Topic Link

I don’t know about you, but I run a ton of add-ons. I run add-ons for fighting, I run add-ons for rep tracking, I run an add-on for auto-selling grey items and repairing when I go to a vendor. Blizzard, in the past, has taken some of the favorite add-ons and rolled them into the game (loot window follows to mouse, integrated quest map).
One thing that has always bugged me was the “looking for” interface. When out on my warlock in old zones, I like to search for ‘low-level quests’ in addition to pick herbs. On the current interface, this is an either/or option. You can’t do both, while logically, my orc could.
If you could provide input into the game, what would you have added to the Cataclysm interface?

I would put into the game 7 things:

1. An option to resize and move every window – Seriously, half of the addons people use is to do JUST THIS. I run X-Perl so that I can move my portrait and party away from the top-left corner of the screen. My entire focus is at the bottom and center due to cool downs and reacting to mobs. I can’t sacrifice the time to look to the side of my 28” monitor.
2. Sortable Character Selection Screen – I made a lot of toons, leveled them up to around 60ish before making my two mains. I want them at the top, together, but one is at the bottom. It shouldn’t be too hard to do…
3. MORE LOOT SYSTEMS – There are only so many loot systems out there: EPGP, DKP, Loot Council, etc. Blizzard could take a handful of them and add support for them. Currently EPGP lootmaster has bothered me to no end due to it not remembering sort order.
4. Guild Forum – Remove the need to have an external website; have a in game guild forum. Ultima Online has had this forever; it would allow for more communication between members who rarely see each other.
5. Quest Item Bar – like QBar, but a standard bar. I know it’s on the quest list, but sometimes I don’t want the list out….
6. Tabard Tab – I like my tabards, give me an option to store them elsewhere.
7. Bank Tab (Similar to a Guild Bank tab) to store Holiday Items – I like to collect these, but I will have to start throwing them out because I have too much in my bank…

I jump in my hydrogen powered hover-car and make my way down the highway to the super mall. I get out and onto the conveyer belt to the electronic store. I ask the robotic teller that I want the new tablet and a box of dehydrated food in pill form. The tablet allows me to do whatever I want, without restrictions and without faceless organizations telling me what I can and can not have on it.

*sigh* If only…

Today, the only way to get a dinosaur burning vehicle that heaves itself down the tarred rock road and shift our weight on dismembered cow hides as we trudge into a store with “geniuses” who feed me a large heaping pile of Public Relations BS.

Give me a decent tablet, with the ability to run whatever Operating System I want, Windows, Android, Linux, whatever. Don’t lock me into a certain version, or limit what software I can run on MY DEVICE.

I’m looking to Asus for hope.

Utter perfection!

We were all happy with our success; after being blocked since February due to refusal/lack of healers. Then we realized we had nothing else to do over the weekend…

We also killed Illidan! Not quite as impressive… but still a good time.

The rest of the weekend was just relaxing: fishing and dailies coupled with some classic television.

WoW Update:

As described Monday we are a GM less, but a much happier guild. I thanked everyone who defended me against the lies being spread around; and we have started a new effort against the Lich King.

Later Monday night I purchased 2 copies of Cataclysm Collector’s Edition from Amazon. I was unable to purchase 2 at the same time from the same account; I had to spread it across my fiancée’s account and mine. But they are both Amazon Prime, and paid with my account; so it’s a little annoying work-around, but we got them!

Anyways! Our Tuesday raid had a great turnout… of raiders who haven’t raided together. It was a little bit of a learning experience; we had a new off tank (I was DPSing, check for a blue moon). Aggro was a bit of an issue on Deathwhisper, so I tanked the Heroic Gunship… just in case.

I have been made loot master, so I had to learn EPGPLootmaster; it’s annoying and doesn’t always work… and nearly no one in our raid has it.

We finished Plague Quarter, only 1 wipe the entire night (Putricide; people had never done 25-man before). Not too bad for what happened Monday; I had expected a lot of no shows and QQ.

Lets hope tonight goes just as well!

