Once in a while, I find myself in the uncanny situation of being just ahead of the curve on some type of breaking news or situation. The moment something happens, I’ll be right there, in the thick of it – “on the ground”, so to speak. Last week was just such a time.

Other times… well, other times, I find myself wondering how the hell I managed to go this long without seeing this movie/playing this game/eating a scorpion. Hell, sometimes it’s even stuff that I should have instinctively known about, like this game that has a gun that shoots sharks instead of bullets.

Hold on, hold on, I can explain. With Midnight Run, well, y’know, I just never got around to it. I mean, it’s in my netflix queue, that counts for something, right? Right? Please, stop hitting me. Ow, ow! And the scorpion, well he was in my tequila last night. Was I supposed to just let him get away with that? Hell no! I did what any badass would do – I ate the fucker. I have no excuse for not knowing about the Land Shark Gun game; I totally dropped the ball on that one. Dragon Age: Origins, on the other hand… well I blame that one on Microsoft. That’s right, I call foul on the achievement system.

Don’t get me wrong – I love achievements. I mean, I don’t live and die for them, but if I can do something that’ll only take me an extra hour or eight and it’ll net me another hundred or so on my gamerscore, am I gonna go for it? More than likely. It is for this reason and this reason alone I have several games that are better played on PC for the Xbox 360 (I’m looking at you, anything-FPS!). How could I resist buying Borderlands on the 360, when so many of my friends already had it, and playing it there would rack up my achievements on xbox live? I’m not some robot programmed to not care about friendly obsessive competition, you know.

So Dragon Age: Origins comes out and I’m totally going to buy it. But then I have many friends tell me “hey, it’s so much better on PC”. Freeze. I do some research, and the word sounds the same all around. That’s not to say that the 360 version isn’t good, just that it’s not really, well, the same game (controls, graphic limitations, etc. can really change a game experience). So I’m immediately torn. Obviously, I want to buy the game on the 360, rack up my gamerscore, and show off all my points to my friends. On the other hand, I really want to experience what is considered by many to be the “real” experience of the game (sprawling real-time tactical RPG on a controller doesn’t sound so awesome to me). So I stall, and stall, and stall. Days turn into weeks; weeks into months. Eventually, I just sort of write it off as one of those limbo games that I’m never going to buy (NOTE: do not confuse this with the game Limbo, which I plan to purchase the very MOMENT it is available – seriously, I demoed this game at PAX East and it was un-freakin-believable).

Then Steam (oh, Steam, how far you’ve come) goes and unleashes their “OMG THE OUTSIDE WORLD IS PLOTTING TO KILL YOU; HERE ARE ALL THE GAMES YOU EVER WANTED, ALL ON SALE; BUY THEM AND STAY INDOORS AND SAFE!” summer sale (definitely one of the best promotions I’ve seen in ages), and I pick up a boatload of new titles for rock bottom prices, Dragon Age: Origins included. Hooked immediately.

I’m maybe 30 hours in or so and I love it so far. I had intended on just playing it all last week until I beat it (stay-cation, remember), but then that whole “omg the Blizzard sky is falling” thing happened (remember that? those silly kids), so I got a little sidetracked. Even still, I’m loving every moment of it so far, and I can already foresee myself starting over once I’m done just to try it another way. Although, I suppose it would be good of me to finish the games I’ve started already before I got sidetracked (*cough*FFXIII*cough*Alan Wake*cough*), and then there’s that whole “guild” thing I run (not to mention, y’know, work), but hey – what’s a gamer to do? I’d rather have too many great games to play than too few.

Did you take advantage of the Steam Summer Sale? What games are you playing catch-up with at the moment? Most importantly, what do you think are some of the most underrated/unknown awesome games out there?

Originally Posted by Nethaera (Source)
Hello everyone,

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

*blink, blink*

Wow. I, for one, am impressed, awed, and proud.

Proud of the work the community did in getting their feelings regarding this change across, proud that so many put their money where their mouths were and canceled as a statement, proud that so many linked and forwarded my story and those of others (thanks for the publicity, too!), but not just that.

