Real ID Party Feature

Posted on August 17, 2011 by James Reynolds

Have you ever went into a dungeon complaining to a Real ID friend about how the healer sucks or how the tank isn’t holding enough aggro, wishing they could join you instead? Now you can with the new Real ID Party feature!

This new feature allows World of Warcraft players to invite their real-life Real ID friends regardless of what realm they play on and queue for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon. Inviting a Real ID friend to a group is simple. Just open up your friends list to view which friends are online. Click on the “plus” button to send an invitation to join your group. You can invite up to 5 Real ID friends but can also use the dungeon finder as well to fill in the missing roles. Any player who is the group leader can invite their real ID friend making it easier to fill the missing roles.

What is a Real ID friend you ask?

Real ID is a system that battle.net created to be used with people you know and trust in real life such as friends, co-workers and family, to interact with while in-game. Although you can pretty much add anyone you wish as long as you have their email address. To add a friend, open up your friends list, click on “Add Friend”, type in the player’s email and you’re finished. The player will see a pending request in their friend’s list. If they accept, you will become Real ID friends with them.

There is another feature call “friends of friends” where you can view the friends of your Real ID friend on the friends list. If you know someone on their list, just simply click on their name and press add. They will receive a pending request in their friends list just like your Real ID friend did.

So what are you waiting for? Get online and have some fun with your friends across the realms! No more wishing that they can be alongside you. Have fun and as always, be polite and appropriate while in a group. No one likes a PuG!

Cataclysm: A Second Look at Talent Trees

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Ashley Clark

One of the major game play changes that arrived with the launch of Cataclysm was Blizzard’s decision to entirely revamp class talent trees. Blizzard’s reasoning behind doing so was that in prior expansions, such as The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, developers felt talent trees had too many boring options that simply buffed passive stats and bloated the trees. The theory behind altering the trees for Cataclysm was to remove uninteresting five-point talents and to make each talent point feel significant and exciting. In moving towards this goal, Blizzard restricted the existence of hybrid roles by forcing players to dedicate 31 of their 40 talent points to a specific tree before they could place points elsewhere. By limiting the presence of hybrids, Blizzard’s hope was to lessen the occurrence where players would select “over-powered” talents from each tree, which resulted in unbalanced circumstances for PvE and PvP.

However, was Blizzard accurate in their assumption that altering talent trees would create more unique and exciting game play? Some players condemn the change, claiming that it homogenizes the ways in which players can experience the game. Whereas in previous expansions players could pick and choose talents that fit their play style, resulting in distinct talent tree compositions, Cataclysm talent force players to spec a specific way because there’s clear distinction between which talents are and aren’t necessary. This resigns players into assigning their talents identically, which diminishes the feeling of having a unique identity and play style within the game. While Blizzard developer Greg Streets argues that “there are some legitimately hard choices for many of the specs. Usually these come in two varieties: which talent you want before you can advance to the next tier of the tree, or where you want to spend those remaining talents after you’ve hit the bottom of the tree,” this really only holds true for a handful of spec, and even then it’s only in relation to the remaining 9 points after reaching the bottom of a tree. A good example of this occurrence is retribution paladins. In Wrath of the Lich King, retribution paladins had to make a tough decision on whether to spec into Aura Mastery or Divine Guardian, since each talent had its respective benefits in certain encounters. However, the current standard retribution PvE spec is unarguably concrete, and any variation from it simply cripples the player.

While there are exceptions to this argument, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the removal of hybrids and the trimming of talent trees results in homogenized game play. Yet, as it is with all changes it ultimately depends on the player base to decide whether or not homogenization is a step in the right direction for the evolution of World of Warcraft.

Healing Enchant: Heartsong or Power Torrent?

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Ashley Clark

After a couple hours of getting blown off ledges by tornados, healing through increasingly acidic rain, and staring into Al’Akir’s windy grundle, we downed that gusty elemental god. And what dropped?

Stormwake, the Tempest’s Reach of the Undertow.

Best-in-slot holy paladin mainhand.

I couldn’t wait to equip that beautiful blade, but it is, of course, sacrilege to equip an item that isn’t fully enchanted. The guildies are just as excited for me: “Grats Art! Gonna throw Power Torrent on that puppy?”

“Nope. Heartsong.”

