MMO GurL

I’ve been making videos for MMORPGs for awhile now, since 2008 according to my first uploaded video which for sentiments sake was on Dream of Mirror Online (linked here bad audio and all!). At first it seemed only the people who were getting really crazy views (1 million +) were able to show ads and attempt monetizing on their work to make and upload videos. Then Youtube started extending the offer to their lower traffic members, like myself with a highest view count of 31k.

I was pretty excited to actually make money on my videos. After all I had put in a lot of money up front buying several different recorders before I found the right one, buying microphones, video producing software, as well as the countless games I’ve purchased and subs I’ve paid over the years. All of this straight out of my pocket because I enjoy making these videos.

It was disappointing when I realized I would not receive a payment until I had reached a balance of $100 and even more upsetting when I figured it would take 3 years to ever see a payment at my current rate of about $2.60 per month. Not to mention the fact that Google is able to give advertisement space to people for free that I’m sure they charge for up front (ie the people who pay to show their advertisements). So Youtube is getting a great deal out of me! I pay all my own fees and they don’t ever have to pay me until I reach a $100 minimum all the while collecting payment from their advertisers and paying me nothing.

Then there is the fact that when I first went to monetize all of my videos that Youtube just decided not to let me monetize about half of them. One, my Perfect World Character Creation video which was one of my bigger view counts at 26k. Although Youtube did decide that they could advertise on my video without giving me the credit for it. As you can see they are showing a Lord of the Rings ad on MY video for which they already denied me the right to profit from.

On your video manager screen, you can see which videos are monetized by whether they have a little green square with a dollar sign in the middle or not. As you can see, my Perfect World video is not monetized and yet they are advertising on it. This pisses me off even more then knowing they just aren’t letting me make my measly 7 cents per 100 views or more!

Then there is their piss poor explanation as to why they decide a video is not enough of your own property to profit from based on this little bit of information. This makes no sense to me because this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3SLfIeDEIM) was allowed for monetization and to me it is more of a simple gameplay video. I don’t talk as much because I’m playing the game and I barely explain much of what I’m doing. While in my character creation video here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpLNLYBfhV4) I spent almost 40 minutes explaining all of the customizations to every single race and sex! And so that doesn’t qualify while the other ones does?

I do understand that these games belong to the people who develop them and take millions to produce. But at the same time the videos I make are free advertisement for the games they showcase. And it is cheap as dirt advertisement compared to what they would pay for up front. I’m adding my own voice to all of these videos from my computer with my software which should fall under fair use and add some of my own intellectual property to the video. Without me these videos wouldn’t even exist. Yet it seems Youtube just decides at the drop of a hat to deny certain videos even when they fall under the rules.

I’m going to go unprofessional here and say this SHIT pisses me off big time. I’m honestly considering deleting half of my videos especially if someone else is now monetizing off of them. Perhaps I should just give it up all together. I’m really not sure at this point. Anger does tend to cloud judgement so maybe I should sit on it for awhile.

How would this make you feel? What would you do about it?

So, I was lucky enough to stumble upon Curse’s Tera CBT3 key giveaway last week and got myself in to check the game out. I was going to make a simple tweet, but I ran out of room and realized that I should just write a post on it instead. So, let’s dive into it!

Things I Liked

Models

Those of you who follow my Youtube channel know that I devote most all of them to character creation videos. Some viewers pick on me for being vain or shallow, but I love good looking models. I love options and customization. Let’s just say, Tera’s models are amazing. The sheer amount of variety is delightful! The Popurri alone have TONS of options; you can be a cat, bunny, ferret, hampster, woodchuck, badger, panda, you get the idea.

It doesn’t stop at character creation though! Then you get into the game and see the npc models as well as the mob models and you’re like, “ Man, how did they do this and I haven’t seen anyone else come close yet!” At the end of the ‘newbie 1-11 zone’ you ride on a Pegasus and the detail on this thing is striking! I was ooing and aweing wondering if one day I might be able to have one of them for myself. So you get the point, the models are FRICKEN AMAZING!

Environment

And as some games spend all their chips on the models, this one expands to the environment as well. You can actually see birds flying off in the far distance and everything has such great detail! I was really immersed in the feel of this world and couldn’t get over all the work they put into it. Just when I got used to the starter zone, I flew to Velika – the first capital city you come across – and was shocked again at my amazement of the detail put into the zones. The city is a little confusing to navigate, but it’s beautiful!

Diversity of classes

Over the weekend I didn’t get to play as much as I’d have liked to, but I did get to try a lot of the classes to level 6 or so. I played a lancer, mystic, sorcerer, slayer, and an archer. By far and away I enjoyed the playstyle of the archer and that’s the character I leveled the most, followed by the lancer. But what impressed me was how different it was to play on each class. Coming from WOW where everything is practically the same now aside from a few base mechanics, it was nice to see such differences. For instance, on my lancer I’m equipped with a shield and actually have to actively block with it! It’s nice to see someone implement this! No more relying on old standards, but moving forward which should have been done ages ago. But it was nice to actually feel such differences when switching to other characters. It wasn’t just, “Oh, I’m ranged dps, melee dps.”