I’m also proud that Blizzard has, in this move, underlined and reinforced the support I’ve given them for the past decade of my life in the continued enjoyment and reverence of their games. Thank you for demonstrating that I was right to have believed in you, and thank you for truly doing what you can to support the safety and security of your userbase. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So first and foremost, a list of a few RealID-related updates:

I’m sure you’re all familiar with John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. If not, it is as follows:

Now I’m sure a lot of you have noticed that many of the supporters of the RealID system (so far every one that I’ve found is white and male, but that could just be coincidence) have been referencing the above Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory as proof/reason for their support. “Remove the anonymity, and the troll will go away!” they say. Now, Tim Buckley over at Ctrl+Alt+Del is of the mind that if you take away the anonymity, not a goddamned thing changes, and I agree. People who are gonna troll are gonna troll no matter what.

More to my amusement, however, Tycho posts his take on the RealID/Real Names issue:

So please – stop posting the Fuckwad Theory as your basis. Accountability is important, yes, but a single username for a RealID would accomplish the same thing.

SpiderFarmer makes one of many fantastic posts from a female gamer’s standpoint, and I commend her for her post. Also deserving of praise for the same topic are all the folks over in the WoW Ladies community who decided to step up and speak their minds – not to mention this incredible master list of information and links. Well done!

A great many popular gaming bloggers continue to leave the game in protest (or at least cancel their subscriptions for the time being), while many helpful forum posters state they will cease to post altogether outside of their blogs. Keeva at Tree Bark Jacket suggests allowing a wow.com-esque self-regulation downranking system, and I gotta say that’d be pretty awesome. The sad thing is, the more and more I read about this, the more I’m convinced that it has nothing at all to do with forum behavior or trolls, as the initial post said, but instead has to do with the aforementioned facebook integration, a desire to secure ActiBlizzard’s Asian market by complying with Korean and Chinese laws, and/or the eventual implementation of targeted advertising in game. That is not a road upon which I’d like to travel, sad to say.

Anyone have any suggestions of upcoming MMOs that look promising? Champions? Warhammer? FFXIV? That Torchlight MMO? Ascended is open to suggestions, should this change go live. I know many will still play (and I support their decision to do so – I just want them to be happy), but a large amount of my guild has already canceled their subscriptions, and one of the most important things for us all, in the end, is that we play together. We still have members on our forums that quit playing years ago, and I have no intention nor desire to see the community of my guild collapse because of RealID. Any and all suggestions, however, are most appreciated. We just want to kill internet dragons.

Finally, I’d also like to add that I am extremely excited about this possibly becoming the new Hitler Downfall meme:

Video editors – FALL IN AND ROLL OUT!

So the real question now is, of course – how the hell do I follow that up? I’m not going to lie – I definitely wanted some publicity for what I did (who wouldn’t?), but I didn’t expect anything like this. A few hundred readers made me happy. Now that you guys are in the tens of thousands (and still climbing!), I feel like I better have a good follow-up trick, eh? Well, let’s see what I have up my sleeve.

Let me preface this by saying that I love this game. In fact, I loved every Blizzard game I ever played. Before WoW, I played Diablo II for four years, and loved every second of it. Some of my favorite people that I know today I met on the diabloii forums, debating the most efficient leveling/gearing path for hammerdins (gogo Enigma runeword!). Several of them are actually the people who convinced me to pick up WoW.

At the time, I was opposed to pay-to-play games. “I already bought the game once,” I’d argue, “why would I keep paying for it?” Obviously, at that time I had no real understanding of the cost nor scope involved in the running or maintenance of an MMO. A few of those friends offered to give me prepaid WoW cards, just to see if I’d like it. Their reasoning was that I had just purchased Half-Life 2, beaten it in a week, and felt entirely justified in my $60 purchase. With the same cost to me, I could have several months of play time and see how I like it. I agreed and bought the game the day it came out. I was hooked immediately.

Over the years, I’ve been in a few guilds, led two of them, and have been fortunate enough to have spent the last four years or so with the same amazing group of people. I’ve gone from a member, to a class leader, to the guild leader, and I consider them an extension of my family. Some members I’ve never met in real life, but would be at my wedding were I to get married. Some members are now some of my best friends irl, and I met them because they applied to my guild and happened to live in the next town over. Over the years I’ve met a large amount of them in real life and regularly talk with most of them on the phone (even the ones who don’t play anymore). There have been times when I’ve pushed through brutal burnout just for them; times when I was so tired of the game, but I logged in to continue making the game fun, safe and enjoyable for them.

