Friday Laziness: Day Early Holiday Weekend Edition

Quote of the day, courtesy of Gevlon:

"Blizzard could create a great game. It would have 1M subscribers. I would love it. Blizzard executives wouldn't."

That about sums it up.

Aside from RL 4th of July festivities, I'll be spending the weekend with the Aion US beta, and some time with Champions as well (though I can't talk about what I'm doing in that one). I'm really looking forward to it, even if it's going to take my gaming time away from Prototype, which I am really enjoying and highly recommend to everyone. It's available for PC and runs very well even if your system isn't state-of-the-art (but you may have to turn down the graphics settings a lot).

I've been quoting a certain song a lot, but people keep not getting it and I end up insulting people. I guess it just isn't as well known as "I'm on a boat". In an effort to spread the song around, I present "Fishin' Hole", by musical god Stephen Lynch. As always with Lynch, EXPLICIT CONTENT INCOMING:



Have a great 4th of July weekend! Even those of you in other countries, I hope you at least get a "bank holiday".

Friday Laziness: Aion

Based on all the buzz I've been hearing on Ye Olde Internetworke lately, and especially a preview from Ixobelle, I've pre-ordered a copy of Aion. Aion is an upcoming MMO in which, to oversimplify, you play an anime version of a winged angel in what looks like a gorgeous fantasy world. From the looks of the website, it has a great aesthetic, a standard MMO levelling experience, a mixed PvP and PvE endgame, and clones all of the WoW classes except for druids and shaman. I'm pretty confident it will be worth as much to me as a single-player game at that price even if I only play for the first month. And better yet, pre-ordering gives me access to the beta events, so hopefully I can give you some more in-depth impressions to decide if you are interested in the game as well.

Between this and Champions Online both releasing in September, I wonder if I'll be able to fit WoW in anymore?

Friday Laziness: Simulated Homelessness

This is a great idea, and tells a touching and thought-provoking story.

It's not a book, not a movie, but simply a photo diary of the lives of two homeless people in the Sims 3.

Came across it via Bio Break; I highly recommend Syp's blog as well.

Friday Laziness: Itemization Philosophy

Itemization in Ulduar is wonky. It's so off that it's led many players to think the devs don't know their own game, or at least that the itemization people don't talk to the class design or raid design people. For example, our Holy Paladin hasn't taken a single plate piece because they are loaded with mp5, which is functionally useless to him (because crit and int are better regen stats for him aside from also increasing healing throughput). Every 2-handed weapon in Uld 10, including hard modes, is itemized the same, with either arPen or Hit on top of Strength and Crit. Don't even get me started on caster leather, elemental shaman gear, the lack of MP5 on resto shaman offset gear, or all the spirit on every piece of caster cloth. I recently respecced Blood from Unholy on my DK because there are virtually no upgrades in Ulduar without Armor Penetration (which is awesome for Blood and terrible for Unholy).

What I'm saying is, there are no choices. Every piece is equally poorly itemized. So the devs say they want us to play a "game" with our gear where we make interesting choices about what's an upgrade and what's not. But they don't offer interesting choices, just bad stat after bad stat. Things in Ulduar, despite higher ilevels, are turning out to not be upgrades over Naxx pieces because of how poorly itemized Ulduar gear is. And it's not just a few bad pieces, it's virtually every piece in every slot. Like I said: no choice. Where's the fun in that?

It's a real problem because 1) gear is a part of the "fun" of raiding, and 2) the hard modes were tuned for a raid wearing upgrades over our Naxx gear (upgrades we can't find for many slots in Ulduar). The hard modes were tested with shirts of uber, and I seriously doubt the drops in Ulduar constitute a full 8% increase in stats and 130 increase in all ratings, especially when we are DEing most of these ilevel "upgrades".

And the explanation, as you can see in this thread (I recommend you read every post GC makes in that thread by clicking the "Blizz" icon at the top of each post to go to the next one), is that they made the gear shitty on purpose so they could make the next tier more attractive than this one without raising it's ilevel very much.

Seriously. That is insulting. The thread specifically tries to avoid insulting the devs, and they turn around and insult us. If you are going to reduce the fun by taking choice away, the least you could do is not reduce the fun further by making the items we don't have a choice about suck.

