Heirloom Cold Weather Flying, OMG!

Zarhym on Just discovered: cold weather flying at 68! (Source)

Just to confirm, Tome of Cold Weather Flight is actually a new heirloom item planned to go into patch 3.2. At level 80 players can buy this heirloom item from the Cold Weather Flying Trainer in Dalaran for 1,000 gold and send it to an alt of the same realm, faction and account. The tome can be used to learn Cold Weather Flying at level 68, consuming the tome in the process.

Please note this feature is not yet in the newest version of the public test realm patch notes updated today. The item and its functionality are subject to change during the testing process.

Wow! Can I has my 2K gold back that I payed for 2 of my alts already? >_< This change is coming way too fast. How are people even going to appreciate it anymore if all is given away?

Sorry at work, will post a more extended post later today hopefully.

What makes a good raider, good?

A High Latency Life posted about the traits that made a raider good. He goes on to say that skill is not really what makes a good raider, and has posted a list of traits that makes a good MMO player.

I read through that list and I have to say that I'm not fitting the list too much =/

1. Patience - This is like my worst trait ever. I am very goal driven, and I often don't care how I get somewhere, but preferably fast. I also have massive difficulty to wait for someone to finish, and if I ever have to teach others I'm hopping from feet to feet, eager to take over, and show them how it's done...the fast way.

2. Tenacity - I just get sick of repeating stuff at a certain point. And at that point I give up. No I do not wipe 50 times on the same boss, mainly because I also know that I'm not the only one not getting more motivated by it, I think half of humanity wouldn't be motivated by it.

My theory: if you keep banging your head against the wall all you end up having is a very bloody forehead. Basically, step back and think at a certain point, instead of just keeping at it. Maybe you're just not ready.

3. A sense of humor - I hope sarcasm counts, because otherwise I'm failing heavily on this point.

4. A keen sense to follow direction - Erm...does a keen sense to give directions count? Cause I love telling people what to do.

5. Ability to take ownership - Ooooh, one that I can score on. Yes, I do make sure that my character is as ready as possibly can be...or do I? I have to admit that I still haven't spent the 6K gold it would take to get my boots or belt created...

6. Look to those who came before you - I guess so...then again, I started by looking a lot at Matt Low when I changed to disc. I was hoping every day that information was coming about disc priests on worldofmatticus...and it just didn't come. Not until we were several months into the expansion did he discover disc. From then on there was nothing to find about holy anymore btw, funny how that works.

Otherwise, been looking for a good disc priest to look at, but they are hard to find. Then again, maybe I'm just too stubborn and often don't agree with a lot of the theory crafting I see.

7. Never be afraid to step out of the box - Well...in my last answer you could already see that I am definitely not affraid to step out of the box. In fact, I'm firmly against boxes. Don't stick people in those confined spaces, at least not until you have a box for each of them.

8. Adaptability - Hmm..sometimes. I do change according to what I experience.

9. Know your role - Oh my, I love healing, and on my priest I definitely stick to healing. But on my druid..I swear that wasn't the boomkin casting those hots >_<

10. You must like Pie- Can it be cake? Like chocolate cake?

With a bit more seriousness, I have to say that I agree to most points that he brings up. And these are certainly things that I would look for in a good raider. To add two of my own.

11. Initiative - You have to be able to show initiative. Don't wait for others to show you where to go, figure it out yourself and go there. Don't always wait for others to form a group, just shout out in guild and form your own group.

12. Team Play - Above everything you need to not be a solo player. You have to work well together with the group, and understand and accept that you cannot and will not be the only one in a raid.

How about you, do you possess these traits?

To 25 or not to 25: that is the question

My guild was raiding before I even joined them, and I have been with them for over 3 years already. Which, in MMO terms, is apparently quite a long time for a guild to even exist.

Back in the Molten Core era they were raiding with 40 people. Not always with FP only, they did have an alliance with a different guild I was told, but still, they raided with 40 people.

Like all guilds we started with Kara in BC, boy was that a rough start. I remember wiping on Attumen, and us being scared of not being fast enough so that trash would be respawning. FP started with only one 10man in Kara. Then another 10man went to raid this place, and when we merged with another guild we suddenly had a third, and some weeks we even had enough players for a fourth 10man.

Around this time we started raiding Gruul's and Mag's. I was sad, these raids were organized on times that I just couldn't make, but at the same time I was proud of the guild for being in there, and I cheered for my guildies when they killed Gruul.

Once Kara was mostly on farm, and we managed to reschedule some 10mans, we started doing SSC on weekends. That was so much fun. Like most guilds we skipped Hydros at first, since you needed all the resist gear, and started on Lurker.

We had good evenings and bad evenings, but eventually we mostly cleared SSC and TK, only leaving Vashj and Kael'Thas standing.

The first change came, allowing guilds to raid Black Temple and Mount Hyjal without being keyed, and the guild decided that we should raid these instances. We set up a minimum requirement for stam for Najentus, and while people were getting their gear ready we started clearing the first two bosses in Hyjal.

Before the last major patch in Burning Crusade we were 4/5 on Hyjal and 5/9 Black Temple, and in between the last patch and Lich King we cleared all raid instances but Sunwell.

Choices
Thinking back there wasn't an awful lot of choice. If you wanted to progress there was a path to follow and either you decided to follow it as a guild, or you didn't. FP did and even though we weren't the number 1 in anything we did pretty good, and we had great fun.

Then came Lich King. All of a sudden you had 10mans and 25mans simultaneously. And so much simultaneously that there was no case of choosing. If you wanted to progress you raided both. So we propped one 10man into the Friday evening, and stuck our 25man on Saturday. We got faster at both, and even though it took a while, we managed to get both raids done.