“Aww! Boo! You’re boring, you n00b! Go die in a murloc bonfire!”

Well, they didn’t say that. But if they did, it might be reflective of my own inner turmoil.

As awesome as the shifting orange and purple flames of Power Torrent are, no matter how many top-end healers rock it, regardless of its overwhelming badass factor, there has only ever been one mainhand healing enchant for me. Give me that cool blue glow, Heartsong.

Here’s why:

Consistency, reliability, and flexibility. When Heartsong procs (which it frequently does, with an uptime of over 50%) you gain spirit, which gives you more mana. Mana that you can use whenever and however you want.

Being a good healer isn’t just watching health bars and clicking the ones that FLASH RED BECAUSE SOMEBODY IS GOING TO DIE. It’s anticipating periods of heavy damage intake and preparing accordingly, conserving mana through the relatively peaceful gaps. You know, that whole “situational awareness” thing. Off-tank about to eat a Chimaeron Double Attack? Have your slow, big heal ready to finish as soon as the attack lands. Who cares if it’s expensive, you have extra mana from Heartsong!

Let’s dispel another healing myth while we’re at it. You can never, ever have too much mana. If you end a fight with a ton of mana, heal harder! Use bigger, faster heals. Take pressure off of your fellow healers, or even better, use fewer healers and down bosses faster. Everybody likes more loot (or at least shards, this late in a patch). Take Heartsong’s mana and put it to good use.

Then there’s Power Torrent. It’s like that guildy who is awesomely skilled, knowledgeable, and friendly, but who can only raid for half an hour every other week. Tempting and full of potential, but ultimately disappointing. It has a 45 second internal cooldown compared to Heartsong’s 20, and the proc only lasts 12 seconds for an average uptime of around 25%.

Looking back at that Chimaeron example, what will probably happen with Power Torrent? It will proc when you don’t need it, when you only need to heal for 10k hp at a time. You might as well not have an enchant at that point.

Tories (a not-too-clever name that I just came up with for Power Torrent healers) might point to their enchant’s tendency to help with mana as well as throughput. That is, because Power Torrent increases your overall mana pool, abilities that regenerate percentages of your overall mana pool are more effective. However, my argument is the same: it probably won’t be there when you need it. Are you really going to delay your Divine Plea 30 seconds for an extra ~1300 mana? What if that means you short yourself one Plea ( ~18k mana) at the end of the fight?

That said, there is no denying the importance of Intellect for healers. Maybe the Tories have it right. At the end of the day, healing is the one role where comfort and preference trump being “correct” in terms of playstyle. I may just throw Power Torrent on Stormwake and see what all of the fuss is about.

Plus, it will match my cape, and that’s what is really important, right?

How to Name your WoW Characters

Posted on December 12, 2010 by Ashley Clark

Let’s play spot the PUG:

Carrigan, Dorakeen, Phyona, Cathari, Vahlden, Grumnar, Wolfdeath, Gilcrist, Dunquinn, Darsmora.

Compound nouns: the sore thumbs of naming.

I’m not somebody with a lot of WoW pet peeves. Everybody plays for their own reasons. Some people like collecting pets while others need to be at the forefront of progression raiding. Millions of personalities come together in this World of Warcraft, and I have no right to tell anybody how to play this game (it is a game, remember?).

That said, compound noun names drive me so absolutely crazy that all I can do is laugh at them. Is there really such a dearth of creativity among WoW players?

For those who might be confused, a compound noun is a mixture of two nouns to form one word, e.g. trashcan, bedroom, etc.

In WoW, “compound names” usually combine the words death, angel, dark, kill, strong, reap, crush, maim, scar, etc. Throw in “stab” for rogues, “shot” for hunters, “ice” for mages, and “holy” for priests and pallies.

From those examples alone we get Darkmaim, Iceangel, and Holykill. Terrific.

And what if Darkmaim is taken? No worries! Just add a ‘X’ after the name: Darkmaimx. Or Darkmaimxx, or even Xdarkmaimx!

My all-time favorite compound name came from a retribution paladin begging to come to our guild’s full ICC clear way back in WOTLK: Fireslammer. How does he slam so much fire? I asked myself.

