MMO GurL

I must be a glutton for punishment or perhaps I just like a challenge, but for better or worse, I’m a healer.

I started out long ago as a tank – in fact I tanked for all of Vanilla WOW. Come BC, I didn’t want much at all to do with tanking. Tanking dungeons on a warrior was a nightmare and I soon moved onto a DPS role. I spent most of BC playing that role until I decided to level a shaman with which I intended to help my guild out with heals. We were always missing a healer for raid nights and so I figured I’d roll one. I really enjoyed shaman healing for both raids and pvp and I spent all of Season 3 partaking in much pillar humping in arena on that same shaman.

Since then, I have played the healer role as a druid, paladin, and finally now as a priest. I played through WotLK mainly on my resto druid, but towards the end I switched to my paladin for raids as my druid took more of a PVP turn.

Suffice it to say, I never had too much of a problem healing in heroics or dungeons. Every once in a while a tank would come into random pugged heroic, and have some low health, but even than it was pretty easy. They would have to be horrible for me to actually leave the heroic in frustration. In fact, most tanks that I got paired with weren’t horrible at all, but were amazingly overpowered and could probably have survived on their own with the exception of some boss fights.

In those days, the tanks carried the group. There is no question in my mind.

Things have changed immensely with Cataclysm though and now it is hard to pick out who, if anyone, carries the group. I can tell you who suffers the most stressful part of the experience though, and that my friends, is the healer.

We are now engaged in heroics that are actually difficult. There is no more face rolling through these instances with the tank carrying everyone. You have to bring DPS that can actually do good damage. You need a well geared tank with mitigation and you need an awesome healer. In fact, I’d say if I had to pick anyone to carry the team, it is the healer. And when nobody else brings what they’re supposed to bring to the table – it is the healer who suffers.

PUG tanks are still in a rush – they expect you to never run out of mana and even though you just went through your whole 90k mana pool on one trash pool because the DPS was so bad and nobody bothered to use crowd control – they keep running on ahead. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, “If he pulls – he can die.” I am not the best geared as I just hit 85 not too long ago, but I have a 350 item level which isn’t quite chopped liver and I consider myself a damn good healer.

If I can’t keep up with these people, than something is wrong.

What’s wrong is that DPS is still expecting a carry. As soon as they hit 85 they will buy or craft some PVP blues and get their ONLY 329 prerequisite for joining a heroic. They come in not realizing or not caring that they need to be doing at least 8-10k dps to even make a dent in the heroic. If those mobs don’t die fast or aren’t Cced – than my mana pool will simply not last and we will all die.

Let me describe to you what my last heroic PUG was like. I queued with my husband, who is a mage, and also newly 85. His gear is not the greatest, but he can still push 10k, and honestly that is all that matters to me. We got sent to the Vortex Pinnacle and were paired with a warrior tank, a warlock, and a feral druid. The tank told my husband to sheep which is kind of funny considering mages can’t sheep elementals. So the tank ignores this and just pulls anyway. The pulls were so taxing on my mana that I was having to sit and drink after almost every single one. On top of that, the other dps were standing in unnecessary spells like the lightning cloud AOE.

I didn’t realize we had the lock at first and was caught up in having to play 150% to keep up. When I did, I asked him to banish one of the elementals. As soon as I did this, he left the party. Just left! God forbid he should help CC!! He was replaced with a DK who did piss poor DPS – about 6k to be specific and who also kept AFKing in the middle of fights. Somebody ended up voting to kick him, and he was replaced with yet ANOTHER DK who did 4k DPS instead of 6. This new DK spent most of the dungeon dying and in Orgrimmar (yes, he was actually just sitting in town while we did all the work). The tank ended up kicking the feral druid was at least doing 8k DPS and that guy got replaced with a bad hunter.

SOMEHOW, I made it through this nightmare and we got to the last boss with 2 DPS – 1 sitting in town – and we wiped to Assad as the hunter died at the first Supremacy of the Storm and we just couldn’t do it with 1 DPS so I eventually went OOM.

While it was a nightmare for me, it made me realize all of the flaws of the new system and how it effects healers the most. I also feel that only requiring an item level that doesn’t take into account how much actual damage the player can do is horrendously silly. Things have gone back to the way they were before random heroics where you just queue with your guild mates because they are the only ones you trust to not fail horribly.

