May 2010 – Mana Obscura

The Jigsaw Man

Posted on May 31, 2010 by Gazimoff

Every so often, I see a concept or idea spread across the Warcraft blogsphere that just makes me smile. A great example of this is Sven’s Greater Internet Romantic Hero Theory. If you haven’t read it, go there now! Don’t worry about me, I’ll still be here when you get back. Sven’s idea was itself inspired by Pilfkin’s own theories about the Virtual Me, which is also a great read.

For me though the story doesn’t end here. Although I have a main character who I love playing, I also have an army of alts to care for and nurture. Each of them started off as an idea to explore a different idea, a different personality. I’ve got the traditional family man who still goes off adventuring occasionally, just to prove to himself he’s still alive. I’ve got the genius engineer who struggles to live in a world that doesn’t understand or respect him. I’ve got the suave young rapscallion who has a girl in every port and has trouble choosing whether to think with his brain or his balls. I have the bitter, lonely old man who’s angry with the world and everything in it, who would give anything just to see it all consumed in an inferno.

The MMO genre doesn’t just mean that I have one character that I explore and empathise with, it means I have a pile of jigsaw pieces. It’s like someone has taken a hammer to my mind and taken each shattered piece of personality to make a character out of. I don’t think that I’m unique in all of this – I reckon it happens to a great number of people. As soon as we’re presented with choices, we choose them all!

Just like Sven and Pilfkin suggest though, a character is a two-way street and it’s no different with a collection of alts. Sometimes I don’t feel in the mood to play a character. It’s not a case of “oh no, not the Warlock again” but more something like “I’ve had a crap day at work and want to tell people to go die in a fire”. There are other times when I want to cheer myself up, so I’ll log on as the mad as a trouser full of ferrets Roffles and randomly roleplay at people. Being silly and making other people laugh makes me laugh as well. It’s weird and I guess highlights a ton of approval seeking personality flaws in me, but you play the cards you’re dealt with.

I think that the characters we play tend to affect our feelings more than we give them credit for. Even if it’s just a case of feeling that the character you’re playing is cool and interesting, those feelings tend to reflect back on you. If you feel that a character is dull, plain or boring he’ll probably get relegated to the sock drawer of obscurity.

Meanwhile I’m not going to even try and put together the jigsaw in my head. Besides, I’m probably missing a few pieces anyway.

Getting Ready for Cataclysm

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Gazimoff

At the moment there’s this imaginary calendar inside my head. It’s telling me that sometime before the end of the year, Cataclysm will be released. It’s the kind of thought that brings a smile to my face, like remembering that I’m going to have steak for dinner tonight. It’s not quite up there with the feeling I’d get if I had… say two tickets to see Ramnstein, but it’s in that rough ball park.

I have this kind of ritual that I go through when preparing for an expansion and Cataclysm is no exception. It’s also something that came up with Blog Azeroth’s shared topic this week. Going through three phases of preparation for a computer game expansion is probably a bit extreme, bud didn’t you hear that Warcraft is Serious Business?

The first one always starts with me trawling round the computer game stores twice a week, asking if they’re taking preorders. This goes on until they’re either sick of the sight of me or they’re finally taking them. And not just any order – I want to lay my hands on the Collector’s Edition. I’m not happy until I have the piece of paper in my hand telling me that it’s preordered. I also make sure I have preorders with about three or four different stores, just so that I can improve my chances of getting a copy.

As soon as a release date is announced, I book time off from work. The expansion is serious business, and I want to make sure I can enjoy it without interruptions! It also means that I can be one of the first to have the expansion installed, patched and running. At least that’s the theory.

The second phase starts around six months before the expansion when I realise that my bank is full to the seams with crafting materials that I’m never going to need or use. I’ll make some kind of noise about having a bank clearout, but it never happens until everyone else has done it and the prices have fallen through the floor. Anyone for a Frozen Orb, stack of twenty for five gold? How about frostweave, fifty silver a stack? Maybe a few eternals?

I’ll also start looking at my characters, thinking about which one I want to get to level cap first (my mage) and get all the new recipes (also my mage). I’ll be taking a look at which characters would give me a good range of abilities on each server that I play (or which ones will help my mage the most) and make sure they’re prepped and ready. If there’s any gear that I can pick up for the alts, I’ll have a look at creating it. This’ll usually happen just after I’ve had my bank clearout, so I’ll end up buying it back and making a huge loss.

I’ll also make plans to clear out my PC and make sure it’s running smoothly as my third phase. I’ll promise to uninstall some games, delete some crap and maybe do a system reinstall in order to make sure everything’s sweet. I’m even thinking about picking up a copy of Windows 7 this time just to get off the concrete boot that is Vista. Of course none of this happens until the day of release when I’m holding the shiny disc in my hand and it’s telling me I don’t have enough space. Cue swearing, shuffling things around, more swearing and finally getting the thing installed. It’s then that I find out that it runs like a slug because of all the new effects and I end up playing it in 16-bit Sega Mega Drive mode until I fork out for a computer upgrade.

