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The most dissapointing thing about WOTLK is that its made me realize what a huge wuss I am when it comes to this game.

Before I go into the specifics, let me say that I did ZERO pre-expansion preperation.  The entirety of my agenda was just to wait for the expansion and deck myself out in quest greens from Northrend.  It’s not completely horrible stuff . . . but compared to someone who’s only wearing S2 PVP gear, I’m at a disadvantage.

So, everytime I see a red name, and especially when I see multiple red names, the first thing I think is “PLEASE just leave me alone.”  My strategy is to pray they want the same thing.

In the world dog fighting and mixed martial arts, “gameness” is used to describe the desire to fight.  Somewhere, in the world of warcraft, I had lost that desire.

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Okay,

Just got through playing the Left 4 Dead demo.  If Gears2 doesn’t get me out of my gaming funk, I’m pretty sure this game will.

Amazon decided to ship Gears of War 2

a few hours early.  It might be sacreligious, but I’m not going to play it tonight.

All the guys I used to play FPS games with kind of migrated to Gears of War.  As much as I dislike FPS games on the console, playing Gears is kind of the only time I get to play with these guys.  I’m hoping playing Gears 2 with friends online will snap me out of this funk.

I made a late night post yesterday about how I was tired of games.  It’s still true today.  I kind of forced myself to play Fallout 3 a little bit.

To be honest, there is something about Bethesda’s game design that doesn’t sit right with me.  Like, I love the idea that the world is totally open, but at the same time it kind of blows to be doing a bunch of stuff when you are relatively low level.  Like, I get these dialogue choices that could be pretty cool, but I know they won’t work becuase I’m too low level.  But what am I supposed to do?  It’s just diappointing that I unknowingly got into a situation and I can’t play the game the way I want to play it, becuase I got here and my stats were too low.

I was discussing Fallout 3 with a friend after I made my post about being tired of games.  He’s gone through similar patches, and strangely enough, was starting to feel the same way I feel about games.  But, knowing him, his apathy towards games will disappear once Gears of War 2 comes out. Read the rest of this entry »

I said in my last post that I felt Fallout 3 was awesome.  And I still feel that way.  But, I’m probably not going to play it for a while.

I had plans.  Today I was gonna pass out Halloween candy and play Fallout 3.  That didn’t happen.  Instead, I ran a few games of WSG (side note:  I’ve been playing nothing but WSG this week, and amazingly, Horde has been dominating).  Then I read a book.  (Chuck Klosterman IV, if anyone cares).

I’m just, kind of burned out on games right now.  It’s hard to explain, but I’m just completely apathetic right now.  Last week, I was actually going to go purchase a PS3 to play Little Big Planet.  Right now, I’m glad I saved my money.

I don’t blame WoW, but I definately feel like it contributed this to this feeling.  I just fell into an all too familar routine.  I get off work, and its like, well, time to get to my second job.  Login, do daily quests, run a couple of BGs.  I think it was the daily quests that did it.  When are logging on to run the same daily quests day in and day out, its like, fuck, this is like having a second job.

I certainly don’t want to make the argument that games are a waste of time . . . far from it.  I think my experience with Fallout 3 is proof (at least for me) that games are very much a productive activity.  Its just, there are other things in my life I want to focus on, things that have a higher priority than getting 5/5 S2 healing gear.

ANYWAYS, right now, its 2AM on November 1st, and my number one priority at this moment is to watch Pump Up the Volume on HBO.

I also picked up some fresh gear–a Canon HV30 video camera and Panasonic Lumix FZ28.  I’m hoping to put together some cool stuff with that very soon.

I’ve been kind of busy these past few weeks.  I’ve picked up 4/5 pieces of S2 gear.  I play when I can, but usually when I get home from work there’s a 300+ queue on Tich, so I usually move on to something else.

I started playing Fallout 3 . . . but I had to quit becuase if I kept playing I would have been up till about 5am.  Its a lot of fun.  Deep down, a part of me was a tiny bit worried about how this would turn out.  I liked the IDEA behind Oblivion, but the actual gameplay left me dissapointed.  But I love Fallout 3.  This weekend is going to be just a massive play session.  I’m literally going to lock myself in my house, order pizzas and just play this game as much as possible.

The combat is suprisingly well done in this game.  In some ways, I’ll always love the original turn based combat of the original.  But, in some weird way, the new combat system totally works with my gameplay style.  Becuase my gameplay style is just about murdering everyone.  Seriously, you don’t know how hard it is for me to walk into Megaton and not just start blowing people away.  I had every intention of using VATs as much as possible–but that went out the window when I got my first free-aim headshot.

But I’ve also had these strangely emotional moments.  Like, I really felt, for the first time, that a game had reached me on an emotional level.  I’m not really one of those “GAMES AS ART!” type of people.  I love games, I play games regularly, but overall, my intention is just to have fun.  I’m not really interested in the emotional capacity of games.  So it was to my own amazement just how emotionally drawn into this game I had become.