I was going to write something about how, you know, it's really OK if we are excited about gear in Ulduar and actually know we are getting upgrades. But BBB just summed it up so perfectly that you should just read his post on it. :)

But enough angry ranting. The bottom line is that I am very happy with Ulduar, just like BBB is. This is more a nitpick. The devs deserve a lot of credit for delivering an awesome instance. I am thankful for what I have, but I also feel compelled to point out problems when I see them. I just don't want people to get the impression that I'm a total Negative Nancy. I am having a lot of fun in Ulduar.

And anyway, cheer up, it's the weekend! Viva la alcoholism!

Friday Laziness: Yes I'm Still Blogging About WoW Edition

WoW has slowed down a bit. This always happens in the summer. It's frustrating for me because I have my widdle heart set on a 310% speed proto drake, but it will be removed from the game in a few months. Gotta get the raid together for hard modes! But when you only have 11 raiders, 2 of them being busy with RL means you don't raid. And we never get our true A-team anymore. I really want to recruit so we can keep raiding, but a few people are very resistant to that idea because it means that they might have to occassionally sit a raid. I'd rather have more people than we need and have to sit people later on when things pick back up than have to cancel raids all week. Of course, being the raid leader I'm not really at risk to sit.

The other problem is with everyone playing less is it's tough to recruit. We aren't running pug Naxx 25s and meeting new people like we used to (that's where all of our post-forming recruits came from, actually). And our old friends list seems empty when no one is logging on. So I really don't know how to recruit. I don't want to do it cold. We are only looking to fill one spot, and are such a small group that the personality really has to fit perfectly, and the play has to be up to par, and those things are hard to judge if you haven't raided with someone a few times. And no one wants to go through a lengthly waiting and testing process (longer than for most hardcore 25 man guilds) just to join a 12-person guild, or worse, to be rejected from it. We're averse to using a forum post, and don't have a ton of spare time to pug around.

So I really don't know what to do. Any suggestions?

Anyway, 10 raiders signed up for tonight. It's not the A-team (yeah, 11-person guild has an A-team, we have one person who isn't up to par but we keep around because they are a really good friend and aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination, just not extraordinary like my other raiders). And we actually do have a 12th guildie, he just took a long raiding hiatus and finally has some time to raid with us again this weekend. 2 of our raiders still appear to be gone, meaning that we don't raid unless we get lucky and this guy is free. The biggest danger of running a small guild (though I recall that my old 25-man raiding guild had some doldrums in TBC as well).

But hopefully we can clear out the watchers and Vezax tonight, and get enough together later in the week to kill Yogg (or maybe even try him tonight if another A-team member logs on!) Wish me luck. Have a great weekend!

In the meantime, please to enjoy this lolcat.

Friday Laziness: When Does Champions Come Out?

Obviously my last post was an April Fool's joke. Except it probably wasn't funny enough to qualify as a joke. April 1 kind of caught me off guard; hopefully I will plan better next year.

But, even with the fun of achievements and Ulduar on the horizon, I'm in the same place right now as the entire WoW community seems to be: bored and out of stuff to do in WoW that really revs our engines. Either we are playing other games, going through the motions, or trying to freshen the game by trying it from another angle. So most of us only log into our mains during the cut-back raid times, and spend the rest of our gaming time on alts or other games (I'm finally getting deep into Fallout 3, which I strongly recommend, especially if you take the "Bloody Mess" perk).

I do find my mind wandering, looking for another multiplayer experience that really grabs me. Fallout is based on feeling alone and desolate, and it excels as an RPG and game, but is missing the social and competitive elements of WoW, a lack which I notice. Though I'm decent at shooters, they don't tend to hold my attention as multiplayer hobbies. Team Fortress 2 and Quake Live have only managed to take up a few afternoons or evenings for me before the rest of my brain feels neglected. I've been reaquainting myself with StarCraft for the past few evenings, but it just isn't the same.

What I really need is another MMO. Unfortunately, none of the MMOs out there strike my fancy. I really hate to get into this, because I'd rather put that whole stupid "WoW tourist" thing behind me, but what I want to talk about is Champions and how I wish it would come out now while I'm bored, instead of later when I'm busy with Ulduar.