The upgrades also sting me. They’re never on sale, even though I’ve been browsing and passed up on a ton of special offers. I also have to choose the “ship it to me by rocket car or faster” delivery option. It usually costs me almost as much as the upgrade, but I tick it because I’m an impatient sod who has to see these crazy new effects immediately. This is also accompanied by comments from the Significant Other who’s still making do with the same machine she had five years ago and is wondering when it’s going to be her turn to upgrade.

So yes, I *am* getting ready for Cataclysm, just like I was getting ready for the previous expansions. But I’m also realistic – I’m lazy and easily distracted and will probably be cursing again sometime near the end of the year.

(Photograph of Palermo Airport’s luggage carousel by Bjs)

Getting The Most from Refer-A-Friend

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Gazimoff

If you’re a heavy raider or arena junkie there’s a fair chance that you’ve hit burnout at least once since you started playing Warcraft. Playing the same character, doing the same content week in and week out can make the game feel repetitive and stale. Boredom sets in and enthusiasm wanes. Luckily help is at hand in the form of Blizzard’s Refer-a-Friend system. If you’ve ever fancied having an army of alts, trying out different classes or creating new roleplay characters, RaF might be ideal for you. But when should you use it and how do you get the most out of it?

First, a bit of background. The Refer-a-Friend or RaF system is designed for players to get their friends to try out the game. It offers a range of perks to make the levelling process easier and a couple of bonuses if the friend sticks to the game for a while. Simple enough so far, right? The other great thing is that it’s a great way for players to “buddy up” and work on new alts together. This does mean that either you or your friend will need to open a second Warcraft account, but you may find that the bonuses outweigh the costs.

So what are these bonuses?

300% XP bonus for everything including mob kills, quest completion and even zone discovery. The bonus lasts until you both hit level 60, plus you both have to be grouped and “in range” (about 40 yards or so) for the bonus to be applied.
Summon Friend ability – this is great if you’re playing characters of different races, or if one of you wants to sell up junk or get training. Once per hour you can summon your friend (or they can summon you).
Bonus Levels – the player on the new account can gift levels to the player that reffered him. Those levels must be to a character on the same realm and in the same faction. You accumulate one gift-able level for every two that you gain normally. It means that if you level a character to 60, you get 30 levels to gift. The character receiving the levels must be a lower level than the one giving them.
Free Gametime – if your friend buys the game and pays for a month of play, you get a month’s play free of charge.
Bonus Mount – when your friend has paid for two months of gametime, you get a free mount. This mount recently changed to the only two-seater flying mount currently in-game – the X-53 Touring Rocket!

Know The Limits

There are some limitations to the Refer-a-Friend system. It’s worth keeping these in mind, as it’ll have an affect on how you plan to use it and potentially on how you spend your time in-game.

The big one is that it’s only good for getting characters to 60 – after then you’re running on your own steam. This isn’t as bad as it sounds as the quest hubs and paths in both Outland and Northrend are much tighter. There are also many more opportunities to PuG instances when you hit Outland, as you’ll not only find players who’ve emerged from RaF but you’ll also have Deathknights to lend a hand.

The second issue is that the RaF process only lasts for three months. After the time is up, the bonuses vanish. As a result, it’s probably best to avoid starting a RaF account until after any major holidays or other plans that are going to take you offline for more than a week.

The third is that it requires someone to create a new Warcraft account from the RaF invite, upgrade it to a standard account through buying another copy of the game and buy two additional months of gametime once the first month runs out. Keep an eye out for copies of the game being sold off cheaply in your local videogame store, particularly if it’s the Battlechest that also contains the Burning Crusade expansion. For the gametime you might want to pick up a 60-day gametime voucher, and while you can buy this on the Blizzard store you can sometimes find them for sale cheaper at places like Wootloots.

Choose Your Friends Carefully

If you’re still contemplating setting up a RaF partnership, make sure that you choose who you do it with carefully. You’re after someone who will stick with it for the three months that you’re going to be tied together. You also want someone who’s online at the same times that you are and has the same level of commitment to other in-game stuff that you do. The last thing you want is to set up a partnership with a hardcore raider that can’t play with you because he’s in Icecrown 25 every night.

A great way to test it is set up a 10-day free trial. See how your partnership fares over a short time period and get a feel for levelling with someone again. If it all works out then go ahead and shell out for the upgrades. If not you might want to contemplate looking around again.

Real-life friends, family members and so on make a great RaF partner because of the mutual friendship that you have. Just be sure to keep the friendship going when you’re not logged into Warcraft, otherwise the friend might feel that you only want them for their XP bonus.

