It started out going to work, but I got to pull into the loading dock which appeared as a garage rather than the parking lot. It was Thanksgiving and I was offered three platters of goodies to take home.
I was also asked to watch a coworker's mice for a day sometime in the future. This surprised me even in the dream, but I still agreed.
When I go to leave I open the garage door to find that just outside there is a lot of junk piled up, old bicycles and stuff. It had obviously been there for a while and somehow I had gotten into the garage anyway.
It didn't seem to matter because I got out again in whatever mysterious way I got in and found myself next in my parent's back yard in a red canoe with my mother and grandfather after I had unloaded my goodies.
I took out a small packet of tiny Oreos (like quarter inch diameter tiny) and opened them. They were vanilla on one side and chocolate on the other with white frosting in between. I offered then to my mom then had some myself.
Looking around I notice the terrain is quite different from reality and about half the backyard is flooded. The water was perfectly calm where we were which would usually be a hill.
It was probably no coincidence that things started to move soon after I noticed that. From the treeline on the back edge of the yard a tall grey dead tree floated upright towards us narrowly missing the boat. The tree was missing all but the very stubs of its branches.
A second dead tree floated out and that one bumps the end of the canoe sending us speeding down the hill where we stop in calm water again at the bottom.
At this point I am made aware that we are trying not to get wet for some reason and the canoe, now made of raw rough wood, has a hole in it. My mother and I climb out to shore without getting wet to try to find something to patch the hole inside.
After getting back up the hill we turn around to find my grandfather sitting on the patio at the bottom of the hill in front of a slider door out from the basement, he was all wet and told us he was going to sit there to dry out.
Next we go through the house and down to the basement to go out to the patio. A pterodactyl swoops down and grabs something off the patio and flys off. I then notice a pair of babies which are covered in bright red fluffy down with white spots. We go out to bring my grandfather inside and they come at us nipping and pushing. They seem rather strong for their size. The dog get out in the process and goes after one. I get the dog back in and go back out to help trying to keep one that followed me from getting in.
Then I wake up to my alarm clock.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Something to Remember Me By
PVP is all about the dying and everyone and anyone will die at some point. In an ideal PVP world all things being equal everyone would lose half the time and win the other half.
Once you come to terms with your own fleeting mortality you can come to appreciate sharing a little something with whomever got that killing blow.
For starters I like to share a faerie fire with rogues and other druids. Rogues have to burn a cooldown if they want to stealth, but druids are out of luck until it wears off. Nothing annoys a stealthy player more than not being able too.
The next step up, once you have the resilience to survive long enough to pull it off, is to leave your enemy with a 5 combo point rip. Which brings me to a story about why druids and paladins should avoid each other in 1 on 1 combat.
I was nearing the end of an Arathi Basin and things were not looking good. I stealthed up to the lumber mill and found a single paladin guarding the flag, but standing just inside the building pacing and jumping.
I still needed to assault a flag with my orphan so I took a chance hoping they would not attack and would of been more than happy to retake the flag right after I was done. They attacked instead.
It was quite the fight, each of us burning pretty much every cooldown we had over the course of the fight, some of them more than once if they had cooldowns under 3 minutes. Each of us had killed each other three times over when we both ran out of tricks.
I went down in a last stitch effort to heal myself before getting a hammer of wrath to the head (which was followed by one of those nasty instant exorcisms), but I still still had a full power rip ticking away which took that paladin out seconds later while spamming flash of light. It was a laugh out loud moment.
Alliance lost that battleground before I even got the chance to rez and I requeued for another random battleground and got Isle of Conquest. Usually I run up and fight at the workshop then fall back and defend the keep, but this time I listened to some yahoo that told a couple groups to take the hangar. It sounded like a nice change of pace so I went with it.
I met that same paladin up at the top as they ran in to attack, I pounced on them like white on rice and they just bubbled and jumped off the edge. :(
Once you come to terms with your own fleeting mortality you can come to appreciate sharing a little something with whomever got that killing blow.
