Nuggetty Goodness

Cataclysm is beautiful, but it ultimately brought home to me how much I hate WoW's combat architecture, and how I disagree with almost all of Blizzard's game design choices. And so, in what was probably a foregone conclusion in the first place, I've cancelled my subscription again.

That being said - Cataclysm is truly polished work. If this had been the first expansion I'd played, rather than the Burning Crusade, I might never have left.

But now, it's time to catch up with Gwen and Keiran, and to get back to feeding toes to Rotty!

So I'm one of those people who's gone back to WoW for a month (at least, that's the plan), to poke around the new old world, then waddle off again. It's partly due to a good friend making HOOOOGE PUPPY EYES at me, Blizzard's US$20 deal for Vanilla, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King, and some life in general happening. I didn't buy Cataclysm, I don't intend to stay, and I most certainly don't EVER want to raid again.

However, on with the story!

It's funny - I've read on other blogs that they find it a bit unnerving that Blizzard basically simply went - CUT!  

Five years later...

...because as a returning player, that's precisely it is! In my case, 2 years, not 5, but still.

The baby troll experience is much more streamlined now, and it's even entertaining, with a nice dash of variety.

The UI has improved vastly. I've only downloaded 2 addons (Omen, Recount), and don't feel the need to download anything else.

I'm running a Discipline smite-atonement healer build (similar but not identical to the link), and having fun with it after the initial readjustment needed to the pace of combat / style of combat of WoW, vs GW. As an example, in GW, a 2 second cast (unless you're an elementalist (mage)) is something you'd better have a damn good reason for casting, because that's so SLOW; in WoW, a 2 second cast is fast/normal. 

Azshara, though some silly part of me hates to say it, rivals Guild Wars: Eye of the North for beauty. I petulantly say to myself that well EotN was out YEARS ago! But still, I know I'm being silly. =)

But the main problem is culture shock.

Culture shock from coming from Guild Wars; culture shock from the WoW I left, which is not - 5/2 years later - the WoW I've come back to.

What culture shock, you ask? Well, even if you didn't, too bad!

Here's wall-of-text rant to a poor friend this morning:

like why mages don't make water anymore, don't decurse anymore (not that they ever really did but still), why no one knows how to LoS pull anymore, why no one moves out of green goo anymore, why tanks no longer seem to understand that tanking is more than standing there like a lump, (although more of them can now hold aggro), and that no one seems to realise even after a wipe that careful pulls are better than charging into the centre of the room and wiping.

I was healing in Scholomance last night.

I was the only one who remembered it, until a warlock at the end.

And we wiped in the first room. Of course.

'it wasn't my fault I was feared!' Well, Yes it was. Because you ran to the centre of the fucking room. XD

And stood there and fought. -_-

Scholo hasn't changed at all - well okay, it's gotten easier - but I think they moved it down so that it would be more like the old Vanilla days when it was challenging - it's level 40ish now.

The bright side is tanking (at low levels) seems piss easy now.

I've only had one tank who couldn't hold aggro - incompetanks used to be the bane of my existence.

The dark side is they're used to seeing their tank friends pull the whole instance *while outgearing it*, but forgetting/not counting the top part. ~_o

Anyway it felt like old scholo, only at 40 I don't even have prayer of healing yet. Well okay, it was easier, because no one died even though some parts were REALLY CLOSE, and everything I said above happened.

When I started pulling the second room (summoner + skeleton room) sanely, one person ragequit.

'We're going too slow! I don't have time for this!' *quit*

And because the tank had no idea how to pull, had no idea what an los (Line-of-Sight) pull was - I was like, 'Look, STAY HERE. I will pull.' Group, 'Why don't you let the tank do his job.' Oh yes, because the first room went so well, oh yes. Because you know if you run into the centre of the library and fight and get feared and pull the whole room and we die, obviously it's not your fault, because you were feared, yeah! No, I didn't say that, but I sure was thinking it. XD

There's even less skill than I remembered, and that's impressive. XD

Tanks NEVER wait for healer mana anymore. I realise most people are heirloomed out the wazoo, but I am not (I started with a fresh PC version instead of upgrading my old mac one), and I don't want to be.

That scholo I drank 40 waters because they would never let me drink.

So it was, 4 seconds of drink, stand up chase the tank.

Who is of course pulling a whole room. Again. XD

It was nice seeing scholo again though.

Oh yeah they were all standing in the green, of course.

I stopped even trying to explain things, noone was interested in mechanics - they just wanted to make shiny lights and … lol.

The tank did listen to me on one thing though.

I was so fucking amazed!

