage trade-chan spammers that are looking for guild-members to start with "LOOKING FOR MEMBERS FOR SUPER GUILD KNIGHTS OF AZEROTH! 2300 ACHIEVEMENT POINTS REQUIRED TO JOIN!" After all, that's what they did with resilience. "HEY, IT'S NOT ABOUT HOW GOOD YOU ARE, ITS ABOUT HOW ******* MUCH RESILLLIAUNCE YOU HVEA!Â½!"#"Â¤#!Â¤U()=I=(#" (I hate to admit it, but europeans can't spell resilience). As a mage I could easily make the decision to stay at 300-350 resilliance since I knew I had the skill to survive any eventual burst negated by those numbers. Seeing someone requesting 400 resilience for a ******* PUG-premade got me pretty pissed. Most BGs isn't even about winning 1v1 situations... Sitting in full brutal and having to convince some random greenie (No, I never actually did), that I'm capable of playing in their premade even though I havn't put resilience in every ******* socket and enchant is just beyond me.

I feel like I have to get back to Kellie Pickler though... Despite her few (read: many, I just don't want to miss my chances if she's a Gameriot fan. I doubt she's smart enough to read what's inside brackets (paranthesis?)) 'mistakes', I ******* love that girl. There's noone more genuine. Tbh, I think she just trolls this world. True IRL-trolling. She most likely played WoW, and when she realised that she had to complete 1000 quests to get 10 achievement points that no real person actually cares about, she decided to just troll the world. And she did it good.... I have that youtube-clip in stock but seeing as I've already posted it in an entry like 8 months ago, I'll just leave it up to you to find out who Kellie Pickler is, incase you didn't already know.

Deserter ended. I think I'll go 'guard' one of our bases in EoTS now. Being a cave-defender in AV is far too risky these days...

So since I like this idea with 'direct blogging', I'll have to admit that I'm sitting here at 10am writing this post on a paper. I've never really planned an entry like this before, so I'll try to get a picture of the papers. (After-edit: I have a picture, but I'm unable to post it since it's on my phone) The reason I'm doing this is because I have 2 flaming hot nerweigans sleeping in the other room, and I just can't go home and post this until I've tried to get some broadlight-day-action. (After-edit again: Obviously I didn't get any) I got kind of ****-blocked yesterday

Back to the issue... I would write more IRL-stuff but I just don't want all my entries to be the same ****.

So.. Now, hang on a bit while I do some calculations.... MC, BwL, AQ, AQ20, ZG, 1500 quests, 40h on mount, 1000 fishes, 24h in front of the dalaran fountain.....

(8h later)
Reading up on some I've written earlier I realise that maybe I should have drunk less last night, or even slept another 4h, but I won't erase anything. I'll share all of me with you guys. So the calculations I spent 8h doing showed that to complete the achievements you don't even have to try to complete, you would have to spend about 1200 hours. 50 days. So much for the 'casual way'. 'Hard' achievements like fishing up The Lurker Below or winning 100 arena games isn't even included in those calculations. Don't you just love it? But hey, for some of these you can even get another tailor recipe... Which is probably part of another achievement.. Oh my god, I can't take this anymore....

The worst problem is that this is like a drug. Like the worst drug. It's like putting nicotin into alcohol. WoW is a bad drug already, and adding a ******* achievement-system is just making the problem worse. I have tons of mates that basicly play the game to get achievements these days. Did Blizz plan this? Did they actually realise that they had made their game so ******* bad for hardcore-peeps that they had to include an achievement-system to give the hardcores something to do? Or were they just so pissed that people kept playing 'well' in the arena because they practiced and duelled outside orgrimmer so they built a system to make sure people had other things to do instead of duelling, while also ******* everything called class-balance in order to make some casuals succeed in the arenas? I just don't know...Â

So... I realise I won't get that many +likes since there's no pictures, e-drama, orange/bold headlines or asians in this entry, but I hope whoever managed to get through the whole post enjoyed it.

As usual I won't read through my ranting, so any bad english, repetition (?), or misssssssspells (Yeah, I didn't really know how many s's to put in there) isn't my problem.

Bye....

