Blog Posts from "The Ooglar" - Gameriot.com

Video Game Reviews 101.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:57:22 -0400

Alright d00ds. I'm back. I've actually found that writing these once-every-2-day bloggerings to be fairly easy to do. Actually, I'm beginning to realize it's because I can just, literally, stream of consciousness the whole damn thing and instead of going "man, that whole thing made no sense," I can be all like "*****" and then slap a period on that baby and call it good.

*****.

OK, that aside, I've had a lot of fun with my newly established blog, and it's clear that I love attention, so I'll take some of your tips in mind and implement them in my writing. If you have any particular topic that you'd like me to froth about, feel free to email, or post up some suggestions in the comments.

Some more learned readers might note that schizophrenia doesn't always suggest split personalities, but I'll say that that's not what Hollywood thinks, so you can shut up. Either way, the thing of MMORPGs is that they're designed to never be 'fully completed,' and they're designed to be enjoyed (not played; ENJOYED) in a plethora of different ways. For those of you who don't understand the distinction between enjoyed and played, I mean this in the sense that MMORPGs are designed for most players to not participate in every possible activity, rather, they are meant to choose, buffet style, what they like and don't like, and then run with that. The problem, therefore, is that a lot of MMO reviewers will base their reviews upon the first ten to twenty or so levels of the game, and then toss out an extrapolation that the rest of the game will be like this or that, but perhaps with flashier spells. Truth is, nobody's got the time to really play your stupid MMO all the way to endgame, because nobody has the time for that.

The media is constructed in such a way that everyone thinks we all need news on a daily basis. I could care less what kind of news it is, but for some reason we like to think that because we have so many great ways to communicate instantly, then we must... be communicating at all times. This is particularly true with news, in that we think that news must be happening every day, and if it isn't happening today, well, we've got to make something news-worthy. Music tends to be reviewed based upon the reviewer listening to CD about two to five times, trying to find meaning and derive enjoyment in different ways each time. Books are meant to read once, maybe twice, and then pondered upon for their cultural impact. Movies need only be watched once before the critic can then go out extolling the virtues ofUp, just because he cried in the beginning (who didn't? And Up was surprisingly good). All of the above 'reviewing methods' can be done in the time-span of a single day, whereas MMORPGs require us to spend an inordinate amount of time playing, just so we can lead the pack, but never stand on top of the mountain.

Thus, readers, I implore you, when listening to idiots reviewing MMORPGs, always take their preferences into mind, even if they are making themselves sound like the pinnacle of all video game judgementery (especially if this). MMORPGs are a very subtle beast, and in order for one to properly review them, my personal belief is that you must find a way to play your way through as many faucets of the game as possible; you must try to examine the game from as many sides as possible and, in the end, stop pulling arbitrary numbers or grades out of your ass to somehow encompass the entirety of your gaming experience. I really don't give a **** if Aion ranks an A or an 8.2 in your books; I'd like to know what your gaming history is, what you wanted from this game, and whether or not you made sure your avatar was super hot (THIS IS IMPORTANT).

*****.

(See what I did there?)

P.S. I'm trying to include images to keep the wall of text from critting you, but seriously, it's hard to find pictures for this kind of abstract crap.

Mummorpugs - Part II

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:58:40 -0400

Welcome back.

I'm not trying to set some kind of ridiculous precedent here by writing another article precisely two days later, so for those of you that are using The Ooglar to 'balance out' your doses of handsome... I'd advise you not to. I have the tendency to procrastinate like... something that procrastinates a lot. You get the point.

I can't say that I'm a massive fan of anything sci-fi related, but BioWare is currently such a strong development company, I really can't see them failing this. Truthfully, I'm becoming more of a fan boy of this IP because of BioWare's ridiculously impressive game resume: THESE DUDES DID SONIC CHRONICLES: THE DARK BROTHERHOOD!!!

Insane.

Jokes aside, SW:TOR looks ridiculously awesome, and not because it's going to have voice acting throughout instead of the first 20 levels. I actually don't care about voice acting or not, but what really intrigues me is the fact that this game will feature legitimate choices (LET'S HOPE NOT THE CLASSIC KILL THE PUPPY DON'T KILL THE PUPPY) that really affect the development of your character. Not to mention the fact that they are taking some incredibly unique approaches to the creation of SW:TOR - it definitely makes me squeaky with anticipation, even though they might not release in 2010 (I have no idea what they've established as a release date).

What I do know, however, is that I will be rolling a Bounty Hunter just like that girl in the trailer, because she was ultra-badass and I will never understand why anyone would want to be a Jedi, when she blew up so many of them with her non-Jedi rockets and flamethrowers.

---

At this point, of course, there are also MMOs that I'm really not looking forward to, but I'm feeling rather lazy and I don't want to go into too much detail. Last year we saw Darkfall Online come to fruition and die a horrible death - this year I can honestly say that I'm pissed off with the three godamn Superhero based MMOs in the works, and while I've heard nothing but good things about Jumpgate Evolutions and Star Trek Online, I probably won't be dipping into that stuff.

And now, once more, I've written too much. It is time to sleep - perhaps to dream.

P.S. For those of you who don't know, not only is Champions Online slated to come out in the Fall, but there is also DC Universe Online and Marvel Ultimate Alliance in the works to follow up. Yes, that's right, there will then be four superhero themed MMOs where there used to be one.

Genius!

Testing, 1, 2, 3. Today is MOBAs and MMORPGs day.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:37:44 -0400

Hello.

I'm Pwyff.

You may remember me.

This is a test. A test to see if writing once or twice a week is really as bad as I think it totally will be.

Now, you might be asking "but Pwyff, aren't you, like... busy as a bat?" And this is very true. Bats are very busy.

But first a rewind with a pink text header:

I'm Chris “Pwyff” Tom. World Famous Handsome, former writer of the TBC Arena Blog “The Ooglar,” and owner of Handsome Gladiator Pwyff of the level 70 population of Ner’zhul. Some of you might remember me from the Serennidramabomb that was and others might remember my affectionate relationship with the written word. These days I’m a part-time Associate Editor for a major MMO gaming website, a professional freelance script writer, a Creative Director of a small business, a senior editor for a small web-based essay business and I moonlight as a Ninja when the weather is good. Only when the weather is good.

With that out of the way, I'll let you know that I was going to just do a weekly DotA article for the Ohcee and talk about how to get the most mileage out of... pubbing, but they don't like me, or they think I'm gay (totallynot). On another note, I'll also say that this entry is not a promise of further handsomeness or anything of the sort, rather, it is a test to see just how much I miss writing the word *****. Even though it looks like I have a lot of work, you'd be surprised how little of that work really lets me refer to genitalia (except when writing personal scripts), so this is my little puppy project. Puppy project, in this case, meaning that this is a small project that at the slightest indication of other

Equal Opportunites

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:31:31 -0500

So... a lot of fun things occurred over the past week. The end culmination is nothing. Woo.
*****, as well. I don't know why I just said that, but it needs to be said. Working for a corporation with some kind of standards (HI MING) is fun and pays well, but this all comes at the sacrifice of me being able to drop the C-word. Wait. Not Allakhazam? *****.
Right.
I'm also going to be starting my own... slightly more off-the-cuff than this "please be impartial and polite" crap on Allakhazam. When I do, I expect all 5 of you to be there.

Or be square.

----

FULL ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT: http://allakhazam.com/story.html?story=16836

If anyoneâ€™s been keeping an eye on Blizzardâ€™s changes within World of Warcraft, they would have noted that there has been a consistent push towards getting casual players more gear. In particular, arena rating has become easier to achieve, and therefore arena gear has been easier to acquire. Now, the moment cool gear becomes easier to get, you donâ€™t need to be bulimic to predict the myriad of responses that would come. Bad Zoolander references aside, should Blizzard have done this?

World of Warcraft PVP has often been considered one of the few places where rewards do not correlate directly with the amount of time one has to spare (except in the era of the Grand Marshall and High Warlord). Rather, when an individual is seen sporting full Season 5 Deadly Gladiator gear, the general populace assumes that this is a player who really knows how to play the game. The general disagreement with easier arena ratings can be summed up in one colloquial phrase: â€œbaddies getting free gear.â€ Straw man arguments aside, the quarrel stems from the belief that skill and dedication are pre-requisites when it comes to rewarding individuals.

FULL ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT: http://allakhazam.com/story.html?story=16836

Unrest in the Garden of Square Enix

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:37:35 -0500

New article up; this one's talking about the recent FFXI bans that basically gobbled up a portion of the hardcore endgame FFXI community. Before y'all go and say anything stupid, like "they still play FFXI?" realize that you're stupid and that's that. The point I was trying to make was that SE is clearly out of touch with their endgame playerbase if an exploit this ridiculous could have been utilized for at least a year and a half. If SE did not know about this exploit, then that says volumes about their inability to maintain a close eye on their most ambitious players. Say what you will about business models, but the fact is, these are the guys that explore all the new content. In this regard, while paying attention to your endgame playerbase is less beneficial monetary wise, in terms of creating a video game, they certainly contribute extensively to the creation of what constitutes an MMO.

Forgive the lolcats, as they are misleading. I did not mean to say that SE absolutely did know about it.

---

Read the full article at http://allakhazam.com/story.html?story=16761

It is remarkably difficult to open a discussion about the very subjective subject (heh) that is cheating and exploiting, so I decided that I would utilize the greatest essay introduction ever. If you are enrolled in university at the moment and you ever write an essay, Iâ€™d suggest you take the following thesis, change the words to fit your needs, and thusly reap the rewards of creating pure, undistilled academia. No need to thank me. Donations, however...

Ahem. To continue:

For millions (maybe billions) of years, man has pondered the meaning of cheating. But what is cheating? Websterâ€™s dictionary defines cheating as â€œto practice fraud or trickeryâ€ and â€œto violate rules dishonestlyâ€. An online dictionary further defines cheating as â€œan annual European species of brome grass widely naturalized in temperate regionsâ€. Taking the above definitions, therefore, we may define cheating as a method of dishonestly violating rules to practice fraud or trickery involving a European species of grass.

Awesome.

European grass aside, this article was written mostly out of wedlock; born from the marriage of Square Enixâ€™s recent bannings and my awkward desire to be â€˜hipâ€™ and â€˜with itâ€™ in my writing. For those who donâ€™t know, on January 22nd, 2009, SE finally decided to bring divine punishment down upon hundreds of FFXI players who had exploited an in-game glitch to get 3x the loot in specific zones. While this wouldnâ€™t have been so bad if all of the items in question were RA/EX (bind on pickup), a number of the dupable items could be sold (and were) for extravagant amounts of gil, mostly due to their rarity. Thus, not only did this duping trick allow players to get excessive amounts of RA/EX gear quicker than SE intended, but they profited an incredible amount in the process.........

THE REST OF THE ARTICLE CAN BE READ AT http://allakhazam.com/story.html?story=16761

Professionally Awesome

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:03:21 -0500

I'm thinking about starting up an article here maybe once a week to reflect on writing for a gaming company as opposed to self-sustained writing. I can definitely tell you that I can't talk about ***** as much as I'd like to. More on that later.

Anywho, this week's article isn't so groundbreaking, but I'm not a groundbreaking kind of guy.

OK!?

---

The full article can be read here at: http://wow.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=16718

---

Depending on where you live and where you come from, youâ€™ve probably heard of the growing community of MANABUUURRRRNNN professional e-gamers; cyber athletes who rake in the cash by playing the games that they love (or end up hating because they play them so much). I say depending on where you live and where you come from in this case because if we imagine that you hail from, say, Korea, the country that invented the â€œI-canâ€™t-see-your-fingers-they-are-moving-too-fastâ€ syndrome and the ailment known as â€œI-can-micromanage-better-than-a-computer-itisâ€, then youâ€™re probably more than well aware of what Iâ€™m talking about. If, on the other hand, youâ€™ve just emerged from your rock, blinking and confused at this internet substance, then Iâ€™m willing to bet that video game athletes arenâ€™t something that you saw coming. Either way, this article is not aimed at discussing the growing market that comes from professional FPS or RTS gaming. Rather, it is aimed at the new, acronym-awkward professional MMO PVP athlete (I might as well just say World of Warcraft e-athlete). In particular, this article is aimed towards answering the real question: is MMO PVP a viable path in e-athleticism. . . . .

---

The full article can be read here at: http://wow.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=16718

OK Guys, here's the deal.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:58:57 -0500

OK guys, here's the deal. I'm writing now. Professionally. Sort of. I pretend that I'm professional, and so should you. So the idea here is that your job is to support me so that I can get a raise, and then one day buy a car.

Why do you want to help me buy a car?

Well because if I have a car, I'll totally start writing about stuff here too.

Totally.

So the deal is, I'm going to post a tidbit of the articles I write, and you will read the full article and then post about how you love it!

Yay!

HERE WE GO!

---

Playing an MMORPG is a lot like living in Canada or the USA. While you may vote, the fact remains that your government has probably done a lot of things that youâ€™re not particularly fond of (Iâ€™m looking at you, University tuition). There also remains the fact that there is very little you can do, aside from joining those hilariously drunk student gatherings where everyone rents a bus and goes â€˜somewhereâ€™ in order to demonstrate that they have no money to pay for school. In reality, this is about the same when it comes to our own MMORPGs. While it is true that there are very hard working developers who are constantly trawling the communities for ideas to bring back to their caves, chances are, the most significant changes that are added into an MMO are implemented according to the will of the parent company. I really canâ€™t recall a time when I was asked â€œWould you like us to raise the level cap to 80?â€ in World of Warcraft. On the other hand, while I would be fairly flattered if I was asked this question, basing key development ideas off of my coin-toss decision making abilities is a great way to anger your fan base.

Take, for example. . .

[ MORE CAN BE FOUND AT: http://allakhazam.com/story.html?story=16670 ]

Zzz...

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:28:39 -0400

I AM TAKING LE BREAK.

SNUCK SNUCK

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:08:02 -0400

So I'm busy, and I'm pretty sure you're busy (with WoW). Maybe you're planning. Maybe not.

Who knows.

I don't.

QUICK SEASON 4 LETS GO:

18stam/5%stun resist as our only chance against lawlroguemagespamspamspam.

SPIRIT IS BETTER THAN STRAIGHT MP5 IN ALMOST EVERY SINGLE SCENARIO, PLEASE REMEMBER THIS. I THINK. I DON'T DO MATH SO I DON'T KNOW BUT SERIOUSLY.

For Feral Druids, stack AGI to the sky and pretend like you're viable.

Uhhh.

My shaman is going to stack spellhaste in every orifice possible, and then lead a 4DPS team to glory and distinction as the most skillful comp ever.