On the boss who does the aoe knockback, I despairingly said as everyone poinged off in all directions, 'It's easier to tank that against the wall so you don't get knocked back.'

And god in heaven, he listened.

How shocking.

Well, at least he listened to that.

At least I taught one idiot something.

...this post isn't going to make me very popular with WoW players, is it? XD Oh wells! Soon I shall have lovely luscious Livia back. *Worships Livia* AI forever!

Clarification:
This build doesn't use Heal, ever. It uses Smite in place of Heal. Obviously, I'm still a baby, but I've heard reports of it working fine in heroics as well. It's in raids where it fails - the bosses are often fatter than 8 yards, alas for obese bosses!

Why? Couple of reasons:
1) With a full stack of Evangelism, Smite-Atonement costs just a little more than Heal, and casts faster.
2) Smite (with talents) can reduce the CD of Penance.
3) Unlike Heal - where you have to wait for the damage to hit, then heal it, with an additional 0.5s tacked on top of that - you are constantly smiting. Because you are constantly smiting, you're healing the damage the moment it happens. So far, I've found that Smite-Atonement healing can cover anything but Shit Has Hit the Fan (SHHtF) situations, where you go into overdrive. If you have time to cast Heal, you have more than enough time to heal with Smite-Atonement instead.
4) Evangelism is almost always up at 5 stacks. I have Archangel macroed to Penance, and I ONLY use Penance to heal. That means in SHHtF situations, my Penance packs a real punch, and so do my Flash Heals, and whatnot. I do not use Archangel for energy management - I find the constant cost reduction of Smite-Atonement for me to add up more than what I'd need to spend to rebuild 5 stacks.
5) Smite-Atonement is a 'smart heal'. It'll heal anything within 8 yards of your target with the lowest health. I've read complaints about not being able to 'direct' it, but the truth is, in a 5man (and that's all I'm interested in), you can. With a judicious Renew+PW:S, or, depending on the situation, just a Renew, you can more or less make certain that the person with the lowest health (even by a fraction), is the tank. This also makes it more interesting - to me, anyway.
6) Right now, at level 42, tanks are more or less in Non-SHHtF situations, taking almost exactly the amount of damage that Smite-Atonement heals. Obviously it differs a little between tanks, but the general rate has been amazingly reliable and constant.
7) It's just plain fun (to me), especially when it comes to making sure that Smite-Atonement hits the tank, just like you want it to.
8) It adds (acknowledgedly sad, but still existent!) DPS without any negative effects - always good.

There may, in fact, be a choice to be made. Although Robin Torrence is right to contrast the flexible responses of people in resource-rich, unpredictable environments with the highly logistical survival routines of those in high-latitude, harsh environments, the correlation is only general. As the archaeologist Everett Bassett has pointed out, the farther north or south you get, the more risk-reduction strategies are forced to diverge. The orthodox strategy is to become ever more specialized, going big on sleds, kayaks, harpoons, fall-traps, summer gear, winter gear, big-game gear, small trapping gear, and so on. As things become harder to find and hunt, water and wind get colder, and light and dark shift from a twenty-four-hour cycle to a twelve-month alternation. Investment in the insulating, adaptive technology is attractive. This is the "life-pod" approach, where getting food and staying warm are guaranteed by technological fixes at every point. The alternative strategy is a dramatic opposite and involves extreme opportunism. It is unorthodox, because in such demanding environments you need to be really good, divesting yourself of every encumbrance for maximum flexibility, weighing energy costs with potential risks at every moment. In the orthodox case it can be fatal if the gear fails, in the unorthodox case, if you do.

[...]

Perhaps this explains the expedient technology of the Tasmanians. Instead of sitting down for a long time to make a complex tool that you might lose or damage, you hardly break stride to knap a sandstone blade edge and deal with that seal. The Tasmanians were highly skilled land hunters, yet they used neither spear thrower nor stone-tipped projectiles. They did not have ground stone tools because grinding stone is very laborious, whereas efficient knapping can be a matter of a few highly skilled strikes. Everything was quick, and replicable. If a blade was lost, you made another one, or picked up an old one and refreshed the edge. Being without clothes reduced your other possessions, so that what you owned was yourself. Entailment was minimized. This was Hermann Buhl's logic on Nanga Parbat: not naked, but with an absolute minimum of gear. It could be described as reverse entailment.

The Artificial Ape
Timothy Taylor

The basic premise of The Artificial Ape is that technology has evolved us, as much as we've evolved it. The technologies we've come up with present a third force, together with environmental/natural selection, and culture, that are even now changing how humans evolve. We're smaller and weaker than our ancestors, simply because with the technologies we have at hand now, we don't need to be larger, or stronger, or even the same as they were. It's a fascinating book, and very persuasively argued.

