If you don’t already read Grumpy, do so! its like having a conversation with someone. He posted about something I have been suspecting myself. That the LFR loot system seems to somehow give loot to the player trying the least (or not knowing how to play their class). While this is speculation bordering on conspiracy theory, I have seen it more than once.

When I first started to get into LFR with my toons, I was on the low side of the totem pole. I had no heroic gear on any of my toons and only my priest had a four piece from Firelands. Those first couple of weeks I got a lot of drops because most of the time my numbers were bellow those epic filled people.

Now every time I go into the LFR even with guildies we top the charts. I assume that most people running regular or heroic DS don’t run LFR anymore (or as much.) We seem to not get look anymore, even though we are missing either 1/2 pieces or basically just valor capping.

I am all for accessibility in a game, but I am not ok with rewarding people that don’t even try.

Now that is extremely subjective. To me someone that does not try is someone that is doing less than 10K DPS… but to someone else that might be someone that is not fully gemmed and enchanted.

I guess this is giving me a new perspective on what it means for others to reward bad play.

As much as I want to seem like a fair person, I fall to the trap that makes me look at my accomplishments and say… why isn’t everyone else here?

I know the resources are there, noxxic alone has simplified having to look at various blogs for the cookie cutters specs. One place has all the answers. But some people don’t even know how to search the internet.

We all know google exists, but knowing what to put on that search box is very important. Knowing how to ask a question gets you half way to solving the problem.

A string of (“Why does my DPS suck”) will not send you to the right spec for your class. Someone with a little more experience than me might know to look for (“Arms warrior 4.3 stance dancing.”) I know some people just went… WHAT?

Exactly. Some people know, some people have just never been told.

While I do think that blizzard does need to punish people not trying at all (they should be able to determine just someone auto attacking and going AFK), there should be a system in place where people that are getting into the LFR can go and ask questions of other players. Almost like in game mentors.

I know guilds provide that, but what if we could have a different color of text under our name if we are willing to give tips and guidance to someone.

Sure, the problem of rewarding bad play is still there and should be corrected. I think that what is important is to help the people that need the help and weed out those that just want to cheat the system.

This week’s shared topic from BlogAzeroth is as follows:

How do you express your geekery? Do you own obvious paraphernalia like a Horde-symbol bumper sticker, in-joke tshirts like the dps/ups pun, or less obviously related items like a gift from a guildie? Rather than physical indicators, do you mix nerd lingo into your everyday speech or talk/post about geekdom in non-nerd spaces? How do you advertise your nerd tendencies? Does it help you to attract new nerd friends?

I will try to not make this a wall of text… but this topic brings out sooo much to talk about.

The first is the obvious horde bias! come on people, alliance play the game and even BLOG! :p I think it is maybe time to create an Alliance blogger ring or something.

I used to have a dragon figurine in my desk at work, but my current office is not really that conducive of displaying my geekery and not too many people visit it. At home that is a different story.

We do need to rewind things a bit though. I have been a proud geek before Bill Gates made it cool with his bags of money. I would tell anyone about my love for anime or video games. My first actual convert, or maybe someone I made come out of the closet about her geekdom is my wife. Since meeting me she has watched anime, read manga and even gone further than me creating an actual facebook page for her in game character. I think it might be time to create some toons in an RP server.

We have attended Blizzcon and even sported custom made T-shirts with our guild logo.

Currently at home we have various models from the game displayed, from the Panderan to the Deathwing little thingie we got at blizzcon. I would put an alliance lion on my car if I found a good one (mental note to get one.)

I use a lot of geek speech that sometimes leaves people dumbfounded in the corporate setting I work at, but it has helped me identify other geeks. If someone gets it, then I know they are more than likely geeks themselves.

One of my latest post on my “other” blog is super geeky. I am think I am pretty open about it. I have always identified myself as a tattoed geek. Most people think that because you are a geek you have to be wimpy somehow… but I love to ride motorcycles and love sports as well.

Now that you mention attracting nerd friends, I do think I need to get a group of people to play some BSG Board game, I miss playing that.

The wife and I are also planning to have a pretty nerd out room for our computers once we move to a bigger place.

