10 reasons to QQ

I've noticed lately how there seems to be more and more whining/qq about the game everywhere. Of course there are some who seem to have turned QQ into a profession, but mostly we love this game, right?

Right.

So why then does there seem to be such an increase in whiners at the moment?

Over the past couple of days I've asked this to some people and the answer were very varied. I figured I would start with giving the 10 reasons I think that people QQ mostly, and on the right you will find a poll, so you can let me know what your number 1 reason is to QQ. The poll will stay open until next week Friday. I'm curious to see the answers!

1. Class Imbalance (perceived/actual)

Number one by a big lead I think (we'll see) is class balance. People seem to constantly be scared that Blizzard favors one class over the other and I honestly think that every class is by now OP except the one that is the choice of the QQing player.

I think it's actually rather funny how you see just about every class going on about how badly designed their class/abilities are compared to all the other classes. Everybody wants to be more powerful, and everybody feels that the rest has gotten more and better tools to work with.

I think in reality it rarely happens that a class stays OP for too long, if there even are seriously OP classes. Simply because it isn't in Blizz's best interest to create class imbalance. If a class is indeed too powerful compared to other classes Blizzard will discuss it and fix it as soon as they have found a way to do so without breaking the game.

But, as I work in an IT company, I can tell you that fixing one thing can often lead to another falling over. Class balance is the same thing. Fix the DK, and see all the other tanks become OP. Give the pallie healer more tools, and watch the other healing classes cry. Give a rogue an extra, and hey wait...why is that fury warrior doing so much dps...oh crap, it's because we did so and so to the rogue.

Blizzard must have a hell of a job to keep the balance of classes just that, balanced, and I salute them for doing a pretty darn good job.

2. Loot
Ninja whining is probably about the most common type of loot QQ, but there are other types of loot whining. So and so item doesn't drop often enough, or it drops too often. The stats are wrong, the color is wrong, the look is wong altogether, or hey, why on earth can priests not use swords.

3. Other Players
Good players whine about bad players spoiling their raids, and bad players whine about good players not wanting to bring them along. Then there is of course all the guild drama, raid drama...WoW.com has a whole lot of examples of drama involving other players.

4. Patch Day
The closer a patch day comes, the more QQing I seem to see. People are always scared for change, and we have seen a lot of big changes in a very short time in the game.

The other type of QQ you see around patch day is of course the 'your addon is out of date' fear. I mean lets face it, having to update most of your addons just isn't fun. And in the worst case you'll find out that your much beloved addon isn't supported at all anymore, and you'll have to find an alternative.

5. Boredom
I think this is currently a big reason behind the QQ. In fact, if I myself would QQ this would be my reason. I now have levelled 3 characters to 80, and am working on 4 and 5, and I've seen the content.

This reason is not often recognized as it is though. People complain about quests, about dungeons, about all sorts of stuff, but in the end it just comes down to being bored. And I guess the whole being bored can come with a fear of not feeling motivated to play at all anymore, and losing the game you have cherised and loved for so long. And what then to do in the time you just gained by not playing?

6. Too Difficult/Easy
In BC we heard the whole too difficult a lot. And I have to say, it was hard progression. My guild managed to get Illidan down before WotLK, but not before the famous patch that made it all easier. And we never even saw Sunwell until we were all level 80 and went back for our achievement.

Now however you often hear complaints about things being too easy. I can sort of agree to a point that I do feel that Blizzard has made the progression rate too easy. Not so much the raiding, but the dungeons and questing.

I remember doing quests in Netherstorm that really required a group to do, but this time around the most difficult quests still only required two. I think a lot of people are done with the casual content, the content that you can just slip in for an hour. And maybe, just maybe, it had been better for the game to make the dungeons slightly less easy.

7. PVP
There are various reasons people would QQ about PVP. It can be the battle ground layout, or the arena size/shape/objects. It can also be abilities used against them, or in the case of Wintergraps lag issues, or the fact that defending is easier than attacking or the other way around.

Justified QQ or not, PVP is definitely one of the number one causes for some good old whining.

8. Summer
Ahhh..sun, beach, trees, cloudless skies...who wants to be inside when there's all that to enjoy out into the Real World. A lot of guilds will soon start feeling it again, in fact I think it has already started happening. The summer lull.

People take holidays, go outside more often, or simply don't feel much like playing in this time of year. To all the QQers with this problem I would say, "It happens every year, it'll be better in fall, you'll see."

9. Blue QQ
GC never checks my threads, GC probably thinks that shaman are OP, GC needs to check out engineering. CHECK THIS OUT GC!

People QQ when they get a blue tag, and they QQ when they don't get a blue response..make up your mind people.

10. Technical Issues
This, to a certain extent, is actually a very valid QQ at times. If the server is down, the server is down. The lag in Wintergrasp is causing the game to be less fun, people not being able to connect due to problems with authenticating...no fun.

All I can say about any type of QQ is that in the end it just doesn't make the game more fun. It only makes people get snarky at each other and dislike the game more. It makes people quit guilds, and give up something they really enjoyed.

