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.

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

These are the most awesome bit of fan creation that I have seen in a long time. Visit the creator at the deviantart site below and leave some comments if you like edible Illidan truffles!

source: anafuji.deviantart.com, walyou.com

Blizz backed off Real ID forcing players to disclose their real name on the forums. Very cool and I’m glad they listened. Check out the full post here.

I am purposefully not posting much on this as it lives somewhere in the gray where it’s hard to tell whether spreading the news it helpful, interesting, or harmful. I’ll start you on the breadcrumb trail though and it will be up to you whether or not you’d like to follow it.

but nobody really cares with all this Real ID shit going on. My husband pointed out something kind of scary last night. And it is very odd considering the weird name they chose – being Real ID. See this was an act proposed in 2005 to create a national ID number of sorts. It’s called the Real ID Act…how strange. If you care, the post is here – I honestly don’t really care though!

WTB a Tinfoil Hat for the forums.

One of the biggest problems I have had in the past 2 years when trying to play ANY game is that constantly you will see in the general, zone, or trade chat, that the game is a WOW clone. I remember playing Alganon for the first time and the whole chat was filled with people trashing how similar the game was and that was all anyone could focus on. Every new game I try is called a Wow Clone. Most recently a friend of mine suggested that Allods Online was a WOW Clone, and then even when I was playing last night, someone said it in zone chat.

I think it’s time for a history lesson here kiddies. WoW was not and is not the end all be all for MMORPGs. Let’s take a look back to 1999 when Everquest Online was first released as that’s the first major MMORPG released in the format that WoW is in today. I personally never played EQ but I had friends who were quite into it and would show it to me all the time. My main fears were all the stories you’d hear of players becoming utterly obsessed and losing touch with reality, losing their jobs, commiting suicide – you get the point. BUT! Even before that Ultima Online was considered the FIRST graphical MMORPG in 1997. The only reason EQ is so well known is because it was the first majorly commercial success of it’s time.

Well this is a familiar scene.

While there are many pegs along the evolutionary road of MMORPGS, the next BIG milestones to me would be MUDs. Everquest Online came from text based RPGS called MUDs. As you can see below EverQuest derived mainly from a MUD called DikuMUD. The framework for DikuMUD formed the foundation for many other MUDs. So it was a natural step in the chain of RPGs to add a 3D GUI.

Even Wiki says it.

I wasn’t too into MUDs when they were the rage, but my husband was an avid player, programmer, and ascii art designer – so I was able to ask him some questions and he even got me started in one. MUDs have an amazing amount of features, races, classes, and exploration.

377 people online is probably more than Warhammer has.

My husband always told me about a MUD called Aftershock (which I don’t believe is up anymore) where you could be inducted into this secret society of Werewolves. As a member, you had to keep the society secret from other common players by never shape-shifting in front of them. Werewolves were also in constant war with the Vampires, but had to keep the fight private. If you disobeyed the laws of the tribe, you could be decapitated and suffer permanent player death (I.E. character gone forever). I don’t know about you – but that sure beats rep grinding for one piece of gear that will be outdated in the next patch.

Oldschool Interface of the MUD

MUDs came from tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons. These tabletop games were called Pen and Paper rpgs and started sometime in the 70′s. You had a character sheet that you would spend hours agonizing over to make sure that it was perfect before playing.  There was a Dungeon Master who would oversee the game and basically create the game environment for you. They made the rooms, the monsters, the fights, the story, everything was the DM or GM’s (GameMaster) job. Decisions and actions were dictated by rolling the dice. The DM would say,  “Roll a four sided dice against your agility,” and you would either fail or pass the roll. People would play together for a couple hours a night or more, but the actual campaign could last months.

I'm casting magic missles at the darkness!

It can easily be argued that most of the content for Dungeons and Dragons was derived from Tolkien’s work. In this bit from Wiki, it plainly says that certain monster and race names were taken and changed for marketing’s sake.

I think what it comes down to is that people are mistaking clones for the whole ‘if it’s not broke don’t fix it’ system. These are how improvements are made and it’s usually with simple things. Like think about lightbulbs – the shape changes, the filaments change, but the basic idea that the bulb should stay as a glass bulb stays the same! This is the same as interfaces being similar. How many different possibilities could there even be for a working UI? People get used to certain things and so changing UIs too drastically gives a lot of gamers system shock and they get turned off by the game. Me getting annoyed by the lack of a mini map in Allods Online is a perfect example of this. But since it was JUST a mini map missing, it wasn’t that bad. If it had been the whole interface, and skills, and who knows what else, I might not have continued to play.

In closing, if you really want to know every little bit of information dating back to before Zork on virtual MMORPGS, check out this article in its entirety. It’s pretty damn accurate and is much better than sounding like an ignorant retard when you say WOW CLONE. And for information on the history of role-playing games specifically – check this one out.

Say no to saying WoW Clone!

Today the web is exploding with posts, blogs, and articles about how pissed off people are that Blizzard is extending it’s Real ID concept to posts on the forums too. Basically they will be showing your real name when and if you choose to post on the official Blizzard forums for WoW or Starcraft 2. Starcraft 2 will come first, and then WoW once it’s closer to Cataclysm’s launch.

Trolls are bad and stuff and we can't control them!

It’s funny because they actually use the excuse that it will help keep trolling down. OR YOU COULD MODERATE YOUR FORUMS! This is the same damn problem in the game with trolls and generally ill behaved players. There is no punishment. So I guess they choose to just keep people from posting period on the forums because I know I don’t feel comfortable using my name on the web, and nor do many other people. I don’t even understand what Blizz is trying to pull with this shit.

For the full blue post go here.

source: examiner.com, forums.worldofwarcraft.com, forums.battle.net, blogs.courierpostonline.com and many more.