Though I respect them as games, I'm not looking for something like EVE, and Lotro and WAR and EQ2 and Vanguard I know from experience are too much like WoW to feel different for me, except for the fact that they have poorer art direction (imo) and lose some of my favorite WoW features. Obviously, OMG real consequences games like Darkfall are out, and FF11 has an appealing setting, but I also know from experience that I don't enjoy the forced grouping or extended battles of that game. And I already played City of Heroes into the ground before picking up WoW. Not saying they are bad games, just saying that they don't have what I, one particular person, am looking for. This is not meant as a flamefest.

Ok, SWG is a bad game.

But anyway, the only new MMO I know is supposed to come out this spring is Champions Online. Built by mostly the displaced CoH team with a new license, I expect CoH2, which is fine by me. I loved CoH, but it just didn't have enough depth or content.

Looking around the internet with all my might, I can't seem to find a solid release date for the thing. All reports say "Spring 09", but umm...that's ending pretty soon? Shouldn't they have a release date out by now, even if that date is "the end of May"? Or will it just be pushed back?

The really sad thing is that Champion's best bet is to land a week ago. The WoW juggenaut has ground to a sickening near-halt, and millions are just chomping at the bit for a fun, appealing MMO that isn't going to drive them away immediately with it's hardcoreness. I know some people think that WoW subscribers trying other games is a bad thing for those games, but I disagree. Sure, you get all the terribad entitled griefers, etc., but you also get the great players and good average joes. You just don't notice the positive parts, because they aren't as loud and obnoxious. Or maybe they just aren't grouping with you. :)

And think about this: if Champions releases, say, a month after Ulduar comes out, guess who goes to try Champions? A mix of 1) people who hate WoW, and 2) people who either suck so much at WoW or are such social outcasts there that they jump somewhere else for a clean slate.

If Champions comes out now, at least a bunch of those dreaded "WoW Tourists" will be people who are successful in WoW and just bored, rather than the entire starter playerbase of Champions being WoWhaters, comic fanboys, and outcast ninjas/botters/griefers.

And if Champions is of good quality, I'll likely keep my subscription to it in parallel with my WoW subscription, at least until Starcraft 2 comes out and I have to choose between 2 of the 3 to devote my game time to. So I'll be a member, rather than a tourist. If someone would just come out with a game with even comparable levels of quality, content, and fun in my eyes. God knows WoW needs a real competitor, so the devs will get a wake-up call. I think right now they are quite well aware that they are free to screw us as much as they feel like, because we don't have any other legitimate place to turn. But that's a topic for another day, and I'm lazy.

Tonight, we're downgrading to Jack Daniels. Mmmmmm.

Friday Un-Laziness: Punisher's WoW Journal Edition

With a futuristic helicopter in one hand and an icicle made of thunder in the other, my rogue is more than ready for Ulduar. From our Naxx 25 pugs, he's in best-in-slot gear except for two minor upgrades I could still grab. With this spec and a 4s/5r rotation, glyphs of SS, blade flurry, and rupture, and gemming for agility, I can pull 4k dps average on bosses, with more like 4500 on Patchwerk with decent raid buffs (still never had a feral druid for the bleed debuff, where are all of them?) I see reports all over EJ about other classes, particularly DKs and hunters, blasting off 5-6k dps with gear that can't possibly be any better than mine, though. At first, it made me wonder what I might be doing wrong. I know I wasn't getting Hysteria, and had no other rogue to trade Tricks with. Maybe I was missing a few more buffs, and maybe I could time my cooldowns better with my buff procs. Then I saw the list of rogue buffs and DK/hunter nerfs in the 3.1 patch notes and realized my mistake had been made at the character select screen, not in a raid. I cannot wait to see what I can do when the patch hits!

But having written that, I wonder: why should I have bothered talking about it? I always enjoyed Tobold's (and others') "WoW Journal" posts where they write about what they've been doing in-game. There's some voyeuristic enjoyment there in seeing what the neighbors are doing, and comparing it to your own experience a bit. But would anybody get enjoyment out of what I just posted? Unlike Tobold's posts, my experience is hardly representative of the average gamer's experience. Judging by sites like wow-heroes, only a tiny fraction of wow players have achieved my level of dps or gear. So will others get interest and enjoyment out of me talking about my life, or will they just not care (or worse, be turned against me by jealousy or whatever)? I know from experience that mentioning my dps or gear publicly is an easy way to turn people against me. In one recent comments section on another blog, I got attacked based on a series of untrue assumptions that went well beyond what I had revealed. Because I did high dps and dared think that was more valuable than poor dps, I became a strawman scapegoat, being attacked and blamed for grievances the other commenters had against either people from their past, or elitists (who are somehow, at the same time, ignorant of all the wisdom the poor player is privy to) they imagined. There are some I've met who have a deep-seated, ingrained hate for anyone that performs well, as though we are ruining it for everyone else and deserve to get cut down to size. I've never really understood it. Maybe I'm coming off as elitist and egotistical right now and will turn some people off. Sadly, I can't tell, and am just going to write what I want to rather than worrying about it.