Oh, and I solo'd a Mage / Rogue team in the 1750s because that's just how cool I am.

Kbye. Pwyff... out.

PS: JASI HI

New Video demonstrates that Pwyff was handsome first.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:20:42 -0400

It’s interesting, you know.

leading the pack. Quite simply, because my life is getting more packed with other components, the uniqueness of each individual piece is made more enjoyable. I’m relatively certain that this is how Blizzard is directing our lovely Warcraft to be played, and I’m absolutely for it.

Unfortunately, I suppose you could say, when one drastically shifts from one demographic to another, you’re obviously left with legions of the old timers, crying and sobbing in the corner, wondering why you’ve forsaken them so.

Glancing around at the scene of TBC, it’s vaguely depressing to see how these desolate PVE castaways are really dealing with their new reality. Many take it rather stoically; they continue to love their PVE, and accept that no longer does this world reward them for their ability to be hardcore. Where fame used to be granted to the T3 geared terrors in BG60s, these days you won’t get famous unless you’re handsome, like me, or talented, like me, or you’re a qtpie like Hafu-sama-chan-kun the Golden.

In actuality, I’d like to modify my original statement from “it’s depressing to see how these desolate PVE castaways are dealing with their new reality” to this: really, I don’t mind all of you who continue to PVE; I just pity those who refuse to accept the new reality.

Your gear used to earn you respect! Your PVE accomplishments may have earned you respect! But these days, it really does feel like end game raiding and end game gear is available to those who simply have the time. Say what you will, feel free to froth at the mouth while complaining about how difficult it is to coordinate a 25-man raid, but seriously; raiding is tough because you’ve got such a medley of personalities with varying degrees of retarded. When my guild was attempting Archimonde, we had a priest die three times in a row (and consequently wipe the raid) because he was unable to judge the proper time to use his tears. If you haven’t learned the fight yet; you have a solid 5-10 seconds to click these god damn tears, and the fact that you’re flying in the air is a relatively good indication of when you should think about clicking them.

As well, PVE is really far too static to present a significant challenge to the smarter demographic of WoW players. If you’ve decided to do it completely ad hoc without strategies, a la world firsts, then you may be on to something. That something, however, very quickly dissipates if the challenge itself does not vary over the weeks, months, years. The reason why PVP is considered to be slightly more ‘skill based’ than PVE is simply by the fact that PVP pits you against other players, and no matter what, playing video games against other players is much more challenging that playing PVE.

Why?

It’s just because even though the mobs in PVE hit for 10k-15k on clothies; that’s not difficult, that’s annoying. WoW in itself is not very skill based, but what little skill there is involved, a significant amount of it pans out when you’re put against an individual capable of completely surprising you time and time again.

And no, I don’t god damn mean RNG procs. DIE.

Anyways, that’s really where the challenge is: People.

I honestly believe that raiding these days doesn’t bring up significant advantages for most classes, except, really, raid progression. My Druid only uses about 3-4 pieces of PVE gear that I’ve accumulated in my months of raiding, but my PVE set is considered end-game Sunwell capable. At the end of it all, really, what does it come down to?

Raiding has no real challenge value, except for the first two to three attempts. Thereafter, raiding becomes a weekly grind.

Raiding offers no significant upgrades for many classes and for the ones that do benefit, many top tier teams can work around these. There are instances where individuals can take advantage of these PVE upgrades, but it is absolutely achievable with full arena gear.

So why do we raid? In fact, I tout myself to be casual and an intelligent player, so why do I continue to do it?

Honestly, it’s because I just enjoy playing with my guild. I log on to raid for my piddly 2 hours a night because I enjoy playing a game with 25 people. My guild has about two more bosses to go before we even see Illidan, but we raid a grand total of 6 hours a week. I log on to raid for people just like I log on to play arena with people. That’s the only reason I like to play these games, otherwise I might as well go play on my console.

What you ******* need to stop doing is playing or raiding for some insignificant pixels of gear. If you’re super desperate for e-fame, a la Lawlrennia, you can feel free to tackle long forgotten instances to prove that you had fun first. For those of you who aren’t desperate to get famous, try raiding with your buddies and tell me what the difference is between that and if you had been doing arena or goofing off somewhere else. WoW is for people; the internet is for porn.

That made no sense, but it did.

P.S. Updated Druid handbook soon, might be moving domains soon, and I should be back.

P.P.S. If anyone’s been waiting for The Man Who Never Was, PT. 6, I will be finishing that ASAP.

Good writers aren't born...

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:12:47 -0400

They're taught by Pwyff!

You can also say "they're inspired by Pwyff," or "they're imitating Pwyff," or my personal favorite, "they are Pwyff." But then again, that last one pretty much means that I'm awesome. Which I am, don't get me wrong. But I'm also humble, so watch out for that.

On a more or less equivalent personal note, people have been asking me if I'm 'competing' in this blog writing contest of sorts. I'm afraid I don't really understand what you mean when you even say 'compete,' because I am inherently 'competing' the moment I set down anything on this badly-thought-out-color-scheme of a blog.

If you'd like to modify your adjective to something a bit more pertinent. Say... "Pwyff, do you care about this competition?" or perhaps "Pwyff, are you actively seeking to earn teh phat lewts?" then I would have an answer for you as: No.

Furthermore, believe me when I say that this isn't a 'no-that-really-means-yes-but-I'm-telling-you-no so-that-you'll-be-impressed-by-my-nonchalance.' Nay, this is a 'no' that really pretty much means what it says; I have heard about the GR competition, but I am unchanged by it's revelatory news. The reason as to my apathy really lies in the fact that a competition like this is pretty much counter-intuitive to my goals.

My goal, my desire and my life is dedicated to, really, one thing only: quality writing. It was because of this desire that I shifted my gaze from news journalism to gaming journalism. The former has become quagmired in the commercialism, the sensationalism and the fear mongering themes of the news genre; I can't stand it. I'm not saying that all news media is like this, but you can't deny me when I say that most main-stream news (papers, television and radio) are entirely devoid of personality and actual feeling. We as a community have expanded to global proportions, but somewhere along the way, we became entirely desensitized to each other. We are inundated with tragedy after tragedy, commercial after commercial, every clip and video separated by a smiling row of dentures, gleaming into your eyes, piercing your soul as she says "And now, this." Then we are exposed to more, more, more.

That and the genre really stifles creativity. I tried it, it's boring.

This competition is trying to do to my precious gaming journalism and online blogging what consumer commercialism did to my news media: it will attempt to enforce deadlines and sensationalism, and then it will reward those who worship these two greedy demons. Already I see individuals trying to slam out badly written article after article, attempting to pilfer greater slices of the pie, working not for the happiness of creation, but pursuing fame, money and attention.

If you are one of these people, please stop it. You're ******* with my dream.

I am writing for the simple joy of creation. I love writing and I love writing about things; anything. I chose gaming journalism because the depth of my knowledge of music is limited to the fact that I love Raine Meida, 3 Doors Down and Nujabes. My political knowledge is decent, but I can't even pretend that I like to watch watered down political debates. Finally, and I believe this is my biggest reason for choosing gaming journalism; there exists those who are already working hard to maintain the quality. Kotaku, The Escapist and 1UP are amazing bastions of solid journalism, but when you truly get to the heart of things, this man, Jerry Holkins, is the reason I continue to love this media form. Douglas Adams and Orson Scott Card keep me pursuing a career as a novelist, but as long as Tycho Brahe exists as a character, I understand that gaming journalism is safe until I can enter it.

A competition to see who gets the most hits, the most sensationalism and the most attention, is not a competition for me.

Allow me then, to give you all some tips. I don't presume that I'm the best blogger on here or anywhere, but I do know that 'quality' is not the first thing that comes to mind when we consider our beloved WoWRiot. These tips may not garner you hordes of fangirls and cocaine, but they will let you understand how to write something that you can look back on and say "that's some good quality **** right there."

Write only when you want to.

It is understood with anything that things have deadlines. Assignments, homework, business reports, phone calls, everything. But the fact is, if you rush yourself and immerse yourself in the 'get it done' mindset, then you will undermine the quality of your work. Every piece of writing is a bit of your soul, your creativity, tempered and produced with the intention of sharing. How do you rush that? Pursue what you feel passionate about, write about what you feel passionate about, and allow your interest to guide your deadlines. If you can't make something now, don't just spew out crap because you need to. Take an hour, go walking, play some WoW, hang out with friends, read a book, punch a baby, who knows; just stop bludgeoning your brain, and let it breathe.

Place yourself in your writing.

I could seriously care less if someone told me about what someone else thinks. I care about what you think. I want to know what your take is, and I want to hear your voice in your work. News media tells you that they are unbiased and fair, but it is impossible to achieve this when we are all inherently biased. A camera angle can impart a biased nature; a wrongly chosen word reflects the speaker's intentions. Understand that you can't simply 'stop' being biased when you write, so acknowledge it and use it. I want to see your personality shine through, and I want to see why this bothers you, why this makes you happy.

Learn Diversity.

Do you know what beating a dead horse means? It means that this particular equine being has been beaten to death by you, and then, because you think that it needs even more beatings, you beat it. In layman's terms, this means that you've hit the point of diminishing returns. Kind of. A comedian does not walk up the front stage and tell the same joke over and over.

"Why couldn't the bike get up in the morning?"
"He was two tired."

You might get laughs the first time, but if you turn around and ask the same question, but perhaps say "scooter" in place of bike, chances are, you're an idiot. Pursue diversity, change up your topics, write about a plethora of different things and understand that some may garner more attention then others. Whatever you do, however, don't replicate your most popular stuff, because then you're just beating a dead whatever.

Learn Basic Conversational Grammer.

I don't even need to explain this. I don't care about nitpicking when to use apostrophes or not, but if your **** reads "Yet like all the Asian beauty pageants I have seen, the most plain looking chicks after a 45 minutes make-up session can look pretty good that is why most women who went to that studio also ordered solo shots," then I'm going to hunt you down with a comma and violate you with it.

Tell the god damned truth whenever you can.

I could honestly care less as to how popular you make yourself out to be, but it's incredibly easy to tell when someone is lying to themselves or they're modifying the truth to make themselves sound better. Just be honest and authentic; it's easier to maintain and it's easier to trust you.

Do these sound like difficult criteria to follow?
No.

Are they difficult to follow?
**** yes.

It's so easy to get caught up in the comments, the fame and the glamor; but are you going to meet these people? Will they make a tangible difference on your life? Writing is about creating relationships with those who read your work and understanding that your role as a creator is something significant in this world.

Please don't destroy the integrity of journalism when there are so many people who have devoted their lives to sustaining it.

If you really want to level the healing playing field...

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:56:10 -0400

You're going to have to destroy the Druid class.

The fact is, within the current meta-game being played right now, Druids are by far the strongest healers. That's just how it is.

Imagine, if you will, your high school yearbooks. Maybe your graduating year was subjected to this, maybe not, but a good deal of you guys will remember those student voted awards that were given to the graduating class; "Most likely to get pregnant by age 20," or "Most handsome Pwyff ever," etc etc. If such a yearbook was to be printed for our Warcraft alumni, can you imagine how many snarky awards my beloved Druid would be featured in?

Most independent healer: Druid
Most handsome: Pwyff
Most mobile healer: Druid
Most likely to get pregnant by age 20: Pwyff
Most likely to get off a drink during a fight: Druid
Most likely to get hit by a car: Pwyff
Best Crowd Control Spell (arguably): Druid
Most popular healing class in 2v2 and 3v3: Druid
Most handsome Pwyff: Pwyff
Most likely to get nerfed: Druid.

In reality, the car one was the only award I won in my school years; and this was because I refused to stop using my $5 roller blades in the wintertime. But the fact remains that we're just too strong! If we're overrepresented in the highest echelons, it makes sense to nerf us until this **** resolves itself!

Right?

Wrong.

Well, kind of.

In a way.

This is probably blasphemous to say, and you guys can go ahead and get uppity and panty-knotty..-y, but it doesn't seem like these recurring nerfs are doing anything for keeping our domination in check. In fact, I'd go so far to say that with every nerf that has come for Restoration Druids in the past little while has, really, only seen more and more Druids gain popularity. The only class that I would say can even remotely compete with Druids as the dominant healing class across all three brackets would be the Priest.

Hmmm, I wonder why the Priest would still be as powerful as the Druid... Does... anyone care to check the past changelogs and see who has gotten the most class modifications in the past arena seasons?

Could it be...

THE PRIEST?

...

No, it's the Paladin, I'm messing with you.

...

Kidding.

Imagine that! The Priest has gotten some of the most significant changes of any healing class in the game, and woah! Imagine that! The Priest is one of the only comparable healing classes in terms of overall representation across all three brackets!

Imagine that!

...

Imagine that!

...

I'll stop being obnoxious and get to my point.

WoW ARENA IS AN EVOLVING GAME.

The problem with Blizzard is that they're still stuck in the PVE aspect of it all. In the past, you could make slight nerfs and slight adjustments to classes based upon what you wanted them to be doing in the dungeons.

"Well ****," the developers said, "Druids are under-represented in raids Pre-TBC, how do we fix that?"

And Voila! They tweaked our beloved class so that we could OT and DPS in the same spec with a simple gear change as Feral, or they made us incredibly mobile as Restoration spec by giving us Lifebloom and a form that made HoTs all the more mana efficient. But this was not the end of it all; what if all raid bosses required a single tank, or all bosses had no mobility involved? Then these proposed Druid changes would have fallen flat on their face, because what good is mobility if mobility is not demanded? Thus, in conjunction with these changes, Blizzard made bosses where mobility was absolutely key (hello Archimonde), or instances where an off-tank was needed for some bosses, but DPS was needed for others (hello ZA).

In this way, Blizzard was able to balance the class by tweaking it's overall playstyle, and then configuring dungeons and instances to suit these playstyles. However, do understand this: you cannot have one without the other. At least, if you want to have proper balance.

But now, can we see what's wrong when we apply this same mindset to arena?

Anyone?

Billy, in the back?

"Because arena cannot be tweaked in terms of how it is supposed to be play. The Blizzard team is limited to modifying the classes and hoping that players will respond by changing their playstyles in kind. However, like the cliche goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. In this way, Blizzard cannot enforce a specific playstyle or strategy in arena, because it is a player driven - and therefore player evolved - game."

Thank you Billy.

Yes, that's right. But the problem here is that arena has evolved (devolved?) to such an alien landscape that even the WoW developers cannot keep up with the trends. Thus, you get consistent nerfs to the Druid class in the hopes that this will finally convince everyone to try something else, but to no avail. SO WHAT DO YOU DO HOME FRIES?