Our charter is simple, yet powerful. Our goal is to have fun in a safe, comfortable environment. We raid casually, but not poorly. We raid twice a week, which means that when we have a bad night, it’s not a night – it’s a week. We have to push that much harder. Still, at the end, we’re friends playing a game together, and as such we strongly enforce a simple rule – respect each other, always. There is no excessive cursing, harassing, or griefing; we’re all in this together. Sure, it’s a game, but I take my role in it seriously, and the GM’s job is to make sure the game is fun, enjoyable, and safe for everyone else.

Now back to RealID.

I’ve always been a strong proponent of voting with your dollar. Financially supporting a company is not only a means of acquiring goods and services, but also of showing support for the products and behaviors of said company. I believe in the market, and just as firmly believe that consumers should use their money to demonstrate what companies and products they support (when possible).

I’ve spent the last two days glued to my computer, reading post after post, pingback after pingback. I’ve read the first several hundred pages of the initial forum thread, I’ve read fantastic posts (some good ones here, here, and a great list here) and some good debates, but in the end, it comes down to one thing – complacency and support.

If this change goes live and I am a paying customer when it does, I am implicitly supporting the entire system. That means I am implicitly supporting a system that I 100% believe will (not could, we know that already – will) cause harm to someone. My post yesterday proved the ease of it. Yes, if you want to find someone, you probably can and will, but having a company decide to be the ones to display names in a competitive environment crosses the line. This change is ill-conceived, poorly thought out, and as far as I’m concerned, unethical and immoral. This change will push the moderation responsibility outside of the game world/forums and into the real world. I cannot think of a more irresponsible course of action for a company to take with the safety and privacy of their client base.

Some have said I’m all talk (a funny statement from people who’ve only known of my existence for less than 24 hours, but ok), so here’s some action.

It is with heavy heart that I have canceled my World of Warcraft subscriptions. They will run their course into the end of the month, at which point one of two things will happen.

• 1.) Blizzard will have by then changed their planned implementation of real names on the forums due to overwhelmingly negative response. As a result, I will reactivate my subscription and all will be well in the world.
• 2.) Blizzard will not have changed their planned implementation of real names on the forums, and my subscription, as well as my continued support of any Activision Blizzard product, will remain absent.

Why am I doing this now, instead of later? Why so early on, some ask? I’ll tell you. Sure, I could wait a month and if it’s still planned on going live, unsub then. My account is still paid up until the end of the month anyway, so there’s no real difference there. But the timing is the key. By canceling now, I’ve sent a message that I am unhappy with what they are doing now. If I wait a couple weeks until they issue an official response to the backlash, I’ve already lost my chance at being a voice that helped influence their decision; I’d be quietly and passively reacting to their decision. I don’t want to leave this game, I just feel like I have to do so. I have no intention of walking away without first doing what I can to try to change the reason that I feel I must go.

This is not an easy decision, nor does it feel good. I sincerely hope that Blizzard changes their policy/implementation on this. I’ve been a fan of everything they’ve done since I was a kid. I’ve not only been looking forward to Cataclysm, but also Diablo III. My guild has been my extended family for years, and I cherish their presence in my life. I cannot, however, idly support what will be a decision that ends up assisting (if not directly causing) the assault, rape, or stalking of someone, and I cannot and will not support it with my dollar.

To my guild – I’m so, so sorry. You are family to me, and if this is permanent, I will do all I can to smoothly transition leadership to a new leader as well as finish our preparations for Cataclysm. I cannot, however, financially support a company that so blatantly disregards the safety and security of their client base. To do so would be in violation of everything good you love about me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Please, Activision Blizzard – rethink your plans for RealID. I want to give you money; I want to play your games. Please make me feel comfortable doing so.

EDIT: I just wanted to add – the fix here isn’t hard. I’m not against RealID; I’m against forcing the outing and display of real names. The fix is a simple one – instead of it showing real names, show a single username per RealID. That gives the accountability you say you want without violating the privacy of your clients, not to mention it avoids putting them into unnecessary danger. Do that, and I’ll gladly renew my accounts. Keep real names in, and I will never be buying another Activision product again.

