Furry Healing

Play Habits

2007-02-05T02:28:00.000-05:00

Recently I've decided to start playing Warcraft again as you may know. To me this decision was not arrived at easily because the last time I played I basically made it my life for about 2 years. I was completely un-prepared to do this again.

This weekend I decided I didn't really want to do anything, so I stayed home basically all weekend and played WoW. To me this was fine, I played and enjoyed myself. However, Saturday night when my brother got home from work he says to me, 'You realize you've been playing this game all day?' I say 'Yes, and I'm fine with that.' He looks at me like I'm insane but whatever.

Playing Habits

2007-01-29T17:12:00.000-05:00

I don't really know what to say about this, I still enjoy the game and so sometimes I want to play excessively but I haven't had it happen yet. I think I'm fortunate in this way because I get in game do a couple quests kill some stuff and get a little bored and so move on to other things.

No complaints about the content yet, the two new areas I've seen are pretty amazing to look at and it's also pretty nice to see feral and balance itemization for Druids. This makes me happy, however I do feel a little odd replacing my phat lewts (epix/purplz/whatever) with greens.

TBC Follow-Up

2007-01-21T15:17:00.000-05:00

So after some encouragement from friends of mine I went ahead and bought the expansion as well as new original disks so I could install it on the Mac I got recently.

I'm pretty determined to not get into raiding like I did last time because I think my addiction stemmed largely from having in-game obligations. This time I'm just here for fun so time to give 'er a spin.

Until next time.

The Burning Crusade?

2007-01-20T15:27:00.000-05:00

The expansion has been released and now that I know it I've been thinking about picking it up to try the WoW waters once more. I suppose I do miss it a bit, I met some wonderful personalities while playing and I do think I would enjoy it again. My main concern of course would be getting completely sucked in again which is exactly what I want to not happen and I've learned I do have a tendency to have things happen that way. I find something I enjoy and then I do it all the time until I get completely burnt out on it.

Speaking with a good friend of mind he said, 'It's all about moderation.' Of course he's correct, I'm just worried about the discipline required I suppose.

So Much for My Addiction

2006-11-29T19:21:00.000-05:00

As is evidenced by my complete lack of posting here, I've pretty much entirely stopped playing World of Warcraft. My account is still active, you know, just in case but the way things have been lately I'm not terribly optimistic.

In the last eight weeks or so I've probably been in game for about five hours. What can I say, I've been more interested in other things.

And so, best of luck to all of you out there that may happen upon this who are still playing.

Gomez

2006-10-06T13:06:00.000-04:00

Last night my brother, a friend and I went to see Gomez at the Bowery Ballroom in Manhattan. The Ballroom is a pretty awesome little venue from what I saw last night.

I had only heard a couple of songs my brother made me listen to before we went to the show so I was only somewhat aware of what to expect. However, I really enjoyed the music and the performance. The show itself was amazing and it turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable night.

If you haven't heard of Gomez I'd encourage you to check them out, definately worth listening to.

Work?

2006-10-04T15:43:00.000-04:00

Work for me has been a little strange lately. As I've mentioned before (I think) I'm a Java Developer for a small company. Recently I changed projects and have since been put on a new on as well. This means I have to pieces of software I'm supposed to be working to develop and or maintain.

The strange thing about this is I haven't really been tasked for either of them. Due to not really having work to do, I've been able to indulge in some day time battlegrounding. Now I've been playing my Warlock rather than my Druid because, to be quite honest, I really miss blowing stuff up.

In order to conform with my desire to blow stuff up I also respecced my Warlock to a Nightfall/Conflagrate build. This is basically a purely offensive kill stuff before it kills you build. It doesn't offer a whole lot in the way of survival, but I've been able to take a couple down with me before I run myself dry.

All in all its been fun, but I've been playing mostly Alterac Valley in order to get my hands on those fairly decent off-hands Therazane's Touch and Tome of Shadow Force. After a couple days of mid-day battlegrounding in Alterac Valley I finished today.

I'm extremely glad to be finished too. It seems a lot of the competition which used to be held between groups when it was just our server competing against each other is gone and its all about the reputation grind which could get terribly frustrating.

C'Thun Owned

2006-10-01T20:34:00.000-04:00

Through the week we'd cleared all of Ahn'Qiraj save C'Thun. Which means we had all of Sunday, our big raid day, to work on the Old God. Right around 8:40 he fell in two vulnerabilities after multiple attempts, most of them ugly.

Not much more to say besides 'HOOAH!' and show pictures.

RDX6 -- Alpha 8 Interim Releases and Alpha 9

2006-10-01T10:57:00.000-04:00

A lot has gone on since the last time I wrote about RDX6. There have been four interim releases all containing a significant amount of content and then a final Alpha release.

The first interim release contained a first batch of bossmods for RDX6. These bossmods covered most of Naxxramas, omitting only one boss in the Death Knight wing and having only partially completed Four Horsemen module. I have only gotten to use one of them, specifically the one for Noth the Plaugebringer and to be perfectly honest when I did, the Big Wigs version was better. The RDX bossmod did not seem to wait until the Curse of the Plaguebringer was cast until beginning to count to the next one, which is important because it is a cooldown ability not on a straight timer. However, I am certain the bossmods will be improved over time.

The second interim release was for a raid status module. This provided a framework for the creation of statistics which constituted interesting raid status information for the individual. The statistics work off of Sets created by Filter objects so its mostly using things which people are already familiar with.

In the third interim release there were some improvements made to the debuff auto-curing. The improvements include things like a blacklist and the ability to prioritize by creating a Set which contains those who are a priority.

The fourth interim release included a 'styles' module which allows the user to change the way the the default frames look. I haven't had a chance to experiment with this yet so I can't say much.

Alpha 9 appears to be an inclusion of all the interim releases plus some polish.

Full Changelog
Alpha 9
* Assist Frame feature added, enabling the ability to make "assist windows"
* New sort option "Set Order" -- when used with a NominativeSet, will sort the entries in the order in which they appear in the NominativeSet editor.
* Styles module added
* Added Morfina's window list idea.
* Bugfix/RaidStatus: fixed occasional invalid unit erros.
* Bugfix: Font Not Set should finally be eliminated.
* Possible bugfix: Fixed a race condition in the alert code. Might fix the distorted graphics, not sure.
* IMPORTANT Deprecated VFL code has been removed. Versions of VFL past 20060930 will NOT WORK with RDX5
* VFL now has a Lua error handling facility complete with stack traces.
* Fixed various RPC bugs.
* Feature Editor will no longer remove invalid features. Errored features will be colored yellow in the list; impossible features will be colored red.
* Feature Editor will now show an "errors" popup at the bottom describing the most recent errors found.
* Wenge's multi target system added.
* Bugfix: Buffs with the same texture will no longer break things.
* Raid Status module added.
* Debuff curing: /rdx curefrom command added - allows the selection of a set or sort from which to cure.
* Debuff curing: LoS/OOR blacklist added.
* RaidStatus: display preferences now inhere to the Statistic object rather than the rendering feature.

Diseases!

2006-09-29T08:15:00.000-04:00

The title has nothing to do with Warcraft, a lot to do with me. The last couple of days, in fact most of the week really, I've been feeling rather ill. Whatever I had really reared its head Tuesday and Wednesday and I must have been running a fever around 105 at least. I didn't really check because I didn't really want to know.

I slept through all but the first hour of Tuesday and Wednesday's raids; participated in the first hour of Tuesday's. Wednesday was, or so it seems now, my day for recovery as I slept almost as much time as I was awake in thirty-six hours between Tuesday and Wednesday.

Anyway, as a result of all of this, nothing really interesting has been going on with me. Between working and sleeping I have been grabbing some time to make an effort of maxxing out Alterac Valley and Arathi Basin reputations on my Warlock. As a result of the way Horde tends to play Alterac Valley its making me want to shoot myself in the face, but I figure this feeling will pass; particularly when I have the reputation I need.

I also did manage to raid last night as I was feeling considerably better, probably a result of all the above mentioned rest. We struggled with Noth, but eventually got him, then killed the trash between the Twin Emperors and C'Thun and then we 'one-shotted' Ouro in a fantastical double KO.

RDX6 -- Alpha 8

2006-09-26T11:49:00.000-04:00

With this release RDX6 is beginning to fulfill the 'complate raid solution' billing with the implementation of auto curing. Auto curing is basically the RDX version of Decursive or CT Cure, it removes one debuff which the user of /rdx cure is capable of removing. Of course in order for the auto-cure to be useful we have to be able to find people with curable debuffs, to this end a 'curable' filter option has been added.

This release has the major convenience feature I've been after as well which is the ability to quickly switch desktops. There is now a button on the encounter bar which allows you to select from the desktops which have been added to the quick desktops list making changing from my normal desktop to one I need for a specific reason much quicker and easier.

Another powerful new feature is the ability to create and save custom scripts for RDX which can then be used in Binding objects to run a script when a specific binding is used. I imagine this will allow people who are power users to do some really incredible things with their RDX bindings.

Alpha highlights have also been added. Alpha highlights work similarly to the color highlights released in Alpha 5 except instead of overlaying a color on the bar they change the alpha level of it. I personally thing I will use this over the color highlights because it provides a quick way to distinguish between the two without making the bars appear all different colors which really bothered me.