I just wish that there were some way that these DPS could not waste everyone’s time. There is no such thing as an easy carry anymore, somebody is always going to suffer for it. I’ll be damned if that person is going to be me because I am simply not going to bash my head against the wall anymore for people I don’t know and that can’t even grant me the simple courtesy of coming to a heroic prepared (IE with some kind of concept of how to play their class and do decent DPS). There are regulars available to under-geared players and I took part in them for quite some time before I even queued for heroics!

I do like the concept of meeting new people and I’m not saying that everyone should be perfect, but they should at least be able to bring the needed DPS to clear it without overwhelming difficulty.

So is this the end of random heroics for the majority or is there some way that Blizzard can fix this?

Photo taken from one of Cynicalbrit’s wipe-a-thon videos.

On Sunday, I decided that I was going to spend the day leveling my Defiant rogue in Rift. She was level 29 to start and I didn’t get her too far into 30 before I decided to shut the client down. Why? Because I was nerd raging.

To start with, I’m leveling in a zone called Scarlet Gorge and whoever designed this zone is a masochistic bastard (sorry, but it’s true). The zone is an absolute nightmare as most of the quests I have done so far involve killing mobs that are jam packed on top of each other.

In recent zones, like Stonefield, you may have had to kill a couple at a time, but in Scarlet Gorge, you are stuck with 3 most of the time and then will most likely get a patrol that you weren’t accounting for. As a rogue, I do have a crowd control mechanism (sap) to take care of one mob, but that still leaves two which can sometimes be tricky unless I use a cool-down or a potion. If I get an extra mob into the equation, I’m screwed, and will have to run or I’ll die; in fact, even if I run, I still may die.

On top of dealing with that for about 2 hours, a major invasion occurred and the boss Gnar King (I think that was it – don’t hold me to it) showed up. I ran half way across the map for the chance to participate and after missing the big fight I ran in to help clear up the trash. I used an AOE and next thing I know I’m flagged and I see what seemed to magically appear out of nowhere: a ton of Guardians all flagged.

They chased me down all the while I was just hoping to get far enough away to stealth out. What crap!! I had to nerd rage to Twitter and then had to log out. I was just too pissed off.

It made me think, “Why do things like that get me so upset? Why do people have to nerd rage?”

I think a lot of it is because we like to think that we are all awesome in our game world and that we can’t die. Dying by a mob is annoying, but dying from another character outside of a Warfront (Instanced PVP game) is just unacceptable. Why?

Perhaps because we feel that we’ve been out-witted. That someone by default of killing us is better than us. When the reality of it is that these people are usually using sneaky methods to get us in the first place. A huge group going to a major rift invasion flagged is of course looking for trouble. It’s almost as bad as those people that would flag themselves and sit on top of your mobs just hoping that you would accidentally hit them and get flagged so they could kill you?

That is also a part of why it’s so irritating to be tricked. A player figures that they know all the tricks and when they get out-smarted it’s enough to set them off into nerd rage city.

Another thing that always gets me is that I don’t like to deal with jerks in a game that is supposed to be some kind of happy go lucky virtual world. When I first started playing MMORPGs, there were never any negative people around. Maybe 1 out of 100 would be a jerk and everyone would talk about how awful they were and why they would do such a thing.

Now it’s just a fact of MMORPG life and it’s something I still haven’t come to fully accept. It annoys me that people really do think that they aren’t dealing with real people on the other end of the line. Worst yet is that most of the time griefing is done out of boredom; I say find these people something to do!

The main reason that I have never enjoyed a PVP server is because I have two separate mindsets when I play a MMORPG: PVE AND PVP. When I’m trying to level, I don’t think about the possibility of a player ganking me and I don’t even want to. I have played multiple games on a PVP server and in the end, it just gets old! Sure you can kill people whenever you want to, but you also have to worry about them killing you – whether you feel like fighting or not.

When I go into a battleground or warfront, I’m expecting to fight! I’m ready to go and I know that it’s kill or be killed, so I don’t hesitate. That also means that obviously if I’m there, I’m in the mood to fight and am perfectly fine with dying. But, I can’t stand getting caught off guard when I’m not actually wanting to PVP.