Lets celebrate the new year with some IRL-stuff

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 08:42:38 -0500

So I've had this idea for a while... Actually writing about-IRL things just to see what happens. I don't actually keep up all that good with Gameriot, even though I enjoy the site, so I dunno if this "Write about WoW or get deleted" drama is still out there, but since it might be, I'll try to include some WoW-related stuff into this.

This is the story about my IRL-life, and I don't give a **** if you care.

This is also gonna be a long read, but in the end I write this because I want to, and why I endulge every urge I'll explain further down.

So it's 1 pm here in Sweden and I'm up in a ski-resort venting. The reason I'm not out in the slopes is simply because I cba being with the people I'm here with. Also, I'm a closet WoW-player, so I had to get some free time to grind some honor. Unfortunatly my prepaid is up . Anyways... Most people would probably classify me as an alcoholic, or at least a holiday-alcoholic. I drink, and I don't mind drinking. I enjoy waking up and taking a beer, because, to be honest, drinking makes a day hell lot of funnier than not drinking. Now don't get me wrong. I basicly never get out of control. I'm not like one of those teenage-movie-guys that makes a fool out of himself when he's drunk. I can handle my liqour. So, I drink a lot, but I rarely get very drunk. Everyone doesn't enjoy that however, and I respect that. The problem is that most people that doesn't enjoy that, doesn't respect people that enjoy it.

I'm here with a mate I know very well, and 2 girls I don't know very well. One is 19, acts like 17, has a semi-drunk as father, and is the girlfriend of my mate. The other one is 28 and kind of acts like a communist. It's her responsibility to 'make sure' everyone is alright and has a pleasant time. She has also already survived cancer, so there's pretty much drama here already. My mate is actually a damn nice fellow, but like every other couple, he gets poisoned as soon as his gf is around. Think: One dude (me) who just enjoys playing WoW, one guild-leader that you usually like, but gets all strange when he has en e-romance with some Tauren female, one UD Rogue that is all about the loot, and one priest healer that makes sure that noone pulls a single joke on vent during a raid-encounter and you'll get the picture.

Now, imagine this scenario. I've been out til 5am the day before, they of course going home early to get a good nights sleep. They wake up at 8am, managing to wake me up at 9am, and I go to the fridge and grab a beer while casually saying something like "You sure you don't want to stay in bed with me all day then?" to the communist. This wasn't popular. These people doesn't seem to think that you can joke if you're the slightest affected by alocohol. Add to this that I accidently made out with this girl 2 times earlier. Big mistake.

But still... That kind of sums me up. When I'm around people that are dead-serious, I try to put a smile on their faces. It's kind of IRL-trolling. I never see any reason to be sad or angry, except when Blizzard claims that warlocks needs buffs while also claiming that PvP won't get 'good' before resiliance. That ******* pisses me of, considering I'm a mage and claim that warlocks basicly have been overpowered for 3 out of 4 seasons.

I don't see any reason to have a girlfriend either. (Most likely) due to TV, young people today walk around and tell each and every person they meet that they love them.. Seriously... From what I've noticed during my years, there's 2 and a half reason people 'couple up'. From a guys perspective: Either they find a damn good looking girl to be their girlfriend, or they're ******* ugly themselves. Having a good looking girlfriend is like having an epic in vanilla-WoW. It may not be perfect or suited to your class, but it's ******* purple and will give you respect. (For some reason.) If you're ugly you basicly realise that you're out of options. You need someone to ****, you're a paladin that needs that cloth-item to heal, so you take the first ugly girl that also realise this. You never talk to each other about the fact that you're together just because none of you can get better, but it's fact.

The last half are couples that actually like each other. They do exist (I think), and sure.. That is beautiful. But wishing this for yourself is like wishing Warglaives would drop from Hogger. In theory it can happen considering GC, but let's not kid ourselves.

So I don't 'do' girlfriends. I think it's too much bull****. Too much television. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in the "******* ugly" cathegory. From what I can tell and from what I've heard I'm a fairly attractive guy. When I'm out however, I do realise that 20 drunk WoW-nightelf-nerds go up and dance close to the first attractive girl they see, just to get turned down faster than a stunned mutilate rogue goes down in the arena. I really cba being that guy. So I check out the half-attractive ones, and depending on how much I've drunk, even some not-so-attractive girls. They're usually more interesting, and they're usually damn easy to get in bed. When a girl can't depend on her looks to get a guy, she has to learn how to be funny and interesting (Or start playing WoW for e-romance). And I love that. Even though I never would, I could basicly fall in love with an ugly just because she's damn funny. And that's real love. Even though it's not.