Compound namers were even there when I first dinged 85:

Thanks again, Firefarter. Say, I wonder who would win in a duel between Firefarter and Fireslammer…

But seriously, people, we can do better. If you’re looking for inspiration, try these:

Foreign Languages: Often used, yes, but picking an obscure translation of the word “death” sounds so much better, without losing the intended meaning. Ancient Greek works well, and you can easily find online translators.

Fantasy Literature: My personal favorite naming source. I’m not talking about Arragornx or Lleggolaszs. Go to the fantasy section of your local bookstore, open up a fantasy novel you’ve never heard of, and pick a random name from a random page. I’ll give you 100k gold if it’s not a better WoW name than Angelcrush.

Music: Great for getting those creative juices flowing. Full of lovely-sounding lyrics and/or edgy sounds to inspire you. Give it a try.

All I’m asking for is a little effort! After all, you’re going to hear this name a bazillion times over ventrilo.

But you know, the more I think about it, Darkmaim kind of sounds like a beastly name…darn, name unavailable.

Baron’s Mount – I will have it!

Posted on December 5, 2008 by Ashley Clark

Baron run #19… still no mount. I now am a proud level 80 Death Knight and really think that I would look like a much cooler Death Knight on Baron’s steed. I have to be perfectly honest: nothing bothers me more in the game now than seeing a random rogue in greens with Baron’s mount. The 1/1000 drop rate doesn’t deter me though as I move into Baron run #20. The random drop of epic items is what makes the PvE portion of WoW so entertaining.

Wrath has introduced a phenomenal selection of new loot to drool over. Emblems at 80, which replaced badges at 70, now offer tier 7 for sale. Naxx has some revamped weapons and armor with models from the original level 60 Naxx dungeon. Need a new weapon? Heroic Halls of Lightning offers a sweet 2 handed axe with warrior-ish stats. Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle offers a very nice 1 handed tank sword. The sword, for the record, looks beast on my Death Knight.

Of all the MMO’s that I’ve played, WoW has the widest variety of item art. The variety amongst all the weapons is fantastic (most of the armor…the Wrath armor is starting to get stale for me though I am hoping Bliz updates the look of a few pieces). I still have Quel Serrar sitting in my warrior’s bank. But, what is great about the game is that Blizzard continues to develop and add items.

I know a few raid groups on my server have already bested all the top raid instances. I feel kind of bad that they have to wait for new loot to be introduced into the game for something to look forward to! I have a feeling that I won’t be the only person farming Baron’s mount in the very near future.

What is your favorite piece so far in Wrath? How about in WoW? My top favorite item in WoW has recently become the baby blizzard bear…so cute! But, my favorite item as far as looks continues to be Ashkandi from Blackwing Lair. I just really loved the look and the sword has kind of stuck with me as the best!

The Magic of Nexus

Posted on November 26, 2008 by James Reynolds

I have to say that one of my favourite aspects of the WotLK expansion has been exploring the new instances in Northend. Although Utgarde Keep had its moments, it pales in comparison to the Nexus on levels of both look and gameplay. I personally found tanking Utgarde Keep ridiculously easy. Without any new challenges presented and the somewhat predictable room-by-room encounter of giant Viking-men thundering towards me, it didn’t hold my attention nearly as well as the Nexus.

The Nexus is a series of underground ice caves and tunnels. Unlike most instances in WoW, you’re given some allowance in what bosses you pursue first and what order you explore each section of the dungeon in. You can go into different wings of the dungeon, although the final boss Keristrasza – a red female dragon you’ll want to cut the tongue off of by the end of the fight – can only be released from her prison after you’ve killed the other three bosses in the instance. You can then summon her by clicking on all three orbs.

Anomalus was a fairly easy boss to take down. He reminded me a lot of the Curator from Karazhan. Like the Curator, you must kill his adds whenever they come out before continuing to attack him. Ormorok the Tree-Shaper was pretty much a tank-and-spank for my group. Just make sure you make your way to him quickly otherwise you’ll be overcome by annoying little flower adds. Grand Magus Telestra is an annoying blood elf boss that does this wacky cloning thing in phase two of your fight with her. She’ll also volley your team around, which you can ultimately do nothing to stop, so enjoy the bouncey ride for as long as it lasts.

