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Ah, New York.  Home to the 24-hour Mickie-D’s, Thai beer, suicidal cabbies and the question, “What the fuck is that smell?”  Oh but on my latest trip, it also held The Million Nerd March or what is publicly called New York Comic Con.  As my train heads back down the nutsack of the east coast, aka New Jersey, I’m left to ponder the day and realized a couple things.  One, even after a half a dozen beverages before deciding to head home, I can still hold a pen halfway straight.  And two, being around thousands of fellow geeks gathered around all in one place, you can’t help but scratch your head at some of the things you see.

Now, I had a pretty specific list of things I wanted to get done on this excursion.  Al of which related to The Old Republic.  So I wasn’t going to let some fat nerd ahead of me slow me down and keep me from my blitzkrieg upon Comic Con.  If anything, I was going to be said fat nerd myself.  So I got up at the ass crack of dawn to make sure I got there with plenty of time to spare.  The plan worked so well, I was about the sixth person in the line of people who already had their tickets.  Victory!  With this position, I had front row seating to some of the most bizarre cos-players I’ve ever seen while they went around my line to the back.  Some were OK, most weren’t.  The two dudes dueling banjos behind me only enhanced the atmosphere.  Also, it got to the point where going around the line sent you right into traffic, on a busy street, with a bus depot right there.  Now really, what’s so hard for people to understand about the words, “Cross the street,” so you don’t get a bus shoved up your ass?  At ten o’clock, it was on.  CHARGE! Read more…

Poor Android. It always seems to be the step-child when it comes to app development. Being an early adaptor, I can say that for the most part, apps on iOS tend to run smoother than the same apps on Android. Android users have had to use a bunch of 3rd party apps to do what the WoW Armory on iOS already does, and the official app left much to be desired. Does the newly released WoW Armory work on Android? Check in past to break for the answer! Read more…

With 4.2, Blizzard has injected the new content with eight new hunter pets, all of whom are not only rare elites, but are specifically designed to WTFpwn you if you swoop in and try to tame it like a “normal” hunter pet. This had a significant impact on my decision to resub to WoW. My exploits taming pets in the game are documented on here and stalking the prey, taming and forming a relationship with the pets that I tame is the reason that I have always run BM, even though it is pretty much a garbage spec as far as DPS goes. I really enjoy seeing hunters in Stormwind with exotic pets and trading stories about the taming process. Maybe it is because I am on an RP server, but all the BM hunters that I have talked to are of the same mindset.

Having tamed a couple of the new hunter pets, I can say with certainty, that there are two distinctly different experiences that I had encountered while huntering. Hunting Ban’thalos, is a tricky affair. Ban is a spirit beast owl, yes an owl, that is way up in the air above the Sanctuary of Malorne. Like way up there. I had to park myself in a tree and then mount up and fly up some more to tag the owl. Drop into the tree, freeze trap, and tame beast. Bam sounds easy right? It always sounds easy on paper. Read more…

After several pitiful months of low funds, I’ve decided to pick up an old hobby and start working at the Auction House.  This post isn’t designed to walk you through my brilliant methods of generating vast sums of wealth (there are plenty of other blogs devoted to that and my methods aren’t nearly as profitable as theirs…nor would I describe them as brillaint).  Rather, this post is designed to discuss a couple rules of thumb that I’ve successfully employed.

Why?

This may seem like a basic question to ask but first ask yourself why you are playing the Auction House in the first place.  Are you looking to make enough to buy a coveted item or are you trying to set up a massive fortune that will ensure you never have to scrap by begging on the streets of Stormwind again?  The way you bid, buy out and price will all be a reflection of what your end goal is.  Hence the importance of answering this question before you even step through the front door.

Don’t Over Check Your Auctions

On the first day I posted my Auctions, I must have checked in on them a dozen times throughout the day.  Each time I saw someone else post something that I posted at a cheaper price, I panicked.  Would mine ever sell?  Should I take it off the market now?  Should I just call this whole exercise a wash, buy some Valor bracers and sell them on the Auction House (each time an Auction hadn’t sold, I was sorely tempted to take this route).