Finally, as always, the changelog:

Full Changelog
Alpha 8
* "Auto Cure" functionality
* Mouse binding: "Cure unit"
* Macro assist functionality
* RDX.TargetFirst(), /rdx first
* RDX.SelectDesktop(), /rdx desktop
* Mouse binding: raw Lua
* Conditioning/conditional desktop switching.
* Fast desktop switching
* User/desktop/encounter autoexec
* Alpha highlights
* "Me" filter
* Wenge's class sort

Sprocket

2006-09-24T11:15:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the 'Post Your UI' thread on the EJ forums I found this extremely neat addon called Sprocket which allows the user to create custom radial menus which pop up at the press of a key binding.

Sprocket lets you set up to eight different key binds for menus, so 8 different menus plus any sub-menus attached to them. Each menu has 8 slots available for actions (macros or spells) or items.

I feel like this is a really great addon which will take some time to get used to as well as to find out the best ways to use it. Obviously you wouldn't want to bind really frequently used actions to it, but other things such as consumables (ones that don't require perfect timing to use) may not be a bad idea and it could really save some bar space.

Another One Bites the Dust

2006-09-21T23:42:00.000-04:00

Not much to say here other than I made another raid, we killed another boss. Ouro goes done, I was there and have the screenshot to prove it.

I really enjoyed the fight and I think it will definately be a repeatable kill for us even though it was a little heavy on the Nature Protection consumables they're pretty cheap to make.

Good fight and good night.

RDX6 Module -- Quill

2006-09-20T20:30:00.000-04:00

All I can say about it is inspired by Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, "Whoa."

Feature Announcement - Quill
Submitted by root on Tue, 2006-09-19 17:24.
Quill is a synchronized digital whiteboard for RDX. In short, it allows you to draw diagrams on a free-form canvas while everyone in your raid group watches in realtime.

With Quill, you can:

* Draw with squares, circles, polygons or freehand.
* Place text or icons in your drawings.
* Draw on a zoomable, movable canvas.
* Import maps from Atlas directly into your drawings.
* Broadcast your drawings to your raid group in realtime.
* Save your drawings into the RDX filesystem and load them for later use.

Quill is currently in internal testing and will be available as a post-release module for RDX6. If you're wondering why an RDX membership is worthwhile for you and your guild, look no further, because we will continue to release power tools like this as time goes on in order to deliver maximum value to our members.

UI Changes are Fun!

2006-09-19T22:16:00.000-04:00

Being the quirky oddball person I am, despite having told the officer core last night I wouldn't be around too much in the future I decided to log on today and fart around with my UI a bit. The idea of the changes was to give myself a smaller memory footprint and retain the functionality I had grown accustomed to. I also wanted to check out some new mods.

The biggest change, despite it not being a terribly visual one, was a switch from Flexbar to Bongos. I'd heard good things about Bongos from a number of people and I wasn't really using the extra functionality provided by Flexbar for my Druid's UI. I will have to reconsider dropping it for some other characters who do use a bit more of the scripting and events available in Flexbar.

I also made the change from Titan Panel to FuBar 2.0 again because of the smaller memory footprint. The thing which had really kept me from switching earlier was I couldn't find the plugins which matched the Titan Panel functionality I was most interested in. It actually turns out the functionality has been there all along but weren't posted on the UI sites I used most (hi wowinterface!).

I also wanted to try out a new addon called Heart. I wanted it to replace the Healing Estimator addon I was using. Unfortunately I haven't been able to set it up to do what I want yet and so may be switching back soon.

Aside from the specific addon changes I also redid the layout a bit, moving the map to the bottom center freeing up real estated for buffs in the upper right. The catalyst for this layout change was the Elkano's Buff Bar addon I wanted to try.

It ended up looking like this way..

Viscidus Down

2006-09-19T08:10:00.000-04:00

While I was away over the weekend my guild also took the time to learn and kill Viscidus. I (obviously) wasn't there but I thought I'd give the update and post the kill shot. Congratulations guys and gals.

RDX6 -- Alpha 7

2006-09-19T00:11:00.000-04:00

As previously mentioned Alpha 7 of RDX6 was released recently. I don't have jack to report about it because, well, I haven't used it really.

But I do have access to the changelog which I won't keep from you any longer so here it is.

Full Changelog
Alpha 7
* Bossmod API
* HOT API
* Sort by numerical HP
* RPC code and protocol cleanup
* RPC compression (thanks Wenge)
* Spell name entry box (thanks Wenge)
* New scheduling algorithms to reduce garbage creation in the scheduler.
* Virtual object support

The major change is the first cut of the things required to write and run Boss Mods for RDX6. Apparently there are some around somewhere on the RDX6 Member Forums, but I haven't taken the time to get them up and running let alone test them out.

I Need to Drink a lot of Beer, Fast

2006-09-18T23:58:00.000-04:00

This past weekend my brother and I went up to visit some friends in Connecticut. The entry title is actually a partial quote, the whole thing was something like..

I'm feeling pretty hung over right now and the smell of that beer she has is doing funny things to my stomach. I think I need to drink a lot of beer fast to just power through this.

For me it was one of the funnier things said over the weekend. Funniest thing seen award goes to a fellow who performed a certain "Mentos & Coke" experiment inspired by..

You see our experimenter wasn't quite sure it would work at all, so after dropping the Mentos in he kept his face hovering over the bottle of Diet Coke just long enough to have it explode all over his face. It was probably the most hilarious thing I've seen in the last five years and if the video of it gets uploaded I will be sure to share it... oh yes, it was indeed recorded.

Asside from all of this, I haven't been logged in to World of Warcraft since sometime Thursday (I think?) evening and so haven't really had a chance to experiment with the new changes to RDX6. I also informed the guild leadership today I probably won't be around as regularly as I was before, its been really nice to take a break from WoW and enjoy some of the fun things in life. As a result this blog may change focus a bit.

Alpha 7 Released

2006-09-14T23:47:00.000-04:00

Veni released Alpha 7 sometime today. I'll talk more about it tomorrow if I get a chance to look over it more thoroughly. I just wanted to let folks know it was out!

Noth Who?

2006-09-14T23:01:00.000-04:00

So as I mentioned before I didn't go to the raid last evening since I didn't particularly feel like raiding. While I was out drinking with my brother my guild was attempting Noth for the first time. From what I heard last night didn't go terribly well but the guild leadership decided to give him another go tonight.

After a completely unproductive day of work, and with my brother at work I decided to log in and do what I could to help out with getting a kill tonight. I'm glad I did. We got started around 6:30 and I had an inventory fully stocked with consumables as did many others. After a great attempt (43%) without consumables the raid leaders and officers decided it was time to go all out. We dip into consumables with Greater Arcane Protection potions for the melee near the mages during the second balcony and other damage and health consumables. Personally I'm sporting a Mageblood Potion and some Brilliant Mana Oil, nothing crazy but a significant boost.

Our first attempt with consumables... 66% wipe. Not exactly what were hoping for and so the frustration begins a bit. Next attempt with consumables, 52% wipe, better but still worse than sans consumables.

Everyone is a little irritated but we get back in there, buff up, get the consumables going and throw ourselves at him again. We're at 25% and I'm feeling this one, he's going down. At 23% we miss dispelling a Curse of the Plaugebringer and wipe spectacularly with about a minute and five seconds left before the third balcony.

Now I'm bummed about the wipe, but excited to give him another go. We get back in and do it again. When he goes up to the balcony the first time he's at 75%, much better than we've had him all night; I'm feeling good about this attempt. He comes down and we get him to 52% before he goes up to the balcony the second time; we're ahead of schedule. While he's up the adds are going down so fast we have off-tanks standing around waiting to pick something up which hasn't happened all night. When Noth comes down from the balcony again we just unload on him. By the end each of our off-tanks has about six adds they're controlling and Noth is down. We were all so excited about the imminent kill people were too close to the green plague door which now opens wide letting undead larvae in to feast on our flesh. Eventually the adds from Noth plus the larvae overwhelm us; its a kill, but its a wipe! Shaman pop up and the res train gets started and all is well.

Our raid leader was so excited he passed out next to Noth and we all circled up to laugh at him!

Nights like tonight remind me why I enjoy raiding.

Loots: Cloak of the Scourge Desecrated Girdle

The Time WoW Consumes

2006-09-13T22:11:00.000-04:00

I've read a lot of posts, blogs, forums, etc. about MMO and specifically World of Warcraft addiction, but I never really thought I'd be talking about it from personal experience.

Recently, as I've said before, I moved up to Brooklyn to live with my brother; since arriving here I've started to view WoW in a completely different way. When I was in DC I didn't know a lot of people and I didn't take the time to meet new people, instead I logged on to WoW and chatted or played in Azeroth. I did this because I found it fun, and like anything you really enjoy it affected my life. Looking back now, I wouldn't say it affected it as much as it occupied an enormous part of it. I ate, slept, worked, and played World of Warcraft. Friends I'd made in college and high school I barely talked to, I was out of touch with real life. The truth is, I knew it and was fine with it. I got my social interaction in game, and I really enjoyed talking with the people I had met and playing the game.

The 'trouble' now is I've come to enjoy going out places and hanging out with my brother. WoW is considerably less of a priority for me right now. I used to look forward to logging in and playing, and had no problem sitting through a five hour session of raiding. Yesterday I logged in to raid and had to leave early because I couldn't focus on what was going on and they were headed to Naxxramas. This recounting doesn't even count the fact I couldn't bring myself to log in tonight and help out with what they were doing.

Maybe this is just a phase and in a little while I'll be over it. Time will tell.

A Different Take on RDX

2006-09-12T00:35:00.000-04:00

The title links to a post by someone who is quite irritated by Veni charging for access to the website which hosts RDX. For those of you who are lazy I'll first quote the entire article and then my reply to it.