Vuuk wrote an excellent post talking about “mains“, when I started to reply to post I realized that it actually merited a post.

I currently don’t have a main, while I raid with my priest with our raid team, I have also tanked a lot with my warrior this expansion. I also use my bear and DK quite a bit and try to valor cap them now that is so simple with LFR and LFD.

First Born: Logtar – nElf Warrior

Besides him learning that crocodiles are fierce killers on my way to Ironforge, Logtar’s leveling was not very memorable. He was power leveled in BC so that he could become a potential tank and eventually raid. While he did do Karazan before WotLK came out, he did more dungeons than actual raids. I did spend a lot of time in the isle of q with him.

I guess he could be considered my main, but I enjoy playing all of the alts that I have taken to max level. I have been told both that I am a great tank and also the backhanded compliment of, you are a great healer, bring your priest!

Second Child: Hollogos – Dwarf Priest

I have never RPed, but I created this character with one of my grandparents in mind. He was my mentor in a lot of ways and while an avatar in a game is no replacement, it is a reminder of how much I cared for my grandpa!

The priest was the personal challenge. I heard that priest were horrible to level because they got hit really hard and did not put out much damage. I don’t know if it was because people tried to level anything other than the supreme priest spec! DISCIPLINE! ROAR.

I had a great time leveling this toon and apparently it is one of the ones I play best. He was a dungeon and raid healer all through WotLK and eventually did the whole shadow thing for ICC when we needed an extra DPS for Sourfang. He was actually my first toon to Kill the LK with his bubble spamming abilities.

T11 our lack of tanks made him take a backseat, while he still raided on alt runs we were in a low pop server where pugs were pretty non existent. So the warrior got all the first kills in BoT, BWD and TofW. Fast forward to T12 when we moved and he was actually the first toon that made it over with a secured raiding spot. He once again became exceeded the first child by killing Raggy first.

He is happy sitting on his 4 set bonus (which I am not all so sure is as cool as the FL one) and working on the lootship.

Gatoso the wonderbear!

If I was to start all over in WoW, a druid would probably be my first toon. They can do it all, mele, range, heal and tanking! Truly the overachievers of the WoW world.

Gatoso also had a lightning fast leveling pace. He was leveled when my wife started playing. As his name suggest (Gato-Cat/Oso-Bear) he was supposed to be a DPS/Tank. He did tank towards the end of Wrath, but was quickly relegated to an on hold status for most of T11. Enter the new server and the lack of healers there and bam! he actually raided T12 almost every week. He has been the networking toon with other guild because he can heal or tank for them. Most people eat one of the “o”s when pronouncing the name and call him Gaatzo. I am a pretty decent tank with him but still working on becoming a better healer for sure.

Left Behind Lock – Talgro – gnome

When my wife started playing I leveled Talgro so I would not be completely dumb when talking to her about the class. He is a max enchanter and engineer and made me some money with both of those professions. I think he has built about 6/7 bikes.

He was mostly a fun alt. I thought that he would be easily recognizable as one of my toons because I stone one of the practices from our guildie Curan to use the same letter for alts (Talgro<- Logtar) but it is amazing how many people just don't recognize it at first. I did raid with him and even kill the LK before Cata, but he was mostly a last choice because it was rare that we did not need heals or tanks in a run.

He is my only max level character left on the last server and I have not logged in there for a while now.

With my wife being our resident lock, there is really no reason for another one. The other thing is that if I want to be a damage dealer, a shadow priest is fun to play with. I do miss his money making capabilities... but not sure he will get played any time soon.

The DK that did not get deleted – Talgor

I have played with a lot of people, but one of the people we miss the most was our awesome blood DK that killed the LK with us for the first time. Phaetal was not just an awesome blook tank, he is also a great person. We actually still keep in contact even though he gave up on the game the week we killed the LK!

I had played a DK since the expansion came out, but he was the default (delete character to make room.) When some of my guildies decided to see how the horde side was in our server, my almost capped DK was deleted and Mooerte (the tanking cow was born)… I think he made it to 60, helped guildies through some zone and was deleted. Fast forward to the LK kill and us loosing a DK tank and I rolled one in his likeness! I think that is what made it hard for me to ever delete him.

