Project Lore

Patch 3.2 Executing.... Whenever Blizzard decides to lay a patch on us I hold my breath.  Sure, I want the bounty of content, but sometimes that isn't all we receive.  Oftentimes we'll be stuck at login screens, the World Server will be down, our add-ons will cease to work, or worse, fail to do their jobs appropriately.  And that's just some of the "features" that we hope to see on a Tuesday evening.  More painful are the Slowsky approved download speeds, constant reboots, authentication problems, massive lag, or lag spikes, and the realization that nothing is going to be accomplished till Wednesday.  Think I am being a bit dramatic?  Then allow me to refresh your memory of Patch 3.0.8. I was as excited as anyone for Call of the Crusade (the game can never have too many 5-mans), but I had my reservations about the patch actually going live.  Boy have I never been so glad to eat my words before. Blizzard delivered the patch with only slightly extended downtime.  While I didn't login till a few hours after my server returned from dead, I was greeted with a stable, normal latency experience the entire night.  It didn't matter if I was running around the generally packed Dalaran or the newly flooded Argent Tournament grounds.  It was all entirely playable on Magtheridon (NA).  The post-patch trauma has been so negligible that I've been able to run through the dailies, grab a level and change on Solidsagart and tackle the new dungeon (repeatedly), along with some heroics.  And that was just on Tuesday! To round out the objectiveness of the post I should point out that it hasn't been all roses.  Roughly half of my add-ons were broke (and some remain unfixed by authors too busy with content) by Patch 3.2.  I've encountered the Trial of the Crusade opening encounter bug (is there an accepted name for it?) roughly half of my attempts.  Last, but not least, is the ninja change to Malygos, I doubt it's a bug, that gave our raid a bit of pause.  The big blue dragon's Vortex drops players off far farther from their original location than ever before.  And no, I still haven't kill the crazed warmonger. I heard there was something up with Kel'Thuzad, but haven't come across the lich recently.  Has anyone experienced anything wonky with that encounter?  How stable has your server been since patch day?  Have you been able to chain those heroics? All things considered I believe Call of the Crusade was the most expertly executed patch in recent memory.  Certainly since Wrath of the Lich King's launch back in November.  Dare we assume Blizzard is finally getting the hang of the patch spiel?!

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Master these bad habits, and you too can be a Lord of Time like Nozdormu! Despite how stressful it can get sometimes, I'm a multi-tasker at heart. When I'm doing one thing, I generally have to be doing two or three others. Got to keep that brain entertained! Though WoW is far from being the worst offender where downtime is concerned (go play Final Fantasy XI!), there are nonetheless those times when waiting on things to happen is just too much to bear, and your mind begins to wander... As I've already established, I'm especially bad about this. When my guild wipes on a boss, it generally takes anywhere from five to ten minutes to rebuff and get set up for the next attempt, and that's more than enough time for me to begin losing interest. I mean, as a rogue, there's not a whole lot I have to prepare before a fight. Often, I'll just tab out and start reading something on the internet while I wait, and it takes a fellow officer barking at me over Ventrilo about missing the Ready Check to get back into the game. I'm sorry, it's a habit! I have the attention span of an excited puppy on speed! It gets so bad at times, that I'll be multi-tasking right in the middle of an intense fight. Regardless of whether I'm just killing some time, or yawning in the middle of a stationary boss battle (hello, Patchwerk!), here are a few of my favorite ADD-friendly activities:

1. Watch TV - Television is traditonally a passive medium, and as long as you've got the muscle memory down for a particular encounter, turning your eyes towards the boob tube for a little while probably won't impact your game much. I'm guilty of watching such thought-intensive shows as LOST while raiding, which isn't the best of ideas (hey, not my fault my favorite shows come on during raid nights!), but trash television is absolutely perfect. Turn on a reality show or set your receiver to just about any Discovery Channel network and you're good to go! It'll give you something vaguely interesting to look at when you're bored without having to spare too many synapses. Optionally, movies you've seen before work, too (I'm watching The Last Action Hero while typing this article, in fact)!
2. Personal Grooming - We all play Warcraft, sometimes a lot more than we should. And, on some days, this means we may skip the shower or sit around in our dirty boxers all day. Contrary to popular belief, taking care of yourself doesn't need to be hassle, so when you're waiting for a fellow raider to come back from their smoke break or kid aggro, why not pick up a pair of nail clippers and trim those claws of yours? Try brushing your hair or your teeth. I don't think I'd recommend anything too crazy, like shaving or waxing your chest (imagine the yelps of pain over voice chat), but there are plenty of little things you can do to make yourself a tad more acceptable when you crawl out of your cave to grab some midnight burritos.
3. Eat! - Feed your face! I can't count the number of times I've come home from work, hungry as a bear in Spring, right around the time a raid starts. Grab whatever deliciously greasy snack you can and pound it down your gullet during or between attempts. Make a little game of it to see how many french fries you can consume while healing through Hard Mode Iron Council!
4. Play With Your Dog - Or cat. Or guinea pig. Or whatever. If you've got a pet, force it to entertain you! Got your face smashed in on a fight and staring at the release button? Pick up a damn tennis ball and throw it down the hallway for Fido. Guaranteed to be more fun than waiting for a battle rez! Cats will probably still ignore you, though.
5. Play Another Game - Go on. What's stopping you from loading up old classics like Minesweeper and Solitaire. I prefer console games, myself, and usually have one running in the background when there's nothing on TV. Honestly, it's even easier to ignore the raid now that semi-official Peggle and Bejeweled add-ons are available (and you can even set them to pop up when you die, too!).

