Dwism.com

On Diablo 3 beta aka #D3

2012-01-30T05:29:00.000-08:00

First off, a shame-filled plug: http://dudewheresmybantha.wordpress.com/ (Dude... Where is his Bantha??) is a new blog from my absolute favorite blogger Calli.
He was the guy responsible for getting me to start blogging in the first place (please, don't send him any threatening emails, he has publicly denied responsibility). And he is a genius of a blogger (especially now that Righteous orbs stopped blogging). And he is young. And has all his hair. And is very muscular. And manly. Even if he only plays female toons. Which makes him even more manly.

He is also my guild leader in SWTOR. Biased? I don't know the meaning of the word. Literally, I don't, I'm not a native Britishspeak language.

Anyways, here's hoping that his new blog http://dudewheresmybantha.wordpress.com/ will do just as well, and be just as fabulous (in a manly way), as his old blog http://pewpewlazerz.wordpress.com/

Diablo 3 beta
So thanks to twitter and the @blizzardCS account. I am in the D3 Beta. How do I like it? First let me set the scene:
The year was 1996, Quake had released earlier that year. So had Tekken 2. (not to mention Duke nukem). But those games paled in comparison to what would be released that christmas: Diablo.
Before Diablo, I was a teen who liked games. After Diablo, I was a gamer who liked Diablo. I still remember me and my little brother spending the weekends on 3 hour rotation shifts playing the game. Before WoW, this was the game that I sunk the most hours into (combined with the sequal). I still think that the reason why my mouse hand creaks is after that long summer with D2s expansion 'Lord of destruction'.

In so many words, Diablo - for me- was where it all began.

So I was pretty excited to get into this beta. Even if I knew that Blizzard North where in no way involved. And all the key personnel from Diablo 1 and 2 are now on Torchlight (more on that later)
Even if I knew these things, intellectually, emotionally I was - and still am- in love with Diablo.

From the moment in 2008 when I was at the Blizzard Worldwide invitational in Paris and heard that guitar play those chords (great moment, all the kiddies went "huh" and all the elderly gamers started weeping.) I have been looking forward to this release.
However, the more info that started to pour in, the sadder I got.
No, I am not one of those "it's too bright and colourfull" morons.

I actually *remember* the old games, and not just the Hell parts of em.
To me, it was the playable characters. None of them stuck to me.
Sure the good ol Barbarian is there, and he looks better than ever. But the reiteration of the Monk? meh. The wizzard? shrug. And I really don't want to talk about the witch doctor or the demon hunter.

None of the lore, nor the mechanics really did 'it' for me. I talked about this back in September, and after having played the game I'll stand by this post:
http://dwism.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-biggest-problem-with-upcoming-diablo.html

The "oh no a click to another article- not reading that" short version: The Companions look way more attractive to me, than the playable characters.

Especially now that Torchlight 2 has released their playable characters

Sure the Engineer looks a little silly compared to the serious tone set by the barbarian above. (and this is Blizzard throwing away their cartoony looks of WoW and following the gritty look of Diablo, so it fits, its not the style i'm moaning about)
But C'mon, a *steam* powered tank! Every class in Torchlight looks like something I want to try, none of the classes in Diablo are something I and gagging to throw days upon days of played time into.

Gamewise, Diablo 3 is fantastic. I've completed it twice now, and think i'll go through it on at least one more class, so if any of the Diablo 3 characters looks awesome to you - get the game. Me, I think i'll be waiting on the first expansion with new playable characters before I buy it.

But I am giving it to my brother for his birthday. You know, for old times sake.

No longer a hardcore casual, just casual

2012-01-25T05:29:00.000-08:00

So something dawned on my yesterday.
I finally had an evening free to game all the SWTOR I could want. Instead I saw a documentary with Mrs Dwism, played for an hour, then went to bed early.

There where a time, where I'd log on when i got home from work, scan the AH, do dailies, then prep for raid (then -sometimes- eat dinner).

I am the only 'main' left in my SWTOR guild that have not reached 50. I say 'main' because we have some members who rolled alts on our servers to hang out with us, when their Empire mains, are not demanding their attention. Hell, Mr. Calli has a main at level 50 and 3 alts who are closing in on my level 40 main.

Part of this is because I have a 6 month old child, but she goes to sleep at 7 at the latest, so that really should not interfere with evening gaming/raiding.
Another part is that, I think (hindsight and all that) that the gruel grinding of hard mode Lich king, and the following 8 months of no content to raid, killed my last love of raiding. Sure I can watch strat videos of fireland (and I still do, even though it's been.. oh boy 6 months, since I had an active wow account), and miss raiding. But I doubt I'd find time to clear anything *for* raiding. Even if I still believe that I'd still enjoy the actual raids in themselves, but it's been so long I don't really remember.

I stress to underline that no part of this, has anything to do with the game I am playing atm. Leveling in SWTOR is way more fun, than in WoW. Only time I ever got a bit tired of it, was when I hit 36'ish and I felt I had to level 2 levels up before I could continue on my class quests, and the story had JUST gotten to such a exciting point (again). As a matter of fact I try and postpone my class quests on each planet to as late as possible, so I can do those in one go. Nothing kills story more than having another exciting storyline come and distract you.

What I fear has happened
I fear, that I have outgrown gaming. I truly am afraid of that. So much of my identity is around me playing games in my free time. Hell, the reason I have the job I have, is because I play so many games, and know so much about games. I haven't touched my xbox since two hours right after I got Batman Arkham City home, and before that, not once in 4 months.
I dunno what I'd do, if I turn into someone who comes home from work, cleans a bit up, starts dinner and then spends the evening in front of the television, repeating the "whats on tonight" line. Night after night after night. That sounds very close to my version of hell.
Maybe it's the whole, 'life has kindda changed, your a dad' - thing. Maybe its because i'm turning 30. I'm not sure what the illness is, I just know what the symptoms are. And this patient, does not like what he is witnessing. I'm getting old
I fear that one day, I'll be in a permanent state of this:

I really hope, that when my babygirl gets to that age, when she wants to play with me, I'll have outgrown this thing, and be all like

"barbie-adventure dressup???? I've completed it TWICE, but for you my love, i'll play it again".

But for now, I'll just take a slight step back, log in when I feel like playing, and cross my fingers that I won't fall completly out of love with gaming. Because right now, the only thing that is keeping me playing anything, is the fantastic people in my guild, and the story of Star Wars The Old Republic.

I did it, made this whole post w/o using the "I'm getting to old for this... sh"

Why is healing in swtor so bad?

2012-01-20T01:39:00.000-08:00

For those that do not know my history, I've started my mmo-career out as a healer. Hell this blog is named after the nicname my healer had (Dreamweaver, DW). And I've always had him in my backhand ready to help out, in case my group did not need a tank.
So it was with WoW, so I had planned it to be with SWTOR.

Enter; Washburne Whom I had (in honor of Alan Tudyks marvelous performance) rolled as a smuggler and planned on giving him the title Captain, and never changing that. So I rolled Scoundrel, and talented up in sawbones.
Now, I'm okay with the fact that it seems to take him *forever* to kill anything, he is a healer after all, even if my tanking companion seems unable to do any actual tanking... may just be a low level thing. Regardless, everyone knows healers, level up in group play. So I went group playing.

Healing is horrible in this game. Both because of personal preferences and because the game does not seem to not like healers. Allow me to elaborate

1. Setting up any sort of decent healing grid is a pain.
Honestly, when you have to look at tutorial videos in order to find out how to set groups up in the same grid as in operations, something is wrong. It is not very intuitive, it is not easily done and you have to set it up in order to have any chance at healing, because the default is not made by healers for healers. It's made by... well my guess is that the UI in general, has been made by a designer. Not a game designer, but an add designer. It has all the slickness and cleanliness as any add agency I've worked with, can produce. But it has no thought behind it, either. It was made to look pretty, not to be functional.

2. Nobody in the design process where healers
That is a harsh statement, I know, and it is more meant as a provocation than something I actually believe, but when you can't get companions on your healing bars. And you can't get the person you group with Companions health to show up *anywhere*, something is amiss.
I ran Esseless with a guildie on his Jedi Sentinel alt, so our two companions where the tanks. It was a horrible experience. He had to remind me of his little droid every now and again because I had no where to see it's health. And then I had to try and click on that little metallic thing in the middle of where all the mobs where, in order to heal it.
If Companions are supposed to receive a heal, either in Flash-points or in heroic areas, why not automatically add em to the group grid, so I can see their effing health?

3. (personal preferences) I want my click casting
This point might seem petty to some, but for me, this is the difference between enjoying healing, and not. It's to do with those blasted addons, that has spoiled me. Be it "Healbot" (my ol' favorite), Vuhdu, grid or whathaveyou. They gave me a clear view of HoT's, health and made it easy for me to cast a heal and the type of heal I wanted to cast. I could rightclick on a portrait that lacked health, and it would cast my big heal. If I held down Ctrl+right clicked, it would cast a HoT ect ect. Sure it sometimes gave healing a "whack-a-mole'esque" feel, but it allowed you to do what you wanted to do, when you wanted to do it.
Just looking at theese addons makes we long to play WoW again...

4. SWTOR does not seem to know what they want healers to do
Heal.
That would be the short answer, but it would also be wrong. Do they want all healing classes to be similar? Doesn't seem like it.
Do they want healers to do damage while healing? This does not seem to have been discussed. On one hand it seems that the idea for healers where that healing is boring, so the design of the class was that they (not unlike WARhammer) should be able to dish out whilst still healing.
But then why not give us the same ability as in WARhammer? two targets, one friendly, one not. Allow me to target a mob while I heal the tank.
Actually, this is something my tank could use in pvp too.
This was one of the greatest things about WARhammer. If you are of the belief that healing is boring, then facilitate us healing and dps'ing, similar to how WARhammer did it.
If you believe that people actually roll healers because they want to heal (shocking), then give us the tools to actually heal.
They way I see healing, is that the people behind the game, have not been able to decide what they want healers to do, or be.
Smuggler, do you want us to do damage too, while healing? Why not pair us in the gunslinger tree, instead of the melee tree? (This might change drastically if I ever get him past 30'ish, but atm it is clunky and akward to heal and do dps, and it seems to be a waste of my time to only heal - especially soloing)

Gone blackout

2012-01-18T00:26:00.000-08:00

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/stand-together-the-gaming-community-vs-sopa-and-pipa

https://www.google.com/takeaction/

Yes even few-reader blogs, like mine, will close shop if anything like SOPA og PIPA gets through over there... in America. That weird and wonderful and powerful country that is so very far away from where I live, but has so much power over stuff like this.

3 weeks in: So how’s the game?

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

Can you believe that tomorrow Star Wars the ol’ Republic has been out for 3 whole weeks (not including early access).

So how’s the game? In a word: great

So that is it? Silence for a month and this is your post? Really? And I even /w you in game telling you that you where awesome, just to get an invite to your guild, that is bt to the w AWESOME!

Don’t worry, I’ll elaborate. Besides being great, the game has 4 themes of flaws, besides the bugs and UI, which will always be problems for new games, I'm not fussed nor worried.

First flaw: the game is too damn great.

My alt-a-holicism, which used to be manageable, has blown out into full hardcore indecision’O’rama.
Yep, I’ve switched mains – and rolled new ones- more times than I care to admit. So far I am sticking to my Jedi Knight Guardian (currently questing in Balmorra), but my Trooper (vanguard), my jedi knight sentinel, my Smuggler gunslinger/scoundrel are all begging for attention and to - yet again – become my main.I’ve managed to stick to my JK for now, because a) I have to get something to 50 at some point, and b) my guild is in dire need of tanks atm.

Soon they will need dps, and then I’ll be stuck again. Most likely I’ll level… I’ve no idea. Alright if it was not abundantly clear, I really like this game. So this flaw is more of a praise. Lets look at what is not working.

There are too many Goddamn abilities.

I’m sorry but 2 bars filled with active abilities at level 30, is too many. You can’t log out for more than a day and still remember em all. At it get’s in the way of any kind of flow. At least for me. Especcially when; There is no notice when proc abilities… proc. Staring at your ability bar, waiting for Riposte to proc is not fun. Let me look at my game, not my bars.

Action house This might be rough, but the galactic trade network makes me think that no-one on board of this game, has ever played an mmo before.

There should have been 8 mirror classes at launch, not 4.

This one might take a little while longer to explain. No, I don’t need more alts to take up my time. Nor new stories. But I think that part of the reason why there are too many abilities per class, is because each class is essentially 2 classes rolled into one. And two – I might add – that are nothing alike. Vanguard and Commando play very differently, one is basically melee dps/tank when the other is ranged heal/dps. Why not be up front: We have 8 classes, but 4 stories.

Why does my scoundrel even have cover and cover abilities? He does not seem to have any talents (at least in healing) that supports this, at all. Yet he has abilities that in early game does support this, and does fill up my ability bar. Same with Every class I've played. They have plenty of cross-abilities that both use, but loads that you do not. It gets in the way of flow. It blocks class uniqueness. And it *seems* like this is only in place so as to cover up that there is “only” four unique stories per faction. In wow there is only 1 quest per class. And the only one still active of those, are the new rogue legendary. It is pretty effing AWESOME that there are 4 completely unique stories per faction. Just be up front about there being 2 classes to each story. OR take some abilities away when we chose class at level 10. Anything but this halfhearted clusterF… That is the current ability/class system.

It would give a better prio/rotation system. It would give a clearer class distinction, everything would be better. At least from where I stand.

/dw

To thine ownself be true.

2011-12-12T05:53:00.000-08:00

You always, always say "Be true to yourself," but you never say which part of yourself to be true to! -Buddy/Syndrome to Mr. Incredible

The day before the big day, and as the above quote reveals, I am having doubts as to what part of myself to be true to. This is all about choosing a starting class in swtor - Of course.

I don't wanna be anything other than what I've been trying to be lately

When you choose a class in an mmo, you chose more than just mechanics and pixels. You are also choosing how you present yourself to your fellow gamer. This holds especially true in such a story driven game as Star wars the Old Republic.

As a sidenote, if you do not believe me, try rolling a night elf hunter in WoW and naming it some form of Legolas. have fun!

With every class in Star Wars, comes a set of caricatures. The counselor is the diplomat/healer, the inquisitor is the schemer/corrupter ect ect.

And this week. The week before launch of the actual game, I'm starting to doubt which me I want to represent me in swtor.

I've boiled it down to two.

Trooper Vanguard

Jedi Knight Guardian

So both are the fighting defenders of the Old Republic. Both can be the protectors of the innocent, and tanks for the groups. I want to play that. But where do they differ? Mostly in two aspects. At least where I am concerned.

One is the melee, getting into the brawl, using a effing lightsabre, the other using a big gun (and a vibroknife), and using the (new for mmos) ranged tank mechanics.

So tried and jedi or new and trooper. At least when tanking.

The other place they differ is in aesthetics. Look at em. Both are damn cool.

One leaps into the middle of the fray, the other throws big damn grenades!

So far what I've done is this: I've flipped a coin. Like any true old pen and paper D&D gamer would. Allowing Tymora to help me.

Jedi Knight won. But I've decided to switch between em till I get to around level 20 before I make my final decision. How their stories evolve, how I feel about the type of responses my character makes, how their armor looks (yes I am that shallow) and how they feel to play will be the deciding factors.

For example I really felt that the Imperial Agent got extremely clunky once I passed level 10 and chose Operative. Bare in mind, that I did not level the operative beyond level 14, so maybe there is hope that they work better later on. As another example, I really liked the bounty hunters story (well, it had promise at least) but I dreadded the way I read his responses, and the way he *said* em. Those are the pittfalls I am looking to avoid.
If they both end up being equally fun and exciting, I've already tossed that coin, because I do not want to repeat my WoW-mistakes of having more than one type of tank rolled. Gearing two tanks is a scenario I do not want to think about. Especcailly since I want a dps alt and a healing alt too.

I'll get more into this once the game launched.

Oh and there is a guild.
http://www.swtor.com/guilds/251140/house-montague
It's locked for launch, but if you find yourself in swtor and feel a bit lonely, Look a member up with the phrase "I am Dwisms biggest fan, I love him about everything else, show me to your leader".
Or, you know, just say hi.

See you in game!

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes

2011-12-08T00:18:00.001-08:00

How DARE they?

Bioware, you are the scum of the earth.

We're happy to finally announce today that Early Game Access begins December 13th, 2011. This means that everyone who has pre-ordered Star Wars: The Old Republic and redeemed their pre-order code will have up to seven days to play the game early.

What is wrong with you? Did you ever stop to think that we players might have other plans? How am I supposed to be able to finish *both* Revan and my Republic commando series before launch? And what about my poor wife? HUH?? Now I won't have time to buy her a Christmas gift.

God Dammit. And my holiday doesn't start till the 16th, what if I get in on the 13th? then what? Did you guys just cost me my job? Thats just fantastic. Thank you sooooo very much, now my kid won't get any presents either because daddy's poor and unemployed. All thanks to Bioware. And you actually say you are "happy to announce" this? Damn you sadistic swine!

However, we still need to remain flexible during Early Game Access, and this led to the decision to notify people on the day that their Early Game Access begins.

Oh that's just great, so now I can't sleep either? Oh wow, brilliant. You are truly evil. Now I have to sit in front of my pc, clicking F5 constanly looking at my inbox. While I starve and soil myself? Are you happy now?

Damn you all to hell

OH OH OH and then IF I survive this launch, and survive playing 24/7 I'm going to run out of context in like 2-3 months?
Great. thanks.

Sincerely
Sourpuss neverhappy (MR.)

Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow

2011-12-05T07:40:00.001-08:00

Yes I'm sticking to my plan to make all December posts start with a quote from the poet.

So, Beta ended
Not with a bang, not even with a fizzle, but with a "Server Maintenance will start in 1 minute". That was pretty close to the most un-epic gaming event I can ever remember having been a part of.
It was such a huge letdown that all day I've been asking myself "did I really get up early for *that*" (in the EU the testing ended Monday morning at 7 am.)
I know it's very entitlement-ish (that is too a word), of me to expect a whole end of beta event, a la what WoW had back when that beta testing ended. But c'mon at least end beta with "see you in game" or "thank you for participating" or something anything.... Other than "Server maintenance will start..." and then shut down.

So after beta ended I stared at the final server list, being offline and going "meh". Not really the feeling one should get for a game you are supposed to be excited about. Because there is plenty to be excited about.

Firstly, beta wen't smooth. Game looks to be rock solid and ready for the heavy load of live. Especcially when you include the headstart ease on the servers we will get.

Oh and how do you ensure that you will get in early? You write spammy twits to @rockjaw where you call him a wide variety of colo(u)rfull names and bonus if you insinuate that his SO has male genitalia. Seriously, I've seen people do this. Try and look at the @rockjaw posts sometime. I'm glad i am not a CM some times.
But in relevant news

@Rockjaw
Stephen ReidNo, #SWTOR CE owners do not get more Early Game Access: http://t.co/meLNnQDL 30 minutes ago via TweetDeck · powered by @socialditto

(I ofc wrote him 52 tweets telling him to suck it! Suck it hard trebek!)

Sad new perhaps, but relevant.

What did I get to do?
Other than fall in love?
Sorry.

I got to try classes out. I got every single class of it's starting planet, bar 2: Smuggler and Trooper, my two mains come launch.
I am not spoiling even a fraction of their story (well that's not true, but i'll get to that) and I loved all of them. Some more than others. And some for other reasons than others. For example the Imperial Agent. Loved the story, hated the class.
Maybe it was the "pew pew with some healing at level 10-13 in instances" -mode I was in that night, but it was an extremely clunky experience. Nothing flowed, nothing clicked. it was just a desperate do some damage, but never any REAL damage, because you have to save energy for heals. Not very fun in my book. So I am considering leveling my smuggler as long range pew.
Also, like Spinks, I loved both the Jedi Knight and Sith warrior, probably more than I really ought to. I am a sophisticated man (no, really) and the whole dual-wielding power-fantasy thing, should be well below me. (thihihihi below me,.... DAMMIT).
Okay so I had fun. So much fun in fact, that I had to cheat. I had to roll a Trooper to make sure I really wanted to play one of those tanks over the JK for launch. Because honestly the bounty hunter left no impression on me, whatsoever, other than the fact that Meko was cute and fun. Anyway, I only needed to play that pretty pretty awesome Trooper for 3 levels and I knew I'd made the right choice.

That left me with Jedi Counselor and Sith Inquisitor, both classes that made up in story, what they lacked in gameplay. Perhaps the shadow tank or the shadow rogue will be better, but for the first 10 levels I was not blown away by them.
Also, when did throwing pebbles at someone equal hurling lightning? Win for the baddies right there.

I got a very limited glimpse at pvp too. Seemed interesting, but I'd have to try more to make any other comment than "seems interesting".

Then I got to spend one glorious Saturday night playing through Black Talon with two old WoWfriends. One of them being the soon to be active again blogger Calli of PewPewlazors (dunno if this is in fact true, but I will punk him to start writing again.)

And apart from Calli pointing out -glaring- plotholes. I loved it. It had everything one could hope for in a low level instance. Great pace, fun, lovely story (apart from the GLARING plot holes... make Calli explain em, I was in a shock and awe state), great twist (did you know that there are two very distinct dungeons in there, depending on whether or not you let someone live or die.. glorious).

AND as an added bonus to me and my other friend who was not Calli: after 20 runs (give or take) Calli had yet to get *any* loot on any of his alts.
And I'm not sure whether I should tell this or not, but very late, at the very end, a chestpiece did drop that he could use. There was an awed silence over mumble. then the following happened: 1 pass, 2 greed rolls. One player won his greed, the other was Calli.
Turns out it does matter if you click on need or greed, even if the item is for you. So much fun.

Something worrying
All in all, the game holds great promise in my eyes. And even if end game proves to be a dud, I still got 8 great stories to try out before I run out of things to do. So I am happy. They didn't make kotor 3, they made kotor 3-10!! So single-player RPG'ers rejoice.
Yet, end game looks to be at least slightly fun, so it is win all around.

But something about the beta ending, worried me. How do you have a big blowout at the end of beta? this is the first mmo (not counting Star Trek online) I've played where the two factions can't really 'reach' each other. How do you raid the Empires capital? How does the Mandalores spread fear in our hearts by attacking our homes, when it's a city in space, and not a castle that can be laid to siege? And other than the reunited Mandalores (face it, they will come) what enemies exists? Except Empire and republic? That was at least something WoW had going for it. Combined stories, bigger threats. ect ect.
I am curiously awaiting how expansions will handle this.

A rose by any other name. My Legacy

2011-12-01T01:34:00.001-08:00

My guilds name is "House of Montague", so I am going with titles following that genre all December long!

I am of course talking about The Legacy System.
In short, when your first toon completes chapter 1, you get the option of choosing a Legacy name. It is a sort of surname/title that you can use on all toons on your server. So you can have "[name] Rosebud" or "[name] Of the Rosebud Legacy" on every character you make.
The idea is fantastic. First of, it shows people who know you, that you are you, even on alts. If you become known as the bestetst crafter, nicest guy, bad-ass tank or whatever, you can still play on alts and have business come your way. Or if you want peace, you can turn it off and be a nobody.
It's one of those things I never knew I missed in wow. Especially since all pvp and pve in swtor will be server only. No cross-server anonymity.

Server reputation matters again
This is back in the vanilla wow days, where you spend months building up a rep. Where if someone acted like a complete jerk you could pm his guild master and ask if that was really what the guild wanted to protray itself as, and you knew he would get booted or get reprimanded.
No more internet fuckwad theory.

GOGOGOGOPULLASSWIPEFUCKYOU

Sure instances takes a bit longer, when people have an actual need to be polite to eachother. But then again, people act polite to eachother, and that actually also (imo) means that if you are not an anonymous body, you care about playing well, and not just be "there for the loot, going afk lol", because you could very soon end up without people who want to run dungeons with you.

And for pvp, oh pvp. Nothings better than running an battleground and meeting your arch-nemesis on the other side of the field, and screw any and all objectives to hunt that motherfucker down and hurt him. Huuuuurt him.

What I'm saying is, that server reputations will matter again, and I think that is great. Legacy system helps with that, if you have a good reputation on your server.

What's in a name?