The article:

There's a raid addon called RDX (for "Raid Data Exchange") made by some warlock in a super-elite guild... and he charges for it. This makes me angry.

People leaked the code for "RDX 5" and apparently there's a version out there from the website "Conquest" with additions made by other people, so the addon-author "lessened the security checks" (I don't know waht this means--there's probably a Microsoft-style online check for authenticity/paid-ness and it disables itself if you haven't paid?). He claims that he "lessened the security" to give access to RDX 5 to the general public because RDX 6 is about to come out anyway. (I think a more likely story is that people got their hands on the code and un-securified it.) Now, you can pay to download the RDX 6 alpha, which doesn't work with a raid group yet.

I can't believe how elitist people are. Yes, I believe that he works hard on this addon. Yes, I believe that he is some kind of good coder. No, I don't think he should "restrict" his addon to world-first guilds who pay him. The whole point of a coding community is ... to have a community, right? Of course all the addons I've ever seen in the entire world were all free. Yeah, because of this you get a lot of shitty addons, but there is the occasional outstanding one, and those rise to the surface.

But he's charging for it because he knows his addon is good and "all the world-first guilds use it." He doesn't need it to be free to be widely used and he doesn't even want to offer it for public consumption because we're not good enough for him. I can't believe that he was able to pull this off. It makes sense though, because there's a small community of "world-first" guilds that are way above everyone else (we have no world-first guilds on Dragonmaw--far from it), and they use this as another way to make themselves feel better than the rest of us. Another badge of elitism--"we pay for RDX." It's just really strange. Even saying so reeks of some sort of crying on my part, "wahh those guilds are better than us and I'm just trying to think of something bad to say about them," but it's how I feel.

If I knew more about the politics of free software, I would say a lot more. I want to tell Lawrence Lessig about this or something. I just can't believe that requiring online "security checks" to use software (a la Microsoft) has found its way into the world of WoW addons.

See for yourself: http://www.rdx-raid.com
Someone in his guild has a blog: http://furryhealing.blogspot.com/
People elsewhere flame him: http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5780 and in the thread about the world first 4 horsemen kill: Curse News Post ...etc. Google.

Very strange.

My reply:

Hi, I found this article from a technorati search because it links to my blog (http://furryhealing.blogspot.com). Seeing as you seemed pretty irritating by the whole thing I wanted to explain a little bit.

First, I'm not a member of his guild (Scions of Destiny I think), in fact I don't even know him except to know he writes some pretty nice code.

Second, I'm not even in one of these 'elite guilds' you mention. My guild isn't competing for world firsts, in fact for the most part we aren't even competing for server firsts (seconds maybe).

Third, RDX is most certainly not CTRA with some new bells and whistles. Personally I have not looked at the LUA code of CTRA particularly closely but I will tell you with certainty that RDX is far and away the superior raiding tool.

Fourthly, this is nit picking but since I probably sound like a prick anyway.. CTRA wasn't really the first raid windows either, it was just the most widely distributed.

Since I'm not in a guild competing for world firsts which requires use of this add on you may (or may not) be curious about why I chose to pay the money to get it. Its pretty simple really, curiousity. I was curious to see what the code for such an elaborate add on looked like (I'm a programmer/developer by trade), even more so I was curious to see if he could really deliver on all the things he's claimed RDX will be able to do.

To contrast, my experience with CTRA is that it is an addon of basic windows with some nice extra information available to raid leaders. However, it is extremely static, and has remarkably little customizability. RDX by contrast provides incredible oppurtunities to change raid windows in a way which makes them more useful to the user.

As far as paying for the mod, I actually understand where the irritation fueling those feelings comes from. The simple solution is of course if its not worth it for you, don't get it.

Thanks for the different point of view none-the-less, most of the things I read about RDX are about how great it is.

This is what I'll call a 'lazy entry' on my part. What I quoted for me is simply the comment I left on the journal article.

Back to the Raiding Scene

2006-09-11T00:40:00.000-04:00

It was kind of strange going back to serious raiding after having taken just over a week off. I felt a little out of it and amazingly unable to focus. Perhaps its just the state of our raiding. We blew through Blackwing Lair and our three farm status Naxx bosses in just over six hours, which is a pretty good time for us.

Hopefully it was just an off day for me and I'll get back into the swing of things quickly otherwise it may be time for a fairly serious break from raiding for me.

Regardless, I saw my first Rejuvenating Gem drop. I didn't get it since I'm towards the end of a long line of people wanting one, but it was nice to see they actually exist on the drop tables. Stormrage Handguards also dropped but I passed those to another druid to whom they were actually an upgrade.

RDX6 -- Alpha 6

2006-09-10T12:32:00.000-04:00

The big change to RDX6 in Alpha 6 was the addition of the data transfer front end. Basically the data transfer feature of RDX is a big reason its so helpful to raid groups making use of it. It allows users to send and receive whole packages of windows and information. In the future it will (as I understand it) allow the transfer of encounters and modules as well. This makes keeping everyone in your raid or guild up to date with the latest boss mods and raid windows easy since the information can be sent while inside World of Warcraft rather than everyone having to exit the game and download the latest version.

Since I'm the only person I know on my server with the alpha membership I can't really give any feedback about this feature because I can't test or play with it.

Here are the RDX site description of sending and receiving packages as well as the Alpha 6 changlog.

Send Packages - The frontend for the data transfer system has been implemented. It is now possible to send packages over RDX Conferences. To do so, right-click on a package in the RDX Explorer and select "Send..." You can send to premade conferences (for instance, GROUP is the standard conference for your raid/party) or you can create a new custom conference, inviting whoever you wish.

Receive Packages - It's now possible to receive packages from other users. When a user sends you a package, you will see a window describing the contents of that package and allowing you to accept or reject that package. To see the exact serialized Lua forms of the objects you're being sent, you can click on them.

Full Changelog
Alpha 6
* Layout option: clamp to screen
* Layout option: nudge
* Window Manager: docking system overhaul
* Bugfix: Strange docking behavior for Encounter pane (and other classless windows)
* CustomUnitFrame/UnitFrameDesign becomes deprecated
* 'Single-Column Layout' feature becomes deprecated
* Conference system frontend
* Ability to send/receive RDX objects over conferences
* PowerType filter
* Long RPC monitor
* Multiple rows for buff/debuff icons

RDX6 -- Alpha 5

2006-09-10T11:27:00.000-04:00

The big feature new to this version is the ability to highlight based on certain conditions in a UnitFrame. As a healer the most obvious use for this is the ability to clearly identify people who are without doubt in range for heals. Unfortunately, because of the API Blizzard exposes to the modding community the closest range check to maximum heal range is 30 yards rather than the 40 yard range of healing spells. As a result the highlighting isn't as useful as it could be in this case, but it does help in hectic situations.

The above screenshot is an example of the highlighting, in it I am the only person within 30 yards so my bar is highlighted. If I think of it I'll grab a better screen shot later today.

Another significant change was the added ability to collate members of a sort. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to use this functionality yet, though the example other alpha testers have given is similar to the way highlighting is being used with healing. What the collation feature does is group members of a subset to the top of a window while highlighting makes the bar a different color. I'm not sure which will be more useful to me yet, I suppose time will tell.

My creativity hasn't really come up with any particularly interesting ways to use these new features just yet but I like to believe I can make better use of them than showing me who is in healing range.

Edit: I wanted to add the Alpha 5 changelog so here it is.

Full Changelog
Alpha 5
* New Sort system
* Highlight system
* Grid Layout (multiple columns, limit display size, etc.)
* Bugfix: you can no longer add events to a window until you've added some kind of multiplexer.
* New feature: Null multiplexer
* Bugfix: shouldn't be able to paste into the Builtin package.
* Bugfix: buff icons framelevel is lower than base frame.
* Bugfix: added missing "Orientation" field in Buff/Debuff icons features.
* Bugfix: Window Wizard "both hp and mana" display doesn't add UNIT_MANA event to feature list.
* Cast Spell mousebinding won't retarget if already targeting.
* Window Wizard: Option to display Missing HP.

RDX6 - Alpha 5 and Alpha 6

2006-09-09T14:29:00.000-04:00

While I was moving and without interweb access Veni was apparently hard at work releasing two new Alpha versions.

I'll give an update of the cool new stuff it can do once I figure it all out and am less hungover.

And I'm In!

2006-09-07T14:32:00.000-04:00

I'm starting to feel moved in, I have my room set up and mostly just clothes to unpack now.

Also of note my internet is going so I'll be back to updating again.

Moved in, unpacked, unloaded?

2006-09-05T01:04:00.000-04:00

Arrived with the U-Haul full Saturday night, unloaded everything Sunday morning, went back to get my car Monday and brought it up to Brooklyn. As of now, I'm a resident here in Brooklyn.

Earlier my brother and I were having a discussion about whether I was moved in or not. I said I wasn't because everything is still in boxes and all over the place. To me, I'm moved in when all my things are in order; I'm just unloaded.

Regardless of the semantics, my internet connection is mostly non-existent, the only reason I can type this message is because my brother's Mac is apparently good at jacking unsecured wireless connections. My PC on the other hand is pretty horrible at it since I don't even see this connection as existing.. go figure. So updates will continue to be sporadic or non-existent until our connection is setup on Thursday.

RDX6 -- Alpha 4

2006-09-02T02:40:00.000-04:00

The newest version of RDX6 got released sometime last evening. I took about two hours to mess around with some of the new things which have been added. The largest change is to the unit frame designs which are available. Veni has provided us with a way to customize the unit frames and bars significantly more than we were previously able.