Plan Your Characters

The RaF system is a great chance for you to try out a new class that you’ve never played before. It also provides a great way of getting around server transfer fees – if you’re thinking of trying out a new server then roll an alt there with a friend.

Before starting your RaF partnership, it’s worth planning out what characters you want to have, and which faction and server you want them in. Try to create a priority list – you might really want to try out a Troll Shaman but aren’t really fussed about another Gnomish Mage. Make sure your friend can work with your list as well – levelling two warrior tanks or holy priests side by side is going to be tricky.

Aim to have about three or four pairs planned when you start to give you plenty to do. Although it only takes about two days of gametime to get to 60 with the bonuses, you want to allow enough time to do your other ingame activities like raiding. You also need to think about who you’re going to give your donated levels to, with four pairs giving you two extra characters that you can get to 60 instantly.

Map Your Routes

If you’re going to be doing a lot of levelling, it’s important to make sure that you mix things up sufficiently. The last thing you need is to be swapping repetitive raiding for repetitive questing, as it’s just swapping out one boredom for another. Try and choose different zones to quest in so that you avoid duplication as much as possible. Swapping factions is also possible, although you’ll find that some quests are repeated on both Horde and Alliance side.

It’s also important to be fairly ruthless with your quest log. You will munch through quests at an incredible rate, with quests dropping from red through to green very quickly. If a quest goes grey and you haven’t completed it, drop it from your log. If there aren’t many quests for your level in an area then look at moving on. You want to make sure you’re in places where there are large amounts of closely packed quests that you can chomp through quickly.

Getting the Gear

A side-effect from the fast pace of levelling is that your characters will rapidly outstrip any gear that they accumulate. Heirloom gear is an option, but it’s not available to the person that created the new account. Plus, because of the XP bonuses on some heirloom gear you’ll end up levelling at slightly different rates.

If you can, try to plan ahead by obtaining gear beforehand. If you can craft suitable gear-sets for certain level milestones then go for it. If not, try to periodically run the larger instances such as Scarlet Monastery and Blackrock Depths in order to pick up new gear. A third person to help boost you through these instances is invaluble, particularly if you plan ahead and pick up all the instance quests beforehand. BRD itself is worth about four levels from both the mob XP and the available quests.

A great way of getting a good gear baseline is to do the last few levels (58-60) in Outland. The quest rewards there are fairly substantial upgrades on the stuff available in Vanilla WoW and should provide you with a solid starting point for life after RaF.

Still Interested?

I’ve used the RaF system a couple of times, and love the freedom it’s given me. I’m pleased with the range of characters I’ve got, especially considering that I’d have really struggled to motivate myself to getting some of them past level 20. I’m now in the position where I have lots of options going into Cataclysm and have characters that can fulfil any role. If you’ve struggled with levelling alts in the past you might find this is the boost you need.

Mixing Mage Mechanics

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Gazimoff

One of the frequent accusations a Mage suffers from in Warcraft is about our buttons. Apparently we have two of them and we spam them repeatedly. We ignore everything else on the screen – for all we care we could just have a couple of small icons at the bottom, with large yellow numbers appearing when we press them.

As mages we all know there’s more to our class than the robe and the pointy hat. If there wasn’t we’d be little different to Warlocks, except maybe with a better education and less irrational fear of sunlight. But how often have we peeled back the robe and looked at how our class works? When it gets down to fundamentals, do we really have the best game in the world?

The Gatling Gun Mage

If you think of a Warcraft Mage, you’re thinking of this guy. He spends his time casting spells as frequently and as potently as possible. The player can frequently be found mashing buttons, frothing at the mouth and cackling wildly. It’s one of those very pure and raw mechanics that instantly provides you with feedback on how you’re doing. Push Button, Receive Bacon.

It also means that being a mage is directly linked to your performance. If you’re the top of the damage meters you’re good. If you’re somewhere in the middle you need to push your buttons harder. If you’re at the bottom you’re a Warlock. It doesn’t matter what spec you play or what gear you have. If you’re pro it will show.

The Spellweaver

For some mages, a thirst emerged for something more cerebral and involved than just mashing buttons. A further concept emerged, where a mage would start by casting one spell, but would then elaborate on it further by drawing on additional components to make something truly special. Age of Conan was a game that demonstrated this, although it began to become more of a caster version of Dance Dance Revolution than anything else.

There is still this unmet dream of a mage pulling off some incredible spell, the skies going dark and the boss being hit with a column of fire as a devastating finishing move is unleashed. It feels counter-intuitive that the most devastating mage a spell has in his arsenal is the same one he’s been using for the last seventy four levels but just hits harder.