I have two problems with this system: What if I (and the odds here are really really good), pick a name I'll grow to hate? Case in point, my username on swtor.com was made in a hurry when the site opened up, and I jumbled the letters from rampage around. Seemed like a good idea at the time. 3 years later, and 'Pamrage' is an eye-sore to me, and I can't effing change it.

Secondly. What name would fit an honest upright Trooper, an morally challenged smuggler and a battle-hungry Jedi knight all at once? For the longest time I was thinking about rethinking Skywalker, for example into Sunrunner, Clouddancer, Raincrawler ect ect. But beside these being sort of silly names, none of em really could embrace 3 such different characters. Not to mention if I decide to give Empire a go.

So now I'm stuck. Maybe I'll go back to rosebud. Or ill find some cool Shakespearean reference, that seems inventive and funny at the time, but in six months will make me want to throw up.

I hate names.

A look back at the SWTOR stress-test weekend

2011-11-29T04:42:00.001-08:00

I sure hope Bioware got their servers stress-tested hard. Because I honestly did not feel much of it.
Sure there where some queues to get in queue to the servers. And one of the in-game stress tests of searching for lightsabers in the knowledge base, went kindda fubar, but other than that... wow. [No never use that word..] other than that... impressive.

The game itself
Looked amazing, felt great, and i did not for a second regret pre-ordering the big CE. As a matter of fact, I think I just might have to get two copies, because mrs. Dwism was very horrible to me, using her feminie wiles to secure the computer (and the game) almost what felt like the entire weekend. Almost.
It was incredible for a seasoned gamer and mmo'er for me to play, but almost just as gratifying to watch a game semi-newb like my wife, having a go at it. And watching her play, made something very clear to me:

This game will never beat wow, it was never meant to either, but it will never get the subscription-numbers that wow does. If it gets 15% of wow's max playerbase, I think the developers are thrilled.

Why? well this game is tailored for a very small and very specific playerbase: mmo gamers who care greatly about story and preferably love star wars. I don't think there are 10 million of us out there tbh. The starting zones are filled with these expectations about the players. You know what a quest looks like, you know how the accept quest - do quest - turn in quest - find sidequests, thing works. You know to be looking at your skills searching for the rotation/mechanics. You know to ignore things like "kinetic damage" and you care about what your answers to questions like "please show those flesheaters justice Jedi" will be and will do.
My wife, did not.

And she has played wow for many years. Some of the stuff above she did know. But as soon as that dialoque wheel turned up the first time, she was ready to turn the pc off. "If they want to tell me an epic story or an interesting story, then I want to know what *they* wanted to answer to these dialogues." She said, when I told her how fantastic it was that you got to decide for yourself what you wanted to say.
I had a hard time arguing with that.

And it wasn't just her. I had to spend way to long figuring out how where and when to select my advanced class. Not which class. But where the trainer was, at what level and how to find the guy who gave me the quest to get the advanced class options.
That is all fine and good, if you knew that at level 10 you had to look for a trainer. Non-mmo gamers won't know to look for that, and I honestly doubt that they will read that crummy little 'clues' scribble on the side. Because who bought *this* game to read quest-texts??

And after I finally managed to find the damned trainer for my Sith Warrior, and trainer the dualweilding talents. I spend a good 30 minutes looking for a vendor that would sell me a second lightsabre. Then I spend 20 minutes finally finding a forum post telling me to first: a) talk to trainer, b) look in mail and c) open inventory to find new item hidding within all those greys, that you can open for your second lightsaber.

That is not taking the player by the hand.

Perspective
Do I sound angry? I am not, I love this game. I am just coming to terms with the fact that this will most likely be a niche game. Thats fine too, as long as the xpacks won't suffer from it. It is just something we have to keep in the back of our heads, if you ask me. WoW was a great game in taking in new players and getting them to actually learn to play their game. From betas starting zones, this is not the same type of game.
I had my dad try it out. He is an old school Star Wars fan, so he wanted to play as Han Solo (ofc, my mom loves Harrison Ford), it started of great! While I was cooking dinner he threw himself at it.

Histoy lesson; my dad bought me my first Super nintendo, and gameboy. Later playstation 1. And we played loads of games together. he isn't one of those "lets sit grandpa in front of the pc and laugh" types. So when he gave up after 5 minutes, because they where shooting at him, and he coulnd't aim at them (think he thought that since they had blasters it was a shooter), I knew. This game is not for beginners. It is for Gamers.

For us gamers, and those beginners with patience and a drive to get to learn it dammit, it is a great game. It just won't suck you in after 5 minutes of gameplay like one certain other mmo.

Before we get to stuff I like
And while we are at the whinging: WHY oh why did you have to put light/dark requirements on my gear?
There was a great post on the beta tester forum, that summed up said: Why did you do this? min-max players will skip dialogue, quests and story will not be important. Again.
I cannot kill this npc who rubs me the wrong way, because then I won't have light 5 and I won't be able to wear my belt.
FU... count to ten.
All of a sudden your character goes from being either a) an extension of yourself in the star wars universe or b) the type of character to want to be in the star wars universe to this: I don't care about what they are talking about. Just give me my damn light-side/dark side options and points.

This is horrible. This is why I won't raid. Please don't keep this in game. I want my character to only chose dialogue options based on what my character wanted to say or do, NOT because otherwise his boots will suddenly fall of.
Horrible.
Can't we change this? How about one one type of boot exist, but it changes looks depending on how many ranks in dark/light you have. You know, as a reflection of your action instead? It is so easy to solve. Why do Bioware insist on keeping it this way? /sadpandaface

Also, can't we do something about dialogue wheels? How about if you mouseover an answer you get the whole thing, your character is going to say? Too many times in beta did I click something and he said something else. As the best of my recollection one options read: "It might be dangerous for you" and what my goodietooshooe inquisitor said was: "If you oppose me, I'll kill you." ... Yea not really what I wanted to say there really. I was hoping more of the protection sort of way that it could be read. So mouseover and I see the whole thing.
Then you can not do it, when you do not care all that much. Just a thought.

Allright good stuff
This is sort of good in a bad way, but I loved way too many classes to ever justify having a life. I want to see all the stories. I want to see all the places. The weekends biggest video (starfleet Dentists, how I love thee) was one of the things that got me hyped the most. Look at those locals. I want to go there. I want to live and play in this game. Target of target will come very soon. So will addons. Don't worry. Everything will be fixed later. Classes will get fixed so that they are all equally powered. But those locals, are set, and they are awesome. The story is set, and it is awesome.
I bet right now, actors are voicing the next two expansions. Ever thought about that? And we don't even know what the emperor looks like.

For me, this is looking to be an incredibly great game. I love story, I care about lore, I am a mmo veteran. Even at one point I raided at a semi-top level. I've been there, I want that joy again. And star wars seem to bring it.

Biggest problem I have is ristricting myself to one toon at first, and hopefully only 3 in the end. But what order?

Trooper first! I think

If you are on the fence about this game. Please note at the things I am getting upset about. Gear and dialogue-misunderstandings. and none are even major issues in those areas. Conversations DO work. It's just that sometimes not how I wanted them to. Maybe that is actually real life for you right there. You want to tell your prisoner that you fear his life is in danger, and all he hears is "ill kill you" hmm.

But please, fix dark side/ light side ranked gear. Because that sucks.

December 16 see ya'll there (or later)

Our goal in this weekends beta-test for #swtor - pound those servers

2011-11-25T02:42:00.001-08:00

As our kind and generous overlords at Reddit points out, it is important to keep our eyes on the main goal of this weekends beta-test: To pounce on the servers, and hit em hard. The harder the beating they take, the better the actual launch will be (that is my summaries of this text ... that has since been [deleted] for reasons I don't get... Anyway I think the point is solid, the more we bang on the servers, the more Bioware can get good data on the stress launch will cause em, and give them a chance to make launch as smooth as possible.

Here are the talking points as I remember them
* If you are stuck at authentication or cannot log in. Don't give up. Keep retrying to log in. bang hard on the door, and keep banging
* Report lag, even if it seems obvious, they need to know where the lag-spots are (I acn imagine that the first trading post will be a tough spot all weekend
* Don't log out, ever. Be cruel to them, they harder we are now, the better launch (where it really matters)
* But be forgiving, this is a beta-stress-test NOT a "let me see if this is a game i'll buy" -test. That means that lag will happen, you will disconnect and spend many hours doing so. If you are going to judge a game on those terms you are too stupid to game. Turn off PC, go sit in a corner. Please.

In summary, be happy if you can't log in and keep disconnecting. You are helping to ensure that it won't happen when the game launches.

Be happy that you won't be able to game... yea it's a weird cookie to swallow, but I know it is a mantra i'll keep telling myself over and over and over, when I disconnect or lag or or or.

Happy Betaweekend

Talent calculator for the trooping tank

2011-11-23T02:11:00.001-08:00

Not knowing anything other than a) what abilities do and b) what the talent calc looks like, I've decided to go out where the ice is at it's thinnest and make this build for mah

Shield specialist Vanguard Trooper

If you are not planing to roll trooper the torhead calculator is a great place to toy around with talents for your class/specc - of all the calculators I've seen (three) this one is my personal favorite. Polish is polish, and it looks so very much like the Wowhead calculator im used to (go figure)

How to spend yor time in beta the best way (for yourself)

2011-11-21T12:04:00.001-08:00

So let's disregard the main reason we are all going to play beta: stresstesting servers and finding bugs, so launch will be fantastic!
And let us pretend that we are also selfish beings. What is the best way you could spend this weekends beta the best way possible?

Here are my answers to that:

Find your class/race combo

adaram is here to help you out

@Adaram
AdaramFor those wondering about #SWTOR class/race options. It's not pretty, but it gives you the information from the beta. http://t.co/2bJMlpLS 1 hour ago via web · powered by @socialditto

Find out what your main will look like, copy down those face/hair/tatoo ect scale numbers (aka face type 3, hair style 17, body size 15 ect ect)

Give the classes you are interested in a go! Remember, dps/tps/hps doesn't matter, numbers can be tweaked easily.
For me, Ill be looking at how two tanking classes are feeling. Do I prefer the Jedi knight or the Troopers way of engaging mobs and controlling the battlefield. At least I hope to get an initial idea of where I want to start.

Remember that there is something called mirror-classes There is no need to ruin the story for yourself, if you are looking at the Bountyhunter, roll a trooper. If that Jedi sage is looking like awesomesauce, try out the sith Inquisitor. No need to spoil anything you do not have to.

stuff I liked since nda got lifted (swtor links)

2011-11-21T06:18:00.001-08:00

In no particular order:
Outlaw's den

The very unofficial trailer/teaser of the Smuggler... colour me interested! Second class I'll roll now. Hot diggety

Legacy system (all my waking hours are dedicated to finding a great legacy name.. So far: hasaboner, I chose that in order to motivate myself to finding a truly epic one, knowing that otherwise all my toons will have a boner)

Justin.tv's streams. Some bad some great, but boy did I spend many an hour this weekend watching.

The fact that Im now downloading the game for this weekend!!

http://www.torhead.com/ nuff said

Also r2db ( http://r2-db.com/ ) is looking good, it didnt have the same bug, that torheads talent-calc have. However, you can tell that they are not as polished as the guys behind wowhead are. Its like chosing the polish of apple, versus the plentyfullness of andriod. I like both.

Edit: forgot the Red Rancor series of showing dungeons. Cannot wait for pt 3

pt1 of the awesomeness that is directive 7

part 2 starts kicking things into gear

and pt 3... is here nau

Short news: beta weekend confirmed for 25th-28th

2011-11-17T02:58:00.001-08:00

http://twitter.com/#!/SWTOR/status/137114739221340160

What more to say?
Oh, yea i'm getting more and more confused as to what class I'll roll.
Now I'm up to 3: smuggler healer or trooper tank or Jedi knight tank. Must be a positive sign.
Hopefully this weekend will help me a little bit to decide, because i am CERTAIN that a stress test doesn't mean constant lagging and chrashing server. Never ever ever

UPDATE
No real update... yet

Faction change in SWTOR...? unpossible

2011-11-08T05:20:00.000-08:00

The people want what they want. And my people (the massive 3 of em in my swtor-guild) want to play Republic.
And since those who insisted we went Empire, or they would not play, have decided not to play either way, we did a quick poll and the votes where in two camps: "I couldn't care less" and "immagoodguyyesREPUBLIC" (my paraphrasing).
So that part was easy. Then came the harder part. faction changing on the website. Could not be done. So I had to delete our guild, created on guild-launch-day, and make a brand new guild with the same name. And the same people. Only, Now I'm set to be a trooper with a really really big... gun

That got me thinking, should old friends decide to stop, and new friends emerge who where Empire, what could I do? In many other games (wow), there is an option to pay some money, and change to the other factions mirror class (or same class for the other faction) - in swtor, that option seems to not only not available, but it does not seem to even be considered.

Q: Can you have a Twi'lek dancer in your starship?
Daniel Erickson: No, but if you have the CE, you can have a holo of a Twi'lek dancer in your starship.
Q: Faction change?
Daniel Erickson: NO.

I intentionally left in the question just before the one about faction change to show how they usually answer a (more or less dumb) question politely and calmly, every question except the faction change one. NO.

This makes sense. This game is not WoW, it is not aimed at people who could care less about story, factions, morale-questions. The crowd who only want to play the game and have fun, are welcome, but it is not catered to them. At least not how I read this.

This is not a game that aims to please as many people as possible, this is a game that wants to tell 8 character specific stories and 1 grand story-arc in the most exciting time in the star wars universe; the time of the old republic. And I hope to the higher powers that I'll only get to play with people who get this.

Think back to the first Old republic game, some parts of the game-play was sub-par, some things where downright frustrating. Same can be said about the Dragon Age games or Mass Effect (DUNEBUGGY YOU*LL BE THE DEATH OF ME), but the story made you keep going.
This is what is being attempted to be made into an mmo. Every Operation, every Flashpoint, every Scenario plays a part in that grand story Arc. (Okay, so Huttball probably pays a smaller part than some of the other scenarios, granted.)

And I do hate. I really really do

For me, this means three things: I'll get to play a Trooper with a really really big gun, and that trooper, will never become a bounty-hunter. Unless I start anew with a bounty-hunter with a frikking flamethrower.. and I just might.
It also means something else; It means that even though I won't have time to grind out gear, or spend weeks raiding to see end game content, I can still feel a purpose in leveling a new toon, because the leveling has a point of it's own, and not just to get to endgame where the real game starts, asap. I love that.

But thirdly, it also means that, for now, I'll have nightmares about the general chat being clustered with old wow-players going "why do I have to kill that guy, lol" "where am I supposed to go nau?" "NO I didn't see the cinematic im trying to get to max level fast, not lol about in n00b zone plox"... /sigh
If I'm lucky they will all roll super evul bad guy Sith, and leave me and my Trooper the hell alone.

SWTOR is the future game for me...

2011-10-25T05:06:00.000-07:00

...But it might not be for you.

I am committed to Swtor. It holds everything I could wish for in a game. Or at least the promise of...
No matter how much I appreciate Blizzards next expansion, I am still cancelling my WoW sub, next month. I've preordered the CE (although I've discovered today, that I've lost my receipt).
I've pulled in my remaining vacation, for the first weeks of the games release. And I've explained to my 3 month old daughter, that "When Daddys game is coming, the two of us will be on a break, it's just something daddy's gotta do". To which she replied "aggggwhaagyy prrrhhhffff" while giggling. She has known me her whole life. She gets me.

Mrs Dwism on the other hand, has not known me her whole life, so she is somewhat less happy about the thought of me, playing a video-game over x-mas. Leaving her alone with a newborn. So there are still a few potholes left in my plan.
Oh and I'm guessing my family will want to see me over the holidays too - But frankly after Mini-Dwism came to this world, nobody really bothers talking to me, just as long as she is there. So maybe I could just arrange for someone to deliver her around the extended family for the holidays... hmm ponder more on this I will.

What is it I like, and why you may not like this game

Notice how I avoided the whole "this is not the game you are looking for", I am very proud of not falling into that pit.. fall.

Story
Story will matter. You will care about story. If you do not care about story, but just want to pwn some n00bs. Then maybe this game is not for you. Because if you skip something as important as story in this game. You will quickly discover that the quests are not roller-coaster rides of mini-plants vs zombies games, or dance dance mania or weird escorts with someone riding a spider. This may be fun, but for now, by most accounts, quests are used for two things: driving the plot forward (aka story) and letting you get to learn how your class works. So whattayaknow, there are a lot of "kill this" "pick up that" quests. This is an mmo. Did you really hate playing Gears of War 3, because there was too much shooter in your shooter?
If you are going to skip story, and aren't into pvp, then this game might not be for you. Go play with pandas.

The holy trinity (maybe the big four is more appropriate)
There are tanks, there are dps, there are healers. That is the working formula for mmo's and that is repeated in SWTOR. I like the trinity. It lets me play the role I like, and I've not ever seen any other mmo with a formula other than the big four (ranged dps, melee dps, tank, healer). And if you hate that way of playing pve, then maybe swtor is not for you.

Crafting
One of my favorite passtimes in mmos have been with crafting. I love it, and SWTORs looks to be grand. If you hate crafting, then don't do it! SWTOR might still be for you, just don't go whine if those who do craft make more credit and earn better gear easier than you.

PVP
If you hate pvp, then don't pvp. But I do think that you should give swotors pvp a chance. It looks to be a blast, and the way they let tanks play an important part too, combined with pvp with story and Huttball - Whats not to be intrigued about? Give it a go, if pvp is still not for you, then there are loads of other things to do in swtor.

Mini-games
If the only reason why you grind dailies or do "stupid" mini-games in other mmos is for the gear, then maybe swtor isn't the game for you. The only known mini-game (that I know of) is spaceship combat, but that won't bring you epic gear. Space-combat will only grant you space-combat stuff. Also, I'll bet that pazaak is coming up soon..ish

If you are gaming the system with darkside/light side companion points and social points, then swtor is not the game for you. Stay away.
Those points are meant as a reflection of the type of character you play, not the other way around. Please stop whining about that you "have to" chose to kill the orphan, because you need the dark side points. You don't. You don't need to kill any orphans you do not want to, and you don't *need* any points. The points will get there, if you want to look dark and seedy. And there is no gear withheld from you, if you do not max out your light side points. There are gear-looks, withheld from you, but "cape of über power" that requires +72 dark side points, will have a counterpart with same gear-stats but which is made for neutral toons. So stop gaming a system, only thing you will achieve is you will ruin the game for yourself.

What I am not trying to say

Is to stay away from this game. What I am trying to say, is: Don't go into this game with the hopes of it being something it is not going to be. Hell, the things I like now, may even change before release. Maybe you will be required to have x amount of light/dark side points to be able to enter Flashpoints. Look at what the game offers or hopes to offer, and not what you want it to offer. I read somewhere about some players wanting to try out Star Wars Galaxies first in order to see if they would like swtor. That's not good. Hopefully what I've written here, will get you excited for the game, I know I am. And if you are, I'll see you in game, where I will tank n spank n pvp ya'll as a... well so far as a Bounty hunter, but hopefully I'll get into some beta first to see how it all plays out.

Until the holidays and launch. Have fun, and pray with me for pazaak!

Pandaren - Just what the Doc ordered

2011-10-22T05:19:00.000-07:00

Before this weekends WoW announcement of pandarens misty Expansion, I wrote this in a comment over on Spinksville:

[In regards to the new expansion] preferably not one with pandas in it. If they do announce mists of Pandora, to me, that would mean they have gone back on one too many promises.

What I would hope for is one last expansion, where they fight of Sargeras’ Burning Legion, holding them of Azeroth permanently. Thus ending the saga of WoW with a bang, rather than having it fizzle out due to fewer and fewer subscribers. To alas, that will never ever happen

So why am I now claiming that MoP (Mists of Pandaria) is just what the Doc ordered? Well mostly because the rumors I had read about what the expansion would hold, where mostly unfounded. But what does the expansion hold, that I think will save WoW?
Let's take a look at what it has to offer (and what it, thankfully, does not)

New Class
- Gone is the adult themed dangerous DeathKnight, the (let's face it) Emo-class of WoW. And in comes the ninja. Sure they call him a monk, but to kids, that's just a mysterious Ninja. And kids is what WoW is all about. There are no complicated "father raised me to be a king, but i killed him and has myself become death incarnated" -themed Arthas. There are drunken pandaars, and... pretty landscapes.

New race.
They are cute, they are fun. That is something the Horde has been serverly missing. A non-brooding proud warrior or seedy undead'ish race. Alliance have both Gnome and Dwarf already, but still in my optics that is a race-choice that will be popular. So popular in fact, that they skipped it for The Burning Crusade as the new Alliance class, and instead Gave em to both Horde and Alliance. That - to me- speaks volumes on just how popular the Pandaars are out there.

Something for the kids
Like I mentioned before, WoW has had it's fair share of adult themes. Incest, patricide, Corruption ect ect ect. Now there will be Pokemon-ish combat where cute pets battle it out. There will be Public Quests (took em long enough) that gives you easy access to grand heroic type of stories. And like I said, a cool class, and a cool race. Not necessarily a deep class or race, but cool easygoing and fun.

Something for pvp
The whole expansion is about the war between the alliance and the horde, there isn't a big bad pve boss. So yea, pvp players will be happy

Something for pve
Challenge-mode dungeons, World bosses, Scenarios. Note that non of the new stuff is deep, but instead easy going and fun.

Something for the casual players
Look above, all the new things are for casual players. They even made the talent-system even easier. Historically there has really not been all that much for casual players to do, once they hit level-cap. Dailies, professions and digging, and that was pretty much it. Now, however, dungeons are made to be even shorter. So you "won't have to do just one per night". Any non-casual gamer would frown at that qoute, because not since vanilla have gamers felt like there was only time for one dungeon per night. But for casual players (and speaking as one since I got my baby-girl) finding time for ONE heroic per WEEK, is a hard job. So I can definitely see where they are coming from.

Still dark themes
The Mantid are ready to get more fleshed out. Oh there will be dark and cool and oh-wow things also.

Point is
Blizz have realised that hardcore gamers will always find plenty things to do. They will raid, they will pvp, they will raid with alts, so they can swap for perfect group setups. They will spend 50 hours camping a spot for a world boss spawn. Hardcore, are like that. So why cater to them? Now the casuals will be like Tobolds wife (and to some extend me, these days) They will level an alt from 1-85, look around. and reroll class. They can only do that so many times before they cancel their sub. With this expansion all of a sudden casuals will have plenty of stuff to do, other than leveling.

... also, Tauren Monk? Win! (or gnome monk)

What I am trying to get at, is that you can't compare Lightsabers with Pandas. If you do, you dont get it.
Wow has become a game for *everyone*. There are so many types of people playing this game. There won't be in swtor. WoW has an incredible wide appeal, swtor won't. WoW will with this expansion ensure that players like me, will return if swtor turns out to be yet another Conan/Aion/Global agenda/WAR ect ect game. A game that promises a lot, but do not deliver.

In fact, in order to ensure that I won't play swtor for very long, It only needs to fail at ensureing that I have plenty to do at end-game other than raids/dungeons/space-ship minigames.

So WoW has done everything right, in making sure that people who like or liked wow will continue to play, or return. and it has done a whole lot to ensure that new gamers will give it a go. Try selling wrath to your 12 year old Niece. Fat chance.
Try selling MoP to either a niece or a nephew. Won't be hard. Because it is a much wider game now, than both Wrath and Cata was.

60 days (or 8 and a half week) left until launch

2011-10-21T05:25:00.000-07:00

So there is less than 60 days left, when this post airs. Loads of news have hit the web since my last post. But if you are looking for a swtor news site you are better of asking a jedi, or giving in to your inner darth hater.

This blog has (until I get to do some actual class testing) changed focus from sith warrior tank to Bounty hunter tank. Hot damn, theres aoe, there is fire, there is funsies!
And as I've posted earlier, the Sith warrior seems to be all about teenage angst and spiky haired morons screaming at each other. Unless I find some complexity in that class, I think they are not for me. And so far, I have not. Only redeeming aspect of Sith Warrior is the (greatly recommended) swtor book Decieved. I really like the moral questions and - balance that Darth Malgus deals... or tries to deal with. But that is one drop in a sea of "no, I don't want to play that", I'm afraid. The final nail in the deciding coffin was *the* trailer. You know the one.
This one The one where the bounty hunter says: "You will realise what a complete Idiot you are" - after a Jedi tried to mind-trick him. I love love love that.