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So, most people know, WoW servers are pretty unstable right now. Huge lag spikes, mostly, but some people are reporting disconnects, crashes, all that good stuff. I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I’ve seen some theories flying around suggestion that this patch was pushed out a little too early, possibly in response to the release of WAR. Given that there are a number of in-game issues (including balance changes) still being worked on, a compelling case can be made. But then again, I’m not sure exactly how many US players there are, I’ve heard reports of anywhere from 2-8 million, but that’s a lot of server maintenance. When our company first published its website, it crashed after about 5,000 hits. Still, after 4 years of constant maintenance and patches, and 1 expansion already under its belt, you have to wonder, it kind of makes you wonder why Blizzard is still plagued with these types of problems.

Over at Keen and Graev’s, Keen is looking for feedback on goldselling. My response is in the comments there somewhere. There’s a lot of interesting responses, but overall, it’s obvious time is the biggest factor. In some weird way, I look at goldselling as a product of the current “lifestyle design” movement taking place in the workplace. People, especially young professionals, have placed a much higher value on time over money. Looking at it purely in the context of time vs. money, for a lot of people, especially working people, it almost makes sense. Personally, even though it would be more beneficial for me to buy gold rather than spend time farming for it, the value of the gold doesn’t outweigh the negative stigma of the act itself and the reputation of the companies involved. On a purely monetary level, yes, it would be smarter and more beneficial for me to buy gold, but on a social level, these 3^rd party gold selling companies aren’t companies I want to support.

FINALLY, I just want to say that leveling on my protection spec warrior is going SWIMMINGLY. In comparison to leveling as a protection spec Paladin, the warrior definitely kills things faster (and has better interrupts), but can’t heal himself like the Paladin. So while I can kill more mobs in a shorter span of time, that extra time usually goes towards eating/bandaging, so I’d say in the long run, its about even with Prot Pally leveling. But yeah, I’m having a great time. How viable is Prot for PVP at this point? I really love this spec.

The XP changes to outlands make things easy as well. With my Paladin, on full rested XP, I got about 1/2 to ¾ of a level each night. Last night I got 1 ½ levels. I’m currently at 63 ½ right now, hoping to hit 65 tonight.

As I mentioned, I tried Ret, had some fun, but at the end of the day (less than 24 hours) I respec’d back to Holy. Tossing out heals and standing in the back is more fun for me than trying to dish out SICK CRITS.

I’d link my Armory, but apparently wowarmory.com is being not cool and doesn’t show my updated build. SO, HERE (via Wowhead) is what I believe I am running, since I can’t check in-game right now.

Its pretty much a straight forward healing build, 51 points in Holy with a couple of added Prot talents for good measure.

Since I’m not really doing Arena, I opted out of Unyielding Faith and Pure of Heart. I may forgo Holy Guidance to pick them up, but right now I’m just healing in BGs and I don’t feel like fears or curses are a huge issue. Also, if I was running arena, I’d probably want to pick up Blessed Hands for the dispel resistance. And again, since its BGs I’m healing and sitting at the back of the group, I picked up Enlightened Judgments for the added range. I judge a lot more often now, so I figured I’d pick up Judgments of the Pure for the added haste bonus. I’m not sure how much of an impact it has on my healing—I think the jury is still out on that.

I really want to like Beacon of Light, and when running arena or raiding, I could see how this can be useful. But in an uncoordinated BG pickup group (which is how I mostly play), I’m not seeing a lot of use out of this. So far, I’ve only really used it on myself to keep me up while I heal the raid. Oh, I also used to this to get 300,000+ damage or healing in AV achievement.

For my purposes, I’m not sure how useful it is to drop 51 points in Holy. I see a lot of healers going Ret to try and pickup Benediction, Improved Judgments, Conviction and Divine Purpose. Truth be told, my original intent was to run a Holy/Ret build and pickup Judgments of the Wise and Repentance. But with the nerf to JotW, that build lost support.

I’m still not sure how I want to level in WOTLK, but I will most likely keep Holy as one of my talent specs.

I also spent some time on my Warrior, getting this guy to 62. I’ve heard a lot of good things about how awesome Protection now is for leveling, so I decided to give it a try. When I level, I’m all about minimizing downtime, and apparently Protection is amazing for this reason.

SO, I’m currently spec’d THIS (via wowhead) for leveling. As I level, I’ll max out Armored to the Teeth, followed by max Cruelty, and finally Imp Spell Reflect. I had a bit of a rough start, mostly because I have no clue what kind of attack rotation I should be using (hard to blame me, look at a Holy Paladin’s spell rotation). Best I can figure, I just spam Devastate, Shield Slam, and Revenge and Shockwave when they come up. I was able to get some SICK CRITS out of this build, so overall things are looking pretty good. I’m hoping to get this guy to 70 before the expansion. In fact, now that I think about it, I raced to get him to 60 before TBC, and then never played him cause I thought Warriors were terrible and any class that couldn’t heal was gimped. BUT, I did have a lot of fun killing people in PVP with my warrior, so I’d like to get him up there.

