Project Lore

The inability to launch instances this late in Wrath of the Lich King has always been odd to me.  Like many of the people in my guild, and likely a large part of the WoW populace, there is almost no reason for me to enter any 5-man dungeons.  That isn't to say that I don't do it here and there, but my frequency in no way compares to Solidsamm's marathon sessions during the early days of level 80.  I am sure many of you agree (that is until Call of the Crusade drops with its Emblem changes), and yet, just as many of us continue to get the dreaded "Additional instances cannot be launched" when trying to open an instance.  This is an especially painful message after having just attacked a raid full of Horde. Logic would state that if less people are running dungeons there should be more "room" on the instance servers.  According to Vrakthris it isn't that cut and dry.  But one should never apply logic to system architecture and computer programming.  There are a numbers of reasons why this isn't a one-to-one situation.  For example, if instances are given some sort of weight (5-man = one, 10-man = 2, 25-man = four) depending on how stressful they are on the hosting machine, then the server could theoretically be just as full as ever. Whatever the real design flaw is, it appears that Blizzard's architecture people have found a solution.  According to Wryxian, over on the EU forums, the recent extended maintenance and server restarts are directly related to fixing the instance problem.  Wryxian explains that "each group", presumably each Battlegroup, has to come down not once, but twice for the fix, and that things do not always go smoothly. I haven't located a post that mirrors the undead crocodile's statements on the North American forums, but it's probably safe to assume the same thing is happening here.  After all, my server was down for some extra time this morning, including a reboot during my Drakuru battle (I died!).  With Call of the Crusade's background downloading initiated, the fix may come just in time. I've had to deal with it more and more recently, but the wait hasn't broken my spirits.  Getting a group still remains far more difficult.  How bad has the stubbornness of the instance server been on your realm?

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What does pronunciation have to do with a fond memory, let alone World of Warcraft?  Allow me to paint you a (paint by numbers) picture.  I was cleaning out my bookmarks a few weeks ago and I came across a thread I saved from 2005 entitled "How do you pronounce Scholomance?"  Filled with glee and excitement, I clicked on the link to relive the joy that 2005 had brought me, but it was all for naught thanks to Blizzard and the forum pruning.  Dejected but not broken, I tried a quick Google search and came across an archived version of the thread.  It is difficult to read and it repeats itself for some reason, but now-retired CM Caydiem, and the other forum goers, deliver a bunch of win in the thread. I must hand it to the original poster though, that was a brave question to ask more than six months after the title was released.  It was also a good one.  Seeing as the game and its locations are largely made up via the MMORPG's various racial dialects, it can be quite difficult to discern the correct pronunciation.  As the thread points out, sometimes Blizzard doesn't even know the "correct" phonetics to the words.  There are a ton of phrases from World of Warcraft that I have heard mispronounced in various way.  I'll admit that I just recently learned the correct pronunciation of Ulduar (Ull-doo-ar).  Reaching further back there are common mistakes with the Draenei (DRAN-eye), their buddies the Naaru (na-ru), TBC's main city Shattrath, C'Thun (Kah-Thoon) and everyone's favorite goblin town of Gadgetzan (Gadget-zan).  I was off on only two of those, drain-y and ul-der. I honestly don't know the official pronunciation of Shattrath City.  Personally, I have always said Shatt-wrath, but find a silent th, Shatt-ra, to be acceptable as well due to the draenei roots.  You'd think that I would have learned from my guild's ventrilo, but how often do people say the whole location, rather than Shat?  Perhaps my guildmates don't know the intended sound of the city either... What commonly used locations and words do you hear murdered during your travels?  At the same time, please state the perceived correct way to say the words in question.  The thing that makes me chuckle the most is that English words like melee and buffet are botched to this day! As for spelling misteakes, that is an entirely different discussion.  All this talk of steaks and smorgasbords is making me hungry.

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<QQ>I touched upon this subject last week in my farewell to Warhammer Online post, but it has raised its ugly head once again.  For all intents and purposes, Blizzard has no facility implemented - and in use - to disseminate crucial or important information to the mass of World of Warcraft subscribers.  Yes, they have the official forums and the front page of WorldofWarcraft.com, but they don't use these facilities to their utmost potential. Rather than being a haven for important discussions, details and announcements, the majority of the forum is used as a soapbox by angry and disenfranchised players.  Blues do creep in and drop bombs on the community here and there, but their efforts are trivialized by how few of us absorb the morsels.  To top it off, the same question or topic is then brought up a week later.  The front page of the MMORPG's official website is employed as a facilitator to a degree, with contests or huge announcements disclosed, but it misses the mark when compared to what it could easily offer. Bloggers, players and apparently even Ghostcrawler are fed up with the lack of a central information repository.  It doesn't have to be anything glamorous, new or even incredibly up-to-date.  To make most QQers happy, all Blizzard would have to do is a weekly wrap-up of important blue posts.  Just a quick summation of the hot topics with direct links to the discussions and we'd be so much happier.  Sure, bloggers would have to remain on the prowl for daily updates, but the average playerbase would enjoy the information being delivered in a nice package for them.</QQ> There is also a flip side to this.  Rather than placating critics like me, the developer would likely draw more casual subscribers into the forums if they had a "safe" starting point like this.  From what I have gathered from anecdotal evidence, most of my casual friends fear the forum is some sort of mystical creature with a thousand or so maws.  Perhaps it is all the clutter that comes from the repeating topics, the hatred spewed or the know-it-all attitudes.  Or, to lift Ghostcrawler's statement, maybe it is a "perfect storm" of the three. I rarely frequented the forums when I was a hardcore player because of this very issue.  It wasn't until I when I relapsed into real life that I began lurking the forums on a regular basis.  You know, to stay hip and all.  But lurking is all I ever do...How often do you frequent the forums and in what capacity?  Poster or lurker?  You seem to love our wrap-ups, but would you want Blizzard to do one of their important information on a weekly basis? And yes, I know that ProjectLore or any number of sites could do this, I just feel that Blizzard should be doing it to keep their customers informed.  Plus, as you can see by our growing list of talented bloggers, we have serious business to discuss, dissect and diss! Diss is still a common colloquialism right?  Oh god, am I getting old?!