Since my last post, the Embargo for game magazines got lifted, and loads of previews have swarmed the web.

(Darth hater has gathered most up)

Hey.
Nice timing, right on top of BlizzCon. Honestly it couldn't have waited a week, so you didn't seem as petty as you do right now Bioware? No? Okay then. Maybe this Fridays update will be "free betas for everyone who cancels their sub to you-know-what!!"

So what is a guy to do for the next 60 days? I'll tell ye: Batman Arkham City, casual wow - taking my time to say goodbye to friends in game and the world itself. And then of course there is this.

The two biggest thing to hit your speakers since 2008

Firstly the biggest love of my life, Mr Tom Waits (musically, of course... then again, He wouldn't have to sing many songs to me to not get kicked out of my bed... erhmm) has released a new album, telling us we are just the same kind of bad as [him] me. The reviews I've read so far, indicate that this is -if not *the* best- one of his best albums to date, and one of his most important ones to boot. If you have not listened to Tom Waits before, you have like 17 albums to get through, and a world of joyment. I recommend you start here. Because that is the song my daughter got named after

Secondly Maynard James Keenan launched a new record from his side project "Pusicfer", and the previews i've read suggest that this one is.. just awesome. If you have not heard of him yet.. Well I recommend you start with some of the later Tool and then begin loving Pusicfer. But honestly, if you have neither heard of Tool, Tom Waits or Puscifer, Then I don't think we could ever be friends.

So what does all this mean

It means that until the game hits, and this blog -most likely- starts focusing on Bounty hunters tanking, things just might get a tiny bit quieter than readers are used to. Only thing I could see changing this, is if I get some access to some beta, and change my main.
What I have planned is trying to see what sort of official info I can find, about how the different classes work - especially Bounty hunter tanking and Sith Warrior tanking- and writing about that. There is no shortage of more-or-less legal and NDA breaking posts, and movies in the seedier parts of the internet, talking about this. But I am trying to keep my hands as clean as I can. (So far I've managed to stay clean when posting... But I just may have spend a crackload of time reading and watching stuff from certain cake-oriented sites).

the Swtor beta mail gate or the swtorgate

2011-09-30T00:29:00.000-07:00

So that was a new way for me to wake up. Checked my phone, saw two mails from bioware. Something about beta.

WOKE THE FUcK UP

Turned on pc, logged into www.swtor.com/tester saw nothing new. Got confused. Read email more in depth than just the header. Oh fyi this is what the mails looked like

And this is what the headers looked like (those are taken from Reddit)

Turns out it was all a huge mistake, because I am still not in any beta

Earlier today, two e-mails were sent to members of the Star Wars: The Old Republic community. These e-mails were sent to a larger group than intended, and have caused some confusion in the community. We can confirm that these e-mails were from EA and BioWare and apologize for any confusion they have caused. Please note that receiving these e-mails does not affect your chances to be invited to test the game. Thank you all for your understanding!

Some people are (and I am not kidding here) threatening to cancel their order of the game over this. Personally, something like this doesn't bother me. It was a human error and not anything deliberate. Bioware has made it clear that this means nothing to the beta-testing status of those who received me mails (aka we are not flagged as having participated and will therefor not be eligible for another test). Those of us who received this erroneous mail are neither better or worse of than anyone else. We where just lucky to get this years best wake-up call.

I am still looking forward to the game, very much so. And I am still very much hoping to get into beta (either testing or a weekend) so I can honey-pot lure more of my friends to start playing this.

You can do it guys, get that Swtor

So in short: Got a fun email, doesn't affect anything. Still looking forward to the game.
Happy escalated f5 day everyone (aka friday-update day)

Let's get happy about SWTOR again - tank classes

2011-09-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

..Or I guess, rather, let's get me happy about swtor again.

There has been some snickering at bloggers who felt sour on this whole release date thing

@SwtorLife Cynical much? Sheesh

And I guess that indirectly hits me too. And I know it is a silly of me to feel weird about how they launched the whole release date news, considering the build up it had. Well, it is out of my system now. I'm done complaining.

Now I am just longing for some more in depth on the classes, how their mechanics work. For example, is the Sith Warrior -Juggernaut - immortal class, will it work like (dare I compare? Is it even fair? - Well It seems I dare rhyme) Wow's warrior class? building up rage to perform actions ect. - Will it have a shield?

I've heard that the Sith inquisitor's mechanics are very similar to a hybrid of the Blood-Death knight and rogue, dodging attacks... or maybe not, I hear lot's of things and they sometimes counter each-other. But I have no idea.
- Then again, I don't really have an interest in the inquisitor, because honestly, I find the idea of that class tanking and healing, to be very... odd, given the class is in my eyes a spanish inquisitor, remade. And they don't heal nobody, nor do they take any form of beatings for anyone. Maybe that's just me.

What I am concerned about, is how the two other tanks on the Empire side of things, and that is the immortal (sith warrior) and The Shield tech (Bounty hunter)

Start up, the best overview I've seen is from AskaJedi and it's coloumn 'The Bacta tank'
Not a whole lot, but enough to get an idea of what's what. So for me, my choice is between this guy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x3b68_f-h8&feature=player_profilepage#t=62s (can't seem to figure out how to put in a video from youtube that starts at a specific point, in any other way than link)
They spiky haired little tween-boy's wet dream who's 'hate knows no bounds'.

OR the boring version of the trooper. Thats not true, bounty hunter tanks, tank with flamethrowers, so... Win.

Only thing is, that I can't tell the different spec of bounty hunter apart:

Lore wise I like, no, I LOVE em both, so there is no problem there. I can certainly see myself enjoying both stories. As explained above, I am not sure that the Sith warrior, is designed for a player like me. So far, what they have released the Sith warrior seem to be a one dimensional teenage-angry-kid. Same kind of people who where a fan of He-man because he had such a huge... sword. It is the impotent kid, who finds a violence fantasy to relate to, in order to get the power-feel he is lacking in his daily life.
I am hoping they nuance this a bit (like they did in Deceived) but so far, no such luck - for me.

The bounty hunter on the other hand, seems to be made for someone without ego-problems (playing a star wars game and not being a force-user..) but still has some ego-issues (flamethrower, c'mon :D), and that is really me. I love being off-tank and that is what i read the bounty hunter tank to be; still the tank, but not a force-user tank. They guy who gets the job done, by any means necessary.

So until I get a better feel for how the classes work, I am picking the bounty hunter, and I am getting kindda psyched about too :D

Feeling weird about how Swtor was announced

2011-09-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

For anyone who might've missed it: SWtOR has announced it's release on Dec 20/22 (depending on where you live).

Firstly I am thrilled to see that Biowares pricing people have discovered that there is a difference between the value of euro and usd so I won't feel robbed every month. yea!

Now the part where I feel weird.

For so very long, the word about a release date was a unified "You will know well in advance when the game is coming" examplified with Stephen 'Rockjaw' Reid telling us all to stop reading into everything and

I've said before that an announcement as big as release date will be so big, it'll come thundering towards us and we'll all hear it long before it arrives. That train's coming... but so far, I'd just say we've laid down some early track.

The whole train thing even became a twitter joke

Rockjaw:Someone sent me a hat. I won’t tell you what it is, because knowing you lot, you’ll freak out. But person who sent it? It’s here. (July 1. 2011.)

Rockjaw:Disclaimers: Hat does not imply anything. It is merely a hat. No train is coming (yet). Do not panic. Do not adjust your set. (July 1. 2011.)

What i'm getting at is this, when we for so long had been told that we would have no doubt when a big announcement like the release date was coming, only to have it sprung on us, what else can't be believed.

I am sort of willingly naive when it comes to marketing. I realize that there is no greater joy than the joy of expectation. So when biowares representatives claim to be on the level and then do a 180 and go against what they have been telling us, I cannot help but feel that my trust in the bioware comunity reps have taken a blow.

"Wait, you are pissed that they gave us a release date? What is wrong with you??"

yea I know, it may seem weird to some, and I am not pissed, I'm just not feeling a great need to trust anything bioware reps say anymore. "We care about story" -no, don't buy it. "we want to make a great game" - like you did with DA:O ?

To me, it is like this, your favorite uncle comes by and say

"Hey kids, I've got some candy for ya! I ordered in online, and they haven't send it to me yet, but i'll let you know when it comes so we can all enjoy it together"

Then a week later you go into your living room and see a great stoking big bowl filled with candy sitting there
"Oh yea" your Uncle says "candy came yesterday".

Now part of you is happy (cuz theres candy) - but would you trust him the next time he makes a promise?

Dwarves are classy!

2011-09-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

I have aconfession to make, for the last 3 months I’ve… done something.

I've re-subbed wow.

What got me back? The undead 1-20 experience.
I read so many places abouthow great it was, story and quest and game-wise, that I got the free level plaything and went back in. Well before I had gone from 1-15 I had already resubbedand was back on the Alliance side on my Death Knight tank, testing out the newZG.

Then ourRetardin happened. I won’t name names here, suffice to say that he is a dickwith arms. Arms that can type on keyboards. I hate him (not really, it’s supposedto be a funny intro to the next part). Mostly I hate him, because he knows meall to well, for someone who is supposed to only know me through my toons inraids.

What he didwas this: He looked at our guilds achievements and noticed that we wheremissing two “classy” achieves. One for pretty-boring-jumpy-freaks aka nightelfs, and one for Heroic-awesome lager-drinking-super-beings, aka Dwarves.

He thennoticed that both where missing the Mage-component and then he scoured theguild-lists for suckers. What he did to convince one of our lovely healingpriests to roll nelf mage, I’ll never know. I just pray that no unborn virgin-childrenor unicorns where hurt. But the fact was, that when I returned to Sempher fi,she was well into her 70’s loving fire in dungeons. Now what he did to me… Thatwas just down-right diablolical.
Oh disclaimer: the last two sentences are mostlikely completely made up, this is just how I imagined it. It may not even havebeen his idea, nor something he did consciously. As a matter of fact, I have noway of knowing that the priest herself didn’t get drunk of her face and decidedto roll a smelly nelf.

Back to thestory.

One daywhile playing on alts, I got a /w from our Retardin. “hey long time no see” Itstarted. He then went on to talk about a mix of old times in raids. Good oldtimes, fond old times. Times of when I had time to raid. He commented on thatfact, that I did not raid any longer, and what a shame that was. And then itbegan.

Again, thisis just to make an amusing anecdote, I doubt he is a scheming evul genius, butthis way it just makes for a better story, and regardless, the important thingis, that this is how it *woked* on me.

- Cometo think of it, he did manage to play ret even back in Vanilla (sometimes) sohe just might be an evul genius.

Erhm hrrrrm.Then it began. “The guild sure could use that achievement for the guild perk it gives”. ”Man if only we had someonewho wanted to level a Dwarf mage, I guess it is because we don’t really haveany Dwarf lovers left since Thorixus left the guild”.
OkayI am actually 100% certain he didn't say this, but it adds flavor. Thor was abeloved guild member and Dwarf connoisseur who would battle me and a dwarfhunter in guild on who thought that Dwarves where the most awesomest race ever(we all won, when you play Dwarf, it is win for everyone. Never forgetstoneform).
Well if nothing else, it reminded me of all thegreat times I had had with my dwarf alts, and Dwarf playing guildies. Iremembered names like Brandi who I have not seen play since back in vanilla. Soemotionally I was hooked. Who would defend the proud Dwarfes in guild, if notme? Whom,whom I ask?!?

And then came the final blow. The sucker punch.“it would really mean a lot to the guild and I know [raid leader] has beenasking for it, for a long time.” Oh right, [raid leader], the guy who taught meto tank, and whom I feel I owe so very much to, in terms of learning to play, raidand love! Well at least play raid and tank… ehhm.
So I was emotionally hooked, I felt indebted-lyhooked, and I am and always will be a tank. So when I see a damsel in distress(in this case, my guild) and I can rescue her (my guild) I jump to it!
I know I have what has sometimes been describedas the “white knight” complex. The biggest feeling I had when I stopped raidingwas, that I felt like I let down my guildies. They had been there for me for somany years, and now this baby came and I couldn’t make any of the raid-nights,or weekend 10 manned raids any longer. I felt terrible. For months after I hadstopped. I never really missed the game, itself, I missed my guildies. So whenI got the chance to return the favor, to feel like we where square on meabandoning them to be an ugly boring adult. AND I got to help dwarves look goodAND I got to feel like I was contributing to the guild and not just leeching oftheir guild-rank perks. Well, had I really any choice?
My old level 40-something human mage wasdeleted and dreamster was born.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Well not solittle, I think its sort of a big conspiracy. But I do believe that Warlockswill love this news: Mages are effing boring to play.

Frost is really a fun spec, if it wasn’t forthat elemental being. Not only did it stand on top of me all the time (like Iwas a warlock or something), but it has little to no use whatsoever. At leaston my hunter I could use my pets to something more than just a dot. WhyBlizzard implemented that … thing, I’ll never understand. Now I get why theyhave been so uptight about no other classes getting a pet.

Fire. Fire is horrible. At lower levels youoneshot targets with fireblast, making all the dot mechanics useless, and athigher levels.. ugh. No control and combustion is just. Well anyone who claimsto love combustion (with or without combustion helper addon) are… not me. It isa fighechty twitchy playstyle that just makes for so much un-fun. The aoe indungeons is fun, at least compared to frost and Arcane, so just a little morefun than watching grass grow.

Arcane. Fun..ish. Id rather play my hunter orlock for ranged, but it beats shadow-priests imo. I never got that whole “burn/conserve”rotation in game, since solo, you never had that issue, and in dungeons I stilltopped the charts without worrying. But I could see that as a fun thing inraids.

So I amsort of sick of myself and proud of myself for making it to 85 (well beforethat smelly nelf, who had a 70-something level headstart on me). Decked out inHeirlooms and not playing very often (so I had rested bonus a lot of the time)it took me a combined 3 days and 3 hours 40 min to go from level 1-85

Lack of great class choices for Diablo 3

2011-09-09T01:32:00.000-07:00

My biggest problem with the upcoming Diablo game, isn't that I am more excited about GoW (a frikking shooter) than a franchise I litterally spend my entire youth playing. It is not the fact that the only Beta-invite I seem to be able to get my hands on is in a mail asking me

To secure your place among the first of Sanctuary’s heroes,Please use the following template below to
verify your account and information via email.
* Name:
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Thanks and see you all in the Burning Hells!

No, my biggest problem is the fact that none of the Classes hold *any* interest to me. None. I'd rather (much much rather) be playing any of the three followers

Enchanter, Templar & Scoundrel

Than I would the 5 classes. None of them seem at all interesting to me.

Which Doctor

Looks like someone has seem one too many "vodoo is magic for black people" documentaries. They look daft and remind me of something out of 'Resident Evil V'. I could not see myself enjoying playing that for any amount of time.

Demon hunter

"It's a cross-bow thats a machine-gun, and we'll have two because reloading is for suckers". It would make the producers of Van Hellsing hide in shame.

Wizard

Wizard is the "We can't call them Mages anymore because we used that name in WoW, and we can't call them Sorceress no more because we want male options too". All I hear is 'You are a wizard Harry' whenever I see the name. Also, keeping with the negative, I've never enjoyed any form of casters in any game I can recall. So lets move on to some more likely candidates for the type of player I am.

Barbarian

Would I have liked him more in full plate with a shield? yes. Do I like the idea that he reminds me of Logan nine-fingers? More than I can explain here. Unfortunately I fear that so many years ago in Vanilla, dealing with fury warriors wiping everything, has vanned me off any class that is all about wielding as big a phallus as possible. It does look as though he can dual-wield, but anything that class do will - in my eyes- just be a poor substitute for the old D2 paladin.

So that leaves me the

Monk

(He knows Kung-fu) Okay so I was a huge fan of the monk in the old games. Only thing that bothered me, was the fact that (as I recall it) they couldn't gear up, and there is something to be said about gearing up in a game all about item-drops. Well that has all been fixed now! So why aren't I overhyped for this class?
Why haven't I watched the trailer to bits? (Other than the fact that compared to some of the other classes, this one just looks plain stupid). I dunno, maybe it is because that whenever I look at swtors classes - and want to play each and everyone badly- or look at Diablo 3's frikking compaion classes and want to play them so much more than the actual classes. I'm left wanting.

I think the point of D3 is that I am no longer a teenager playing Diablo. Since the last game I've grown up. This game seems to be made for 12 year old boys (about the age I had when the first game came out). I mean, just look at this trailer
Clearly made for someone who is either a kid, or want to pretend to be one.

I guess that is fine. Not all games should be made for every demographic, and this time around, and I don't fit in with the target audience. Shame really. I grew up on these games. These games are the foundation for me still playing Blizzard games. I loved em, and it always saddens me to feel I've outgrown something.

Guess I'll keep an eye for Tobolds lovely blog and his talk about the Beta. If an old man like him can love (or even like) the game, then maybe I can too. For now, out of lack of better choices, I think I'll be playing the Barbarian. At least he looks my age...

Huttball, my new favorite sport

2011-08-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

I've never been one who went nuts for pvp. This Vid changed my mind (go to source and see it in high def and on full screen).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=543lyjmr7yM&feature=player_embedded

Also I really love the reasoning behind adding what some people call an 'immersion breaking' game-type.

Quote:

Originally Posted by
Why the **** are Imperials and republicans playing a game of football against each other?

That's the question I have for Daniel Erickson and his writing staff.

Hey Folks,

Totally fair question. I wrote Huttball personally and gave it my big stamp of approval. Huttball came from a request by the pvp team to have a mode that could mix sides in the event of unbalanced factions. So it's not Empire vs Republic playing insane death sports, it's anyone who wants to win some prizes and flex their muscles going to Nar Shaddaa, gambling center of the galaxy, and blowing off some steam. Story is important but so are alternate, setting-appropriate activities that give some depth and variety to the world and the gameplay experience. There is a crazy Hutt that likes running huge arena events for his amusement. Your choice if that's the way your Bounty Hunter enjoys spending his downtime.

Hope that helps,
Daniel Erickson

Lead Writer
Star Wars, The Old Republic

I'm honestly okay with this. Just look at the latest soccer world cup. Plenty of countries who do not really like each-other square of. Or remember back to the olympics of the cold war era? Russia and the US had some of the most memorable games during that era. And the republic and Empire are in a cold war, there is a peace treaty, so imo everything looks good!

Beta-weekends, now in Europe too
http://twitter.com/#!/Rockjaw/status/104602048481341440

It never even occurred to me, that Europe might get screwed yet again on beta (I've no numeric proof that 'we' got screwed over the first time, but I hear about Americans in Beta, and I'm not, so there is that!), but good to know that we will get some semblance of beta-access as the US. It is important for me, for mainly two reasons:
1) I want to try out the different classes before launch, to get a feel for them, so I don't "waste" my limited play time on rerolling, and thusly falling behind my other friends playing.
2) I want to have my not-so-commited-yet friends over and frikking show em the game. There is only so much the gameplay vids can do for people who are not yet sold (at least those of my friends who are not yet). So I figured that showing em actual gameplay (not letting em play, because thats not allowed as I understand it), would do wonders. So Bioware, if you want more sales, gif beta-weekend access. thanks

Things that worry me about #swtor

2011-07-28T02:47:00.000-07:00

Tobold talked a bit, this morning, about what he calls single-playerness. In short, it is all about whether or not it is good for an mmo to have strong single-player questing elements only (Me reading into what he wrote, most of his post is about how important it is to get in on the launch to see content when it's crowded or when the worlds have dried out).
And it got me thinking about a tid-bit of information - or rather two tid-bits combined, that really nags me about Star Wars the Old Republic.

Being separated, yet together.
What I mean by the above, is that on one hand you hear about the different types of quests you will encounter during your leveling, and end-game:

Quests will be the primary means of advancement for your character. In SWTOR, there will be several types of quests:
Class Quests: These unique quest chains are specifically related to your class, and are meant to be experienced alone, but can also be completed with a group. Those quests are extremely relevant to your character's story and only you can change their outcome and the finale. Each class has an unique chain, and none of it is shared with others.
Side-quests: These quests are not directly related to any particular chain, and they can be started and finished solo in a relatively small amount of time. They still do give rewards and will be important to the advancement of your character. Like all quests in this game, they will have different outcomes depending on your choices.
Being a MMORPG, SWTOR also focuses heavily on multiplayer interactions. Many quests will have you looking for a group of other real players. The group size is slightly smaller than in most similar games (4 players maximum), and the game will feature a soft trinity system that allows players to pick their favourite role while still mantaining a certain flexibility within the group.
World Quests: World Quests are the multiplayer version of side-quests. They will feature single quests or very short chains, built for easy pick up and play, and meant to be played with a group. Your choices will still matter, but only one player will be able to pick a choice per dialogue. A random dice roll decides which player is allowed to talk (This mechanic is true for any kind of quest that is being played within a group, exception made for your personal Class Quests).
World Arcs: These epic quest arcs range from four to ten quests -sometimes even more- and feature epic storylines, big decisions, hard fights, and may have you playing them multiple times on different playthroughs in order to complete them, due to their length. Like World Quests, World Arcs are meant to be played with a group of players.

And on the other hand, you hear about how the various classes will start of and level through, not only different areas, but different *planets* alltogether, and when they are on the same planets, (as seen in the above qoute) the different classes will be doing their own unique and glorious class-specific quest-line.

We have seen how the agent, moves from planet to planet, infiltrating Hutta camps and seducing innocent, while it's starting planet best buddy, the bounty hunter is busy with 'The Great Hunt'.

Examplified from these two previews from PC GAMER The Imperial agent and The Bounty Hunter
and like Tom playing the bounty hunter said

Rather than run between my story and Josh’s Imperial Agent one, it made more sense to team up with a fellow Bounty Hunter.

By the way, those two previews are a great read, so if you haven't already, go read em :)
Anyway, the Imperial agent and his real life friends (well colleague) the Bounty hunter, are on the same frikking planet, and even *they* cannot find an incentive to coop. Imagine if one of em had chosen the Sith warrior!
So you can team up with other people playing your class, because you will be going the same places. Will that only be for the Class quests? How will the side-quests add up?

RL example; I've talked Mrs Dwism into getting the game too. We will be goodi two-shoe Republic peeps. I'll be the no-bs-trooper, and she'll be the smart-well-spoken Jedi-mage.. ehm consular. How will that work out? Will we be able to go off for two hours and do our class-stuff, then meet up at three-fifteen on Alderaan for some world-quests? Or will she be spending 45 minuttes waiting for me? Or will she have to go with me on my "learn to throw grenades" schooling, while I have to grudgingly attend a hearing on the treaty of xyloligguuu 15, because that is where her class quest takes her? so that instead of teaming up, we will be dragging each other down taking twice as long to level?
By the looks of it (at least the way I see it) we will have to level to max, then go around doing stuff together, so our class-quests progression do not get neglected, since we have been told that abilities, speeders, unique and super important stuff, lies within those class-quests.

And another thing
Did you see the class trailers? Especcially the EFFING Sith warrior part?? That is *my* future class Bioware, and he looks like every 12 year old jackass-adhd kids wet dream. "OMG leik wow cool, a mohawk and he likes has two liteswords, and his hate nows no bunds!"

That is *not* the class I want to play. That is something, Nelson Muntz wants to play. Ugh. Look at that Vid. He jumps all over the place. Everything else looks so damned great in that trailer, except that red-skinned devil-lookalike with a mohawk. Looks like what some 57 year old childless PR agent would make up, if he wanted to create an evil-cool guy that "kids theese days" would think where "aw33sum".
Fuck.

Release date to be revealed come September (swtor)

2011-07-26T23:57:00.000-07:00

As we get into the bulk of the summer we're going to be ramping up our beta campaign and by the time we get to around September we'll be in a position to really call the ball give the hard ship date.

From Darth haters transcript of the latest earnings conference call

Couple that with this lovely qoute

“Most MMOs announce ship dates 4-8 weeks ahead of launch” – John Riccitiello, Electronic Arts CEO

As seen on askajedi

That is all

squeeeeeeeeee

Morale choices in SWTOR, looking damn good!