Other than the unit frame designs, the second large change was the initial release of a window creation wizard. The way the wizard saves things could use some tweaking and I'm sure future incarnations of the wizard will change things, but its a good first cut.

If I manage to get all my packing finished tomorrow in a timely manner I'll get in game to do a little more testing and take some screenshots in order to better display what the new unit frames are capable of.

Until then, the changelog will have to do..

Alpha 4
* Window wizard
* Mouse binding: Assist Unit
* Mouse binding: option to not retarget after spell cast
* Slash commands for show/hide RDX (/rdx hide and /rdx show)
* UnitFrames will use Feature Editor
* Bug: issue where unitframes aren't being properly parented to their windows
* Bug: Aura data structure sometimes gets "stuck" in an invalid state (periodic ProcessAuras())
* Can no longer rename over top of an already existing file.

Quick Note About Moving...

2006-09-01T23:27:00.000-04:00

... other than its not terribly fun.. I've found I never realize how much junk I hang on to until I move. The reason for this? I don't go to throw a bunch of junk away until I move. Funny eh?

Burning Crusade Preview - Warlocks

2006-09-01T16:01:00.000-04:00

Up until now I've expressed interest mostly in things pertaining to the Druid class. While I love the Druid class and think it is incredibly rewarding to be a healer, I also play a Warlock. My Warlock was my first Horde character as well as my first max-level Horde character. Since Blizzard has not yet released the Druid preview for TBC but has released the Warlock talents and spells I'd like to take some time to look at these.

First I'd like to look at the new and the improved spells in the Warlock's arsenal; In general, I think the Warlock changes are directly related to this and the implications it has..

I will say this, for expansion the debuff limit is being increased from 16 to 40, combined with the focus on smaller raid dungeons, Warlock players will have more freedom and opportunity to use their debuffing abilities with less limitation. Beyond this, all classes will have new spells, talents and abilities that they will bring to the table by the time level 70 is achieved.

I hate quoting the above without a source, but I'm positive it was a blue post on the World of Warcraft Official Forums which have recently undergone a revamp destroying all the old posts.

The increase in debuff slots and the decrease in raid size could mean extremely competitive dps (damage per second) from Warlocks. Currently in large scale raids Warlock dps suffers considerably if they are not permitted to use their debuffs; debuffs are also the most efficient dpm (damage per mana) spells available to Warlocks.

The extremely restrictive factor for Warlock dps is threat, or rather their inability to reduce threat without dying. This concern is directly addressed by..

Soulshatter - Rank 1
Requires Level 66
193 Health
Instant cast            5 min cooldown
Reagents: Soul Shard
Reduces threat by 50% for all enemies.

I like this spell because to me it still requires the Warlock to toe the aggro line in order to get maximum benefit; the Warlock lives on a precarious line.

Another new spell, Incinerate, introduces an interesting mechanic. Incinerate gains bonus damage for having an active Immolate spell. It also looks to be the direct damage fire nuke which Warlocks have been asking for since heavy Destruction builds became more popular (Conflagrate.. yummy!).

Incinerate - Rank 2
Requires Level 70
300 Mana            30 yd range
2.5 sec cast
Deals 429 to 497 Fire damage to your target and
an additional 107 to 125 Fire damage if the target
is affected by an Immolate spell.

I particularly like this because it doesn't have any extra aggro generation attached to it like Searing Pain does which makes it spammable.

Another thing Blizzard has implemented, in a way, which players have been clamoring for is a shadow based AoE spell. I say Blizzard has done this 'in a way' because they introduced two ways to do AoE shadow damage, the first is an effect of Seed of Corruption.

Seed of Corruption - Rank 1
Requires Level 70
882 Mana            30 yd range
2 sec cast
Imbeds a demon seed in the enemy target, causing
1044 Shadow damage over 18 sec. When the target
takes 1044 total damage, the seed will inflict
1110 to 1290 Shadow damage to all enemies within
15 yards of the target. Only one Corruption spell
per Warlock can be active on any one target.

The second shadow based AoE is the new 41 point talent in the Destruction tree.

All three of the Warlock talent trees have seen a much needed revamp for the expansion. The changes to the early (first seven) tiers of Destruction and Demonology got mostly tweaking; unsurprisingly the Affliction tree saw significant changes. Affliction has been a staple part of raiding builds for a long time, but it was largely agreed by the community there were far to many filler talents.

In Affliction..

Improved Drain Health and Improved Drain Mana got consolidated and revamped. Instead of a flat increase they increase according to the number of Affliction debuffs the target has

Curse of Exhaustion (CoEx) has been changed from a 1 point talent with an additional 4 talent points required for fully improved CoEx to a single point talent for full effect.

Empowered Corruption has been added in place of Improved Drain Mana, making Corruption an even more powerful DoT.

Shadow Embrace has been added, presumably replacing Improved CoEx, adding additional reason to keep Affliction debuffs on targets being tanked.

Additionally, the new top (seventh, eigth and ninth) tier talents are quite good. Lasting Afflictions seems the Warlock equivalent of Improved Shadow Word:Pain except for multiple spells; Contagion further increases the Warlock's damage from debuffs; Malediction will increase magic raid dps by three percent (assuming both Curse of Shadows {CoS} and Curse of Elements {CoE}); Unstable Affliction is a nasty little PvP surprise. I think Blizzard did an excellent job of cleaning up the Affliction tree (particularly if they make Improved Curse of Agony {CoA} affect spell damage).

I also like whats been done in Demonology. Demonology continues to have the only flat aggro reduction available to Warlocks, the problem was Demonology Warlocks (in my experience) rarely did enough damage without sacrificing their pet (making the aggro reducer impossible) to need the aggro reduction. It appears Blizzard is attempting to correct this for TBC by adding talents such as Demonic Aegis which will increase the spell damage bonus received from the new Fel Armor spell and Demonic Tactics which will increase total damage from the Warlock by five percent. However, even with Demonic tactics I believe a Warlock would still need to sacrifice their Succubus in order to deal respectable damage (compared to the Affliction or Destruction Warlocks). Due to this I believe (unless the summonable Fel Guard is amazing) the Demonology tree will remain more of a PvP tree as opposed to a PvE tree.

Lastly I want to look at the changes made to the Destruction tree. In the first five tiers the only change Blizzard made to Destruction was to reduce Improved Searing Pain to a three point investment (formerly five points). In tiers six and seven Blizzard has added two 'defensive' talents; Nether Protection has a chance to grant 4 seconds of immunity to damage from the fire and shadow schools after being damaged by either; Soul Leech has a chance to return some of the damage dealt by direct damage spells to the Warlock as health. Shadow and Flame in tier eight allows the Warlock to gain an even greater contribution from their +damage gear. Finally Shadofury in tier nine gives the Warlock an AoE shadow spell on a cooldown.

I really like all the changes to the trees as I believe they are in the spirit of the design of the different trees. Heavy Destruction builds remain glass cannons, heavy Affliction builds will have considerably stronger debuffs across the board, and I imagine a Warlock Soul Linked to his summoned Fel Guard would be quite the irritation to kill.

In light of whats been released for the Warlock class I'm not only excited to play my Warlock in TBC, but I'm filled with anticipation to see what they decide to do with the Druid class.

Its Crazy How Life Works

2006-09-01T00:03:00.000-04:00

Just as my raid group is doing what I love to be doing, namely learning and defeating new bosses, my move date comes up. Due to the move I've missed several raids and I'm going to miss several more. None-the-less I wish them well in their continued killings in Naxxramas.

Obviously, this means I haven't had a chance to work with RDX6 any more since my last update. Though I do have news regarding Veni's updates; the next set of unit frames will be much more flexible. The most prominent feature in the new unit frames will be the ability to display health and mana bars simultaneously. Hopefully it will also mean the ability to display missing health on the bars as this is one of the things I miss most from my brief stint with RDX5 and from CTRA.

Its likely my updates in the next seven days will be sporadic and likely not Warcraft related since.. well.. I won't be playing Warcraft.

Upgrade Update

2006-08-31T23:44:00.000-04:00

I was tinkering around with the new layout templates for a couple hours and was unable to easily port my old CSS to a new layout template.

What this means is I will probably need to start from a different template than I started from last time. I believe this because the structure of the page I started with was significantly different; not to mention the new page elements or widgets introduced by the new stuff Blogger has in the beta.

Blogger Upgrade

2006-08-31T12:37:00.000-04:00

When I logged in to the blogger website this morning I was excited to see my blog was eligible to be moved to Blogger Beta. Soon after I made the switch.

After making the switch I realized I was about to lose my template. As you can see (assuming you've been here before) the layout of this page has changed quite drastically. Hopefully tonight I can find time to redo my layout so it at least resembles what it looked like before because I really liked it. Probably part of the reason I liked it was because I spent about two hours modifying an existing template to make it look the way it did.

Fortunately my lists of links made the conversion, even more fortunately I have a copy of my old template at home. Its likely I will be tinkering with xml and css this evening rather than preparing for my move to Brooklyn, oh how easily I am distracted.

Edit: Plus the feature I was really interested in, namely the categories or labels, doesn't seem to really have added terribly much to this blog. Maybe I'll feel differently once I have it all up and running the way I like again.

Edit: I found I was able to revert to my old layout, which I like much better and so will leave up until I have a chance to modify one of the new layouts to suit me.