Mob intelligence Learning Curve

This kind of goes along with the diversity thing too, but for each mob there is a learning curve for how to kill it (or how to kill it without taking much damage). For instance, on the lancer, you’d have to learn what their attack patterns were to know when to use your shield. This aspect adds a new level of complexity which when mixed with the new system of aiming really adds a new experience for MMOs.

Bye Bye Targets

FINALLY SOME INNOVATION! Been waiting a long time to see innovation implemented properly. I think the target system in Tera works great and I love that the idea worked. I worried that it was a good idea, but just wouldn’t play right.

Cutscenes

They do need to fix the voice overs to sync better, but it’s really neat that they have the cut-scenes in the game for important story aspects. I especially liked the ones when you get to Velika and get grilled by the new commander. The last game I played that even tried to do something like this was Dream of Mirror and I was only frustrated that the story dialogue started off heavy and then tapered away. Tera seems to be doing the opposite so far and I look forward to seeing more of these!

Things I Didn’t Like

Same Starting Area

I hate when games do this because I tend to like having a few alts. But Tera decided to make only one starting area and therefore you will have to deal with the repetition of doing the same quests over and over.

Quests Lacking

The quests themselves are nothing new either. Collect this, kill that! I didn’t noticed as much considering all of the other perks of the game, but it could get a bit annoying if they don’t switch it up more later. I will add that they have these instanced quests that use “Teleportals” and those were pretty cool.

Decisions Decisions

So far I’m not totally sold on whether or not I want to preorder the game. If I did, I’d want to get the digital collector’s edition so that I could get the 2 free mounts at a decent price. I just don’t want to have to pay up front on their website. When I preorder, I usually like to do it with Amazon since they only charge once the game ships, but it doesn’t seem that the Digital collector’s is for sale there or even a physical collector’s. I think before deciding and spending more money on MMOs, that I’ll need to play a bit more. I only got to level 12 this weekend so I definitely need to see more to decide, but so far it is looking good!

 Have you played in any of the betas yet? Will you preorder Tera based on your experience?

 As it’s pretty obvious from my lack of posting, I’ve taken a huge MMO hiatus. I have a lot of trouble justifying my love for MMOs at times and tend to feel like I’m wasting my life away doing something that isn’t beneficial to me in the least. I get over it from time to time and allow myself the guiltless stroll through MMO Lane, but I struggle with it. I jumped back into WOW recently; I have been working my head off at my real life job and since I do creative work, it can be draining to work all the time. I decided it was time for a bit of recreational time and so here I am back in Azeroth.

I have been playing ranged DPS and healers for the past 4 years or more. When I first started playing though, my absolute first main was a protection warrior! I haven’t tanked since Burning Crusade, and though what better way to make the game different, then to pick up a different role. I rolled a Dwarf warrior and started leveling my little butt off. Whenever I’m starting a new character, even if it’s one I have already played (I still have that 70 warrior), I always reroll and level from 1 so that I can get a better feel for learning all the skills of that character. I also keybind just about everything and so I like to remember the keybinds one a time instead of all at once. Makes it actually stick. It also makes it so that you utilize all of your skills as you level. You understand them better. It just makes sense to me.

When I hit 15, and hopped into Dungeon Finder, I was a little nervous because I hadn’t tanked in so long. I have done all of the dungeons a million times or more though and so it ended up just fine. I did however run into a lot of problems with the players I grouped with and that’s exactly what made me think about writing this post.

Let’s talk a little about Tanking and why it’s good and why it sucks and if it’s worth it in the end to take on this role.

The Good

Fast Queue Times and Rewards

Queue times for tanks in Dungeon Finder are practically instant and at 85 you will even get reward bags most of the time when there is a shortage of tanks (when isn’t there?). Healers get this sometimes, but not nearly as often as tank do and DPS never see it.

Godlike Power

Maybe this is just me, but I really enjoy the fact that I am keeping all of these people alive. I never felt it as a healer, but when tanking it’s like I know that if I were to die, most likely the rest of the group will too. You’re choices in pulls and what cool downs you use, can make or break the group. It’s a cool feeling to wield life and death even in the digital world.

A Unique Role

Playing a tank is a totally different way of life compared to being DPS or heals. I get so bored on my Boomkin because it’s just a lot of pew pew. On my healer I find that I am either bored or stressed depending on the group. There never seems to be a happy medium of engagement though where I am actively working, but not stressed. Being a tank is SO engaging! I’m a little ADD, so I need to have that 100% up time, and you certainly get it with tanking.