2011-07-25T04:32:00.000-07:00

After reading yet another fantastic Darth-hater live blog coverage transcript. I stumbled over this neat qoute

And my favorite moment actually I think was quite early on when I was playing the Jedi Knight on Tython. And there's a quest pretty early on where you come across two padawans who are obviously involved in a romantic relationship and you basically get the choice of essentially turning them in to the Jedi Council or leaving them be to go about their romantic business. And Jedi Code would suggest that you should go and inform the Council cause this is not something that's allowed. And I think the minute that I found that quest and had my first moment of what do I want to do, because it was a genuine moral choice. And also for me, it was a point of which it said, you know what, you can roleplay your character here. So in my case, as I recall, I chose to let them go and told them I wasn't going to tell the Council, and then I went and told the Council anyway. So that was the kind of Jedi I was playing.

It's by Community Rep Stephen Reid aka Rockjaw and it sets the game up better than any video-trailer or beta-pie leak ever could. THIS is why I am looking forward to this game. If we can get this kind of story, and class-mechanics/boss-mechanics/balancing of WoW this will make it my all time super favorite game of forever.
And I'll name my Girl after whoever they damn well want me to*

Like Rockjaw said, that is a real morale choice. From the Jedi-code there is no real good answer.
- Report them? Ain't that kindda a douchy thing to do, so you are betraying them, and that leads to the dark side!
- Not reporting them is a strict violation of the Jedi-code, and leads to the dark side!

Loving it :)

In other -not loving it so much- news: I've caved in (like the proverbial $5 whore when her plastic teeth meets a baseball bat) Just like I knew I would, and pre-ordered the CE version of the game. From Gamestop. Because where I'm from that is sort of the only place to get it from. Needless to say, I've not recieved any codes (and by the looks of it I never will). Because all they wanted to talk about in the store, was that I would DEFINITELY get the Collectors Edition sometime around launch. 100% for certain.
"But when will I get my pre-order code?"
"You WILL get the Collectors Edition, we swear!!"
"eh yea but.."
"Do not fear citizen, you will get that Collectors Edition that you payed $213 for!!!!"
/leaves store

This of course is all Rockjaws fault! It really really is
But at least he was kind enough to calm me down. Firstly by stating that the codes "early access first sign up, gets first in" thing, was more of a matter of who used their codes in the first month, rather than the first hours. AND in replying to my question (I am such a sucker for when that happens) he assured that the pre-order codes do not have any effect on getting into the beta-weekends in September. So I am not all to fuzzed if my store gets my codes this week or the next. For now I am just happy that I haven't payed for the damned thing yet, plus that I will get the box and when I get my codes I won't be severely handicapped in comparison to those who ordered the game from a retailer that knows what they are doing.

* I don't actually have any say in her name. Mrs Dwism does.

Release window narrows, plus "beta-weekend"

2011-07-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

Another short post, just to get away from my "angry-because-of-money" thing. I really hate that I let things like being screwed over by about $60 compared to other gamers, get to me. After all, it's my choice to buy or not. So here we are

http://www.askajedi.com/2011/07/21/beta-test-weekends-in-september-holiday-launch/

Looks like the game won't be out untill "Holiday season 2011" some people consider the holdays to start around September (at least thats when the first x-mas themed cataloques starts to flow in my mail) while others consider it to be the week between christmas and new years eve.

Heres hoping its not the latter.

Pre-order SWTOR CE edition is expensive as hell (for EU players)

2011-07-21T03:22:00.000-07:00

Oh hello there Bioware. Did you know that 150$ is not really 150 euros? Acutally its more like 213$

So.. you know.. fuck you

This

is the same as

This

But this $ is not the same as €

Yesterday I didn't know, what my breaking point would be, for whether or not I'd buy the Collectors edition. now I know.

All the small things (that make for a grand mmo)

2011-07-19T07:41:00.000-07:00

Let me start this post up front by saying that yes, this is me gushing over a game that has yet to be released. Specifically Star Wars the Old republic. Now said gushing will not be about how awsome the game will be, because - frankly - the bitches over at Bioware haven't given me beta-access. Erhhhhmm. It will not be about gameplay, but how their dev team has communicated with fans and how they have managed to keep my interest peaked.

All the things I wanted to know about mmo-development (But was too afraid to ask)

What got my mind working on this post, was that weird bird-thingy-thing. Some fellow fans are trying to get a buzz going about the game every sunday, and have thusly named the themed tweets about what they are looking forward to in the game: #SWTORsun, and it is great fun (although it could use more people tweeting about it).

One of those tweets where from Steve Docherty aka Roq777 who wrote

probably been said already, but I'm thankful for the transparency of the dev team and the way they're handling the community.

And that post started an avalanche within. So far I've enjoyed the friday updates, that swtor releases almost every friday immensely for... 2 years I guess. The great thing about the updates, where the posts about things you never assumed you'd ever care about. Like Maps, or how beta-players moved, or how you build up an UI.
It opened my eyes to the fact that mmo's are more than interesting classes, with exciting mechanics and the balancing of those (although I still think those are some core things, that just needs to be in order for a game to work), and I love em for it.
I imagine myself taking time out enjoying the work that has been put into all those weird nooks and crannies of the game, mostly because it has made me enjoy and see those same things in wow.
At the same time, whenever those things do not work, I also pay extra attention to it. Like in a cutscene in wow, where the camera-angle cuts of the dialogue or the action. Or when my map isn't giving me the information I'm looking for.
Specifically I spend the better part of 5 hours trying to not make my quest-givers text come out transparent. That time did not include all the messing around with clearing my addon folder and WTF and reinstalling the blasted game. Its all the small things, that make or break an experience (a great thanks goes out to 'Skinner' addon).

So looking forward to the next friday update (and weirdly enough I'm hoping it'll be about crafting windows or inventory setups.)...Oh and hoping that Comiccon will bring news of pre-order information (especially special edition)

Lots of afk stuff, plus; Why I am a tank

2011-07-11T05:58:00.000-07:00

Let us start on a high note, and just keep going from there.

I just love that one.

Back in blac... ehm WoW
Anyway summer is here, and lots of stuff has happened, I've re-dipped my feet ever so slightly back into wow, and realised that although the Undead starting zone is a complete blast story-wise there are a lot of things that bother me, also I am a ui addict.

I think I spend more time tweaking my UI, downloading addons and tweaking them, than I did playing the game itself. I had fun doing both. However, without grinding, nor wearing any of the perky BoA gear, I still managed to outlevel every zone I played. That Sucks. Hard. Because now there is a direct and distinct story line, and whenever that story arc works, you want to follow it to it's conclusion. I want to know what happeneded to Johnny Awsome (although that whole "belfs are gay lol lol lol" joke sure got old fast. Like at the first time it was mentioned. How a multinational company like Blizz, who spends time ensuring that murlocks aren't mistreated, can be so outright hostile toward male characters who are not the bulging male orc figure, is beoynd me. To me this goes far beoynd sexuality. I think that Chas over at, the now closed righteous orbs said it best, when he discussed "menz" right... rant over)

To shorten all of the above a bit up; you outlevel the story, and when you move into a new zone everything starts anew. Last bit blew my immersion a little bit, but that is a side thing to the annoyance of watching a great arc get ruined by having to do grey quests. /sadface

Twitter n Star Wars ToR
In other cool news, I've made http://www.swtor-life.com's top #SWTORsun tweet list. For more on what on earth swtorsun is, check out this link http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=366402
I can honestly say that I spend way more time thinking up my tweet, than you will ever get me to admit. Twitter is a real hard nut for me to crack, since it's only 140 characters and I am a ramblin' type of dwarf! But it is great fun, and getting a mention (even though, let's be brutally honest, not all that many people joined in on the fun.. fingers crossed for next week) in a "best of" type of thing, does Oh so many good things for my lust for twitter and my vanity sucks up all the praise I can possibly get. Which is a great bridge to my last bit today

Call me Pappa (aka why I am a tank)
Yes it's true. Mrs Dwism gave birth to a little baby girl last week, when that happened someone turned on the "everything is crazy"- dial, and I've not been able to shut it off since. Everything is crazy! Fun... But crazy. I am really digging the whole parenthood thing. I am very good at this. If I must say so myself, and while we are at it, I'll just add here, that from a completely objective standpoint I can tell ya'll that she is the most adorable smart, cute and greatest kid, you ever did see- Objectively speaking, of course.
So now our little family has settled into our own little tri-fecta. Mrs Dwism is our healer, the little one (Mini-dwism) is our dps (poops her pants a lot, cries even more, and sleeps all raid... and yet gets all the attention and credit) and I'm the tank. There are lots of little ways this plays out for example; all the daily small problems my wife handles (like feeding), but whenever shit (litterally) hits anything, in comes the tank. Whenever any organizing needs to get done (aka, pull-order), in comes the tank. And whenever everything is fine, or there is no need for tanking. I'm away from the action in front of the pc, or sleeping. Just like any other tank.

Speaking of which. Ever since '08 when I first signed up for Swtor I have been longing for this game to come out. Now... Not so much. I've figured that, the longer it takes for this game to come out, the more independant will mini-dwism be, and the more game-time I'll be able to squeeze in!! (although I am still pretty sure that this game will be out mid-nov).
So I will most likely have way less time to post big blog posts, but look me up on @dwisms on twitter, where I'll be bugging swtor professionals and following all the cool people ;)

/dwism

How things are looking for SWTOR (after E3)

2011-06-14T08:07:00.000-07:00

Sorry this post got a little delayed. I spend all my weekend closely studying BioWare (see pic below, and note this is actually me at a music festival... Not just a interweb foto I found.)

"Things are looking juuuuust right for Bioware"´

Anyways, the interweb has been brimming with comments about the game. Most of them incredibly stupid. I mean, "why isn't this and that class balanced against each other at mid-level??" Blizz did not even fix that untill, what... 3 years into launch?
I even read someone complaining about them not "revealing" the raid-sizes. Is this a breaking point for anyone before a game is launched? Whether or not there are 13 or 15 people in raids?
The whining, and moaning has gotten so bad that Spinksville felt the need to create a post entitled "why I still want to play this thing."

I don't get it. Thing is not even in open beta, and so far - as far as I can tell, what is standing between the game being finished and now is number tweaking.
Yes, quests are fetch/kill/find/gather/escort mostly. Did I miss an announcement claiming otherwise? I am honestly confused about some of the complaints. Maybe it's just me, but a game very similar to wow, with a new twist on dailies (spaceshooting), in a star wars Old Republic setting, with the Bioware approved story-based.. ehh everything, does not sound like a bad game. In fact it sounds just the game I've always wanted to play.

So yea, I'm sticking with my happy cap.
Oh and take a look at this hands on preview/impressions piece from massively, where 4 of their writers talk about their experience. It sounds very well-adjusted. Not beating on the game, nor hyping it. Personally I think that Shawn Shusters ending comment, was very fitting for my expectations:

SWTOR will attract fans of BioWare's unmatched storylines, Star Wars franchise fans, and traditional MMO followers. It will not, however, revolutionize the genre.

Oh and, that razer keyboard looks ehh OF THE FRIKKING HOOK FO SHIZZLE... yo

Rounding off, I think my friends comment after I linked him the launch trailer, was very fitting "Meh, its sort of a letdown compared to the other two you sent me earlier" I then explained that this was supposed to be the launch trailer, and setting the game up, and introducing us the world and setting of the game, where the other two where more fluff and hype and supposed to get people excited for the game before an actual launch. He then replied, that after having seen it a couple of times, it did grow on him. And maybe that is where the game is now, Setting the tone of the actual game, now that we are hyped and excited enough.

this just in: Massively has found two "17 Hours with..." previews from PC gamer, one of ... Bounty hunter and the other ...imperial agent. Just like the hands on above, there is not one answer to the "is it good" Question. It is, as always it seems, in the eye of the beholder. (After reading theese to... Yea my happy cap is still on).

Short: Here is what is bothering me about that whole release date thing

2011-06-07T05:45:00.000-07:00

Very short post, I'm going to be writting a big-ol huge "Dwism LUBS E3" post later*. For now.

Here is what Bioware has to say about the release date of SWTOR

There will be no release date announced during E3 2011, and no pre-order details either. Our release date window has not changed. We are still aiming to release Star Wars: The Old Republic in the second half of 2011.
While I know many of you believed a release date announcement was going to happen - which is understandable - as I've said before, an announcement of that size will effectively be 'pre-announced', and we will not 'bait and switch' you. We aren't going to lay a trail of subtle clues that lead to a release date announcement. We'll be obvious. We're just not there yet.

Thats all fine and dandy, but in comparison... how can they know this date already??

Ehm, I know they claim to stick to the "fall 2011" schedule, but personally I'm getting a wee bit worried

Looking forward to E3

2011-05-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

As always I'm looking forward to the big gaming conventions. I know myself well enough to know that I enjoy waiting for most games, as much as I enjoy playing them (this holds true for more than 80% of games released, case in point: Brink, way better in theory than in actual game). So release dates, new exciting games and dreams of hours of extreme fun and frustration! Love it.

So no surprise that I'm looking very much forward to this years E3. This year in particular for loads and loads of reasons: Last year was the first year for E3 out of its self-imposed "for developers and press only" weird idea, and it was a huge success, gaming (imo) really needs that one big blow-out show where the winters big releases gets lined up against each-other. Its like the Oscars but in reverse (that makes plenty of sense, shut up).

Another reason I am so very much looking forward to this years E3, is that I am willing to bet loads of pence, that this is the event where Bioware will release a release date!
... What do you mean, "for what?"?
Star Wars The Old Republic, ofc

Also, I am hoping for release dates for D3 and partly for Heart of the swarm. I liked the solo-part of SCII, so I am hoping for more of that, plus a fixed story-line where I didn't skip between story-parts if I chose another planet than what Blizz had expected. Aaanyways.

I am also looking forward for more info on Torchlight 2, GoW 3, Skyrim, Arkham City, Mass effect 3 And Guild Wars 2.. It is going to be a sweet year!

Also, I am considering starting in WoW again, playing dungeons only on my Paladin. I really burned my fingers on Aion and my very pregnant wife, has taken our couch (and by extension my Xbox) hostage from now on, so I can't really waste time there. For now, I got chores and reading, but I think that eventually I'll have to get a game for my PC that I can get excited over, and Swtor seems a long way away still (fingers crossed for that beta!!)

The robots are coming (to play ball!)

2011-05-16T02:53:00.000-07:00

This is a bit off-topic (how can anything be 'on topic' in a rant blog?)

Anyways, I stumbled over this robot catching balls and making coffee.

So soon it can play ball, and make coffee, throw in a hot evening dress and Mrs Dwism has some serious competition.

I kid....

I swear

This just in: Blizz hates mages! (and locks and big ugly moonkins)

2011-05-11T04:56:00.000-07:00

So the brand spanking new Legendary staff has been revealed, and not a damn was given.

Why?

Because it is the most boring Legendary Item in the history of wow.

Why?

Because it does not -do- anything.

(from mmo-champion)

What do you mean, it does not -do- anything? It has Spellpower comming out of the Wazoo!!

It does, and nothing else. Legendary weapons always* used to have some component that made it interesting. Remember Thunderfury? with the lightning effect? It made all the difference in the world to tanking. More recently Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings made cool bubbles, that made our resident tree-hippy-druid think he was a real healer (you know, Disc priest).

And then here comes Dragonwrath and adds NOTHING to the mix except moar sockets n SP...
The reason for that is twofold: Casters are boring, so they get a boring staff, and Blizz hates Mages (especcially -you, yes you-)
..You might argue that the same thing could be said about Warglavies

Yes I would say..

But you would be ugly and wrong and ugly, and look like a mix between a gnome and a female human, just wrong and ugly!

I don't see how that was called for, besides you didn't explain the difference

There is two of em!

Oh and am wrong and ugly

yes ~~Calli~~ mage, you are

*disregard Atish... uhm because it ruins my argument

May the fourth be with us indeed!

2011-05-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

Boom, went Star Wars. Apart from the obvious like: Blu-ray versions of the films announced, there where heaps of interesting new tid-bits in relation to the important things (...the game!)

Best news ever
European testing may have started. I signed up for that nearly two years ago, so "hell its about.... ect"

Also best news ever
Game to be released in second half of 2011, so my predictions of april 2012 seem to be way off (thank you Jebus)

Interesting news.. ever
Space combat was discussed. I am actually looking very very much forward to this. I like action games too, and a bit of variety (*real* variety, not like the move your toon to pick up stuff or hit stuff or talt to stuff or pick up stuff to talk to stuff you will hit on - type of deal) in my dailies will be a welcome change. I'm also a kid of the Arcade-halls, so I like rail-shooters, so I just might be a bit biased on that one :)

Weird news that turned out to be really interesting news... ever
Lore time!! This time around... dun dun dunnnnn Humans!
And it's an really interesting article!

All in all May the fourth was a neat day!

How fanboy'ism crept up on me

2011-05-04T02:16:00.000-07:00

So Tobold made a post. A post about something completely different. He made a post about solo-endgame progression. A great post. But in the end he wrote the words that will ensure that he burns on the righteous fires of Truthness and rightfullness and Game'isms!

[Talking about wow] And with patch 4.2 still being months away, this might well be a case of too little, too late. But then, lots of players might be back in WoW at the end of the year, if SWTOR is really such a dud as some previewers claim.

Then he linked to a preview of Star Wars ToR that was... Less than favorable.
Now, some of you might think that this quote wheren't all that bad, you might even say: "Hey Dwism, based on that preview, the things he said where very balanced and seemed very objectively true." Oh yea?

Well you would be Completely... right.
And that is the weird thing, because, it did seem to stand to reason, that if the game is as horrible as the preview indicates, then SWTOR will be a dud and people (ie me) will return to wow.
My response to him (via buzz) was something along the line of: "OH YEA??? well those people who wrote that SUCKED ASS!!"
...At least that was my first draft. Then I took a deep breath and rewrote it, so Tobold wouldn't block me forever for being a Gevlon-esque type of moron. What I did attack, and what I still stand by as being a fair and even critique: The previewers ragged on the following
- Spawntimes
- The fact that a ranged class stood still and "only" did ranged damage
- Quest-chains in an epic storyline took you on many smaller quests leading up to the grand arc
- The plot was not as fast-paced as the other Bioware games, and there where KILL Quests (how dare they??? Kill quests in an action MMO? The sky is indeed falling)

What our discussion lead to this excellent post from Tobold about what people are expecting from SWToR. Because most of the stupdity of that preview post stemmed from (imo) that websites expectations that SWTOR would be the second comming of mmo's. I don't think it will. For me, the game has succeeded if it has the class balance nearly of wow (as opposed to the class balance Bioware has in their single-player games... mage in dragons age anyone?), combined with a story almost as good as that of normal Bioware hights and loads and loads of things to do!

Back on point
What disturbed me the following day, was not the discussion as a whole, but rather my reaction to it. Why did I flare up about a stupid gamesites stupid preview of a game I've not played? I've never been much of a fanboy (although I do prefer Dr peppers over Coke, and Puma over Nike... and Celtics over that crap team from L.A.), no really... Ive never been much of a fanboy, but all of a sudden there I was, getting steamed over this silly preview. It was kindda really a scary experience. I had indeed fallen to a low I'd never thought I'd reach. Still today, in the aftermath, I can reread that preview and get all "morons, what did you expect" over it.
But hey, at least an opinionated preview is better than this stupid thing from over at IGN Their premise is good enough: "what would a non-mmo player and non-star wars fan, think of 48 hours of playing the games starting area?" but the result... I feel like I've just read the abstract of an article. Wheres the meat?
Anyway I, Dwism, have learned a lot, and I solemnly swear to never nerd-rage and fanboy defend something I haven't even tried yet myself... unless the author is a moron...

Weird coincidence on Aions homepage?

2011-05-02T23:17:00.000-07:00

I've thought a lot above the screen-shot i took below, and I've decided that the wording Aion uses is entirely on purpose, since they -at launch- spoke a great deal about a great cataclysm happening in their world too.

So... Instead of believing that they have the worst possible translator associated with their homepage, I choose to believe they have a very dark sense of humor. (Not that I've been able to spot *any* sense of humor in game, thus far)

In an mmo-vacuum

2011-04-27T05:02:00.000-07:00

So earlier today I was browsing my old guilds website (they are the best WoW-playing 25 manned raiding guild out there, if you need a friendly place filled with really nice leaders, in the EU they are looking for boomkins (25 raid) rogues and dps (10 raid) Think they are 4/13 heroic nowadays).
And I started to miss playing an mmo again. Specifically WoW. Then I browsed some of the achievements they have been knocking of, and the whole time/grind rinse repeat we-have-done-this-for-too-many-years-over-and-over-again feeling hit me, and I let the thought, of returning, go.

Thing is, I miss playing an mmo, but I really do not have... that something needed to play wow again, but I do miss playing an online adventure game.
So far bulletstorm/portal2/the orange box, have been able to satisfy my gaming lust, but I'm really starting to miss the online interaction (and there is noway I'm going online in a shooter on a console... I still have a will to live) and adventure and sense of grandure, that is typical of an mmo. So what to do? Play another mmo?
As some of my readers may have noticed, this blogs focus has shifted towards one MMO in particular, but with no beta in sight for eu players, and while the game does not seem to have an 2011 release, that leaves me in a vacuum between me gotten fed up with wow (unfortunately, I really do wish I still wanted to play that game), and SWTOR being released.

I could start a new mmo, or reboot an old one I've played before, and there are loads to choose from: DC universe, champions online, WARhammer, Conan, Rift, Aion, City of heroes, guild wars and LORTO... And those are just the ones *ive already tried*

... Oh my, that is a lot.

I did boot up WAR again recently, and while I do adore the mechanics and the lore surrounding the green-skins ["hit em" (good plan) "Oi, hit em again" (great plan)], a quick look at their website reveals a game that (apart from the 'free to play to level 10 thing',) seems very dead... unfortunately, because out og that very long list of mmo's above, WAR, was the one i liked the most.

So I am stuck in a mmo vacuum. The empty nothing space between burning out on an old favorite, and the release of a (hopefully) new favorite.

Fingers crossed for an early release!! and mayhaps that mini-dwism will take some of my attention away from missing an mmo... but honestly, if Mrs Dwism couldn't, I don't see how a tiny little thing that sleeps eats and poops and nothing else, ever could! (famous last gaming words)

Star wars ToR release date, yet again!

2011-04-26T05:25:00.000-07:00

Last thing: we absolutely know that some of you feel we should have announced a date, or at least narrowed the release window, already. That's your opinion. Our opinion is until we're ready to commit to a narrower window or a specific date, we're not going to do that. When we commit, we'll commit in a big way.

From a rather lengthy forum thread about the release date, where Stephen Reid gets... well no, he doesn't *get himself* anything. He uses x-mas as an example on how long in advance we will know the game will come out (just like you know that x-mas will come way before december), and morons thougth that meant that he was confirming a december release.
Regardless. The above quote was how he ended his input, and that sort of saddens me.
Just like the release of both the Lich king, cataclysm, and even TBC I used to have a tiny bit of holiday/overtime set aside, for when a game was released, so I could make sure I'd get to really have a good solid 'go' at it.

For Star Wars, however, it seems I won't get that chance.

If the game is released (and that seems to become a bigger and bigger *if*) in 2011, My workplace simply does not have the flexibility to give me days of within a certain amount of time, and that is slowly running out for this year (plus in 2 months the baby is coming, and I am honestly starting to have doubts as to whether I even *want* to lock myself in a room for a week once she's here... Let alone Mrs Dwism will allow me to :D)

/sigh
I hate growing up

How do you play an evil Character in an mmoRPG?

2011-04-08T05:12:00.000-07:00

The spark for this post came from Spinks post about "Do you play evil Characters in RPGs?" Which was not about any of the things *I* wanted it to be about.
So I thought I'd make this post and talk about what I'd hoped Spinks would have touched down on. (And try and bribe her, to throw in her 2 cents too... Do you accept paintings?)

How to play Eeeeeevuuuuul in an mmoRPG
The focus point being the RPG part. The opcomming mega-blockbuster-epic-super-win game (I am so not looking for a Job at any gaming company now... I... I love you, Bioware...) Star Wars - The Old Republic.
The game where, you either play the racist elitist Warmongering slave-torturing Empire, or you play as the peaceloving bunny-hugging, flowersniffing Republic, also known as the good guys or the bad guys.