I must say, there isn’t much about the Nexus that one wouldn’t like. You get to enter a world of ice, bursting with colours and fantastical dragons. This in itself, at least for me, brought a sort of out-of-this-world epic adventure into being. In fact, some of the caves even have fascinating magical properties. In one section my guildmates and I noticed that our health and mana regenerated ridiculously fast. Overall, I found it just challenging enough to require some strategizing without being too difficult, and I was wholeheartedly entertained by the inside appearance of the entire dungeon. It will be interesting to see how these instances transform on heroic mode once I’ve reached level 80.

I’m not 80 yet!?!

Posted on November 20, 2008 by Ashley Clark

Nope. Not 80. What kind of WoW player am I? Real WoW players have already hit 80 and finished all the raid content. Except, not really. Sure, a few have. But, a majority of players are still leveling and enjoying all that the new Wrath content has to offer. So, what else is there to enjoy other than grinding quickly to 80 and the new raid instances?

Well, for starters, the music. I’m not sure if anyone keeps their sound controls up anymore while playing, but Northrend has some of the best game music I have ever heard. Yes, I am grouping Wrath with all of the Final Fantasy games as far as music now. It is just that good. So far, my favorite music is in Howling Fjord though I do love the soft piano in Dragonblight.

Okay, so you listen to heavy metal in your mom’s basement while playing WoW and couldn’t care less about the music. How about the quests? I was a huge fan of Warcraft pre WoW and love to see the story line continue. The Dragonblight quests give you a wonderful look at the events in Warcraft 3 with Arthas flash backs, but also a nice in game cut scene that pushes the story forward. If that isn’t great enough, the world literally changes after you finish the quest (think how Guild Wars did it).

What’s that? You don’t like the music and you aoe grind without questing? Seriously? Okay, what about everyone riding around on those new armored bears? The turkey killing achievement? The beautiful landscape? Death Knights!?! Surely, some of this is enough to enjoy even if you aren’t quite 80 like the rest of the world already.

On a small side note, my Death Knight is now level 76. I have tanked every instance up to my level so far and also tried dps. I am managing around 1200 dps with a cookie cutter spec, which I know a lot of people hate. However, tanking does seem very viable. I really am hoping that Blizzard implements the dual spec option that they keep mentioning on the WoW forums.

Oh, and if anyone at Blizzard reads this: please, oh please, make achievements account wide so I feel there is a reason to level my alts up to 80 too. Thank you!

Wrath of the Lich King: Post Release

Posted on November 15, 2008 by Ashley Clark

The day we have all been waiting for has come and passed. Millions of Blizzard fans slammed into unkempt lines around the country to pick up their copy of the new WoW expansion. I would imagine that most succeeded, though I can tell you that the line I waited in was 2 city blocks long (yours truly was 3rd in line and had nothing to worry about).

On Thursday morning at 12:16 AM, I installed Wrath on my computer and updated my account to Wrath play ability. I started my Death Knight, whom is a Night Elf, and played through the intro levels until the wee hours of the morning. I now know that they call early hours the wee hours because you start to go delirious from lack of sleep, but you still have fun… weeee! Anyhow, I leveled my Death Knight through the opening levels on Wednesday night and continued the next day. A day later, I am 67 with some change. I hope to make it into Northrend by tonight or tomorrow morning without neglecting my family too much. Wrath has definitely been an exciting voyage so far! It is very interesting to see who chooses what class to level within my guild and who has rerolled a new class entirely.

I’ve seen achievements scroll across guild chat for new Grand Master professions and exploration of Northrend, which I will not see for awhile given my new class. Everyone is starting to explore the Nexus and Utgarde Keep. I am still back in Outlands leveling my Death Knight. I did get an honorable kill achievement. A level 70 hunter without the Wrath expansion thought he should try to kill me.

The one pitfall to Wrath so far is that all of the people that I play with are easily surpassing me into Northrend. I am glad that Blizzard made it easier to level from 60-70 in the last patch, but it is still a long road to catch up to my guild mates so that I can stop playing alone. I keep hearing about giants and penguins and neat areas, but am not quite ready to adventure there. On the other hand, I was the one that rerolled to Death Knight so this pitfall was my own choice.

So far, this expansion has completely knocked out all of the server disappointments that I have had in the past week. This expansion has surpassed my expectations, even after I played beta. What choices have you made since Wrath came out? Has the expansion experience been as good or better than the Burning Crusade?

