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?

I love GameFly, I really do. I even had a clever plan with them – keep my queue insanely small, and they’ll be forced to send me the games I want. It worked up until now. This time, Bioshock 2 was the only game in my queue for two weeks. Looks like they will not, in fact, just buy another copy to fill the demand. All is good now, though, for they have finally shipped me a copy, and I should have it by Monday. I look forward to revisiting Rapture next week.

If you’re in Cambridge tonight, you have the chance to see me in rare form, which is to say out and about on the town instead of sequestered away in my office, working on Loremaster on my Death Knight. I will instead be at TT the Bear’s, greatly enjoying the music of The Luxury. Freakin’ awesome Brit-pop-rock band from Boston, winners of the 31st annual Rock and Roll Rumble, totally awesome ninja robots that breath lava while they play and more badass than Chuck Norris after he beheaded the Highlander. No, really. Check it out.

Some new Kill Shots/Achievements up – check em out.

Aeman (one of my guild’s two raid leaders – trust me, they make it work well) has been working on an off-official-raidtimes 10-man Glory of the Icecrown Raider run for a few weeks now, and we’ve been making some steady progress. I’m quite excited about what’s to come. So far, the fights haven’t been too tricky; I’d say just enough for a 10-man run, enough to make you work for it. Averna and I were talking about the ease of 10m vs. 25m last night, and I’m of the mind that it’s not so much that the 10m runs are easier, per se, but rather that there’s less to carry, less confusion, and each and every member is important. On the one hand, that puts a lot more pressure on each raid member, but on the other, that’s a lot less chances to mess up; it narrows the margin of error by 15 players, and that’s a lot of confusion removed. Someone died? It’s pretty easy to notice, and probably pretty easy to get a battle rez up (it’s not like you have five druids in the raid – well, you probably don’t).

Thing is, with 25 people, someone’s more likely to mess up, someone’s more likely to need to be carried, and in some 25-man encounters, people can’t be carried. Everyone has a job, and they need to perform it flawlessly or everyone dies. That’s just how it goes sometimes, and I think that just becomes more apparent when there are more chances/people to mess up. 10 man runs aren’t inherently easier, they’re just easier to manage. I guess my point is, no hatin’ on those who push out 10-man runs/kills/achievements – they’re working just as hard as you are at them. They just might be working harder than the weakest link in your 25-man, and that can be the difference between a kill and a wipe.

This just in! Patch notes for 3.3.3 just hit, and boy am I pissed about some of it (just some, though – some is sweet!). Next post will cover what I think; stay tuned and see you soon!

——————–

How the Blizzard Authenticator works, and why it improves security.

=================NEWSFLASH==============
The Blizzard Authenticators are once again in stock!

Click here for orders in the United States
Click here for orders in Canada, New Zealand, and Latin America

==========================================

On 26/06/08, Blizzard announced the Blizzard Authenticator, a device that provides your WoW account with an extra layer of security. They sell this device in their Blizzard Store for $6.50. You may consider buying it, but is the extra security really worth the money? How much more secure does it make your account? This post will explain how this device works, and exactly why it makes your account more secure.

===How the authenticator works===

The Blizzard Authenticator is a token that you can put for example on your keychain. It has a little display that, once your press the button will generate a 6-digit number that changes every minute.

This number is used as a 1-time password. This means the password is only valid once. When you use it to log in, the code becomes invalid and any hacker trying to access your account later with the same number won’t be able to log in.

A hacker wanting to access your account will now, in addition to keylogging your username and password, have to physically break into your house and steal the authenticator to see what number it displays. But hackers are clever people. Isn’t there any way for them to know which number the authenticator is going to display? The answer is no, and here’s why.

Every authenticator has a little built-in clock. This clock keeps track of the number of seconds since, for example the WoW release date, Tigole’s birthday or whenever. Each authenticator also has a unique key, which it uses to encrypt this number of seconds into what looks like a completely random number. There is no way, without knowing the encryption key, to guess what number is going to be displayed at any point in time. Even if the hacker has all the numbers you entered before, he can’t extrapolate that into what number will be showing next.

