WoW MMO: The Dance of Death?

I'm not so crude that I would urinate from up here....ok..I am.

While the title of this particular entry seems dramatic, the truth of the matter is more of an epic fail than anything else. In truth today has been rather slow for me both in World of Warcraft and out in the real world. I'm going to hop around each subject briefly today due to the fact I rather not get into some type of serious philosophical discussion today.

I got to level 10 last night with my Blood Elf Rogue, Ahrimin.(The name Danshir is already taken..by me..don't ask. =*( . ) Since I had not previously viewed whatever changes to the talents that rogues get since a few months prior to Wrath of the Lich King, I may have squealed a bit in glee at some of the changes made to pre-existing talents and of course the new abilities.

Dual wield specialization a tier 1 combat? <3

The only change I didn't like was the move of relentless strikes to the subtlety tree. While I know others may have been overjoyed by it, I'm personally not a big fan of PvP in World of Warcraft nor of the subtlety tree itself. Other than that however I was quite eager to go ahead and spend a few thousand gold on trying different talent builds.(To date, I have spent over 3578+ gold. I didn't start keeping record of it until a few months after I started WoW at it's initial release date. If you count in how much I've spent on respecs for both my rogue and hunter...well.. it's too much.)

After that I decided to look up WoWhead's talent builder and just goof off with some potential ideas. While people can "theorycraft" all damn day, in truth what looks good on paper may be horrid in use. Still I made some builds to work towards and I'll make any changes as needed. If you want to check them out and scoff at my "noob" ability you may.(Remember, I've not played a rogue since..uhh..last year. So please, be gentle.)

Combat Sword Build

Mutilate PvE Build

After that I decided to go look into this year's Lunar Festival. I really wanted to level, however my wife wasn't really in the mood to play so I was left to doing things that didn't involve reaping the exp. (So I've been leveling professions, getting out of the way flight paths(I hate you ThunderBluff), and playing the auction house. Oh joy.) When I went over to Moonglade after the initial festival quest...I recalled something I probably should have considered before translocating myself..

I'm on a PvP server.

Instantly I was surrounded by level 80 characters with BIG scarlet letters that proclaimed my imminent release from this mortal coil. Or quite simply...

I was screwed.

No one attacked me however. So I quietly walked over to the pillar of light that would take me over to Orgrimmar so I could pick up some additional flight paths.(I'm so exciting! /sarcasm) That's of course when an Night Elf Hunter ran up to me. Judging by the skull on his portrait I decided my chances were null and void. Yet this particular human being(By this I mean the player...) challenged me in a way where the competition would be fair.

A dance off.

The Battle of the Century

I had to chuckle at this. It was one of those situations that you knew would turn out badly, yet fate threw you a curve ball only to shatter any assumption you may have had. After a few minutes of dancing while alt+tabbing out to work on both this site and NegativeGamer, I decided I would go ahead and leave...well..that's what I TRIED to do.

But this happened instead.

You knew it was going to happen.

So I got ambushed by some Rogue that apparently didn't appreciate my dancing ability. What a way to end the day eh?

On as positive note I only saw one Chuck Norris joke the whole day.

For today's discussion if you're so inclined, is to talk about what keeps you in whatever MMO you happen to play after you've already met the level cap. Is it the "lust" for additional loot? PvP content? Simply talking and chatting with friends?

Discuss.

The MMO Virus: Blogging

If you came here looking for some more pictures of me falling to my death, I suggest you go read some old posts. I don't blame you for wanting to cackle in glee as I showcase my agility at ramming my skull into the earth. That tendency of mine will hopefully end before I make it over to Thousand Needles. Though I do have something evil in mind to foil the next suicide attempt by going into engineering and picking up a parachute cloak.

Brief nerd info: Parachute comes from both a French word with a Latin prefix. Para meaning "counter" and chute meaning "fall".

/RemoveTangent

What I wanted to talk about today is the "art" of blogging or having a website in general. I feel like a virus.
Let me go through this analogy with you. People make blogs to be heard, to tell others their opinions about whatever subject that particular blog focuses on. Success or survival of a blog is to continue to grow in terms of viewers, and to continue that growth until it reaches critical mass. Like a virus, I want my website to spread everywhere, to "infect" people into becoming non-readers into...well readers.

Of course to be a successful "virus" you have to be different than all the other viruses out there, or you'll be eradicated. There are so many more analogies you can throw in here, the electronic "survival of the fittest" so to speak when it comes to having a successful webpage. I'm not claiming my website is a success story however.

I'm still infecting people.

I would love to look back at this page a year from now and say " Wow, look at my evil empire."