My answer to all these questions was to have a beer and see what the market does.  This may sound rather zen and fit oddly with the fast moving, capitalist nature of Azerothian Auction Houses but it does make sense.  There will always be folks looking to make a quick buck on their items and there will always be a market for those under priced items.  You can’t panic each time you see another player foolishly undercutting the minimum bid on an item that you’ve posted.  Instead, simply wait it out.  Sure, some of your items won’t sell but some will!  Take a deep breath and let the market decide what sells.

One final note: find someone on your server that you can pump for information.  There are two guys that I know I can ask any questions about the local economy on my server.  Big thanks to Bigg and Tovo for their fiscal wisdom!



I’ve recently switched my main from my Warlock to my Paladin for a number of reasons (most of them pivot around the need to bring in a well balanced group to our raids).  Reasons aside, there are some key differences in play style that I want to elaborate on.  My plan is to continue to document both major and minor changes as I come across them.  Below are the two most obvious that I’ve discovered so far.

Rotation
This has been one of the biggest surprises; I no longer care about my rotation.  For years, I had been a slave to my rotation, focusing on maximizing the uptime of my DOT’s and living between seconds to ensure that I was making the correct decisions about when to cast each spell.  Quartz and my Rotation add on were where the majority of my attention went during fights.

On the Paladin, my rotation has gone out of the window.  My rotation now relies on my judgment and the rhythm of the fight.  When I use my cool downs is compleley at my discretion.  At first, it felt a little awkward no longer relying on a program to tell me what to cast but as time has passed, I’ve really come to enjoy the freedom.

Pattern Recognition
On my Warlock, I spent a hell of a lot of time mastering mechanics while focusing with a laser like precision on doing everything possible to increase my DPS.  On my Paladin, I focus a lot more on the pattern of damage that is occurring with the Tanks and the DPS.  For instance, on the new Shannox fight in Firelands, I learned that tanks take a huge spike of damage whenever the dog returns from fetching the spear.  Coincidently, I also realized that minding mechanics is as important as a healer as it is as a DPS (stepping on a trap still makes you an asshole).

Both of these may seem like minor changes, but my entire play style has altered to accommodate them.  For the first time in a long time, WOW is feeling fresh and interesting again!

One recent Blue Post discussed some of the ways that Blizzard has imparted a sense of responsibility to damage dealing classes in raid instances.  Slorkuz’s full post had some interesting points about the necessity for damage dealers to respond to mechanics quickly or risk wiping the raid.  For instance, Valiona and Theralion have several mechanics that put a tremendous amount of responsibility on the DPS.  If your damage dealers fail to respond effectively, chances are you’ll fail the encounter.  Further, he partially attributed the difficulty of current raids to the responsibility that is put on the shoulders of DPS in many encounters.

While I agree in principal that putting more responsibility on the shoulders of damage dealers introduces more interesting raid mechanics and shows damage dealers how the other half lives, I think there are some faults with the current approach.  One of the major differences between tanks, healers and DPS is that tanks and healers ALWAYS have responsibility in raids and instances.  It’s built so deeply into their roles that they are familiar with the burden that hangs around their necks.  If a tank/healer make a mistake, everyone else suffers.

DPS on the other hand is rarely put into such a position.  If a DPS makes a mistake, the majority of encounters will continue on with very little interruption.  There is rarely a time when a DPS is directly responsible for the lives of others in game.  As a result, DPS has very little experience with that kind of burden.  That’s why new encounters that demand that damage dealers perform crucial tasks are so challenging for raids.  You’re asking someone who is used to hanging around the margins to step into the spotlight…and the costs are high when they fail.

Even with that criticism in place, I applaud Blizzard’s effort to try and attribute more accountability to DPS.  It often feels like the neglected leg of the stool as an encounter can progress with mediocre DPS but most encounters cannot progress with mediocre heals and tanking.  I just wish that Blizzard would associate an opportunity cost to the performance of your DPS rather than a failure penalty.  For instance, Blizzard could alter the Engulfing Magic debuff in Valiona and Theralion to a AOE damage debuff instead of a direct damage debuff.  This could take some of the teeth out of the encounter while keeping the burden on DPS to move.