Ultimately, the nerd rage is not cool. I’m sitting there all upset like my street credits have been ruined as a decent PVPer, when in reality, it just doesn’t matter. It’s still just a game and it can be shut off at any time. I won’t deny that it’s very hard to avoid spazzing out when frustration gets heavy. I have no problem admitting that I nerd rage. It might even be because I drink too much coffee. Still, it’s best to just try to stay calm because those little jack asses just love it when you get mad.

WHY U MAD, BRO?

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I read an interesting blog recently that I found through Twitter. I’m not going to mention any specific names here because it is not my intention to be menacing towards the person. But I do have some valid concerns with the message they are spreading with the blog.

The theme of the blog was basically stating that you shouldn’t bother with a fake life in an online game such as MMORPGs, but instead should improve your real life. This is a great thought and all, but what does that say to the many people who play games every day? To me, it says, “Hey you’re a loser and you’re not doing what you could be doing with your life because you waste all of your time playing Rift or WoW and that’s not productive!” Sorry! Long winded, I know!

So, the point still stands; is it really that horrible for you to play MMORPGs? In order to answer this question honestly you have to be prepared to answer a few other questions first.

1. Are you neglecting something or someone to play your MMORPG?

This is usually the first sign of abuse. Most good mothers will tell their children that everything is alright in moderation. So as long as you’re not going over-board, there’s not much to worry about. If you start neglecting your hygiene, your spouse, your children, your chores, and responsibilities, than you probably do have a problem and should reevaluate your situation.

2. If you had absolutely nothing to do – No games – what would you do?

This is a big indicator here. I have been playing MMORPGs for a long, long time and don’t think I have never sat down and thought to myself what a waste of time it all was. I have stopped many times for quite long chunks of time and you know what? I never really did anything that amazing with my free time. I watched TV and movies a lot. I will say that I was a lot better with cleaning the house, but I recall after awhile I got sick of the prospect of being some neat-freak housewife that just cleaned all day! So like that mother said, “Everything in moderation,” even productive things.

3. What can you change in your life that you haven’t changed because of your preoccupation with games?

A lot of people play games because they can’t do anything about their current situation in life. Maybe they have a horrible job, maybe they’re stuck in a house that’s worth less than the mortgage out on it; there can be any number of problems in a person’s life that can’t be instantly resolved. Sure that person who has a bad job can put out applications all day, but in this economy they’d be lucky to get a call back for 1 out of every 30 applications they submit.

But what about what CAN be changed? Can you honestly say that you are doing everything that you want to be doing? At least with the things you can do something about? Think about that and it will help you to determine if you’re too focused on gaming.

4. Are you gaining something positive from playing your game?

I gain many things from playing MMORPGs: I get better at writing, I get better at socializing (I’m actually really anti-social in real life) and meeting new people, I make friends that I probably wouldn’t make in real life. I’m also gaining the potential to make some money with my time. Articles do sell and whenever I want to take the step into writing full time I will have more than enough of a resume with my contributions to other sites (like Rift Junkies) as well as my own.

So yes, gaming is not just about self indulgence for me. It is a lot more and I gain a lot from it. This alone outweighs any worries I have about whether or not gaming is productive enough for me. Even if you don’t write, make sure the game is giving you something back besides just the game.

Since I’ve come back to my MMO GurL persona I’ve fought with whether or not it was the right thing to do. I stopped playing for almost a year and tried to get my art career afloat. In the end I found that art was way too consuming a thing for me to do while trying to raise a child and keep my marriage together. Some things just take up FAR too much of your time and it’s not just games that can do it.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that anyone who plays games as a hobby is wasting their time though. I think that the person who’s doing the gaming needs to make the decision for themselves. I have been playing video games since the Atari and so for me, as far as hobbies go, games are far more ME than art is. Why is that such a horrible thing?

I’m not hiding in a fake world; I just like to visit it sometimes. How do we even know that the world we think is real is real (Matrix anyone?)? And I don’t know about you, but I can’t shoot fireballs in the “real” world, so I’m going to go do it in the virtual one!

Obviously if you’re here you have some interest in MMORPGs – so tell me – Do you think that playing such games is an innately bad thing? Why or why not?

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Photo taken from: Make Love, Not Warcraft – South Park Episode

Head on over and check it out! This is a segment I hope to be doing either weekly or bi-weekly called Ear to the Rift that will try to cover some of the current issues in the Rift community.