Blog Azeroth Shared Topic – August 23-29 2010: Group relations: how to assist/protect

There is no official one-liner topic for this week, but it can be summarized:

Topic: How do you assist the group outside of your given role/how can people assist you in your given role?

Given the two roles that I play are Retribution DPS and Protection Tanking; I do quite a bit.

Additional Roles to Fulfill while DPSing:

• Reduce the need to be healed
  • Stand out of Fire
  • Sacred Shield
  • Instant Flash Heal
  • Bubble Hearth
• Ensure Healers are Add-Free
  • Kite Mobs (Retribution Paladins have a natural speed boost)
  • AoE Taunt off Healers
• Ensure someone Survives to Resurrect
  • Divine Intervention Macroed to target my fiancée the Shadow Priest

I take offense to people saying all I have to do as a Retribution Paladin is “roll my face” across the keyboard; I pay attention to the entire raid to ensure we survive, as well as being high on the damage meters.

Additional Roles to Fulfill while Tanking:

• Dispelling – I do a lot of this, just to help the healers out (one less thing to cast for them)
• …
• Looks like I only do my tanking job of holding aggro and watching the situation unfold/announce to the raid

There are more things people should be doing to assist ME while I am tanking:

• If you peel a mob off, do NOT run away from me; run towards me
  • If you can’t run, stop attacking
• Do NOT pull before I do
• Attack the same Mob I have focused
• Misdirect to me or any stupid Warlock
• Give me a moment to lay down a few moves to build aggro
• Understand taunts have cooldowns and can occasionally miss
  • Yelling at me will only make me not taunt once I can again

• What they can do
• What they can not do

Those are the basic categories. The categories are expanded to cover: number of users, number of computers, and ability to run concurrently. From a usability standpoint, anything that needs to be explained to the user isn’t very usable; and to describe some licenses you need pages.

Example Licenses I have come across:

• Select License
• Standard License
• Open License
• Single-User License
• Individual License

When just glancing at the name of the license I don’t understand what I can and can not do. They are no better than random variable names…

// I decided to name this variable Bob because he told me
// one day that every day is worth living, and that he hated
// Janice so he hoped that she would be removed from his life...
private int Tax_Return(int[] assets)
{
	int Bob = 49;
	int Janice = assets[1];
	// Remove Janice from Bob
	return Bob - Janice;
}
// WTF is Bob?

But there is hope, the Creative Commons license! I can understand everything with a glance. This site is under an “Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike” license, so you can reuse as long as credit is given and no money is made.

License types should include in their names to make them self-descriptive:

• Amount of Users Allowed
• Amount of Computers Allowed
• Concurrency

This would result in understandable license names:

• Single User/Multiple Computer License
• Multiple User/Multiple Computer Concurrent License
• Single User/Single Computer Concurrent License
• Single User/Single Computer License
• Multiple User/Single Computer License

I shouldn’t have to read for hours just to find out if I can put software on my laptop and desktop…

• • Friday
    • Another Failed 10-man Lich King raid day. Once again we were refused help from Co-GM (Call her “Liartyme”) in our guild (more on this later); even though the majority of people in their raid wished to help.
      • Logged off early.
• Saturday
  • Early morning heading to my parents’ house.
  • Replaced 4x shocks on my truck
  • Rotated tires
  • Cleaned, sanded and rolled on a bed liner to my truck
  • No online time spent Saturday
• Sunday
  • Morning spent putzing around Azeroth.
  • Eventually a good friend in the guild logged on to fill us into the drama that had occurred since the moment we logged off on Friday.
• Monday
  • Liartyme Quit.
  • Rejoiced!

Drama

At one time, our guild had enough members for two 25-man raids and four 10-man raids in Ice Crown Citadel. As time went on the turn out for 10-mans dwindled as people needed less and less gear from them. The guild eventually began to run one 25-man and two 10-man raids. I lead one 10-man raid (Team B) and the other was run by Liartyme (Team A). Our groups competed for first kills, we each received our fair share. Then Team A killed Arthas.