This is a major change of direction from any other MMO that I am aware of, in wow you have the honorable misunderstood horde, and the honorable self righteous aliance (or is that the other way around), they are both similar, but on opposite sides in this conflict due to interesting and complicated accidents. And more times than others they have to band together in order to fight greater and *real* evils of the world (Burning Legion, Arthas, yourmomma!! ect ect). Same with Rift, where you have the loyal followers of the ancient Gods and the not-so-loyal-more-of-an-screw-you-deities-variety (and I'll bet with anyone, that sooner or later they will also be banding together to fight giga-rifts, or something along those lines). So when your protagonist all of a sudden is a puppy-kicking "I want power" type of person, in a society filled to the brim with back-stabbing plotting and scheeming villans, from the school-nurse over to the trash-collectors and up to the emporer himself, you have to ask yourself two questions:
1. Why does my avatar do what he does? What motivates him to kick said puppy?Are anyone only evil? and
2. How on earth does a whole society of evil backstabbing plotters and scheemers survive? Isn't every single thing being developed or build, constantly getting blown up? Aren't every single inventor more occupied with avoiding poisonous darts than surviving? Who, in a society like the Sith, would ever settle down to become a moist-farmer? How does this society work?

Lets start with the first one. Back in August of 2010 I tried to give my own version of how the Jedi propaganda had only made it *seem* like Sith where bad, when in reality The Empire where the good guys! (Go read it, I'm sort of kinda really proud of that piece), that one got shot down pretty badly by the release of the first swtor book 'Fatal alliances'. In that book, Sith where once again eeeeeevuuuuul (but not completely unbelievable, so the book works), and considering the 'Knights of the old Republic' games, it's not really that shocking that Sith seem to have become cartoonish villains twirrrrrling their moustahces and petting their cats.
The good guys over on Darthhater made this fantastic piece on 'Ideology of a dark lord' that throws out plenty of bones, for us players who want to play as an Empire loyal subject.

The thing is, I am a goodie too shoo, I've killed of my characters in Vampire rpgs in order to save their imaginary families. I am a sucker for the whole knight in shining armor thing. My friends, at least my gaming friends, are not so much.
That was not a big deal when I played with them in WoW, I could still roll a noble Orc, or a wise Tauren and tag along their warlock undead world conquerers (Why, yes, Lamaron, I was thinking of you), but this time around... It's going to be hard for me to be anything near noble or goodhearted, or non-scheeming. I have to be a bad guy, if I want to play with my friends. And I'm taking that task to heart, it's going to be healthy for me, to try and push myself a little bit. Try and be the bully, be the Darth I know lives within me. It is going to be hard. But hopefully it will also be giving.
At least I've convinced Mrs Dwism to get the game too, and we'll duo as Jedi knight/Jedi councellor, so I get to have a little good guy action on the side!!

But today I stumbled over this little gem from the official swtor forum. Its from managing editor Alexander Freed and it reads:

Imagine living in a society where you're taught that great men and women - the brilliant, the inspired, the powerful - should rise as far as they can, and lesser men and women are uplifted by following and supporting the highest of the high. Imagine your society has believed this for centuries, and - after suffering terribly a long time ago - built a magnificent and powerful nation that celebrates art, achievement, struggle, duty and conquest.

This is a culture where every citizen serves the state - at least for a time, in the best capacity he or she can - and where that contribution is honored. A culture where a great number of joys and vices are permitted - in the proper context, so long as they don't interfere with one's duty.

Of course, that's not necessarily how you'd view it if you were a slave. Or someone who suffered from the random whims of the powerful. Or someone who believed that species isn't an indicator of inherent potential. Or...

Well, there are plenty of reasons to see the Empire as a tyrannical, billions-strong cult without conscience, kept in line by propaganda and unearned rewards on one hand and terror on the other.

But most Imperials wouldn't see it that way.

And I'm getting it. They *are* evil, but now -to me- the Sith seem Plausible evil, instead of cartoonishly evil. I am going to have a blast I think!

Swimming in SW:ToR

2011-04-08T01:42:00.000-07:00

Torocast lead the way in my bloggroll of blogs ranting on just how horrible the announcement made by Bioware, that there would be no swimming in SW:ToR.
And it worked, I got all huffed and bothered and very very annoyed, and had halfway written a rant on how this kills everythign everywhere, and "won't somebody think of the immersion", untill i did some - you know- research, and digging.Before, I was in line with forum commentator Shobu:

No multiplayer space combat, no controlling your ship's flight, no swimming, all races have the same body, non-customizable companions that you can't use at endgame...... This had better have one heck of a mindblowing story

Then I was reminded that this was Bioware, and I found this

There's no rigid wall in the game at this point. You walk in shallow water, it becomes deeper as you progress, and at some point you start getting the message that you should turn back. You can continue on and ultimately drown (then respawn) or move back.

In order for swimming to be actually worth the implementation and time, we'd want to do it right - meaning content built around it, maybe a water centric planet, etc. Absent that content - there are no water worlds in this game - we've decided to focus on other things that are more important to us.

I can definitely see why people like swimming (or any other feature for that matter), however, the decision to put a feature like that in the game cannot be solved with a simple yes/no poll. In reality, the question is more like “Do you want swimming or 'feature X'”. In this case, we chose feature X (or Y, or Z) for a number of reasons - one being that just adding a very basic version of swimming without building proper content around isn't something we wanted to focus on for launch.

We'll definitely look at this again later, after launch, but if we were to decide to do it, it'd be accompanied with proper content and mechanics themed around it.

Is this in any way, shape or form worse than the 'Fatigue' you get in WoW? Not in my optics. Faith in game restored, body at ease, exhale... ahh, all is once again right in the universe, and we can continue to look forward to hearing all the gory details of the UK event!

Now, give me a release week, so I can start planning my vacations, dammit!

Mass effect 2: Arrival - [Spoiling]

2011-03-30T00:32:00.000-07:00

After having cleared my evening (and reserved the house tv, so Mrs dwism was banished to do other things) I was all set for an evening of Mass Effect hype.
This was to be the last DLC before the big and final ME:3 chapter hits the stores. Ohboyoheffingboy!

An hour and a half later later I was starring at a black screen. Game over. My brain was left processing two thoughts: "Did I just pay 560 MS points for an extended commercial for Mass effect 3?" and "Did I just pay 560 MS points for something that lasted an hour, tops?". It wasn't so much the price-tag, more than the feeling of letdown. There was no real story here, that I could not have gotten from watching a 35 seconds add for the game. This was not a game, so much as a "aren't you hyped for the 3rd game" type of deal. And if my frikking *commercial* had been free, I'd been euphoric about this. I enjoy a good hype now and then. But to have payed for no content what-so-ever (Well some content, there was one firefight where you had to survive loads of waves, that was a great deal of fun... if only I'd have a chance to replay it), but in fact have payed for an advertisement, has left me a little sour and feeling a lot of resentment for having voted for Bioware in the March Mayham competition on the escapist.

Because, honestly, what kind of a complete tool would ever vote for a company shitty enough to have their costumers pay to watch advertisements?´

Decieved

2011-03-17T03:24:00.000-07:00

Our time has come. For three hundred years, we prepared. We grew stronger. While you rested in your cradle of power, believing your people were safe and protected. You were trusted to lead the Republic but you were deceived, as our powers of the Dark Side have blinded you...
You where deceived and now your Republic shall fall.

Ohboyohboyohboyohboy
Guess what Amazon-package I just received today. The first book was pure awesome, way better than any WoW fiction I've read (maybe the Shattering came close)

Now I know what my weekend will consist of:

Ohboyohboyohboyohboy

Dragon age 2, forced team-mates

2011-03-16T06:05:00.000-07:00

(this contains a semi-sort of spoiler)

in this opinion-piece I'll talk a wee bit about dragon age 2. This will assume that you have played the first game, or at least know of it... or the gaming term: holy trinity.

There is one person in Dragon age 2 that I do not like: Anders. More on that little whiny sourpuss later.

First Spinksville has a very accurate writeup about this game that very much is on the same wavelength as my initial impression is... on. Read that if you want positives. Because the game is fun. If it was not for this little whiny prick

"Ugh, do we have to do stuff, can't we just mope around?"

Argh, I hate you Anders. Stop ruining my game.

"But Dwism" you might say "why not just ignore him and play with another group setup?"
Because he is the only frikking healer available, since I rolled a warrior. Nobody told me, I'd only have one mage available who had healing powers. And you *need* a healer with you, at all times. Maybe unless you play at the easiest mode. But otherwise, you will need a tank and a healer with you, in order to make it anywhere.
This is why the "we only have one mage with healing options" pisses me off, so much.
How come I don't get a say in who I want with me?

Just look at him. Ugh.

But otherwise the games great.

Halp I'm being blackmailed!

2011-03-15T09:43:00.000-07:00

...Or at least that is what it feels like.

A couple of weeks ago The Escapists magazines "extra credit" team launched a fab vid called 'An open letter to EA marketing' I've briefly touched on this in regards to how Biowares Facebook page demanded its fans to share facebook updates to all their friends in order to unlock special in-game items.

It felt weird. It did not work.
http://www.facebook.com/BioWare
They, however, kept going. Here is the latest attempt:

Take note of my twitter profile, I talk even more gibberish there so ofc you have to follow me too!!

...First off: Mass effect 2? You have a frikking teaser trailer out on ME3. again, weird.

Secondly, shouldn't we *want* to retweet stuff, that is interesting? and secondly, why are you taking your fans hostage in order to get em to advertise your games for you?

Most of my Facebook friends, do not give a flying bat-shit about mass effect images. Seriously, my 85 year old grandma' isn't going to go out and buy an xbox and play ME... although that would be grand.

Point is, the people who could care about this, in my social circles, are either already aware of this, OR i'll make damn sure they are, without your pressuring me to do it.
I am not a facebook or twitter slut, selling my identity and friends over free stuff. Please please please Bioware/EA THINK.

Right now, I am considering stopping to follow you on any social network *because* of these sort of tatics.
If you want these sort of "social media" type of things work, you have to stick with appealing to the fans, not force em into slave labor.
Make me *want* to tell my friends about your games, not thinking "oh well, I want to see more about your games, but first I have to soil myself in order to get more images, info stuff". Get the difference? In star wars you released a play through of the PAXeast of the Flashpoint "Taral V", *that* i did share with my friends. That was cool, that was something to show, that was something I wanted my friends to see.

Stick to that, and you might get hype on your games without that sour aftertaste.

How Damion Shubert made me doubt myself

2011-03-09T05:15:00.000-08:00

Massively(dotcom) did a fantastic piece on Sw:ToR and how they think about their player base. In particularly on the "loner" gamers.
This is another fantastic piece, that both of my SW:ToR beacons wrote about (Darthhater and AskaJedi ) and I won't really go into detail about the piece in itself. But rather go into a couple of the stereotypes that Mr. Shubert presents, and what they made me think about how I game. Specifically he mentions the "The introvert" and the "unworthy" and the "adrift" (go read the article please, its good and well worth the read and explains these a lot better and clearer than I could). What I am getting to, is that there is a not so unique, mix of the above, that very well describes me as a gamer. And it is one of my biggest fears concerning me starting in a new mmo.

The introvert unworthy drifter

The way I got into my guild (whom btw are looking for rogues and resto-druids and disc-priests and are kicking Arse in 25 manned raids and are realm #1 in guild battle-ground pvp... just saying) speaks volumes on how I am in games.
I was in a little guild called "Mean Drunks", I got invited there at level 5 by the guild leaders Girlfriend who had rolled an alt. I was a dwarf priest, she was low on health. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I healed her as I walked by, and she thought "Uh healer! and he is nice!!" so I got a /w if I wanted to join their casual guild. I said yea, and joined.
It took me 3 months before I found out that everyone in guild -apart from one Mage- was from the country as me. That is how socially silent I am around *new* people. People who know me often wonder when I'll shut up...
Anyways, I was happily leveling 20 levels below everyone else. And the Mage from Holland (that was the only guy not from my country) was very much unlike me. He joined the big guild. ("whoa dude, they have 15 level 60s online on an afternoon" he would whisper me). And once I had hit 60, and started dungeons (only with other "Mean Drunks") and got a bit of healing gear, he had not forgotten me. He was very fast to invite me to Zul'gurub on his Big guild, when they where a healer short.

I joined. I healed, I did not whine when I did not get any loot for helping them out. So they asked me to write an application. Icefly (as the mage was called) vouched for me, and the rest is history. I healed through the latter part of vanilla, and through TBC and got rank of just one notch higher of regular member. Then I had my foot in the door (only took two expansions) and I rolled my dream-type of class: a Tank.

What does it mean?
It means that unless I get my friends to join me in Star Wars, i'll be spending my time as a loner. There are a lot of 'typical gamer types' that I cannot cope with. Especially those that claim they are "mature gamers", because in my experience, if you need to claim that you are 'adult and stuff', you never are. Same with 12 year olds. Another pet peeve of mine are gamers who use 'gay' as a description to anything. "that is so gay". urgh.

I can very much be a gamer snob if people rub me the wrong way, for example the type of player who as everyone else say "hello" in a pug, feels the need to epeen all over my dungeon, either by strouting his gear/dps or by belittleing other players.
So, there are a lot of guilds where I will go the "Tam way" and get in a fight with one player, and I will not be pretty. I am very much a grumpy bear, but once i know and respect the other players, I'd like to consider myself a Douglas

Thing is, when you love tanking, but need time to warm up to people, you are very dependent on getting a solid base of players around you, very quickly. So maybe I should take this opportunity to get myself to open up more online. Start chatting with random players, start embracing people you randomly meet.
But then the other thing comes up.

I joined as a healer, and ended up a tank. Those are two classes that are great to play, because if you play DPS your ability (or lack thereof) to play, is very easy to measure. And the results are not always as fun as you'd like em to be. As both my virtual friend Calli and equally virtual Lar'is´´sa found out.
(But between you and me, dear reader, their problems stems from playing mages above anything else).
So I'll stick to playing a tank, thank you very much. In a way there is way less performance demands of tanks, than DPS. *for me*, because I could go into a pug on my alt tank-a-din and be way overgeared for a PUG heroic in wrath, and still get booted because I did not have ICC gear, and then join on my sucky newly dinged rogue and do 1800 dps and not hear a word.
But for me, I'd rather play the tank there, because *I'd* know that my dps sucked, when tanking it is not the numbers that determine how well I play, but only.. how well I play. (Well it makes sense to me).

Dragon's age II -demo

2011-03-02T02:03:00.000-08:00

Things I've discovered since I've quit wow:
- Mythos online is boring
- Rift was good, but if you are tired of wow, this is not the place to go
- DC universe online, however, is a great change of pace. Loads of fun, but made for consoles.

...And I am continually amazed at just how much free time I suddenly have. Look at all those games I've played, and even though many of them where for a very very short while, I've had time to read books and talk to friends and my wife (and her belly).
And I know you all think you know where this is all heading: "thank God Im done with WoW, why did I ever spend so much time with that game."

Well, sorry to disappoint. I wish wish wish, that I was still having fun in WoW. I loved the people in my guild, I adored the Lore (and I'm still capable of showing a certain mage who's Lore ego has grown beyond his capabilities, just what is what!!)

But alas I do not miss playing wow, so I've gone back to my dusty old xbox to game. After a very failed experiment with Kinect (do you realise just how much space that thing requires?), I've gone back to my two old favorite past-times on the the little box that could: Drinking beer while playing gears of war coop with an old buddy, and playing the Bioware legendary series: Dragon age: Origins and Mass effect 2.
And it shouldn't really come to no surprise to anyone who love quality RPG's that I have been playing the Dragons age sequel demo.

In fact. I've played it a little too much I think. First I started playing it with the class combo I usually love (warrior, tank) then I went through every single variety you can play the class/gender combo.
So I have completed it as: male/female rogue with bow, male/female rogue with daggers, male/female warrior with two-hander, male/female warrior with 1 handed sword and shield, and female mage without healing spells, and male/female mage with healing spells.
So I feel pretty confident in giving out my advice on what to play.

Firstly Bioware has gone with their mother-company in the way of *horrible* marketing of the game.
(btw, if there is one link of mine you should follow and see, it is the one above, please please do not rob yourself of "Extra Credits" show on EA.)
And if you chose to play as a female, you get the promise of hot girl on girl action from the black chick, and if you play as a guy, you get the exact same offer. Good thing, she is not choosy. Bad luck of you are a straight woman playing this game.
Oh who am I kidding, at age 29, I am one year away from being to old to play games, because we all know that gamers are male, white, and between 8-29 years old. FUN FACT: Larissa is a fake, she does not really exist.
Secondly, they are marketing the game via facebook with an: copy this advert text to all your friends, and if one million gamers to that, you get an virtual sword.. or book, or something, at the start of the game. That is not really how facebook works. At least not for me. I doubt any of my friends on facebook are friends with me, because I post commercials on their pages... Hopefully it is for the fun fun "click this if you want to see the scandalous Paris Hilton drinking contest" links that I send em....
I mean, I get the first competition: get a million to download and try our demo, and there is a community reward. That one rocks. The second: *complete* the demo, and you get a headstart weapon. Cool.... But "save us publicity money, by becoming our advertizing whore??? No thank you.

Where was I? Oh right classes. So female is out... or in, depending on whether you want to have naughty conversations with women... or with women. Ehm.
Point is, gender doesn't matter. At least they got that right.

Classes however are much more fun to chose between. But first, a spoiler alert: Depending on whether or not you chose a mage yourself or not, either your sister, the mage, will die, or your brother, the hot-head-warrior, will bite the dust. That way, the game ensures that you will always have a mage, but only one. So make sure that if you make a mage, for yourself, make sure that sis gets some healing spells, or if you are a mage, make sure *you* get some healing spells. Because healers, just like the first game, are extremely overpowered. So you want one in your group.
Secondly, the game hooks you up with a tank early on. So don't bother rolling one yourself, because two tanks are dumb.
Thirdly: for me, rogues with daggers, do not work. They are not fun, they are underpowered and they do not seem to do more damage than the two-handed warrior (but they die more easily). Rogues with bows, however, rock!
This has as much to do with your groups initial setup, (a dps warrior, a mage [who will heal], a tank and you. This begs the question, are Bioware trying to condition you to roll a rogue? They are the only class with a build in, advantage: they can pick locks, and the group setup is made for bow-using rogues. Only weird thing about em, is that their first level ability is "backflip" out of trouble

And when you compare that to the mages first ability: "Blow an enemy's mind into blubber", it does not seem all that impressive.
But a lot of the class choices, like I said, build on how the demo is set up. I was dead set on getting myself a bow-shooting-baddarse rogue for when the game came out. Until I tried the game again as a warrior, and realised: I cannot hide from what I love, and I love having a big shield and slamming it.

The only great thing about rift for me, and this is a really really REALLY great thing: one ability that their Paladin got: Face slam.
Let me quote the ability description:

Slam a shield into an enemy's face for 175 to 179 Physical damage, modified by Strength, in addition to interrupting casting

I dunno about you, but I get a very vivid mental image, when I read that description. Take that puny spell caster!!

What did I think of the demo overall

Once I got over the fact that I did not need to worry all that much about the demos group set-up and could play what I enjoyed the most, I must say that imo, the game has taken everything right, from the first game, and kept it, and fixed everything *wrong* with the first game.
The "talking scroll wheel" thing works better. No more "I didnt click that" or "what *that* what that meant" moments, that I still have in both Mass effect games, and in the first dragons age.
Ai seems smarter. And I can choose much easier now, whether I want to be the field general and pause/give orders all the time, or just tank plouhg my way through the game, while the others in the group do their damn jobs!

The holy trinity of tank/dps/healer lives very strongly in this game, and I think that is a plus. overall I am looking very much forward to once again getting a game that can consume my whole non-working time.

It's not you, Its me.

2011-02-11T07:45:00.000-08:00

Listen... I've been super busy at work lately. Your awsome, you really are. Listen, Its not you it's me.

Im going to break up with you wow. I think we have both changed. Quite a lot to be honest. It is not anybodys fault. But we just don't really match up together any more.
Like I said, its not really anybody's fault. We both tried hard to make it work. You tried and turn our relationship really casual, and that was cool. I even claimed you where the best you had ever been. But we both know, that was not the entire truth. There where a lot of factors, that played in.
My life fitted so well around you, and your around me, back then.
Things have changed.
I'm not the player you knew, and you aren't the game I fell in love with. We where both trying to pretend to be something and someone, we are not.
I pretended I was still the hard-core raiding type of player. When in fact, I had not really raided anything seriously since back when Lich king hardmode was something we spend the summer doing.
You, on the other hand, kept promising to change, to become cataclysmically different, and interesting.

Let's face it, you never did.

When you went Cataclysm, and threw on one new dress, you really didn't change. You just dazzled me for a short while.
I'm not blaming you, you tried to be what I thought I wanted. You aren't any longer. And I'm not what you want, either.

You want tanks, and healers that are willing to put up with whining and moaning from strangers. It's really a SICK fetish you have there. I thought I could be that, but in reality I just stuck with the people I knew. I was not as outgoing as you had hoped I would be. On the other hand, you claimed that staying with the same people where what you wanted, but you didn't. You may have given me bonuses for doing stuff with my guildies but you had not changed. You still wanted me to PuG.

I realise I was not easy to understand. I claimed I wanted hard new content, you tried and make your dungeons hard. Then the others you where seeing, started to bemoan that the dungeons where hard.

You where caught in a tough situation, and tried to make the best of it. unfortunatly - in the end- you ended up cutting me off entirely.

But there where other things too. Stuff, that you could do nothing about. Me. I changed. I was no longer happy, spending 7-8 hours a day in front of the computer. I couldn't do that any longer. I've grown old, and tired. Now-a-days when I get home, I don't have the energy and time, you demand of me, at least not what you demand of me, so I can get what makes *me* happy.

And then there was Mrs Dwism. You remember her. You two used to have a casual hanging-out- sort of relationship. I was cool with that. Anyway. Mrs Dwism and me.. ehm well...
We've gotten pregnant. Mostly her, but i'm a guilty party too. That has done a lot to take my focus away from you. And i know this hurts now, but I am very happy that im going to be a daddy-dwism. Its a gurrrl!!

Hopefully someday, me and mini-me will pick up your latest version and we will play together the three of us. For now, other stuff is on my horizon.
Stuff like baby clothes

baby toys

And other stuff.

I loved every second of our 5 year relationship, and I would not trade the years of /played time for ANYTHING. But I've changed, and its time to realise, that the two of us have grown apart.

/Dwism

WoW, Dungeons are hard!

2011-01-14T02:10:00.000-08:00

You said it GC, Dungeons are hard (again).

It is a clear indicator of just how great Wrath of the Lich king sold, that there are hardly any players left (at least in terms of "voices in the community") that seem to remember life before Arthas starting rumbling in the north (again... He was there in Vanilla too).
Or maybe it is just a clear indicator of just how long time people play this game, of just how high the turnover in player-base is.

So anyway, people are not able to zerg heroic dungeons any longer. This causes some upset players, and a need to explain to them just why dungeons are hard (again).
So Greg sat down in front of his Ipad (I imagine) that rests in the armchair of souls atop a mountain of money, in the private lake in is private Island, on his 1'000'000 ft yacht... again, so I imagine.There he writes a piece for a Blizzard blog, that could have just as well been named:

So you forgot h2p?

Or maybe

What did you think "heroic" means?

In the end he chose

WoW, Dungeons are hard!

(Puns intended I assume)

Where he writes all sorts of good phrases like: We know where you are coming from, we understand you. Don't worry... ect ect It is a good read, and I implore you to go read it. Loads of insight into the minds and thinking of the people who produce the game you play.

What I want to touch on is a fine point he makes, and it is about the pace of the run, and on healer mana, and on how it is usually the dps at fault when you wipe, but it is usually the healer who gets the blame (my wording).

On PUGs

Once upon a time, in the days of wrath, you would get a PuG, via the dungeon finder, you would get a buff, if you pugged and get a pugg when you pugged enough. So people said: "screw you" to their guildies, and went pugging. They could do this, because Pugs then only needed a few things: over-geared tank, and geared healer. Sometimes a capable dps would show up, and things would go faster.
Then came Cataclysm, and Blizzard discovered, that maybe guilds where a good thing, and talking to people you where in group with, was also a good thing. So now the attractive buff, where for being in a guild group, and dungeons became so hard, that you at least had to have a an IQ over 40 to be able to complete them.
And the world crashed.