That's just a small sampling of the things you can do when the chips are down (and some I simply can't mention here). Sure, it may on occasion be a detriment to your group, but at the same time, it's nice to get you head out of the game, if only for a few minutes, so that the stress of constantly wiping or waiting on others doesn't begin to consume you. We all need breaks, and if your raid leader isn't giving you regular "fivers," go ahead and give yourself one. Hey, this is the internet. Nobody needs to know what you're really up to, unless you forget to set your "push to talk" key on Vent! At the end of the day, I think my suggestions are fairly standard. How do you readers handle the downtime? I'm hoping to hear some rather creative solutions, myself!

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Today's extended maintenance has been going on for a while now, and was even extended an extra two hours in order to deploy a quick bug fixing patch to the servers. Hopefully once realms are actually up it will go much smoother than last week's introduction of Patch 3.1. The official patch notes for this relatively minor patch cover mostly bug fixes, but we also get a free respec! That is never a bad thing in my eyes. Full notes follow: General

• In order to address issues with the dual talent specialization system, all players will have their talents points refunded. Players who have purchased dual talent specializations will have both specializations reset. Glyphs will not be affected by this reset.

Bugs

• Characters who are not of the same race or class are once again able to view each others' professions linked in chat.
• Fixed an issue in which player and pet nameplates were appearing larger than normal.
• Thrall's throne has been adjusted back to its proper size and the base replaced. He will no longer need to defy gravity.
• Fixed an issue with a display error on druid leather helms.
• Corrected an issue for GeForce2/ATI 7 series card users that would result in critical errors for select actions in game. As a result certain projected textures, like spell effects and targeting circles, will no longer render on some terrain objects.
• Achievements
  • Corrected an issue preventing players from earning the achievement, "Storming Stormwind." Players who were not properly awarded this achievement for completing the objective should retroactively be granted completion.
• Warlock
  • Demonology
    • Fel Synergy (Rank 1): Corrected the tooltip to now display the proper healing amount.
• Dungeons and Raids
  • Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme
    • Fixed an issue with the outside map not appearing correctly.
    • Fixed an issue where an incorrect skin was being applied to certain classes/races when the Human Illusion buff is cast upon them.
  • Ulduar
    • The mob packs in the XT-002 Deconstructor encounter can now be engaged separately and are no longer linked.

More Ulduar trash to figure out? I can't wait! What are your thoughts?

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Wow.  What a mess the Echoes of Doom patch has been.  I do not know about the rest of you, but I have had a hell of a time with the latest content patch.  Blizzard Entertainment warned us that the maintenance would be extended, but my main server experienced over 12 hours of down time. Then it was hit with shoddy performance when the realm finally came up.  In fairness, I would rather take the downtime now, than when all the new content from Wrath of the Lich King goes live.  Of course, that is the exact reason Blizzard does these patches ahead of time, to work out the kinks. My server being down was only half the battle though.  I don't think I have mentioned this before, but I actually play World of Warcraft on three separate computers.  Keeping the WoW installations on the myriad of computers I have is difficult enough for common play (no, I don't want to carry around my WoW installation on an external harddrive).  So you can imagine how annoying it is to go through the motions of patching and reinstalling addons on three computers for a major content patch.  Tools like  the BLASC Client can only do so much. My two Windows XP boxes patched up nicely, although I had to transfer the patch from one box to the other because a download was corrupt.  Thankfully, Blizzard's repair tool managed to revert the MMORPG to 2.0.0 rather than having to reinstall everything.  Things went smoothly after that. My Windows Vista 64-bit box has been, and continues to be, a bit more difficult though.  I have the User Access Controls disabled - because they suck - and still get harassed by Blizzard's installer telling me to move the files to a public directory.  I told it to do what it wants and it failed to copy data from the original installation location into the public area.  I figured it was a PEBKAC issue and tried again, this time not moving the files.  Failed again with much the same error, unable to copy data. I then did a whole bunch of dumb things like copied the patch files into the installation folder, ran it as administrator, ran it as administrator while on one foot and ran it as administrator while I played The Witcher.  At this point I was worried about the installation as a whole, thinking that the failures may just cause a chain reaction of destruction.  Double-clicked the repair tool (as admin, while I prayed to Pagan gods) and got reverted to 2.0.0 on the Vista box. It took me awhile, but I finally gave up in frustration and began to download a new copy of the patch.  Hours later, in fact, it ended up being early this morning, it completed and installed correctly.  Looks like I was blaming Vista for another corrupted download.  Sorry Microsoft! Things are up and running on all of my computers now, and I have begun taking a hard look at which specs to select for my Rogue and Priest.  I think I am going to roll with a healer Priest from now until level 80, so that should be different.  How did the conversion to the Wrath of the Lich King's launch screen - which rocks by the way - go for all of you?

