Took a quick break to check out MMO-champion to see what was up and saw Blizzard upgraded the Armory.  They added some neat features, including a 3D view of your character modeled with all your gear along with a RSS feed of your recent activity.  It shows stuff like Achievements, or Achievement Criteria, Boss Kills, and when you aquire an item.  This seemed like a pretty neat thing to put on the site so I added it under my armory profile.

It is nice to see Blizzard continuing to develop the armory and is surpassing anything any of the other MMOs were doing, and used to charge you for even!

It is probably asking for too much but it would be nice if it showed things like when you aquired a pet, or mounts since these are things people collect and are proud of as well.

First Impressions

I thought I’d write down what my first impressions are of the magazine now that I received it and had a chance to go through it.  The first thing I thought when I saw it was WoW this looks like Nintendo Power…  Now I know this is being produced by the same company, but they kept making a big deal about the quality and such that for some reason I expected a little more.  Not to say there is anything wrong with Nintendo Power, I subscribed to it for years and years in fact back in the day.

The biggest problem with the magazine of course though was that it was late, very late in fact.  This is the Winter 2009 edition, and you can tell by the way things are wrote in the articles that they were written a while ago.  If Blizzard is going to treat this like one of their game releases and the magazine is going to end up this late each time then they may have an problem.

The Art

The artwork in the magazine is excellent!  The cover which they gave us a preview of before Christmas in the form of a desktop background is awesome.  If they continue that level of artwork I hope they make it available as a background as well in the future!  Throughout the magazine you’ll find page after page of concept art, in game screenshots, and custom graphics.  I remember one of the selling points they were pushing that it would be like an art book and you can definitely see that. Some of my favorite was the Deathwing art on page 9 where they began the Cataclysm preview, and the Lich King on page 36 for the article on Icecrown Citadel.

The Content

The content in the magazine is there, and good but it isn’t exclusive enough I think to draw in subscribers yet.  Magazines have it hard I will admit, even harder than a Newspaper.  They take longer to produce and the information gets old.  The thing here though is they have direct access to Blizzard so I was expecting more first hand information.  So far my favorite parts of the articles have been the lore they put in.  Now I’m sure this information is written down somewhere else but it is nice how it is integrated into the information being dispensed.

My biggest complaint about this issue in particular was the lack of any new information about Cataclysm in the magazine.  They had a nice article, but it little to no new information.  They had some charts describing leveling flows for the revamped old continents I don’t remember seeing before anyways. I was hoping for more information, any thing really, but maybe there isn’t anything new to give or Blizzard is being hush hush about it all still   That said the article is very well written and a good review of all the goodies we are going to be getting in the expansion.

The other thing I found interesting and this may be because of the delayed release but there was a nice article about ICC, but mostly about the lore and what was in ICC. Not any detailed raid info or the like but they did have a detailed article about the ToC Raid.  Again the magazine was suppose to come out before 3.3 was put live which is why it ended up that way.  It is too bad they couldn’t have got in like a profile of even the first boss in there or something.  I haven’t read the entire ToC article yet but it looks good, and I look forward to reading one on ICC

Conclusion

This is the first issue so you can cut them a lot of slack I think.  They are only doing quarterly issues so I hope they can get them out on time from now on.  Overall I am pleased with the magazine.  I can complain about it being late, or not having the information I wanted to be in it, but Blizzard is involved in it so I should and will probably have to expect both of those   The artwork is awesome to see.  They have access to Blizzard so interviews with the devs and executives is going to be great.  There is something for everyone in this magazine.  They have quite a bit of PvP content, most of which I hadn’t read yet, about Arenas, and Battlegrounds and the like.  They have the stories and lore we all enjoy.  They even had a section over Blizzards card game version of WoW.  I liked the sections on Healing, Tanking and DPS as well.  It also seemed like they had player interviews and opinions throughout the magazine again which was a plus to me.  Finally they had fun things like the article on warcraftpets.com and cooldown which had some amusing abilities/items you’ll never see

I look forward to first quarter 2010 issue which I hope to be full of great ICC and new Cataclysm information, as well as actually arriving in first quarter

Here is another blast from the past!

My first Nef kill when I was with FEST on Jan 26, 2006.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY WoWPriests.info!

This is the 4th Anniversary of the site.  I believe this is the longest I’ve ever run a web project and stuck with it   We have had quite a few transitions in the last 4 years.  Technically the Anniversary was November 1st, but with all the extra hours at work I’ve been doing I missed it and decided to celebrate on December 1st

I purchased this domain in September 2004 and put up a Priest fan site.  This was after I bought my way into the fileplanet sponsored stress test of WoW.  I got to be involved in both Stress Test 1 and 2, plus Open Beta.  Originally when I started getting interested in WoW I was dead set on playing a Druid.  So when I got in the stress test I didn’t want to spoil anything so I decided to choose the one class I would probably never play, the Priest.  Even though I always played a Cleric in MUDS, all the MMO’s Priest/Cleric classes were always terrible.  It turns out though I fell in love with the Priest and I started a fan site for it.  The site just never took off though and I decided to take a different approach.

So on November 1st 2005 I started a blog called Adventures of a Dwarf Priest.  At the time Dwarves were sought after because of fear ward and such.  The blog was originally run on google’s blogger site.  Eventually I transitioned it to my own hosting and began using wordpress.  The site has undergone several faces in that time period and I am quite happy with the evolution of the site now.