RDX6 Desktops

2006-08-29T23:27:00.001-04:00

As promised I took some full fleshed shots of Desktops I created in RDX6.

The first shot is of a Desktop of raid members grouped by class.

The second shot is of a Desktop laid out by group number.

The third shot is of a Desktop arranged by 'type'. The obvious exception to this being Druids (for which I used a Window object from the class Desktop). I may further divide DPS into Physical DPS and Magical DPS but I don't have a compelling reason to at the moment.

The Innervate Window in the above shot is I think the most interesting Window I've created so far. The Innervate Window will only show Priests, Mages, or Druids who are alive, within 30 yards, between zero and forty percent mana, and do not have an Innervate buff on them already. The window sorts from lowest mana percentage to highest and when I left click on the bar it casts Innervate. My only semi-gribe about this is I can not make it use a macro which announces in our Druid channel who I am Innervating to prevent overlapping. However, this feature has been brought up to Veni and I imagine it will be implemented some time in the future.

Maexxna Exterminated!

2006-08-29T01:07:00.000-04:00

My raid was able to take the giant spider down this evening during their second raid of attempts. I'm extremely impressed with how quickly they were able to get her pounded down, and the consensus seemed to be it was not due to consumables which means I look forward to repeating the feat next week.

Sadly I was unable to be there for the raid (but I jacked a kill shot anyway) on account of my needing to get my car started in order for me to get it to the dealership to have some work done. Apparently not turning on or driving your car for about six months is bad.. who knew?! I'm hoping I'll be able to make the raid this Sunday while we work on some more Naxxramas bosses, but with the whole moving thing going on I'm kind of skeptical about it.

RDX6 - Raid Reaction

2006-08-29T01:00:00.000-04:00

I got to utilize the RDX6 Alpha in a real 40 person raid setting for the first time tonight.

As stated previously my major concern was the drag it may put on my system performance wise, but I must say any fear of performance has been alleviated. While using RDX I had no extra noticeable lag in casting times or targetting.

In fact, the only real complaint I had about it was its oddness in window updating. This problem has been talked about a lot on the RDX forums though and Veni says he has found what was causing the issue so I expect it will be fixed soon. There is also a work around for the problem which I ended up implementing. Unfortunately the workaround did not seem to fix the problem but I did not get the oppurtunity to restart the World of Warcraft client or to even reload the UI.

All in all, I'm still quite pleased with this addon and I'm definately looking forward to future developments.

Edit: I'll grab a shot of filled out raid windows next time since the ones in Raid Data Exchange v6 - Update are pretty empty.

Burning Crusade Leak - Druids

2006-08-28T12:16:00.000-04:00

It looks as though some of the talents and spells which will be available in The Burning Crusade expansion have been leaked. World of Raids appears to have the majority of them listed.

The Druid changes for TBC are pretty interesting. The Balance and Feral talents appear to be focused on bringing a Druid specced heavily into them more in line with parent class damage output, though it doesn't look like anything in the talents will be helping with the mitigation differences between Warrior and Bear tanks.

I believe the new Restoration 41 point talent will be incredible in a raid situation.

Tier 9
Harmonize: Distributes damage taken by party members within 30 yards between the party while in effect. Note: Its a self cast buff that lasts up to 30 seconds.

While it does not offer any additional mitigation (like Ancestral Fortitude or Inspiration) it would be an incredible way to counteract expected spikes of damage, but like our healing will require proactive use rather than reactive. I really like this because it keeps the 'feel' of the class the same.

I'm also looking forward to some of the new base abilities.

Enervate (Restoration): Drains mana, energy, or rage every second for 20 seconds.

I think this will be an incredibly useful tool in PvP and adds some interesting options to the class. I think it'd a fascinating choice of which to use if it shared a cooldown with Innervate as its essentially the opposite effect.

I'll share some thoughts about the other supposed changes in the future.

Edit: Removed the comment about Cyclone because I had mis-read the description.

Life Rears Its Head

2006-08-28T11:35:00.000-04:00

Real life obligations have reared their head at me and so I've been mostly out of game lately. Most of these obligations are related to my upcoming move from the District to Brooklyn which is something I'm really looking forward to.

As far as Warcraft goes, with Faerlina down my raid group has been making a pass at Maexxna and from what I hear has made good progress. I really wish I hadn't had to bail before they started attempts and it would be nice to be there learning Maexxna with them. Learning and disecting encounters is a really enjoyable part of my PvE play experience and I dislike missing it, though I imagine there will be more to come soon.

I'd also like to get some more time with the latest RDX6 Alpha release so I can keep playing.. I mean testing it. I'm also curious about how my machine will perform while running it in a large-scale raid.

Cross-Server Battlegrounds

2006-08-27T03:17:00.000-04:00

I must admit I had severe reservations about Blizzard implementing cross-server battlegrounds. I was concerned que times would increase, and the average gear of my opponent would go up as well.

After spending the last two or three days doing some relatively decent Arathi Basin PuGs I must withdraw my reservations. Arathi Basin is by far my favorite battleground as a healing Druid. A well timed heal or moonfire can really turn things around and I don't have to run around with a stupid 'Please kill me' flag on my back. Playing Arathi Basin at all prior to 1.12 had only happened when I queued up with a full group. When we queued up as a full fifteen person group the games usually ended within ten minutes. While this is great for grinding honor, its really kind of boring if I'm looking for PvP.

Being able to join an Arathi Basin PuG just for kicks has been a real pleasure whether I was playing my Warlock or my Druid. I'm sure part of the reason I'm enjoying it so much is because I just haven't had the option to for quite a while, but I'm alright with that.

It has also been a joy to find the competition I'm facing from other servers isn't much stiffer than it was from my home server. Of course there are some shining stars out there, but there were some on my server as well. For the most part I find myself fighting the same batch of semi-skilled, semi-geared players I've been fighting all along except now they have different names. Basically, nothing has changed except I can play any battleground I like at any time I like and because of this fact Blizzard gets a genuine 'Thank you' from me.

1.12 World PvP Objectives

2006-08-26T04:59:00.000-04:00

The towers in Eastern Plagelans (EPL) remind me of the old Tarren Mill v. Southshore (TM/SS) days when the honor system was first implemented.

I can't see myself ever having a reason to go and try to capture the towers, just like I never had a reason to attack or defend Tarren Mill. After a while though, I started going to Tarren Mill because I knew even if something wasn't going on now, by killing a few guarsd at Southshore I could stir up some shit.

I believe the EPL towers will function the same way. If this world objectives design is to be successful it will not be because controlling them gives a minor buff; it will be because the towers give players looking for World PvP someplace to look for members of the opposite who are also looking for World PvP. Really, giving the players some place to go and look for a fight is what the towers and the sand (lolsand) are all about. I expect the buffs will be simply a perk for doing well, not the catalyst for action and conflict.

Raid Data Exchange v6 - Update

2006-08-26T03:56:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned before, I joined the RDX website in order to get at and help test the earliest releases of this add on. For better or worse, I took the plunge today without really reading anything on the RDX website about how to get started.

For those of you considering becoming charter members this means when you open up RDX for the first time it looks like this:

Rather than be discouraged (or look for documentation!) I spent the next two hours or so creating Filter, Sort, MouseBinding, UnitFrame, and Window Objects, organizing them into Packages until eventually my Object Browser looked like this:

The end product of all this tinkering you may be wondering? Nothing spectacular really, in fact it ended up being something I'd done in about twenty minutes using RDX5. Of course AFTER I had created windows in order to display Tanks, Druids, Healers, DPS..

I went and looked at the RDX website in an attempt to find an answer to one of the many questions which had arisen in my mind (which I did find by the way), I found this quote from Veni regarding the user friendliness of RDX6 as well..

I do sympathize with the user friendliness issues, a lot of people find the new RDX intimidating.

I will be working to address those issues as we move on through the alpha.

One thing I will be doing is adding "Wizards" like a Window Wizard that will let you set up a window in a few easy steps. The wizard will generate all of the sets/sorts/features for you so that you don't have to mess with them.

I didn't find this terribly surprising. You may notice the listing in the above screenshots under Packages which says Builtin, I fully expect this to be well populated by the time a release version rolls around.

Usability concerns aside, the flexibility of Veni's approach is what really amazed me. I'm no stranger to Object Oriented Programming, in fact its what they pay me for, but Object Orientation like this in a language which, to my knowledge, is not particularly designed for an Object Oriented approach is pretty amazing.

In the end I could have saved myself a lot of time by reading the documentation provided and downloading the pre-constructed objects, but I'm really glad I didn't. Not having Builtin objects forced me to understand the relationships between the objects and allowed me to appreciate the power of Veni's approach.

My biggest concern for RDX6 at this point is how much of a resource hog is it going to be. It may have been because of the refresh events I chose in the Window configuration, but I was getting some client side lag which I will attribute pretty completely to my addition of RDX6 and I wasn't even in a raid environment.

In response to resource consumption concerns Veni says,

Well, we're still in alpha, I'm always looking for ways to make things more efficient, and I'll keep reducing consumption when I can. That Kb/s figure in battle sounds a little high and I'll look into reducing it.

However, my focus with RDX is not to make a minimalistic addon, but rather a fully featured one. You can expect RDX to take up a good chunk of memory.

I personally completely understand his interest in developing a fully featured raiding utility. However, I think it will certainly be necessary to balance utility and performance. An addon developed to be used in what is generally the laggiest of environments certainly needs to keep a somewhat smaller footprint.

So far this mod gets a thumbs up from me.

Grand Widow Faerlina Terminated!