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In light of all the downtime, alts have been a pretty hot topic lately. Just about everyone I play with is working on one, and now a few people I know are even thinking about switching mains. I know I’ve been working my alts pretty hard recently. I went through a number of different classes before I decided I want to make the rogue my “main alt.” It got me thinking about the role that your main plays in picking your alt.There are a few ways to approach it. At first I decided I wanted to do the complete opposite of my Protection Paladin. After a bit of thought I decided this would probably be the Warlock. Unlike my Pally he’s a DPS class, he’s squishy, he’s ranged, and he has a pet. It seemed difficult to find something much more different. It turns out that this was a little too different. My play style was that of a tank, I would always pull more than I could handle, and it ended up being a fairly unpleasant experience. I was disappointed, but I decided it was time to try something else. I then started my rogue. This was much better. Leather armor meant she could take a little more of a beating, and she was a melee class, so as that was certainly in my comfort zone. Turned out I really enjoyed the class. Play style actually wasn’t far off from my Paladin. Combat was actually more similar than I would have thought, just much faster. Instead of pulling mobs and counting on being the one that dies last, I just had to count on being the one that kills the other one first. Once I got her to 30 I decided to try some other classes on for size. I’ve played shaman, druid, warrior, and priest all past 30. After all that I ended up going back to the rogue. It was simply too much fun. In the end I found picking a class that compliments your play style is a win. My recommendation would be to find that common link between what you enjoy and what other classes have to offer. For me it was getting up in peoples faces with melee classes. Maybe you want to stick with pet classes, or keep it at range, or stick with mana users. Whatever it is, I think common ground is a good thing. What about you, what made you pick your alt? Is it similar or completely different from your main? Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to grind out a level and a half to 70!

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It seems like the entire world (of Warcraft) has gone into a bit of a holding pattern lately. Many people (myself included) have stopped raiding, we just heard about the arena points reset, so there is not a whole left for anyone to do other than count the days until November 13^th. While I am very much in the same boat, like hell I'm going to stop playing the game! So I have been trying to find a few activities to keeping me going. In the short term, I have been spending my days grinding the Kodo mount for Brewfest. I have over 200 kills and still have yet to see the thing drop, I'm beginning to suspect the cake is a lie. I imagine I will get it eventually, and if not, Brewfest will ultimately come to an end. Soon I will be looking for other alternatives. I have been trying to stay positive and look at this as a good excuse to catch up on those things I have always been meaning to do. I'm talking about all those projects I have always meant to get around to, but never did because I was busy raiding. Here is my list of things I think I will finally be able take a shot at:

Netherwing - I want to finally grind out the Netherwing Dailies, and get my nether drake. Although I must admit, with all the new mounts on the horizon, my desire here is waning a bit.

Fishing / Cooking - I have played around with the idea of leveling my fishing and cooking. It seems like a good way to make some cash and be able to make all that tasty raid food.  Problem is I hate fishing, so I guess this one is just a matter of how bored I get.

Farming Gold - The last thing I could even thing to do on my main is stockpile gold. Certainly not a bad approach, but I question what is going to happen to the WoW economy, and if this will pay off in the long run.

Alts - I have a Rogue that is closing in on 70 fast, and want to make her a priority. I have a few others sitting in 60 range that I may have time to get up there as well.

New Professions - With the prices on the AH falling through the floor (at least on Executus), this isn't a bad time to powerlevel a new profession on one of my alts, and I've always wanted to try Jewelcrafting. For some it may be a good time to push to 375 on your main.

Roll Horde - I've always wondered how the other half lives.

I'm sure there are lots of other worthy projects that would be worth taking on during this time. So tell me, what are you guys doing?  Have you come up with a productive way to spend your WoW time? Please don't tell me you are still raiding... I may become incredibly jealous.

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