So I leveled the DK but did not tank much at all during Wrath. DK rotation takes a bit to get used to because its more patience and coordination than OMG IF SMASH the KEYS HARDER I WILL CRIT MOAR (ROAR)… yea that is my warrior DPS mode. Eventually got into a nice wave of spreading diseases and the like and realized that he is just beast even as tank.

DKs are probably the strongest tanks right now in T13, and he has done lots of LFR… not sure if I am going to push him to a higher spot because I have 3 toons already somewhat committed to other raids, but he is fun to do LFR with and out DPS people as blood.

The ones that never made it

I am on my second hunter (born only to harass Froto… then I realized that playing a hunter in BGs is just unfair, lol) and first mage right now as alts go. Not sure if either of them will make level cap. I also have a forgotten 50+ level rogue that was going to complete a guild achievement but some people are just too hard to beat when it comes to leveling. Not sure if I will level cap any more toons, I love having flexibility when the need is there. I have not deleted many toons other than DKs and I currently have no horde toons I play. I am thinking of leveling another DK on the horde side in a server some RL friends play so I could raid with friends that have horde toons using the new tools coming up.

So that is pretty much my alt history, not really a clear main, just whatever is needed to rescue the princess.

There is a lot to be said about the vocal minority, but blizzard was wrong to listen to the people that wanted to make the game “hard” again.

A lot of people miss the point that the complexity of the game in vanilla was not because the end game encounters were harder, but the game was not as refined as it is now. It was exponentially less accessible.

I was WoW for the first time while I was living in Michigan. The person showing me the game was one of the developers I worked with and I cannot even remember what class he was playing. All I remember from that first look at the game was the obscene amount of buttons available to you and that you were penalized by having to walk back to your body. I was torn between trying UO or WoW back then, but FPSs were more my addiction back then, that and gunbound.

I did not actually play WoW until BC and the little endgame I got to see was limited. It wasn’t until Wrath that I really started to be able to raid and experience the end game and by this point we had the LFD, the Token gear system and just overall a smoother user experience. I did experience dungeons where CC had to be used before, and even some of the fights where you had to use multiple people performing various tasks that created a lot more complexity to encounters. Ulduar was no pushover by any means, but encounters in that expansion, even ToC which I did not enjoy all that much were engaging and difficult but rewarding.

As I have noted before Cataclysm separated the casual from the raiders big time. With the lack of content and heroics being challenging again you really damaged the casual groups that had mixed skills in their ranks. The troll heroics did not do us any favors because most people that has seen the places before were not engaged by them story wise, and most casual players would cause death after death because the trash was extremely unforgiving. I believe most players in WoW sit in the dungeon world for quite some time hoping that they can raid but not having the time to invest on it. When those dungeons are not a source of fun for the people that already have the gear, good luck with trying to get people to go with you to those places.

The LFR and the new dungeons are completely opposite to what the rest of Cataclysm was. It is not that they are overly simple, because they are really not. The ramp up though is not as high as it was the rest of the expansion and you can still have fun inside of them. They are quick, they are fun, and they allow you to once again play with your friends.

Most of the hardcore raiders I knew stopped playing the game with Cataclysm. Once those players have moved on, who is the audience? The casuals. It makes no sense for a company like Blizzard to create content that only 1% of the population gets to see. Sure, that might have been the case before, but when that number turns into 5-10% during Wrath, there is no point to dial complexity back up and saying… you know what you guys don’t deserve to see this because you don’t have the skills. Enter Firelands nerf, enter LFR, enter new shorter dungeons.

Three difficulty levels is a great model. I will probably still be a normal/raid achievement raider. Knowing I can have fun with my friends is more important to me, and the LFR and new dungeons clearly show that Blizzard gets it. Make things too difficult and lose players.

I hated Firelands. We will have to still go in there until Triz completes her legendary quest as well as Jackie’s mage that has it right behind her. It will be probably done on a off night but I could not wait to get out of that world of orange and brow. I am not a fan of the color to begin with and with all the fights being driven by one or two dumb mechanics it felt good to go in there a clear the place minus Rags in less than 2 hours. So 3 new dungeons and a new raid could not come fast enough.

