Project Lore

My second career choice.

 I'll admit it, I did not level my priest from level 70 to 80 as holy.  The dual spec talent, while nearly pointless on my rogue, was too enticing for my priest.  So Solidsagart went to the dark side, literally, while making her way to the end game.  Since reaching level 80 she's done a complete 180, focusing solely on healing.  I've paid my dues (being blamed for everything), learned the ropes (let hunters/rogues die), and found out which responsibilities I like and don't like.

Being the critical person that I am I've realized how poorly designed the healing mechanics are right now.  The developers know there's an issue and plan to rectify the sitution in Cataclysm, a topic I've discussed, but meter epeen blinds many players.  Ghostcrawler summed the problem up nicely in a blue post from yesterday. 

"Now in general I wish there was a little more coordination among healers, but the current damage model we have just doesn't really allow it. I remember when tanking Molten Core, that the priest would say over vent "Big heal coming on the OT!" as he powered up a Greater Heal. You don't have that luxury these days. One of our designers was watching an old Illidan video recently and remarked how everyone was at 50% for so much of the fight. Now days someone is at 100%, will hit 100% in the next couple of GCDs, or will be dead. In that environment, you'd get "Big --" out of your mouth before it would be too late. Players need more health and heals have to be a little more expensive."

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Magtheridon, my home server, has been off ever since the Lich King was released upon the masses.  Pings of 100-200ms (56k speeds) have become the norm.  Unplayable pings of 500ms and beyond plague prime time on Tuesday and Wednesday.  As the week moves on the server becomes more playable.  To little to late, as the damage is done to most guilds.  Including mine, which raids on Tuesdays and Wednesdays only. 

After a successful 25-man with my two 10-man guilds last Tuesday, this Tuesday's was an absolute disaster.  While forming the raid we realized that the pings were going all over the place, from tolerable to two seconds of lag.  We zoned in hoping that the instance cluster would be more stable.  It wasn't.  We cleared trash, but could not get past Marrowgar due to the sporadic latency.  After the raid dissolved a 10-man was formed to tackle Ignis, the new weekly quest.  Our assumption was that being outgeared would make up for any lag.  The quick demise of Flame Leviathan gave us hope.  False hope, we wiped.  Repeatedly.  Our failing was chalked up to lag and everyone logged in disgust.  Who knows if my rogue will get his weekly done now...

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A guild castle from Runes of Magic.

This week we look back at the recurring idea of guild housing, and Upper Deck Entertainment's thoughts on the WoW TCG issue.

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There's many ways to teach a dog, or even a child new tricks.  Most of the psychology behind teaching relies on positive reinforcement.  The idea is simple, whenever the subject does something correctly it is rewarded for its action.  Food, love or a pat on the head, the reward can be almost anything likeable.  It has also been shown that if the positive reinforcement comes somewhat randomly, rather than every time, the subject is more likely to seek perfection later on. 

Positive reinforcement has worked wonders on me.  My parents promoted good grades by granting me fancy dinners for each A.  My teacher gave out Jolly Ranchers for fixing a grammatical error in a paragraph (it's vs. its ftw).  Sports accomplishments lead to WWF/WCW (now WWE) pay-per-view events - I even like cheesy stories!  In college I rewarded my own achievements with video games or a night on the town.  It's a tactic I use on my pets, and will likely repeat when I have my own koopalings.

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Love is in the Air is over and done with, but not before I made a major mental lapse.  Amatera was kinda enough to remind us on Saturday that the seasonal event ended that night, but I hadn't acquired a single Love Token upon reading his PSA.  The event is far easier than in the past, but there was still a limit on the number of tokens one could acquire in a given day.  Unfortunately, the limit is lower than the amount required for a Truesilver Shafted Arrow.  I thought I had more time!  My rogue now has to stare at 30xLove Token in his bank for the next year.

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How many of you just yawned?  Thanks crazy_ryan.