But it does not have to be that way.
What is the core problem with hard mode dungeons? Players are idiots, right?

No, Goblin, WRONG.
First of, I'm going to say something that might be construed as controversial, so please, read the whole post before you get all angry and feeling like commenting.. Ready? Here we go:

There are probably more stupid players in the US version of WoW, than in the EU one.

Calm down.

It is because there are more kids in the Us version of the game that speaks the language, than there are in the European version. In the American version, every single little greedy Gobl... ehm, player of 6 years and up, can log on, understand what is being said, written, and even reply. And we all know kids; Gimmie, gimmie, gimmie, mine mine mine, you are all just carebears and Morons and slackers, I want for me me me.

Here in the EU, the only kids we have playing fall into 3 catagories: English children (who act just like every other child, but can speak and type in english), Non-english speaking kids in small countries, and non-english speaking kids, in large countries. so when the non-english speaking kids in large countries get their own localization (german, french, spanish, russian), we are left with a comparable small percentage of kids playing the game, that are verbally active, and if you are secure enough in a second language to communicate in it, you are also mature enough to be able to understand the basics of the game (my hypothesis).

So in conclusion to this little sidetrack: we in the Eu have a smaller percentage of small greedy stupid kids playing, than the North american version of the game (my guess is that the localized versions, have it just as bad as the North american).

Back to the point
With that in mind, here is how you ensure, that your semi- or fully- pugged run, is a success:

Delegate responsibility

And it is not even that hard to do. Start the run (okay I am a tank, so it is probably easier for me to muscle this through) by saying something along the lines of:

/p hello there good people, in this run the following will mark their own CC targets and CC them at will, once CC'ed I will tank the rest of em. If you have roots, please root melee, if there is a rogue, let him/her sap before you cast your hex/sheep/whathave you

/p [mage] please use [Symbol A], [rogue] please use [symbol B], [Priest] please use shackle when available and then mark em with [Symbol Z], I will mark my main nuking target with SKULL.

And you know what? That is pretty much it. If you ask an employee to do meningless tasks and dumbass machine-like work, (say press 111 then 2 then 111 then 2-3) that is what you will get, a Zombie. If you ask em to take responsability, and expalin that they are as important to ensure sucess as you are. You will see marks fly all over the place (in a good sense), you will see people say in chat: "Oh noes, that one was immune", and you can all make a note of that for later, and burn some major cooldowns and still make it.
Plus, this will make runs go faster. No more having one person marking everything. No more silence from the hunter because he was afk, and when you pulled, he did not cc his mark. Because if he aint there, he won't mark, and you can make sure he is there and ready, before pull, and not during the potential wipe.

Isn't it amazing? Give your fellow a chance to take responsability, and they will jump at it. It makes heroics a breeze, it saves you from having to stop. at. every. single. trash. pack. and. discuss. because. you. need. to. discuss. it....again.
And once you get to a boss, people are so invested in the run, that a wipe hardly ever makes people leave. Wiping on a boss is allowed, struggling on trash, is not.

Go on, try it. You will love it!

It's all about the elements baby!

2010-12-10T09:27:00.000-08:00

I am going to get into my feelings about Cataclysm as a whole very soon (tm), suffice to say that the first draft was titled: "Meh".

That is not what this Friday evening post is about. It is about me "getting it". Hopefully I am not the last person on the face of Azeroth to get this, but the theme of the expansion is very much

The four elements

So far so good. In The shattering (the book), the elements play a very large role too. Especially how the 4 elements (water, earth, air and Fiiiire) play with each other.
(soon (tm) i'll get into the two books Shattering and Stormrage)

So anyways. today i found out that there is even MORE about the elements in the expansion!!

in this Alchamy post , Lylirra explains to us that:

We've recently seen a few questions regarding the functionality of Transmute: Living Elements and whether or not its effects are truly random. There's definitely some behind-the-scenes magic to this particular transmute, so we wanted to provide a bit more explanation on how it works.

Typically, when you use Transmute: Living Elements, you will receive 14-16 random Volatile elements (Volatile Air, Volatile Earth, Volatile Water, or Volatile Fire) in exchange for 15 Volatile Life. If you use this transmute while in one of the new Cataclysm zones associated with the Elemental Planes, however, the element into which your Volatile Life will transform will be predetermined. For example, if you use Transmute: Living Elements while in Uldum, you will always receive Volatile Air for your efforts.

Here's a list of the affected zones and their corresponding Volatile elements:
Mount Hyjal: Volatile Fire
Vashj'ir: Volatile Water
Deepholm: Volatile Earth
Uldum: Volatile Air

Additionally, alchemists with Transmutation specialization will always receive bonus Volatile elements when completing this transmute. The bonus will be random, though, regardless of which zone you are in.

TLDR: Each zone in cataclysms 4 new zones have an elemental Theme.
MH: is FIRE (they are burning the world tree)
Vashj'ir: is water (I know, I am as shocked as you are)
Deepholm: is earth (again a "well Duh" moment)
And Uldum is Air: (by now I was thinking "why didn't I see this sooner???)

So there you have it. They seem to have actually put some thought into the zones, beside the imidiate story that goes on there. I for one, did not see it coming.

Conflicting emotions

2010-12-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

So this is almost the conversation I had with my boss boss this morning.
This play has 3 people in it, me, my boss' boss and my brain. We will call my bosses boss Tom.

Tom: So Dwism (yep that is like totally what they all call me at work), we are having a kind of important meeting next Wedensday evening. It is about our future budget and some pretty important people will be there, can I count on you to be there and make input on the Y and Z cases?
Brain: NOOOO YOU TWAT, we already have a 10 hour day, filled with screaming kids and boring work, please just say no and go the fekk home.
Dwism: Oh sure, totally. I'll be there.
Brain: MORON
Tom: Good, super listen I want to talk to you about....
Brain: You do realise that this Wedensday will be the 8th right? The day after release of Cataclysm.
Dwism: [twitches]
Tom: Are you okay?
Dwism: Totally, I'm great. Go on
Tom: blah with work blah*
Brain: Say you got something important. Your aunt will die and need to be buried, or you are planning to get snowed in. ANYTHING. You have looked forward to this day for a frikking year, and now you will be at work not playing. AND you have an early morning so no late night gaming either. loser.
Tom: blah blah
Dwism: mmmh totally.
Brain: Your guild will kick you, you won't be their go-to-death-tank anymore
DWism: [Blurts]Oh like I was that in the first place, Sol totally has that spot, he's brilliant, and can make the times plus I only did 10 manned in wrath
Tom: what who?
Dwism: eh what?

/end scene
So yea, Cata will be. Just. Great. Great. Great great great great.

*note: it wasn't boring, it was just work stuff

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

In other news, Thanks to Consider (see my blog list) I have found the perfect leveling specc

Allright children, step aside, time for the big boys and girls to have some fun

2010-11-30T00:38:00.000-08:00

When they said that "the Shattering" was an early Christmas present to WoW fans, what they really meant was:

It is *just* like frikking Christmas, meaning that we start of bored out of our skulls looking on as the little ones get to unwrap their presents first, whereas we big boys/girls, get to sit on our hands waiting for our turn.

Well the little kids have had their fun already. Now give us end gamers our expansion, dammit!

Last night, I logged on to level my hunters new pets to 80, and got to get a good look at our guild list. It was a decent night, considering the time of year, there where quite a few people on.
None of them where in Northrend. They where all out getting their "Un'Goro Crater completed" achieves. It is sort of what Spinks talked about, the new zones aren't really *meant* for us (the max level toons). And do not get me started on the complete and utter laziness and dickishness that is the "yea well Outland won't change, screw you who cares about story or immersion, because the money are with gamers, that never make it past level 30, so we are pandering to them" - attitude that Blizzard has shown.

Seriously. You get 60 levels of re-molded content, that is up to lore, then 20 levels of "back in my day" boring grind, in order to get to the last 5 levels of new stuff? Blizzard, did you really think nobody would notice?

If it is a "design choice", then give us the "design choice" to skip dead content. At 60 let me skip to 80.

Back to the point
It's weird because I really never get sidetracked... Anyways:

The Shattering feels like an old Christmas song, that (extremely loosely translated) says that "You should let Sine get to open her present [ahead of time]". It is a sort of silent truce between parents and small whiny children:

You get to open your present ahead of everyone else, now STFU

Oh and to all you non-civilized readers (US and UK, this one goes out to you especially) Every normal society opens their presents on the eve of the 24th after
a) a big ol' meal and then
b) 2 hours running around a big decorated tree singing songs only half the people remember... and they only know half the words.

Just like the pegans who invented Christmas intended it to.

Right, so the whiny little children get to have one present opened ahead of everyone else, while we get to sit and wait.
Just like in game. Here you will see an very very VERY old mage, running around in the level 20 zones completing lowbi quests and keep repeating to himself "I am having fun, I am having fun", while he patiently waits for his turn at the presents.

Only a week to go now, before the rest of Azeroth get their turn at opening presents. And I cannot wait.

Merry Shattering, and to all a happy Cataclysm.

How this expansion makes WoW feel to me

2010-11-26T04:34:00.000-08:00

This was sooo much not stolen from anywhere else... I swear.

But this picture really did hit home for me, for two reasons:
1) I am very much a kid of the Calvin and Hobbs generation (this was the last official one he ever drew)
2) It really nails the feeling I have in WoW atm

Intermission: Fortune-telling time

2010-11-19T01:32:00.000-08:00

So having a wee bit of writers block, following my "way too big a mouthfull" posts series about the look back at WoW before Cataclysm. I thought we could all use a little bit of a time-out.

So I had a little go at the brand new Fortune telling site that Blizz has released.

http://fortune.worldofwarcraft.com/en_us/home.html

And it is heaps of fun. There are mentions of Double-rainbows, And diablo (see below)

You are put through a little quest consisting of 10 questions, where your answers determine your class. The questions range from sincere to.. well silly (whoa double rainbow, what does this mean?).

But in the end, the result is hauntingly close to something I mentioned earlier

After that experience I decided to try my luck with some a fortune teller. The results... hauntingly scary.

One month till Cataclysm, time to look back at Wrath. Part 1

2010-11-11T08:16:00.000-08:00

Back in the day, if you wanted to raid, you better be in a guild. And not just any guild would do. You needed to be in a big one.
Raids where big. Big to organize. Big to get to, big to do.

First off, you needed 39 other people. You needed 4 of them to be warriors (sometimes more, sometimes only 1). When the warriors where not tanking, they would be replaced for dps or healer (dps= mage or rogue and healer= priest). Classes where very well balanced: You had warriors to tank, Priests to heal and mages or rogues to dps. Then you had the other classes to fill up the rest of the spots and/or provide buffs.

My very first raiding guild raided on the premise that, if a person had waited outside of the instance, he would be in raid. So everyone showed up 2 hours before raid start. Or rather, everyone except the officers, and the MT.
Then we would sit outside of Molten core (don't you dare go on alts!!!) and talk or wait.
Needless to say, that when I switched guilds, I was delighted to see that they had signups.

How the raids where
Before i go on, I feel it is important to say, that most of these experiences in vanilla, are mine. This was how I experienced WoW at it's humble beginnings. Other players experiences may have varied. But take a look at this fantastic post by a fellow hellscream-eu blogger.
I knew the tank he talks about. Or rather... I once raided with him. I might even have healed in that ZG raid he talks about.
It sure sounds like the raid I raided with him.

My point with linking to said post, is to describe how lost everyone was. But as a positive.

Everyone was lost.

Addons where far from a given. Youtube videos guides neither. This was how a typical guide looked back then. ms/paint (or similar) where key!
Everything was brand new. Everyone where brand new. There where no cool-raiders (except for DnT and Nihilum, but they where on different servers, and one didn't just switch server!). There where no jaded bored or burnt out raiders (at least not near me).
I think it's hard to explain or understand now, given the climate we play in these days. Today, everything is "too easy" "held back for too long" "OMG NREF It".

Back in the Molten Core days, in the aq40 days. Back then, you could wait 4-5 months for a "class review".

Oh you don't know what a class review is? It is the patch where the developers look at one class, and try and get it adjusted with the others.
"Don't complain about that ability being over/under powered, wait untill that class is ready for review"
- the Blue posts would say. That was how balance where preserved. And the players took it. And kept playing.
When a class review came it was either like christmans, or the end of the world. Because if the class review did not solve everything, you knew there where all the other classes to go through *first* before your time was up again.
'How does all this ranting relate to raiding?' You might wonder. Well, it sets the theme. You waited. A frikking lot.
Imagine going to a boss with 39 other people. Then wipe. Then wait for everyone to get back (that would usually take 10 minutes, if you where at your keyboard AND where fast to get back. Then...

Well picture this: You and 39 friends go to a restaurant. Then you wait for the waiter. Then someone with long pointy ears is out to the bathroom. Then that pink-haired short woman if having a smoke. Then you need to get everyone buffed. Then someone starts talking trash, then another yells a joke. Then the Raidleader says: "wait the leader of the healing channel is telling me, that there is an uncertainty with the healing strategy (what is so hard about "heal the people who take damage"). Then you get to order your starters. Then the tank pulls.

Getting to a figh took forever. Getting over a wipe took a long time. Figuring out who got what loot... Oh boy.
If I got one item, on new content, once a month, I was happy.

Maybe now you are getting an idea of just how much things improved.

But a lot was lost too.

Losing your innocence

Of the 5 most scary things I have ever done in WoW, one of them does not seem all that frightning, yet it just may have been the most frightening thing for me to do:
That was the very first time I zoned into Molten core.
First off there was the fright of being in a raid. Suddenly 39 other peoples lives depended squarly on me. I did not know it at that time, but raids are sort of different from dungeons. Being the healer in a dungeon, that may have been true, but being a healer in a raid it was certainly not solely up to me. But it all added up to the fright.
Then there where the two first mobs you could see as you entered, the two massive 'Molten Giant's

They may or may not seem impressive by todays standards. But i recently went back into MC to get the achievement, and they still scared the crap out of me.
Everything was bigger, badder, harder and much more scary back then. Simply because it we had not been doing this for 6 years.
Just like in a sequel to any great (or even half decent) horror movie, simply does not get you going the same way, raids will sooner or later become routine.

Or to put it in a more... direct way

Show me a beautiful woman, I'll show you a man who's tired of fucking her

I have talked a lot about chasing the dragon. About trying to get back to that first WoW-high. My first WoW-high was in Vanilla, and - sadly - I'll never get back to that. Some people cannot get past this fact. They refuse to accept it, they go and yell at anyone who tells them that either 'You'll never get it back', or 'It really wasn't that great'. The game *did* improve massively when that first expansion hit the shelves, some improvements where to my liking, some where not. Games evolve, either you evolve with them, or you find something better to do with you time. How this is a controversial statement, is beyond my understanding. But as my last post proved, a lot of things are beyond what I can understand.

Let's get back on track

Themes and plots and story. Oh my.

This is a big one for me, personally this part of the game is almost what matters as much to me as the actual quality of gameplay. I have played through some absolutly horrible games, because I wanted to see the story through to the end.
Back in vanilla, story was not so important. At least not the grand story arch, because there where a *lot* of story and quests and themes everywhere. It was just not a whole lot of it, that had anything to do with anything else.
Lets look at the major dungeons in the game, as an example:
Molten core, Blackwing layer, Temple of Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas.
Molten Core was the remnants of an old Dwarf war
Blackwing was Deathwings sons attempt at world domination (starting with killing the last boss in Molten core, so there is *some* connection)
AQ was... an old God who came from out of nowhere, pretty much, and wanted to enslave us all
And Naxxramas was The Lich kings first attempt at turning us all into ghouls.

Mind you, I had to wowpedia all of the above, because - lore enthusiastic as I might be - Raids where more about showing up, killing evil and getting loot.
Some will claim that this has not changed a whole lot. I will beg to differ in the next part of these series.

How questing and how Dungeons where

I can't for the life of me find the blue post that examplifies quests. Here is how I remember it
Quests around level forty, had a lot of going to different parts of the world, because we wanted the player to feel like they where seasoned players. We have since changed this.

Point was: there where a lot of "go here, pick up this, spend 45 minutes traveling to next spot and deliver" -types of quests. The world sure did seem like an awful big place.
It was also why the most common questions I ever read on forums back then was: "what is the best grinding spot for my level" and "can you recommend a great leveling guide". I am not to proud to admit that most of my alts took great pleasure in James leveling guide (I've learned something, never link to anyone.. So I will assume that most of you are aware of what James leveling guides where/are).

Dungeons where 2 hours of having at least 1 person in your group standing in IF and trying to get a warrior (or if I was not on my priest, standing for 4 hours looking for a warrior and a priest), then everyone traveling to that dungeon. Then have the mage dc or having to go to dinner, and leave, and then one of of your party memebers had to return and scream: "we have warrior and priest!!!" followed by 50 people spamming for invites... Good times.
But it also meant that people hardly ever dropped group. This was back when a good group could take hours completing a dungeon, and bad ones... well...
Story time: I remember playing in Strat (full clear!) with 3 people I had never met, and one guy I had played with a couple of dungeons before. Well back then I lived in a neighbourghood that had an awfull reputation (concrete hell, it was known as). It wasn't all that bad, but it did have this rep. Well I was playing with these people, when my phone rang. It was mrs Dwism, who was on her way home, (this was at night) and her phone was almost out of batteries and there where some creepy people on the bus with her. She wanted to know if I could go to the stop and pick her up. There where 3 stops that where equally close to our appartment, so I asked her, "which stop?" and then the line went dead.
I paniced, wrote something like: Gf had creepy people on bus with her, her phone is dead, brb.

And then I ran. 10 minutes later I had found her, with absolutly nothing to worry about. The creepy people didn't even notice her, when she got off, and the only thing bothering her, was that she could her some "girl in the distance screaming my name".... I blushed, and was very happy that it was dark. when I got back to the flat, the 4 other guys where still in the instance. waiting for me, wondering if everything had turned out allright.

Can you imagine this happening in a PuG today? The only reason they would stay would be for the mystery. I have waited in PuGs in vanilla when someone said "brb" and was gone for 20 minutes. Or a DC for 10.
But you did only do 1 maybe two dungeons a day, so on the good/bad scale I guess those two evens out.

The other thing about dungeons taking this long, was that you got to know people in them. This could be as big a blessing as a curse though. If you ended up with a 12 year old lolllersc8er, your evening was ruined. But Finch and Onxy got married a couple of years back, and we where at their wedding. They where a couple I meet through wow, and even though they do not play any more, we still talk a lot.
In the summer of 2009 the four of us even made it to Belgium (onxy, finch, me and MRs dwism), to visit Ratang, who we all used to play a lot with, but had never met.
So long lasting friendships, made through wow, not something I think an old grumpy Dwarf like me, will ever find again.
So emotionally nothing will ever compete with what the kids call 'Vanilla'. But gamewise... Well next part of this, will look at how The Burning Crusade panned out. (hopefully with a shorter interval than this one had)

One month till Cataclysm, time to look back at Wrath PRELUDE

2010-11-03T03:49:00.000-07:00

With one month left to go until life as we know it (in WoW, calm down), changes forever, I thought this was a good time to look back at wrath as an expansion.
What went right, what went wrong, and why I think that Totalbiscuit is a sad man, who is only concerned about WoW, because it has a big audience, and not because he actually *cares* about the game (let alone plays it).
Luckily for me, he sees people like me complaining about him, as more traffic and more dough. Good for him.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

In order to understand why I think that Wrath was the best WoW has ever been, you need to know about me as a player. Unlike Totalbiscuit, I am a raider. In a guild.

I say unlike him, because even though he talks a lot about how raiding is great and being in a guild is even better. The guy has not raided.
Again, I am getting a little ahead of myself, but let me finish this train of thought, so we can get to the core of this: Looking at Wrath in review.
When you judge Wrath of the Lich King, as being a weak expansion with little to no great raiding content, one would assume that you have cleared said content. He has not. In fact he has hardly done anything in any of the 4 major instances. So when someone like him, claims that Wrath was a lowpoint for wow, you have to take it with a grain of salt.
Because all he knows about the raid instances, is what the QQ on the forum have told him. It is kind of sad, to have your bread and butter be a game, you do not like to play all that much, and your one standout comment be that raiding is great and being in a guild is a good idea... When you are not in a guild, nor are raiding.

My point is, watch his vids for instance-beta-runs, they are fun. Do not listen to the drivel he talks about when concerning raiding. The guy does not raid. He does not know how raiding in Wrath works, because he has not raided there.
Yes I am attacking one guy, but he stands - to me- as the core problem with WoW at the moment:

People who do not know what the Fekk they are talking about, moan about stuff to make themselves popular.

Just like the Greedy Goblin does not believe that any human beings are M&S, he is just doing it to stroke his ego by getting large numbers of readers. Some people need that in their life, but you should not worry about them.

Right, ranty dorf stuff out of the way, let us use this prelude well, with a schedule of what I wanted to get to.

First part: 'Judging your present, means you should know your past.' Where I go on and on about how raiding used to be. Starting with vanilla, and -depending on how long i rant- will also cover The Burning Crusade.

Second part: ' Evolving, how quests, dungeons, and raids have improved vastly' But also how two steps forward might also mean taking 1 step backward.

Third part: 'How raiding and questing and leveling in Wrath is the best it has ever been' Get your facts straight, there have not been an expansion where the raiding, dungeons and leveling have not been better. The only thing wrong, was Blizzards super slow pace at releasing it. (and misjudging the use/difficulty of dungeons).

I guess that regular readers will know pretty much everyrthing I am going to say in the next 3 parts (and it might not become 3 posts, but only two), but this is stuff I really want to say, so... It will be said :)

We got a good look at the people behind Blizzard, they are like me

2010-10-25T02:27:00.000-07:00

At every panel at this years Blizzcon, we saw the people behind Blizzard.

We saw the story-makers, the game-designers, the content-designers, we saw Metzen, Ghostcrawler. We did not see, the numberchruncing fans, we did not see the roleplaying forum fans panel, we did not see a lot of cool things that spinks mentions.

We did see the now (almost infamous) Q&A that Larisa boggles over. Okay some of us saw it, others read transcripts and read their own personal agenda into it.
Whatever you think of their response to this (and mine is in the comments on both posts), there is one thing painfully obvious for me, about these panel talks.

Every single employee with anything worth saying at Blizzard, is: 35+, white, a little overweight (some more than a little), balding and likes metal. And they only ever talk to other people like that.

I am reminded of two things:
This amazing article that really struck a chord with me. It is a bit old, but it is well worth the read:
What if the Character is black? By Brenda Brathwaite.

It is an amazing pieces, that two years later still sticks with me.
And this tl:dr piece from Dark Legacy Comics, it is aptly named "whitecraft"

Before any minds are blown: I am a white, late 20's male, I might be slightly overweight too. I love roleplaying (the real version, at a table with dice), and I almost wept, when I saaw the "GEEK" speech from Metzen.
(you know the part, the Star Wars part, showing the movies to your kids and hoping that those movies will influence their imagination, as much as it did yours...still gets goosebumps, and I don't have kids)

So Shouldn't I be happy? Blizzard is a company filled with... me.
So the games they make, should be perfectly suited for... me.
They should know precisely what I want. Because it is what they want.

But what I do know, is that a company filled with people like me, will only *at best* make a game filled with what I think I want out of a game. At best.
They will not -however- ever be able to make games filled with all the stuff I never knew I wanted in a game. Never.

So here is me hoping that they will soon get some much needed diversity in their departments. Hopefully that will shine through on their music choices too. Because no matter how much I like Offspring and Ozzy, and how much I love 'the D', it is all a little too much the same for my liking.

Edit to add, that I have missed at least one person with some weight at Blizzard, who is not like me. (at least not on appreances.) Shahram Dabiri. He is now lead producer on the secret mmo (well not so secret if you watched blizzcon LARISA!!!!!)

How wrong was i? (Blizzcon)

2010-10-23T02:06:00.000-07:00

I was very very very wrong. On just about everything.

I will have to agree with Tobold that Blizzcon announces absolutely nothing.

How well does that go (so far) with my predictions?
Bare in mind that Chris Metzen said that all the big announcements where made in the opening speech, so there won't (almost certainly) be any real announcements left.