WHAT
DO
YOU
DO
?

I dunno, buff the **** out of everything. Priests got significant buffs and changes to keep up with this evolving arena, but Shamans and Paladins have not gotten real, meaty modifications in a long time. Make it viable for the strongest classes in game, the Warrior and the Rogue, to play with classes other than Druids, make them more tempting rather than uglifying the **** out of me.

Please.

Actually I just got really bored suggesting anything for anyone else. All I'm really concerned about is how much you're messing with my enjoyment.

Stop it.

Listen up and fix us.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:38:49 -0400

There has been a question nagging at my mind for a significant amount of time, yet every moment that it has surfaced, I have pushed it deep within my soul, etching it upon my heart.

"When is it my time?" I whisper to myself as I forsake my few remaining pieces of 'viable spec' upgrades for my 'desired, fun spec' choices. How else does one achieve one's goals if the system, placed by those above, wants to devour your spirit?

Yet I continue to desperately purchase theseof the Gods, to no avail. There would be no rapture. There would be no redemption. As the Divinities ordain their chosen people, I remain a heathen, a testament to those who refuse to buckle under divine ignorance. Here I shall remain, misshapen, ignored, and worst of all, unviable.

My time has not come, and it's not even on the horizon. A brooding deity sits above this World of Warcraft, deaf to my cries.

"I want to be viable!" The Retribution Paladin cried; and thus, while their sculpting was not yet perfect, they gained 15% run speed, and item stat modifications to suit a more offensive need. The Retribution Paladin frowned at his complete lack of mana efficiency paired with his absolute inability to recover such mana, but he rejoiced in the fact that he was, somewhat, viable. The Gods demonstrated that they at least held him within their minds.

"I want to be viable!" The Enhancement Shaman cried; and thus, Toughness reduced slowing and snaring effects by 50% of their duration. Shamanistic Rage became un-dispellable, and reduced incoming damage by 30% for a set amount of time. The Enhancement Shaman still suffered greatly in the face of kiting, and he continued to be targeted as the focus for every fight, but at least he was, somewhat, viable. The WoW Gods demonstrated that they were at least watching out for this hybrid Shamans.

Finally, the lowly Feral Druid and Balance Druid stumbled forward into the all-knowing gaze of the Warcraft deities.

"P-p-please s-sirs, we w-would like to..." They stuttered.

"To WHAT?" The Gods demanded, anger flashing within their malevolent eyes.

"W-we would l-like to be v-v-v-viable!" They squeaked together, cat and owlthing in tandem.

"But Restoration is powerful!" The angry deity roared at the impertinent little animals. "The balance of the World of Warcraft would be capsized if you little beings possessed two viable specializations!"

"W-we know that," They stuttered, "B-but look at the Enhancement Shaman and the Retribution Paladin! T-they aren't s-super viable, but at least th-they can do something in a-arena! We at least want t-to... bring... something... to the arenaaa~aaaa *sob*." Large tears began to pour down their little owly-cat faces. "W-we want to know that y-you're thinking of us just like the R-retribution Paladin or the Enhancement S-s-s-shaman *Baaawl*... Sniff... *Sob*" And with this, the two little animals began to howl and cry in front of the Gods.

"Well ****," The Deities murmured uncharacteristically, "fine, here you go, be viable."

Instantly, the two animals brightened up and gazed with wide-eyed wonder into their saviors. "Truly, do you mean it!?" They dared not believe that their dream would finally come true. "Oh joyous day! Today we become viable in arena! We may join our Retribution Paladin and Enhancement Shaman brethren!" And with that, the owlkin and cat celebreated happily. Soon after, however, they realized that they should probably specify the problems that they felt in arena.

"I'm too squishy! I have no damage mitigation talents outside of Bear form, and if I go Bear, there is absolutely nothing I can do to contribute to the team! Furthermore, I cannot reliably help CC for my team without sacrificing all of my DPS and my energy bar! Finally, my damage in itself is just too low, without any form of utility! Rogues have stuns, reliable interrupts, crippling poison and wound poison! Warriors have instant Mortal Strike and Intercept! Enhancement Shamans have Heroism, Totems, and huge burst damage! Retribution Paladins have massive burst damage and incredible team support spells like Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Freedom, and Divine Shield! In addition, all of them can use these abilities without sacrificing no more than a single GCD, whereas the Feral Druid must give up his energy bar and extra mana and an extra GCD and he must cast in his very squishy caster form and he has no pusback resistance, so pets can easily disable the Feral Druid!" The Feral Druid cried, and then fell over, exhausted and sad.

"I just can't burst fast enough! As a Moonkin, I'm passed over 90% of the time for an Elemental Shaman, because they can do what I do, but they also bring Heroism! I am unable to heal while in Moonkin form, but I have absolutely no damage mitigation talents if I am not in Moonkin form!" The Moonkin yelled. He probably could have yelled more if the author really cared about Moonkin arena viability, but he doesn't, so the Moonkin stopped.

"I see," Said the Warcraft Gods. "I understand your plight, and your inability to become viable. Because I am all-powerful and all knowing, I will grant you your wish, and I will make you viable!"

And with that, Feral Druids got more AP that they didn't need. That was it. Oh, and then they got a Glove bonus on their Season 3 gear that enabled them to interrupt a cast time with an ability that stuns you. Fancy that. Moonkins got some kind of set bonus, but nobody ever understood if the 4set bonus was any good, because to date, no Moonkin has ever gotten enough arena points to purchase four pieces of Moonkin S3 gear. This is due to the fact that Moonkins cannot physically improve past a 1200 Arena Rating. Any time a Moonkin moves beyond this point, they have, inevitably, turned into a Restoration Druid of some form or kind. Oh, and the Warcraft Gods continually nerfed the Restoration Druid, so that all three could eventually be equal in their unviability.

The moral of this story is that you should always eat your food when it's hot.

Almost a year of arena: Retrospective blundering.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:36:05 -0400

I very rarely link to bad writing because I think you, my audience, would get offended, but I'm pretty sure we can all let out a collective chuckle at .

Trust me when I say that I'm not particularly vindicative when it comes to my enemies or whatnot, but I'd like to take this opportunity to re-iterate a very important point:

When it comes to competitive team gaming, people skills are far more valuable than any form of talent.

I've since passed along mocking Serennia, and at the moment I'm feeling vaguely sorry for him. But don't tell him that. Otherwise then he'll talk about how he feels sorry for my ratings or something, and then egos will get hurt. I'll just point out now that just about four to five months ago, when I was playing with Serennia on Tichondrius, his biggest fan at the time was Zilea, and Zilea didn't even play with him!

I suppose now we can all learn and move on, but do understand that a friendly environment is much more conducive to coherent play than anything else. If you add pressure, or constantly blast away at your team's morale, then you're being what I like to call a big weenie. Communication and enjoyment are key to getting the best out of everyone!

Anywho, moving on from that bit of faked on-the-ball tappin'-the-scene-ishness, it's interesting to note that June will mark the first year of the World of Warcraft Arena. I remember the first time I entered Arena was in the middle of Season 1 with green Feral gear. I owe my late start to the fact that Blizzard cleverly gave me the opportunity to level a Shaman, but didn't take my slow leveling nature into account. Thus it would be that when Season 1 was a week before launch that I finally dropped my 53 Shaman and began to earnestly level my Druid.

Season One was, in my opinion, probably one of the best eras of World of Warcraftery. From start to finish, people were making names, trying out comps and gobbling up points. What I felt truly gave the 'scene' it's uniqueness was the fact that, at the time, ratings (and by extension, points) were harder to get. Because of this, most teams in my brackets (I gradually climbed from 1.7k to 2.3k) were a hilarious mish-mash of PVE items and PVP items, and we all experimented like mad scientists to discover our true potential.

In this regard, I say true potential as a kind of sad topic, because I also believe that it was the transition from Season One to Season Two that really eroded the 'discovering your true potential' aspect of WoW. These days, everyone has a role, and they must work to fulfill that particular role. I no longer look at my spec and wonder at the methods by which I could tweak it to fully utilize a 'unique' playstyle. The pioneers have come and gone, and now all of our routes, our choices and our strategies must tug along in their wake.

In terms of competitive gaming and how WoW has evolved from it's former halcyonic salad daysical hayday pastoral glory, I have to show you guys something that I'm sure we can all giggle at, and then point at me and call me bad:

"Either incorporate class switching by making it viable for everyone to be able to experience all of the classes without sacrificing their lives to a video game. . . Make an arena server with premade characters, winnow the competitive gamers from that realm, or stop deluding yourselves. WoW cannot be a truly competitive e-sport, your girlfriend will never lose that weight, your penis really is that small, and no, you'll never be as handsome as me."

I mentioned that juuust before the New Year, and aside from the fact that my writing is still awesome in retrospect, I'm sure you can all see the irony here; I've gotten precisely what I've asked for, and now I'm refusing to play on it, or encourage it. Neat, huh? There's just no pleasing me.

I asked for premade arena servers, and I asked very specifically for the competitive league to get the top players from this league. Blizzard followed suite. Following that, I have come to the realization that WoW is not, and can never really be, about competitive gaming; there's too much RNG, counter-comping persists like a bad odour, and the 'balance' is just really not quite there yet.

In reality, if I were a dev, I'd probably have kicked myself in the balls and have that done with it.

But anyways, I suppose this is really the root of all development processes. Obviously everyone believes that their proposed ideas would solve everything, and once the solutions really hit the ground running, we finally look up from our solutions and realize "oh ****, that was some pretty bad tunnel vision."

So, in this regard, add developmental tunnel vision to my list of negative traits, right next to too handsome, too good, and lacking in situational awareness.

Sue me.

The fact is, I really do hope that this tournament realm injects a healthy dose of competition into the WoW competitive scene. Perhaps it's not a scene that I will lovingly tap anymore, but it is always good to see a particular community flourish as oppose to flounder. When I played Natural Selection, the death of the community was always lurking around the corner. Yet it was by our adamant refusal to die that really allowed me to eke out a year or so of real competitive enjoyment. Sponsorships in that game amounted to little more than free server reservations, worth $12.00 a month, and a few GBs of web hosting, but knowing that someone else was placing confidence in your ability to play a game was inspiring!

In the end, however, allow me to make amends with Blizzard. I'm sorry I really trashed your tournament realms, but I just feel that the class balance was not achieved properly when you opened these realms. I would still like to see Feral Druids employed in some way or form, I desperately want healing options to open up and soar, I very much would like to see more Shamans and Paladins in utilization, UA Warlocks have always fascinated me in their tactical play, and it's always depressing to see Mages instantly go on the decline when arena shifts towards any form of sustained play.

This whole situation feels somewhat analogous to a fat kid who wishes for a wagonload of pepperoni sticks (in fact, what kid didn't wish to eat pepperoni sticks all day when he was young?), but then, when the moment of deliverance arrives, he realizes, too late, that these meat snacks are of the terrible honey and garlic variety. "Screw you Elizabeth Hurley!" He screams to the Heavens. In vain.

In this same way, I have gotten what I have asked for, but there is no Elizabeth Hurley to blame for me not quite getting it the way I wanted. Please Blizzard, I know you've got it in you, and you really have given me a lot. I'm sorry to ask this again of you, but Dear Blizzard, this is Paper; can you please nerf Rock and Scissors?

P.S. Please Nerf my Resto Tree so that I can play Feral and nobody will get grumpy at me.

PWYFFY BECOMES THE #3 RANKED DRUID IN NORTH AMERICA ON NER'ZHUL IN 5V5.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:40:18 -0400

Pwyffy's 5v5 team is #3 on Ner'zhul in North America in 5v5s, but #1 in your hearts.

This is cause for celebration.

I scoured the SK-Gaming tournament ladder, omitting the terrible battlegroups, like everything not equating to BG9. Who cares if there are supposed 'quality' players in other battlegroups; we all know that true talent starts with a nine. Following that, I understood inherently that to compare my team to every other 5v5 team would be a silly thing to do. You may be rated 2500, but you're clearly running some kind of scrub setup, like a Hunter, or the overpowered 5v5 Rogue.
Obviously to compare my unorthodox and creative team against your 'cookie cutter' **** would also be a disservice to me and my servants. We all know that Druids are incredibly weak in 5v5; I think there's only like... three of us who are rated 2k+, who aren't being carried by our teams; those three Druids being myself, Hafu and Kyrano (the former because she's kyute, the latter because he's paying me 5000g to mention him).

Anyways, back to what I was saying, there's only like three Druids worth mentioning above 2k+, and not only that, since 5v5 is our weakest demographic representation, I'm willing to bet that there's only like 10 Druids total who are 2k+ in this extremely difficult bracket.

But along I have come, Pwyffy, the savior of the Druid class, to represent us all in this dark and difficult time! Paving the way for the truly most unique Druid matrix ever employed, I have utilized the extremely underrated combo of Paladin / Warrior / Elemental Shaman, and added the unique touch that only Pwyffy can add; a Druid and a Mage!

As well, we use some of the most complicated strategies ever known to wowkind, like DPSing one target and switching to another. I refer to that as "Pwyffy Switch Baiting," and you may feel free to use such a strategy in your own 5v5s. While it may seem that only my geniuosity could have thought of such a unique approach, I cannot take full credit for these accolades; I am far too humble, and I'll admit that my teammates are what inspire me to think of such inspiring inspirations. As well, do understand that such mastery of Pwyffy Switch Baiting will not come easy.

You will need to have our inside program, called Ventrilo in order to pull this off, and you need something that only I have really been trained in; namely the concept of 'counting down' from three. As well, as far as I know (and I know a lot), only I truly have the golden voice capable of unleashing such chakra. It takes a very inspirational kind of person to be able to inspire his team with such urgings as "TRAIN THAT PRIEST, TRAIN HIM, TRAIN HIM, OK TRAIN THE DRUID, OK NOT WORKING, TRAIN THE SHAMAN, GOOD HE'S DEAD, NOW TRAIN THE PRIEST AGAIN, BOPBOPBOPBOPBOPBOP, **** I CYCLONED YOUR TARGET, WHATEVER, KEEP GOING."

Anyways, now that I have shared with you one of my many innermost secrets, I do hope that you, my Druid proteges, will continue my work. Soon, there will be Druids in every top team, in every top matrix! If Pwyffy can accomplish it, so can you! Believe it!

Lead that team! and how TTR killed my WoW.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:34:33 -0400

I've been getting a few questions pertaining to my long ago post about analyzing classes. Short answer: I'll get around to it. Long answer: Class analysis is boring. Semi-informative answer: Dongs.