For starters I like to share a faerie fire with rogues and other druids. Rogues have to burn a cooldown if they want to stealth, but druids are out of luck until it wears off. Nothing annoys a stealthy player more than not being able too.
The next step up, once you have the resilience to survive long enough to pull it off, is to leave your enemy with a 5 combo point rip. Which brings me to a story about why druids and paladins should avoid each other in 1 on 1 combat.
I was nearing the end of an Arathi Basin and things were not looking good. I stealthed up to the lumber mill and found a single paladin guarding the flag, but standing just inside the building pacing and jumping.
I still needed to assault a flag with my orphan so I took a chance hoping they would not attack and would of been more than happy to retake the flag right after I was done. They attacked instead.
It was quite the fight, each of us burning pretty much every cooldown we had over the course of the fight, some of them more than once if they had cooldowns under 3 minutes. Each of us had killed each other three times over when we both ran out of tricks.
I went down in a last stitch effort to heal myself before getting a hammer of wrath to the head (which was followed by one of those nasty instant exorcisms), but I still still had a full power rip ticking away which took that paladin out seconds later while spamming flash of light. It was a laugh out loud moment.
Alliance lost that battleground before I even got the chance to rez and I requeued for another random battleground and got Isle of Conquest. Usually I run up and fight at the workshop then fall back and defend the keep, but this time I listened to some yahoo that told a couple groups to take the hangar. It sounded like a nice change of pace so I went with it.
I met that same paladin up at the top as they ran in to attack, I pounced on them like white on rice and they just bubbled and jumped off the edge. :(
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
School of Hard Knocks
I thought this achievement would be much worse than it was, but it turns out horde hate it just as much as the alliance and vice versa. What this means is that it is more than likely that some sort of mutually beneficial if only temporary truce will be present at the start of 3 of the 4 battlegrounds.
Eye of the Storm is a free for all against not only the opposing faction, but your own as well so everyone is on their own there if they didn't bring their own help.
So in the spirit of cooperation here are the rules of engagement I discovered doing this achievement yesterday evening. First for returning a flag in Warsong Gulch, let the opposing team take your flag unopposed as they may be trying to help and drop it right away, if they leave the room with the flag (or try) then they should be eliminated. Also if the opposing faction comes in too great of numbers all bets are off and assume the worst. Once the flag is dropped everyone should be nice about taking turns returning it and if you have already done it run over to the other side and extend the same courtesy to the other side. Keep in mind that not everyone knows to right click the flag buff to drop it and some players will be using an ability such as stealth or feign death to drop a flag, so don't beat on them if they don't drop it immediately.
Once everyone has returned a flag that needed to, or enough people get restless the truce ends and the battleground proceeds "normally". I noticed even though we were still competing for a win that there was still a cease fire when players weren't fighting over a flag. You could still walk around freely in the opposing faction base without being attacked so long as you minded your manners.
Next up is capping a tower in Alterac Valley. There is going to be a race among your own faction to run to a tower and cap it before everyone else. This is a little annoying as it is very easy to fall off a spiral staircase when you are in a hurry. No worries here though, the opposing faction will likely come and help you out. Like Warsong Gulch allow the opposing faction to retake the tower freely so long as your faction overwhelms the horde force so that if a fight did break out you would surely win (even those with good intentions can change their mind when odds are in their favor). Once the flag reappears again everyone takes turns capping it until everyone is done. This is going to happen at towers closer to the middle and those who have already done it or aren't interested will head to the ends to down the bosses. Once you are finished it would be nice to head back to your own towers and help the opposing faction in the same way.
This truce really only applies to the central towers and also somewhat to the roads (again in the central portion of the map) as single runners could be going to help. The far south and north are business as usual and by usual I mean a partial turtle as both sides should probably have a few defending their bosses to make sure they don't lose while all this good will is taking place in the middle of the map.