The hacker also can’t hack into the device itself to find out it’s key, because it doesn’t connect to the computer in any way. Even if the hacker were the mailman who delivered the authenticator to your house, he would have to open it up and extract the hardware that contained the key. These devices are generally tamper-resistant and will purge themselves when opened.

So, if the hacker can’t know your 1-time password, how is Blizzard going to know? The difference is, Blizzard has the key for every authenticator they made. When you log in, blizzard looks up which authenticator is associated with your account, and finds the matching key. They then use this key to decrypt the number you entered into the number of seconds the authenticator has been counting. They then verify that this number matches the current time.

Even if the time on your authenticator doesn’t exactly match the time on blizzard’s server, they still allow you to log in within a minute or so of the defined time, just in case the clock in your authenticator is running a little slower or faster than normal. This still does not allow hackers to use the number from a minute ago, because when you log in successfully, that number is then disabled and prevented from being used again.

If you still think someone may eventually find a way around it, this security measure is used by businesses and government agencies around the world to provide security, and they have a lot more sensitive information to guard than the login information to a WoW account. One of my good friends, who is a VIP services lead at Mohegan Sun, saw me log in once and went “wow, *I* use one of those to get into secure areas at work.” This is a tested method that has proven itself to be secure.

===Is existing security not already enough?===

While the authenticator provides an extra security layer strong enough to make your account virtually unhacklable, you can already secure your computer a lot. Is the authenticator really needed?

If you’re running Firefox with Noscript, Flashblock, adblockers, 5 different virus and spyware scanners, a NAT router with it’s ports strictly regulated, using Linux/MacOS X or another operating system, and other security measures I can’t think of at the moment, you are probably really secure. The danger is hackers finding a new way to enter your system that isn’t being guarded yet. Until the vulnerability is patched, or instructions to disable the exploited software are issued, you could potentially get infected with a virus or other malicious software during that short time. The more security measures you take, the lower the chance you will be vulnerable. But security is an ever-changing thing. You have to keep things up-to-date constantly in order to stay secure.

Using an authenticator is completely optional, but it does solve the problem by taking another approach. Instead of preventing keyloggers from getting onto your system, it makes you virtually immune to them. They can try, but with a login code that is always changing logging your keystrokes won’t be any good.

If you wish to better secure your system without buying an authenticator, instructions are given in stickies on the WoW forums, links to which are provided at the end of this post.

Then there is the issue of cost. Blizzard is offering these for $6.50, but should they? It would be a lot better if they provided them for free right? Well, I doubt Blizzard is making money on these. The manufacturing and distribution of these tokens costs them money, and $6.50 is actually pretty cheap. Market prices for these devices can be around $50.

I myself have been playing for over five years, so that’s roughly $900 this game has cost me already, and I’m not even counting the money I payed for the original game and the expansions (or my second account, or name changes, or transfers). I’m not going to mind another $6.50, especially since it provides me the peace of mind of never risking account theft. I purchased one the day I took Guild Leader, because the security and safety of my guild is far, far more important to me than $6.50 or the three seconds extra it takes me to log in every day.

As an aside, there are to date no known account hacks¹ to an authenticator-enabled account. There’s really no reason not to have one.

===More Information===

If you wish to learn more about this authentication technology, most of the information for this post was obtained from the Security Now podcast. All episodes are freely available for download on http://www.grc.com/securitynow.htm. Transcripts are also available. The particular episode that deals with the authenticator technology is #90: Multifactor Authentication, the part which covers some of the information above starting 20 minutes into the episode.