...end tangent.

------------------------------

So my rogue is anxiously awaiting Ulduar, with a Webbed Death and a new spec waiting in the wings for when dual-weapon spec dies its silent death. We are so getting the rusted proto-drake! I like downing easy bosses as much as the next guy, but man, the fact that Algalon the Raid Destroyer doesn't even have a normal mode (only hard!) gives me a brain-boner.

My guild has been quietly debating how to deal with the new dungeon, along the same lines as Ixo's and Tobold's posts on the subject. Do we go in cold and figure out the strats on our own? Do we research the strats ahead of time so we can clear the place as fast as possible (what can I say, we like prestige)? Or something in between?

We've pretty much landed on wanting to mostly learn the fights ourselves, though we may stumble upon a spoiler here and there while reading MMO-Champion or something. But there's one wrinkle: we have a Human Spoiler. Most of my guildies are mature, and this guy is technically an adult, but he has this need to prove his knowledge to everyone else. He's that guy who will jump in and try to answer every question first just to show that he knows it. His main hobby is debate team, forchrissakes. He seriously does live with his mom. You know the type: one of those argumentative nerds who is a nice guy, and quite booksmart, but has no social skills whatsoever. He views everything in terms of whether or not it makes him look knowledgeable and "right". He's a good guy, and an excellent player, but his personality can grate sometimes. And he's been known to act as a sort of WoWInsider/MMO-Champion dictophone, like some sort of demonic automatic text-to-voice malware that got hacked into our vent server. You probably have one of those in your guild too:

"Hey guys, a new patch just came out on the PTR! Let me read every change to you, even though you can read it yourself and probably already have and most of the changes don't interest you!"

and

"Well this is interesting"
...
[Waits for response, no on responds because it's an obvious fish for attention. If it's interesting, tell us what it is instead of trying to bait us and get us to ask you what it is that's so interesting.]
...
[proceeds to read you something from WoWInsider that you already read, that for the record wasn't even that interesting the first time you read it.]

This is also the same guy who will jump on you every time you slack off because he needs to prove he knows more about your class than you do.

"Hey, why didn't you use [obscure move only EJ readers know] here?" [You usually do, but didn't bother this time.]

"Hey, I know we are in the middle of an intense attempt on Sarth plus 2 drakes, but I noticed that our resto druid wasn't using the lulls in healing to melee Sarth to get mana back from my judgment of wisdom! I better clutter vent by telling the druid to do that in a voice that implies I think the druid is stupid (since I don't have any other tone of voice). At least people will notice that I'm doing something they didn't think of!"

Anyway, this Human Spoiler WILL know the fights ahead of time, and will be desperate to show us all how well he can read Stratfu summaries and parrot them back. Honestly, the only counter I as raid leader have against him is to know the strategies myself, which I don't really want to do. So I'm stuck trying to figure out if I'll participate in this spoiler arms race, or figure out some other way of dealing with this . . . challenging quality of an otherwise good guy.

OK, somehow I got on another tangent there.

---------------------------

On the flip side, I've been going back to my DK alt a bit. She's been 80 for a few months now, and over that time I've gathered a pretty good pair of kits, one for dps and one for tanking, from a mix of heroics, guild alt runs of naxx, and pug voa/os runs. Just to highlight the class differences a bit more, my DK is at least a tier below my rogue in gear, and yet I can do about 3500 dps on average with 25 man buffs (with this spec). I know I'm playing both classes reasonably well and getting similar buffs, so I'm definitely seeing some justification to buffs to rogue raid dps. But that's just from my perspective.

I've been very excited about my tanking set ever since I offtanked our 8-man near-Undying (one death to ice block on KT in the entire run). I got a very nice axe off KT (note to Blizz: that's how you itemize a DK weapon!), and wanted to make sure all of my gear was maxed out in case I was needed for more achievement runs, and because min/maxing my character is part of the game's fun for me. Since my rogue is sitting on 75 emblems of valor with nothing to spend them on, I picked up the epic tanking boe bracers (to replace my crafted blue), and ran a voa 25 on the DK to get the last two valor emblems I needed to pick up the tanking cape, replacing the crappy armor cape off maexxna 10.