In other news, another question that was sent my way concerned the method in which I got my players. Maybe the general populace is absolutely swimming in quality players, but over here in the ghettos of Ner'zhul, I believe our top PVP community is dwindling down into the one-hand-countables. I mainly attribute this to two large, gleaming reasons:

1.) **** yo' tournament realms.
2.) Everyone is bored to ****.

Actually, those aren't reasons as much as they are opinions; sharp like daggers, piercing your retina like fat girls with tank tops.

My first reason is a relatively straightforward one. For those of you who sprang that $25 to play your optimized race / gear / gem combination on the Tournament Realms, I salute you. I told you all previously that I wouldn't play on the Tournament Realms, and I stand by this conviction. WoW is, and always has been, an MMORPG to me; for them to allow me to create a character that has, literally, beaten the MMORPG aspect, is boring. I won't get into that.

Another interesting aspect of the tournament realms, however, is the fact that it has literally decimated any arena-ing on regular WoW servers. Pick up a team and play in any bracket on a Monday, and I guarantee that once you go past the 1800s, every third team will be a seller team. Arena on my beloved regular WoW has devolved to some kind of BG grind; it has about as much personality and 'freshness' as your mother with an iPod.

Maybe it's the same on the tournament realm too; maybe everybody is just bored of what WoW has to offer, and so now we all lackadaisically go through the motions of enjoyment, but there is no real emotion behind it. Like sex with me.

Hyuk.

Anyways, through all of this badboringness, there gleams a shining diamond in the atmosphere: me. While all you drones continue to pretend to take some kind of satisfaction from the World of Warcraft, I continue to enjoy the game. I hope this is inspiring for you all to know that at least one individual plays WoW because he likes it.

"How do you accomplish this Pwyff?" You all ask, jaws agape.

Well, it's simple really; it's the same thing I've been doing for my whole life. I am playing my game and playing with people who see the gaming medium as a socially gratifying platform. In stupid terms: I'm playing for the people. This ultimately leads me to the conclusion that people who play for a team make much better teammates than people who play on a team. The difference between these two types of players is about as big as the difference between Naruto and Sasuke. Believe it!

...

Sorry.

The method by which I lead a team is really simple, actually. My team always has some kind of driving concept behind it, and it's usually a concept that can be summarized in under ten words, with one of those words being rofltastic.

By example, my Season 2 5v5 team of E.Sham / S.Priest / Ice Mage / UA Lock / R. Druid had the general concept of: "CONTROL LOTS, DPS LOTS, NO TOUCHY PWYFF, ROFLTASTIC WIN."

Nine words.
Rofltastic contained.

Excellent.

George Patton once said, "Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." And this is, in my opinion, the absolute truth when it comes to real leadership. Not only that, but is the absolute truth when it comes to being a player who plays for a team. Sun Tzu said that you need to be water in order to react to anything, but how does this happen if you've got some guy telling you precisely how he wants you to react?

Conversely, if you're a player on my team, I expect you to be just as creative as I am. Every loss might be a result of my bad call, but I fully expect my teammates to be able to jump up and say "maybe we should change our strategy to: control more, dps less, rofltastic win?" As long as he keeps the team mantra under ten words, and gets that rofltastic in, I'm game for anything. What makes me drop a player from my team is when they start being little *****es.

I used to play, very briefly, with a Rogue who would spend a good five minutes after every loss to complain about RNG, Mace stuns, the lack of coherency in the American democratic party, rising gas prices and the unrequited love that he possessed for the fat girl at the laundromat. He was so concerned with winning or losing and the amount of points he would get this week that he basically emo'd the enjoyment out of the entire process.

In this way, I could never play with players like Serennia or Ming. No offense to either of them, but they're entirely focused upon themselves to realize that they're playing with other teammates. I've played with many of these kinds of players over the course of my arena days, and since then I've learned that I can not, will not, play with these kinds of people. As a result of this mantra, I find that I attract and play with some of the most enjoyable and talented players in the game. Perhaps it is the talent that makes it enjoyable, or perhaps it is the enjoyment that makes them talented, but therein lies my point.

There's a saying out there that says, "Make them fear you, and they'll kill for you. Make them love you, and they'll die for you." I will continue to play this game to enjoy the people, and because I seek others who do the same, I'm certain that the experience I will be getting out of my video game is just as socially rewarding as anything else I do. Do not be tricked into believing that the internet is an anti-social device; it is simply another aspect of our social spheres that we inhabit! Friends are, in my opinion, friends; despite the medium, despite the process by which you acquired them.

Enjoy your friends, enjoy the game.

I'm back with new teams and bad ratings.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:44:19 -0400

I suppose a more consistent stream of updates would really help my viability here, but I'll make the same plea that fat anorexic kids give when they try to justify their absence: I was out RPing in the RL.
Finals are over, grades are good, girlfriend is done tomorrow, getting a summer job, everything is A-OK. Been playing arena these days, and it's truly amazing, looking around, at how different the climate has become. I just entered Black Temple for the first time today as well, seeing as my guild is now 3/9 BT, and 4/5 Hyjal. This isn't leet PVEing by any stretch of the mind, but it was incredibly fun. I suppose I'll get just as bored running around dodging volcanoes on Supremus as I did dodging OH WAIT not dodging, but getting raped by bad Vashj bolt timings. While this is much delayed in the doing so; I tip my hat to Blizzard for their production of Black Temple and the fun times it will bring.

As for PVP.

First of all, in 2s, I've been trying out the very out-moded Restokin / Rogue combination, and I'll be very honest here, I feel a lot less powerful than my Warrior / Druid predecessor. Warrior / Druid is spectacularly boring, but do not let that equate to bad; it's remains, to this day, one of the strongest comps I've ever seen, and I place a great deal of faith in it. Playing Rogue / Restokin simply opens my eyes to the unfortunate **** block that is SL/SL Warlock + Healer that I used to love stomping all over with a Warrior. A Rogue simply cannot swap and kill a pet fast enough, and so we must lie down in the fetal position and cry. Maybe I'm playing it wrong.

In 3s, I'm just about near 2k playing a very odd matrix of Hunter / Mage / Druid. And I like it. Geekboys says that there are only four teams above 2k that play this matrix, and I think, in actuality, two of those teams really play this comp, but Geekboys is not to be trusted and is therefore the enemy. I'm not really here to discuss the creative validity of my comp, and I'll be honest as to how I arrived at it: it involved the words 'taking what's available.'

I simply picked up where I left off three months prior (albeit with BT gems and 375 enchanting, hur) and made good on my promise to my Mage to play 'something leet' in 3s with him. We also planned to try out an amazing Warrior / Fire Mage / Moonkin / E.Sham / Holy Paladin 4DPS 'I-don't-know-what-the-****-this-comp-is-doing' but it just goes to show that not every plan makes it through the cognitive process.

Anyways, I must say re-iterate here what I mentioned before: I like this comp. The fact is, you're looking at the highest number of Rogue harassment tools available to you, in one of the strongest Rogue brackets. In terms of stripping / controlling CCs, you've got:

Magical:
Sheep / Roots / Cyclone / Frost Trap (or is it Physical?) / Ice Novas / Frostbolt Slows

Physical:
Scatter Shot / Bash (OH WAIT) / Pounce / Maim / Feral Charge / Concussive Shot

All of these combined mean that you should be able to keep Rogues off of your Mage for significant amounts of time. The fact that you're still running a Physical + Magic DPS means that you can burst and deal damage to almost anyone. When we go up against RMP, we typically mount pressure and vipers on the Mage while controlling the Rogue. Ideally, frustration should mount and we ought to be able to pressure off of a full counterspell to just place the Mage down for good. A common strategy is for me to stand in front of Priests and cast Healing Touch. The Priest will be so happy to manaburn me and take pictures, his Mage will be dead.

Alternatively, it's simply a matter of hearing those words "Priest full CS," that link into a Silencing Shot to a Feral Charge to a Bash to a Cyclone. None of this **** be on shared DRs, and all of it is good and solid.

Ultimately what stands in our way is twofold:

A) Double healer teams.
B) Our suck.

Obviously B being a significant factor, I attribute most of our suck to simply getting used to this matrix. Hunter / Mage / Druid is a quasi outlast team, but is inherently bad at outlasting because we have a god damned Mage. Yet because we bring a Marks Hunter (note: not the bad BM kind), we have to acknowledge that yes, Marks Hunters are almost always on Drain teams. Thus we run what I feel to be a very balanced comp, but one that is outshadowed in both directions by more 'strategy specific' comps. Against triple DPS we seem to do just fine, but once you start moving into the stronger outlast teams, we have serious problems.

Hunter / Mage is made mainly for harassing melee, but we get really messed up when a Lock / Priest / Hunter combo comes stomping up. Now my Mage is getting feared and drained, and we can't mount any significant pressure on them. This is the same for any other matrix out there that can conceivably retain heals from two unique sources. The ******* just won't die. Once we hit 2.1k-2.2k, expect me to talk about how I had no doubts or something.

In 5s, I just broke 2k with relative ease (overall, like 40-7 record) with a 2345 redux of Druid / Warrior / Pally / Mage / E.Sham. We're particuarly effective against the hordes of ******* melee teams out there, as I'm able to play some serious mind games with any Warrior on the field, but once more, we're running into some walls when we go up against slightly more lasting teams. Teams with Warriors and Priests generally can train our Mage with little effort, whereas we're limited to the players we can significantly burst from start to go. Not only that, but they're usually expecting it, and so they hide the first moment they can. C'est le vie, there's not much else to say about that.

Now, I wanted to talk about just how ****** up the arena scene is outside of the TTRs, but I think I'll save that for tomorrow's post. I'm really just being lazy.

P.S. TIRAMI THE ELEMENTAL SHAMAN OF WIN IS 70 AFTER YEARS OF BEING 68. I WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN.

[Interlude] BEST TIMING EVER.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 05:52:36 -0400

Yeah I was planning to be all like class analysis this, perception that, ***** this, handsome that, but no, Blizzard pre-empted this by releasing 2.4, and thereby forcing me to wait at least a little while before I can say "THIS CLASS IS JESUS IN WOW, PLEASE NERF, THERE IS NO COUNTER." That and this is my last two weeks of classes, term papers are due very soon, and thereafter I will be on vacation for my summer. Be patient.

That said, my spec these days has been that Restokin Deep spec that's been running rampant, but I appear to be, as you less handsome individuals say, "a square" when it comes to this spec.

Particularly there is the fact that my battlegroup is absolutely infested with crackwhorish Warlocks. Rogue / Druid vs Warlock/(Druid/Rogue/Mage/Priest) is fun and all, but in every regard, versus a Warlock I'd absolutely love to bring a Warrior over a Rogue. No offense to my Rogue at all (I LUV U ROSS PLZ DUN LEEV ME), but instant MS application combined with an incredible disregard for Felhunter AP debuffs is what truly made me feel confident with a Warrior.

In reality, running 2s with a Warrior, while it was incredibly boring, was also very inspiring. While I absolutely despise the comp itself in terms of fun and enjoyment, I do know that this is probably the best 2s partner a Druid could ever ask for. Rogues are great and all, but in my opinion, they're still a little bit mobility hampered, and when they go up against Healer / X teams, I feel that sometimes that heavy pressure is simply lacking.

That said, I think I'll try out this spec for 2s and 3s:

http://wowhead.com/?talent=0tj0zbZVMhoZVMIxcq0hs

With the advent of a faster casting Manaburn combined with Cyclone being reduced to the same range as Fear, I would prefer to have my trusty Feral Charge at my disposal once more. I predict far too often will a healer simply outrange my Cyclone, and then I'll miss that all important interrupt because I just couldn't get in range fast enough. This is especially true when we speak in terms of Druid / Rogue, because if you dick it up once, you've basically turned the whole match into a large hairy scrotum.

I truly enjoy the likes of Swiftmend, because then it frees up Nature's Swiftness for an offensive Cyclone, but still allows me to heal bomb when necessary. Not only that, but it vaguely gives back a good amount of mana, because I can take full advantage of a Rejuv, versus just letting it run out with a Restokin. Regrowth being 20% cheaper also points to the fact that I shouldn't feel the mana problem too badly. Losing Moonkin will be kind of uncool, but Natural Perfection looks delicious when it's in a dispellable form: more layers of magical dispel protection means more handsome time for me.

As for 5s, I'm going to get together some friends and form up an old school 4DPS team with whatever I can scavenge. In reality, screw the fact that 4DPS is dead, I just enjoyed it so much that I don't care. ONWARD HO!

Nerdcrafting.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:09:15 -0400

If you've ever played any competitive game, you would fully understand that half of the 'competitive' aspect of a game truly comes from the players themselves. If you don't understand what I mean, think in terms of Poker.

Have you ever played Poker at a table of pros? People that you know can play the game, understand the game, and live the game? These guys are freaks.

Kidding.

The fact is, however, that when you play guys like these, if someone went all in, or raised the blinds pre-flop, or played aggressively, and then called, then you'd actually put weight behind their actions. That is to say, you would react to them based not only on what they're doing (calling, folding, raising), but based on what you expect them to do and what you expect them to be thinking. So, if a guy raises pre-flop, he's pretty much guaranteed to have a decent card hand. There is the rare chance that he's bluffing, but nobody likes to bluff pre-flop with something like a 7-2 off suit.

Now then, have you ever played against friends, like girlfriends you've got to teach the game, but secretly you're hoping that they'll like it, and then one day they'll agree to play strip poker? Of course, we all know that:

a) it won't happen, and
b) if it does happen, you might be more embarrassed than they will be.

Playing against these guys can make a bad poker player like myself bat **** crazy. Why? Because there's no prediction with these kinds of players, especially the first time around. They'll go all in and you won't be sure if they're just trying to bluff something really badly (you don't bluff when you have absolutely nothing, but they might), if they actually have a hand, or if (and this is the worst) they have a hand, but they don't know it.

I can recall at least a dozen times where I'd play with a bunch of friends, and the new guy or girl would say "I don't have anything," and then they'd end up with a straight. Or, and this is a particularly fun tactic I used to employ in my high school poker games, recruit a girl to play, come back in three hands, and watch her win, at minimum, two pots because she didn't care what anyone had, and just decided to bet.

This is called beginner's luck.

Beginner's luck in competitive games really stems from the fact that your opponent doesn't know what to expect, and so they over-analyze things, or attribute you with ideas that you don't really have.

In analogous terms, I used to kick a friend of mine, let's call him Bob, in the nuts every now and then. I don't even know why I did it, but I just randomly surprised him by punting his testicles when he wasn't looking.