The last "easy" one is assaulting a flag in Arathi Basin. The battle starts off with your own faction racing to assault the flags first, then for a time the battle is the same as any other Arathi Basin until the flags are captured. At this point the truce begins, allow the opposing faction to approach and assault your flag so long as they do not come in a large number to overwhelm the group you are guarding the flag with. The opposing faction gets credit for assaulting your flag and it is immediately defended by someone clicking on it again. At the same time if you need to assault a flag you walk up to an enemy controlled flag and assault it without attacking anyone. If you are attacked then try another flag. There will be some players that will just try to be mean, but it's really no skin off their nose since the flag is only lost for a second or two and hardly effects the outcome of the battleground.
This truce will likely last the entire duration of the battleground, so long as you walk up to an enemy flag in a non-threatening manner you probably won't be attacked.
The last one is capturing a flag in Eye of the Storm and this is totally going to be a grind. Both your faction and the opposing faction, 30 players in all likely want to grab that flag and return it to their base. The center of the map around the flag spawn is going to be brutal and maybe half a dozen people will actually get to do it any given battleground if they are lucky. It is possible that a battleground could end without anyone capturing a flag.
In this case I left it up to Karma, I tried my best to grab the flag and when the opposing faction was trying to grab the flag I fought them off rather than try to grab the flag myself. I got lucky and the third flag spawn in my second Eye of the Storm I got it and capped it.
My next step would of been to recruit some help to fend off the opposing faction (and possibly my own in the form of a pally bubble canceling the flag pick-up cast).
Good luck out there! When it feels hopeless keep in mind that the other side is just as frustrated and possibly annoyed as you are and will probably try and help you out for a favor in return if given the chance.
Eye of the Storm is a free for all against not only the opposing faction, but your own as well so everyone is on their own there if they didn't bring their own help.
So in the spirit of cooperation here are the rules of engagement I discovered doing this achievement yesterday evening. First for returning a flag in Warsong Gulch, let the opposing team take your flag unopposed as they may be trying to help and drop it right away, if they leave the room with the flag (or try) then they should be eliminated. Also if the opposing faction comes in too great of numbers all bets are off and assume the worst. Once the flag is dropped everyone should be nice about taking turns returning it and if you have already done it run over to the other side and extend the same courtesy to the other side. Keep in mind that not everyone knows to right click the flag buff to drop it and some players will be using an ability such as stealth or feign death to drop a flag, so don't beat on them if they don't drop it immediately.
Once everyone has returned a flag that needed to, or enough people get restless the truce ends and the battleground proceeds "normally". I noticed even though we were still competing for a win that there was still a cease fire when players weren't fighting over a flag. You could still walk around freely in the opposing faction base without being attacked so long as you minded your manners.
Next up is capping a tower in Alterac Valley. There is going to be a race among your own faction to run to a tower and cap it before everyone else. This is a little annoying as it is very easy to fall off a spiral staircase when you are in a hurry. No worries here though, the opposing faction will likely come and help you out. Like Warsong Gulch allow the opposing faction to retake the tower freely so long as your faction overwhelms the horde force so that if a fight did break out you would surely win (even those with good intentions can change their mind when odds are in their favor). Once the flag reappears again everyone takes turns capping it until everyone is done. This is going to happen at towers closer to the middle and those who have already done it or aren't interested will head to the ends to down the bosses. Once you are finished it would be nice to head back to your own towers and help the opposing faction in the same way.
This truce really only applies to the central towers and also somewhat to the roads (again in the central portion of the map) as single runners could be going to help. The far south and north are business as usual and by usual I mean a partial turtle as both sides should probably have a few defending their bosses to make sure they don't lose while all this good will is taking place in the middle of the map.
The last "easy" one is assaulting a flag in Arathi Basin. The battle starts off with your own faction racing to assault the flags first, then for a time the battle is the same as any other Arathi Basin until the flags are captured. At this point the truce begins, allow the opposing faction to approach and assault your flag so long as they do not come in a large number to overwhelm the group you are guarding the flag with. The opposing faction gets credit for assaulting your flag and it is immediately defended by someone clicking on it again. At the same time if you need to assault a flag you walk up to an enemy controlled flag and assault it without attacking anyone. If you are attacked then try another flag. There will be some players that will just try to be mean, but it's really no skin off their nose since the flag is only lost for a second or two and hardly effects the outcome of the battleground.