DK's were given two big boons in the most recent live patch to help them reach the necessary uncrittability defense number of 540 defense skill: a rune and a sigil (note this sigil has a 100% chance of a 30 second buff, effectively granting a passive 53 defense rating). But the math seems to show that the other tanking runeforge enchant, which gives 4% parry, offers much better overall tanking value, particularly because it's not subject to diminishing returns like parry and dodge ratings are. Since I'm hitting a ridiculous 54% combined dodge/parry during combat in just my naxx 10 level gear (that will go down by 10 in 3.1), diminishing returns are becoming a real concern. So I decided to pick up the +defense enchant to cape and replace all my blue stam gems with green def/stam gems, and all my green gems with yellow +def gems. I ended up also having to sacrifice one of my expertise gems for a def/exp gem, but I just barely managed to stay at defense cap while switching runes on my weapon. The net effect is that I traded a small amount of health for a nice big chunk of parry (which also acts as a threat stat!). This is made even better by the fact that I tank as unholy (here's my current spec), meaning I focus on avoidance to keep Bone Shield up as long as possible.

My threat was a little low in our naxx10 run compared to the paladin main tank (yeah, he was better geared, and I know pally threat is a bit high right now, but whatever, I'm a perfectionist), so I also focused my build a bit around threat and aimed to pile on some +hit and +expertise (it's a big problem for my cycle when plague strike is dodged, let me tell you). I'm not anywhere near the cap, but wherever I didn't need +defense, I stacked expertise, and I chose gear with +hit on it. I managed to only be about .07% below the melee hit cap and reach 18 expertise (25ish is the cap). Not bad, but that's one area where better gear would make a major difference. Right now I'm struggling just to stay at defense cap without having to change my runeforge back.

------

Finally, there's my leveling projects.

Also, being a huge Penny Arcade whorefanboy, I have an ongoing habit of trying to play on the Alliance side of the Dark Iron server (where there's a set of allied guilds all started by the group who played there with Gabe and Tycho back in the day). I also love Draenei. So seeing an opportunity, I forsook the old level 30 shaman I had on that server from my TBC attempt to join the PA Alliance, and Hatchthulu the Draenei Blood Death Knight was born!

Meanwhile, my old druid alt is slowly climbing through Northrend (74 right now). He was pure resto at 70, and had been leveled as a Moonkin. Though I played a feral druid as my main all the way to AQ40 in vanilla wow, I just didn't have the heart to set up all the buttons and macros that would be needed to manage bear and cat forms with my control setup. Last week, I had a hankering to try kitty levelling, and now that I've spent an hour getting every button on my keyboard doing three different things depending on what form I'm in, I haven't looked back. The leveling feels much faster than Moonkin, but maybe that's just me.

Besides, I get enough caster gameplay out of my Mage, who finally hit 68 and ventured into Northrend 2 nights ago. He's rocking 3 heirloom items and just blasting up the levels while seemingly invincible with a deep, deep Frost build. I never played a clothie before, and never thought I would enjoy a mage, but shatter combos are pretty fun, and I'm still psyched about the idea of playing Arcane when I hit 80. The complexity of the rotation and the ability to tailor your damage to your desired mana consumption is intriguing, as are the PvP possibilities of instant invisibility and a major instant-cast Arcane Barrage. I anticipate that much like my dual-Unholy DK, I'll be dual-speccing my mage into two different Arcane specs.

Unfortunately, there's no time to play all of these characters and also have a life, so it will be months if not years before I've gotten them all to 80 and gotten to experience the really fun part of doing 5-mans and raiding with new characters that freshen the game experience for me. And that's not even touching the hunter, warlock, paladin, or warrior that I leveled with Recruit a Friend!

WTB hired help that will level my alts for me, PST.

Wow, one could write an entire blog post just about the implications of that statement. But I think it's time for me to actually start the Laziness part of my Friday. White Horse, here I come!

Friday Laziness: Outer Space Edition

Let's not lie to each other here: there's no way I'm going to be able to think about much today besides tonight's Battlestar Galactica series finale. I. Cannot. Wait.