In fact, this testicle pounding became so common that whenever I made a forward motion with my leg, Bob would instantly flinch downward to protect his scrotum.

After he did that, I began to exploit this by making a kicking motion, and then when he flinched, I would use the inertia of his flinch and I'd pull him forward, making him land on his face.

Thus my friend developed a strategy to counter my scrotum kick, and then I deviated from plan by exploiting his counter.

Now imagine if I began to do this a lot; making him flinch and then tripping him forward. Now imagine that he developed a counter to this by flinching, and then immediately straightening so that I couldn't pull him forward. Thus, he pretends to counter my pretend kick, and then he counters my trip by... doing nothing, really.

What we have here is basic cause and effect. By this scrotumlicious demonstration alone, you all now understand just how heavily perception and tradition affect the mind. Think of it like this:

Chris executes Plan A. (Kick to the balls)
Bob counters Plan A with Plan B. (Protect the balls)
Chris counters Plan B with Plan C. (Exploit scrotum protection by tripping)
Bob counters Plan C with Plan D. (Protect from tripping by straightening)

Now, in order for Bob to execute Plan B, I still have to fake Plan A. That is, my end goal is to trip Bob, but in order to do that, I have to pretend to sack Bob in the nuts, and then when you react to that, I can trip you.

But what happens if we replace Bob with a blind man, and then I expect the blind man to react in the same way as Bob? Thus, I make the kick motion and go to trip the blind man, and OH WHAT IS THIS, I find that I am unable to do so.

Why?

Because the blind man didn't react to my mind games.

Now what if I kicked the blind man in the testicles?

The blind man would have bruised nads.

Sun Tzu once said that "All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him."

This is what WoW as an arena is. Everyone is far too set in their playstyle ways, but hardly anyone goes forth to understand classes, inside and out. Hardly anyone devises plans based on what their opponent is doing, rather than what they think their opponent will do, or what they think this specific composition should do. Thus, I suppose my job, or your job, if you want to play competitive WoW, is to consider each class as we conceive them to be and as what we think they do.

If you know that a team trinkets early, do you double cast fear, so that they trinket once and get feared immediately? Now what happens if your opponent waits 2 seconds, and then uses his trinket?

Let's talk strategy and classes in the coming while. Feel free to contribute or email. CRT2 (at) sfu (dot) com.

Making the MMOst of your MMO (hah).

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:58:48 -0400

The Cocktacular week will have been done and gone by the 'morrow night, and with the leaving of the penises (penii?), there will be much rejoicing and Smash Brother..ing. Myself having grown unusually attached to Ike in a record amount of time, I foresee a beautiful relationship in the making.

Either way, in terms of arena, I am, very slowly, re-entering the scene. It seems that every corner I turn, there are a few individuals who want to play some kind of crazy comp with me. Or, more commonly, it is myself inventing crazy comps and shoving them down the throats of others, thereby forcing them to comply or choke to death. Of particular fun has been my Hunter / RDruid / Frost Mage comp in 3s, wherein our potential, thus far, has been limitless in execution. I do not even pretend to presume that such a fat-man comp will go beyond the 2000s, but it's always heartening to see what enjoyable brouhahas you can stir up when you play with friends. There was also an epic 1 hour Resto Druid / Frost Mage vs Resto Druid / Warrior game that ended in a win, and this was, ultimately, what forced us to stop: my eyes were burning from boredom.

Anywho, I was going to remark on this a while back, but then I got caught up in some kind of daydreaming, and you never got to see what I was writing. As it is, our 'current day' blogging trend is to talk about these so called Tournament Realms, in which you can pay to transfer a character onto, and thereby enjoy pre-made PVP; any time, all the time. I myself am outright refusing to take part in this transfer. Why? Because I truly believe that the moment I go over there, I will immediately be completely unable to return, and furthermore, I will lose interest in this World (of Warcraft) within a month.

The fact is, World of Warcraft is an MMO.

MMOs are entirely concerned with progression and development of a character; this is what gives them their addictive nature. An individual feels that he has, and is, accomplishing much more than if he played Counter-Strike because his character has advanced a few levels and now does a few extra digits of fake damage to fake monsters. In reality, this man is getting fat on all accounts, but he believes that with the MMO progression, he has accomplished something. With Counter-Strike, he has simply aged and plumped up. All aspects of the World of Warcraft are created with the intention of making us feel progression. PVE is a progression, instances give us reputation for progression, heroics give us badges for progression, PVP gives us honor for progression and Arena gives us Arena Points for... *****.

And progression.

The fact is, however, because Blizzard is so eager to have WoW exist as PVP platform, they suddenly need to make sweeping changes to a video game that resists precisely what they want to do.

By example, if you examine some of the most competitive games out there right now, I'd like you to list them off of the top of your head:

Fighting Games
FPS Shooters
RTS Games
Trading Card Games

Note that all of these types of games are non-progressive in nature. You progress in skill, yes, but in terms of character development, there is none. Why? Because in a competitive setting, everything needs to be assumed equal in order for players to be assessed entirely in terms of skill.

If you and I were to have a competition as to who can eat the most pie, and then you go and spend billions of dollars on pie related training equipment as well as getting pie-consumption related surgery in order to accommodate even more pie, then I believe we may agree that this competition is slightly unbalanced. This is especially true if I, your competitor, simply eat a lot of cheetos prior to the match so that I may have a slightly larger stomache when I enter the arena against your fine-tuned-pie-eating-body.

This is WoW.

The fact is, an enormous part of WoW is dedicated to the ideology of the MMO. Why? Because it's a god damned MMO.

Characters are developed over time and their uniqueness is stipulated upon the amount of time and choices that the player makes for their characters. For all of us to take these characters that we've spent time building upon in unique ways, and then to presuppose that an equal playing field can be achieved amongst all of us, is downright fat and silly. What is even more fat and silly is the fact that Blizzard attempts to create a competitive atmosphere and then they go ahead and introduce an especially fat arena rating system to push us back into the MMOindset (PUN AHOY).

Thus, Blizzard expects us to approach this game competitively, and therefore on a level playing field, but then they pull a fast one and create equipment tier and rating progression. The problem here is that because Blizzard has turned arena into something of a progression battle, everyone has become balls-tied to their own progression.

Instead of innovative gameplay from a massive competitive community, we have innovative gameplay only from the nerdiest of the commnity. Why? Because they are the only ones that can spare the incredible time it takes to participate. Quite simply, very few people have the time to devote themselves entirely to testing out fresh and innovative matrices with other pre-pubescent teens, nor do many people have the time to spare to level up a bajillion alts in order to pursue even more creative matrices.

Nay, we simply listen and obey. We approach PVP in the same way we approach PVE; by prescription. You tell me how I can progress, and ultimately, I will progress.

...

But this is a problem.

Arena ratings are becoming something like a push-up bra. Sure, they look nice and they give you some structure, but at the end of the day, they inhibit you and make you damned uncomfortable. Mind you, I'm not a cross-dresser, so I wouldn't really know if a push-up bra is uncomfortable, but I suspect it would be. If you aren't convinced that I'm not a cross-dresser, then **** you, my heels go well with my jeans.

The structure of WoW arena in itself is what is inhibiting any form of creative play:
... When you place all of the competitive and interesting teams at the top.
... When you make it a requirement to get to their rating in order to play them.
... When you impose heavy losses (hi 30 pt loss, 1 pt gain) if you lose to a different team while at the top.
... When you make queue times last longer than I normally last in bed.
... When you give delicious arena water that can extend a normal 5-10 minute game to a 1 hour game.
... When you have teams sit on their ratings because they understand that the win to loss ratio is supremely retarded at 2300+
... When you have the game transform itself from a fixation upon enjoyment and progression, to a fixation upon ratings in themselves.
... then things have just become saggy tits.

Quite simply, there is no real room for competitive, creative experimentation in WoW as arena unless you have some of the following:

a) Large amounts of money.
b) Incredible amounts of time.
c) Teammates with the equivalent amount of time and money, or the willingness to accept your time and money.
d) A server with an enormous talent pool of non-idiots with a vague semblance of social capability. Basic speech is a plus.

Obviously this isn't a very set in stone type of ideology, but overall, it's a relatively true one. Experimentation can come about as a result of simply taking friends for a ride, but more often than not, this is not the case. I played whatever comps I could possibly pull out my bottom because my server consists of about 10 coherent individuals. Maybe it's just me.

So how do we fix something like this? Well, Blizzard has introduced the new arena tournament servers.

BUT

Are we ******* forgetting that this is an MMO? Have we become so obsessed with WoW, that Blizzard can create a Tournament Realm with an advertised equal playing field, and then we suddenly forget that we're playing World of Unbalancedcraft?

The fact is, I play World of Warcraft for my friends and my community of friends. If WoW were to suddenly become an offline game, I would lose interest in the game faster than if you told Serennia that going to live tournaments means taking a shower. I also play this game for progression; I enjoy the idea of a persistent world, and I even more enjoy the idea of building a character that is uniquely my creation. My character, Pwyffy, is a rugged manly she-male Nightelf that is forged from my own e-work, and there is no other individual in this world who has the same Pwyffy as I.

If I were to transfer to these Tournament realms, then I have effectively lost what I most love about the MMO. II would have transferred to a massive server so that I can experience the thrill of MMO PVP, but without any form of progression and without any form of community (face it, the WoW community is honestly a flaming pile of **** and 15 year olds). Yet, despite the fact that there is no progression and there is no development, I will continue to play an incredibly unbalanced game that relies far too heavily on random number generation to be considered anywhere near competitive.

Yeah.

About that.

This is pretty much why I quit WoW when I went to Tichondrius. WoW is about developing a community of friends and pretending that you're all progressing somewhere, even if you're not. To take away that aspect of the MMO is to take away the MMO in itself. And if you really want to play a game without the aspects of the MMO... Why not play the plethora of more balanced games out there?

Cocktacular.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:44:09 -0400

This week is pretty much a giant penis. Imagine, if you will, a labyrinth of ***** that one must navigate for a full 168 hours (7 days, genius); wherein the end conclusion of such a phallic maze is something equally retarded, like a **** festival. This is my week, in terms that only you, my intelligent readers, may understand. The fact that Smash Brothers was also released this week also postulates another theory that that God is jealous of my good looks and is therefore seeking to take back the title of "Best Looking in the Divine Category." He's clearly at a significant disadvantage (if you look at God in the face, you go crazy; if you look at my face, you will get pregnant. I believe I clearly have the upper hand), but don't let me tell you that.

So ***** and angry God. This is my week.

---

The range of Cyclone has been reduced to 20 yards. (was 30 yards before)

This is, in my opinion, a much needed nerf. Personally I'd like that 15% speed added back, and Cyclone's range to be reduced, because that works in a little more coherent fashion, but whatever.

What does this mean?

Our CC is now in the same range as a Warlock fear.

Peek healing while CCing has now become more difficult.

MAYBE NOW THEY'LL BUFF FERAL. Who knows. Maybe tomorrow. Furthermore, the sun will explode and destroy all of us. Serennia will get a job. Ming will devote his life to responsible journalism. Jasi will give us an interesting article (HYUK). Let us all wait on tenterhooks and other similar objects that denote the 'edge of our seat,' type of anticipation.

Give us a 10% healing reduction (stacking to 50% at full) on Bear form Lacerate.

Go on.

Add the lube.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:37:24 -0400

Been doing some very low pressure arena with a Rogue guildie of mine, and thus far we've gone a very tiddly 17-2 (1709 rating) with 1 D/C loss, and one 'first-game-ever-what-the-****-is-this-'bear'-form-you-speak-of loss. The first few rounds we played, we just played Combat Maces + 11/11/39 Resto of deliciousness, and overall, it seemed to work pretty well. The only problem was that the moment you see anything Warrior Druid oriented, you've got a severe Rock Paper Scissors syndrome on your hands. Perhaps to be more precise, it's more of a case of us being Paper and the other guys being Flamethrower.

Anyways, the fact remains that we were in the 1500s, so playing arena in this bracket is the equivalent of playing Chess with a blind man. As long as you understand what team you're on, you've won. If the blind man has a wallet, then you've double won. Actually, the only loss was to a full S2/S3 Warlock / Druid team when I was first trying out my mods and forgetting what to do (LET'S JUST KILL THE PET SLOWLY).

Either way, we finally tested out the whole entire Restokin spec with Shadowstep Rogue. That is to say, 33/0/28 sans Moonkin form with an extra point tossed into Improved Regrowth. My Rogue is from my guild and he's pretty much our best geared Rogue, so he's capable of dropping his resilience just a smidgen to bump up his DPS, and I must say that this is quite fun.

Obviously the lack of Feral Charge and Swiftmend are two great big kicks to the testicles, combined with the fact that I really have little to no access to BT / Hyjal gear until I get attuned on Monday. Unfortunately, I've found that it's rather difficult now to truly get away from Warriors without some form of intervention from my Rogue. Call my rusty if you'd like (no, on second thought, I'm too handsome to be rusty), but lack of offensive Feral Charges really places far too much pressure on Bash and Nature's Grasp landing. The thing is, Bash, as I have mentioned, is not an actual skill per say, but more of a button to push when you want to see some fancy 'Dodge' text, or 'Parry' text, followed by the accompanying sound.

Nature's Grasp is great and all, but placing the entirety of your survival upon a 1minute cooldown that can be dispelled (even when covered) is kind of, well, gay.

That and my internet is on the fritz, and so Travel Form spamming is, for the most part, out of the question.

Anywho, in reality, losing Feral Charge really makes you appreciate the damned thing. Go figure. With Cyclone and Blind being on shared diminishing returns, the only options that a Restokin Druid has in terms of being a CC / interrupt train is to, really, cyclone spam the target requiring heals, maybe chuck out a 3second cyclone on the healer, and then use your Bash sound to make yourself feel like you've got more interrupt options beyond that.

Lack of Swiftmend, on the other hand, is just straight up lame. Losing an extremely mana efficient instant heal that can be timed just beyond a mortal strike duration is, quite simply, amazing. Losing this ability is taking the equivalent of that amazing, and making it equally retarded. The only reason why I'm not missing Swiftmend as much as I should is because of the nature of a Shadowstep Rogue. Cheat Death is such an amazing talent, and a Prep / SS Rogue has so many outs that the requirement for Swiftmend isn't quite so high. I've never had a game where my Rogue has died when I've been at full mana, and that's a very significant fact in my eyes, especially when we go up against full DPS oriented Warriors, and I decide not to heal.