This truce will likely last the entire duration of the battleground, so long as you walk up to an enemy flag in a non-threatening manner you probably won't be attacked.
The last one is capturing a flag in Eye of the Storm and this is totally going to be a grind. Both your faction and the opposing faction, 30 players in all likely want to grab that flag and return it to their base. The center of the map around the flag spawn is going to be brutal and maybe half a dozen people will actually get to do it any given battleground if they are lucky. It is possible that a battleground could end without anyone capturing a flag.
In this case I left it up to Karma, I tried my best to grab the flag and when the opposing faction was trying to grab the flag I fought them off rather than try to grab the flag myself. I got lucky and the third flag spawn in my second Eye of the Storm I got it and capped it.
My next step would of been to recruit some help to fend off the opposing faction (and possibly my own in the form of a pally bubble canceling the flag pick-up cast).
Good luck out there! When it feels hopeless keep in mind that the other side is just as frustrated and possibly annoyed as you are and will probably try and help you out for a favor in return if given the chance.
Friday, April 30, 2010
1 in 33333 Raid!
Last night in ICC10 not one, not two, but three iLevel 264 BOE epics dropped...
Ring of Rotting Sinew from a Deathspeaker High Priest, 2% chance.
Leggings of Dubious Charms from a Val'kyr Herald, 3% chance.
Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets from Stinky, 5% chance.
For a combined chance of .00003% or 1 in 33333 according to wowhead's drop rates. Should be pretty accurate given the few thousand data points for each mob/item.
33333 raids is 641 years of weekly raids!
Considering we run three and a half hours a week that would be over 13 years of solid raiding if it were possible to repeat the instance back to back.
And after all that can you believe that the shirt from Precious didn't drop once yet with a 30% drop rate? Come on. :)
Not likely to see that happen again in any case.
Ring of Rotting Sinew from a Deathspeaker High Priest, 2% chance.
Leggings of Dubious Charms from a Val'kyr Herald, 3% chance.
Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets from Stinky, 5% chance.
For a combined chance of .00003% or 1 in 33333 according to wowhead's drop rates. Should be pretty accurate given the few thousand data points for each mob/item.
33333 raids is 641 years of weekly raids!
Considering we run three and a half hours a week that would be over 13 years of solid raiding if it were possible to repeat the instance back to back.
And after all that can you believe that the shirt from Precious didn't drop once yet with a 30% drop rate? Come on. :)
Not likely to see that happen again in any case.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
I recently updated a couple old posts:
Whats in a Name? describes how I came up with my character names and
Add-Ons I Use lists all the add-ons I currently use.
Whats in a Name? describes how I came up with my character names and
Add-Ons I Use lists all the add-ons I currently use.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Raiding Pro Choice
Wrath made 10 mans an option where as before there was really only one or two raids and they didn't have the same sense of progression that the 25 man content had. Still popular opinion places 25-man content higher in the pecking order and those who choose 10 man content over 25 man content are not taken as seriously and probably openly mocked in a PUG environment.
The idea of 25 man content providing better rewards never really made sense to me. For the most part 25 man content is as easy if not easier than 10 man content. I attribute that mainly to the diminished effects of a single raiders performance effecting the outcome compared to a ten man where people are not only more responsible for their chosen role, but may also be asked to fill a second role at times often on the fly.
The main argument of why 25 mans should provide better rewards is one of logistics, it is harder to get 25 people together. That added investment of time and effort is only made by a few people out of the 25 involved though, most players in a 25 man have less responsibility that they would of had in a 10 man. So if it were feasible it should be the organizers of the raid getting the extra rewards, not everyone.
So the recently announced changes for Cataclysm are much closer to how I think things should be, but if it were me I would provide proportional rewards in 25 man, but not any more per person than 10-man content. So more item and more gold, but not more badges since they are given to everyone and don't get shared.
If 25 mans become less popular as a result that only means that people were running for the rewards and not because they preferred them over 10 mans. Most of them weren't the ones actually organizing the runs anyway and I bet that those who organized runs in the past will continue to do so whether it be a 10 man or a 25 man run.
