Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

Before I got on tonight I started looking at all the tweets I missed today working too hard and found out a bunch of stuff came out on 3.3.  I read up on the new 5 man dungeon coming in 3.3 and it sounds awesome.  I’m so excited about this because 5 man content is by far my favorite and most enjoyable thing in WoW.  The new dungeon has 5 wings, and sounds like it is very story driven which goes well with the rest of WOTLK.  They put 3.3 on the PTR today as well.  As usual you can find the best notes on the PTR goings on over at mmo-champion.

Looks like they have made quite a few changes to make leveling easier for casters after the nerf to regen.  They increased low level regen and have it gradually nerf itself.  Then they lowered the cost of the lower rank spells. Other than these changes there were not many class changes.  For Priests they mention pets (Shadow Fiend) now have 90% avoidance on AOE damage, except in the case of PvP.  MMO also notes that Prayer of Mending is procing Inspiration now and initially I was super excited by that.  Then when I ended up playing later I found out it is already doing it in the 3.2.2 patch

After going through all that I got on  and noticed the Heroic Daily was Utgarde Keep.  I joined up a group for that and did that one super fast.  It was funny I was with two Shadow Priests, and a ret Paly with a Death Knight for the tank.  The Death Knight was very good, and very well geared.  He also sprinted through the instance which was fun   That is the only way the older instances can really be fun now because you out gear them so bad is to do HUGE pulls and go FAST.  I tried to get the group to not break the ice on the first boss so I could get that achievement but some how I still didn’t get it.  I did get the 1000 stone keeper shards at the end, not that I ever use those for anything

After that I had a tiny bit of energy left so I decided to do a Trial of Champions.  I still have one more pet to get and probably want to get that finished soon   My ToC group went pretty well though I managed to kill myself at the end, I wasn’t paying attention to my own health enough in phase 3, I died at the same time as the stupid black knight   All these are just serving me well to gear up my future Worgen Warrior   I’m saving my Triumph badges right now for the helm. I hadn’t done ToC since the patch and it looks like they make the first boss guys reset after the jousting battle automagically instead of everyone running out of the instance now   That was awfully nice of them.

All the 3.3 news goes in line with what has been going around on the Cataclysm forums I think.  With it going on the PTR this month, it probably means that it will go live in December.  Which would probably put the expansion at April or May baring any surprise 3.4 patch hehe  I think this is the impression Blizzard was giving at Blizzcon.  That the expansion would actually be out before the next Blizzcon.  Initially I kept thinking people were insane for talking about it that soon, but I’m not sure 3.3 would hold much longer than May.  It sounds like they have seriously been working on it for quite a while.  I have been wondering about beta too since they didn’t give out beta keys at Blizzcon this year my prediction is they will invite the random way like they have in the past.  I also am going to predict that the subscribers of the new magazine will get a beta invite

Oh and also if you missed it Blizzard updated their website.  It looks very nice with lots of pretty graphics now   I also noticed they improved their employment system as well.  My dream job, the Cinematics Systems Administrator is STILL open, despite me being perfect for it, and applying for it twice for the past 6 months.  I’ll have to get my resume up their again in their new system.  Oh Blizzard why won’t you hire me!

I got on late this evening.  I really wanted to continue my goal of my upgraded Squire.  Only problem was I am dead tired.  I have been working long days at work now for 3 weeks.  I pull out enough energy to run some of the Argent Tournament dailies.

While I was doing that I put myself in the Heroic Trial of Champions queue and ended up with a group.  Had a nice Dwarf warrior tank, not super geared but good.  As usual I had some pretty silly dps.  Especially on the last fight it seems like everyone has a death wish.  Melee DPS who have to be in the bosses faces should really be more situationally aware.  I lost the rouge on the last fight be he almost insisted on being blown up, then the ghost version of the BK concentrated on him right after.

I just realized that some how I have been calling the 5 man dungeon Tournament of Champions, and it is actually Trial of Champions.  I wonder how I managed to get that one wrong?  I must have been transposing tournament for trial in everything I heard and read because it has never clicked in LOL  Yes I indeed HAVE been working too much.

I also didn’t have enough energy for a computer upgrade I was doing.  I did through more RAM in my machine this week, have 16GB now.  I bought a new HD because my main is full.  The new one should speed up WoW it is quite a bit faster than my current one, it is the WD 1TB Red.  I had been holding out on my current drive till Snow Leopard got out.  I read a few glitches with WoW and Snow Leopard but I’m not going to worry about them, I should be ok with my Mac Pro.  The glitches center around Expose and leaving Safari open when you play WoW.  Probably won’t have the energy to do the upgrade till this weekend though.

I saw that new soundtrack is out now too, I’m going to have to download it.  I’ll probably just get it from iTunes, the legendary addition is just a bunch of stuff you may look at once   The site up for it is very pretty.  This must be the soundtrack I heard them mention at Blizzcon.

I’ve seen some good posts buy Ghostcrawler recently and I wanted to share a couple that I hope people really take to heart.  I really like Ghostcrawler, and I love how Blizzard doesn’t take any crap, they have a vision for the game and they are going with it.  They don’t have 11.5 million players because they don’t know what they are doing The first one in response to someone talking about Priest nerfs.