Some people have a problem with that aswell. They claim that I shouldn't take home ugly girls, while they in the next minute claim that "It's not all about looks!". ******* hypocrits.

While writing this I'm obviously drinking. I would never spit out this much self-pity otherwise. Keep in mind while reading, that I get drunker, and that I also have to take the last lift to the ski-shop in order to return my board that I had to rent since I forgot a ****ty little piece to my own board. So the end might suck.

So we've covered some love and some situational stuff. I won't go in to politics because that would just get way out of hand. Ah, I have a good one now. Let's see if I can find the button to make this topic "Gameriot style".

Responsibility
I didn't find the color but I made it bold!

I can't speak for the rest of the world, even though I'm pretty sure America is involved in this, but people seem unable to take responsibility for their actions in todays world.

If I get totally pissed and make a fool out of myself I don't blame the liqour company, I blame myself. I wake up and tell the people I suspect I might've offended/trolled that I'm sorry. "I drank too much, and I'm sorry if I offended you". I never use "It wasn't my fault, I was too drunk" or "It was out of my hands" or "I regret myself". (Well, I have actually done that but I've never meant it). I said earlier that this doesn't happen often, and it really doesn't, but when it happens, thats what I say. About the "I regret myself". That's one of the worst bull**** excuses I've ever heard mankind come up with. When people drink too much, they know that they will drink too much. Personally I know when/if I drink too much, and I'm okay with it. I've realised that drama is fun, and that people enjoy it. If people really really really really would hate drama like everyone keeps saying, the most watched show on television wouldn't be Idol or whatever bull**** reality show is popular right now. I take responsibility by saying that I enjoy drama, and I wish more people would. Drama is what makes non-drama so much better.

You have all seen the matrix. "The first version of Matrix was a perfect world... It failed...". Most people, if looking inside themselves, probably agree that WoW was more exciting (better) during the vanilla times when the game wasn't about grinding heroic badges or reputation, but rather running instances to get the gear you wanted. Now, don't get me wrong, the new system is good, but it's still boring. Winning that drop from Drakkisath was ******* epic... Getting that 200th heroic emblem isn't. That's what I'm talking about.

And on that topic, most people would run their 15th UBRS run just to get the valor chest, and when it didn't drop they would say "This was a ******* wasted run." NO. It wasn't a ******* wasted run. You had a chance to get the drop, even though it didn't drop. That's the logic we live after. The love-sick think "I'll go out since I have a chance to meet that perfect boy", the gamblers think "I'll play because I have a chance to win the money" and you initially ran UBRS because you had a chance to get that valor chest.Â

Taking responsibility for your action is in my opinion the first step of becoming mature. When Celerex lost that "Smash my laptop with my headphones!" game, the mature response would be something like "Sorry I missed that sheep guys" or "We need to work more on communication if we want to win this" or "In my opinion you guys need more practice". Not nerd-rage. Self-responsibility. Damn, responsibility is a ****** up word to write... And live by... Apparanatly...

Endluging your every urge
Don't take this literay. If people would, we'd probably see a lot of more rapists out in the streets. Noone wants to read "Vance arrested for molesting" in the New York times. Then we'd just have another Jasi-day. But people should still try to endulge their urges while also taking responsibility for them. I'm not american or brittish, but I think endulge is the right word to use here. Why doesn't people do what the **** they want to? I'll take a short example. Say I'm a girl and I love to 'make love' (****). Yet, I don't do it because either the minister at my local bull**** church will be on my ass, or the boys in my class will call me a slut. ******* DEFEND YOURSELF WOMAN! I'm so sick of people (Yes, this is probably you reading this) thinking that things has to be 'a certain way'. What's the problem with saying "So I enjoy sex, I don't see the problem here", and why the ***** (It's not your spam-filter, it's actually stars. I can't express this rage) can't guys just accept that? If some of today youth would just sit down and think for a second they'd realise that they're ******* idiots. I don't consider myself that smart, but seriously.... I consider 95% of the inhabitants of earth idiots. Just read the papers these days... We're so ******* (I'm starting to use that word too much now in the end.. Must be the beer...) affected by the bull****-children-story-chuch that we forget that we actually have control over ourselves. You are what you want to be. There's no ******* God or anything that controls us.