No you didn’t misread that -  I said just like dating!

I’ve found myself in a crazy situation where I really want to play both Rift and World of Warcraft. I’m wondering if it’s really possible to play both at the same time and why I’d even want to do so. While this may sound crude, I think it offers the perfect analogy as to how I feel about both games.

World of Warcraft is like that ex of yours who drives you crazy, but is really good in bed and knows all of the fiendish little things you like to do, but are too scared to bring up with a new partner! So you find yourself breaking up with WoW all the time because – well it drives you crazy and is a total nutcase – but it always reels you in with the good sex.

Now Rift is like that new person you meet that has the chance to be your future spouse. They haven’t done anything wrong to you – nothing to tarnish your relationship. They seem too good to be true almost and so you kind of get a little weary thinking that you may be getting your hopes up. In reality that makes you like them even more! They are full of potential!

You can see where I’m going with this. There’s something to be said for both: good and bad. But the way I feel about Rift and WoW, is that both have something that the other doesn’t have. When I play Rift, I feel like I’m missing a certain immersion that I get when I’m playing WoW. Maybe it’s all the time and experience I’ve had playing WoW that makes me feel more comfortable with it (like that ex). To me, WoW just seems more engaging and there is so much more nostalgia (murlocs, the onyxia wipe guy, jaraxxus songs, leeroy, roflmao, the internet is for porn, you no take candle, I could go on for awhile!).

Rift on the other hand has something that is completely new! Classes I have never tried before. Being able to have 2 classes on one character that I can switch back and forth to at will. Not having to level a totally new character again and again and again is a super plus. One of the things I like the most about Rift as silly as it may sound is AOE looting. When I am playing WoW I think, man, I wish I could AOE loot!

For now, until Rift does something to harm our relationship making it a less than desirable union, I will hold onto it. I’m still going to be banging my ex on the side though! I figure if this goes on for long enough $30 a month for subs isn’t THAT horrible and I can just look into making a schedule so one doesn’t find out about the other!

Can you handle two or more MMORPGs or is one clearly enough? What do you like about WoW and Rift?

Photo Edited by: Me , Original by: put that down

Here is Abigale’s latest response to the hacked accounts in Rift:

“We are aware that there are still issues with some of you being hacked. This is a top priority for us here at Trion and the team has been working to address the situation. As we posted last week, there have already been a number of updates put in place. We are also introducing another function that should make it into the game early this week.

Coin Lock

Users will be coin locked if they log in from a significantly different location. When their account is coin locked, they will be sent an email to the address that they have on their account (their login email) with a code to enter into the game.

Users will see the Coin Locked icon in the spot where their tutorial button shows up. Deactivating the tutorial tips will not turn off the Coin Locked button.

While in a Coin Locked status, users will have the following limitations:
• No access to the auction house
• No ability to SEND mail. Users can still receive and view mail as well as remove items from mail
• No ability to SELL to vendors. Users can still purchase items from vendors
• No ability to salvage, runebreak or destroy items
• No ability to trade
• Users can continue to play and gain coin and items, but cannot get rid of them.

If you are Coin Locked, simply click on the Coin Locked icon and enter the code found in your email from Trion.

If you log in and your account is coin locked, check your email! Someone may have logged in from another location with your account.

If you do not receive the email, please click on the Coin Locked icon and click the “Resend” button to have the email resent to you.

If you cannot access your email or you are otherwise unable to change your Coin Locked status, please contact Customer Service.

We’re also working on the addition of two-factor authentication at the login level, which will let you use an app or a cell phone as a way to ensure that you’re the one logging on. (You may have heard of this in other products as a SecurID or an Authenticator.) We’ll be sharing specifics on that as soon as we can as well.

If you have been hacked:

Contact Customer Support immediately. The CS Team is responding as quickly as possible to restore accounts for those who have been hit.

We assure you this matter is very important to us and we are doing everything we can to resolve your issues and safeguard your account.”

As a follow-up to my own hacked account issue; they have been restored. It took about 5 days total to get them back in working order. It would have been 3 days if they hadn’t messed up one of the restores. I haven’t had any problems since but I changed the email associated with the account and the password is now on lock down!

Source: Update on Hacked Accounts

Last night I was horribly violated… by a hacker. Tonight I was violated again… by a victim-bashing community.

