Project Lore

Vote to Kick is one of those tricky subjects with no clear cut "correct" way to solve. Currently, players using the Dungeon Finder tool need a unanimous vote (save the person being voted on) to remove someone from the party. Votes can be initiated by anyone and are completely anonymous. Players have no way of knowing who started the Vote to Kick, or who voted which way on a Vote to Kick if it fails. A Vote to Kick cannot occur within the first 15 minutes of an instance, unless the player has disconnected. This sounds like a pretty good system, but it has its flaws. Lets start with the things that should be considered direct exploits. Currently, there are players who get three of their friends together and queue for a dungeon, filling out the last slot with a pick-up member and receiving the luck of the draw buff for doing so. During a boss fight, just before a boss dies, the group votes to kick the random member, who has no say in the matter since the vote passes with the unanimous consent of the other four. The member loses the ability to roll on any loot that the boss drops. The scumbags can then queue to find another member for the trash and next boss. Its really despicable, and there have been some incidents brought up on the official WoW forums. A solution seems to be to not allow vote to kick when you queue with 4 people, but what do you do in the situation that you legitimately need to remove the last person? How about people who enter an instance and immediately AFK? Its doubtful that the group will wait for one person for 15 minutes, and they can't be removed during that time. If honor AFK farming is any evidence, there may need to be some sort of AFK countermeasure. Blizzard posters have said that the Dungeon Finder and Vote to Kick are very young and they are examining how it should work. Here are some ideas to amend the current system:

• Majority vote. For a party of 5, you would need 3 votes to remove someone from the party. The only drawback would be that if one person votes "no", they know that everyone else voted yes. In the current system, only after everyone has voted "yes" do players get any information on who took what action. For smaller sized parties, the majority and unanimous amount to the same thing.
• AFK tool. An interface option to go idle for a certain amount of time could be okayed by the party. If a player is AFK during non-approved time, a check could be done by other players to see if there are at their keyboard. If they don't take action for some amount of time (30-60 seconds?), they are removed from the party. This would solve the constant AFKer/AFK farmer problem.
• A reputation or karma system. Using player feedback during a Vote to Kick or after a dungeon system, Blizzard could improve matchmaking. Players found to be abusive of the system can be flagged and examined after repeated incidents. Based on your friends or guildmates feedback, the tool could dynamically match you with players you are likely to get along with. This is a very social way to approach the problem; I feel like this could fix some of the problems with "community subvesion" that the Dungeon Finder causes, but would require a lot of work. I could see this being implemented to an extent in the Battle.net overhaul. At the very least, increase the chance to be grouped with friends-of-friends and less likely to be grouped with friends-of-ignored-players.
• The ability to split parties. If a disagreement happens and 3 players want to vote to kick the other two, they should be able to continue on together. This is impossible to do if you can't loose the other two and you are from different servers.
• Cross server friends. This is something that is coming in the Battle.net implementation, likely in "patch 4.0". Finding good people to queue with and having some way to find them again lets you decide who you would to be grouped with and lessens the chance of conflict.

What ideas do you have for solving difficult situations arising from the Dungeon Finder?

The second wing of Icecrown Citadel, known as the Plagueworks, will be playable today. Players must first defeat all four existing bosses in the Lower Spire (Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Gunship Battle, Deathbringer) in a given lockout period to access the Plagueworks. There are three bosses in the Plagueworks - Festergut, Rotface, and Professor Putricide. They are located in the west wing of the citadel. Once the subsequent wings are released (Frostwing Halls and the Crimson Halls), it seems that there will be some leeway in choosing what order to do the bosses. Professor Putricide leads the Plagueworks. He is one of  the masterminds behind the Plague of Undeath and has been researching and perfecting many of the Scourge's horrors. Rotface and Festergut are two of his more horrific creations. Some of the loot from these new bosses has already been found by MMO-Champion. Head over to their site to see what you can hope to get from Rotface, Festergut, and Putricide. There are a number of other bug fixes and changes going live today, including updated loot for Oculus. I would expect a small patch to be distributed today to reflect some of these changes.