I do understand why those 95% idiots gets confused when they download one movie after the other and the 'point' of the movies are all different.. 'Be yourself!', 'Adapt to your love!', 'Never back down!', 'You can do it!'. ******* bull****. Of course we need to adapt. Anyone reading this who actually tried this 'Be yourself' probably found out that he eventually sat there without friend and a copy of vanilla-WoW 4 years ago.

Just trust me on this one. As yourself you won't go far. Adapting to the person you need something from will work. Of course I laugh at this girls bad joke about how the drink tastes like cinnamon. I want to get laid. And I get laid. There's something for you to think about.

So I kinda need to head out now. Reading through all this I realise that I could've been funnier, but as I said earlier. I mainly write this for me. I do appriciate if one of you guys like it, but it won't change my life. I won't beg for "+likes". That's another thing I hate. I will admit some of my earlier posts has been about ending up on the "top lists" though. Trying to appeal to the public. But in the end, that's not what matters.

Hopefully some of what I've written will cause someone to slightly change some part of their appearance, and if that happens it's the beggining of a new and better world. **** the enviorment, lets make sure people can cope first.

Bye.

Some about mages in S5

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 04:57:29 -0500

Ok, first post that isn't really a troll post. I havn't seen someone discussing mages for a while so here I'll give my initial thoughts.

Unfortunatly all BGs are dead, and PvPing in Wintegrasp just annoys me, so I havn't had a chance to try any real PvP specs yet, seeing as im stuck with the horribly boring frostfire build in order to acquire some easy PvE epics before the season starts. (As always through WoWs history, instances (read Archavon) tend to drop 5x more warlock loot than mage loot, so I havn't been able to get any deadly part yet either.

Considering the current plans is playing with a priest in both 2s and 3s I figured going in with full PvE gear + some welfare epics should be sufficient enough.

Now, about setups.

From what I can tell, mages are still stuck with very few alternatives, and currently I can only count 3 (Well, 2,5).

I'll mainly talk about 2s now, seeing as 3s would make this already long post way too long, but I might add some 3s remarks in the middle of everything.

Mage/Rogue
Mage/Priest
Mage/Deathknight

Things doesn't change.
Unfortunatly I don't think Death Knight will actually be that good of an option seeing as they're easy to lock down, and can't really provide any real CC. The only real advantage with them is death grip. A healer caught out in the open used to be an easy kill, and hopefully that remains so. I still wouldn't get my hopes up though.
The only spec you can really play here is a deep frost one aswell, and even though deep frost is a nice build, casting will be even harder in Wotlk, and I just don't think it will pay out considering the new Arcane/Frost build now available. More on that later.
A DK in 3s is still a very valid alternative though. He can peel those melees of your priests, your priest can keep your DK moving, and you can worry about the damage instead of the CC.

Playing with a Rogue will be the same old. Kill them before they kill you. The upside here is that you're now pretty much free to gem and spec as you see fit. Whatever rocks your both. There will of course always be the better alternative, but every spec now has a somewhat good compatability with a Rogue. With a skilled shadowdancer, good communication and an arcane/frost built, targets should go down really fast.

With a Priest, depending on how well they'll actually heal now in the arena, you could do some interesting damage-choices. Considering the new spell-pushback rules, you could actually get a couple of shots off, however, the comp will still be pretty boring, relying a lot on position and timing, and games can feel very boring after a while. However, if we get a shorter CD on ecovation, and considering the 2-set bonus on our T7, we will have plenty of mana to take out any melee threatening our priest. If you decide to run this setup in PvE getter you better pickup some survival skills though.

And the specs
The first, obvious one, is of course the deep frost. I don't see any reason not to pickup improved CS here, so this is basicly how it would look:

Deep Frost
Depending on who you're playing with, some talents in there could be replaced, such as Arcane Fortitude, Magic Attunement, imp. CoC, etc. Another interesting choice you can make here is to put some points into Frozen core. If casters are dominant in the higher brackets of the arena (Like it would happen), or Warlocks are bugging you, this spec, together with a 2% less spelldamage taken meta socket, will provide you with excellent magic protection. However, in the long term I don't really think it will be worth it, unless you have a really easy time against melee, but it's nice having the option.
In the end you would end up with about 120 raw resistance against all scholls, together with an ~8% spell damage reduction (Meta gem + Frozen core), and then 360 less damage taken from Dampen magic. I don't really have all the formulas atm, but it should generate at least 20-25% less spelldamage taken. Not that bad.
Everyone who played a mage pre-wotlk should know how to play this spec well so I won't go further in to it.