Whoa, whoa, back up a second – so if we want to post on the public forums, be it to talk, recruit, learn, help, or ask for technical assistance, we need to do so using our real first and last names? Yes, that’s what they’re saying, exactly. The idea is that with that level of accountability, people will troll less. They’re right, of course, but only if by “troll” you mean “post”.

There have already tens of thousands of posts in the single thread (over 1100 pages at the time of this writing) explaining how the many, many reasons this is a terrible idea, from the ease of stalking and creepy pedobears, to the ethical violation of forced exposure (it’s not optional when the forums are necessary to resolve technical issues), to the very real fact that real names will be tied to a gaming site and googleable by potential employers, and more  – check the thread.

My posting here isn’t to reiterate everything that’s been said before, but rather to tell a cautionary (and hopefully exemplary) tale of the very real dangers of this change. Buckle up, it’s quite a ride.

Early on in that thread, a toon by the name of Sikketh (from Thunderlord) posted the following:

I may be a decent human being, but it’s nigh-impossible for me to resist a dare like that. I set to work.

With just his first and last name and his wow toon’s name, I was able to find his twitter, facebook, home address, home phone number, work address, work phone number and parent’s names. The whole process took about 20 minutes. I immediately called the house, but no one was home. I sat on the idea of calling his work for a bit, and eventually decided to do so (he did ask for it).

The following is an ACTUAL PARAPHRASE of the phone conversation when I called his work (names and addresses have of course been removed):

Coworker: Hello?
Me: Hello, could I please speak with So-And-So?
CW: Um, sure, hold on.
Me: Thank you.
::hold music::
(a new person, female, answers)
Manager: Hello, this is Kimberly SomeLastName, can I help you?
Me: Yes, I was wondering if I could please speak with So-And-So?
Manager: ::pause:: Sure. Please hold.
Me: Thank you.
::hold music, five minute wait::
::(Male Voice)::
MV: Hello?
Me: Hello, is this So-And-So?
MV: Yes.
Me: First and foremost, I want to apologize for calling you at work, and I also apologize if this doesn’t make sense, but are you Sikketh, from Thunderlord?
MV: ::pause:: Yes.
Me: So yeah, that took me about 20 minutes and it was pretty easy.
MV: Wow. Ok.
Me: Also, just for shits and giggles, is your address ?
MV: yep.
Me: Phone number 555-555-5555?
MV: yep.
Me: I know your parents’ names are Name1 and Name2, I know your room is painted blue and I know you have a cute dog. I know where you were on the 4th of July and I know when you got back. Don’t worry, I’m not a crazy, I’m not going to do anything with it, and I’m not going to post your address or anything anywhere. I just wanted you to know that what I did was very easy and very free, from just your name and toon’s name. You have a good day, and thanks for being a good sport about it.
MV: Hey, I did basically ask for it – thank you. I was wrong about RealID.

My post on the public thread is as follows, in response to his above post:

He took the whole thing really well, and has since edited his name out of his original post (as well as put in a “Edit: I was found!”) and we’ve talked some on facebook. I explained in detail to him how I went about it so that he can do what he can to close up those gaps (he’s since locked his twitter and facebook pages better, though finding his address and phone number didn’t require either, just his name). He’s even since applied to my guild and his application is under review.

I mentioned that this wasn’t the first time I’ve done this. He asked if I could find anyone, and I was like “most people have an online presence these days – if you do, I can find you.” He asked me to find his boss, the aforementioned Kimberly SomeLastName (protip: SomeLastName is still a fake name) – I found her and her husband’s home address and phone number in about a minute.

The point of this tale, however, is not to demonstrate a fun and heartwarming tale about a well-meaning prankster who teaches someone else a lesson and possibly gains a friend out of it. No, the point of this tale is that it is shockingly easy to find people through the internet from very little information, and not everyone is nice. Let us not so quickly forget the sick and tragic case of Julien Barreaux, a counterstrike player who’s character was killed via knife fight and who became so enraged that he spent the next six months stalking down his opponent (known only as “Mikhael”), who turned out to live in a town only a few miles away. He then found him and stabbed him in the chest, missing his heart by an inch. The victim survived and the assailant is now behind bars, but c’mon, people. I found someone several states away from me in less than 20 minutes from their name. You really think it’s a good idea to force that into the open?