Getting my priest to the point that she could heal challenging raids took some time.  I spent hours inside various dungeons farming loot and badges.  It is to the point now that my alt has as many Glory of the Hero sub-achievements as my main, and that's without even trying.  Initially the process was a lot of fun.  As a poorly geared level 80 I was constantly busy spamming heals, dispelling and general riff raff.  In essence, I was re-learning most of the encounters from the new perspective of a healer, so my brain was engaged.  The switch from pure DPS to pure healing extended the replayability of these dungeon.

Unfortunately, I still hit that wall.  You know, the one that makes getting instance X a drag, where you always speedrun instance Y, and contemplate bailing on Z.  The wall I am referring to is being overgeared, and that's when healing is incredibly boring.

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Those of you who have been following my WoW career on Project Lore may recall a priest I made at the tail end of The Burning Crusade.  I cut my teeth healing those late game dungeons, leveling holy from level 60 to 70, but never healed with enough frequency to feel comfortable in her shoes.  I ended up dropping her like a bad habit when Wrath of the Lich King came along.  It wasn't until my rogue had been topped off and geared for raiding that I returned to my space goat.  Thanks to the Dungeon Finder she's been geared up for some weeks now.

For fear of making a fool of myself I eased into healing like I do into a jacuzzi; feet first, acclimate, leg, other leg, acclimate, my precious, acclimate, the unimportant parts.  Guild run dungeons came first, with me rolling on unwanted gear before I pieced together a healing set deemed worthy.  Then I tried my hand at random heroics, hoping, praying that I wouldn't have to heal someone as poorly geared as myself.  After scoring some much needed epic gear there and honing my skills further, I ninjaed my way into a few weekly runs for my first taste of raid healing.  I may have been the bottom of the healing meters, but things went well enough.  That is to say the quests were completed.  After soaking up further badges in VoA and more random raids/dungeons I figured I was finally geared enough to tackle bigger projects.

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Our new listeners out there know that we've been struggling to come up with a name for Project Lore's official audio podcast.  We've currently recorded an entire trilogy of shows - impressive, I know - but the best title we've been able to come up with is the Dave Edition.  It was a hit with at least one fan, our current maximum.  Now we are asking, neigh begging, our fans to help us create the perfect moniker.  And this time we are offering rewards phat loot.

Tokyopop, makers of the World of Warcraft manga, my most beloved surprise of 2009, has donated three prize packs that will be awarded to the best names.  The winners will be chosen at the discretion of Project Lore's contributors, and a vote from Tokyopop will break any tie.  Ideas must be submitted as comments to this post.  Leave your real e-mail address or we'll have no way of contacting you should you win.  If you have submitted ideas on previous posts, please resubmit them for further consideration.  You are allowed to submit more than one entry, and more than once.  Feel free to explain the reasoning behind your submission as well.

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The still unnamed ProjectLore Audio Podcast - we do nothing fast around these parts - has had but one recurring theme throughout its short life, speculating.  We've speculated on everything from the direction of the horde, the upcoming Auction House app and even C'Thun's connection to being alive (spoiler: he isn't).  During all of that speculation, the crew has kept returning to one specific topic, whether or not there's enough content to last until Cataclysm.

The original discussion was tabled after we realized that we still had no idea when Cataclysm would be out.  That changed during Activision-Blizzard's conference call last week, where it was revealed that Cataclysm will be out in the second half of 2010.  With guilds dropping the hardmodes left and right - 10 of 12 are done - we came to a consensus that no, Patch 3.3 would not last most players until Cataclysm was released.

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Upper Deck Entertainment was one of the first companies to jump on board of the World of Warcraft band wagon, and now it is also going to be one of the first to leave it.  According to ManaNation, a Magic: The Gathering site, Upper Deck Entertainment and Blizzard have split.  Fear not, like so many of my high school relationships it was a mutual, or "ami­ca­ble" in business terms.

ManaNation's sources could not locate the exact reasoning for the split, but the website assumes it has something to do with Upper Deck's recent legal troubles.  The card company has had not one, but two foul ups recently.  The first over another licensed card game, the ever popular Yu-Gi-Oh from Konami, and a more recent tiff with one of the company's longest-standing partners, Major League Baseball.

Blizzard's disembodied head hit the official forums shortly after the news broke to clear the air.  Zarhym is quick to point out that although the rumor is true, Blizzard is not going to let the game die. 

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