You’re Needed

Everyone needs a tank, so you won’t have trouble finding a guild or even a pug to raid with. People are a lot more willing to help a tank learn a fight then help a DPS so you’ll find more lenience as you go.

All in all, it’s a good feeling to know that my attentiveness makes the difference for everyone else’s play experience. I make the healer’s life easier by making sure to keep agro on all mobs at all times. I make the DPS’ life easier by making them worry less about whether or not they will die to having to tank a mob by themselves. I have the capacity to make everyone’s experience in a dungeon a little bit smoother. If you have the aptitude for tanking, it really is a rewarding job, but that doesn’t go without saying the downfalls of the role…

The Bad

Dying

As a tank, you’re going to a die a lot. Especially if you have a level of honor as I do where I feel that I should do my job until the last moment. If I feel a healer isn’t taking care of me or paying attention, I usually just leave the group and find another. But you’re still going to have to bare with them for the first few deaths before you can make a conclusion. At a low level death is just a frustration, but when you’re 85, you’re talking big time repair bills! Join a guild that gives a reasonable daily allowance for your repairs so you don’t have to worry about it as much!

Overzealous DPS

We’ve all had them in our group, the warrior or paladin that consistently runs ahead of the tank like a one man army. They always attack the mobs you’re not attacking and seem to have a good time at making your job as difficult as possible. Most times I will just ask them to stop and they will or let them know it’s hard for you to keep agro if you don’t get there first. If none of this works, you can just leave, but if they really want to make a fight of it, go down to The Ugly and see what to do about it.

Bad Healers

A lot of people figure that the easiest way to get a faster queue time is to just roll a healing spec, go in their DPS gear, and go along for the ride. The thing these people don’t realize is that healing can be just as difficult as tanking. Most of the time, a good tank can carry a bad healer, but there are times where you will get healers who are not even healing you. I ran into a healer the other day who (I kid you not!) ran right past me tanking a group of 3 mobs into another group of 5 mobs and died. The whole group died because of it at the very beginning of the instance. They apologized and said it was an accident, alright that’s fine, but once everyone was ready to go again, I asked if they were ready – they said yes. We made it to the first boss, and I watched the healer walk into the room with us. I had waited awhile for them to follow, and upon seeing them enter, I figured that was the OK to go ahead. I blew every single one of cool downs and still they let me die. I don’t mind when people have trouble or don’t know what to do. But if you’re not going to pay attention, don’t do a dungeon please!

Must Know More

As a tank you will usually have a different function then the rest of the group during boss fights. At low level dungeon tanking, this isn’t so much a problem as it’s all tank and spank. But when you get to 80, you’ll find the encounters involve some thinking, and you may have to do something different then the DPS does. A perfect example of this is on the Ultraxion fight in Dragon Soul where 2 tanks have to alternate after getting debuffed with Fading Light. The tank has to hit Heroic Will which phases them out and keeps them from gaining threat for 10 seconds. If you didn’t know this, you could very easily wipe the group. There are tons of strategies for the many raid bosses in the game, and it will be your job to know the fight.

The Ugly

Now we’re down to the absolute worst part of tanking, but it could easily be said for any other roles as well when you’re grouping up strangers. Mean Jerk People! The other night, I ran into a couple of real winners in Dungeon Finder. They were two paladins, one retribution and one holy, and while I didn’t have a problem with the healer, the ret pally was driving me crazy. I would be tanking a group of 3, and he would run off and agro the next group before the current one was even finished. He was making my life stressful as heck and ruining my experience. I asked him to stop and he actually told me to “Get Over It.” I responded by asking him, “How hard is it not to be an ass?” to which he said, “#$%^ Off.” Then his healer buddy piped in talking about how it was a low level instance, and not a big deal, “We’re not noobs, we can handle it.”

That was besides the point. I was stressing out to try and do my job; if you didn’t need tanks in a dungeon, then they wouldn’t exist. If he had wanted to tank, then why didn’t he? There’s no reason to ruin someone else’s time just because you can’t play by the rules, or just be a decent person and respect someone’s wishes when they ask. Instead he calls me a shitty tank when I can assure you I was doing pretty good considering the way he was acting. I just hate dealing with people like this and it has become a way of life in the game.

I was so annoyed with this guy that I told him to tank the dungeon himself and then left and put in an abuse ticket to WOW GMS. I was very happy with the response I got as well and it pretty much brought me full circle to all of the feelings I have about tanking.

Tanking is really fun, but don’t let the jerks ruin it for you. As the GM said above, they need a report to do anything about it. Call me a wimp if you want, I really don’t care. I was playing this game back in 2004 when there just were not jerks in the game. Everyone used to be awesome and nice and usually the one that caused problems were just new and didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t this intential jerkiness.

If you want to give tanking a shot, go ahead! It can be a really good experience, especially if you’ve been bored with prior roles!

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.

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