This change is a terrible one, and I hope the overwhelmingly negative reaction from Blizzard’s player base will cause a change. I am all for accountability – tie our RealID to a single, unchangable forum avatar/username. This eliminates level 1 alt posting and forces sustained accountability for all forum posts, while at the same time protecting our privacy.

And that, my friends, is how we do it. We opted to keep at it sans buff, not for bragging rights or anything (it certainly wasn’t a server first, by a long shot), but just because hey – this is endgame end-of-expansion-pack content. We wanted to do it for ourselves, to know that we could, in fact, overcome the obstacles as the were initially tuned. As it turns out, we can. ^.^

Quick and easy link to the photoset can be found here.

So PAX East – I loved it. There were aspects that were terrible, certainly (*cough* most panels *cough* – I’ll rant about the Girls On Gaming panel soon), but the sights, sounds, and pure gaming fun? Can’t be beat, and I can’t wait for next year. As everyone has already said, the Hynes Convention Center was a terrible location for such an event, but they tried and did what they could. The location was right (right smack dab in the middle of Boston Proper), but the failing was just that the convention hall didn’t have the customization required for such an event. The preexisting halls were too small to contain even a fraction of the people who wanted to be present for a given panel, and I foolishly spent the majority of the first day learning that it wasn’t really worth trying to get into any of them. Once I took that to heart and got to the wandering and sporadic gaming, I had a blast. Next year I expect will be even better.

Oh, and I totally would have OWNED the RB2 tourney had I decided to compete. Winning song was freakin’ Bad Romance. No shit. Come ON.

A few high points of PAX East for me:

• Competing in the Portal challenge – a brand new map incorporating anti-gravity and concluding with cake (!!). Completion entered me into a raffle for an Alienware machine, but I did not win. Bah.
• Playing Fluxx with my guildies – What do you do at a gaming convention? Play games, of course! There were long hallways full of awesome beanbags where we camped ourselves and played Fluxx and Bang! (though I never got a chance to play Bang!, it looked fun).
• Limbo demo - Limbo will be hitting the xbox live arcade sometime this summer, and it looks amazing. Dark, foreboding, simple in concept yet complex in execution. You play a small shadow boy in a dark forest world filled with numerous gruesome deaths, and you try to avoid them. That’s about all I was able to figure out from a few moments of play, but it was enough. I’ll be getting this game the day it comes out.
• Split/Second demo – This game was very, very polished, and while I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks once it releases, if I had to guess right now, my money on breakaway awesome racing hit of 2010 will still be Blur.
• D&D Multi-Touch Table – This thing is totally sick. I’d heard about this rich boy toy for a while now, but seeing it in action is something else entirely. *drool*

Tons more, for sure, but those are some of my favorites.

So one con down, another coming. In a little less than two weeks, ROFLcon will be upon us. I have a lot less guildies coming into town for this one, but I’m looking forward to seeing Eitri again, and hopefully kicking his ass at some Fluxx. I’ve glanced over the schedule a bit, but since it’s still a week and a half out, I figure a lot of it is still up in the air, and there’s no use in getting all worked up about a schedule that’s just going to change 8 times before the day comes. I’ll update more as we get a little bit closer to it (not to mention during).

Oh, and before I go – the Blur Multiplayer Beta Demo is in Open Beta status, which means that if you have an xbox 360 and a gold live account, you can download it for free. Check it out and hit me up; I’ll crush you.

• PAX East decom post (wih pictures!)
• RB2 DLC update (Hendrix!)
• Ascended Meetup! (tons of fun, and even more beer!)
• D&D Discussion (yes, I’m starting again)
• FFXIII talk (not much, as I’m not far in)
• ROFLcon Anticipation (less than a month!)
• Lich King 10m update (hint: still trying)

and MORE! You’ll see; it’ll be rad.