My suggestion for it all?

Lets QQ a bit less, and make the WoW a better place. Kay?



Edit: AAAARGH...the polls don't work!! WHINE QQ CRY!

I'll come back with it later...

Ulduar 10 for Dummies: XT-002 Deconstructor

First, Shy's asked me to congratulate Nefernet on her custard cake... it looks delicious!



After we finish admiring the tasty cake Nefernet's won (that you're not allowed to touch... stay away! It's not yours! Wait.. it's not mine either. Darn!)

Ahem. After all that's said and done (sorry about the missing piece! I had to test it's quality... that's it. Quality testing!), let's talk about XT-002.

Going straight ahead from Flame Leviathan, you reach XT-002. He has two trash packs inside his room, to the left and right of the entrance. The most important mob to down in these packs are the two Parts Recovery Technicians. These mechanognomes shield their allies, meaning you have to move the groups out of the shield effect to keep killing them. The next most dangerous (or annoying) enemy is the Salvagebot - it throws out a spinning sawblade that bounces around the group, doing damage. The sawblade can be targeted and should be killed.

Raid Composition

2 tanks, 2 or 3 healers, 5 or 6 DPS. Ranged DPS is better for this fight due to being able to spread out for Light Bomb (Searing Light) and Gravity Bomb, as well as providing ranged AoE on the add packs during Phase 2.

Pull and Positioning

• The MT should aggro XT-002 when he's standing at the stairs in the center of the room, then run through him and stand on those stairs so XT-002's back is to the raid
• Ranged needs to spread out with at least 10 yards between them. (Type /range if you have DBM installed.) melee should stand in two groups on either side of him to make it easier to run out if one of them gets a bomb effect

Tantrums and Bombs - Phase 1

• During the first phase, XT-002 can use Tympanic Tantrum, causing an earthquake affect that hits everybody for 80% of their HP over 8 seconds
• If you get Light Bomb, stand 10 yards away from other players, as this ability does damage to everyone around you
• If you have Gravity Bomb, run away from the raid - you need to be 12 yards away from the nearest player, because 9 seconds later you'll spawn a gravity well that pulls everyone within 12 yards into it, then deal 12k damage to them

Heart and Adds - Phase 2

• At 75%, 50%, and 25% health, XT-002 shuts down and drops his heart on the ground for 20 seconds. This heart takes double damage, and that damage is transferred to XT-002, shortening his next phase
• The offtank should keep track of the corners. Three types of adds spawn. These are:

• XM-024 Pummeler - these need to be tanked slightly away from the raid, it has small-ranged AoEs, but doesn't hit for very much. No real effort needs to be made to kill them
• XE-321 Boombot - These walk towards XT-002 and need to be killed before they move into the raid at 50% HP, they explode, dealing AoE damage around them
• XS-013 Scrapbot - These come in packs that move towards XT-002 and need to be AoEd down. When they reach him, they heal him back for a small amount of his health

Final Thoughts and a Word of Warning...

• At the end of Phase 2, the heart returns to XT-002 and Phase 1 resumes
• Each time you enter Phase 2, the heart spawns with full HP
• If you kill the heart in Phase 2, then XT-002 enters hard mode, increasing damage dealt, HP total, and gaining new abilities. Unexpected, this will wipe your raid

CC: Equipment Manager

Exactly a week ago today the patch dropped that brought us the new equipment manager. We’ve had all sorts of reports on it already here and there, but I wanted to put it through my own research and figure out what exactly could and couldn’t be done with it. Now I've been playing with it for a week I figured it was time to give my own review.

Basics.

Of course the basic idea behind the equipment manager is to be able to switch between gear sets easily. But to be able to do that you should set up those gear sets first. I figured I would start out with a set for my main discipline spec, and a set for my PVP spec.

These two gear sets are different for about every single piece, so I had to go set up two completely different sets.But first, you have to go to the interface options to turn the equipment manager on.

The first set wasn’t too difficult, in fact it was fairly easy to set up. I was already wearing the gear I normally wear in my regular disc outfit, so all I had to do was save it as a set piece.

But then of course I wanted to create a second set. I opened all my bags and started equipping all my items, thinking that there must be an easier way to do this. When I finally had my pvp gear equipped I saved the set, and played a little with switching back and forth.

Funky, this worked fine.

But there was still the point of having to go through my bags to find the gear pieces for the second set. Turns out there’s no need for this at all.

If you simply open the character screen (press C) and you mouse over an item while holding down alt it will show you all the available gear pieces for that slot. It even goes so far that if you’re standing next to the bank, it will include all the available items in the bank for that gearslot as well. So wow, all the fiddling with bags had not been needed at all…doh.

Enfin. I saved my two gearsets and then decided to create my frost resist set, since we sometimes still need this (Hodir is a fight where it can help, especially while learning the fight). So I switched in my 3 pieces and saved a third set.