I think the next step for Blizzard will be to further equalize the two and perhaps scale content to a variable number of players even if it is only done for each 5 players. Having the ability to run with 10, 15, 20 or 25 for the same amount of reward per person would further emphasize the bring the player idea by allowing people to bring everyone they wanted without having to bench someone or search for fill-ins. That is two more levels of content to balance around, but it would be just an interpolation of the 10 and 25 man versions.
I'm pretty sure I will be running 10 mans pretty much exclusively in the next expansion and only run 25 man content for things like raid quests (assuming they continue them) where there are a lot of people interested in one boss/raid that wouldn't normally be. The best part of that being that I can play with the small group I prefer and not feel held back in the sense that I can't get the better rewards.
The idea of 25 man content providing better rewards never really made sense to me. For the most part 25 man content is as easy if not easier than 10 man content. I attribute that mainly to the diminished effects of a single raiders performance effecting the outcome compared to a ten man where people are not only more responsible for their chosen role, but may also be asked to fill a second role at times often on the fly.
The main argument of why 25 mans should provide better rewards is one of logistics, it is harder to get 25 people together. That added investment of time and effort is only made by a few people out of the 25 involved though, most players in a 25 man have less responsibility that they would of had in a 10 man. So if it were feasible it should be the organizers of the raid getting the extra rewards, not everyone.
So the recently announced changes for Cataclysm are much closer to how I think things should be, but if it were me I would provide proportional rewards in 25 man, but not any more per person than 10-man content. So more item and more gold, but not more badges since they are given to everyone and don't get shared.
If 25 mans become less popular as a result that only means that people were running for the rewards and not because they preferred them over 10 mans. Most of them weren't the ones actually organizing the runs anyway and I bet that those who organized runs in the past will continue to do so whether it be a 10 man or a 25 man run.
I think the next step for Blizzard will be to further equalize the two and perhaps scale content to a variable number of players even if it is only done for each 5 players. Having the ability to run with 10, 15, 20 or 25 for the same amount of reward per person would further emphasize the bring the player idea by allowing people to bring everyone they wanted without having to bench someone or search for fill-ins. That is two more levels of content to balance around, but it would be just an interpolation of the 10 and 25 man versions.
I'm pretty sure I will be running 10 mans pretty much exclusively in the next expansion and only run 25 man content for things like raid quests (assuming they continue them) where there are a lot of people interested in one boss/raid that wouldn't normally be. The best part of that being that I can play with the small group I prefer and not feel held back in the sense that I can't get the better rewards.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
I'm Obviously an Egg Ninja
I did all the Noblegarden achievements yesterday since my new thing is to get the long strange trip meta for the 310% flying speed in flight form. That meant a lot of egg gathering which in turn meant lots of competition for a limited resource. Luckily for me few can compete with a feral druid when it comes to hunting, no matter what the quarry. We are fast, we are sneaky and we have a 30 yard range omnidirectional instant to tag stuff.
I chose the night elf starting area since I figured it would be less popular than most any I like the scenery there. Pop on the Buffy musical soundtrack (hadn't heard it in forever) and it is go time.
First I flipped to my PVP gear for the 4 piece 15% outdoor speed boost which when combined with travel form puts me at 61% faster than everyone else without any speed enhancement. When anyone uses their 60% speed boosting egg basket I am still just a little faster. Next, as if that weren't advantage enough, I enabled auto loot for one click egg grabbing.
Only cat dash and rogue sprint were faster and are on such long cooldowns that it wasn't a concern. Mounting also provides a speed advantage but with the frequent stops remounting becomes more of a burden than the benefit of additional speed (you may beat me to one egg, but I will get the next two).
So after a few laps I am getting really good at it as I learn all the spawn locations. I'm raking in eggs faster than I can loot the chocolate out of them. Around this time I get a whisper, "u ass". Certainly not a very nice greeting so I replied, "If you move faster, you'd see less of it." Then they responded something along the lines of, "whatever you rude something or other".