The Master of Buffs

For the real back-seat mage, the concept of dishing out short duration buffs and debuffs is a possibility. Working in a similar way to a healbot, your sole purpose would be to apply damage buffs to your party members and vulnerability debuffs to their target. Your job is then managing and juggling all those buffs to make sure the rest of the group still does shedloads of damage.

The problem with this model is that you become a passive and boring symbiote that cannot exist without a group to support you. You give them buffs, they give you loot.

Besides, there are no big yellow numbers. Well, none that you’ll see anyway. And life’s all about big yellow numbers.

The Ritualist

You remember those Warlocks? They have a collection of spells that require others to help them – the common ones being Summoning party members and Soulwells. To be fair though they also have a couple of other tricks up their sleeve – have you ever played Doomguard Roulette for example?

The basic mechanic is that a cluster of mages group together to cast spells in the midst of battle, pooling their power to launch a powerful attack at the enemy. Trouble is it means you’d need to take more than one mage with you into battle. It would also mean that as your mages died (from standing in the bad stuff of course), the amount of power in the pot would drop.

So if you were to build your own mage from scratch which bits would you pick? What would you choose from the jumbled box of parts in order to make the ultimate wielder of spells? What would you avoid completely – what would be the last chocolate left in the box? As always, leave your ideas in the comments.

The Spark of Excitement

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Gazimoff

Hype is a wonderful thing. It serves to promote new products and bring them to our attention. It’s also there to help build up excitement; to get us thinking about what fun we’ll be able to have when we’re finally able to get our hands on whatever it is that’s being promoted.

The problem I have with hype is that by making tomorrow look so incredibly exciting, it makes today feel positively mundane. It’s like I’m being reminded constantly about the boring drudgery of my boring life. It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to take a holiday. Fly south for the winter, do something interesting, that kind of thing. Wait for the snow to blow over and come back home when everything is shiny again.

I think Larisa mentions the same thing – we’re all beginning to feel a bit down at the moment. It’s like we’re being sent picture postcards from Cataclysm saying “Wish You Were Here”, yet we can’t fly out there for another 6 months or so when the ash cloud finally moves.

But hang on a minute – our lives aren’t dull and boring. We do exciting things on a daily basis, they’ve just become a little jaded and tarnished over time. If there’s anything that’s making us feel run down, it’s the routine and repetition we end up in. The boredom of repetition though is self-inflicted – we can choose to break that repetition if we desire.

So I’m making a commitment to myself. I reckon that I only play about a quarter of all the game has to offer. I normally do endgame raiding, heroic dungeons and some light RP. I always play spellcasters, moving them in the same direction and clicking the same hotkeys. Considering how much of the game there is available, that’s pretty feeble.

It’s time to mix it up a little. Time to make my own excitement.

I’m going to try and get my rogue up from level 50 to level 80. I’m going to learn the mechanics of the class, find the parts that entertain me and make me smile, and make him my own.

I’m going to get to grips with PvP in earnest. I’m going to get a full set of PvP-ready gear on my mage, kit him out properly, learn the ropes and get an arena team going. I’m going to try and find Gnomageddon’s desire to set things on fire.

I’m going to work on some roleplay themes that have been bubbling away for a while, and stop being a passive consumer of roleplay. I’m going to try and present more of a story to those I play with in order to generate in-game excitement and interest for them today.

There’s also another side to this. It means that I’m not going to be moaning at how boring things are at present and how there’s nothing for me to do, because it simply isn’t true. There are stacks of easy achievements that I don’t have, there are tons of quests that I’ve never done. I’ve not even begun to exhaust the range of content there is in the game.

This spark of excitement is something that’s inside all of us. We had it when we first started playing the game, and it’s still with us now. We’ve just grown used to it, forgotten that it’s there gathering dust in some corner of our being. It just needs to be pulled out and cleaned up a little.

Blizzcon? I’m Virtually There

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Gazimoff

The date for this year’s Blizzcon has been known for a while, but we’ve all been wondering when we’ll be able to lay our hands on some tickets. The great news is that tickets go on sale on June 2nd and 5th at $150 each. There’s more information about what you get for your bucks on the official Blizzcon site.

I’ll be watching it myself through the DirectTV feed. This year it’ll be multi-channel, so I can skip the PVP yawnathon and focus on the panels instead. Yay for choice!

As always though, the big question is what the in-game pet will be? In previous years the ‘con attendees and livestream subscribers have been given a small present, with last year’s being Grunty. Already the interwebs are rife with speculation on what this year’s will be.

Fortunately I can exclusively reveal that those of us attending Blizzcon (either in-person or virtually) will receive a Mini-Deathwing! As is traditional in these situations, there’s the obligatory screenshot below.

I think you’ll agree this is definitely a pet worth getting, and easily beats any panel or new announcement that might come out during the weekend.