That was the final nail in our coffin.

With Team A having killed Arthas, everyone in the guild wanted to run with them. Members of Team B were telling me that they were on a “reserved” list for the Team A and couldn’t go with us. More and more people began to wait for the chance to run with Team A, and soon my group was running their alts/second spec to run our raid.

Since this is the end of an expansion, and the leaks of Cataclysm are ever present, people simply stop playing. Players see that early dropping items are better than the best gear that drops off the bosses. No one cares about the experience; just the gear (it’s sad but true). Our guild slowly lost members until we could only support one 25-man (barely) and one 10-man group.

But there in lies the problem:

We have two distinct groups, each with half a core group; one was hit and miss on Hard-Modes (Team A) and one was perpetually saved to the Lich King encounter (Team B). The notion to join the two groups, kill Arthas and then continue on with Hard-Modes was suggested by me (repeatedly), and had been shot down by Liartyme for weeks because:

“We don’t want to go backwards on progression.”

Apparently everything came to a head the moment I logged off on Friday.

Liartyme began her assault against me, and everyone in my raid group:

• Accusing me of Verbally Abusing her
  • Yelling, swearing and insulting
  • The GM was still under her spell at the time, and said he had no choice but to kick me from guild
    • A loyal raider of mine talked to him and they came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t have done that
    • It’s a game, I’m not that concerned about it to yell at someone
• Accusing me of wanting to ruin their raid
  • “Stealing” members of their raid
  • Not allowing members from my group to go to theirs, even at the end of the week
• Accusing me of wanting to prevent her from raiding
  • Not taking her to our raid
  • How we hated her

Her lies caught up to her once she began trying to stir the pot; loyal members of my raid began to stand up for me (I love them). That is when her tower of lies fell apart:

• She began to talk to people about transferring servers, and tried to bring a lot of members with her. Which was overheard by my raiders.
• All the guys she had flirted with began to realize that she was flirting with all the others
  • She had told all of them that all the others were “stalkers” and “just let them be, they’re harmless”
  • Every one of them she told was “the one” she wanted/loved/cared for.

I only know what I am told, but from what everyone has told me Liartyme had lied, manipulated, and conspired against the guild. Liartyme left the guild after being revealed to be such a bad person.

Team B knew for months how bad for the guild she was; but everyone else was under her spell. With her gone, I feel that we will be able to salvage the 10-mans and begin to rebuild our 25-man raid.

She was the poison in our guild, and she has been cleansed.

Every attempt we make has new players in it; players who have to learn their roles; players who need time to learn the fight; players who end up becoming disgruntled and not playing for the next week… Causing us to get a new set of people in.

This problem hasn’t just been with the Lich King, but pretty much every hard coordinated fight in ICC. Sadly it’s not only limited to DPS; we have main tanks (raid leaders even!) who just stop logging on. People are complaining because we are only focusing on the last fight and they want Emblems of Frost and Loot off certain other bosses.

How about we just kill the angry tyrant who wants to destroy every living soul on the face of Azeroth before we start going after your Tiny Abomination in a Bottle?

Everyone seemed to be happier when a guild member announced that 24-hour maintenance clears all extended raid IDs; that we would have to start over again on 25-man and 10-man. As I write this I hope that this is not the case, because I don’t think we will get the group together again to kill all the hard bosses and get back to Arthas…

I don’t want to go into Cataclysm being the only non-Kingslayer.

Speaking of Cataclysm, I can’t wait! I have already decided that we (my fiancée and I) will be getting collector’s editions. The Star Craft 2 Collector’s edition was so well done (and I had never played Star Craft before getting it) that it simply reinforced our decision. DVD, art book, mouse pad, pet?!?