At least there is a development at least tangentially related to a story about a gritty, ragtag group of humans fighting an intergalactic war.

The new Battle.net is slowly being introduced to the internet's bloodstream. Step by step, Actiblizzard will leverage the WoW audience to ensure the success of their overarchingl online anti-piracy/content distribution platform (think Steam). Battle.net originated as the awesomely free service that helped launch Starcraft into the legendary competitive online game it is (and allowed Diablo 2 to take those first tentative steps toward MMO). Now it's being expanded and improved upon, with more to come. Do not be surprised if, 2-3 years from now, you're paying for a Battle.net subscription that gives you access to WoW and SC2 online and Diablo 3 online, etc, and connects all of those games through chat and social networking. There are a lot of great opportunities here, and I hope Blizzard siezes on them.

But best of all, the introduction of the Battle.net accounts means that we'll likely be seeing SC2 this year. I. Cannot. Wait. Maybe we'll get a release date announced at Blizzcon in August? I was kind of puzzling over why there was even going to be a Blizzcon this year.


This thought inspired me fire up Brood War again, only to find it nearly unplayable on my 24-inch monitor. The game is hard-coded to run at a tiny resolution (640x480?) in full screen mode, and playing it on a widescreen just stretches it out sideways and warps the whole thing. So I found this thread:

http://www.bwhacks.com/forums/starcraft-hacking-related/29147-starcraft-windowed-mode.html

Get scloader2b wmode, and at least you can play the game in a window. Be warned it may be quite tiny. It worked pretty well for me, though I wish I could resize it to my liking.

So until next time, Bowie's in Space!

Friday Laziness: I shouldn't have eaten all those Thin Mints edition

I'm supposedly a grown-up. But today I ate candy until I felt ill. It was awesome.

Until about 45 mins later when my brain almost completely shut down from the sugar crash.

It really cut into my ability to post.

....zzzzzSNORT what? Oh, hey, fell asleep there for a moment.

Anyway, here's a link to the best new website I've found since failblog:

http://fmylife.com

Trust me you'll enjoy your weekend much more if you click that link.

Happy Lazy Friday!

Friday Laziness: more 3.1 class changes, I'm sick

Your getting junk from me today because my sinuses feel like someone stuck hot pokers in them and my throat is filled with styrafoam peanuts. If posting is a little light for a few days next week, now you know why.

• 3.1 on EU PTRs! No one has gotten on them yet, but prepare for a massive influx of new infoz this weekend.
• Ammo is basically gone. Seriously. I thought this was fake until I read the blue post. Now you just buy one magic bullet/arrow and you are set until you find another, better bullet/arrow.
• Replenishment: a few days ago, I posted a suggestion that mages and warlocks should get replenishment on one of their specs. Yesterday, it was announced that mages and warlocks get replenishment. Coincidence?

I'm being kicked out of work by my boss because he's afraid I'll spread the plague to him, so I'll see y'all next week.

Friday Laziness: Protector

This Friday's Laziness is brought to you by Protector, the incredibly addictive flash game you can play in your browser. I have now verified that it is entirely possible to spend all of one's regularly scheduled blogging time playing this game. I do this research for you, people!

Play the most updated version, subtitled Reclaiming the Throne, here.

It's a super-addictive, extremely deep tower-defense style game in a fantasy setting. Give it a try, unless you value being productive.

Friday Un-Laziness: Gear Tiers

Ixobelle's comment on yesterday's post got me thinking:

"until you consider that the loot from 10-mans is an entire tier lower in quality than the loot from 25 mans

this is arguing semantics, but isn't really true... 7.5 and 7 are both basically the same. the difference between an iLevel 200 item and an iLevel 213 item is pretty insignificant."

I wondered what exactly constitutes a "tier" of gear in World of Warcraft.

Let's start with ilevels. As we know, tier 7 is ilevel 200 epic, while tier 7.5 is ilevel 213.

Taking one step back to TBC, there were 3 official sets of "tier" gear for rogues: Netherblade from Kara, Deathmantle from SSC/TK, and Slayer's from BT/Hyjal.

Netherblade is ilevel 120, while Deathmantle, a tier higher is 133. Exactly 13 ilevels of difference. Meanwhile, Slayer's pieces vary between 146 (another jump of 13) to 154 (for the pieces that dropped in Sunwell). Further, 159 (another jump of 13) was the ilevel of the pseudo-tier available in Sunwell.