We live in a different world than we did a year ago. We have the ability to check some boxes, press a button, and be handed a (theoretically) well-composed group and a dungeon to entertain us as much as we like. A year ago, you had to actually make friends, get to know people, and plan for this sort of thing or be satisfied with spamming trade chat for hours to build a questionably competent group. A lot of people praise the new Dungeon Finder system for being able to do such a fantastic job. I loved it so much, I used it exclusively to level my Death Knight from level 75 to 80. In that leveling process, I found groups instantly when I queued as a tank, and generally other players were gentle with helping me learn how to tank. I played with quite a few people who had no idea what they were doing, but it was magnitudes faster and more rewarding than trying to build my own group to do these non-80 instances. The story changed when I hit level 80. There are many more level 80 players than there are leveling players in any 10 level range, and there are many more level 80s using the Dungeon Finder tool than low leveled players. This is partially due to the excellent reward of 2 Emblems of Frost for the first random heroic completed each day. Players looking to earn Emblems of Triumph often complete subsequent random heroics, as they award an additional 2 Emblems of Triumph to the 3-5 Emblems of Triumph already dropping in dungeons. Having experienced the 10-20 minute queue as DPS class (Rogue) for some weeks, there was no way I would be queuing as a DPS on my Death Knight and waiting needlessly. In fact, because I had been tanking for the last few levels, I had no DPS gear. If I wanted to DPS, I would play my geared Rogue. The Dungeon Finder tool does a good job of excluding dungeons that a player does not have good enough gear to attempt. As a fresh 80, I was unable to queue for (or be placed into) the harder heroics, and in the majority of the groups, all of the other players are very well geared with tier 9 (or better) gear. A lot of the times I would receive responses like:

• "I have more health than the tank lawl"
• "omg get better gear"
• "Are you defense capped? Its a requirement to tank heroics."
• [Player leaves party]

It is no worry to me if someone leaves. The LFG system places new healers or DPS into the group instantly, and most players don't want to wait 15 minutes to attempt another dungeon. At first I pulled at a decent pace, keeping an eye on the healers mana, but as I got better gear, I pulled more and more and faster and faster. With a well geared and talented healer, its no trouble at all to tank heroics in subpar gear. The kicker for me was when players flamed me and told me I should get better gear, especially to the defense cap, before attempting to tank heroics. Do you know how much gear it takes to reach the defense cap if you can't get gear from heroics, and subsequently Emblems? It is a lot of work. My options were:

1. Tanking regular instances, dealing with undergeared players, not receiving emblems for my time invested, and replacing this gear upon tanking heroics.
2. DPSing (poorly since I lack gear) in random heroics, for which I would have to wait 20 minutes for per dungeon, and have to deal with loot drama if a tank wanted tanking gear that dropped.
3. Jumping right in to tanking heroics with overgeared players and grinding out tier 9 from Emblems of Triumph while obtaining better gear from the heroics.

To me the choice was obvious. I enchanted and gemmed my gear with care to reach the defense cap as quickly as possible, which made it possible to tank raids and gave me some leeway on my healer's gear and skill. The only downside is dealing with the M&S complaining about my completely logical decision. The claim that there are strict requirements for tanking is completely player imposed and not a game mechanic. In fact, the incentive of an instant queue driving me and other new tanks to tank is exactly what drives down the queue time for the DPS and healers. The philosophy that it is somehow impolite or inconvenient to be a new and undergeared tank using the LFG tool intrinsically limits the number of tanks beginning to tank heroics, encourages potential tanks to DPS, and worsens the queue. Would you prefer a 10 minute queue and a 20 minute dungeon run or a 30 minute queue and a 15 minute dungeon run? Not only is the former more fun, its also less time for the exact same reward. To be fair, the tanks performance is a larger proportion of the groups success than any other role, and I looked at "low-hanging fruit" to upgrade my gear, such as iLvl 213-219 from normal Trial of the Champion or Forge of Souls. Unfortunately, the queue for these instances is non-instant, even long, as a tank, as so few players do regular instances at level 80. It has less players and less geared players to choose from and creates "worse" groups. For one Trial of the Champion run, my Death Knight tank was grouped with 3 Death Knight DPS, all of whom rolled against be for tanking gear. I came out of the instance with no gear and spent a long time in there with undergeared players after waiting in a long queue. The incentive just isn't there when compared with tanking heroics. I'm not the only one who thinks this way. The official WoW Twitter account featured a thread on the WoW Europe forums called "Don't Spank the Tank" with some suggestions and commentary:

Many people have been asking questions regarding the shortage in tanks. Therefore I have decided to make a short "guide" on what "prevents" people from tanking/scares tanks away, and how we ALL can work on the solution (in other words increase the number of people who are willing to tank) , or at least decrease the number of tanks that we scare away. "Low" gear and hitpoints : Nobody starts off in full epic gear, and most instances do not require it either. Still the tank gets made fun of when he/she has some blue gear. Instead of flaming the tank, help out a little if you think the tank may have some trouble staying alive. - If you are a full epic and experienced healer, you should have no trouble to keep up a lower geared tank. - Dps with some healing abilities can throw in a heal as well if needed ( don't look at your dps meters, not important). - Use abilities to lower the damage caused by the mobs. - Use crowd control. "Gogogogogogogogogogogogogo": This actually enrages basicly every tank, it's pushing and annoying, and could easily be replaced by: "I'm ready " or "Pull when you are ready". - If you want your tank to accidentaly let you die, use gogogogo. - If not, just use a more friendly way to let the tank know you want to move on. - Give the tank some time to get ready, find out what is the best way to pull the mobs, regain mana/rage etc. - Keep in mind that the Tank might be waiting for the healer to be on full mana. - Don't pull. And by that I really mean, don't pull. If you're out of luck, the tank and healer will just let you die.