To explain, last night my account got broken into. I’m not sure exactly how it happened. I will admit I didn’t have the most iron-clad password (still 9 mixed digits), but I know for a fact that I had no malware on my computer. The perpetrator not only stripped and sold all of the gear on my characters, but then deleted them.
 

I was online when they got onto my account and was booted to the log-in screen. I instantly changed my password and continually tried to get back on. I succeeded getting on as many as 30 times, but for only 2 seconds at a time. The hacker and I both logged onto a single naked character back and forth from totally different IPs and none of this was even noticed by Trion’s securities.

My husband was on playing with me when this happened and he submitted a ticket online for me. I submitted a ticket through Trion’s website. I also remade my characters to temporarily hold my their names and submitted a ticket online. This happened at 12:00am yesterday and at 5:00pm today I still hadn’t heard a single response.

Frustrated, I called Trion and was told that there had been many hacked accounts. I asked how long it would take and what I could expect. The agent told me that she didn’t know what they would do, but that they would probably restore the characters; that it would be within 24 hours. I reminded her that I had already waited 18 hours from the first ticket I submitted.

She couldn’t even find my original tickets. Is this not a little weird? Three tickets and she couldn’t find a single one? So, if I had not called, would I have ever gotten a response? Especially considering this announcement I found where Trion says that “Hacked Accounts” are their highest priority.

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A full 25 hours later and I have still not heard a single thing about the status of my account. This leaves a really sour taste in my mouth about the game I’ve come to love over the past couple of weeks: Rift.

To make things worse – I decided to visit the forums to see if other people had this problem and mainly to see what had been done to resolve it. I want my three 25+ characters back! What I saw was sickening: more than half the community bashing the victims of hacking.

I normally like to stay unbiased when I write a formal article like this, but I’m going to let it rip. These people make me sick! These are the types of people who say that women deserve to get raped. Theft is theft and it is NEVER right. The person stealing whatever is not theirs is to blame; NOT the victim!

Check this out to see what I mean. There is a lot more where this comes from all over the general discussion section on Rift’s official forums.

What I really want to know is why Rift’s community staff is not policing these posts? They are outright attacks and libel against members of the community. What’s better yet is that these self proclaimed “tech-savvy” computer specialists (totally sarcastic right there) say that if you had any common sense on security that you could keep yourself from being hacked. So since you don’t take the time to protect yourself, well than, it’s your own fault.

No Really! That’s what they are saying! See! Oh and because it’s because! Last time I checked consoles weren’t 99% secure either.

Then we have those who deduct with their IMMENSE critical thinking skills that there are only two ways that this could have happened to a victim, oh and , IT’S ALL THEIR FAULT!

My husband is and has been a support technician lead dealing with phone and DSL for 8 years; he brings the technical know-how to the table. He did a thorough scan of my computer last night and nothing at all was on it. That’s probably because he set up up all my anti-ware and firewalls. If anything were to make it onto my computer, it wouldn’t be long before it was found as I run scans myself at least every week.

This is beside the point though. The point is that I am very tech savvy – I was writing HTML for websites when I was 13 back in the 90′s when nobody knew how to do it! And what I don’t know, my husband makes up for; yet I STILL got hacked. What’s worse is I’m left to deal with a completely unresponsive company that has done nothing to make me feel any comfort about the outcome of my account or the safety of my characters coming back to me in tact. On top of that – while I’m already feeling completely violated – I get told that it’s my fault.

Thirty-seven hours later and I still haven’t heard a thing.

In closing, I’d love to see Trion give these bad little kids on the forum a good spanking with a nice hard ruler. I’d also like for them to give the poor people who have had their solace ripped apart by nasty, thieving cretins a little peace of mind by letting them know what to expect and how long they can expect to be expecting it. I understand that they are busy, but sometimes giving the dog a little bit of the bone is all it needs to feel better.

Could Trion be doing better with support? And what do you think makes so many cold-hearted gamers roam the forums in search of victims to bash?

Photo by: Paskal

Sources: Seriously Trion, it takes 48 hours to roll back a hacked account???�
For those that are blind: Trion responds about account hacking
For the Hacker Apologists: Why do you defend them?
A Message from Trion customer support
Damn morons who got hacked