This doesn't really have anything to do with my post, but I just realized this blog is like, all text.

I had a post I was working on.

It had a bunch of stuff, mostly about the new patch, Blizzcon, and some work updates.

Forget all that, because I’m about to flip it on you.

Originally, I was going to make a post about the new patch.  I was gonna talk about what an amazing spec Retribution has become.  I was gonna talk about how with the addition of Divine Storm and the new judgment system, your gameplay options are much wider than if you were playing something like Holy.

Again, forget all that.

I had fun with Ret.  For the less than 24 hours before the hotfix, I felt SUPERHUMAN.  Rogues were a joke.  Druids were a joke.  Warriors were a joke.  Hunters were a joke.  I’m sitting here, decked out in my healing gear with a couple of Ret pieces I picked up while I was leveling from 65-66 and I’m taking down Warriors like it don’t mean nothing.

I’m not gonna sit here and talk about how Ret is or isn’t OP.  EVERY single person in Warcraft thinks their class is underpowered.  Warriors, Rogues, Druids, Warlocks.  Everyone does all this theory crafting about why their class is so underpowered and what they need to be viable.  Most people felt Ret was overpowered.  That’s fine.  I’ve felt Resto Druids have been overpowered for past few months.  Its all relative.  I’m not gonna mope, or whine, or cry, or threaten to cancel my account or any of that.  I’m just gonna sit here and be thankful I at least had a couple of hours in the spotlight.

The truth is though, I feel like I’m done playing DPS classes.  Ret was fun to go around and burn people down.  But watching the rest of my team get slaughtered while the 6 or so Ret Palies run around with wings on, I dunno, it just didn’t feel right.  If anything, what I take away from this whole experience is how much I enjoy PVP healing.  And with that revelation, I have returned to the gentle, warm embrace of the HOLY tree.

My initial impression — Holy is fun.  While the changes we got aren’t as signifigant as Ret, we do have some pretty nice abilities.  It’ll be interesting to see how Holy performs in the long run, but running 51/10 in BGs is pretty fun for me.

The biggest thing I’m noticing is that with all the Ret pallies running around, mana repleshment is pretty good.  I played about 4 or 5 games today, and I don’t think I ever had to drink once.  A couple of times when I got low, I cast seal of and judged wisdom and jumped into battle (usually against hunter pets :)).

I’m not healing for as much as I used to, but I don’t if that’s a result of the spellpower change or the fact that I’m playing with the default Blizzard UI which blows for healing.  It doesn’t even tell you who’s in range.  I’m probably going to wind up turning them off and just running with nameplates.  I think that’s affecting my healing more than anything right now.

But yeah, I guess I should mention I don’t have any addons running.  Honestly, after watching a lot of the top teams play this game, I realized I’ve become too reliant on addons in this game.  I’ll probably re-install GRID or some sort of raid health bar addon, becuase the blizzard raid UI is absolute garbage.

I’ll update with more thoughts and my build later on, but overall, right now, I’m like where I’m at with Holy.  I am a little sad I won’t be able to breeze through dailies anymore, but, with great power comes great responsibility or something.

I’m suprisingly mellow when it comes to Blizzcon–I thought I’d be much more excited.

I don’t have a laptop, but I will be bringing my camera and cellphone, so I’ll hopefully have things to post.

I’m mostly looking forward to getting together will all my old friends I haven’t seen in ages, but I guess the WoW Class Panel and WoW PVP panel should be interesting.

Actually, I’m PSYCHED about the WoW Tournament and the opportunity to see an elite Paladin first han–oh wait.  Yeah . . . about that.

Overall, I’m not terribly excited about the upcoming Paladin changes.  As a holy paladin, it just makes me sad I didn’t spec ret in the first place.  Becuase then I would have some sweet Ret gear.

As much as I enjoy PVP healing, I’m more than a little bummed out by the lack of significant changes to Holy.  The most frustrating thing about it is Blizzard’s insistance that Paladin’s are somehow “fine.”  They are actually happy with the state of Holy Paladins right now.  Its hard to say how accurate that is–are Paladin’s really so terrible, or are Druids just so out of control overpowered?  I don’t kow, but I’m really hoping that Paladin’s become more viable as PVP healers in the future.

But man, Ret sure does look fun.  Hell, even Protection looks pretty sweet right now.  I think the biggest thing is that both those trees recieved new, active abilities as their 51 point talents.  A healing cleave sounds pretty sweet to me.  I’m not too fired up for Beacon of Light, but its effectiveness remains to be seen.

EDIT:  I am excited about removing all these seals from my action bar.  FUCK YOU SEAL OF THE CRUSADER.