Wrath of the Lich King Descends

Posted on November 13, 2008 by Ashley Clark

It’s here.

The long-anticipated expansion has finally hit stores and I, like most WoW addicts, am gearing up for questing my way through another ten levels. I’m not so sure I’m looking forward to saying goodbye to my beautiful purple epic gear or being placed back on the unequal footing of battling higher levels and being subjected to a repetitive gank fest. But I am excited about having new terrain to explore, raiding new instances, and finding some wicked looking gear for my little pink pigtailed gnome warrior chick after she reaches level 80.

I think with WotLK, players are going to experience both enthusiasm and stress. There are new goals to be set, more fun to be had, and for those of us who were hitting a ceiling with our geared-out 70s, we will now have room to advance and grow again. Unlike the Burning Crusade, which felt more like a mere extension of the original game, I think WotLK is truly bringing a new, epic quality to gameplay and world adventure for gamers. I mean, how cool is it going to be to see a Death Knight in frosted armor stalking around?

In the same token, for those of us who got too comfortable strutting around on our 70s and three-shotting players a couple levels below us, I expect there will be a feverish rush to level to 80 – players are afraid that the slower they are with the leveling process, the more they are going to get their butts kicked by others that are leveling quicker than them…especially considering experience points are now given even for PVP kills.

I’ve noticed a lot of my guild members have been concerned about saving up hordes of gold for the expansion as well, assuming that they will be able to level faster if they have a bunch of gold in reserves. The impatience to get to 80 and find better gear is being felt by most players. But where many players had topped-out on gear previously – making it easier for those newer to raiding to deck themselves out in purples – I foresee the competitive spirit for getting new armor making it twice as difficult for players to get geared after the expansion.

Yet in the end, I don’t doubt WotLK will be a success. Blizzard has millions of subscribers for a reason. The expansions keep the game fresh, new, and exciting. Despite the stress and struggle of dealing with the unfamiliar content and updates made to the game, I’ll admit…I can’t wait to download my copy of WotLK and get started.

Wrath, 2 Days Away…Exciting or Excruciating?

Posted on November 11, 2008 by James Reynolds

We are now 2 days away from the second World of Warcraft Expansion and I personally couldn’t be more excited. Hey everyone, before I get started I just wanted to introduce myself briefly. I have been playing World Of Warcraft for about four years and I play a hunter as my main. I have killed every boss there is to kill and have PVPed my way to a 2300 rating in season 2. I have a Protadin and a Resto Shaman as well, but my passion lies with my hunter.

My guild was stuck on M’uru when 3.0.2 hit, and that night we cleared the whole zone without a wipe. Some say that we didn’t deserve the kill because of the content nerf, but I don’t care. I finished B.C. (Burning Crusade) and totally feel I deserve it. I struggled through every boss as it was cutting edge and didn’t get carried through it. I paid my dues and my repair bills with the rest of them.

Now as we approach Wrath, just as my colleague below mentions, we are all trying to sure up some cash, achievements, and our specs before the zerg fest that will be the first few days.

This is where I get to my point…

Will it be exciting, fun and amazing? Or will it be laggy, annoying and excruciating?

For me, the opening days of B.C. were the most fun I have ever had in game. I play on a PVP server and it was glorious. Ganking was happening for sure, but camping/griefing wasn’t. I am for world PVP as much as the next guy, no matter how annoying it may be, but nothing gets my blood boiled (punintended) more than the repetitive killing of a helpless player.

I’m talking about when the group of five hangs out on the Isle of Quel’danas and repeatedly kill the poor solo player just trying to get his mana remnants. When the previous expansion hit, this didn’t happen. People were too excited about leveling. There were some epic world encounters don’t get me wrong, but that’s where they ended.

In addition, the game servers for the most part were very smooth. I didn’t experience any server lockups or shutdowns as well as a very limited number of hiccups. No one thought that it would run as smoothly as it did, and B.C. went out without a hitch.

The question is, will Wrath be as smooth? Will there be enough mobs for everyone? Will there be too much griefing on PVP servers? Will there be server shutdowns? No one will know until November 13th, but I personally have faith that we will have some fun times in Northrend this weekend, and I can’t wait.

This is an exciting time for most WOW players, but to some it will be nothing but headaches.

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