The dungeons are short, VERY short. With a competent group they can be done in less than 30 minutes. I think we cleared one in about 20 or less. Eventually I think that Ilidan and Thrall will get very very annoying and seem slow, but at least for now they seem to keep up. I still seem doomed to have the same shield from the first month of Cata that Mike crafted for me… I hope the gear gods smile upon me and let me upgrade my shield.

Only half of the new raid is open in the LFR. The raid is extremely easy for raiders, who are the only people that could probably access it the first week due to the iLvL requirement of 372. I did the raid with one of my tanks and both of my healers and actually managed a couple of nice drops for the healers. The bosses seem to have their mechanics tuned very low and after 1 wipe it seems anyone that had not seen the fight before was able to pick it up and execute. I do think that having most of the raid be in pretty good gear probably helps, but 372 is pretty high… I am sure people with PvP gear will sneak in but overall it should not be an issue for any group to clear at least the first 4 bosses.

I did not spend any time in the darkmoon fair since I was focused on capping my 4 raid capable toons of valor points. Capping is now a breeze. The new dungeons give you 150 (either new or old heroics) and the raid gives you 250. It took no time to get all of them capped.

I have not had this much fun playing WoW in a while. If I want to raid, I can get into one in minutes. The only annoying thing is dealing with bad pugs, but surprisingly that is not the case in the raid. I guess we will see how it pans out as the weeks go on and more people get into the LFR.

While the whole WoW community was all up and arms about the Fireland nerfs, I was too busy having fun with the actual game.

I cannot help but enjoy all the chatter going on on the web about the Firelands now being a joke and the cries from hardcore raiders about how now their achievement has been taken away, blah blah blah.

Really guys, really? No matter what blizzard does it seem that someone will complain, but with all the attention being paid to raids I cannot imagine why so many are so upset.

If you are truly that good and that hardcore you should have been 6/7HM. Even if you were just semi hardcore 4/7 should also have been yours pretty easily. Anyone that completed T11 on heroic should have been working on hardmodes day one (well, I guess week two after pwning Rag)… if you weren’t, then you got exactly what you asked for after Wrath, OMG let me be LEET and better than everyone again! Newsflash! you truly are not, so many d-bags out there are still not 7/7 HM and they still think they are top raiders.

Trust me when I tell you that casual raiders like me (someone that is ok with no doing HM at all) doesn’t care about your shinnies.

I have killed Rag with two toons now, as a healer and as a tank. My big regret is that I did it once with just some people I knew, and another with a total pug. I have been able to put with some of the best raiders in our server and it has been a fun experience. I just enjoy killing things with my guild so much more. We are going to be working on that though. Being able to pug gives me the opportunity to learn fights and mechanics, and then come up with my own strategy with less wipes with my friends.

One interesting thing about Firelands is that most of the encounters are exactly what I expected them to be. Frustrating for no good reason. I have not done heroics yet, but even the normal encounters are so dependent on random crap that it really separates people. Its not just the bads from the good either, it is also separating people by computer performance. A lot of things have a huge lag component. Shannox, you stand on fire and you die… but you have only seconds to get out.

Even thought they are complex, one encounter that I liked a lot was Domo. The encounter is extremely easy for people that have raided for a while, but still challenging. It scales great too, if you have awesome healers you can let something happen more times… if you are great at movement, the same. The encounter is probably one of the best bosses I have seen designed. It is also easy to explain and execute. That is probably my favorite encounter in Firelands.

Rag is probably my least favorite. Not because I died there quite a bit while people learn the fight, but because it is just too much going on. It is not interesting or fun, it is basically a lot of… omg someone messed up, we all died, walk back. There are a lot of defile like situations where one messup will kill everyone.

I have a solid strategy now for that encounter that is a combination of several things that I have seen other people do. The frustrating part is that there is still an element of luck to the encounter. One simple timing thing can be the difference between a wipe and a kill.

One of the things that I don’t understand about strategies for that fight is how people assign DPS.