In terms of the positives, I truly enjoy the offensive nature of the game. A portion of my quitting had largely to do with the fact that Resto Druids are god damned boring. Finding a method to play our most powerful spec (or a variation of it) while still maintaining that fun feeling is the equivalent of trying to make Math enjoyable. You could teach multiplication in the form of scantily clad women, but even then, I'd probably just attempt to subtract the clothing.

Heh. I made a bad joke.

Hilariously handsome wit aside, being able to fully pressure a Paladin / Warrior team without too much interruption and just pure DPS is a very nice thing indeed. I'm rusty as hell, but even I'm finding that this playstyle suits me just fine. While I do need even more babysitting than I did before, this spec gives me a bit of happiness when it comes to arena. When one used to dread the time spent playing Warrior / Druid, this is a very positive change. I suppose now I have to figure out a way to incorporate this kind of change into my 3v3 / 5v5 teams.

THIS IS PROBABLY MONTHS TOO LATE, BUT THAT MAKES ME RETRO IN THE COOL SENSE.

A game within a game.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:30:46 -0500

As a sidenote for blog readers: I'm a consistently evolving writer of all sorts. If you find that my writing style has changed over the course of a while, it's because I'm either experimenting, or I've simply been influenced. If anybody is interested, I may talk a little bit about what it takes in terms of writing, style and approach to maintain a vaguely popular blog, but that would be at a later time.

Just to give an idea as to where I'm going, I really decided to revive writing here mostly because of my return to WoW, and therefore to the community, but partially because I'd really like to get into a form of this new-wave journalism that's taking place. This is especially true in terms of gaming journalism, and it's something I'm absolutely certain I'd like to get into once I graduate. That said, I'm really hoping that I can keep up a few goals in mind:

1.) Be able to consistently update at least once every three days, but more likely once every two days.

2.) Be able to talk about subjects relating to gamers in general, or World of Warcraft in specific.

3.) Continue to refine my writing.

4.) Spread my handsomeness.

Obviously the fourth one is, in reality, impossible to achieve because the world already knows of my handsomeness. In this regard, the human population is my limit when it comes to spreading such good looks. Goals 1-3 are probably more difficult to achieve, but looks are often the key to success, so I've succeeded. Clearly.

---

Anywho, since my return to the World of Warcraft is, in reality, rather slow (work / social life are currently flooding me), I find myself relatively unable to be able to bring a truly critical point of view to Warcraft arena. If I don't really understand what the high-end 'scene' is like, then I really can't do my usual *****ing and moaning.

In fact, I'll bet if I were to say, right now, "FERAL DRUIDS NEED MORTAL STRIKE IN BEAR FORM TO BALANCE THEM," I'm willing to bet a bunch of you ******* would tell me that I need to play some god damned arena before I open my trap. In fact, I would agree with you in this regard, even though I'm willing to bet that I'll still hold this belief once I begin to play more arena. Yet there is also the fact that there have been no significant changes since my hiatus, so really, shouldn't I be able to pick up where I left off?

The answer is, obviously, **** no.

Why?

This is because arena is always consistently evolving as more and more people change their playstyles and other playstyles become more outdated.

Obviously.

This game balances itself by game mechanics, yes, but also by the players themselves. Blizzard making sweeping changes to react to 'trends' in the system is somewhat like trying to develop the perfect, single meal to be eaten by 2 million ******* babies. Each of these babies have individual tastes and preferences as well. In fact, some of these god damned babies are born without a sense of taste, so they don't even like anything. Others are just crack babies, so they can't eat; they just shake a lot.

Now imagine in the first month, you feed these babies their first meal, and a good amount of them love it. But then there's a community of babies that's all like "this **** is weak," and they cause a big ruckus. So you tweak the formula to help those babies enjoy the food. Then suddenly WHAM, some popular ******* baby decides that he's going to eat this food in a completely different way, and now the food tastes like **** to everyone because they're trying to shove it up their noses.

Well, ****, now we need a food that's agreeable to being shoved up your nose, because clearly these retarded sheep aren't going to change their minds.

In reality, there's two ways to actively balance a video game for the masses:

One is my Pokemon analogies. Every couple months the Pokemon community has to come together to discuss what should be considered an 'Overused' (Top Tier) Pokemon, a 'Borderline' (almost top tier), an 'Underused' (subpar) and a 'Never Used' (terrible) Pokemon. It's astonishing to see some Pokemon that used to be OU drop all the way down to the UU category because the perception of the role of that specific Pokemon changed, and was therefore replaced by another Pokemon that performed the role better.

So Miltank used to be used as a powerful wall with decent offensive capabilities and team support. Yet, soon it got completely overtaken by Snorlax and Blissey because players could only see Miltank as full support (therefore Blissey is much better suited), or full offence (Snorlax is king here). Yet, is Miltank a bad pokemon? **** no. He's a god damned cow that can kill a whole team off if you don't know what he's doing. The fact is, however, everyone's perception of Miltank has changed so completely that now Miltank has become a Pokemon that needs buffs because we're looking at it different, and it is mediocre in this role.

In this way, the community works to shape the metagame and the game perception. Through their internal changes, the way the game is played and perceived is modified on a day to day basis. In the first year, offensive teams are king, but then an anti-offensive team comes about, and that takes king because nobody could react fast enough. Soon, a stall team is king because everybody had switched over to the anti-offensive team, and are once more rendered obsolete. The game itself has not changed, but the trends dictate how the game will be played.

Yu-Gi-Oh the Trading Card Game operates in a similar manner, except the creators of the card game take an extremely active role in shaping the direction they want the game to take. They accomplish this by releasing 'forbidden card' lists and 'limited card' lists to effectively castrate specific decks that they consider to be too powerful or popular. In particular, decks that rely purely upon the cards and luck, but minimize strategy (you either draw the right card and play it, or you don't) and minimize interaction with your opponent are frowned upon by the Yu-Gi-Oh overlords.

Through this method, the creators of the game work to effectively keep the game within a specific mindframe, and they actively work to encourage specific styles of decks. In this case, decks the place a premium upon intense strategy and interaction with their opponents (will he counter this, or will he do this?) have usually benefited from each new 'forbidden card list' release, because the Card game developers wanted to encourage the high level metagame to go in that direction.

In reality, these handsome analogies are probably flawed. I know. But you've got to realize that the metagame in World of Warcraft is slightly underplayed. Metagame means 'a strategy within a game,' or a game within a game. Basically, it's about understanding what's popular at the time, and countering it. Pokemon has a metagame, Yu-Gi-Oh the TGC has a metagame, and the World of Warcraft has a metagame. What is important now is to consider each class as they currently are, try to take away all preconceptions, and try to think of a new strategy to break the metagame. Who knows? Maybe a new anti-Druid counter will run rampant, and then I'll be screaming for Lifebloom upgrades. I do believe that Druids need a tweak in one direction, and buffs in other directions, but I also believe that our strengths are currently being magnified by the metagame being employed today.

Or Blizzard just plays a lot of Druids, and you're all a bunch of babies.

I'm like Dominik Hasek.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:25:11 -0500

STACK THE PADS.

Actually I'm nothing like Dominik Hasek, I just really like the guy a lot. I suppose you could make some vague reference to the fact that I came out of a semi-retirement versus Hasek has retiring like 56 times, but then you'd be stretching it (vague pun somewhere in there).

My return to Ner'zhul has been pretty smooth for the most part, but I feel, and play, rustier than something that is really ******* rusty. Memri wanted to play the Hafu / GC style RDruid / RShaman / Warrior lolfest, but it took me like five god damned hours to set up my UI on my laptop to something I liked. That and there appears to be a severe talent drain on Ner'zhul; it fiendishly sucks and slurps away at our more talented PVP players, shuttling them away to more e-famous opportunities amongst those Tichondri-bores (witty+1).

Either way, fresh from a 3-month hiatus (which saw me playing more other-genre games than I had played in my entire previous career), Emotive hopped onto his Rogue and harassed me into playing with a pick-up Mage to do some 2.1k rated RMD-3v3-ball. Allow me to say, at this point, that this is not something you should do when you just recently installed some random mods (because they looked cool), and you don't remember anything about WoW other than an intense craving for manaburns.

We ran into Zilea's 3v3 team running (surprisingly) Pally / Rogue / Warlock with Vaux / Available (these two have been playing overgeared Gladiator Rogue / Warlock since ever), and promptly got curb stomped in the first round (I'M SUPPOSED TO FERAL CHARGE OR SOMETHING). The second time we saw them, we almost killed an SL-Specced Available, despite me still forgetting that I have animal shaped forms, but ended up losing nonetheless.

Looks like I'm really really rusty.

Much thanks to those who sent me in-game messages of welcome; much surprise to those who pretended to be fans of my writing. I'm guessing you ******* think I brought back some kind of uber-cache of BT gems to share with the server, because I did, so if you get lots of people to read my stuff, you'll totally get some. Totally.

In terms of plans for the future, my full-time hired Mage, Decima, is on vacation with his brother (my vague Paladin), so I'm going to need to find a filler team for now, or make one and simply wait. I'm having a blast playing and getting back into the game with my very low pressure guildies, so I expect to have some fun there. More on these considerations later.

P.S. Mod list, tell me if I'm missing anything:

Prat
XPerl
SpellAlerter (Raddy, your SpellAlert confusing gayness is gay)
SimpleCombatLog
Af_Tooltip
Quartz
OmniCC
ItemRack

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee102/Xpers/WoWScrnShot_030608_131738.jpg

Top left is target casting, middle is focus casting. I think.

They called me Pwyff.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 04:56:43 -0500

Mid-terms are over (not that I really did work) and bills are settled. Downloaded some mods the night before, popping in those numbers that will transfer some ugly bunch of pixels with ******* plumage for a hat from this overloaded Ironforge to a less overloaded Ironforge. Tells me it's processing the transaction, but I can't wait that long, so I brute force the speed with the power of handsome. 2 minutes later, logging into Ner'zhul to discover that my ugly bunch of pixels (of which I am rather fond of) has accumulated a following of incoherent numbers and consonants on the journey here.

PwyffE2805, (it tells me rather cheekily) is its new name.

Right. The day I transferred, a particularly sharp guildie made an alt to placehold for me for when I came back. Easy.

Logging onto a Shaman that I haven't leveled since 62, but an equally lovely guildie had gotten to 67 because I mentioned that we would 'share the workload.'

Sorry.

Plowed into a guild who had not seen 'Pwyff the Druid' in pixel format for 3 and a half months. Instead, they now knew me as 'Pwyff the ventrilo abuser and play-er of Call of Duty 4 when he said he would be leveling his Shaman.' Demanding the whereabouts of said sharp guildie who had placeholded my name; frothing at the mouth, the urge to play a plumed Night Elf threatening to overwhelm my basest instincts.

In a raging fit of incoherency, eyes bloodshot, I wildly glare at my girlfriend and scream, "I'm playing World of Warcraft!" Exclamation point being enunciated to stress the importance of my words. If it was grammatically allowed, I would have added four or five more of these gravity defying lines (to further emphasize the point), but I have been taught that this is wrong. I make sure to froth more, to make up for the missing exclamations.

"That's nice," she says.

Underneath these placid words there lies a sea of pure terrification, which is the feeling of being terrified distilled into a gelatinous form. My guild is ignoring my inquiries as to the whereabouts of my placeholder, but it may also have to do with my constant reference to ***** every second word. That and they've been conditioned to ignore me. I later learn that the ****** hasn't been on in awhile.

At this point, my left eye was twitching badly, and I couldn't stop making these low squeaking sounds. I told my girlfriend that it was the cats, but I could see that underneath her words, ("I don't care") she was bat-**** scared.

I couldn't take it.

Clicking the newly christianed PwyffE2508. Growling once more at the Rename Box and being told to "shut up" by this brave young girl trying to confront her fear (not succeeding), I begin the process that will re-define my existence as a God. A thousand names flash across my mind; this is the opportunity to truly create something that reflects the terror that shadows my footsteps into the arena; a name to represent the hope and beauty that my countenance inspires. Jesus! Mohammad! Natalie Portman! Ninjas with Nuclear Bombs for Arms! All valid and almost worthy names.

Finally, inspiration strikes from my divine muse and the name is settled upon. A name to shake the heavens and bring empires to their knees.

Pwyffy is born. He is coming. Ner'zhul is not prepared.

This is why we can't have nice things.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:03:29 -0500

[ Update ]
Apparently they changed it to -0.2 seconds off of Regrowth.
That's...
Well...
No, I'm not going to lie, that sucks slightly less, but it still sucks.

---

I leave for two months and you ******* decide that it's time to destroy Druids while I'm gone.

Thanks.

********.

First of all, big congratulations to my guild for downing Kael'Thas like... a month ago. Nobody's looking forward to getting me attuned to Hyjal on Feb. 25th (my transfer date), but that's just too bad. If, somehow, this patch hits near the time I transfer, then all's good and well, but then I'm just going to be *****ing and moaning in vent about the Druid 4set change. It's fine, I tend to moan and ***** anyways, so they may actually enjoy the improvement over my 'general' *****ing and moaning, since there's some kind of vague topic underneath it all.

Which, by the way, I assume you've all heard of the Druid changes? I'm writing this like 2 weeks after they were released or something, so just a quick recap. This isn't for you, this is for me, so screw off:

- 4-piece bonus on Restoration-spec Arena and PvP sets has been changed to "The casting time on your Healing Touch spell is reduced by 0.25 sec."
(Was a 15% increase to the outdoor movement speed before)

- Lacerate: This ability now deals additional damage based on the attack power of the Druid.

- Natural Perfection: This ability will no longer be triggered by taking critical strikes while sitting. In addition, it is now affected by the Subtlety talent.

For the NonDruid, but affects us:

Resilience now reduces the effects of mana-drain spells.

Warlock:

- Drain mana (Rank 6) now drains 300 mana every 1 sec from the target. (Was 200)

Priest:

- Mana Burn effect reduced roughly 50%.
PWYFF, DEVOURER OF MANABURNS IS HUGE BUFFED.

---

Obviously big things here are the fact that 4Piece has been transformed into something of a 4chan lulz. 15% movement speed has always been my true love, just because it allowed me to kite things in the relative safety of Bear form, and still outspeed a Rogue. No longer.

I'd actually like to say that this kind of change makes me slightly happy. The only reason it does so is because now it enables Feral Druids to somehow threaten Resto Druids. Slightly. A Feral who is faster than a Resto is always a good thing, and given the extremely buggy nature of Feral Druids (I am biting you from my tummy!), anything that helps... helps.