It is interesting too me how many of these “My class has no niche,” “My class has nothing special about it,” “My class needs to be overhauled” discussions come out after a nerf. I think a lot of players mentally substitute power for fun, and when they’re brought into line, the class stops being as fun for them.

I understand that a lot of players want to be the hero. They want to get invited to a raid or Arena team because they’re so awesome. You want people to cheer when you get invited. It’s a rush – I get that.. But except for the very high end of play, your skill and gear have a lot more effect on your contribution than the class design.

IMO, the players asking their peers “How can I better handle this situation?” or “Which would be a better gear choice for me?” are generally going to see their performance go up more than the guys asking “Hey, how ’bout you buff me?”

This particular statement means a lot to me, and especially to those whining about Discipline spec.  I really enjoy this spec, it is not a big numbers, meter blasting spec, but it is really fun.  It is fast and furious, and it is different from the way I had played most of my WoW life.  People constantly complain it is not viable, or you can’t do this or you can’t do that.  I say it is all about how you handle the situation.  A good Disc Priest can get the Job done, we just have to do it differently.

The other post I found very interesting was over some complaints on the stat changes that haven’t even happened yet People were pulling the usual “Oh you’re dumbing down WoW ” crap and whining about catering to casuals.  Ghostcrawler responded as to why it was necessary and someone replied this:

I’m sorry, but I fail to see your logic. If players are itemized poorly, it’s because they don’t care to do enough research to learn how to properly itemize or how to successfully itemize to fit their play-style.

Then in typical awesome Ghostcrawler fashion he came back with a resounding:

I find many of these arguments to be elitist. This is not a “catering to the casuals” issue. This is an issue that even some of our most educated and math-savy players could not make gear decisions without the help of external tools. We’re much less concerned about more casual players because the specific choice of upgrade will mean less for them (skill outweighs the contribution of stats for all but the absolute best players) and they often choose pieces based on things like art over stats.

I’m talking about very hardcore raiders who no longer could eyeball a piece of gear with any degree of authority. I might believe that some very few of you are so proficient with the math as to be able to eyeball the stats, but I think you are vastly overestimating the number of players who can or do. Remember, the formula to convert armor penetration into damage was so complicated that we had to take the unusual step of actually spelling out how it was calculated.

With this change will you still have to make hard choices about upgrading? Absolutely. Will there still be quasi-religious debates about which neck is best in slot for a given spec? Of course. Will you still need to understand the mechanics to make the best choice for your character? We think so. One of our overall design philosophies for WoW (and Blizzard) is to be simple but have a lot of depth. Some people mistake needless complexity for depth.

Meanwhile, we think there is a lot of benefit of getting rid of problematic stats like defense and accomplishing things like letting casters improve by focusing on throughput over mana pool.

I completely agree with him and think some people need to get off their high horse and be realistic.  I hope a lot of people will read this post and realize the error of their ways but I’m kind of doubting it.  The people who say things like this really do have a false sense of entitlement.  I’m a caster and I don’t PvP so I think I had a good handle on all of the stats I use, but there is plenty to know and it is difficult to make a decision about something, especially something very close to what you have.  I think what the plan is should be fine.  People act like with this change you won’t need to know anything anymore when it simple isn’t true.  You will still have to balance your stats, your mana pool/regen how much crit and hit you want.  Plus we are getting a new stat for Mastery which adds a new interesting element to the game.  Not to mention the new ability to reforge an item and alter its stats in addition to gemming and enchanting.  There is plenty of depth as GC put it for the more hardcore, while still being simple enough for people to make good decisions.

Anyways I thought I’d share my thoughts on these two posts and why I liked them.

Well Blizzcon 2009 is over and what a Blizzcon it was!  I really wish Inien and I had got tickets.  I’m told bummed over all the exclusives they had their this year they never did anything like that the previous 3 years.  The feed wasn’t too bad, we watched it on high and it buffered every once in a while.  The most annoying thing was them cutting off the feed for the contests.  If you followed my twittering though it was all pretty exciting.

The new expansion was as rumored and then some.  I’m very excited about some of the new ways to customize your characters even more.  The reforging and path of the titans is sounding awesome.  They also mentioned my Dwarf treasure finding skill will become useful again in the expansion.  Chests will make a return!  The redesign of the entire new world shows Blizzard has some major dedication.  I have been playing MMO’s my entire life and I have never seen one add as much free content as Blizzard, nor advance the game and the story as they do.  A lot of whining on the forums about the new race/class combos (booowhooo)  but I think the majority of the people will welcome it.  The new races will bring another unique flavor to the world.  The revamp of the talent system and the inclusion of the new mastery stat and condensing of some other stats is HUGE.  I can’t believe they are taking on that along with having rebuilt the entire old world.