The Composer and the Engineer

Posted on May 16, 2010 by Gazimoff

Hail to the Chief chorus music

Note: Minor mention about revised levelling system. Nothing that isn’t common knowledge already.

Over the last few months I’ve been using the Refer-a-Friend system to level up some new alts. It’s been a bit of a struggle – even with the perks and bonuses I’d forgotten how much of a grind the experience can be. More to the point though, it’s made me pay much more attention to the process behind gaining new skills and abilities, and how those abilities are then put to use.

Looking at it one way, learning how to play a class could be a bit like learning music. For a mage, you would start off with your basic nuking spell like Fireball, learning the rhythm of the class. You’d then build upon that with other spells, such as Scorch and Hot Streak, in order to create a rotation. The way that your fingers beat out a patern on your hotkeys is a similar pattern to a pianist – there’s a melody there that becomes increasingly complex as you gain levels. I think that it’s also true for Affliction Warlocks, learning how to weave their spells together in a well rehearsed pattern.

Looking at it a different way, you could treat it as an engineering problem, with each ability seen as part of an engine. To start off with you have a pretty basic engine that grunts along, but as you collect more engine parts you can start building some really fancy stuff. Of course if you put the parts together in the wrong way you get something that misfires horribly. Arrange the parts well and you have an engine that purrs, delivering meaty performance and incredible efficiency.

The trouble starts creeping in when you look at how you introduce new abilities to a player. Currently you hop along to your trainer, who teaches you both new skills and existing ranks of old skills at the appropriate level. And that’s it. There’s no real advice about when the new skill you’ve just learned is worth using, or if it’s helpful to your playstyle at all. Some of the best in-game resources for helping with this are other players, while Psynister’s Guides are a great “missing manual” for players levelling a new class.

But should we need these guides at all, or is this something that the game itself should do? Should the game be teaching this stuff to players instead, either through interactions with class trainers or by an extended tooltip method? Should we have to rely on the goodwill of other players in order to help us?

I think that Blizzard understand some of this problem by removing spell ranks in Cataclysm. It removes “trainer blindness” – that bit where you’re spam-learning a ton of skills. Most of the time they’ll be new ranks of spells you already know, with the occasional new one sneaking in. The idea is that by focusing your attention purely on skills that are new you’ll be much faster at incorporating them into your routine. I’m not sure if it’s sufficient to provide all the help a player needs, but I think it’s a welcome step in the right direction.

More fundamentally than this, I think that it’s a ripe time to have a look at how classes treat their skills. Do you want to treat players as composers, starting them off with the simple things and giving them a rhythm to build upon? Or do you want to treat them as engineers, handing them a Lego bucket of abilities with which to build an engine that roars? After all, the two different approaches require a different mindset and a different approach to how they are taught.

Personally I think that both are valid approaches, as players in general are a varied bunch. Some will prefer one style over another while a few will be able to handle both. By being upfront and helping to start that process, I think that players are much more likely to find a class that grips them to the end.

Maybe, just maybe, they’ll make an engine that sings.

Getting Real About Idents

Posted on May 11, 2010 by Gazimoff

Battle.Net Real ID Logo

Social gaming has been kicking around for a while. Anyone with a Facebook account knows what it’s like to be flooded with requests to join some game or another. Usually these games are joy-stealing fun vampires, purely designed to drain away any thought you had that they’re designed to entertain you. They thrive on being able to render players into such a catatonic stupor that they’ll pay real cash just to be able to press their buttons more often.

I’d lay odds that one of the big reasons people are turning off from Facebook in their droves (apart from the privacy concerns) is because they’ve had enough of being spammed by a horde of grovelling farmhands or inept Mafioso. The players themselves probably mean well, but finding hundreds of Xeroxed pleas for help is enough to try the patience of a saint. And even though you can ignore everything from one application, there’s soon another that springs up to spew forth a torrent of spam from its drooling mouth. It’s like playing whack-a-mole just to keep on top of it.

There are other ways to pull together a social gaming experience. Both the Xbox and Playstation networks use an ID that you can link to friends with and share messages. You can even use voice chat, see what your friends are playing and team up in games together. It’s a pretty slick experience and one that most gamers seem comfortable with. The key thing though about the setup on consoles is that it’s usually about playing single-player or basic team games. If I share my Xbox Live details with a friend, I’m not sharing details on all the characters I have in Dragon Age: Origins, just the games that I play and the achievements I’ve earned. I’m also using a nickname, not my email address or other information.

So why the big deal about Blizzard’s new RealID system? It initially feels like a good idea, providing players with a way to communicate with each-other no matter what realm, faction or even game you’re playing. Say you’re working on a refer-a-friend alt but a guild needs your help with a raid, it’s now possible for them to get you a message without having to resort to SMS messaging or ventrilo camping.