So maybe in TBC, Blizz established a consistent standard of 13 ilevels per tier.

But let's go further back. Maybe the old-world sets can shed some light:

The classic Nightslayer from MC was ilevel 66. Bloodfang from BWL was 76 (hrm...the plot thickens!), and Bonescythe from the original level 60 Naxx was 86-92 (most pieces were either 86 or 88, with just the ring at 92). So we can see that back at level 60, a tier increase was only 10 ilevels, not 13.

It's very difficult to make assumptions based on this data, as there are a few possible interpretations that jump out at me:

1) In the original World of Warcraft, Blizzard didn't really know what they were doing when designing raid gear. During their richer and more enlightened recent years, they've settled on 13 ilevels as a "tier" and will probably remain that way indefinitely.

2) The ilevel gap between tiers must expand as the player increases in level. So if the ilevel gap at level 60 was 10, and the ilevel gap at 70 was 13, then the ilevel gap at 80 is either something like 16 (add 3 every 10 levels) or 17 (add 30% every 10 levels). This would put tier 7.5 at slightly less than a full tier apart from tier 7.

We won't really know which of these is true until Ulduar is released. Then it will become very clear what "a tier higher" really means.

--------

Now whether the stat difference between the tiers is big enough to really care about...that's another question.

According to wowhead's item compare, just switching my 5 heroes pieces to valorous pieces gives me:

48 Agi 44 Sta 58 Armor 86 AP 21 Crit 5 Expertise 25 Haste 10 Hit

That seems pretty significant, but I'm not entirely convinced.

According to Vula'jin's most recent version of the rogue dps spreadsheet:

My theoretical max dps in full Naxx 10 gear (nothing from KT/Sapph/Maly except helm) with my usual 10-man raid buffs is:

3210.19

While in full Naxx 25 gear is:

3555.38


That's a 10.25% increase for replacing 16 items (I kept the Mirror of Truth trinket). Is that a lot, or a little? Seems smaller than I expected.

So it comes down to a matter of opinion: do you think that after gathering all of that gear, a jump in dps of 10% is significant? Was it even worth the extra effort? That is definitely debateable. And certainly not worth getting upset over.

But the thrust of my argument stands either way: tier 7.5 is more accessible to bad players than tier 7 is, and that's not the way it should be.

-Thanks for the comment, Ixo! I hadn't looked at it that way before. It's actually a big relief to know that I don't have to worry about scrubs in tier 7.5 using the gear advantage to brute force past me on the damage meters, since it's really not that big a difference, especially if they only have a few pieces. I don't really plan to do much 25 man raiding, now that I no longer have to herd all those cats just to see the content.

Friday Laziness: Supreme Laziness Edition

OMG I AM SO LAZY. Here is a 1- paragraph post! Or 5 paragraphs, if you like counting for yourself instead of taking my word for things.


How come this holiday season is the least exciting one video games have probably ever seen? Is it just because Nintendo has forsaken us, with their big releases being the glorified children's toy Wii Music and the brain-saggingly boring Animal Crossing? Or is it because every single other major release is a first-person shooter (Fallout, Bad Company, Resistance 2, Gears 2) or an exploration platformer (Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider). OK, Fallout is technically a first-person RPG and not a shooter, but that's probably why it's the only major holiday release I'm actually planning to pick up. Every single thing I listed is a sequel. Where are the creative new IPs (besides Left 4 Dead, which also has a number in it's name for some reason)? Most Xmases, I have a long list of exciting games I can't wait for.

What gives? Is it just that the gaming mainstream is straying further and further from my tastes? It definitely is, when the bestselling games are Call of Duty and Halo. Or maybe I'd just rather play WoW?

. . . or maybe...I'm just getting old? Have I finally outgrown your average video game? What am I going to do with my free time?


Sometimes I just like to wallow in the laziness, and let it wash over me like a mountain spring on a cool morning.

Fridays: now so lazy they're on Monday!

You now know what it takes to keep me from posting on my new every-weekday schedule: An entire continent of new WoW content.

Games that Rock: Wrath, so far...

Friday Games That Are Metal: FF7

Fact: Final Fantasy 7 is the most metal game ever made.

Sure, there had been metal games before, and there have been metal games since. But none can compare to this magnum opus of metallity. As Wayne would say, it's intensity in ten cities. It can wail.