Sure I beat them to an egg, sure they clicked on the same one I did and sure I clicked on the second one there before they did as well, but is that wrong? I certainly didn't insult anyone when they beat me to an egg, I just moved on, after all I can't be everywhere at once and neither can anyone else.
By far my favorite eggs to grab were from pseudo AFK players camping one spawn and obviously doing something else to keep them occupied. Usually I avoid an egg with someone next to it, but after a few rotations it was easy to pick out the folks that were just sitting there and there was much less competition for those eggs as most would assume those eggs would be gone by the time they got to them.
Usually even I would consider it in bad form to grab something that someone is obviously waiting for, but in this case there are two groups of people: those that are content to watch a single spawn or small cluster and watch a movie and those that put all their attention toward egg gathering and just want to get it over with. I fall into the latter category obviously. If you don't want to put in the effort to notice you have an egg in front of you before I run over and grab it then I have no sympathy.
I feel a little bad for the folks that are trying and just don't have the speed and/or reflexes of a hasted melee veteran (caster types don't usually have that skill set as developed), but there are plenty of eggs in the sea; go the other direction, don't pick on me for using every advantage I have available to me. My absolute favorite egg snatch was a cat charge through the air onto a rabbit critter right next to an egg.
Still I got pretty bored of egg gathering by the end and am happy that I will not have to do it again (queuing for a random in the middle was a nice diversion). I'm sure many others are happy I won't be snatching eggs out from under them as well, but there are other druids out there and druids are a pretty savvy bunch when it comes to making the best use of their class. I can say one thing though, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Turkinator.
I chose the night elf starting area since I figured it would be less popular than most any I like the scenery there. Pop on the Buffy musical soundtrack (hadn't heard it in forever) and it is go time.
First I flipped to my PVP gear for the 4 piece 15% outdoor speed boost which when combined with travel form puts me at 61% faster than everyone else without any speed enhancement. When anyone uses their 60% speed boosting egg basket I am still just a little faster. Next, as if that weren't advantage enough, I enabled auto loot for one click egg grabbing.
Only cat dash and rogue sprint were faster and are on such long cooldowns that it wasn't a concern. Mounting also provides a speed advantage but with the frequent stops remounting becomes more of a burden than the benefit of additional speed (you may beat me to one egg, but I will get the next two).
So after a few laps I am getting really good at it as I learn all the spawn locations. I'm raking in eggs faster than I can loot the chocolate out of them. Around this time I get a whisper, "u ass". Certainly not a very nice greeting so I replied, "If you move faster, you'd see less of it." Then they responded something along the lines of, "whatever you rude something or other".
Sure I beat them to an egg, sure they clicked on the same one I did and sure I clicked on the second one there before they did as well, but is that wrong? I certainly didn't insult anyone when they beat me to an egg, I just moved on, after all I can't be everywhere at once and neither can anyone else.
By far my favorite eggs to grab were from pseudo AFK players camping one spawn and obviously doing something else to keep them occupied. Usually I avoid an egg with someone next to it, but after a few rotations it was easy to pick out the folks that were just sitting there and there was much less competition for those eggs as most would assume those eggs would be gone by the time they got to them.
Usually even I would consider it in bad form to grab something that someone is obviously waiting for, but in this case there are two groups of people: those that are content to watch a single spawn or small cluster and watch a movie and those that put all their attention toward egg gathering and just want to get it over with. I fall into the latter category obviously. If you don't want to put in the effort to notice you have an egg in front of you before I run over and grab it then I have no sympathy.
I feel a little bad for the folks that are trying and just don't have the speed and/or reflexes of a hasted melee veteran (caster types don't usually have that skill set as developed), but there are plenty of eggs in the sea; go the other direction, don't pick on me for using every advantage I have available to me. My absolute favorite egg snatch was a cat charge through the air onto a rabbit critter right next to an egg.
Still I got pretty bored of egg gathering by the end and am happy that I will not have to do it again (queuing for a random in the middle was a nice diversion). I'm sure many others are happy I won't be snatching eggs out from under them as well, but there are other druids out there and druids are a pretty savvy bunch when it comes to making the best use of their class. I can say one thing though, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Turkinator.
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