===Useful Links===

Buy the Blizzard Authenticator:
Unites States
Canada, New Zealand, Latin America

More information about the Blizzard Authenticator:

Support page: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=24986]http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=24986
FAQ page: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=24660]http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=24660
Activating your authenticator: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=24987]http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=24987

Links for securing your system against keyloggers (no authenticator required):

Protect your PC guide: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=273198555]http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=273198555
Avoid getting hacked: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=102690401]http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=102690401
Account security: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=35983697]http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=35983697
How to recover a compromised account: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=17191745]http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=17191745

*this post shamelessly stolen/paraphrased from Ysgarth. (I’d link directly, but I honestly lost the original)

Not only does having an authenticator save you trouble, it saves your guild leader trouble. You see, every time a member gets hacked, each of their toons steals items/money/whatever they can get from the gbank. When the hacked accountholder goes through their restoration process, GMs only help with THEIR account. The gbank is considered to be an extension of the Guild Leader’s account/responsibility, and as a result, *they* have to put in a ticket, too. This makes GLs like me die the little death every time.  Don’t make us pay for your negligence!

¹Again, a unsubstantiated report arises now and then, as I mention above. Until I see an official report from Blizzard or some tech industry standard saying keyfobs aren’t as secure as we thought, I don’t buy it – the science just isn’t there. Most importantly, though, it is still important to remember that although authenticators do, to the best of our knowledge, make your account hack-proof, they do not, in fact, make them doing dumb stuff-proof. In order to have your authenticated account compromised, you have to fall for a phishing/fake site; you have to give your account info/keyfob/unused current number out to someone; you have to be gullible enough to do exactly what Blizzard has said to never do – NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR INFO. Never! Don’t enter your account info into a linked site, ever. Go to what you know to be the real login site, always. Don’t tell anyone your account name, your password, your keyfob serial number, anything.

I’ll repeat – never trust another player, and never trust a link. Ever.

And get an authenticator.

So for xmas, my wonderful girlfriend (with the mass assistance of my fantastic guild) put together a care package of all 25 Primordial Saronite needed for The Sacred and The Corrupt, the aforementioned Shadowmourne intro starting quest. All of them (they’re at least 2k a pop on my server, even now – they were more then). Seriously, these guys are way too good to me.

Add on top of that our recent Festergut and Rotface kills (are these fights fun or what?), and that gives me a shiny new weapon, Shadow’s Edge, and you have one happy Death Knight. I’m currently at 97/1000 souls for A Feast of Souls, and looking forward to adding some more tonight in the 10m run.

So PAX East 2010 – who’s going? I know I’m already registered for all three days; I know a good dozen or so of my guild is as well. This is looking to be a sell-out event, so if you’re thinking of going, you should really get a move on those registrations.

While I’m at it, what about ROFLCon? They just announced Auto Tune the News, and the list of confirmed guests gets larger every day. Two years ago, ROFLCon was not only a good time, it was an unexpectedly informative and intelligent one, and if you’re interested in not just the lulz of internet culture, but also how it got here, where it is, and where it is going, I strongly suggest checking it out. (plus you’ll get to drink with me – fun times!)

As a complete aside, Firefox’s new tab behavior can suck my salty balls. I don’t want to have to know where my current tab is in order to find my new one; I want it to be at the end of my tab panel. This is why I don’t use Chrome. Firefox, you suck now (at least until someone makes an addon that reverts). Boo.

So holy shit, I’m on a boa- errr, wait – I’m thirty! Damn, that kinda went fast. They really weren’t kidding. The past weekend went by far too fast, and included being taken out to dinner at Hungry Mother (seriously some of the best food you will ever eat) by the lovely lady, seeing Bob Saget (holy crap is he amazingly filthy) at the Wilbur Theater in downtown Boston, and having a ton of people over my place to have a Bad Movie Night, including such wretched films as the SyFy made-for-tv Raptor Island and what is hailed my many as “the Citizen Kane of bad cinema” The Room (it was terrible, but I’ve seen – nay, I OWN worse). On the next day, I rested (and leveled my shammy – 77!). All in all, a totally rad birthday weekend.

Oh – check this shit out. I now own a Codex Seraphinianus. No, seriously – the book I’ve been searching for (at a reasonable price, which is to say, under $500) and unable to find for a good decade now. Yep, that’s what Allison got me for my 30^th birthday. I don’t even know what to say, other than you’re incredible, and making me be sappy on the internet. Thank you.