While Super Mario 64 brought us into the world of 3-D gameplay, Final Fantasy 7 brought 2-D gameplay into 3-D, and took game appearance and production values into a new, mind-bending realm that we'd never seen before. 3-D full-motion video cutscenes! 3-D battle sequences! WTF is a polygon!?!

The gameplay didn't do anything that couldn't have been pulled off in FF6's 2-D SNES engine. But it just looked so good. And what did Square choose to do with all of that production value? Bring to life the most metal world you've ever seen. Here, in no particular order, is why FF7 is the most metal game ever created:


1) The hero and villain have impossibly large swords. easily twice the size of their own bodies.

2) The hair. Many games have tried, but none have succeeded in creating better hair than Cloud's. It was scientifically formulated out of pure Cool Molecules.

3) Sephiroth looks like he's from a hair metal band, only more androgenous

4) Everyone is wearing tight leather outfits with lots of zippers

5) The game takes place in a dystopian steampunk future where the main villain is an evil corporation that is literally sucking the life force out of the earth. Again, a smaller entity doing the right thing and combating a much larger evil has a totally metal, revolutionist slant to it that I can't help but be charmed by.

5a) The entire setting. Swords and guns coexist. A city made of metal plates. It's just metal.

6) That city is actually a giant gun.

7) The protagonist's best friend has a gatling gun for a hand.

8) The hero uses his giant sword to battle hordes of soldiers while riding a motorcyle at top speed down a highway.

9) He follows this up by demonstrating his prowess as a master Xtreme snowboarder

9) One of the hero's other friends can transform into Frankenstein, a Werewolf, and a Demon.

10) At the end of the game, the villain uses an attack that shoots a giant laser beam through every single planet in the entire solar system, obliterating them.

10a) This planet-vaporaizing laser beam barely hurts your party.

11) And finally and most decisively, the music ROCKS. It sounds like it was written on electric guitar. Battles are conducted to headbanging riffs.



And this is just a partial list I came up with off the top of my head in the past ten minutes.

What, you expect me to put actual work into a post for Friday Laziness?

Friday Laziness = Top 5 List (vol 1)

You know why I grew up liking video games? It had nothing to do with lethargy or shyness (I spent most of my childhood riding bikes with friends), it was because, at a young age, I loved things that were Fucking Metal. I was the child who played air guitar to his dad's Led Zeppelin records when I'd had to much sugar, and I was the also the child that routinely combined my medeival and outer space legos into new, warped creations, because a spaceship covered in swords piloted by a blaster-weilding cyborg knight was more metal than a plain old spaceship.

So because on Fridays I am way too lazy to post anything that's actually constructive, I'd like to usher you into the weekends instead with a top 5 lists of why x awesome old-school video game was fucking metal.

We begin with what very well may be the most fucking metal series ever to grace consoles: Mega Man.


I mean, look at the box art for Mega Man 9. It's not enough that Dr. Wily is apparently now a cyborg who has reduced the earth to a smoking, post-apocolyptic wasteland. It's not enough that Mega Man is apparently being pursued by a giant robot with buzzsaws for hands. He's got a giant cannon for a hand, and what do you think he uses his other hand to hold?

Another gun.

Fuck yes.


------


Top 5 reasons (of MANY) that Mega Man is fucking metal:

5) He's made of metal. L. O. L.

4) His real name is Rock. His sister's name is Roll. Get it?

3) This is a guy who has a gun for a hand. He's not fucking around.

2) The games had a feeling of solitary heroism to them. It was just you, a single robot, against an army of evil themed robots and wave after wave of their minions and traps. You played a rugged individualist standing up against the corrupt system with the odds stacked high against you. And you would have to conquer them alone.

1) The soundtrack. I can still remember many of the levels' tunes, many of which pumped intense techno beats accompanied by epic guitar licks. I would seriously listen to a CD of these things. Every time someone on the internet does a remix or instrumental version of this stuff, I am THERE, pouncing like a hungry panther. A hungry cybernetic panther covered in swords that shoot lasers.


EXTRA AWESOME WEEKEND GIFT BONUS WHOA!: Listen to The Protomen. They've set the saga of Mega Man to a series of original epic rock songs with a revolutionary air. You've been doing a disservice to yourself if you haven't already listened.

Go!