The Dungeon Finder does a fantastic job of matching players who might need gear from heroics (like my Death Knight) with those with the gear, skill, and knowledge to teach and help them. I am a very knowledgeable WoW player and was quick to pick up on the intricacies of tanking. Don't make assumptions, and consider the best personal decision before leaving a group or going off on a tank. Its easy to be rude and emotional, as you will probably never see the players in your group again (and if you do probably won't remember them), but it is worth your time to be intelligent and thoughtful about your decisions.

A Tribute to Addons is a column featuring new, cool, or useful addons. Send a tweet to @Heartbourne or @Projectlore with your suggestions, or leave a comment. One of the most common questions I receive for Protip is "what inventory addon do you use?" The answer is ArkInventory. ArkInventory, conveniently abbreviated AI, is an invaluable tool for managing your inventory. It has a highly customizable "single bag" interface that displays all of your items in one frame instead of 5+ individual ones. Players can define rules to sort items by different conditions. For example, I sort all of my items by quality first, so all of my gray vendor trash is listed first and my epics listed last. I then sort by item level, and continue drilling down until I can usually scan my inventory to find items quickly.

Many settings. Handle it!

Perhaps more useful than this is the ability to add items to different columns. By default, all items are classified by Blizzard into different categories. ArkInventory can use this data to help you sort your items, as well as other conditions. Like the sorting rules, categories can be a powerful tool for organizing, especially when combined with rules. I have columns for my soulbound equipable gear, another for poisons and rogue glyphs, another for food and bandages, etc. On my characters that I do a lot of crafting on, I have settings to sort ore into a column, gems into another, etc. One nice feature is the ability to hide columns. Putting empty bag spaces into a hidden column has worked well for me. The lack of empty slots to click makes it impossible to split stacks of items (I believe), but it was rare enough that I would do that without the help of addon like auctioneer anyway. ArkInventory is loaded with features. You've probably seen me using the search bar in Protip, which greys out items that do not contain text matching the string entered. Along with the ability to scale the size of the frame, automatic resizing of columns to take up the least amount of area, independent rules for banks, guild banks, and keyrings, and the ability to browse the inventories of your other characters, AI is an addon I simply cannot play without. Grab it from Curse or WoWInterface and simplify your inventory!

Protip is short video series with various tips and guides. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne for notifications of new videos!

In my quest to be the BB King, I sneak into Ironforge and whip out my Red Rider Air Rifle, and take aim.

WoWFlix is a column featuring videos from around the web related to World of Warcraft. If you find something you’d like to be featured, leave a comment or send a tweet to @Heartbourne. From the same people who brought you the critically acclaimed Autotune the News comes a whole new flavor of autotuning... The Gregory Brothers did a great job as always. Mr. T is great unintentional singer, and who hasn't heard of Night Elf Mohawks? This video is part of a larger video-game autotune video: I pity the fools who haven't heard of the great Night Elf Mohawks. If you haven't done so yourself, why don't you go grab some Mohawk Grenades and stir up some mischief in Azeroth?

Protip is short video series with various tips and guides. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne for notifications of new videos!

 

I continue on my quest to be the BB King by sneaking into the Deeprun Tram and sniping High Tinker Mekkatorque.

Protip is short video series with various tips and guides. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne for notifications of new videos!

Protip 5 features the achievement BB King. I invade the Alliance cities and whip out my BB gun on the Alliance leaders. FOR THE HORDE!

Protip is short video series with various tips and guides. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne for notifications of new videos!

 

Today on Protip, we grab the achievement 'Tis the Season by collecting winter clothes from the Nexus, tailoring, and leatherworking.

"y u do this?"

Halls of Reflection measures up as the hardest heroic by most people's standards. You may have heard of tanking in the nooks behind the bosses Falric and Marwyn for the first encounter, but an entirely new "strategy" has come to light for the second encounter that completely trivializes it. Called the "ledge" trick, players simply allow the Lich King to run past them before the encounter starts. The Lich King will continue forward, but the armies he raises will simply backtrack toward your group. You will have as much time as you need to kill the mobs. The time limit of Arthas approaching is really the important part of this encounter, so I imagine this makes the encounter really easy. Additionally, the mobs have different spawn and run speeds, so they are spread out even more and can be taken down nigh individually. However, most people agree that this is considered an exploit and players should not to attempt it. Unlike tanking behind the walls near the bosses, which was an intentional design decision, this is very clearly a bug. No Blizzard designer would intentionally make an encounter that becomes completely silly and pointless with strange player positioning. That being said, are you going to risk the warnings and try it since it is quickly becoming ubiquitous?