You have 8 sons to deal with in 10 man and there is always a split depending on where the hammer lands.

S – S – S – S – S – S – (H) – S – S (right split)
S – S – S – S – (H) – S – S – S – S (middle split)
S – S – (H) – S – S – S – S – S – S – (left split)

Most people end up assigning a number to each person and having them kill that sun regardless of split. It always leads to trouble. All the sun run to the hammer and if they hit the hammer they blow up causing a wipe most of the time, if two sons hit it, game over.

The way I will deal with it when I am actually leading a kill will be that 4 people are assigned a side of the hammer. The rest of the DPS will then be cleaners.

The split should also take into consideration DPS numbers and stuns.

S – S – S – S – 1D – T – (H) – T – 2D (right split)
S – S – 1D – T – (H) – T – 2D – S – S (middle split)
1D – T – (H) – T – 2D – S – S – S – S – (left split)

Tanks and top DPS are what matter the most.

When you are learning the fight, this is probably the hardest thing to get consistently. If you work on that first, the rest of the fight can be directed by the RL, however telling everyone what to kill can be a daunting task and what makes Rag hard to pug.

On the second hammer phase you have the added mobs to deal with. As a tank you have to just pick it up, deal with your son, then kill the add. That also takes a little be to get used to if the tank is new.

This is the first time that I actually wanted to write an addon that just slots people for you and spams it so they know where to go.

I still dislike Firelands quite a bit. I hope there is never another raid like this one again. I hope that Dragon Soul is more ICC or Ulduar than ToC. However, I am comfortable enough with it to take groups through it now. It will be nice to get some legendary weapons out of there.

How can a guy this cute cause so much controversy?

Let me tell you a little story. I went to a private catholic high school. Even though we were only middle class my parents put a high value on education so they sent me to a school they thought would provide me with better opportunities in the future. There were plenty of people in that school who had parents that were very, very well off. There once was a concert of some popular band coming to the city, and some of my classmates decided to go… not only did they get the best sits that money could afford, they also made a big sign with the word “Poor” to show to the rest of the crowd. It even made the paper. It was probably just a stupid teenager move, but it illustrates something that happens in WoW quite a bit.

“I have something you don’t have.”

From raiders displaying their hard to obtain mounts, to people riding their celestial pony. Many people like to show off what they can get. It used to be that the game was “pure” and you could only get certain things through grinding or skill, but the celestial pony, at least to the masses, told everyone… I can afford to buy this.

Sure, there are plenty of people that buy it just because they like it, are “completionists”, or think is ubber-cute, but there will be a segment that gets stuff like this to tell others, “I have the money to spend that you don’t.” I think that is what rubs most people the wrong way, that they either can’t afford or chose not to spend real money beyond their monthly fees for the game.

The real issue with this cute guy is that he comes packed with tons of issues.

The most important in my opinion is value. It used to be that if you bought a pet at the store you got it on all your characters. Say you have 10 toons you play, at 10 dollars you are paying about 1 dollar per toon to have that pet. Now if you want that cute little guy on all of your 10 toons… you have to dish out 100 USD!

You say ridiculous… I say really? Yeap, there are people with multiple mains that love pets and might end up dishing out money to get it on all their toons. I think the value for the customer there is at that point diminished greatly.

The second side-effect is that since this item is now trade-able you now have an indirect way of converting real money into WoW money. This is not new, the WoW admins pointed out already that you could do that with the loot cards. Easier and more available to players it is though. It will depend greatly on your servers economy, but in essence now you CAN buy gold in a legal way if you want to.

Blizzard is being really smart about a lot of things, and this one might rub a lot of people the wrong way, but you cannot blame them for trying. Will this curve gold selling? I have no idea, I don’t know what that market looks like at all anymore. I have always been against buying gold. Is this annoying to the people that don’t want to or can afford the extra money? It depends on how much you care.