Ok, so patch 3.3 went and came today (check out the totally sweet patch trailer here), giving all servers a good dose of not working at all, and thus giving me a chance to write this post instead of scramble to get as many heroics in as possible before my eyes bleed so I can get a jump on the quest for Shadowmourne. That is to say, in order to start the questline (which may or may not be required for the later-necessary Shadowfrost Shards to even drop), you need to farm to Friendly with the Ashen Verdict and acquire a bunch of stuff, including 25(!!) Primordial Saronite (at 23 Emblems of Frost a piece!). This is quite an endeavor, so we’ll see how it goes.

Oh crap – servers are up – cutting this short. When they inevitably crash later, I’ll be back. If by some miracle of God’s Grace and Beauty they remain up – what do you guys think of the changes? What is your favorite? What is your least favorite? Ready GO

I’m looking forward to seeing what, exactly, all of the necessary steps will be for its construction; I’m hoping to avoid a repeat of Val’anyr (we obtained I think maybe 11 shards total?) this time, but seeing as we’re a casual raiding guild, I don’t really expect us to obtain one. Wish? Hope? Pray? Sacrifice kittens to dark forces? Maybe. No expectations, though.

A guy can hope, right?

In other news, I’ve been updating my Amazon.com wishlist for the upcoming holidays. See, I’m similar to TheFerrett in that I am often difficult to buy things for, simply because I tend to buy things when I want them (save for expensive things, since I’m generally poor). Given that, I find it best to keep a running list for people who might be gift-inclined around my birthday (December 3rd!) and/or xmas. I also promise not to buy anything on my wishlist for myself from mid-november to post-xmas. It’s not very up to date, but I’m working on it, and I hope to have it done by the end of this weekend. I fully realize that almost none of you were planning on getting me anything for any reason, but hey – my mom reads this blog (hi mom!), and I know she appreciates lists.

Conversations such as these are just a tasting of my daytime experience, though, as I’ve spent most of my time working to better myself in-game. Fed up with being poor both irl and in-game, I’ve reactivated my second account and once again set up a side machine solely dedicated to working the auction house.

You see, I don’t want to work for my money. Why spend all my in-game time farming or doing dailies, when I could instead just set up another machine that constantly scans the auction house, looking for foolishly-low-priced deals? I make him jump every 20 minutes or so, and when the computer makes an audible “ding!”, I look over and click “yes” or “no”. Easy money.

I will say, however, many of my friends make UNREASONABLE money by working professions into it. Maybe I’ll try it; I’d love to make 20k a week instead of 2.5k. The trick, of course, seems to be having a jewelcrafter. This will require some work.

To that end, I’ve been leveling my Shaman. I’ve spent a good portion of the past several days remembering that level 51-53 is, in fact, the worst level area in all of leveling. You’re too high to do any of the quests that are close together, you’re too low to do most of the plagueland quests, and the only things that are reasonable for you are like, Felwood quests that are 48907 miles apart from one another. Before 51, you can find quests to do if you look hard enough/have done them enough to know where to be/where not to be (hint for Alliance – stay out of Feralas altogether). At 53 or so, Tirion’s quests in EPL open up and it’s tons of grinding (over a hundred mobs he wants dead) – it’s like a carpool lane to Outland. I’m actually on my way to freakin’ Un’Goro right now, because at least if I grind there, I can skin everything and maybe make some cash.

EDIT: Ok, so I totally forgot about Un’Goro. There are, in fact, a ton of quests for low-50s toons, they’re close together, and they involve a lot of grinding. Also, Shamans¹ are OP – I’ve been soloing devilsaurs all weekend. So yeah, levels 51-53 aren’t as devoid as options as I may have previously declared. My bad. I will revise my statement, and declare that the 50s in general are the worst, if only because they take the longest (you may say “but no, the 40s are worse!” but that’s because you’re trying to level on Alliance in Feralas, and that’s never a good idea).