It’s also a big tool for Blizzard in order to encourage players to subscribe to both Warcraft and their next-gen MMO. One of my own experiences with dabbling in games like Lord of the Rings Online and Age of Conan is that I tended to miss out on things happening in Warcraft. Sometimes this is a good thing, such as when you’re after a break or suffering from burnout. Other times it can be a real hindrance – you become scared to try out your new game in case you miss something in your old one. By having a messaging system that works in both, Blizzard ensures that players can feel comfortably contactable whatever game they choose to play.

The difficulty comes with trying to match up a messaging system with more esoteric concepts, such as how gamers view themselves and their relationships with other gamers. There’s also the problems that arise from how you uniquely identify each player on the network, and how that player shares their identity with others. There are also issues with how gamers view their activities in-game and whether they feel comfortable disclosing those activities.

Gamers have traditionally given themselves aliases for use in the online world. Nicknames like my own are in common use, readily shared and exchanged. It’s how we identify ourselves and how we share that identity with others. The trouble is there are quite often several people who share the same nickname, resulting in names like switchblade6764. Blizzard’s solution was to use the only piece of information they have that’s different for each individual – our email address. In many ways it makes sense – it’s a logical identifier to build a system around. In other ways it’s a nightmare – we might use the same email address for our billing information, or for PayPal, or any one of a number of other systems. It pushes players into a situation where they have to think very carefully about who they would link up with over RealID, which in turn reduces the usefulness of the system as a whole.

As an example, I use a different email address for my guild’s website and other WoW stuff than the one I have linked to my Battle.net account. While my open email address gets tons of Warcraft related phishing emails, I know they’re fake by default because they’re in the wrong inbox. Tying my identity and my email address together removes this security. Personally, I would rather have seen a push towards nicknames instead of the current solution.

The other issue is related to presence and how that presence is handled. To give an example, when I fire up my desktop I’m automatically logged into Messenger. Across the world various people receive little alerts that I’ve come online. What they don’t get is status updates to say I’m checking my email, surfing the net, coding in Visual Studio or doing any of a hundred other activities that I can use my PC for. All they know is that I’m either online or not. And if I choose, I can set myself to “appear offline” and vanish.

The problem with RealID is that it overestimates how much of a social experience gaming really is. It’s true that MMO gamers like to talk to each other and have shared experiences. But it’s also true that sometimes a gamer just seeks peace and solace in a fantasy world, away from other people. By automatically linking a RealID to every character on every server in every game that you have, you remove that opportunity for gamers to have a solo experience in your game. You force gamers to go elsewhere and off your network if they want to play a game without being disturbed, without being watched or followed. It’s this aspect that doesn’t make sense to me, and feels like a strong oversight.

Gaming is evolving into a shared experience because players prefer them and developers want to provide them. It makes sense to try and stretch those shared experiences beyond a single game and into an entire fleet for players to meet and team up in. But it has to be done in the right way, understanding the social nuances and conventions that gamers have established and working with them. By going against these norms, developers risk alienating the very people they hope to bring together.

The Fresh 80 Mage: An Arcane Raiding Guide

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Gazimoff

Levelling a mage to 80 is no mean feat – it takes dedication, patience and practice to pull it off. This is especially true for the last twenty levels in Outland and Northrend, as instance groups are a rarity and solo questing is pretty much all that’s available. But once you’re at level cap there’s nowhere else to go except heroics and raids. This guide is intended to help you get ready to raid as quickly as possible.

Before We Begin

This guide assumes that you’re already a level 80 mage. If you’re currently looking to roll a new mage and level up to 80, I suggest you check out Psynister’s excellent levelling guides. Using these you should get to 80, but you’ll also pick up guidance on how the class works and how the mage talents contribute to the class mechanics.

This guide also focuses exclusively on the Arcane raiding spec. For other raiding specs I’d suggest checking out Empowered Fire’s guide to raiding in 3.3.3, or the info at Frost is the New Black or Spicytunas. Although Arcane is currently Flavour Of The Month, it’s worth being aware of other specs so that you can swap to them as the buffs and nerfs change things.

The final thing I should mention is that this guide is designed to get you started as a raiding Arcane mage. It doesn’t cover individual raid tactics or advanced strategies. For those, I’d reccomend the resources avaiable at the Elitist Jerks mage forums or the mage section of Epic Answers.

Playstyle

Mages are the typical glass cannon. They do a high amount of damage, but can only take very little punishment before falling over dead. As a result, your job is focused on doing two really simple tasks:

Doing as much damage as you can, over as long a time as you can. As a raiding mage, you’re looking for consistency – there’s no point to being able to frontload your damage in the first ten seconds of a fight. Having a consistent DPS rate from the start to the end of the bossfight is what you’re looking for here. You also want to stretch your mana as far as it will go – this means that you need to have a healthy mana pool and know how to keep it topped up.
Taking as little damage as possible. This means moving out of the bad stuff quickly and being very aware of what’s going on around you – dead mages don’t DPS. It also means knowing what spells you can use while you’re moving so that your DPS doesn’t plummet as soon as you start running around screaming. I’d also suggest having a good read of the healing tips for DPS, as we’re so fragile that getting on the good side of healers is strongly encouraged.