However, as nuggets are wont to do, this is where I tangent off from what Taylor talks about. Reading the two quoted paragraphs above, I couldn't help but feel as if he were describing World of Warcraft (orthodox) and Guild Wars (unorthodox) in anthropological terms, with going big on specialised technologies being the veritable smorgasboard of add-ons available for WoW, vs GW's very, very minimalist, pared-down system. The statement, 'In the orthodox case it can be fatal if the gear fails, in the unorthodox case, if you do.' was the nail in the coffin - or the icing on the cake, if you prefer.

The second paragraph also rings very true for me when juxtaposing these two MMOs. Many's the WoW-player I've heard lament in GW that 'there's nothing to DO at 20!' There is - but it's all about yourself. What you own is... yourself. There's no sense of, 'Oh I should be raiding now, I need more stuff so I can get more stuff...' GW gives you an immense amount of freedom in terms of deciding what you want your endgame to be about - and it's that exact freedom that can lead to people not knowing what to do, just like how it's easier to create a project if you're told the goal and purpose, rather than being just told to go and do whatever you like.

I'm not trying to say that one type of design is necessarily better than the other - just that they're different, and work along different lines.

I hope ArenaNet remembers that, while they develop Guild Wars 2.

Earlier today, I switched to International District to sync Vizunah Square with someone, then, like most senile people, forgot to change it back.

A couple of hours later, I wandered over to Lion's Arch, and found a whole bunch of pink-clad people bouncing around, dancing and whatnot. Now, spontaneous strange dancing does happen (I think) in every MMO where there IS a /dance in the first place. However, spontaneous strange dancing of people all dressed in varying shades of pink is... not so common. Add this to the fact that random people kept asking when the 'Pink Dye Guy' would show up, only to be told, 'In 8 hours', I decided to investimagate!

And this is what I found. O.o
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Pink_Day_in_LA/PinkDayArchive

Introduction

Well, guys and gals, it's about that time of year again. Saji here and I'm going to give you a little information about this year's, Pink Day in LA.

We're going with the theme that, "Gamers Care Too." Why? Well, with all the recent news stories about how people who play video games, especially violent ones, are bad people, and when a crime is committed, such as a shooting, you will no doubt hear about how the person was playing the newest Grand Theft Auto game, or some other violent game. But, obviously, not everyone who plays games is violent or bad. We're doing this event this year to show others that an online community with players from around the world can get together and support a worthy cause. We want to show the world that GAMERS CARE TOO!

Now, remember last year, where I gave a little speech on the subject of Breast Cancer? Well, it was awkward, trying to get people's attention with others constantly spamming. So, this year, there won't be any big speech on the subject, but instead, DRGN is making a site dedicated to informing gamers about Breast Cancer risks, treatments, and more. Check it out over at the Pink Day in LA Website.

"But what about in-game?" - I hear you ask. Well, to show support, like last year, we want everyone to get their armor decked out in brilliant pink. We want to see everyone in the district wearing pink, but, you'll have to supply your own dye! Sadly enough, last year we had many people take the free handouts of dye for granted, along with the fact we had rude players who interfered with other aspects of the event (such as the end photo-ops).

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply to this post or email me at, mastersaji@pinkday.draconus-united.com or you can reach me on AIM or Yahoo IM at, Tooker311

And they've done it for 2 years already. O.o

As a former WoW player, all I can say is... wow. Not without respect for BBB's Raid from the Heart recently, I never saw anything even vaguely like this when I was playing WoW. Player-run events, sponsored by guilds, for no other reason than they find something important. Just... wow.

I think it helps greatly that in GW, as opposed to WoW, you can switch servers whenever you like. So there's no, 'Oh I would love to but I'd have to organise it on MY server, or I can't make it on YOUR server because I don't have a toon there that's high level enough, that can get there, etc'. I had a poke around another player-run event earlier this year - Mantlecon, which was rather fun as well.

Somewhat related is GW's Canthan New Year, where alliances will sponsor districts... just because. They'll go farm up all the stuff the chefs need, so all people have to do (if they don't want to / care to / haven't farmed enough to help) is stand around and chatter and get presents.

This is one of the things I really love about Guild Wars, that I don't think I ever experienced in World of Warcraft.

It's strange, really. How is it that an MMO where you can choose to spend almost all your 'gaming' activity time with your own AI encourages so much more player-run social interaction than one where people are forced to group with each other? Or did I just answer my own question?