Then we have the Arcane/Frost. New to Wotlk.
As with the deep frost, there are some talents you could replace here aswell.
This specific one is meant for people that play with a DK/Rogue, but also want the option to handle melee well. Changing between Mage Armor and Ice Armor will be very important, since this spec has some of that magic protection mentioned above.
The interesting parts here are of course Ice Shards together with Shatter together with Spell Power (and possibly Torment of the weak. I dunno why I havn't got that in the spec up there, but you could easily motivate dropping something to pick that up). This would potentially give 150% crit bonus on frost spells, and together with a skyflare diamond (if I'm not mistaken), it goes up to 154,5%. Add torment of the weak and.. Well.. If it stacks... 170% something...

Now I don't know what Arcane Barrage hits for with decent gear in Wotlk, but I can imagine the Shatter combo followed by an AB would hurt like hell. Pick up some extra haste unless Icy Veins is enough (or you want to save it to break snares), and we're potentially looking at an Arcane Powered Frostbolt -> Lance -> Lance -> Barrage, 3 shattering at 170% crit damage and then a finisher and you will understand the power. Now, this may seem hard to accomplish, but... Well, with the Icy veins glyph, getting a frostnova off, going Icy veins, blinking to 25 yards, then throwing it shouldn't be impossible, as long as you've observed your opponents cooldowns. As long as he has his trinket out you can allow your priest to fear or rogue to blind in order to get the perfect burst of. Don't forget that you'll still have your PoM left here.

So this looks very promising.

I cba looking in to fire since I hate playing it. There could be some potential in a fire/frostfire builds, but relying on scorches and Hot streaks isn't my cake.

Gemming and glyphing
First, the choice between meta gem and feet enchant.
As for the meta gem you have 3 options.

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond - CSD - 21 crit, 3% inc. crit damage
Tireless Skyflare Diamond - TSD - 25 spd, Run Speed
Effulgent Skyflare Damage - ESD - 32 stam, 2% less spelldamage taken

The reason I included the last one is due to it's stamina, and a bonus that might look worthless, but could be worth picking up if you start stacking damage preventive talents (Early S5 perhaps. Dunno how bursty it'll be yet)

But the initial idea is of course to take either CSD or TSD. As one of those fancy poster wrote earlier (Serennia I think), the duration gems just aint worth it. If it was 25-30%, sure, but 10%? Nah. If you get silenced you've done something wrong in the first place, you should be able to blink every stun, and you really shouldn't get feared all that often. And if you to, 1 or 2 seconds won't help much.

With CSD you have to go with the Tuskars Speed boot enchant. 15 stamina and Run speed.
With TSD you can go with the Icewalker enchant. 12 hit and 12 crit.

Now, depending on build, both these options are good. If you're short on hit the TSD is the way to go, but if you're relying on your crits, especially with the Arcane/Frost build, you could easily get your hit somewhere else. The 3% inc. crit damage will pay out. It will definatly pay out when it matters. So really, the only reason not to go with the CSD is if you're running a fire-build or just can't find ways to get hit with a Deep frost build.

Otherwise the gemming and glyphing is quite obvious. You gem hit til you're PvP capped, and then you gem either spelldamage/crit/stam or resilience, depending on your spec and personal choice. I would avoid the latter 2, but as I said, I don't know how bursty the start of S5 will be. My guess is: Bursty. Like hell.

The obvious Glyphs are of course Icy veins, Evocation and (Water elemental, Arcane Power or Polymorph, depending on spec and skill). You will obviously pick up the Slow Fall glyph aswell for an extra debuff to protect yourself. Then you could pick up the Arcane Intellect buff, but you don't really want to. The Fire and Frostward glyphs will be better, even though only occationally.