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The many of you looking forward to the Dual Spec feature coming in Patch v3.1 will be slightly annoyed to hear that the supporting Equipment Manager feature has been cut from the patch.  According to Bornakk - in an odd April Fools RPing thread - the feature has a few "issues" that still need to be banged out before it will meet Blizzard's quality standards.  I haven't played on the PTR enough to know exactly what the issues could be, but it seems that we will be using ItemRack (remember Outfitter has ceased development due to the UI Policy changes) for awhile longer.  Per Blizzard's mantra, it'll be ready soon, which this time means "some time after patch 3.1."  Speaking of patch 3.1, that leviathan of an update will likely be going live in late April. The slashing of material isn't that big of a deal, as the Equipment Manager is still coming, but more of a sign of how huge Ulduar's patch is going to be.  Perhaps more was bitten off than the company could chew.  At the same time, I would much rather Blizzard cut these "lesser" content additions rather than delaying the entire patch.  For the Equipment Manager, we have had several third-party addons to choose from since WoW launched back in 2004.  Granted, the more robust the default UI is, the better.  It is much easier if we can spend the least amount of time, memory and processing power on addons as possible. In the meantime, time to prepare for Ulduar, grind up 1000 spare gold, sharpen those daggers for the Argent Tournament and attempt to down the second Old God.  One more after Yogg-Saron and I can be labeled as an Old God Serial Killer by the FBI.  Sweet, a title to strive for!  What do you multi-speccers use for gear swapping at the moment?  Anyone come across Equipment Manager issues?

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Yesterday I mentioned that most of my Thanksgiving was spent trying to convince people to join me in Azeroth, rather than playing myself. It isn't that I didn't want to play, I did my best to find the time, but living far away from my family forces me to obligate the little time I have with them to them. I blame society and quality parenting (don't ever tell my parents I said that).

While I was busy chastising my brother for his disinterest in Wrath and cursing my cousin's friends for ruining a raiding buddy, Ghostcrawler was busy on the official forums discussing the intricacies of World of Warcraft. Seeing as we have extended maintenance this fine Tuesday, I thought we could dive into his numerous posts and do some light theory discussing today.

The first meaty post I noticed from Mr. Crabbie was a discussion on the upcoming dual spec feature. Healers and tanks have been looking forward to this feature more than anyone, as it will allow them to tank or heal when needed, and revert to a better talent build for solo leveling. Sadly, if the feature doesn't make it into the game soon then most of us will be level 80, and it will lose he majority of its impact. Blizzard realizes this, and even though they won't put an ETA on it, they are trying to get the feature in for patch 3.1.

After reading that over, I noticed another post of interest to PvEers. I have been following the discussion of Wrath's difficulty ever since Ensidia (then TwentyFifthNovember) crushed the end game content. GC mentions that Blizzard is happy with the way PvE is going. Specifically, the developers want players to run the lower level dungeons at the appropriate levels, and make sure they do not “hit the introductory raid content like a brick wall.”

One of the most interesting posts to players of all flavors will be the discussion on itemization. Greg Street gives some background into how Blizzard wants you to feel when you have to decide between items. Back in the day, and after The Burning Crusade's launch, it was pretty obvious that one piece was vastly superior to another. Blizzard is now creating gear that doesn't lend itself to clearcut answers.

Shall I take a bit of haste or a large amount of attack power? These are the kind of questions Blizzard wants you to ask when looking at your gear options. I guess that explains why I have five trinkets that are almost equal. I went with the one with the lowest cooldown and best static stat.

Last but not least, Ghostcrawler spread tanking posts all over the holiday period. The pre-Thanksgiving post is the most interesting (and possess the least QQing by the OP) as it discusses core mechanics behind tanking. The OP asks what the point of the defense mechanism is, to which Street replies to, some 20 posts later. The interesting part is that the tanking mechanics that have been a staple in World of Warcraft since the days of Onyxia, may have just been added to the crustacean's whiteboard. The pincher possessor is not happy with the fact that the mechanic pulls “double duty.” In the future we may see the stat split up into multiple pieces, as the current incarnation “might eventually be a problem.” Topics such as easy tanking and tanking scalability – needing two or three tanks for 10- and 25-man raids – were also brought up.

The decapods dedication to World of Warcraft, the world he has helped to create, is astounding. Being in California one would assume that he celebrated Thanksgiving, yet he managed to post a horde of responses on that day alone. Seems that he took off Wednesday and Friday for travel days thought. The sheer volume of informative posts from Saturday makes me feel inadequate.

Here's to hoping that dual spec is implemented before I turn my focus back on my priest.

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