Here is what they announced:

- Cataclysm will be pre-downloadable, so that you can play at midnight on launch

- The last class for Diablo 3 will be the (boooooooring loking) Demon hunter

- Diabloe 3 will have a (horrible looking) pvp arena system.

Argh

Here is what I predicted:

- The new unannounced mmo will get a teaser.

- Last Class from Diablo III will be revealed (holy warrior, holy warrior, holy warrior)

- Release date of Diablo III will be revealed

- Next expansion for scII will be revealed. And no, I am not talking about'heart of the swarm', I mean the first expansion for scII 'Wings of Liberty'

So basically I got 1 right. And that was my safe bet.
So what was there of goodies at the Blizzcons first day?
Not much. An interesting talk about dungeon design for wow. Only, they said pretty much the same thing they did 2 years ago, so that was a let down.
Then there where some tournaments, and im sorry but the two women commentating Warcraft 3, where complete and utter IDIOTS.
Even me, who have not played Wc3 since it was a new game, could tell they where wrong:

He looks uncertain, like he does not know where his opponent is, oh no he is splitting up his army. BIG MISTAKE, he is going to loose this game, and he was on top

Really? To me it looks like he is boxing the other guy in, but i guess you two know what you are talking abo...

Oh he got lucky there finding the other army, and there is no escape, he has won it. That was so lucky, he made a bad call and just got so lucky

...And they went on and on with this drivel. At one time they even questioned why this Korean kid did not "gg" (give up: "good game") as they called it, despite the fact that he controlled the entire map. Le grand frikking sigh.
So I turned to look at some WoW arena

And they seem to have lagged out

Then I went to bed.
Hopefully things will pick up today... You know what? Honestly LAGGING OUT. How is that possible at a tournament? Set up by Blizz themselves? Seriously, that is some amateur s*** going on there. It reminds me of when Steve Jobs gave a presentation of some phone and could not get a signal

You'd think they would have tested stuff like that.

Anyway. Heres hoping they will improve the quality of -everything- tonight, and that re-watching these things when I am not tired, will somehow give me a brighter outlook on the quality and information-value of everything.

But as a PS i'll add this, that the "geek", speech from Metzen, got this old grumpy Dworf, right in the soft spot.
I am a romantic at heart, and when he showed the Star wars logo and said, that "geek is: Watching your daughter see Star Wars for the first time, hoping these films will influence her imagination, as much as it did yours" I chocked up a bit. I did.
I think that that bit alone, was worth the entry fee i payed. Even if that part was aired for free for everyone to watch.

Blizzcon, fekk it... It's just money

2010-10-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

Yes. I am still a fan.
How do I know?
I just bought web-live-feed-thingie for Blizzcon.
Bare in mind that this is an event that (for me) will start at 8pm and end at 5 in the morning. If I where to watch it live.
That is a stupid stupid thing to spend money on.
Really stupid. And everything will be posted on mmo-champion.

So why am I doing it? I'd love to play it cool and say: "Its the pet" "Its Tenacious D" (well... okay it is ALSO that).
But the truth is, that once upon a time I was at wow-invitational (have I mentioned this like a trillion times before? Good, thats my point) and I had an absolute BLAST.

Mrs Dwism, however, did not. She joined a group of 15-20 other non-gaming girlfriends of gamers, and sat down at the main stage when there where nothing on, and read her book. There where a lot of women doing that.... And they say that love makes *men* do stupid things. These women went to Paris.

Frikking PARIS

To read a book at a noisy convention center, while their chosen ones ran around going "omgfggfgfgggdbsdfwef" and other stuff. In Paris.
Argh, I'm getting sidetracked. My point was, that on the last day there was a talk about dungeon design. I was so sucked into this talk, that I forgot about time, and had to be pulled away by the aformentioned Mrs. Dwism - so we would not miss our flight home.
It was so interesting, hearing the thought that is layed into every single detail about a fight. 'Does the boss abilities match the theme of the dungeon and his looks?', 'does these abilities sync well with eachother?' 'does all of these abilities combined present an interesting fight for the 4 types of raiders? (melee, ranged, tonk and healz) ect ect ect.
Now I get to relieve that event all those years ago, and I get to be able to press pause and listen to it all the way through in my own time.

I think I made a good decision.

REMEMBER: Cast your votes on what stuff will be revealed at blizzcon. It is not too late to be able to say "I told you all so"

Blizzard returning us to more privacy?

2010-10-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

I got a mail the other day from Blizzard. They practically begged my forgiveness for the screw-up on Real-ID

"We have changed"
Blizzard claimed.
"We won't ever hurt you again, it was a mistake"
And like bruised women and men in abusive relationships all over the world. I knew better. But I still love Blizzard, and I know that *I* can make them change. If I just don't complain when they want to invite all my facebook friends over. They won't hurt me again. If I just don't screw up.

As a token of their good will, Blizz has effectively shut down Armory. And inspection. I can't see what the 2handed warrior-tank is specced. All I can see is that he is taking loads of damage. I can no longer see if that hunter who looks to be wearing pvp gear, is gemmed for int still. All I can tell is that they suck.
We are back to vanilla.
"Are you happy now?"
Blizzard asks me.
"Isn't this what you wanted? No more inspections, no more armory checks. You can turn off every part of real-id. I told you I changed."

... I kindda hope armory gets working again.

Getting back into the thick of things, and so should you!

2010-10-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

So this is more of an "where I am at in the game right at this moment", than a post meant to inspire or ask questions.
Besides Larisa once said that bloggers are not allowed to ask questions... Or something like that.

So I have returned from my glorious vacation to the US, I've re-activated my WoW-account, I've begun running, and well... Just being happy.
I love fall. There is a reason I got married in the fall. Trees are dieing ehhh turning into pretty colours. The air is sharp and it feels great to breathe (well... It does) the crisp fall air.
But you know what feels even better? Closing the door to your dark room where the only light you have is from a desk lamp, and your pc. And just gaming. And reading about games that are coming. Fall is perfect for that. The weather is perfect for sitting in doors (summer is perfect for sitting inside a movie theater, but thats another talk), and because some people like to worship that it's turning into summer again by cutting down trees and giving gifts, there are a lot of games to look forward to.

This fall, however, I am playing pre-cata and loving it. Just like the outside world Azeroth feels like it's turning into pretty colours.. ehm Dieing (dying? what's the difference? Is it a US/UK thing?..ehm I'm getting sidetracked here).
Its about to perish. To cease. And everyone is grasping at straws, and everyone is struggling to stay alive, relevant and to enjoy every last pixel. It is marvelous.

Just like many a movie mass murder has stated, people are at their most pure, beautiful and truest, when they are close to death. And it is true for gamers.
The best time you ever had in any game as a kid, where when your mom was about to pull the plug on your Snes because you where late for granny's birthday, or when your dad is taking out the batteries of your Gameboy (not advance, just gameboy... guess my age!) because it is *way* over your bed time.
Those where the best parts of the best games. The "Just five more minutes Blizzard" - type of games.

Just five more minutes Blizzard

Here we stand. At the dusk of Wrath, the greatest expansion Blizzard ever created (I've got a post setup to explain just why this is), and we just got the new tools and toys of cataclysm.
Everything is old worn and comfortable. But yet new and exciting. I will make this as clear as I can. This is coming from a player that has played and survived every single expansion so far, and is still loving the game (oh hello there TotalBiscuit, calling yourself a raider while not doing any raids? Fancy meting you here in the "hating the game, not the money -section [I got a post on that coming up soon too])
Where was I?
Oh right.

Take it from me, this is the very very best time to be playing WoW.

Not tomorrow, not after Cataclysm. NOW.
There is fancy new toys to play with. They are funterrific. There is Masteries, there is new resource systems, there is reforging. It is all shiny and new. And everyone is just as confused as you are, trying to figure em out. Nobody knows anything about anything. Or rather, none of them, know any more than you.
Sure you will meet the pitchfork crowd, every know and again, like Tamarind did. But most runs will these days consist of tanks activating their dualspecc-blood at the entrance begging for forgiveness if their threat is weak. Or old alts dusted of to test the waters, to see if this or that class will be their future main.

It is fun times indeed. Almost all raids are the same. Sure your raid-leader might get pissed at you for claiming that Bone shield is overpriced and useless in any sort of practical way, or when you show up to raid as the third healer (10 manned) with two disc speccs to "test out smite versus non-smite builds" (fyi: smite is incredible, sorry Tam, Discs w/o smite are doing it wrong). But overall everyone is relaxed and forgiving. There is no real hunt for gear in order to get ready for the next dungeon, because there isn't one. Yet everyone is excited about raids still because their classes are all shiny and new. (except rogues, which I have on good authority "suck complete arse now, I lost 2k dps" Then again, who ever gave a damn about rogues?).

So get back into the game. enjoy all your alts that work in mysterious new ways. And pray that in a month or so, glyphs will be affordable once again.

Whats to hate about Night elfs? (also there seem to be a new patch)

2010-10-14T23:38:00.000-07:00

To sum up how everyone has reacted to the new patch:
Troll-hunter:

My mana is bugged, I've contacted GM support, but no answer (in trade chat of course)

Bloggers:

Patch takes time to download

Addons do not seem to work

Whoa, I have sooooo many classes, and I cannot get all them working right yet, this is going to take a long time. Because I have so many classes, and they are all dual-specced.

I have a tree-healer and I never realised that it was really a Night elf

Dwism

Patch takes time to download

Addons do not seem to work

Whoa, I have sooooo many classes, and I cannot get all them working right yet, this is going to take a long time. Because I have so many classes, and they are all dual-specced.

I do have a tree healer And you know what, I did know it was an elf. And I also remember when they implemented that stupid tree form. That was horrible. Thank God I can actually see my frikking toon now! Why is it that the most daft model in the history of everything in WoW, is being mourned when removed???

What is wrong with you? What makes the below seem like a brave soldier of the horde/alliance? Fighting the good fight, protecting the weak, killing the Lich king. You rolled an Elf/Tauren. Play as one. And if you rolled after this model was implemented, I am sure that Totalbiscuit has some choice words to you.
And if you rolled a druid in order to play as a tree form. You are most likely some sick sick freak. I can see you know. Leather suit, gag-ball and posting on the official forums, begging for gnome druids so your main can continue to be a gnome. Oh yes.

Madness? THIS. IS. TREE. FORM

....Whats with the hate of Elfs?

They are cool. They are awsome. They are shadowy fighters. They are this

OH yea...

And do you want to know where this pic is from? DOTA 2!

DoTA 2 is in the making. And it's valve behind it.

Valve. DoTA. Valve.

How can you not be happy? Plus tree form is gone! And all classes are yummie new, and glorious and fun and its friday. The only thing is that my addons are still screwy.

What we will learn at Blizzcon 2010

2010-10-12T00:16:00.000-07:00

Let's do a thing.
Let's stick our necks out. Let's try and guess what the reveals will be at Blizzcon 2010

I'll go first!

- The new unannounced mmo will get a teaser.

- Last Class from Diablo III will be revealed (holy warrior, holy warrior, holy warrior)

- Release date of Diablo III will be revealed

(that isn't really a calendar, its a release *year*)

Erhm back on track.

- Next expansion for scII will be revealed. And no, I am not talking about 'heart of the swarm', I mean the first expansion for scII 'Wings of Liberty'

What else? hmm there needs to be a reveal for WoW... Well I guess that one is open to everyone else. Make your own lists, it is always fun to make these (or announce that Boub is a moron and doesn't know the release date...hrrrmmm) guesses and see how many you get right.

Maybe for wow the first raid dungeon? We all know that the release trailer-cinematic for Cata will be shown on Saturday morning, so that's no fun guessing at.

OH AND DON't MISS THE FACT THAT THE GREATEST BAND IN THE WORLD WILL CLOSE DOWN THE FRIKKING SHOW

Almost sort of Cataclysm theme blog changes

2010-10-08T05:12:00.000-07:00

Title says it all doesn't it?

I've gotten out my brush and half-rotten buckets of paint and done myself some remodelling.

I am most proud of my count-down counter, that I got from a site called guildzilla.

Also they have a signatur maker that adds important stats! Like how many times you have /roll need on items, or how many hugs you have given out.
How cool is that?
Screw my resillience or my block rating. This *is* the stuff that matters!

Signed

Release is dec 7th, I am not saying I was wrong, but I was not totally right either ;)

2010-10-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

Guess the good frenchmen got it right in his second try.
I will however stand by my last post critizing him for being a (semi unwilling) puppet of the publicity machine. I guess it is not so bad since mmo-champion is still the very best place for the latest news, so i guess I will have to get of my high horse and just go "WOOOO - We are getting Cataclysm this year"

... But in the back of my head I cannot help but wonder what they have in store for when Star wars the Old Republic is released :)

How tanking looks to pan put in Cataclysm

2010-09-29T01:14:00.000-07:00

Tanking in Cataclysm seems to be (hopefully) very different than it has been so far.

There seems to be one huge change in the way tanks work, that is being implemented. Well actually two: The first one is
Stamina is no longer the sole king of tanking stats, parry and dodge are incredible
Especially for Death Knights, where one of our prime threat moves are Rune Strike, which only activates after a dodge or a parry.
This is great. I've always liked the block/dodge/parry feel of tanking more than the "I have huge health bar, call me Mr. Sponge", so I am thrilled. Let us hope it sticks.

The big big change is how our rotations work. (oh and this is important. I don't care about druids or warriors. I know how paladin tanks work, and I know how Death Knight tanks work. I do not understand or care - or play- any druid or warrior at an endgame level)

The big change is, that at seemingly every bottom press we decide on whether we want to add threat to the mob, or add survivability to ourselves. The hardworking Wake talks about it and so does Iconoclast (with GC)

Here are some chosen quotes:

Since we're quite resource-bound under the new rune system, most boss pulls I initiated with Dancing Rune Weapon and dished out as much threat I could in order to be able to "slack off" further into the fight and handle adds, self-healing, CD-usage and such much more smoothly.

I've found the Blood Shield to, in several situations, be hard to get the full effect out of. It requires the tank's involvement to activate, and even if you're a great player and manage to get the full effect out of it

And Paladins

Many players are feeling there is not enough Holy Power. Generally it seems people want more Holy Power so they can use WoG. If you are in a fight that is dealing so much damage that you feel healing yourself is called for, don't forget that Vengeance will be up very very high in that fight and will be helping a lot with threat. Feel free to substitue in some WoG's for SotR, and if you spec'd right you'll have a chance for your WoG to not consume Holy Power at all allowing you to still use that SotR. Outside of those situations, WoG is not intended for situational use.

What does this mean?
The way I read the above linked posts, the way I see our abilities, and the way these qoutes above (hopefully) examplify, is that we get a choice of adding threat or adding survivability.
Will you use your holy power to selfheal, or add threat? Will you use your rotations to keep your blood shield up, or focus on keeping the mobs sticked to you.
This.
Is.
Great.

Don't get me wrong, this is fantastically fun, you really get to be much more active and alert, and every fight will keep you engaged. In theory.

I say in theory because if I've learned anything in wow, it is this: tanks keep threat, dps pew, and healers keep people alive.
What I mean by this, is that if we wipe, because I -the tank- die, healers will be blamed. Noone would ever say: "tank why didn't you use more defensive moves?" (or dps why didn't you take less damage and do more damage?), if aggro is lost, the tank will be blamed, even if dps where dicks and the healer was shit, and the tank had to use his rotation to keep himself alive, instead of adding threat.
So my bet would be that all tanks would focus on threat (to keep dps appeased), healers will whine that they haven't gotten enough mana to heal, blizz will buff healers, and we are back to where we are now.

having said that, hopefully smart players won't be sheep, and see that it is now important to have healers conserve mana, so the idea and hopefully the smarter groups (aka guild runs are FTW!) will understand that the runs are aimed for the knife-edge decisions of "survive but risk running out of mana while dps are slowed to stay below threat when tank and healers are doing their best to not die" kontra the "nuuuke hard keep threat and kill and hopefully not die while going all out". That should be fun for an entire group, and encourage working together instead of " I am doing MY part, you do yours" -solo'ish idea that is I see as a trend happening. Something I think that the anonymous lfg runs is encouraging, and something I think will kill the game, in the long run.
If group runs become much more about working together, so that 5 players will be more than the sum of their part. When you work together to achieve something that you could not if you had just been 5 players doing their own part. Hopefully that Goblin thought of "I did my part, you do yours and please do not talk to me in the meantime, because I am too cool to talk to anyone". Hopefully the idea would be "let us be more than the sum of our parts, and generally work together to achieve a greater goal. Let us break the mold of what a dps, tank and healer should do, and let us look at what we can do to get to our goal."
Where tanks can focus on surviability, where healers can be conscious of what type of heals they throw and when, and where dps can do more than just 'press this button that does the most damage' and actually be involved in the group beside conquering the dmg meter.

Boubouille is a sucker (and why cata won't come til next year)

2010-09-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

So once again the "unofficial release date" has been postponed. And once again my long time wow-hero Boubouille has proven to be a sucker. An easy mark, a part of "them".

His inside source, who originally told him that Cata was set for nov. 2, has now changed his mind.
"Sorry mate" he might have said "its the start of December now".

Soon that will change again.
And again.
Every little trick is being played to make sure we keep the hype going until the actual release. That release is set for:

Within a week of the release of Star Wars: the Old Republic

Thats right. And they will keep prolonging the release of Cata until there is any reason to release it.
Now, there is not. People are still paying their monthly sub, while finishing the game in beta.

We are all idiots. And Boub is our leader.

I was with him, you know, I too promised to join him running naked through Paris, if Worgen and Goblin did not turn out to be the new races. They did, and mah pants stayed on.
Now his inside source has been located, and the powers that be, will continue to feed him (and vicariously the biggest WoW site, mmo-champion) with whatever info they want to part with, to keep us hyped.

His next post: "my inside sources tell me, that everything in Cata will be twice as awsome as every beta tester thinks!"

... And I used to think that he was cool.

I'm back

2010-09-27T05:19:00.000-07:00

In more ways than one. My wow-account has been reactivated.
Hopefully i'll get my hunter and paladin geared for the expansion (yes you need to have them geared before you start a new expansion!) But mostly it was to get access to the PTR and -hopefully- beta.

The reports I've read on Death Knights have been disheartening. That is why I want my paladin geared and tested out. Because what has been even more disheartening than the reports on how DKs fare, have been ghostcrawlers responses to these reports. They have both been very very very very VERY few, and usually they could be boiled down to: "you are the newest class, you have no issues, even though we have rebooted you, everything is fine. STFU and L2P, we do not care about bla... about death knights" (my interpretation).

But more on that when I get to try out our new tree and mechanics myself :)

But paladin tanks looks so very very yummie and fun. Both lookwise, mechanic wise and coolness factor.

I am going on a hum hum holiday

2010-09-09T03:00:00.000-07:00

Technically summer is over, so I couldn't call this a summer holiday.
But it is *my* summer holiday.
I've mentioned before where I am going, so all i'll write here, is that I've found a Miami dolphins (go Phinz) bar in New York, and I'm thrilled.

Don't give away my VIP seat at the inn while I'm gone, and don't break anything too pretty.

See you..

Look mah i'm on the interweb!

2010-09-07T00:38:00.000-07:00

http://www.wowwiki.com/Raise_Ally

Lets look at that link again

http://www.wowwiki.com/Raise_Ally

Screw you hippies, I'm on the interweb.
Here is the action pic for those of you who missed my awsomeness

Here is a hint, if you are STILL missing it: The first external link.

Oh and let me add, I did not make this entry. I was just wondering why I got traffic from Wowwiki

Running screaming in Terror

2010-09-06T07:58:00.000-07:00

Title has been riped of the post from Troll racials are OP blogs latest post.
Its about how the world (of warcraft) looked before you dinged max level, and what you remember from it.

And the title is extremely fitting. I remember running around screaming in complete terror. You see, I am the explorer type. If I see that my map ends at that river, then I *have* to cross it. I've even swam (swum??) north around Kalimdor, and ended up in a zone for people 30 levels above what I was at the time. ( I remember an orc cheering for me, while something large chased me... He didn't save me though, but still).

So yea, Running screaming in Terror, sums up my leveling experience very well.

There is also one distinct experience I remember vividly (and with great pride too). I was level something 40 and healing an instance.

*whoa stop there*
How does a Death Knight manage to heal intances, and at level 40 something???

Good question. The answer is, I was not always a Death Knight. In fact, I was not always a Dwarf either. But back when i was a healing, I was a Dwarf, and I was a priest. His name was Dreamweaver, and he was awsome.
I did not realise just how awsome I was before said instance. This is the story of when I decided to be a healer.

So back in the day, there was not any instant que for instances. You started asking in general chat when in a city. It usually took a long while for non-max instances. Oh the horror. Also, back then, only priests could heal and warriors could tank (so not much changed there, hurr hurr).

Anyways the Mage knew a level 50 something warrior, whom she lured into giving us a hand, and we where off to kill the ugly princess.

Oh and this was also before there was anything called dual-specc or "healing classes can solo sh*t" - So I was a shadow priest. And since there was no dual-speccing and changing your specc cost like 50.000 gold (at least in present game currency), I healed with a shadow-specc.

That was fine, because I had done it before, and managed to do that, just fine. We cleared the instance in a very smooth and quick run (only around 2 hours). And The tank commented on how rare it was to see holy priests specc in leveling instances.
"oh no" I replied. "I am shadowspecced"
"Yea right you are shadow and healing this great"
"I am, I swear" I said, and clicked shadow.
And he started swooning. For days I got /w from him telling me, that when I hit max level, I should totally call him, and he would get me in his guild.

I was flattered, but what I was not, was a fast leveler. (back then), so when I finally reach level 60, I had forgotten his name, and he mine.
Oh the adventures me and warrior could have had.

years later I discovered that being good (not great, I really was not that great a healer, but I was good) at something, does not equal having fun at something.
That was why I changed to my Death Knight. Where I am not as good a tank as I was a healer. But I am having way more fun.
Ask anyone in my raid group. When we kill something, I am the guy yelling the loudest on TS (or if its the groups second kill, I am the only one yelling on ts... Hello there Arthas. That was embarrassing)

star wars (the original movies) in a whole new light

2010-09-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

I am one of those people who love the prequels. Sure jar-jar is annoying, but he serves his purpose. But other than that, the 3 prequels are a rollercoaster ride of thrilling action, murderous plots and an extremely gloomy ending to a series that has always been cheery-funtastically-happy-go-lucky.

The only thing that bothered me so damned much about them. where the canyon wide plot holes, when you see all 6 movies in a row.
From 3-4 it almost seems as if it is not the same series. For example the old guy in the death star that tells Vader something in the lines of "nobody believes in your ancient religion anymore" ... ancient? when he himself was a young man, that religion was the peace-keepers of the entire frikking universe.
Anyway I've finally found someone who was able to get it all to make sense.
And it places Chewbacca and R2D2 in much more important roles, than anyone of us could ever imagine.

Here is the link, I haven't been able to determine whether or not this is the original, but its the one I read.

Yes, I am aware this is a "read-this-cool-link" post. But it is not as if WoW has anything all that exciting going on atm.

As a matter of fact, I am willing to bet that they are way behind schedule on Cata. Beta has never been this unfinished before, when it was launched to be public. I think that they opened beta up, because they have no other 'content' to throw at people. And by the looks of it, I highly doubt we will see Cata before 2011, conveniently close to the launch of SW:tOR.
Blizzard have a long history of fucking over their competition like this. LotRO, WARhammer, Conan, its all just history repeating itself. More and more Blizzard is looking like a company who -on purpose- withholds content untill there is someone threatning their core audiences.
That is fine, but then they shouldn't give us that crap about how it's all about making great games, and these games are ready when they are ready. When in fact it is all about co**blocking other fun games, from us.

Bro's Don't C**kblock bro's, just ask Barney Stinson.

OH SNAP. The bro code is on youtube - Gotta say, that is one funny book. Best read this year. Read it with friends.

Abusing equal rights to up readership

2010-08-30T07:21:00.000-07:00

Yea, this post is all about that Noisy rogue, who finally managed to make some noise.

Good for him, clearly the years in apprenticeship with the greedy goblin has payed off. It was not as if he had not tried before.

Throw out a line, hope someone with influence or readership grabs the bait and reel em in.
"Sorry wow.com, you are talking bullshit"
"Women are feminists and morons"
"social game, wow is not" (same topic as the greedy goblin uses).