Oh, and I guess there is a game included too…

But there is a dark side: GPUs are being used to hack away at your accounts, one random string at a time. The ever changing “recommended” password policies has increased from 7 characters to 12. Lets jump ahead of the curve with 107 character passwords, with each account having its own unique password. Because that will be fun…

Password policies have always annoyed me. How much will changing my password every 90 days help? Brute Force attacks don’t “hone in” on your password. They don’t get closer and closer to the goal. They guess in sequence. Your new password could very likely be the next one that an attack may guess! In my opinion, passwords should only be changed when a threat is suspected, not on a scheduled (or random) basis.

Anyways! My birthday is coming up and one of my ideas was a second GTX 470. Not only would I increase my power bill and FPS, I would be able to heat my living room in the winter! But the more I think about it, additional RAM or even a micro display would be more useful and fun to play with… So many things, so little money to get them with…

Source: GPUs democratize brute force password hacking

• More Desktop RAM (link)
• iMo USB Monitor  (no touch screen)(link)
• Blu Ray Drive (link)
• WD Caviar Black HDD (link)
• Smallville Season 9 (link)
• House Season 6 (link)
• All of Scrubs (link)
• How I Met Your Mother Season 5 (link)
• Metroid: Other M (link)
• 2x Wii Motion Plus (link)
• 2x Wii Classic Controller Pro (link)
• The Green Lantern Omnibus (link)
• Canon PowerShot SD780IS (link)
• Superman/Batman: Apocalypse (link)
• Secret Origin: The Story of Dc Comics (link)
• Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam (link)
• more to come…

I do, however, like the general look of this layout. I will continue to change it to make it more friendly for me to use.

Businesses, however, are out to make a profit. Profits can’t be made if the business is spending all of its assets on upgrading technologies. Sacrifices are made. The business’ technology remains stagnant for years; forcing developers to support these antiquated technologies or risk losing customers.

When designing a web page a developer has to consider how the page will look on multiple browsers, and in some cases specifically code for compatibility:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Opera
• Internet Explorer
  • 5.0
  • 6.0
  • 7.0
  • 8.0
  • 9.0 (coming soon!)

That is not an exhaustive list, but a list of the “major” browsers that are used (your experiences may vary).  As developers, we have been too lenient in supporting outdated software.

The more we have to support, the harder it is to move forward; firmly rooting our baseline technology to the past.
Imagine that a website is held between “New” and “Old” technologies by elastic bands:

The more backward compatible a website is, the harder it is to move forward. Eventually there are too many ties to old technology and advancement is sluggish. There is too much resistance to change:

The less backward compatibility that a website has, the easier it is to move forward:

Until, finally, no link to the past remains:

Eventually all ties have to be cut.

Developers should not have to worry about how their page will look on a Windows 98 box running IE 4.0; it’s time to move on… let those who refuse to update fend for themselves.

It’s time to stop looking at the internet through the browsers of the 90s.

THAT was my morning today!

Don’t make the user think.

1. “Borderless” window – No border? Using transparencies to have nice rounded edges, or even a circular interface? Great. Your program sticks out like a sore thumb on my very rectangular screen, with rectangular windows. I cannot resize or manipulate your shape in any way. Default functionality was BROKEN so that your software could look like this. Was it necessary? What benefit was gained from making it this way? More time was spent making the custom form than the rest of the program, I am sure.
   
2. Non Existent File Menu- The file menu; something that people hate and love, there are only a few situations where having no file menu is appropriate, mostly when the software requires no human intervention. Just because you can remember 400+ key combination commands for your software, doesn’t mean everyone else can/will/should. Software should have this, whether its the default file menu bar, a ribbon, or something that vaguely resembles a menu that can show users the functionality of your software.
   
3. Non Standard File Menu Structure – What, too good for conventions? Users have been trained for years on how to use a standard menu structure; most don’t even look any more when clicking on the file menu. They know Exit is last, New File is first, Open is next, Save and Save As are in the middle. Changing this only serves to confuse and frustrate the user. I know you want your awesome “File>Do Everything and Order me a Pizza” menu, but you won’t be doing your users a favor.
   