I never bought the celestial steed, I did not like how it looked. I still might some day buy the winged guardian… it will be for the convenience of having a ready mount that flies when I am leveling an alt. The game is so easy right now that I doubt it will really give anyone a big advantage to be able to sell those cubs and make gold. I don’t think it will translate into progression for anyone unless the market for them is super high. What I will be doing is waiting to see what happens with the prices for it. I know I won’t be shelling out 1000k for a pet, the cuteness factor will probably make my wife pay 10 bucks. I don’t think it will break the game… will it open the gates for other things, more than likely. Blizzard has to make money to keep the lights on, and overall I think they do a good job at not making the game all about micro transactions.

In all reality, all they are doing is keeping us talking about WoW for another week before Blizzcon. That they are obviously masters at.

*Update*

WoW insider has now posted the official response, which back ups what I mentioned about the card game already doing this. I also like the fact that Matthew Rossi bring up the point that with the cub you don’t have to hope you get a card, you actually know you are getting the cub.

I started to play WoW in a PvP server from the very beginning. I have been to other servers, but never leveled anything past level 10. It has been always alliance, always AzShara <- yea I spell it like that… or used to anyway.

The molten front dailies have brought alliance and horde back to clashing. In an underpopulated server, its all about the luck of the draw when you get there to work on your dailies. If you are the side with the numbers, wohoo, lets get this done. If you are not… then welcome to a miserable time.

In PvP servers people don’t get it when you are not interested in PvP. I have PvP gear, I can hold my own in must battles. When you are questing though, it is almost never a fair battle, a mob has you half health and a stealth or range comes over and burns you down quickly. I don’t care how good you are at the game, when you get ganked, it will some times turn into an annoyance.

I personally deal with it by either leaving the area if I am outnumbered or giving the player 2 – 3 battles to establish a “winner.” If I am outmatched, then I simply leave the area. Many of the people I play don’t get that concept, they continue to go back and the ganker has just too much fun killing them over and over. I don’t get it myself, I can let go of a current objective and go do something else… but some people are not like that and want to accomplish that goal before they move on to something else.

My wife is one of those people. Even though she has not the only one that has nerdraged hardcore about being ganked, she is the one that I get to hear get progressively frustrated. Sometimes I drop what I a doing and come to her “rescue” hoping to outnumber the ganker, sometimes she just logs into another character. It happens often now that the molten front is the place where a shinny new mount resides.

Sethria’s Roost is a mess of annoying design. Not only is the resurrection spot very far away from the place, if you are unlucky enough to fall off the clift, there is the chance that you cannot get to your body and WILL have to take the durability loss and rez sickness.

I personally have died in Sethria’s Roost more times since the molten front came out than all other places combined since Cata came out(Excluding Raids and Dungeons). Doing the TB dailies I would die maybe once a week when someone felt like PvPing. It was fun for me most of the time and I did not mind having to complete those dailies. The Roost is not the same place though, you are joined by NPCs that “help” you… but they have the side effect that they will attack the opposing faction if they get too close.

Even when I carefully wait my turn to engage mobs in the area, sure enough some else runs and hits the horde character and it turns into a mini battle. The chances of being outnumbered in that area in AzShara are pretty good, so you end up with a long walk back. Sure you can take revenge, but I don’t wish that walk on another player, even if they tried to gank me.

One night a boomkin was there, I can’t remember if I attacked first or if he just hit one of my “helpers” with an AoE. Bottom line was that even after I backed off, there was going to be a battle and he knew how to use his abilities well. I ended up helplessly flying through the air to my impending death. My character got stuck, I got to learn that it is not a good cliff to die.

It was not the gold it took to repair, I did not even waste too much time, I knew getting to my body was going to be a pain so I too the rez sickness and move on. It was just the fact that being in a PvP server meant that even if I did not want to engage in battle with another player I did not have a choice.

My wife reminds me all the time that she did not have a choice on the matter either since I was playing in a PvP server. I also did not have a choice because when I rolled my first toon I had no clue what it really meant to be in a PvP server. The frustration of not having the power to just say, hey I don’t feel like being killed while completing this quest had finally clicked.

This is probably one of the top 3 reasons why AzShara is not going to be our home server anymore. And as a friend wisely put it, if they were ever to make the server PvE and the population issues were fixed… we might some day come back “home.” If you are new to WoW, make sure that you take this into consideration before you chose between PvP and PvE servers.