Setting Up

When getting any new character ready to raid, it’s worth spending time to freshen up the talent spec and glyphs. I’ve included a basic Arcane raiding talent spec below that’ll be useful for most fights. You might also want to have a look at it on the armoury.

From this baseline, there’s a couple of things that you can play around with if you’re feeling adventurous. Incanter’s Absorption can be a little situational, but allows you to use Mana Shield, Fire Ward and Frost Ward to boost your DPS. By dropping the points in Student of the Mind and Slow, you can throw a point in Magic Attunement to get a bit of extra range and throw the rest in Incanter’s Absorption. You can even take the points out of Ice Shards and put them in Frost Warding if you want to make this mechanism even more useful. It’s worth noting though that both wards are being removed in Cataclysm, so this additional technique might not be as viable. Experiment with it though and see how you get on.

For Glyphs, it’s again a bit of a mixed bag. There are four absolute must-haves, but the two leftovers are pretty much up for debate.

Glyph of Molten Armor is worth having as it makes all that surplus spirit on your gear more useful. Although crit rating isn’t as useful as haste rating to an arcane mage, the increase to your damage output is still significant.
Combining with the Molten Armor boost, the Glyph of Arcane Missiles will increase the damage your missiles do when they crit. It’s a win-win situation.
The last major one to go for is Glyph of Arcane Blast, as it works to improve the bonus you get from your spell rotation.
If you’re fed up of buying Light Feathers from the Auction House, it’s worth going for Glyph of Slow Fall to remove the annoying reagent requirement.
The two remaining minor slots are flexible. Most people tend to use Glyph of Fire Ward and Glyph of Frost Ward, but they’re not essential and depend on your playstyle.

Rotations

Arcane has three basic rotations: a standard one that provides the best balance between DPS and mana consumption, a light one that reduces your DPS but stretches your mana out for long fights, and an all out nuke that ramps up your DPS but drains your mana quickly.

Spam until you have four stacks of buff and procs , then cast

Your standard rotation involves casting Arcane Blast a minimum of four times. You’re trying to get Missile Barrage to proc, but you’re also wanting to make sure that you get the full boost that Arcane Blast gives. If Missile Barrage hasn’t proc’ed by the time you’ve cast Arcane Blast four times, just keep on casting it.

Spam until you have four stacks of buff and procs, up to five times maximum, then cast

This rotation is a halfway-house between doing solid DPS and having your mana stretch out over the duration of a bossfight. In fact, considerign the downtime that you get from Evocation, it can sometimes result in higher DPS. The rule with this rotation is to only cast Arcane Blast a maximum of five times. If Missile Barrage hasn’t proc’ed by your fifth Arcane Blast cast, use Arcane Missiles anyway. The casting time is longer and it’ll cost mana to cast, but it’ll also eat up the Arcane Blast stack and reset it for you.

Spam until procs , then cast straight away

If you’re trying to conserve mana, just cast Arcane Blast until Missile Barrage procs. As soon as it does, cast Arcane Missiles. You’ll lose out on DPS as you’re not get the full benefit of stacking up the Arcane Blast buff, but your mana will stretch much further.

Spam until you run out of mana

You can perform burst damage just by spamming Arcane Blast. This will suck through your mana incredibly quickly though, so only use it when you absolutely have to.

You can also boost your DPS through the use of long-cooldown spells. The key ones for an arcane mage are Mirror Image, Icy Veins and Arcane Power. Use them as soon as they become available on trash and general boss fights, or at the same time for a significant boost in DPS when you need it. Sync their use up with Heroism/Bloodlust for even greater effects.

There are times when you need to move around, like getting out of the Bad Stuff or changing fight phase. During these times, switch to using Arcane Barrage instead of Arcane Blast as it’s an instant cast that you can use while moving. You can also use Presence of Mind to make an Arcane Blast instant cast if you’re doing a lot of dancing.

It’s worth going to a target dummy and practicing all of these rotations so that you can get a feel for their nuances and build up some muscle memory. Being able to switch gears during a fight is incredibly useful, especially if several people are floor-tanking and you have a healthy mana pool to give you options.

Gearing Up

At this late stage in the expansion, your quickest way of gearing up is running heroics till you’re blue in the face. Get as many Emblems of Triumph as you can from running heroic instances and pick up the five pieces of Tier 9 gear. You’re going to need 220 emblems for the full set, needing roughly 37 instance runs to collect so it’ll take anything between three days and a week to complete. Surplus badges will end up going towards gap items (belts, rings, trinkets etc) or gems, so every extra badge is worth getting.