4. “Check For Update” Doesn’t Update – I like to keep my software up to date; and applications that check, alert the user of an update, and then automatically download and install said update are wonderful. What isn’t is a program that will check, alert and then launch your browser to the main page of their site to download the base installation file again. That’s not updating, that’s installing the latest version… If you called it “Get Latest Version” I’d be fine; I would not expect it to just update the program.
   Could you imagine that when you went to update your OS it brought you to a page to download an ISO image to install?
5. Floating, Non Dockable Windows – You went that extra mile to allow the tools of your application to be placed anywhere the user wants them, great. How about when I want them docked to the Application? I have not come across this very often, but when I do… it’s very annoying. Paint.NET is my biggest gripe; I love it to death, but I’d like to be able to dock the tool windows to the sides.
   
6. A million settings, but no Import/Export in sight – This is mainly just a hassle. Your software supports a wide array of user settings, to truly allow the user to feel at home; to get everything the way they like it… but no way to backup or transfer those settings to another computer. File systems crash, become corrupted or overwritten; if you have more than a handful of settings, the user should be able to export.
7. Normal Button Use – Tab should move the cursor to the next relevant field; Enter should close any “Ok” popup; Escape SHOULD CLOSE POPUP WINDOWS/MESSAGES.

Cataclysm is coming! The old world is going to be destroyed and remade.

Which town, quest, NPC, or zone really needs to be purged with fire, in your opinion? Will you enjoy dancing on the ashes of a particularly hated quest giver? Or is there some zone you avoid like the plague (plaguelands excluded) where being nuked from orbit could only improve the experience? And why do you hate it/them so much?

I cannot honestly think of a zone that I hate so much that I think the game would be better off without it. I recently finished another round of the 1-58 grind as a feral druid. This time it wasn’t too bad. If I got tired of a zone I would do some random dungeons and then it was off to the next zone.

Since I must pick, I choose The Blastedlands and surrounding areas. I had the unfortunate experience of having to level my warrior from 57 to 58 in this zone (I made it his goal to quest in places I never had before). Horrible design, ridiculously low drop rates for every quest, and more mobs close together than any other zone I had been to. Not to mention that the entire zone is red and orange… mobs blend in and surprise you when you’re trying to heal.

The saddest part about The Blastedlands is that it already appears to be “nuked from orbit.” I understand the lore behind the zone, and what it is supposed to accomplish. But believe me when I say that the only time I will spend in this zone will be the time it takes me to run from the portal there into the Dark Portal.

Other than that, I am fine with the rest of Azeroth.

Relaxing days like these don’t come often. Most of the time I am running from here to there or just plain busy.

I was able to snap a few pictures, trying out my Droid phone camera.

I need a real camera.

With Cataclysm only months away (we can assume), a lot of players are finding themselves bored with current content. How do you, your friends, and/or your guild conquer the pre-expansion slump?

First off, I wish that I could say that I am bored with the content. I am not yet a Kingslayer so ICC is still fun for me, and supposedly, my guild. We run one 25-man raid Tues-Thurs for 2.5-3 hours a night; and two to three 10-man groups whenever people have the time.

In 25-man we get to Blood Queen, and stall on her. It’s a coordination check and we have… “special” raiders who can’t hear their names being called on vent 20 times in a row. We have not progressed in 4 weeks.

In 10-man our random group can do all the way to Sindragosa in 1 raid night. However, no one seems to get on to go any farther. We have not progressed in 3 weeks.

Besides raiding, we are all leveling alts with more diverse roles for Cataclysm; people who have sworn off any role but DPS are making restoration shamans and protection warriors so that we can rectify the current problem that we are facing: not the right makeup of roles/classes.

I know “Bring the player, not the class” is the direction that Blizzard is moving the game; but if I bring 24 other players, regardless of their class, I could end up with 25 squishies and no tank in sight. Hopefully our army of alts can help with that.

We are using this time to learn from our current situation and mistakes; to make our future that much easier.

Personally, I am about to get my second level 80 character, Zagnut an orc warrior, who will be protection/fury. Zagnut has been level 76-78 for months now, but I had lost interest in playing him until I decided to run him through the Icecrown quest chains. I have also been slowly leveling my druid.

