Entries in qqing (2)

The Faulty Design Of The Argent Tournament

Yes, I Know My Achievement Score Sucks & No, I Do Not Care Yes, I Know My Achievement Score Sucks & No, I Do Not Care It's been just over a month since the Secrets of Ulduar stopped being secretive and brought us the Argent Tournament.  The new Icecrown area was designed to raise the level of solo content for those players who wouldn't be entering Ulduar any time soon, or ever.  And we enjoyed it for awhile. I've only missed 3 days worth of dailies since the tournament went live and would consider myself a bit of an expert on the subject.  Don't believe me?  Well then how about this dose of arrogance; I can down all four Champions for Among the Champions without healing my stead.  That really should be an Achievement in my humble opinion.  Doing anything that many days in a row leads to a bit of burnout and I am no exception.  I can't wait until either new Argent Tournament content is added - how long does a coliseum take to build anyways? - or I can stop grinding those Champion's Seals.  Only 70 more to go till I grab the five-some of pets, then it's back to grinding for the Hippogryph. Enough background and qualifying information.  The major fault of the tournament isn't that the content gets stale quickly, or even that it's more financially rewarding to not Champion every faction, it is the design of the Citadel quests.  Actually, not the quests themselves, but the area of Corp'rethar itself.  I'm lucky enough to have time in the morning to tackle my dailies when most people aren't online.  Over the course of the month+ I have had to delay those tasks till peak hours, a time when the Court of Bones turns into a mini Wintergrasp.  If I had to deal with the lag and lack of mobs on a daily basis I think I would have quit the Argent Tournament a long time ago. At first I wrote off the problem as being due to the allure of new content, and wholeheartedly expected the area to become a wasteland in the near future.  Last week's afternoon Citadel run told me otherwise.  How did Blizzard not see this coming?  They basically took the crowds of Dalaran, tossed them into a single confined area and have them fight over a limited resource (although quickly respawning).  Who approved that design document? With the reduction of the Hippogrpyh's price, the bird has been re-added to list of things to purchase.  This means I only have...44 days left.  Those added quests and chance to score a Seal from the purses can't come soon enough.  Solidsamm deserves a break after the pets. Do you experience this kind of lag, or is it limited to my aging and crowded server?  Still plugging away at those Seals?

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QQing About The Qs

Alt Text = Cheating (American Idol)
Estimated Time Remaing: FOREVER
There were a few things that one expected with Wrath of the Lich King's launch, first and foremost was long lines at the midnight sales.  Next was an Auction House ripe for money making, before and after the second expansion's launch.  However, the ability to cash in for gobs of gold would not begin until WotLK finally launched.  The additional opportunities opened up due to the fact that many players would be returning to WoW, while more were joining the ranks of the Horde or Alliance for the first time. Next on the list of items that experienced players would expect should of been queues.  Queue times have been a staple in World of Warcraft since the title's launch way back in 2004.  Originally, they were implemented because the starting areas were so full of players that the lag made the vicinity unplayable.  They persisted on the realms for times when the server hit its maximum load.  Generally speaking, the cap was only hit for most servers during national holidays, Sunday nights and around the release of major content patches or whole expansions.  Thanks to Blizzard's liberal use of awesomesauce on Wrath, Northrend has supplied my main pair of servers with population timers popping up nearly two months since its launch! At the beginning I was one of the many who steadfastly told people to chill out, that the queues would go away in a week, two or perhaps a month.  While I still hold on to the belief that the lines will shrink and then disappear - either to player apathy or hardware updates - but they are putting a serious hurt on my limited playtime.  More importantly, one of my good friends just transferred to another server because Magtheridon has been plagued with 20-30 minute queues during raiding times, and beyond.  Hell, last night at 11 o'clock I had to wait 25 minutes to log in, giving me about 20 minutes to play before I had to pack it up.  On the plus side, he was a Horde player, so perhaps I can get him to re-roll Alliance once this business dies down. How are the stacks on your servers?  Tolerable?  Non-existent?  Transfer worthy?  Also, does anyone know if the queues are faction based at all?  My aforementioned friend has constantly reported longer wait times for Horde than I was getting for Alliance.  However, we never managed to login at the same time to truly compare.

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