It’s basically like Mario Kart (you know how much I love Mario Kart) meets Burnout Paradise, but with a leveling/skillup/loadout system. It’s super fun and I highly recommend it. I’m not sure when the beta ends (probably in a few days), but if you can get it, you should, and we should play. Also – I will crush you. My gamertag is Valiscariot. Drop me a PM on xbl and we’ll have some fun.

Second – Lady Gaga pack for RB2 coming this Tuesday. Who’s got two thumbs and is totally stoked? THIS GUY. Seriously, what a great party pack this is. I realize that it will completely kill my training for the PAX East Rock Band 2 Tournament, but I’m still not convinced I’ll participate anyway. As fun as it may be, I’m not quite convinced that I want to miss Saturday/Sunday panels because of it (not to mention the dozen or so guildies that will be in town for PAX). We’ll see.

Third – Bioshock 2 was everything I wanted it to be. Yeah, yeah, Yahtzee didn’t like it, but he doesn’t like anything – that’s his thing. It was a really good combo of old and new. Goodbye minigame of Pipe Dream, hello quicktime event that doesn’t suck (although I did find a bug in it – if you initiate the hack on a turret, and then auto-hack dart it while the quicktime screen is up, the quicktime screen stays up until you reload the game – boo!). The game was as long as I wanted it to be, the Little Sister events happened about as much as I could tolerate without getting annoyed, and there were enough Gene Tonics to make me wish I had more tonic slots. Well done. Multiplayer ended up being really, really sloppy, but fun for a while. The Sinclair Solutions addon didn’t really add anything I wanted to the game, but we’ll see what happens in the future. All in all, I’m happy.

I’ve somehow avoided buying FFXIII, and instead I’ve added it as the only game in my Gamefly queue. We’ll see how long it takes to get here. Gotta save money for PAX!

I will be updating more on this as the event gets closer, and of course, I’ll be doing what I can to update what I can about the event itself (though since we’ll be hosting a slew of guildmates, don’t expect minute-by-minute updates).

In other news, I’ve almost completed A Feast of Souls, my current quest in my Shadowmourne questline. After that, next up – a hard-ass kill of Putricide! Seeing as we’ll be banging our heads against Putricide again tonight hoping for our first kill of him on 25-man, I’d say it’s a bit away before we can do it so well we can have me in there messing around with being the Abom to get the debuff for the quest, but I’ll update as we get closer. Wish us luck!

So as I mentioned the other day, Blizzard has released the patch notes for 3.3.3 (though GhostCrawler has stated that they are not 100% complete) and there’s some big changes coming. I’m not even going to touch the massive pvp/battleground changes, ’cause hey, pvp is fun, but it’s not my big thing. I’m on a PvP server because I like the violent nature of it; I like the unsuspecting attacks, I like the “look over your shoulder” feel it gives, but at the end of the day, PvE is where my heart is; I live for the raid, for the group kill, for the exultation of a hard fight well executed. Leave the PvP change reviews to someone who lives and breathes for the PK.

First – some random stuff.

Ok, so we’ve got some simple fixes here that make life a little easier. I’m all for ‘em. Bring ‘em on. Insert more times that I say “‘em”. Onward. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I care a lot about my Unholy DK (and am at this point just amused by the fact that it’s impossible for a patch to come without a serious change to the spec), so I’ll hit on those changes.

Whoa whoa wait a second there – is that a buff, a nerf, or somewhere in the middle? Well, it sorta depends on what you do. With the physical damage increase, you’re looking at a buff on non-diseased targets. That is to say, if you use Scourge Strike against something right off the bat, it’s going to do more damage post-patch than it does now. This change should not, however, affect much for PvEers, as even though it looks like a nerf at first glance on the shadow damage, don’t forget the shadow damage is directly proportional to the physical damage, so it’s relatively the same thing (an ever-so-slight buff, actually). Both still double dip in the same ratios, and in the end, if there’s a change, you’re probably not going to notice it. If anything, you’ll notice that ArmPen is worth a tiny bit more. Don’t worry about it. In the end, this will most likely be about a 50 dps buff for you. From this post:

There are a ton of Auction House changes, which I’ll go over (read: look at) at some point in the future, but for now let’s just skip ahead to what made me omg wtf nerdrage pissed:

Yup, totally wtf pissed.