Well finally he managed to find a hook: "That topic everyone is talking about is wrong".

And everyone fell for it. He went from 5 to 10 comments per post to over 100. That is a nice increase, especially considering the fact, that he did not really mean what he wrote.

Greedy Goblin has been doing this for years. Now the apprentice steps up.

The reason why I am so damn sure, that he did not mean that more 'female representation is a bad thing', is for two distinct facts: 1. when he got called out on it, he claims to have been misunderstood, and that people only latch on to one sentence and twist it to misrepresent him. Even I know a diversion, when I see one. When you do not have the arguments to support you, you attack the delivery.

2. His one stance is that since WoW is "high fantasy" it should not try and use modern day politics. That's fine, but if we use that arguement, then Adam should really be up on the fence on how under-represented women are. Because the only source material we have to use to define the gender issues in 'high fantasy', is Dungeons and Dragons. And it is stated over and over again in those books, that men and women are completely equal. They even have the same stats. Talk about fantasy!
In 'high fantasy' Men and women are equally smart, strong, fast and clever and so on and so forth. Yay fantasy land.
So that cannot be the 'high fantasy' Adam is reffering to. Maybe he is using the books of Tolkien as a reference point?
Well that does not make sense either, since Tolkien goes out of his way, in his books, to be a product of his time, when referring to gender roles.

So what are we left with? A blogger who wrote some gibberish in order to get noticed, and succeeded. So I guess it's grats on him.

Update: He now explains his views based on the fact that he is an anti-theist - in his opinion they are a belief system, that battles... ehm belief systems, at every chance they get. Because only with religious zealous can you combat... erhm... religion.

It is on purpose, that I've not linked to him, nor his masters blog.

Tera: Why you play women in games, and how it should be done

2010-08-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

Tera is going to be a HUGE success.
They have campfires that ensures that you will group up to kill stuff, and they know how to programme women for gamers!

Take a look at this vid

Skip to 0:28 and see how she runs!
Brilliant.

Who doesn't like to look up at hot babes skirts all day long?

Then try and skip to 3:01 and look at that cuteypie try and be a big strong magic-wielder. Aww. Look at her do what all women do to get their way: wiggle erotically and lure the monsters in. And them run away when they get close.

Good thing we have game-developers like the ones behind Tera, to push games into more and more realism.

I'm so proud to be a guy today.

Taking a break from WoW is boring

2010-08-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

You know all those people who quit the game, but keep posting about how great life is, and how all of you/us that keep playing the game, are loosers and needs to break the chains of addiction and get a FRIKKING LIFE?

You know those people? I'm not one of them.

I've been on sabbatical from wow for about a month now, and even though I enjoyed replaying the two Knights of the old Republic games (they do crash a LOT in the new'er versions of windows though... Like a really really lot) and I've enjoyed playing star craft two, I am starting to miss WoW.

And that is weird. The game had nothing of interest to me. Dungeons or raids? Nothing. Sure we could clear ICC on alts, but really, I was getting sick of that place. I hardly didnt even log on for the last 3 weeks of my sub. Yet, I miss the people, I miss my guildies, I miss the atmosphere I miss... Well I honestly miss playing in Vanilla.

I think that is the reason I am looking so much forward to Cataclysm (and SWTOR), it is a chance to start a new. It is an opportunity to be amazed by a game. When it is not just a boring grind for the a trillion badges for the next armorset for a raid-dungeon you have already cleared 27 times. When the bosses are fresh, the loot is fun, the raid-strats are new, the quests are not a bore and even something like grinding rep... somehow... seems fun.

Then again, for my horde lock, most of this holds true for wrath, and I still cannot be bothered to log in on her.

And last weekend I did NOTHING. I watched movies, some tv, read a little in a book, had a little nap, considered mowing the lawn, but ended up doing nothing.
I think that was the first time in 5 years I had a weekend where I did'nt do anything, nor had anything planned. And I must admit that I loved every second of it.

Maybe I need a couple more of those before I am ready for Cataclysm. Good thing its still 5 months away.

Why Sith are the good guys, and why swtor will have incredible roleplaying opportunities

2010-08-20T02:25:00.000-07:00

An alternative title could be: How Bioware can completely and utterly fuck up everything that could make this game so great.

- "This game" Being Star wars the old republic, or swtor amongst friends.

What is it then, that I am talking about? It is, of course, the filosophy behind the -so called- dark side. And why The Jedi order are the bane of everything good in the universe.

Confused? well you should be... Possibly.

Allow me to start by explaining why I think that Dark side of the Force is really the good guys. And why I very much fear that Bioware may just not "get it", and if they do not, how I just may be forced to play the bad guys... The Jedi, that is.

Allright, now i'm confusing myself. Let's talk about why and how the Sith are the cure to the disease known as Jedi.

"If you seek to aid everyone that suffers in the galaxy, you will only weaken yourself … and weaken them. It is the internal struggles, when fought and won on their own, that yield the strongest rewards… If you care for others, then dispense with pity and sacrifice and recognize the value in letting them fight their own battles."

―Darth Traya

The dark side, ensures that the old saying of: 'give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, teach him *how* to fish, and he can eat every day' - holds true in the universe. Where the Jedi constantly craves and ensures that all beings in the universe become dependant on them, the Sith ensures that all they meet in the worlds become strong enough to fend for themselves.

Where the Jedi teach their students to fear emotions and never be swayed by personal feelings - to be cold and distant to the world, the Sith teaches us to use our emotions to control the Force to our means. The Jedi think that the force is a all knowing all seeing justifier and all mighty ruler of the galaxy. We know that the force is merely a tool to be used to our means.
They fear power, because they are the only ones who want to have any power. We embrace the search for power, because we want everyone to have their own power. To fuel that power with emotions, makes sure that the power you have are used for good. Fighting for the ones you love, or against those you hate will always ensure that you are on the right path.
The only ones the pesky Jedi scum fight, are those that would challenge the power they crave for themselves.

Why would you cheer for the Jedi slime? Why would you fall for their rotten gifts of day old fish? Join the dark side, We will teach you to fish for yourself and not be the lap-dogs of self-righteous-holier-than-thou-asshats!

Is there really any choice? Is it no obvious which path is the right one to follow?

Why I fear that Bioware will screw up on making this game great.
If it was not obvious to everyone at the end of the above, then that was my attempt to show how and why the dark side (if done right), could have a moral high-ground. Or at the very least *FEEL* that they have one, against the Jedi.
That would make the conflict, not so much be about good versus bad, but a philosophical one of using the force or being used by the force. Where the Jedi pray that the force is with them, and try and listen to what the force have to tell them, the Sith could be the ones who bends the force to follow them.
That would make for an interesting game-conflict.
Unfortunetely for my hopes, you really have to read a LOT of stuff into the previous Old Republic game(s), in order to see this interpritation of the force.
Instead you see the boring old

I am a bad guy, so I will betray everyone, even if it has no meaning whatso'ever in my attempts to reach my goals, i'm the bad guy, so i will do bad things.

I am the janitor/cleaning lady/grunt/general/lawyer/warrior of the Sith and I will spit on you and be an complete asshole in every way, because I am bad and you are good... or you may be bad, but I don't care!!

Every single Sith you meet in those games (i've only played through the first one again recently... so if anyone remembers otherwise please enlighten me), are cartoon villain evul. Everyone.
How can you build up a society that rivals the Empire, with that attitude from everyone? Betrayal, just for the sake of it? scheming and plotting against everyone.
Imagine the builders of one of the space-ships in that universe: He will install faults in the main-line, that will cause the ship to explode on the first attempt at lightspeed. He will then go home, and have dinner, but be poisoned by his wife since her plot was to get impregnated by a distant cousin to darth malaaalalala and then inherent his worksman pension.

They wouldn't get anything done. It is stupid and silly to assume that they all act like this, yet, in former bioware games, this is how the Sith work. Just like the Dark choices your character has to make: Burn an orphin or kick a puppy or go do your mission. You have to go out of your way and be evil in order to get dark side points. There is NO allure of the dark side, there is no point in getting dark side points, other than wanting to roleplay a baddie.

If this is the path the chose to go down in swtor, then I just might have to end up rolling a Jedi, since all of a sudden those emotional-blackmailing good for nothing force-worshippers, might be my only hope at playing a normal guy.

Fairly disappointed in Cata CE

2010-08-18T06:18:00.000-07:00

So today the Collectors edition of Cataclysm was launched.

So what does it bring with it for 3 times the cost?
1 behind the scenes DVD
1 Booklet with lots of pictures
1 album with songs
an ingame pet (little mr Jaws)
some cards from the WoW cardgame
and a mousepad

So... every single item that TBC and wrath CE had. Same things. How many mousepads does one gamer need?
I even think that the Wrath CE had a map too. This one, not so much.
Thank you so very much for phoning it in guys.

I bought the CE edition for Starcraft 2. I am very happy I did. I am almost through the single player campaign and I very much doubt that I'll be playing much multiplayer, yet I am so happy I bought this SE.

The package was imba cool. Like really awsome. The cata: does not look to be more than a box.
And it has all the other things that the Cata box have (including special stuff in game, and special pet for WoW too...)
and most importantly: I got a extremely cool USB stick with the first game on it.

And its frikking heavy. and the orange part lights up when you plug it in.

Now *that* is a CE version I can understand paying extra for. But for the flagship, for WoW for the big Cataclysm one.
The above is all they will offer. Meh

picking my winner!

2010-08-13T05:32:00.000-07:00

I had an amazingly incredible super competition with MASSIVE prizes

that then fell very much to the ground when I found out that the prizes where not even possible to give out (unless I gave the whole game away, and FU very much if you thought i'd do that...)

Anyways lots of good ideas where thrown my way (incl one for worgenfreeman)

but my favorite one, came from Tesh:

Tesh has left a new comment on your post "Name that worgen!! There will be MASSIVE PRIZES":

Aragh or Aargh. Nothing like a HUGE English Wolf to brighten your literary day.

Aint that the thuth?

Other suggestions included: Negrow, Combining one of my old names with lykos (dreamlykos? Lykosdux??) Wherepants or 'notashotasissy'

So far I am loving the Aargh (or a variation therefrom) since it just sounds right for a rageunit with a worgen race combo thingie. It 'sounds' right.

And just to show that I am even worse than anyone of you, at making up a name, my placeholder was:

Dreamshred.

thank you everyone who chiped in, at least from my end, it was a lot of fun. The name isn't set in stone though, there is still 6 months untill Cata is released, and thus plenty of time for me to change my mind.

Why I won't play a gurl

2010-08-11T03:05:00.000-07:00

In my last post (remember the competition is still a going!!) Issy wrote a comment suggesting I went and rolled a female worgen, and named it "Notashotasissy".

While that would surely not be an untrue name, (Since anyone who has not killed the Lich King, must have a life and therefore be 'hot' - I kid, I kid) I wont be rolling a female worgen for several reasons. Hold on tight females, this is a difficult discussion incoming!

1. No female alt will ever top Starshred in pure hotness (at least not alliance, see above) so there is no point in rolling one.

2. Have you seen female plate in wow? No way that can take a blow from big baddies

It's SIMILAR!!!

3. Women are weak!

yes they are. You are also brainzizable smaller. Hello! Einstein was a man, you are women. Name one smart scientist that was a woman! Even the bibles says it.

My point is; women gamers will never be taken seriously as tanks, and neither will women toons. If you show up as a female toon and pretend to know how to tank, you will be laughed at. Unless you play the role of "oh gosh I just don't know how to tank anything, hope you will all bare with me, lol *smile*" and I've played that role more than enough when I was a healer in a sissy robe!

The only reason to play a female toon, is to have a hot piece of ass to look at all day, and honestly if I wanted to do that, there are websites for that sort of thing.

So Issy; that is why i'll be rolling a male toon.

Name that worgen!! There will be MASSIVE PRIZES

2010-08-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, so like I made clear a couple of posts ago I'll be playing a worgen protection warrior (alt, don't freak DK fans) when Cataclysm hits.
Question is, what should I name him?

To me, my former alts names, do spell a trend:
A healing priest called Dreamweaver
A drunken pally called Duffler
A reanimated Dwarf Deathknight named Redux
A dwarf hunter named Leadbelly (and a dog named raindog)

A worgen male warrior named...

Names must be something I can live with for more than a day (worgenfreeman is out), but that doesn't mean that weird twisted jokes aren't allowed.

Now about prizes. I am assuming that readers are playing wow too. And since I will be investing in something something, and felt that well... Its only money and I get a usb drive that sounds cool.

EDIT: It seems that you cannot win anything :( Sorry, As far as I'm told the pet will be locked to the games battle.net account after all.

You can win this:

That's right the Thor mini pet!!1

Carefull!!!

I've not really done any research on this, so I am not 100% sure that I can even give it away, since the game itself will be locked into my battle.net account. This is really a spur of the moment thing.

Deadline is friday morning european standard time at 8.00 am.
Thats around when my sub expires, and I want to get the name secured :)

note: I am kindda curious how this will even work out. My main hope is that some of my lurkers will be lured into posting :)

...If -for some really cool reason- you do not want others to see your ideas (maybe you are going of a tangent and don't want others to copy you.) you can mail me too:
nogetsjovt£gmail[dittlydot]com

Don't mess with dorfs, or they'll punch ya!

2010-08-03T00:33:00.000-07:00

Theldurin (the Lost), has always been a proud member of the Dwarven race. When he discovered something was going wrong with them Twillight cult fans (most have been team Jacob kids), he spoiled their plans and went into hiding.
Even when that Deathwing guy came to bother him, he made sure that he wasn't bothered by anyone!

How?

He punched that dragon in the face!

Edit: Me and blogger and youtube will be busy for a while, caught in a 3 man deathmatch to get the imbedded to work.
For now, follow link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3Q5yD2gKpI

Why space-combat in SWTOR scares me

2010-08-02T02:20:00.000-07:00

No. It is not because I am afraid of flying.

Recently (comicon in San Diego) Bioware let it slip that SWTOR (star wars the old republic) would have your personalized spaceships (your portable homes) used in space-combat.

At first, I was like: "wooo!!!"
Then I was like: "whooooooo"
Then I was like: "woo?!!"
Then I was like: "wait.."
Then I was like: "dude, wait what?"
Then I remembered *that game*. Star trek online. The game that came out in what I call 'super-open-beta-so-everyone-can-try-before-they-buy'. And failed.
I really wanted to love it. I really really did. I tried and I tried and I tried. But ultimatly it failed because it had space-combat.
Now, don't get me wrong, I loved the space-combat part. It was just to simplistic. It was like flame-leviathan in Ulduar, but for half the game. And since you had space-combat fill up half the combat system, they had the space-shooter combat dumbed down too.
So instead of some interesting character combat mechanics, like the ones that wow is getting, and WARhammer and Lord of the rings have. All players, that played Star Trek got, was two systems that where dumbed down and made as non-unique as possible.

Blizzard always had a great gaming philosophy: Easy to learn, difficult to master. But the thinking - at least how I saw it- from Cryptic in Star Trek, seemed to be: 'we will have two different combat systems, that is hard enough for the dumb masses to cope with.' And so you got two boring combat systems.

Hopefully, this won't happen for Bioware, but for a game developer that does not have a great track record for balancing combat systems (don't play a healing char in dragon age? good luck then!), they will now have TWO combat systems to balance out.

Blizzard is having a hard time just balancing out their one combat system. Ask any PVP'er.

Hopefully Bioware, will be well aware (pure poetry) of these issues, but the past does scare me a bit. Both in regards to predecessor and biowares own history of balance.

Yes, ill be a prot worgen in Cata

2010-07-30T04:59:00.000-07:00

Why?

I saw this

Over at mmo-champion.
I was torn, as to whether I should keep going with my Dwarf-setting. Then I saw this, and that was the decider!

(also: yes short posts with a picture in them, make for great blog-posts!!)

This is why SI:7 screws so much up in Cataclysm

2010-07-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

"Hey guy, you should totally kidnap the only calm leader of the horde, that will leave Garrosh in charge... What could possibly go wrong with that?"

Se here for more info. Never trust ANY kind of goblin.

What makes for interesting class-mechanics?

2010-07-26T03:17:00.000-07:00

After having re-watched the fantastic EA-Multiplayer video from SWTOR, I was left feeling a little sad. The perspective of the video, was from a councilor.
And even if it was rough alfa, even if it looked great, even if I watched that damned thing 15 times. Something struck me: The mechanics looked so 2002. Boring and un-inventive. You did some healing by pushing a button. Then you did some melee tricks while mana regenerated and then you healed some more.
This was pretty much how priests worked in Molten Core. (and, i'm told, that is how paladins still work ZING).

And it is weird, because every game is struggling to outdo themselves in interesting and unique ways that a character class works.
Back in the day you had 3 types of mechanics:
rage that generated as you fought
Mana that got depleted as you fought
and energy that came back at steady rate.

To be honest, I am not sure who did what first, but I first discovered changes in this, when Lord of the rings online, came out. And a class like Champions came, where you both build up rage-like powers and spend sort of a combo buildup too. That is the best way to describe it. You would deplete your "power" and build up this secondary energy to unleash special powers.
You can see it in this vid: Notice the blue power depleting in the top corner (below the health) and in the bottom you can see a little bar with 5 red squares (above the round yellow icon with a sword in it).

maybe you have to play it to get it. Regardless it was a mechanic I really loved, and one that is sort of copied in Death Knights.
And if you thought LotRo was nuts, then stay away from war. That game was booming with interesting class mechanics. My favorite there where the High elf Swordmasters. Where you would dance into better battlestances. There where 3 and each stance had different abilites you could use. You could always use the stance below. (and yes I know that Destruction had a duplicate one, but i cannot remember its name). You can see that class at work here
I've earlier written about how cool I thought that the star wars class of Troopers mechanics sounded, in short: The mechanic got copied by WoW for hunters in Cata.
One of the main reasons why I'll be very very active on my hunter in Cataslysm.

I know mages (at least arcane) for a while where a procc class, where you kept looking out for different abilities to procc.

I guess these abundances of interesting mechanics or class-resources, got the better of me, and my hopes for star wars was, that every class would have some magnificently interesting mechanics (like pretty much every single class in Warhammer has), so I got myself pretty disapointed over councilars. Maybe I cannot see the interesting bit in that video. Maybe it is a very cool new intuative way, that this class works for healing (don't even get me started on healers in Warhammer. If only that game had the community that wow did...), but I for one, cannot see it.

Maybe there are players out there that breathe a sigh of relief? "Phew, thank god, a normal class that works how they are supposed to, now I can focus on playing the game".

What do ya'll think? Are there mechanics you look forward to? Are you allready sick and tired of new ways to skim the 3 mechanics from above (rage, mana, energy)?

Why using addons is required when you want to heal and not be a burden

2010-07-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

I really wanted to leave this behind on the reply I gave here, but... Like always, I seem to be unable to stfu. So here is my reply.

I can heal while I move. I just run and click with my mouse. ONE click with my mouse. Then theres a shield, or a renew or a PoM.
Oh right you are a paladin. (but I'll bet your priest can benefit)

Well, how do you heal people? Ill tell you: you click on the portait of the raider who is in need of a heal and then you click on the heal you want to cast.
Me, I click on the portait of the raider I want to heal.

Notice how I didnt do half the stuff you did? On each frikking cast? That shit adds up.

Want to squeeze as much healing out of yourself as you can? Use an addon, it is faster. Personally I use healbot.
And yes, I've healed with no addons, and it makes you a bad healer.
Let me offer a comparison:
You want to go from point A to point B. Using no addons is like running there, using an addon is taking the bike. And your argument is this: "sometimes there is a patch and the wheel falls of". (then you put the wheel back on an ride the bike again) and your other argument is: "a good healer I know performed worse when he used a bike, he fell over and stuff." That just means he has to learn to ride said bike.

Using an addon makes sure that your heals come out whenever you want them to. Using addons makes sure that you can worry about your class mechanics and the fight mechanics. Using an addon makes you learn the game better, because your teammates will not die due to your heals being slower.

If you want to be carried through content by your raid-group, that is fine. Go ahead enjoy. If you like being a worse player because of some self-imposed rules, be my guest.
I can't say I blame you. I tank in leather. You see, when I tank in leather I am at the same level as druids, and it makes me understand the game a lot better.

AAAAAAnd if someone uses macros that they have cpoied/pasted from the interweb, and then claims that addons are destroying healers understanding of their class mechanics... I do not know what to say other than: THAT IS JUST LIKE A FRIKKIN ADDON. you are using tools you did not create (and are just as much a part of the 1s and 0s that makes wow... Just like addons are.), to do the job you want to do. If you are using “target=mouseover" types of addons, you are frikking using a non-pretty UI-addon.

Redux has Gone fishing

2010-07-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

This idea is in NO WAY stolen from anyone!

[muffled voice] [more muffled voice] [heal me] [mumbling] [Control your damn aggro][even more muffled voicing] [taunt damn you]

...
/takes off helm

Right, helm off, then talk.
Where was I? Oh Hi there, didn't see ye standing over there. My name is Redux. I am a tank. Dwism though,t it would be a good idea to tell ye all about what I be doing.

As ye may have herd, I have taken a leave of absence.
In case you do not know me, well... It's about damned time. I've saved these lands more times than I care to remember.
I found a nice little picture of me, Twa's taken by a fan

Oh you noticed my big muscles there, did ye? Well, I am really strong, so no wonder!

I've saved these lands by killing them big evils that be stirring; I killed an old god. I killed this starman who was waiting in the sky, I killed the lich kings entire frikking fortress of doom, known as Naxramas, *and* I frikking killed the Lich king himself. Twice! Both when he was a sleepy, and another time, when I called him poppa, a wuzzy little soppy-princess. That got him really angry I'll tell ye.
And I even won a justing tournament on a horse! And with frikking wobbly floors an everything, why bring them scrawny looking horses to anything, when there be fine bears or goat to be ridden?

And Dragons! did I ever tell you about all the dragons I killed?
And not like this wuzz
Real dragons. Black dragons, dead dragons, blue dragons, pink/purple dragons, fiery dragons, magical dragons. it's a wonder people know me as starcaller, and not Dragons layer. Erhm Dragon slayer.

So after Me last killing spree (I did have 9 other adoring fans following me around, but none of them are normal-sized. They are either untrust-worthy tall elfs or humans, or very untrustworthy-short gnomes. some of them even come from space, and ye cannot trust them!)
So really. I did all the work. That is why I get the black plate-armor and the spiky maces! (I've lend my axe out to this pink-dressed guy. He needs all the help he can get).

But really, I be not much of a fighter. I love the quiet life. I love relaxing with a pint o' Ale near my fire-place.
And I love fishing!

So I went to Magni, and I said: Magni. King Bronzebeard. Even if ye be a Bronzebeard, ye be allright. But if it's all the same to ye, I'd like to go home now. To me cottage, on the outskirts of me family home, of the Wildhammers. I got some barrels of ale, and some fine art hanging on the walls. And I'd like to drink me ale, and look at the fireplace and reminisce about the old days.
And what I'd really love is to do that every night, and spend every day fishing with mah little angel-friend.
Now, unless something big happens. I'd like to be left alone. So should the proud leaders of the alliance (thats us dwarfs, Magni) need help with dealing with something big. And I mean really big. Like an event of cataclysmic proportions. Then, but only then, can ye call on me.

So Magni said something like: "Who the bleedin 'ell do ye think ye are Redux?" And then he got really angry like and said:

I be wanting to make this cut out in stone: Redux, ye have done well, and earned ye title of Ironforge. I be wanting to tell ye, that all of us dwarfes are in debt to ye. But even if ye has redeemed ye-self in teh eyes of our gran-fatters, and We be very apriciative on behalf of the entire region of Khaz Modan. havin said that, Ye still have not invited me or me kin to drink ale with ya. And now ye be leaving us to clean up ye mess. Who do ye think ye are? a bleeding elf? Just waltzing in here making a big mess and then returning to ye homelands? Go on, see if we Bronzebeards care, always leaving us to cleen up ye mess, because ye has tamed the griffins. piss off.

Whatever.

Here I be, fishing and enjoying fine arts and ale. and a fireplace.

That be fine art, that be

So long folks. Thank you for following me. I think DWism will still post now and again, but me. I am taking the year off. I think I've earned it!