We still have a big event to end up the current expansion which is just as exciting!  They went over a little bit of what will be in 3.3 and man it is a doosy!  I can’t believe they are adding in 3 more 5 man dungeons as part of the event along with the raid dungeon.  As many of you know the 5 man dungeons are certainly my favorite.   It sounds like Arthas will be killed and then something about what is going on in Northrend (we are distracted) allows the cataclysm to occur.  Then the whole thing about Thrall wasn’t revealed but that basically he is powerful shaman and the world is being torn apart and we should put two and two together.

Inien and I would have rather been there but we enjoyed the stream.  Hopefully next year we can get tickets!  I wish they would hold it in San Diego for more space

Really excited about Blizzcon tomorrow.  Totally bummed I didn’t get tickets to go, but probably just as well I’ve spent so much money this month!  The $40 stream is much easier on the pocket book!  Inien is going to be heading over to my house tomorrow for the festivities.  I even purchased the TV out adapter for my laptop for the occasion.  We’ll certainly be more comfortable than those sitting in the hard chairs at Blizzcon.

Looking forward to news about all 3 games, WoW, Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.  I hope they clear up some WoW rumors, I’m almost positive that we’ll see a new Diablo 3 class debut, and those lucky Blizzcon attendees will get to play an even more polished Starcraft 2.

I did a lot of questing in Icecrown mostly.  I had a good time though, there are a lot of huge quest chains in the zone.  I’m still only like half done with all the quests for that zone.  As my Disc gear is improving so is my PvP/SoL build   It is kind of funny I’m sturdy enough now to tank big elite melee mobs in the 3 person quests

This quest chain pictured here in the screenshot was funny because you go through all of this crap to try and save him from the plague and then the Naaru just come and kill him essentially.  Presumably they are taking him to heaven?    Yay the Naaru are angels . I had a relatively fun day though.  Was just in and out questing, and I made a nice 500g in the process

Of course the day wasn’t all great, I’m sure you heard my screams right?

Yes despite my best efforts at 10am I was over 9000 in the queue.  This time luck was not on my side, not that being early in the queue helped me last time.  They still let people buy 5 tickets which I think is lame and they were all gone by the time I was 6k in the queue.  I’m going to continue my effort to try and win tickets.  Make sure if you haven’t to click on my Mountain Dew banner and sign-up!  Of course worse comes to worse I’ll probably get the Internet stream

Found out from warcraftpets.com that there is a promotional pet for participating in this campaign Blizzard is working with Pepsi on. I headed over there because you supposedly get this pet if you register with the site, then I found on the site you can win Blizzcon tickets. So to hedge my bet a bit I did every thing I could to get points to attempt to win the Blizzcon tickets. This is the reason for the banner on the site. If you click it and go signup not only will you get a cool pet, but you’ll get me some extra points!

After waiting all morning, and finally getting in the queue I failed to secure my tickets to Blizzcon today for Inien and I. I’m super duper disappointed.  I know there is one more shot but I wanted to get it out of the way.  I’m not sure why they choose to split it up actually.

I started out getting in BEFORE the queue, this was a HUGE mistake, because the queue system initiated and it kicked me off the front page.  I then tried again and ended up behind in the que because of it.  I started off at position 3816, the problem is a large number of people must have purchased 5 tickets.  WHY THE HELL they let them do that I have NO IDEA.

JUST when I finally make it through the queue with single digit % tickets left I arrive back at the store page with an empty cart and a message from Inien that the tickets were sold out.  They must have emptied my cart automatically when they were sold out.  Again I am so disappointed and I hope that they do not let people buy 5 tickets on the last batch of tickets.  It should be 2 tickets like when they did the extra sale of tickets last time.

LAMENESS!

/endrant

Today I just spent the time to go out and fish so that I could get the last cooking skillup.  Then I realized I needed more rhino meat so I had to go do that.  Eventually I got that last cooking skillup.  Then I headed back to town and learned the Fish Feast and got my chef title!  Wahoo!  Yay for more titles!

I also found my Blizzcon cards and was able to signup for my SC2 beta key woot!  I was never any good at SC2, but I did enjoy it.  Protoss was always my favorite and so far playing it at the last few Blizzcons I think it still is!

Was so busy yesterday I never managed to visit the forums and missed some important news.  Jeff Kaplan aka Tigole posted in the general wow forums that he is changing roles at Blizzard.  He will begin working on the new MMO that Blizzard hasn’t spilled the beans on yet.

I wanted to wish him the best in his new position.  I’ve always found him to be an interesting person, and have enjoyed his interviews over the years.  I have seen him at all the Blizzcons, he knew how to rile up the masses

If you read his post it almost sounds like a good bye letter though titled “Till we meet again”.  The only thing I can figure is that Blizzard is still far from letting us know what this secret MMO is so he is unlikely to be in the public eye.

Frankly I can’t even imagine what this new MMO is going to be based on.  I have a hard time believing it would be off Diablo, for one they are working on a new version of it, and I believe WoW and Diablo are probably too close in the fantasy realm.  Starcraft is the other option but they are making a new version of the RTS already and the world in my mind doesn’t lend itself to an MMO concept.  Perhaps it is something completely brand new?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see and I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of Jeff again when Blizzard is ready to tell us