Here’s the thing – I’m in the camp of people that hates Occulus. Now, before you get all hatin’, raging at me for not knowing how to play, saying it’s easy, saying I can get all those extra badges and the mount, hear me out. I like vehicles. Which is to say, I like 2d vehicles, land vehicles. I think that the Flame Leviathan fight is super cool and fun, I think that while Wintergrasp is poorly implemented and the server architecture can’t handle it, it’s fun in concept and I like the style. 3D drake vehicle combat, however, is another thing entirely. I hated Malygos Phase 3 with a seething passion, and would have opted out of running it at all if I weren’t, y’know, the guild leader (it would have set a bad precedent, not to mention the hit on morale). The display engine just doesn’t cope well with 3-dimensional space, figuring placement not just 360º around you, but also above and below. It’s poorly designed and plays in a way that I do not find enjoyable in any way, shape, or form.

Is it easy? Totally. Can I do it? Of course. Should I have to? NO. I play this game to have fun, and Occulus is not fun, at all. I’d rather not play WoW than run Occulus. I don’t care about Triumph badges, I don’t care about mounts. I have no reason to run it, at all, and it saddens me that because Blizzard decided to make the random daily include Emblems of Frost, I’m basically forced to run one random a day in order to be a dedicated raider.

Currently, this isn’t much of an issue: if it pops, I leave, wait 15 minutes, and try again. But the above change tells me the following. First, Blizzard recognized that they had an epidemic of people leaving Occulus when it popped, so they added some extra rewards for completing it – a few extra Triumph badges and the chance at a mount. Apparently, that didn’t do enough, so now they’re taking the other route – punishment. Blizz is acting like a bad parent, first offering sweets as a reward for finishing a dry meatloaf dinner, and when that doesn’t work, threaten punishment. If you don’t run Occulus when it pops, you don’t get to run anything for half an hour. Ok, I’ll log out and go play Rock Band for half an hour. No skin off my back. At least that’s FUN.

Could I suck it up and run it? Sure, I could. I mean, it’s quick and easy, right? As I told a guildie last night, so’s your mom, but that doesn’t mean I should jump her bones. Not. The. Point. I play this game to have fun. I play this game because it IS fun. I like the grind, I like the options, I like the playstyle; hell, I’m working on Loremaster for my freakin’ Death Knight, and even though it’s tedious as all hell, I’m enjoying it a lot. Occulus does nothing for me, and I resent being extorted into running that 15-minute facepalm just because Blizzard can’t admit/accept that it’s terrible. They did as much already when they added the extra rewards for it; I’m sorry that wasn’t enough. You know what would be enough? Give us a one-minute pre-combat “grace period” upon entering an instance to leave it. Yes, you’d see people leaving groups because their teammates aren’t in T10 – I consider that an acceptable rarity, or at least an acceptable option vs punishing people who refuse to waste their time because Blizzard can’t accept that they made something that sucks.

I’m not saying it should be abolished; I’m not saying it should be removed. Shit, some people like it. You may enjoy it, and if so, kudos – I’m fine with that. Everyone is different (no two people are not on fire). But now Blizz wants to see if people will log out for half an hour when their RNG gives them that joke of a run?

You bet your ass I will. I’m just going to do so while being even more pissed that in order to be a progressive raider, I have to run content that I beat over a year ago *every day* and subject myself to the chance of that abortion of an instance or a half hour penalty? The damn things never should have given Emblems of Frost in the first place. I don’t see them changing that anytime soon, though, so I die the little death inside.

Now, again I recognize – some people really like it. I also know that a lot of devs put a lot of time and effort into it, and I respect that. The existence of the instance doesn’t bother me; the fact that I’m going to be penalized for half an hour for not wanting to run it does. I could just not do the daily random, but again – then I’m losing 14 Emblems of Frost a week, and for a serious raider (especially an Unholy DK, that needs all five pieces plus the cloak – 455 Emblems total, unless I get lucky in VoA), that’s a lot.

So that’s why I hate this change. Weak, Blizzard, really weak.

So what are your thoughts on the change? Like it? Hate it? If you’re civil, I’m down for a discussion. Whatcha got?