The "infection" is the greatest part of the success of a webpage. How quickly you spread the word about your website, how well you keep reader's interests, and by doing so well your current readers cannot help but talk about you to non-readers. Without one of these you won't do too much outside of a few personal friends visiting your site.

Without all three you're doomed to mediocrity.

Of course I have a heavy dose of ignorance when it comes to those three key elements. I'm still fresh, young, naive, and insane so instead of yelling across the globe with a great thunderclap " Here I am, read my stuff cause I think I'm spiffy!" I do a small cough to get your attention and mutter something about pie.(That probably would get my attention rather quickly if that happened..)

I bet you're wondering why I'm rambling on so. This epiphany came to me while performing my customer service duties for my day job. And being the nerd that I am, the whole similarity between trying to build a successful webpage/blog and a virus stuck me as somewhat insightful.
So with that in mind I wanted to talk about it as I happen to have such a webpage that is still in it's growing pains.

Hmm..

I guess my goal is to go from being a small cold to being a world wide epidemic that causes mass hysteria and panic. Much like the Scourge in World of Warcraft.(Ha! It's MMO related now!) So eventually I hope to have legions of people all chanting..

"For Danshir.." in guttural zombie speech, and I frankly don't think that is too much to ask. Especially since the Zombie Revolution will be coming along any day now...

An MMO Experience: Stab?

Stabbing a tree in the face..I'm a genius

First off let me explain. I tried playing a priest, I truly did. Yet my eye started to twitch. Maybe it was dealing with people all day on the phone that made the urge to start stabbing people, or maybe the fact I can't escape the class that I first stuck with back when World of Warcraft was first released.

I made a rogue.(Not a rouge, for the love of Zeus people...)

I think part of the blame lies with the "Craft of War:Blind" video. As nerdy as it may sound I really wanted to remake my old combat spec'ed rogue after watching that. So I quickly moved what little I had from my priest to my rogue and began to play. The transformation was to me phenomenal. I had mentioned that I dislike the lower levels of World of Warcraft, which is almost polar opposite of how most people view it. The reason that I had such distaste for the lower level content is simply the lack of abilities/spells one has access too. Well one reason.

It feels as if each class is basically the same at this particular point in the game. However what makes this so unique is I didn't feel that way playing the rogue. Perhaps it was the speed of the combat as I eviscerated my foes with my dagger.(Yuck. I hate daggers so bloody much..) So in essence I had an enjoyable experience playing WoW tonight. There are a few note worthy events I shall share against my better judgement.

I'll make it this time!

I decided I would try once more prove I was a paragon of jumping into a large body of water. Yet my fate was yet again sealed upon pressing my space bar..

*Sigh*

While you enjoy my personal humiliation(again) I did notice a few slight changes in World of Warcraft that I had missed previously. One was the improvement upon the Mining profession. I don't know when this change took effect, but instead of having to flail away several times to get all those precious ores, you get it all in one "hit". It was as if *gasp* Blizzard wasn't trying to waste my time with menial tasks! The next thing I noticed was another Blood Elf racial ability, magic resistance. Instead of just giving resistance to all schools of magic as it did previously when I played, it now increases the chance of spells missing you by 2%. A neat change, but nothing special.

However not all was fine and dandy in Azeroth...

Yeah..Subscription MMO players are ..uhh..mature

I had done probably the one thing that would make me desperately want to log off and never play again. I had ventured into a capital city. Immediately I was swarmed with mindless stupidity of Chuck Norris jokes, racism, and the "Insert the word anal in conjunction with a random ability/spell". Now correct me if I'm wrong, but these people are the ones that complain that the MT/F2P MMOs player populations are too "immature"?

So I threw an axe, and it stuck...in a ghost...wait..

That makes as much sense as the above picture. While there certainly are more players that are younger than the players in subscription MMOs, I would hazard a guess that the maturity level isn't that much different. In fact I would place my bet that non-subscription MMOs place higher.

But hey, that's just my opinion.

I think tomorrow I'm going to play Wizard101 as well as see if there are any updates about Spellborn. I've really wanted to try that out yet sadly someone is procrastinating about the US release. Then again, if I wanted to be truly honest, there are a TON of MMOs coming out that I want to play. JumpGate, DC Universe, The Agency, Spellborn, Aion...

The list could go on.

Hopefully we can see a bit more variety to the MMO genre beside the menagerie of World of Warcraft clones in 2009.

I shall close by re-posting the video "Craft of War:Blind" because it deserves to be viewed...twice. Also we got a new header! Yay!


The Craft of War: BLIND from percula on Vimeo.