On the non-WoW side, I have been playing some of the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii, and have been making steady progress.

XP was fine, until I got accustomed to the benefits of Windows 7.

Not for all the speed, or glitz of the operating system… oh no…

Because of the Windows 7 calculator.

The trend with Cataclysm is to offer the players more to do; get them to play a more varied game than they currently are playing. I agree with this, one way to do this is to keep updating zones/quests/whatever to ensure that no one is stuck in a rut. Some ways to keep content from stagnation:

• Phasing – Obviously the choice for a dynamic world; one player at a time. This made the entire Wrathgate area and quests feel much more epic. Because after you finished the quest line you saw the world change. I feel that Blizzard will be using phasing a lot more in Cataclysm, and for the better. Most of the following ideas can incorporate phasing.
• Faction Based Landscape Changes – Along the lines of how we contributed to the building of the Crusader Coliseum and the capturing of nodes in Arathi Basin, there should be an area where the players must contribute for it to grow. This allows for a faction to set the pace of the expansion of the zone; so it could come out in a week or a month depending.
• New Quests Added to Zones – More quests added to zones can help flesh out the lore contained in that zone; it will also make people revisit zones.
• Don’t just update “current” zones – Outlands and Northrend are STILL zones that can be updated. I feel that these zones should not be updated early on in the expansion; but they should be updated with new content. The Lich King is dead; people who experienced the Wrath content (over level 80, achievements, killed Arthas, finished X number of quests; whatever the criteria) should see a Northrend free of his blight. We should see the benefits of our labor reflected in the world.
  • Perhaps Involve Chromie – “Hey Chromie, can you take me to when Arthas was still Lich King? kthxbai!” and you will go to normal Northrend. Talk to him again “Hey Chromie, I am ready to go back to my time.”
• Whatever is broken should be fixable – Silvermoon has been destroyed for some time now… you would think that any of the Blood Elf architects would have started rebuilding by now… Incorporate quests to help rebuild a zone then phase it when it is completed.

A dynamic world is more interesting and will hold peoples interest a lot longer. Games have created a culture where feedback is instant and our actions effect the outcome. A 5 year lapse in feedback and outcomes won’t cut it again; WoW must become more dynamic if it is to retain the players. Since Cataclysm is all about a facelift, the updates should continue even after launch.

After a long day of adventuring, where’s your favorite town to hang up your weapon, take off your boots or slippers and curl up with a glass of wine? (Or a skin of whatever swill you undead people drink.. how does that work anyway? I wouldn’t think you’d need food and water, but I see you nomming as much as the rest of us.)

What town makes you want to turn your charger around and race for the next outpost? Where you know the bedbugs WILL bite, and the slop on your plate will likely leave you with indigestion?

Be as flexible as you like! Capital cities, towns or outposts–even that little wayside moonwell in on the edge of Ferelas is fair game!

Favorite Places

I have to start off with saying that I enjoy the Blood Elf lore the most; and more specifically Blood Knight lore. So my choices for favorite places reflect that:

• Tranquillien – My first Exalted faction. I have so many fond memories of this zone as a fledgling paladin with my fiancee. Decimating foes with holy vengeance.. and running for our lives from bugged quests…
• Silvermoon – Of course, it’s a dead zone on my realm. But I enjoy walking the streets and looking at the Arabian-esque interiors. It just feels more relaxed than the other major cities.

Least Favorite Places

• Shattrath - By far the least organized city in existence. I have to look up where every NPC is every time I needed to go there.
• Dalaran – Some people hate Dalaran because of the strain it puts on their system. I hate Dalaran because of where it is. Who had the bright idea to place the major sanctuary city WITHIN A STONE THROW DISTANCE of ARTHAS’ CASTLE?!? I feel that at any moment he could have sent wave after wave of scourge at Dalaran…

I’m sure our next sanctuary (if we get a new one) will be placed in Deathwing’s kitchen…