Looking around in the options under the alt buttons I find another button, namely a big red O with a stripe through it. Mousing over tells you that you can ignore a slot, so you don’t have to change your entire gear, but can create a set for just a few specific items, and that will otherwise simply keep equipped whatever you’re wearing at that moment.

In this slider you can also chose to stick certain pieces of gear back in your bag, or to unequip it basically.

You do have to have the equipment manager menu open to get the ignore option btw, while just switching in one item or sticking it in your bag can be done by holding alt and mousing over the item in the character screen at any time.

Macro

You can equip a gear set through a macro. For example for switching into my shadow gear when I switch to shadow form:

#showtooltip
/cast shadowform
/equipset shadow

Or for switching my weapon to my fishing rod:

#showtooltip Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole
/equipset Fishing
/cast Find Fish

Or for when you want to cast spell reflect and you want to switch in a shield quickly:

#showtooltip
/equipset shield
/cast Defensive Stance
/cast Spell Reflection

You do of course want to equip a set that has a shield and a weapon in it, and because there are two spell casts in there you have to click the button twice, but the fact that you can macro in your gear set in one line does mean that it's shorter and hence leaving you with more lines in your macro to use for other handy tricks.

The Not so Good.

The Equipment Manager cannot switch your gear set upon spec switch, as Wowinsider (oh excuse me WoW.com) has already put into details. Well...Boohoo! you have to click two buttons instead of one. You can't keep going anyway after switching specs, at least not if you have a manabar. So to be honest I'm sort of glad that those without cannot just switch gear in 1 second on top of that.

There is a maximum of 10 gear sets. Which seems, as I think about it with a multispec class like a priest, a bit low. Lets see if I could get to 10 sets...Disc/Holy/Shadow/Frost/Regen/High Int/High Stam/High Spellpower/Fishing/PVP/In the City...ok yes, 10 is definitely not enough. And I didn't even stretch the options, and went min/maxing for this.

Lookswise it's clunky and just not streamlined. I've had this comment before, but everything in WoW seems to be designed for the visually impaired. They should really start thinking about a complete visual redesign of the UI since they're sticking stuff in here and there, and the UI becomes fuller and fuller. Which, in turn, is one of the main reasons that I use several of my mods so that I don't have my screen cluttered with clunky blizz stuff.

Holding down alt is not the best button to do this with. Alt is a much used modifier, and people often have it tied to one spell or the other. Also, the interface is not at all intuitive. The fact that you actually have to use alt is already a hard to find option. What I don't understand is why they had to stick it on a button. Item Rack showed me the slider just when I moused over a piece, which worked a lot handier. (like holding down shift to compare two pieces of gear is also the worst choice ever since in windows holding down shift standardly has some option with stickey keys attached that I've had to switch off manually).

Switching at the bank is a pain in the ass. So it switches stuff that you have in your bank in, but you cannot select a gearset and stick it into your bank in one go. I was very used to doing so with some of the more specific sets, and it was a very handy way to quickly dump a gear set in the bank. On the upside, at least it does correctly switch in all the gearpieces, so if you made the switch at the bank you won't have to be scared that you suddenly are missing a piece.

The Biggest Advantage

It does what most people would use it for, and it does mean you have one less mod to update on patch day!

Where am I?

Only a quick post today, but I am already working on tomorrow's CC, I'll be writing about the ins and outs of the new equipment manager.

I went back to last week's 'Where am I?" and took another screenshot as an extra hint. Should help to figure out where Anzu took me last week.


Of course I also explored a little more and came up with a new screenshot, should be a bit easier this time around.

This week I'll find a big custard cake for the person who can give me the coordinates!

While looking around for a good place I also found out something funny. I went up to the violet parlour, and was standing next to the portal and this is what I discovered.


Standing next to the portal, zoomed out as far as I could. Check out the book cupboard next to me...empty, right?

Wrong! To the right of me the same book cupboard, only then completely filled with magical books. Wish I could pick those up for my Higher Learning achievement!

Got any cool screenshots yourself?

So I wanted to write a post...

Think the clock at Stockades is broken. I stared at it for 5 minutes, realized that it didn't move...funky.

I had wanted to write a post, but then I discovered that I had to do my tournament dailies still. So we did those.

Then I figured I would write a post, but we ran into a Vault 25 group who needed a healer, so we went to get our Emblems of Conquest.

Than I thought, "Lets go write a post!" and a guildie asked me if I could quickly brew up some flasks for him.

I figured I would write my post after, so I switched to my bank alt, and discovered that she had a mailbox that was filled to the top, and half of it was about the disappear. So I unmessed my bank, and got my mailbox empty. (I had no idea that I had 193 Icethorn, what on earth am I supposed to do with those o_O).

I quickly mailed myself some Goldclover as well to fill up my stock of Crazy Alchemist potions. I ran sort of low, and we're supposed to beat our head against mimi tomorrow, so I think I'll need them.

And now it's sort of 11 pm, and raid is at 5 am tomorrow...think I'll go sleep a little.

Ever feel like time is just slipping away when you're playing?