But don't get me wrong, this is really pretty retarded for Druids. If the 4Set was changed to something like "reduces the cooldown of Swiftmend by 1second," or even something like "Grants Lifebloom an additional healing of +5% upon bloom," then that would be a nerf, granted, but not a stupid nerf. Reducing the Healing Touch cast time on one of the most mobile healers in the game, even knowing that no current PVP-Druid spec even so much as glances at Naturalist makes me wonder what Blizzard was thinking when they implemented this.

If you don't really understand, think of this in the realms of Mages getting -0.15seconds off of their Fire Nova cast time; or even increasing a Mage's slow debuff duration by 3 seconds.

Quite simply, it's difficult to understand how a Druid could possibly utilize this kind of set bonus, unless the Druid completely modified his playing style. If such is the case, and the Druid is actually stopping to cast Healing Touch, then congratulations, you have just become a gay Priest. The Druid is a class that's structured around mobile healing, HoT spamming, and the hardest healer to interrupt. This was balanced (potentially not 'balanced,' but we had repercussions) by the fact that the Druid, if caught, is one of the squishiest targets to train. We weren't made to stand and cast; stop making us do so with one of the longest healing cast-times in the game.

Thanks.

Oh and interesting how this Resilience nerfing Mana Drain is actually a Mana Drain buff. At most, 25% reduction of 300 mana per second is 75 mana reduced, therefore 225 mana drained per second. This is an upgrade from the previous 200 mana per second, and that's presupposing you have the highest resilience possible.

In reality, I'm actually very sad for Paladins because of this nerf. Most Paladins offset their inability to recover mana (edited for clarity), weakness to Manaburns / Mana Drains and lack of pre-emptive options by stacking PVE gear until their heals could readily supplement their lack of choices. Resilience is a stat that, of all classes, the Paladin needed the least of, simply because of Bubble. Watch as Paladins with their 300ish resilience start getting Mana Drained even more by our lovely Warlock class.

Oh, and yes, I'm going to gobble up as many manaburns as possible upon my return.

February 25th.
*****es.

The Death of the RPG.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:29:01 -0500

[EDIT] Forgot to plug the blog, because I'm an attention ***** of epic proportions:

www.chrispers.wordpress.com

When it comes to gaming, I must say that I lead (past tense here) a rather sheltered life. For me, RPGs were the only genre that I could play, and I executed this dogmatic approach with an extreme degree of success. In hindsight, I must admit that I was extremely lucky, because the late 90’s / early 2000s were, in my opinion, the epitome of the RPG age. In those days, gaming companies were rather limited in their graphical repertoires, and therefore had to focus most, if not all, of their efforts upon brilliant storylines, fun gameplay, or in most cases, both.

This was an age of Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, Bahamut Lagoon, Shining Force, Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Battle, Soul Blade, Secret of Mana (and subsequently Seiken Densetsu 3), Final Fantasy III, Actraiser, Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past (in retrospect, that pun is rather painful), Rocky and Pocky (hur), Secret of Evermore, Earthbound, Crusader of Centy (Sega), Lunar and it’s remake-as-a-sequel, the highly underrated Spike McFang, and a massive plethora of other RPG sprite-based games that engaged players in hundreds to thousands of hours in gameplay (if I’ve forgotten a game, I’ve probably played it, but I’m not an encyclopaedia of nostalgia here).

It’s rather saddening these days to see the shift away from this type of mindset, and the focus upon graphical engines with storylines glued on as an afterthought. Don’t get me wrong here; there are still some dazzling gems (Disgaea, Kingdom Hearts) out there, but when I trundle into my local Electronics Boutique these days, there is no sense of awe at the sheer amount of unexperienced RPGs that I’ve yet to play. Does anybody recall that feeling? In the past, I’d walk into a video game store, and simply gawk at the sheer beauty that only a wall of Squaresoft games can engender. Now you walk into these same stores, and you’re greeted by things like Devil May Cry, where some phantom spectre grades you on how cool you look while killing things, but is suspiciously absent when I’m wondering who it is I’m killing with these awesome rated combos. Nowadays, the only RPG Company for whom my heart makes that familiar little skip-beat is Atlus, which is saddening. Not because Atlus is bad, because I’m a firm believer that they are producing games equal in quality to ye olde Squaresoft, but it’s saddening because there is nobody
else out there producing these things.

Maybe this is simply a sign of the times; we as a people are moving towards faster things, faster ‘instant’ gratification, if that can be understood. As a gamer myself, I suppose I too have evolved over my years and years of gaming. In this regard, I believe that I have to give an extensive amount of credit to my cousin Mike. He is, I suppose you could say, my gaming soul mate, if that makes any particular sense. We have been gaming for upwards of 15 years together, and he’s been the one responsible for introducing me to every single gaming genre outside of my RPG niche. In a sense, I could also say that he’s the one responsible for saving my gaming hobby as well. The RPG market was drying up to what it is today, but every time I lost interest in gaming, I was saved by my cousin, who, on those special occasions once or twice a year, would eagerly introduce me to games like Ragnarok Online, Final Fantasy XI, Counter-Strike, Gunstar Heroes and Guilty Gear. It’s taken me awhile, but I realize now that what endeared these games to me was the fact that I could play them with friends, instead of by myself. I suppose this is also a sign of the times; as our global community grows, our appetite for social interaction spreads to every facet of our lives.

I suppose we are also witnessing the death of the old-school RPG. There are a few flagship games out there, a la Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, but by and large, more and more of ‘this year’s anticipated game,’ falls directly into the lap of multiplayer monstrosities like Halo, Gears of War, Super Smash Brothers, World of Warcraft, Rock Band, Warhammer Online and such. It’s depressing to see such a legacy of gaming turn into this, I’ll admit. A part of me, the book reader, the writer, the creative side of me, yearns for the olden times in which a game had real depth to its characters. I doubt anybody can reproduce the anguish one felt when Aeris died in FF7, or the real sense of epic responsibility that infused the player when experiencing Chrono Trigger, or even the hearty, authentic chuckles that Earthbound got out of me when crying in the corner was a viable form of action in combat. These days you get games like Neverwinter Nights 2, where your best friend gets killed, but one can’t remember her name, five minutes later. Or you have games like Hellgate: London, where I’ve been playing for an hour to two hours, but I have no idea why I’m doing what I’m doing, except these ******* won’t drop my Legendary Gun from whatever orifice hides such items of splendor.

Yes, a part of me is incredibly saddened to see this aspect of the video game wither and die like a crack baby. But then, I glance up from writing this article and recap those brilliant Rock Band moments, up at 5 AM, consuming beverages and breaking guitars, or those long philosophical chats I can have with my cousin while commandeering a scout ship around a solar system in Sins of a Solar Empire, or even creating ‘Fisty Rangers’ in Neverwinter Nights 2, punching things and trying to prevent friends from taking my much deserved and undeserved loot. This was a run-on sentence, but you’re also fat. Thinking of all of these times in which I would not have been able to enjoy the company of friends in tandem with the company of games, I realize that while I am rather saddened at the loss of depth in my fantasy RPGs, the ability to pre-emptively loot someone’s +5 Sword of Stabbing, even though you can’t use it, is a pretty decent tradeoff.

P.S. To the creators of Hellgate: London stating “who gives a ****,” about LAN gaming in a broadband age: you are mentally retarded. Perhaps you may not have experienced the intimacy that only a LAN can offer, but sometimes we just want to play on our own little server with 5 ping. Sometimes we want to be able to pause our game and go get some pizza. Sometimes we want to play in areas where there is no internet. Did you think of this? No? Die.

P.P.S. If anyone knows how to LAN on Hellgate: London, please inform me, and I will name my first and secondborn children after you.

When is a game... just a game?

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:34:39 -0500

Just a note for my Gameriot Blog:
It's also hosted here: http://chrispers.wordpress.com/
If you want to leave a comment without having to register for an account.

I wrote this simply as a way of getting my thoughts down in an organized fashion. Yes, I have heard about GC getting banned and his... interesting methods for defending his actions, and his ways of attacking others for their lack of skill, or something, but this article isn't just about that. Quite simply, I feel that what I have to say is just something that some of you might be able to take and use; if one person of one million is affected by my words, then I've done my job.

P.S. About the bit about my Feral Druid playstyle and methods, I'm sorry if it sounded extremely newbish to you all; I was speaking purely from my experience as playing a Frost Mage + Feral Druid 2v2 team in the 2000-2300s in Season 1 and Season 2. I didn't mean to say that it's the absolute epitome of playing, but it is the best playstyle that I've found for our particular matrix. Should you play, say, Feral Druid + Rogue, the Rogue has a lot more methods of saving himself, and therefore a +heal stacked Druid might work there; I'm sorry for the confusion.

---

When I was going from age 11 to about 14 / 15, I was an incredible addict to everything video games. I was amongst the top online Pokemon players in RBY on the Pokemon Battle Simulator (an online Pokemon Java Battle Program), I was considered amongst the top 10 Gunz Online players when it first came out, I played in the best TFC Attack Defend clan, as well as playing high-end CAL (one of the most popular gaming leagues in the world); I would go on to become the leader of Team Canada in the World Cup of Natural Selection, as well as being in one of the best Natural Selection clans in the game. I also suppose for a moment in time, I was considered to be one of the ‘better’ Druids in the World of Warcraft. If you judge by ratings alone, I was amongst the top 20 Druids in the ‘best’ battlegroup in North America in 2v2 and 3v3, and I was amongst the top 10 Druids in North America in 5v5, but these latter accomplishments would be after my addiction had passed.

If asked, many people would say that they play competitive video games because they enjoy the competition inherently, but when I was that young I played it because it made me feel like I had accomplished something. Video games were a supplement to (what I perceived to be at the time, because when you’re a kid, your problems are everything) a very rocky life outside of my computer. At the time, my parents were getting a divorce, so there was constant fighting in my house (I’d hear them as I played FF:Tactics until 3-4 AM, spamming skills to level up my character job classes); compounded onto this was the fact that I was one of the smallest kids in school, and while I got to hang out with the ‘cool’ kids, I rarely felt accepted or comfortable.

I was on the Basketball, Volleyball, Cross Country and Track team for my school, as well as playing in a large Ice Hockey and Baseball league, but I always got benched in Basketball (and therefore made fun of), I was on the ‘B’ team for Volleyball (and therefore made fun of), I had just started Ice Hockey and Baseball, so I was terrible at Ice Hockey and Baseball (and therefore made fun of), and I was only decent in Track (and… still made fun of).

Thus, I essentially punished myself on a daily basis by going to hang out with these guys that picked on me from Day 1. This is something akin to a fat man eating deep fried Chicken; he knows it will set up stop signs at every major artery, and he knows it will hurt him, but it makes him feel good about himself while he’s eating the delectable treat, so why the hell not. In this same way, I would go hang out with my ‘friends,’ who were ever so popular (best of the Basketball team, etc), and while I would take quite a bit of ridicule from them, I still managed to convince myself that it was worth it when they found someone else to pick on. I felt needed.

Essentially it was during this time that I poured myself into video games. You can say that you play them to enjoy them, but at that time, with every CAL match I dominated, or when I won a clan war in Gunz, or beat that guy in a Pokemon tournament, I felt as though I was validating myself for every wrong that had been done to me in my real life. In reality, it was rather self-destructive, but it was probably one of the significant factors that prevented me (at the time) from committing suicide; while on the reverse side, it was the only thing that prevented me from really confronting my life and what I had made of it. When you’re a child, your problems are the world; if you don’t believe me, then look at Columbine.

Anywho, you can only imagine how addicted I became on the day my dad took my sisters away during my Baseball practice, and asked them if they wanted to live with him during the divorce. I sat for an hour or two in the pouring rain, waiting to be picked up after Baseball while he chatted with them, and when he did come to pick me up, I was never given the choice my sisters were given. Granted, I would have wanted to stay with my mom, because she wouldn’t have had anyone with her at the time, but when your father basically chooses your siblings over you, you can imagine that it might sting. A bit.

That was probably the second worst time of my life; the first time was during High School, when my small stature and uncomfortability with alcohol, drugs and the ‘cool’ attitude just felt too fake for me, and so I never really fitted in. It would eventually go on to a full-scale bullying (I got into fights, or my school bag would get stolen and filled with snow, or my math book got taken and every page was written on) that lasted until the end of Grade 8, yet I still clung to these guys like a moth clings to a fire; after all, if I didn’t have them, what did I have? It’s interesting to note that in Grade 8, I was amongst the elite Pokemon trainers, as well as just making my way into high level CAL.

Correlation, perhaps?

It was also interesting because I took an incredible amount of care with my e-image; once I had gotten it, there was no way in hell I was letting it go. People would insult me for being anti-social, or being addicted to a ’simple video game,’ but I would lash back at them, insult their game-playing abilities, and actually think that I was making a point. I was a social outcast in reality, but in these games, where people were judged on the amount of time they placed into it, and their self worth was judged based upon the amount of shiny things they had, or the ability they possessed at employing a Jolteon / Machamp / Vaporeon / Gengar / Dragonite / Alakazam Pokemon squad, I was king. Not only that, but I brought divine retribution upon all those around me; I would call everyone a scrub, and I, the bullied, was the bully.

I tell you all of this to make you understand, from a knowing viewpoint, why some individuals take video games so seriously. Healthier people, like any of my friends, will look at the drama, the emotion and the lives that have been blended into a ’simple video game,’ and they may try to dismiss it as a childish escape from reality. You may be right, in a sense, but you’ve got to understand that for a video game addict, this ‘escape’ has become our reality, and in many ways, it is our only method of validating ourselves to… ourselves. For myself, and I know for many others, video games supplement the loss we’ve had in our real lives, and often times, these video games subsequently become our preferred form of reality. I hope you understand just how shattering it would be to walk away from ‘just a game’. It’s essentially like going up to an Olympic Swimmer, and asking him if he’d prefer to give it all up and live in a box in winter time… and get kicked a lot.

In the end, what saved me was when I learned to take control of my reality. I’m not sure when it sunk in; perhaps it was after the night at a Grade 8 dance, where all of my ‘friends’ surrounded me, told me to get lost and threw things at me… Or potentially it was when my dad began his unemployment streak that remains unbroken to this day; either way, I learned something. In a video game, one can easily vanish and re-appear in a whole new persona, and each time he can attempt to create a reality that he likes. When I played TFC, I changed my name about 3-4 times; my first 2 names being newbie names, and then my last one being my ‘hardcore’ name that I wanted to become popular with. Yet when it comes to real life, each of us has our one chance to create something that we can be proud of. There is no change name screen, and there certainly is no known method to delete your character and re-create him (unless you’re a Buddhist, and if so, you’re probably smarter and less emo than your average suicide); potentially this is why people hide from their reality after they’ve had their first go… They’ve messed up on their stat point allocation or their talent spec, and now they’ve realized that real life has no such thing as a character reset.