And the end
As I said I will start off with a priest in 2s, running heavy PvE gear with the Arcane/Frost build. Targets should drop fast, and I might even pick up that embroidery on my back for extra burst. The only hard part here should be getting targets in a good position, but considering this is a very instant-based build, you'll still be fine if you don't get a perfect position on them. I can't say I really like this spec, I feel like a coward warlock just spamming a couple of buttons (AB, Slow), but when you learn to play this spec good, I have a feeling there's plenty of tricks you're able to do to gain advantage in the game. Another upside with this spec is that if the Evo change goes through, I'll get a 2 min evocation cooldown, also healing, aswell as i get about 4k mana from my gems due to my PvE gear. Thats very nice. Very nice. My build will probably lack some protection compared to the one I posted above since I'll count on my (holy) priest to wisely use guardian spirit on a good occation if I'm under fire.

In 3s I'm going old RMP. I feel that the Arcane/Frost spec becomes even stronger when I have a rogue locking down my targets, allowing me to do the crowds on 2 target, and him handling the main target. The imp. frostbolt talent here will also be nice, since I'll be able to do rank 1 frostbolts again thanks to my newly found mana-sources.

So... That's my thoughts...
Some numbers may be off here, I havn't done any spreadsheets on these...
GL HF.
3 days to go...

How Ming changed the Brog to the Blog and the impact on the rest of the world

no.spam@gameriot.com (Fovea) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 15:19:25 -0500

There's always these things that happens that you never really think about why they happen.
Like how Facebook all of the sudden passed Myspace in popularity, how people all of a sudden became extremely concerned about the enviorment, how arabs actually learned to fly an airplane or how people all of a sudden started calling "keeping an online diary" for Blogging (Brogging).

Why I added Brogging in paranthesis is because most of you were probably too young when blogging was actually called brogging. Somehow during 2007 the word brogging (which is what blogging used to be called) suddenly shifted to blogging, and it's like noone reflected over how and why.

Now, I was doing a field study on the subject for a course of mine at the university, and even though that had absolutely nothing to do with Gameriot at the time, what I figured out is very well connected into Gameriot and the WoW-community as a whole. I know a lot of you see Ming as a rogue hero, a master of words, and a pro at drawing connections between basketball and WoW-players, but did you also know that it was actually he who made the transition between Brog and Blog happen?

Lets look at some facts.

End of 2005. Britney had just begun her fame. She had also picked up this new brog thing. Heres a sample from her (what was back then called) brog: (Click for enlarged image with all the text)

Ok, so far so good, the world was normal.
We fastforward into the end of 2006. McCain has just been elected the Republican candidate to run for president:

And all of a sudden, during the early stages of the election campaign, while Obama was fighting Hillary, we suddenly find a screenshot from Obamas blog. Yes. BLOG.

BLOG. Not brog. BLOG.

What sort of powerful creature could've been so pursuasive that he could change a word that would change the world, and why did Obama and the rest pick up on it? I really didn't know, but I noticed more sites picking up the word "blog". Bon Jovi, the idol contestors, Athene (He must've been one of the first ones, because he's certainly not famous for being funny).

So, when I saw these screens, I of course asked myself, what happened in between?
I did A LOT of research, but I couldn't find anything... Until my friend Snuzz claimed that Warlocks wasn't overpowered during the earlier Arena Seasons. I laughed and bet him $50 I could prove him wrong. Obviously I went to Mings blog and tried to find early records where he explained how OP rogues were in the end of vanilla WoW. I didn't win my bet with Snuzz, but I did find something more interesting.

This:

And all of a sudden it made sense to me. It was Ming. The biggest american chinese hero. He had made all this happen. By not letting Slapnuts translate his first blog entry, he had made Obama and millions of other americans believe in the word blog, and he had made them confident that MING IS RIGHT!

And if Ming writes Blog, then it is called Blog.

So what does this mean? McCain kept on to the "brog", and he obviously lost the election. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that it was the failure to keep up with popularity of the "blog" that made him loose the election. After all, it's the US. Britney got her boobs done and shaved her hair. She also stuck with the "brog".

Now, I havn't investigated this yet, but is it possible that this is the reason people rise and fall? Take Micheal Jackson. Did he blog or brog? Amy Whinehouse? Every writer who writes sitcoms? (These were damn lausy before brog was invited to so probably not.)

I'm asking you americans, can you give me some informations about this?
After all, I'm just a Swede.... I just can't keep up with the newfeed that is the United States of America...