Anyway, if all goes well, I should be in Outland by later this evening, at which point it’s smooth sailing to 80.

EDIT 2: Level 58 has been achieved, and I am on my way to Hellfire. Wish me luck. I’m home tomorrow as well, so I’ll try to get a post up about the Mike Doughty show I attended on Friday; we’ll see.

¹ Yes, Shamans is, in fact, the correct pluralization of Shaman. I don’t like it either; I think it’s unsightly at best. But hey, that’s how it goes. I’ve accepted it and moved on.

(+) Borderlands is one of the coolest games I’ve seen in a long time. I have it on the xbox 360, if you wanna play.

I’ll post something substantial on these or other subjects soon, but I have a lot of games to play tonight, and not enough time to play them all.

Anyhoo, Allison and I decided it’d be a good time to go visit, so we did. In case you were wondering, yes, the MBTA still sucks, even after all these years.

I had all these fantastic intentions of taking tons of photos and all that jazz, but yeah, once we got off the boring train and into the custody of my old man, I pretty much completely forgot about the camera. Sorry about that. It happens. I do have a handy-dandy link to the photoset of the train ride down, but yeah, no clever down-the-green shots of the pooltable, no close-up of the hole I put in the wall from the dart (yeah, I’m smooth), no yawning cat, no shot of the like nine wild turkeys in the backyard (no, really). Sorry, I’ve let you all down.

Let’s just say we ate a delicious roast, got schooled in 8-ball, and had a really good time. I even managed to escape the cat with minor sinus after-effects. I call this a win.

Oh – and down the street from my house is, quite possibly, the best billboard I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Check this shit out -

I’m almost astounded at the existence of such a billboard. Now, don’t get me wrong – I think it’s awesome and frankly, I agree with it. I’m just astounded at how in-your-face ballsy it is; I didn’t really expect to see something so un-PC in Cambridge, MA. Color me impressed.

Speaking of impressed, I’ve recently fallen in love with this song – Trifonic – Parks on Fire. The rest of the album is decent (a few too many vocal tracks for my liking, but I think they’re going for that “band” thing), but this track is just sublime. Some of the cooler electronic music I’ve heard in a while. I purchased the digital download off their site for like $9, and it’s totally worth it, if you’re into that sort of thing.

So some new PTR notes are up. Let’s check out some stuff on it.

Right off the bat, I noticed a few different changes in regards to early toons, from no more dazing of level 1-5 toons, to more standardization/simplification of starting weapons, to increased regeneration rates for very low level toons. Sure, it’s not like leveling your fifth alt was difficult in the first place, but hey, thanks for thinking of us. Now if only they’d make levels 41-54 less painful. No, really this time.

Awesome General Changes:

• Many of the tail sweeps with knockback effects will no longer hit players’ pets.
• Pet Resilience: All player pets now get 100% of their master’s resilience.

I like increased pet survivability – one less thing to worry about.

Awesome Class Changes:

• Death Knights: Rune of the Stoneskin Gargoyle: There is now a 1-handed version of this rune in addition to the current 2-handed rune.
• Druids: Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.
• Hunters: Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.
• Shamans: Reincarnation: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 60 minutes down to 30 minutes.
• Warlocks: Create Soulstone: The cooldown on this spell and duration of its buff have been lowered from 30 minutes down to 15 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

With the general raid gameplan heading more and more into fast encounters (or at least less trash), I see all of these changes as streamlining the raid wipe/recovery process more and more, and I for one support them all. Faster recovery/less cooldown waiting means more time actually spent making valid attempts against bosses, rather than going “well, we don’t have any battle rezzes/heroism/soulstones this time, so let’s just halfheartedly throw ourselves at it and hope we learn something” and more of an “every attempt is 100%” approach. These changes certainly make sense with the way raids appear to be going, but that doesn’t mean that I’m any less surprised when Blizzard makes a good call.