At a certain point we were even running two 25mans through Naxx. One week group, and one weekend group. Neither group was doing amazingly well, but both groups were clearing the place, and we were able to keep both groups in existence by bringing alts and some of the less experienced players.

Hardly 5 months later Ulduar was there. Our guild had planned to do Ulduar with at least two 10mans, and hopefully we would soon be good enough to get a proper 25man together.

It took a bit longer then expected.

The present
Our guild currently holds the number 1 position on the realm on strict 10. We had hoped to be able to get a proper 25man together with which we could raid the 25s and actually do pretty well. In fact we had waited purposely to even start the 25s, and geared up our characters through 10s. And looking at that realm rank one position, we are doing pretty darn good at it.

It was decided that it was time to try a 25. So our weekend group sacrificed one of their 10man evenings, and we got a 25 together.

That first evening went great, it went perfect. FP has many talented players, and we had 32 people showing up, so we could bring those who were most experienced, and best geared for our 25. We went up to Auriaya, and with great difficulty we got her down. But hey, it was our first 25, right? We did pretty darn amazing for a first try in 25 Ulduar.

The week after we had barely 25 people show up, and some of these people were not only heavily undergeared, some had never even set foot in the place, even on 10s.

You can probably guess already, but it didn't go too well that evening. We barely managed to get Kologarn down on our 7^th try, and we didn't even try Auriaya. We'd had difficulty the week before with our best 25 players, so there was no way we would get her down with this group.

I went on holiday for the two weekends after this, and though they did run a 25, they once again didn't have 25 fully geared, fully ready players.

We too are getting beaten heavily by the summer boss. God, how I hate that dude. On top of this we have a pretty inter time zoned guild, and while normally it's already fairly hard to find suitable time slots, it is currently nigh impossible.

Where to from here?
As always I will follow my gut feeling, I will not stick any 25mans on the calendar for the moment. Another guildie might pick up, but the summer boss is here, and is strong as ever. And though I know this will eventually be beaten, I also know that for the moment our guild can simply not handle progression in 25s.

Sure, we could beat a few bosses in there, get a few upgrades. But the undergeared players would be annoyed because they would be the cause of wiping, and the experienced/geared players would be annoyed because of wiping on bosses we should be able to beat. And that is all if we could even get 25 people together at the same time.

So while we have more than enough capable raiders in the guild, I will have to accept that we cannot get them together online at the same time for a long enough timeslot to raid properly at the moment. And trying, but failing and wiping evening after evening is not going to motivate those that are around.

*sigh*

I don't like these decisions, but hey I knew they came with the job when I signed up. And hey, hopefully Patch 3.2. will come with solutions. We will have an extended raid lockout, and a soft gear reset. Also the summer should be close to coming to an end by then. We'll see, eh...one step at a time..

Blacklist that Ninja!

So back from Las Vegas, and as you might have read, people just try and scam you into all sorts of deals. It doesn't matter to them how they do it, fair or unfair, polite or impolite, they just want you to spend your money with them.

At a certain point I got very annoyed with it, and was cussing, thinking that they should just blacklist these people and throw them all out. Well maybe society has already, after all, they do make their living in Sin City.

It did get me thinking about how it's arranged in World of Warcraft though. I mean, scammers not only exist in the real world, they have even evaded our escapes from the real world. Our very own fantasy home.
Unfortunately not even Blizzard can manage to keep the real scammers away, but maybe...just maybe if we would all work together we might be able to make our online home a bit of a better place?

So this thought kept me busy for a while, and I was wondering how to do it. Until this morning (I still got up at 6 am, silly jetlag x_X) I was speaking to a guildie. He was speaking about a site called WoW Heroes. This site ranks players based on their item level, this way you can find out how well geared you are in comparison to other players, but you can also check how people you wanted to invite for a group or raid are doing.

Now, there are of course a lot of other sites out there who do provide this type of service, like PUG checker. Which is sort of like a shortened armory, which finds information fast, and gives you in one quick view what content a character has done.

WoW Villains
But what if...what if there was a site called WoW Villains. It could be a place where people can report Ninjas bad player behaviour...

You would have to make sure that you have some counter against abuse of course, because otherwise it would get out of hand pretty quickly, and people would simply start listing people because they don't like eachother.

Maybe some sort of blacklisting that you will only get listed on if at least a certain number of different IP addresses has reported you. Or maybe you could even have a counter balance system. 2 good votes outweigh a bad vote or something.

It would definitely be nice to be able to have some sort of prevention against the assholes in game who need items and then hearth out. It would be nice to feel somewhat protected from the scum in the game.

Unfortunately I don't have the technical expertise to set anything like this up, but who knows maybe one day we will see a site like this. I know I would definitely be using it. In general I have good experiences with players, but I too have had my share of people who make you feel almost dirty just by their behaviour. Players who befouled my fantasy world.

More realistic
Oh well....for the moment I would already be very happy if Blizzard would make the ignore list a bit larger, and allow us to stick notes up on why to not invite the people on the list.

I now have M&S on my friends list because I can't stick a note up on the ignore list, and that really is a bit silly...

Jetlagged Out

So I am still here, I do still exist. I also want to post, and there will be a post this evening. I just never believed I could be this jetlagged.

We came back last Sunday, and I swear it all seemed fine....until I woke up at 5 am while my alarm wasn't set until 6:45. And in the evenings I have been dogtired.

But tonight I will post! I will force myself to post, if it would be the last thing I'd....well, maybe not, but you get the idea. I too have an idea...goes about something with blacklisting Ninjas...more later...