It’s also worth keeping a careful eye out for any other gear upgrades that might come your way. Chances are that any loot that drops will be yours if it’s an upgrade. The RatingBuster addon does help, but in order to do a quick comparison, there’s a couple of simple rules to follow:

Spell power is the most important stat, with haste rating being a very close second. If an item has less spellpower but much more haste, grab it. point for point they work out very similar.
Crit rating is the third stat to look out for, but each point of critrating is only worth about half a point of spellpower. It’s usually not worth going for if you’re going to lose a lot of spellpower or haste.
Reaching the hit cap is important for raiding, but don’t downgrade gear purely for the sake of getting more hit. You already get 6% hit through your talents, meaning that in order to be self-reliant you’ll need about 289 hit rating to be capped. Depending on the raid composition though, you might be able to increase it to as much as 10%. You might find you can get away with as little as 184. There’s a good comparison table on Wowwiki’s Spell Hit page.

When gemming your gear, there’s only four to consider. For your headpiece the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is undoubtedly the best choice. Red or no-colour (belt buckle) sockets are best suited to using a Runed Cardinal Ruby. The orange Reckless Ametrine is the best one for your yellow sockets, while the Purified Dreadstone is the best for your blue sockets.

It’s also important to keep your gear enchanted, particularly when you pick up an epic quality item. It’s worth having an Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, a Greater Inscription of the Storm and a Brilliant Spellthread ready for any outstanding gear that you pick up. You might also want to do the same with enchanting scrolls – spellpower boosts, hit/crit boosts or overall stat boosts are the ones to look for here.

Managing Consumables

Apart from the obvious need for a large stack of Arcane Powder, you’re going to need to bring a hefty amount of consumables. As you start out raiding your performance won’t be as good as that of more seasoned mages, it’s very important to make sure that you’re prepared for the raid. Part of this is making sure that the gear you have is optimised, but part of it means that you have the right consumables with you.

Fish Feasts are pretty much the standard buff food, but a cheaper alternative might be Firecracker Salmon, particularly if you’re in a PuG. Either way, you can’t guarantee that there will always be a fish feast for you to use, so it’s worth keeping a stack of these in your bag.

Make sure you have a stack of Runic Mana and Runic Health potions, as you never know when you’ll need them. To avoid using mana potions, make sure you create a Mana Sapphire at the start of every raid, and replace it if you think you’ll exhaust the charges. Also make frequent use of Evocation to keep your mana topped up.

A good number of Flask of the Frost Wyrm are essential for raiding. There’s no need to drink a flask at the start of the raid, but make sure that you’re under the effects of one during every boss fight.

Cataclysm: My Rules of Engagement

Posted on May 8, 2010 by Gazimoff

As the new expansion approaches, there’s going to be a huge amount of information released. Blogs and websites will go crazy, posting update after update on every single detail. The web will be awash with screenshots covering every single detail.

Some readers don’t really want to be presented with news on Cataclysm, and I can appreciate that. In order to be as fair as possible, I’ve listed what I will and won’t write about as far as this expansion is concerned. This will hopefully mean that those readers hoping for a spoiler-free experience should know what to expect.

I should point out that at this point I do not have access to the beta, and I’ve not tried sandboxing the alpha client. Until further notice, what I write about will be inferred from other sources of information. UPDATE: I’m now in the Beta, so I should be able to describe content first-hand.

What I will write about:

I’ll cover class mechanics in detail, particularly for mages. This includes what spells are available and how the talent trees affect those spells.
I’ll also touch loosely on professions, where the profession has a direct impact on the class. I’ll try to keep this as generic as possible.

What I won’t write about:

I’m not going to write about specific quests, even if those quests are significantly important. I want the stories they unveil to be fresh to people
I won’t be covering particular areas of zones where there’s been a radical change in Cataclysm. Again, I want players to be able to experience that “wow” factor for themselves.

What I’ll commit to doing:

Any post that might contain Cataclysm spoilers I’ll tag with [Spoiler] in the post title. If it’s a particular type of spoiler, I’ll add that too.
Anything that I link to that might contain spoilers, I’ll also label as such.

What I ask of you:

Please don’t post comments that include quest or lore spoilers, as I’ll probably delete them. If you must, please include a link and a tag instead.
Please feel free to chime in with your own thoughts and opinions. If you’re not talking about class specifics though, please try to be as generic as possible.

I hope all this makes sense, and is as fair to as many people as possible. With a bit of luck, this will mean those who want will get to experience the expansion as a fresh and new experience. If you have any questions, please feel free to add them in the comments!

Month: May 2010