2006-08-24T23:26:00.000-04:00

After work I signed on and was told to make my way to Naxxramas, which was surprising because I didn't really expect there to be a spot for me since I was arriving about two and a half hours into the raid. As it turns out they were going balls to the wall on Faerlina, we had several casters flasked up plus Greater Fire Protection Potions and Greater Nature Protection Potions were being handed out like cheap candy.

To make a semi-long story short; after a couple of wipes we dropped her just before an enrage we couldn't counter.

Loot was: Widow's Remorse, Splinter of Atiesh, Desecratd Bracers

Unfortunately, I had to leave soon after the kill but it was awesome to be there for it. I love the feeling of killing a boss for the first time, its an amazing rush. I'm pretty interested to see whats coming up next as well!

MMOs Have Social Value

2006-08-24T16:12:00.000-04:00

In a relatively recent piece of published research (Where Everybody Knows Your (Screen) Name: Online Games as "Third Places"), two researchers have concluded MMOs are filling a Cheers like niche in social interaction. They do this

By providing spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function as one form of a new "third place" for informal sociability much like the pubs, coffee shops, and other hangouts of old. Moreover, participation in such virtual "third places" appears particularly well suited to the formation of bridging social capital (Putnam, 2000), social relationships that, while not providing deep emotional support per se, typically function to expose the individual to a diversity of worldviews.

Reactions to this article have been varied, and initial reactions by gamers tend towards Nicodemus of Kill Ten Rats (KTR), though in the comments he admits being misled slightly by the GameDaily Biz article. On the other hand Raph Koster seems to believe the study has a good bit of value despite the "well thats obvious" gut reaction of many MMO players, particularly because

the common sense of game players has no validity in, say, a Congressional hearing. Common sense and anecdotal impressions aren’t worth much in science in general, and having concrete data to present to game detractors is an incredibly valuable thing.

I find this particularly interesting because the more government attempts to influence what type of and the content of games available the more significant studies of this sort will be in allowing game companies to continue doing what they're doing.

Something else I found particularly interesting from the study;

In his seminal text, Oldenburg (1999) documents the decline in brick-and-mortar "third places" in America where individuals can gather to socialize informally beyond the workplace and home. The effects are negative for both individuals and communities: "The essential group experience is being replaced by the exaggerated self-consciousness of individuals. American lifestyles, for all the material acquisition and the seeking after comforts and pleasures, are plagued by boredom, loneliness, alienation" (Oldenburg, 1999, p. 13). Recent national survey data appear to corroborate this assertion, with census data indicating that television claims more than half of American leisure time, while only three-quarters of an hour per day is spent socializing in or outside of the home (Longley, 2004).

Essentially, MMOs are being used in lieu of face to face meeting places rather than in addition too. People are increasingly (myself included) staying in, playing, and socializing rather than going out and socializing. I find this particularly interesting in light of the assertions made by Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams about MMOs being "third places". After achieving a better understanding of what is meant by a "third place" I am beginning to believe MMOs are a better setting than many of the bars and hang-outs I've found where I live. My reasoning for this is simply this, there are no places allowing you to meet people without registering their ethnicity, income levels, etc. MMOs provide this as a unique feature of meeting new people, as well as bridging the gap of oceans and nationalities.

I recently had the pleasure of getting together with number of guildmates whom I did not know in real life prior to the get together. World of Warcraft has allowed me to meet and get to know people from all over the United States not to mention the rest of the globe. An additional benefit to meeting people through an MMO versus randomly in a bar or coffee shop is you will immediately have something to discuss, it establishes a common interest effortlessly.

By no means would I advocate forgoing face to face meetings in order to establish relationships and make acquaintances because I believe the face to face interaction is far more conducive to continued development of a relationship. As a vehicle for metting large quantities of diverse people I'm not sure anything can promote interaction of widely varying groups of people as well as online gaming.

RDX6 Update

2006-08-24T14:44:00.000-04:00

Charter memberships are available and the core alpha package is available for download. I gave in and got my membership immediately, I should get a chance to play around with it later this evening and certainly will over the weekend.

Edit: Play time with RDX6 was extremely limited due to immediately being pulled into Grand Widow Faerlina attempts. There were no pre-constructed templates to try and use so I can't even give an honest first impression of the interface itself.

Hardware Upgrade You Say?

2006-08-23T11:39:00.000-04:00

The server I play on the vast majority of the time was slated to be upgraded during the extended maintenance yesterday and today. While the hardware quite possibly has changed the performance of the server seems to have degraded more than anything else. The last two day's raids have been delayed and botched as a result of Blizzard's shaky servers. I'm not one to condemn them for this, after all I can only imagine the number of variables involved in migrating a complex system onto new hardware. I am, however, surprised by the frequency of server issues which always seem to come up around patch time not to mention the number of significant bugs which are introduced in them. Working in software development makes the bugs being pushed out in each patch really curious about their development process.

Blackwing Lair or Bust

2006-08-22T21:18:00.000-04:00

On to today's raid! Actually, not much to report on that front. Today is Blackwing Lair, and I chose to step out so some of the lesser geared and newer Druids could get some of the set pieces should they drop. I've been fortunate to get a number of the really off-set pieces from the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj and so would rather see some of the other folks get the loot in order to help us progress. The pieces I'm really interested in, Stormrage Chestguard and Stormrage Pauldrons, would be great because they would get me some more regen as well as the three-piece Stormrage bonus in my more +healing focused gear, but other Druids which have been around longer also need those pieces.

Edit: Added links to Stormrage pieces, and because the shoulder armor is Pauldrons not Spaulders.

Patch 1.12 is Live...

2006-08-22T21:00:00.000-04:00

...and my server isn't. Well it is now, but it was kind of sketchy there for a while.

Cross-Realm Battlegrounds
- For the first time in the history of World of Warcraft, you will be
able to face off against players from other realms in the
Battlegrounds. PvP Battlegrounds link Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch,
and Arathi Basin so that players from several realms will be
combined into one huge matchmaking pool. Replenish your mana,
sharpen your blades, and get ready for some brand-new challengers!

The cross server battlegrounds are finally here, and as predicted there are a ton of old and new PvPers queing up again. Hopefully this means the couple of times I get to PvP with my old crew we'll actually have some matches now rather than simply rolling all over everyone. I really truely do hope this cross-realm battlegrounds will re-invigorate the PvP scene as it has been dead on my server for quite some time.

The other thing of note related to PvP in this patch..

World PvP
- The stage is set for intense, objective-based land battles as Horde
and Alliance vie for control over important strategic positions and
resources around Azeroth. Head out for Silithus and Eastern
Plaguelands to engage the enemy on the field!

I have spoken to a number of people who are less than enthusiastic about this change, particularly because it looks to just be another free buff for the dominant faction on PvE servers. This could quite possibly turn out to be the case, but personally I'm hopeful this will mean when some friends and I go looking for some world PvP we won't have to kill guards for 30 minutes in order to find it.

C'Thun, How I Love/Loathe Thee!

2006-08-22T01:05:00.000-04:00

Another exciting night spent learning C'Thun. I really find this encounter fascinating because it relies so much on individual effort. I was remarkably late for the start of this raid due to work. Logging in to Teamspeak (TS) I hear them working on the transition from Phase One to Phase Two and then working on Phase Two, and getting the first vulnerability prior to wiping.

By the time I was needed to fill a spot in the raid (45 minutes or so after I first logged in to TS) quite a few people from the group which had started had been rotated out (mostly because they had to leave for various reasons). The effect this had on the raid was quite interesting from a people watching™ perspective and somewhat frustrating from a raiding perspective.

I'll talk about the people watching™ since its more interesting to everyone, or so I believe. The substitutes (myself included) zone in, presumably get comfortable with their groups and where they are to be positioned within it and generally get ready for the attempt just like everyone else. On the first attempt I was there for we didn't do particularly well as I recall, though we did make it to the end of Phase One we had far to few people on their feet to properly continue the fight and we were quickly over come. This I imagine was a fairly large hit to the morale of those who had already been there wiping trying to clean up Phase Two. Well now those folks were back to cleaning up Phase One with the substitutes. The next attempt went slightly better as I recall, but a poorly timed vulnerability further frustrated the people who had been there for a couple of hours already.

As is bound to happen the 'fresh' faces are now feeding on the frustration of those who have been there and no one is particularly happy with how we are doing. In summary, the vulnerability phase we got on the second attempt was the only one I saw throughout the night. I'm sure the fact is even more irritating for the people who were there from the start than it was for myself. Watching the degradation of the focus of the raid was interesting though. The third attempt I was there for went poorly in general and we were wiped without getting through Phase One. From this point forward things never really turned around for the better and it seemed as though the raid in general was simply going through the motions.

I can't imagine a more troubling thing for a raid leader to be encountered with than a situation like the one we faced tonight. From what I heard when I logged in to TS things were going reasonably well, then people have to go and the raid turns for the worse. Everyone knows the raid as a whole is capable of better, particularly the leadership, but the group can't pull it together and there isn't really anything leadership can do about it. Eventually they did what was, in my opinion, the best thing they could; we went to beat the snot out of Onyxia, and then the raid was over.

I really feel for the people who were there from the start and working on perfecting Phase Two, only to have their work reduced to rubble due to having to sub people out.

25 Person Raids Inc.

2006-08-21T21:51:00.000-04:00

The hot topic around the interweb about the future of World of Warcraft is most certainly Blizzard's decision to lower the raiding cap for upcoming content. This combined with the inclusion of the previously restricted faction classes will make for some interesting decisions facing raid guild leaders in The Burning Crusade (TBC).