What I learned when I lost a chunk of my world (I essentially lost my father and my friends) was that I had two choices at the time: with the first, it would be to simply do what I had been doing up until that moment. Essentially this meant that I could hide from the whole situation, but instead of committing suicide and hoping for a better afterlife, I could conveniently hide within the realms of a video game until God knows what (pun intended). Yet when I saw my dad hiding from reality and doing absolutely nothing all day, denying the fractures in our family, denying our financial problems, and denying his unemployment, something changed in me. My second choice would be the one that was hidden all this time, but it’s the one that we are all afraid to face: I had to pick up my life and do something with it.

I hope you’ll understand just how difficult that second choice can be. Video games offer instant gratification, but to fix your life up requires a lot more work and a lot more time than, say, leveling to 70 in World of Warcraft, or becoming the best Pokemon trainer on the internet, or becoming one of the top Druids in North America. I watched as my dad became unemployed and anti-social; but with each problem that was piled onto our family (financially or emotionally), I just saw him hide further and further into his games. Interesting to note that when we were relying on my Grandparents to supplement us with rent and my mom was working full-time, my dad was a volunteer “mayor” of a major Sims Fan Website, and a volunteer message board moderator of EA’s Official ‘Sims’ forums.

Correlation?

I honestly could have hid in my games at that point, but when you witness someone else doing exactly what you’re doing, but old enough to know better, then something changes inside of you. From that day on, I learned that while a video game offers you the chance to have as many tries as you want, and while you can hide for long amounts of time in these escapes, ultimately the biggest reality there is, is the one you’re in right now. If you want to get your Black Temple Gems, or your 4.0 GPA, attain level 70, or meet the girl of your dreams, you have to be able to put in the work. Too many people think that life is too hard to fix, but during that year, I faced my reality and my life, accepted where I was (at the time I had no friends, no confidence, no passions or interests) and began my steady ‘real life’ level grind.

I walked up to my now best friend, but back then, barely an acquaintance. I was freaked out and severely lacking in confidence, but I forced myself to go up to this group of intimidating, tall… cool bunch of guys (myself being like… 4′11 at the time) who were in French Immersion and played Soccer, Rugby and Lacross at the highest levels, and I asked my acquaintance (he was also tall and in French Immersion, one of the few Asians in the group, and he did Chinese Martial Arts at a very high level) if I could walk with them to the gas station. Thereafter, I joined them every lunchtime for that year, and suddenly, I had friends that I felt comfortable with. These days I see my friends on a daily basis; I have many best friends (I suppose that's a paradox, but you're fat, so nyah), each of which I would give anything for (and I suspect the feeling is shared amongst us all), we go on road trips to visit each other, and we take care of each other.

I worked hard in Ice Hockey, and in grade 10 and 11, I was an Assistant Captain, one of the fastest players on my team, and maintained a solid amount of goals and assists as one of my team’s best defensemen. In Grade 12, I would form a floor hockey team with some of my friends, and we had an near perfect streak, including a 2v8 game that we won 8-7 (the format was 3v3 with a goalie, but it was only myself and my friend on the floor and one of my best friends playing in net for a full hour with no breaks; the opposing team had 8 fully rested players on the bench and a goalie). I would eventually be named to the all-star floor hockey team against the teachers (we lost 2-1), and my own team would lose, 12-8, to the same guys that came up to me and threw popcorn in my face; but at this point, I had reconciled with all of them, and was on very good terms (I still hang out with a few of them now and then at parties) with them. They congratulated me on scoring four goals. Even though I don’t play much these days, I still go rollerblading for hours on end.

I began to write and read a lot more than I used to, and my marks subsequently went higher; ultimately landing me with an 88% GPA average in Grade 12 to get me admitted to any University of my choice. I’m currently doing a double major in Communications and English, I tutor English privately for anywhere from $25-40 an hour, and with that money, I can help pay half of my mom’s rent while she plans to go back to school (she was a Dean of Admissions at a small College at one point).

I also asked out one of the most popular girls in my school in Grade 11.

...

And got rejected.

I asked again in Grade 12 (my outlook on life is to annoy until they agree), and she agreed. We’ve been dating for almost 3 years now. I drive her car (it’s a BMW X5, and I’m terrified of scratching it) to work, so that my mom can use my car. Her (my girlfriend) cats shed on me. My love for her is greater than my handsomeness, if that tells you anything.

All of this came from the day I decided to divert my attention from hiding, and decided to face my reality. Sometimes I have relapses, where I revert to my old self, and believe that video game prowess is a true measurement of a man’s worth, but then I take a step back, play some Rock Band with my friends (apparently I can’t sing, but this has already been established), and when I come back to it all, I look around at our social constructs, our gaming hierarchies, the desperate way in which people want to be known in a video game, or the way they attack others for not being as good as them, and now, finally, I can laugh.

Let’s enjoy our games, but I’d prefer it if we didn’t hide while in the process.

P.S. Rock Band is so good that my friend bought it, even though he doesn’t own a 360. We have set up camp at my girlfriend’s house, and don’t intend to leave. Ever.

The Bestiality of Warcraft.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:23:41 -0500

Is a Feral Druid.

Want to know why?

...

Because they're always getting ******.

ZING!

Anywho, thought I'd drop in and toss out an article while I'm bored and taking a break from... napping. Just thought I'd mention that once I get my Druid back on Ner'zhul, I'm probably going to be going back to Feral for the remainder of Season 3. Restoration is fun and all, but... wait... no, it's not. Resto Druids have just become, by and large, incredibly boring. Deep's new Balance/Resto spec was interesting, and it's something I'll potentially look into when I have the time, but outside of that, you can bet that Restoration won't be getting any significant changes in the next few months or so. People say that we're too overpowered within specific contexts, but in reality, we are the ones creating the contexts. Last I checked, 2v2 and 3v3 doesn't exactly have an incredible reputation for being balanced.

If I were to play Restoration, it would be some ridiculous DPS Resto spec with my Ice Mage partner, or I'll pick up a few guildies and try my hand at 2.5 DPS or something inane like that.

Anywho, I thought I'd mention a little bit about the state (or lack thereof) of Feral Druids in arena. Quite simply, we have a problem here. The strength of the Druid has always been his or her ability to adapt to any given situation with a proper set of spells and maneuvers. If a Warrior is on you, go Bear, kite to a Feral Charge, hop out, Cyclone and run; or Root and spam Wrath. The problem here is that the Feral Druid must always add a 0.5 second global cooldown and 600 mana to anything he plans to cast, if he plans to cast. Cyclone is one of our most powerful tools, and one that we desperately needed, but the Feral Druid cannot utilize this against a smart team.

The problem that comes from this all is simply the fact that Feral Druids must shift, and if we want to be good players, we have to shift, heal and CC at the same time. If an opposing team decides to focus you, then you can certainly bet that you won't last long while trying to employ this style. If you should choose to stay in your furry form, then refer to my old old analogy of being locked in a car under the ocean. You're getting ****** slowly.

I think a large portion of the Feral Druid problems also stems from our dependability upon Mangle, and our sheer ineffectiveness to do anything if we're not in Cat form. These two things combined together essentially forces the Feral Druid to always play some variation of 1/41+/8+, and pigeon-holes us into one of the flimsiest forms ever. I don't even think a Paladin who has no Divine Shield is as susceptible to death as the Cat form Druid is. Not only that, but should we decide to shift to our fatter, furrier, bearier counterparts, I'm vaguely certain that the only way we'll kill you is by shedding you to death.

I know a few cats that could accomplish this without blinking an eye, but I don't think that's going to work in an arena setting.

Yet, despite all of this, when I played Feral Druid for parts of Season 2 and all of Season 1, I must say that it was very enjoyable. Sure there were glaring problems, but I'm crossing my fingers for some form of buff to come in the near future. Since I just realized that I could play Oblivion on my laptop, I think I'll leave you with a few things:

---

Buffs I'd like to see to the Feral Druid:

- The ability to heal ourselves or our teammates without the severe mana cost and incredible time delay (2.5 healing touch woo). Something like Tranquility, but less than a 10 minute cooldown.
- An increased effectiveness of AP to healing conversion (40% of AP in Caster Form converted to +healing, please)
- Feral Faerie Fire made trainable, replaced with a new ability; potentially the one mentioned above which allows us to heal ourselves or our teammates without ridiculous shifting costs and time costs.
- Bear form to do more damage in the PVP setting.
- More damage mitigation abilities for Cat / Bear in the PVP setting; especially magic damage mitigation.
- More 'oh ****' survival abilities inherently placed within the Feral Classes, allowing us to even have a remote chance at 1v1ing any other DPS class.
- ******* UPGRADE OUR FORMS TO LOOK BETTER.

---

Feral Druid tips in Arena:

- Use Tranquility as a faster healing method for yourself and your teammates. If you position yourself properly, a full Tranquility can swing the game in your favour.
- Don't ever try to cast Cyclone with a pet on you; without Nature's Focus, you'd might as well stick a fork in your eye, count to 10, and kill yourself. That's approximately how long it will take to cast.
- If you're going to Cyclone, try to do it inconspicuously, so that you don't alert the other team to hit you with years and years of pushback.
- Pounce > Mangle > Shred > Maim works very well if you can coordinate the Maim with your partner. I've once hit a Paladin with a 5pt Maim after his trinket, and allowed my partner to summon his WE and fully set up his DPS cycle before the Pally could recover.
- Stack offense; if you want the ability to heal and DPS, you might as well go Resto / Balance. When you go Feral, at the moment, you need to maximize your ability to kill things. More things dead = less things that can kill you (everything can kill you).
- Use the PVP glove bonus and throw out 1pt Maims everywhere on Priests, Warlocks and Paladins, especially.
- Don't go Bear too soon, or you'll end up dying slowly, but not doing anything in the process. If you're going to die, stay Cat and try to kill something before you go down.
- Don't run away to heal too soon, or you'll end up accomplishing nothing. As a Feral Druid, you can never outheal anyone's damage, so you're much better off trying to kill them before they can kill you.
- Don't be afraid to spend your mana; a good Feral Druid ends every arena game with near empty mana.
- At the moment, shifting out to Rejuv / Lifebloom is retarded, because they heal for next to nothing; unless you've stacked +heal. If you're stacked +heal, shoot yourself in the groin.

TOODLES.
http://www.chrispers.wordpress.com

Priorities.

no.spam@gameriot.com (Pwyff) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:33:41 -0500

Toddle on over to here:

http://www.chrispers.wordpress.com

Most of my friends are being shipped back to their respective locales, much like cattle or other tasty livestock. What's left in the wake of my Christmas and Birthday expenditures (I turned 20 on January 5th) has been an incredible amalgamation of video games and assorted things to do.

Namely in the fact that I was given an XBox 360, Call of Duty 4 on the XBox 360 and the PC; Halo 3, Armored Core 4, Ghost Recon, Gears of War, Disgaea for the PSP and FF: Tactics for the PSP. In my life, the transition to the new year (getting used to changing my '07 to an '0 is nowhere near as profound as my 'gaming' transition that takes place.

Every year my cousin and friends come up; we usually spend the holidays attempting to catch up, engage in philosophical arguments that last for five hours straight (on the most oddest of topics), re-master video games that we had originally loved, but lacked the time to play during the rest of the year, and generally beat the **** out of games that we picked up specifically for the new years.

For those of you interested in our gaming legacy, my cousin and our childhood family friend have maintained this tradition for upwards of 13 of our 20-22 years. My girlfriend and another of my best friends from high school have recently joined our sleepless gaming troupe, but only to add moral support (in the case of my girlfriend) or to level up my classes in Disgaea to get an Angel (in the case of my best friend).

We've gone from playing Philosoma (an incredibly old Gradius-like game that had us playing for days, attempting to beat) to Gunstar Heroes (easily the best side-scrolling shooter on the Genesis ever) to mastering all forms of fighting games (I am/was the Jigglypuff champion) to wailing through Halo 3 on Legendary in under five hours. Mind you, we do this all in less than a week that we have together, and therefore we rarely sleep during the period. Or, we play through the night and sleep early in the morning until mid-afternoon. You may be thinking that this is actually counter-productive, because then we're tired all the time, and would probably benefit from sleeping early and waking early, and you'd be right.

Either way, this long and meandering passage has led me far, far away from my World of Warcraft.

They (I refer to the vague specter that we all quote for factual reference) say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but in this case, leaving my World of Warcraft has made me realize what it is to be a gamer, and what it is to enjoy a video game. I enjoy the medium of the video game only second to that of the written word (music being a very close third), but when one has responsibilities to maintain within a video game, it takes a degree of willpower to step away from the whole blasted ordeal in order to view it as a whole.

Long story short (when has this ever been the case with me?), I've decided to confirm this break from the World of Warcraft, and to instead pursue other facets of my life; namely that of writing, reading and enjoying the company of my friends. This does not mean that I will stop writing within this genre completely, but it does mean that the volume that you may have been used to over the past few months will sharply decline. I maintain an active interest in my friends who play this game, which means that I will not be quitting the game, but I will merely be playing less than before. My Druid will probably go on break until I can transfer back to my guild, and my Shaman will grind his way to 70... eventually, so that he can play arena with some guildies and friends.

Either way, this is a chapter of my life that I have absolutely no regrets about. I'm simply not the kind of guy who aspires to create a career, or a lifestyle based upon something that is much more akin to a hobby. Not only that, but the politics involved at the highest levels are, once you take a step back, incredibly trivial. It's High School all over again, except it's taking place in an arena that finds us unable to settle the situation with our fists. You may opine to me that it is a less brutal environment, but I'd rather see kids get the stupid beaten out of them, then to witness the escapades of the video gaming community once more. In short, I'm tired of dealing with kids.

Any WoW related articles will go up on my personal blog, as well as here, but any other creative entires will be posted on my new blog. I sincerely thank those of you who read my trivial junk I've spewed over the month, as well as the incredible amount of support I've received from my work, both in-game and out. I've had several players recognize me in TF2 servers and give me kudos for writing, which is surprising, to say the least. If you've enjoyed my writing style, come on over to my personal blog, where I will welcome you with an open heart. If you are pissed and want more Druid tips, feel free to email me at:

woodstock_bbs (at) hotmail (dot) com
or
chris_tom (at) sfu (dot) ca
or
crt2 (at) sfu (dot) ca

If you get no response in a week, I've most likely not received your email.

BRB RL.

-Pwyff, a.k.a. Chrispers, a.k.a. Chris Tom, a.k.a. The most handsome Druid ever.