Bad Class Changes:

• Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We’ve redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.
• Death Knights: Unholy: Night of the Dead: Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 45/90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
• Death Knights: Unholy: Scourge Strike: Redesigned. The base ability now deals 50% weapon damage plus an additional amount as physical damage. However, for each disease the death knight has on the target, the target will take additional shadow damage equal to 25% of the physical damage done.
• Death Knights: Unholy: Unholy Blight: This talent now deals only 10% of Death Coil damage as a damage-over-time effect on the target.
• Death Knight Tier-9 4-Piece Bonus: This set bonus no longer grants Frost Fever a chance to be a critical strike. It still grants that possibility to Blood Plague.

I may be premature in calling the AoE change bad, as I haven’t even done napkin math on it yet, let alone real math, but yeah, it feels like a nerf, so I’m gonna run with it. BAD!

The DK changes are nerfs across the board. We all knew that a tier nerf was coming, though I still expected them to remove Ebon from it rather than Frost Fever. I guess the reasoning was to bring one-disease dual-wield frost dps back into line, ’cause their damage is out of control, but still – the plague strike nerf really hurts, especially in pvp, where it no longer has a cut through armor from being magic. Ouch.

I’m sure there are other class nerfs, but I’ll let someone more knowledgeable in those classes talk about them elsewhere.

Awesome User Interface Changes:

• The range at which players can see unit nameplates has been increased by 40 yards.
• Any party member may mark targets (this does not apply to raid groups)
• Users will be warned when their talents are reset due to a new patch.
• Instant quest text is on by default.
• Ignore list expanded to 50 to match the friends list.
• Interface element added next to the mini-map to show what dungeon you are in (ex: 10- and 25-player Heroic dungeons marked with a skull).
• Experience earned for a quest will display in the Quest Rewards section.
• You can now query for a list of completed quests with “QueryQuestsCompleted()” then wait for the “QUEST_QUERY_COMPLETE” event, and call “etQuestsCompleted()”.

A whole slew of no-brainer changes that for some unknown reason took months to years to add. Glad to see Bliz getting around to them.

Also, QueryQuestsCompleted()? AWESOME. Hello, easy-to-use Loremaster AddOn!

Awesome Quest/Reputation Changes:

• Weekly raid quests are now available from Archmage Lan’dalock in Dalaran. Every Tuesday at 3 AM the Council of Six will choose a different strategic target that must die from either: The Obsidian Sanctum, Naxxramas, The Eye of Eternity, Ulduar, Trial of the Crusader, or Icecrown Citadel.
• The following reputations have been sped up by roughly 30%:
  * Argent Crusade
  * Alliance Vanguard
  * Horde Expedition
  * Kirin Tor
  * Knights of the Ebon Blade
  * Sons of Hodir
  * Wyrmrest Accord
• Sons of Hodir quests now give more reputation overall.
• Top-level helm and shoulder faction-related enchants are now available as Bind-on-Account items that do not require any faction to use once purchased (they still require the appropriate faction level to purchase).
• Reputation commendations can now be purchased for 1 Emblem of Triumph each.

Ok, now I dunno about you, but I think the raid quests are *awesome*. Not only does it give me a reason to run older raid instances, it gives me a chance to run them on my level 80 alts with my guild instead of a pug. I really can’t wait.

The rep changes are something we all saw coming (or at least hoped was coming, especially with Sons of Hodir). There’s currently a thread going on my guild’s forums discussing whether or not this is just a standard end-of-expansion closing of the gap, giving the slower ones a chance to see the end content while it’s still relevant before the next xpac makes it all pointless, or whether this is instead an admission by Blizzard of doing the whole rep thing incorrectly. Honestly, I can see good points on both sides, but I definitely hope it’s the latter. What do you think?

All told, I think we’re looking at some seriously good changes, even with some of the standardization that people have confused lately with the falling of the sky. A lot of people are quite busy trashing Blizzard for this simplification or that easy mode, but hey – ToC25 hardmode is challenging as shit, and I expect Icecrown to be awesome, not even factoring the crazy lore stuff I’ve heard coming from the test realm. (If I had more time, I’d totally get onto the PTR and get you all some serious undercover work, but yeah, I already don’t have enough time to do the things I want to do – sorry).