GSH, the author of Blessing of Kings lays out four likely possibilities in the article linked by the title. The most interesting to me (making the assumption the majority of a guild's playerbase will stay when TBC is released or enough players will return to cover the loses) is,

Instead of each person raiding 5 nights a week, each person raids 4 nights, allowing everyone to raid, though at a lesser rate than previous. The advantage is that everyone remains together. Some people may dislike sitting out, though. Progression will also be much slower, as it will take longer to gear everyone up and for everyone to learn the encounters.

I realize this would not be an option for the people in the particularly hardcore guilds focused almost completely on progression which, to me, seem more likely to cut people (option 2 in GSH's article). However, I feel a rotation may well provide the most amicable option until newer guilds shake themselves out. I can't fool myself into believing a major guild restructuring will not occur on most servers, but I do believe a rotation is a quite amicable option for guilds prior to the inevitable fallout.

Another interesting option from GSH was the suggestion of a guild sponsored Arena team..

Take 4-10 people who like PvP and set them up as an Arena team. While the rest of the guild raids, the Arena team goes out and PvPs. Then when a PvP season ends, the Arena team takes their new toys and is folded back into the raiding team, and a new PvP team is set up.

The appeal I see to this is there are a number of people for whom raiding is not the most interesting part of the game. However, I don't see the Arena team as a rotating group as GSH suggests, but rather a consistent guild sponsored group. To me this will also promote interaction between the rest of the server community and the large raiding guilds. It may even turn out factions split over favorite teams, I can envision the Arena teams becoming quite the hot topic of inter and intrafaction discussion and rivalry and to be quite honest I'm really looking forward to it.

Anyway, back to the 25 person limit. Another suggestion was..

3. Recruit more and run two raids.

If you recruit a few more people, you will have enough to run two raids.

The largest problem I see with this is the potential for drama. Inevitably one group will be considered the good group or the 'A-Team' while the other group will be labeled 'JV Squad'. Its unfortunate, but I think its part of the mob mentality combined with Grass is Always Greener syndrome. Hell its even possible both groups would see the other as the 'A-Team', imagine that! The fractured mentality of the guild would likely eventually lead to simply a fractured guild which would, in most cases, be a real shame.

The other possibility (as pointed out by someone in a topic on the EJ forums) is one raid group 'locking out' a large number of people in such a way that there would not be enough of a balanced group in order to create an effective second raid at all. A guild which wanted to run two raid groups would I think have to have an incredibly bloated roster in order to allow for substitutions. For example, assume a core raid force of 36 (four of each class for simplicity), 25 of these are the regular raiders, with the other 11 rotating in as needed (either because people left early or real life [RL] came up). In order to ensure always being able to field a raid, judging from personal experience, a guild would need at the very least 1 person for each of the substitutes. So each raid, in my estimation, would require a force of 47 people in order to consistently maintain, where 11 or so of those people can be more casual and possibly cross over between the raids, though that would re-introduce the problem we're trying to get around so lets ignore it. Therefore in order to maintain two raids consistently a guild is going to need, judging from my biased experiences, between 80 and 95 raiders. Again looking at my current guild, this means keeping track of the same number of people as we do now, but it places the additional requirement of tracking another raid group. I can see the stress coming out the raid leaders collective ears already.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

2006-08-20T22:30:00.000-04:00

So far so good on the big raid day. We got formed up a little bit late, but not too late. Everyone headed down to the Emperors room, we got buffed up pulled the first Anubisath, had a bad combo call from the raid leader and wiped. So we picked ourselves up, pulled again, and one-shotted them all the way to the Emperors.

We had one wipe on the Emperors due to healing aggro mid-phase (we use two Warrior tanks) but after we got up we blew them away in pretty good time. Due to current raid make-up we're headed to try and take out Rasuvious and then its likely back to Ahn'Qiraj for C'thun trash clearing and attempts.

Clean raid so far so I'm looking forward to a quick downing of Rasuvious so we can get back to C'thun. I really enjoy seeing Old Gods die for some reason...

We ended up getting Rasuvious down after taking a short break for people to repair and stretch. In fact I wouldn't say we just 'got him' I'd say we beat the snot out of him. I think there were only two or three deaths and he was toast.

With Rasuvious down it was time to work towards C'Thun, so we headed back to clear the absurd amount of trash between the Twin Emperors and C'Thun. I have to say, I think we spent almost as much time clearing the trash as we did attempting Rasuvious, which is just frustrating. Not because we wiped and did stupid things, but just because there is sooooooo much of it. I think the most irritating part about the trash before C'Thun is it doesn't really seem to serve any purpose besides delaying the raid getting to C'Thun. The only reson for it I do see (besides the aformentioned delay) is possibly helping us learn to deal with a lot of things going on and a lot of people taking damage at once. However, we don't deal with the trash in anywhere near the way you approach C'Thun. We don't split the raid into groups and we don't spread the DPS.

I'm really looking forward to the C'Thun attempts tomorrow and I hope we get the folks we need to get some good tries. We've got the idea of the first phase down pretty well I think, though we could certainly get through it more cleanly. What we really need to work on is the chaos that ensues in phase two which we can only do by practice, practice, practice. The one thing I think would really help us a lot in learning C'Thun is reducing the time between attempts. Its currently taking us between fifteen and twenty minutes to regather and rebuff between attempts and if we could reduce this even by five minutes we'd probably be able to get at least one more attempt in every four attempts which could help a whole lot.

Relaxation!

2006-08-19T19:18:00.000-04:00

Not a whole lot going on the last two days. Friday and Saturday are our 'off-days' so we don't have scheduled raids. Some folks did hit Zul'Gurub and The Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj last night but my internet was a bit flaky and so I decided to just chill and watch some movies on TV. This worked out pretty well since there were some decent flicks on HBO and various other cable channels.

I knew we weren't raiding today either and my internet was flickering on and off again so I'm once again relaxing and watching movies. I took some time to dust off Battlefield 2 and take it for a spin. I purchased it right around when it was released and had never really played it until today. Its a pretty neat game and I'll bet its incredibly competitive online. Since I didn't want to step into that world I just tooled around against the computer opponents.

I also fired up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for the first time in a couple of months and got loaded up into my old save, ran around for thirty minutes or and realized I didn't really have much interest in playing. Its kind of sad, the only game I'm really interested in right now is World of Warcraft and I think I'm kind of in a slump as far as playing it goes. At one point I had strongly considered leveling up a mage on an RPPvP server, just for the sake of doing it. Plus it was a relatively new server and I thought it would be nice to get away from the gear and faction imbalance a bit. I leveled her up relatively hardcore for a weekend, but I've lost interest in her as well. I think I'm more and more just holding on for the next patch and for The Burning Crusade. Hopefully its just a funk and I'll be back to really enjoying the game again soon.

The other alternative is finding another game to play and I haven't seen anything recently which has piqued my interest enough to even go look at the box let alone purchase.

Raid Data Exchange v6 (RDX6)

2006-08-18T10:27:00.000-04:00

I've been following a thread on the Elitist Jerks forums in reference to a user interface mod which is focused on making raiding easier, namely RDX6. The previous versions of this addon/mod had all been private for use by the creator's guild/raid, though the most recent (RDX5) got leaked and cracked. The leaked version eventually gained some sembelence of support from a couple LUA coders from Conquest on Kilrogg and this version (though stripped of boss mods) was released publicly.

In light of the leaked code Veni, the creator of RDX, has decided that rather than trying to continue securing the code and worry about it leaking that he will provide access to it via a members only site. Anyone may become a member of the site by paying a supposedly small fee, the exact amount of which has yet to be determined.

I've been using RDX5 intermittenly with CTRA for the last week and a half or so. In my opinion the ability to group members of the raid group any way I like is incredibly useful. My two biggest gripe formerly about the frames had been the complete lack of spacing between the health bars in the windows and the lacking ability to color the names of according to class color. The spacing is something that I'm becoming accustomed to as I continue to use the mod though the class colors still bothers me.

RDX6 looks to add some extremely powerful tools for raiders and raid leaders. I think the most notable tool is going to be Omniscience, which boasts the following.

Omniscience is a post-mortem remote combat log viewer, meaning that after the boss (or the raid group) dies, you as the raid leader can examine not only your own combat log, but the combat log of any character in the raid.

The ability to do this will be simply incredible and will in real time eliminate a lot of the guess work around the question 'what killed the tank?' The author has claimed RDX6 will revolutionize raiding interfaces and assuming the rather impressive list of intended features is pulled off I'm fairly inclined to agree.

Unfortunately I'm rather skeptical my raid will be adopting it due to the fee associated with membership even if the raid group discount is significant. Despite this I am planning on getting it once a 'live' version released, and am strongly considering getting the alpha membership as well. The RDX site being up I take to be a sign he's getting close to ready to allowing some to download it and quite frankly I'm pretty excited.

Edit: Because leek is a plant..

To PvP or Not To PvP?

2006-08-17T23:50:00.000-04:00

The more I hear about the changes being made to the PvP System in The Burning Crusade (TBC) the more I'm beginning to think this may be the way I want to go with my future in World of Warcraft. PvP is far more enjoyable to me than PvE for the most part. I think its really more about the frequency of the rush though.

What I mean by 'the frequency of the rush' is quite simply the rush I get from playing the game. It happens in PvE when the group I'm fighting along side and have my time invested in does something which is, to me at least, great. Every first kill is an AMAZINGLY powerful thing for me; which is to say its a huge rush. In PvP I've found this rush to happen more frequently. Each team we come up against gets my blood pumping. Sure its frustrating as hell to lose, especially when you know its a team you could have beaten; the rush from winning though, nothing compares.

Thus far I've been fortunate enough to be a part of the two most dominent Horde PvP teams which have existed on my server, the first time my participation was minor at best. I ranked up to Champion and then faded away as my guild at the time needed me and so I more or less dropped PvP to help them and get entrenched once again in the PvE raiding game. Eventually the majority of that group finished out their ranks and they largely quit (PvP or the game). Then along comes the second group, I happen to be friends with a good buddy of the guy going for rank and putting together the team this time. So we're introduced in a way and I continue running with them. This second PvP group was really the catalyst for my leaving my first raiding group, it gave me something to move on too so I didn't feel like I was simply ditching them though I was; the lieing to myself made it easier though.

With this second group (who's name I woulnd't repeat even if I weren't trying to keep this anonymous) I met some skilled players, made some friends, and was able to rank up to about mid-way through General before life and work caught up to me. They still have people ranking, and I still play with them when I'm able, but its not really the same. The awareness one gets PvPing all the time is retarded, and harshly, by a month of raiding it would seem.

The future of PvP in this game though looks to be quite promising indeed! With the upcoming changes in patch 1.12 (namely the cross-server battlegrounds) and the complete revamp in I really believe that gearing up and simply PvPing may become a viable way to spend my time. However, I will certainly be waiting until the expansion to move to it full time since the seasons and tournament like play is what makes this truly viable. Of course, this all assumes I can find a good team to do it with, most of the second group is finishing up their PvP grind now and I'm not sure how many more weeks they'll be running. Hopefully the cross-server battlegrounds in 1.12 will provide enough of a challenge to make it worth spending a lot of time doing it simply for the enjoyment of it. If the group stays together through 1.12 I imagine I'll truly be able to test myself and find out if I'm good enough to continue doing it in TBC. Here's hoping.

Derr... Where Do We Go George?

2006-08-17T18:49:00.000-04:00

I feel sick to my stomach, I'm grumpy and we're disorganized. I'm somewhat frustrated at raiding tonight and my PvP buddy is romping around killing people and taunting me about it.

We started like we were going to head back to kill the Emperors, we get everyone zoned in to Ahn'Qiraj and into Huhuran's room to start killing the trash again and then its decided we're going to head to Naxxramas to take out Anub'Rekhan and possibly Razuvious. Well now we're recovering from our third or fourth wipe, during which time we have not yet successfully started DPS on Anub... good times.

After five ugly as shit wipes we owned his ass with easy. It didn't cheer me much, but it was nice to see it go well. Lets see where we're headed next.

Onward we go in Naxxramas to take our try at Rasuvious apparently. I'm personally predicting a wipefest judging from us being not only short on healers, but having several undergeared healers as well. Should be fun!

Ooops down to twelve healers, and then there were 14 with two of them in blues... Oh fuck it.

On the bright side I did end up getting promoted amongst the guild ranks, I don't think it meant anything but it was a nice gesture. We now have two tanks who will be in 2/9 Dreadnaught, and we got our third Splinter of Atiesh (on one person), its no where near the 39 some other folks have but its still pretty cool.

Thoughts on Looting

2006-08-17T01:18:00.000-04:00

I've been with my raid for about two months now I believe, and I've certainly gotten my fair share of loot however its mostly a result of personal philosophy than anything else. I would rather see something being used than something being sharded, so if I know I can and will use something I put in for it. The thing I have a problem with is this... I'm actually hurting myself significantly by doing this as far as my raid's current loot system goes because all epics drops (except those from Molten Core) have the same epic cost.

As I said before, I recently picked up the Stormrage Bracers largely because they were my third piece. However, under the current loot system because Dreamwalker Bracers have the same value I would actually have been smarter to leave them go to another Druid and hope my points got high enough to grab the next tier instead.

I suppose ideas like the above are the reason the loot is ultimately decided by a 'council' of the officers, and I also believe I'm just sad because I realize how ridiculously long its going to be before I'll be even in the running for a Rejuvenating Gem or some other hotly contested item. I guess it doesn't bother me as much about the Blackwing Lair things, as they spent a lot of time in there learning the place before I even realized how much I enjoyed raiding, but a place like Naxx where we're really just starting and I'm going to spend as much time and gold learning the stuff as everyone else only to see someone who may or may not have been there as often as me in Naxx, but who has been around a long time pick up the fruits of the labor just bothers me.

I realize while writing this it sounds as though the primary reason I raid is loot, and quite simply its not true. I raid because I enjoy it, and I enjoy it because I feel I'm an asset. Even feeling like an asset I definately feel the strain of being undergeared compared to most of the other Druids save the newest ones. I want to be in a progression raid and I despise feeling as though my gear is part of the reason we aren't succeeding.

Temple of Ahn'Qiraj to Twin Emperors

2006-08-16T21:51:00.000-04:00

As I said before, I'd been elected as the new Druid guide. So I start off by asking if 'New Guy' (FNG) had ever done AQ20 because of the similarities between some of the trash pulls.. newp. I quickly went over the first couple pulls..

heal the tanks, the bird things hit like pansies but the Priests are mana draining
heal the tanks, the Anubisaths hit a little harder but whatever

Skeram.. follow your group heal the tank on the platform. This was about when I really started to realize how easy my job was for almost every fight. Anyway, we continue on and kill Huhuran and the non-set gloves I've been drooling over drop. I put in for them not really expecting to get them since I have decent gloves and the other Druid eligible for loot (not FNG) doesn't really, plus I picked up Malfurion's Blessed Bulwark and Stormrage Bracers yesterday in Blackwing Lair. Needless to say I'm relatively surprised when I am awarded them.

Hooray for loot council I suppose, not to say I'm not grateful but if I were the other Druid I would not be pleased.. at all. Judging from the way things have gone in the past, I fully expect Stormrage Handguards to drop withing 2 weeks and have me be the only Druid which needs them. Now that I have my 3 piece bonus available (even though they're the same slots as my other two highest +healing pieces) I certainly won't be taking it over someone else.

So we start clearing trash to the Emperors, pull the first one.. Plague and Shadow Storm with the spinning dervishes of doom.. we wipe because everyone was waiting to see what the second thing was after Shadow Storm and no one moved.. oops. We get ressed up and pull again, the next three go pretty smoothly. On the fourth pull we get two.. oops. Needless to say we wipe quickly with really no hope for survival. We get ressed up again and finish off the trash. FNG is doing alright, but is really poorly geared for being where we are. Fortunately he's the only new person really (but certainly not the only undergeared one) and so its not too big a deal.

We get to the Twins and suddenly the server goes to shit. Not so much that I'm crying about it, but I basically chain cast heals and cancel as needed. I'm cancelling a couple fewer than normal due to lag, but hey why else carry the potions. However its killing other folks, I've got to assume the lag is hitting them worse because I can't think of any reason with the lag where it is for me; Its annoying but possible to adjust. Short story short we wipe a couple of times due to the heals not landing in time on the other side. Eventually the raid leader calls it rather than throwing outselves at them (and burning two more Flask of the Titans in the process).

Hopefully tomorrow we head back clear the Emperors and take a couple stabs at C'Thun, time will tell.

Out of Work on Time!

2006-08-16T18:16:00.000-04:00

I managed to get out of work at a normal time today (despite being about 25 minutes later than I wanted to be) which means I made raid invites on time, which was nice. However, the real news was I was talking to the President of my company on the way out (its a small company) of the office and into the subway and he says to me..

We may offer you some sort of compensation to stick around for another month.

See, currently I'm planning to move up to New York to live with my brother starting in September, but my current lease runs to October. If they are offering enough to cover the extra month of rent I think its pretty worth it.

On to the raid... I've apparently been elected as new Druid guide for the night, I think mostly because no one else wanted to do it.. so we'll see how that goes.

Temple of Ahn'Qiraj Tonight

2006-08-16T12:57:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting at work, trying to get an Atom feed working for a government site using a package called Rome all the while thinking how much I'd rather be doing something else. Eventually my mind wanders to where we're bound tonight and I realize I'm really looking forward to it. If all goes well we'll clear up through at least the Twin Emporors tonight and maybe get some of the trash leading up to C'Thun out of the way as well.

Since we're currently working on beating the snot out of the old god this would be a huge plus. The less garbage we have to clear tomorrow (or Sunday) in order to commence the wipefest that is C'Thun learning. I'm just curious which sucker it will be to jump the gun a bit and get us all fried this week! There is a reason I hide around the corner until the first one in starts the countdown, and its not just because I like the way the Gnome back there looks.

Blackwing Lair Jump Start

2006-08-15T23:51:00.000-04:00

Maintenance Day.. Everyone's favorite.

I'm at work ready to leave at 5:15 which generally puts me home just in time to get my already parked Druid signed on and invited in time to get full attendence. So yeah, ready to leave and the guy I'm directly doing work for (who is currently offsite) shows up.. GG 30 minute impromptu meeting. However, Blizzard to the rescue; due to maintenance I'm actually home in time to sit and wait an hour for Earthen Ring to come back up.

So ER comes up and in I go, parked at the Blackwing Lair orb and everything. We get going right around 8:30 and I'm thinking, "No way do we finish this clear in time." Color me surprised when 3 hours and 15 minutes later we're handing out Nefarian lewts.

Awesome job tonight in my opinion.

Edit: Lair not Layer...