Call me a fanboy if you want; I think Blizzard is still doing a great job, and I’m looking forward to the next patch as well as the next expansion. Keep up the good work, Bliz!

Side note: in an effort to be more welcoming, I’ve lifted comment moderation. Abuse it and I’ll ban you and post about how much you suck.

See that steak? Yeah, it was awesome. There’s not much more to say about that meal, other than trust me – you wish you ate it. The garlic-rosemary potatoes are a recipe I stole from my main tank Aeman. What can I say; the man knows how to cook. Also? Super nerd. How nerdy, you ask? Nerdy enough to go watch Zombieland, come home, make bison tacos (like I said, the man knows how to cook), and then play Hero Quest.

/:/:/scratching record/:/:/

Yes, that’s right – Hero Quest.

If you’re over 25 and reading this blog, chances are you were a super nerd when you were a kid. Ok, I’ll allow that WoW has somewhat changed the nerd/non-nerd dynamic; you could totally be captain of your rugby team (hi, Apop) and still play WoW. But before WoW came along and made everyone ever play video games, if you were the kind of person to read this blog, you were a dork. You had a crush on Rydia from Final Fantasy (hopefully the grown-up version, you sicko), had a collection of 20-sided dice, and the closest you came to playing a sport was kicking your neighbor’s ass at Ice Hockey. Chances are you know what LARPing is (God help you). If any of this is true, you had a copy of Hero Quest, and right now, you’re wishing you still did.

Well it just so happens that Aeman got his hands on a copy. After Zombieland (which, by the way, was about as perfect as I could have hoped), I went to casa de Aeman & Theine and played Hero Quest. This is, quite possibly, the nerdiest thing I’ve done in a long, long time (and that includes starting this blog). It was totally awesome and I want to do it more. Yes, I just said that in public.

Last night, we did a quick clear through most of Ulduar and watched most loot go to either offspec or sharding, proof that yes, we’re pretty much done with that instance. Time to buckle down and focus on ToC hardmodes. Also – check out my dps on XT-002, sans Heroism (we didn’t want to engage hardmode).

I’ve recently realized just how poor my collective wow account is; I mean, I can always afford repairs (though we have a guild bank allocation for raid repairs, I never use it), but if I wanted to, say, purchase some Crusader Orbs to make the ToC bracers, could I afford ‘em? Not a chance. This irks me. This irks me something fierce. I’m not generally the type to be satisfied with a situation over which I have little control. A-ha!, though – I have control over it; it all comes down to time allocation.

You see, a while back I made this Druid. She’s not much, I realize (dual spec? yes! competent at either? errrr… not really), but she’s fun and more importantly, she was designed as a farmer. Skinning/Herbalism. Insta-flight form is as cheating as you can get without requiring seppuku to absolve yourself of the shame, and it’s perfect for a farming toon. In addition to this, while leveling her, I did as many Outlands/sidequests as I could bear, in order to hasten the place in Northrend at which I’d hit 80. In this case, I got there around mid-Zul’Drak. I’ve now finished Zul’Drak and done about half of the Sholazar quests, and have made about 2.5k in doing so. This is nuts. Druids are a cash cow. When I’m done with this one, I’m considering making another to level just for the gold (I’d make another DK for said purpose if I could; those guys are the definition of solo-leveling OP).

Oh, one last thing – I’ve noticed my traffic increasing steadily. Hello, readers! In case you’re wondering, I do not have a cushy “sit in an office and play on the internet all day” job. As a result, I won’t be updating this daily. I will, however, do what I can to update at least 2-3 times a week. I’ll do what I can to keep you office-bound folk in mind and try to post in such a manner as to give you stuff to read while you get paid to sit on your ass, but no promises.

So there ya go – if I don’t post for a day or two, don’t freak out and unsub. Just sit and be patient; the good stuff’s on the way.