I’ve had a lot of ideas I have wanted to do and not had the time to complete.  I am hoping that some of things I have planned I will be able to get done this coming year.  I am also pretty excited about the new expansion and changes to the world.  There will be all new set of exciting adventures.  My recent entry into Texas Mercenaries brings forth a new set of raiding adventures, and we have the climax to the Lich King saga coming up here soon!  I’ve also picked up Shadow again and there will be many more adventures in my attempts to become a useful and proficient DPS to go along with my amazing Disc healing abilities

Thanks to everyone who reads and enjoys the site!  This has continued to be a very interesting experience for me.

Was going to post some links to some interesting moments in the past over the next few days.  I’d like to start out with the second entry posted to this blog.  This was back on Deathwing after my original guild Witch Hunters dissolved and I was looking for a new guild.   I applied a guild called FEST that turned out to lead to many many interesting adventures   Check out this post.  It gives you an idea of what my UI used to look like, and the old site

Happy Thanks Giving to Everyone!  I hope the Turkey is roasting and everyone has a pleasant day.

I’m pretty excited I ordered my new gaming system this morning.  It is my Christmas Present to myself / Reward for working so hard / Not going to buy a new Mac computer.  I decided since my Mac, now going on 4 years old is still fine for everything I do that upgrading it seemed like an incorrect use of funds.  Even selling the old one would put me out over $2k or more for a current Mac Pro.  Not to mention Mac’s have never been optimized for Games, and the Mac version of WoW has always lagged a bit behind the PC version.  I decided to order a gaming system, and just get a KVM to switch between them.   I’m pretty excited about this because by nature I’m an old Gamer, and an old hardware freak.  I used to upgrade my computer every 3 months before I met my wife

I speced out a machine from a very cool company called iBuyPower.com.  They let you build totally custom PC’s and don’t charge you an arm and a leg for them.  I’ve played with people before who use their machines, and newegg, another company well respected by me sells their machines as well.  So after much thought and research over the past month or so I decided on the following.

I decided to go with the 920 CPU because of the price point.  To go up one processor was more than $260 which just didn’t seem worth it to me.  Instead I opted to get the right MB, CPU fan, and system cooling to do a little over clocking   I haven’t done that in a long time either!  I was reading though and it appears that getting 3.8Ghz out of the 920 is pretty normal.  I decided to go with the ATI HD 5870 graphics card because of the price and speed of the single card.  The highest end GeForce card was still beating it slightly, but it was $200+ more.  The ATI card is also a little more future proof with DX11 support already.

I’m sure this system will run WoW quite well, and am looking forward to a few other upcoming Blizzard games   A non Blizzard game I’m particularly interested in getting as well is Dragon Age: Origins.  I’ve read a lot of good reviews of it and have enjoyed BioWare RPG games in the past.  Hopefully the system isn’t delayed too badly by the HD 5870 shortages I keep reading about.  I decided I better order it and “get in line” so to speak

The one thing I forgot to mention yesterday I was thinking about this morning was my heroic Old kingdom run.  We had a fairly well geared group except for the newbie Hunter.  We got almost to the first boss, and the Paladin says to me, “are you disc?”.  Answering, “uh yes, can’t you see all the bubbles?”.  He told me he didn’t notice and then proceeds to complain about the fact since I’m not healing him (because he is almost never taking damage) he keeps running out of mana.  So I didn’t really say anything but he continued to complain a little after we killed the first boss.  He told me that Disc excels in Raids, not 5 mans…  I asked him if he wanted me to try and stop protecting him and let him take damage and he said no it was fine   I laughed because it actually would be really hard, part of the reason I couldn’t play Holy is I do so much instinctively. I told him that I was great in all situations, noted by the simple fact no one is taking damage

Thinking about it later I couldn’t remember any Paladin ever complaining about it before.  I’m guess that maybe I always end up with someone that does replenishment in my Paladin tanked groups?  We only had that Hunter, Elemental Shaman, and a Rogue.  I’m guessing the hunter wasn’t speced for it.  Seems odd though, or maybe he was just a particularly whinny Paladin

The other funny thing was on the last boss, the one that makes the copies of you.  We lost the Hunter and Elemental Shaman during the phasing.  The hunter releases for some reason and comes back in the instance that causes the boss to bug out.  He died on the way back too.  When we finally start again we have to instruct him not to release.  They both die again on our second attempt but we finish the boss anyways.  Then we go kill the rest of the bosses because the Hunter had never been here before and wanted the achievement

Despite all that I still had a good time.  It is kind of neat to still see new people joining World of Warcraft.  I don’t mind helping out people who want to learn.  Really looking forward to those new 5 mans still.  Come on and hurry up 3.3!  I haven’t had a chance to make it on the PTR still.  It is so late in the game now I might just wait for the surprise on live

Cataclysm, the 3rd Word of Warcraft expansion is on its way.  When it will be here exactly no one can say, but most accounts put it early second quarter of next year.  There is a lot of exciting things in this expansion.  Most information we know came out of Blizzcon, and very little of it was class specific.  We know there will be great changes to the old world as the cataclysm causes widespread destruction in Azeroth.  We know that they are getting rid of some stats, like Spellpower (now based off int), Defense, Armor Penetration and MP5 (regen from spirit only).  We know they are redoing the talent system, removing percent based talents, and adding in talent mastery which has a new stat attributed to it.  Finally we know they are adding a new character customization system called Path of the Titans, which will be sort of like AA’s in EQ but not grindy, more on a time based progression.

Above here you will see my current spec.  I’d like to go over a few of my hopes for Discipline in Cataclysm and what changes we might expect.  First, I love Discipline as you all know.  After floundering for years on Disc, they finally settled on it being a Healing tree, with a focus on damage prevention/mitigation instead of more healing.  Holy does fine on the healing end, and to have two trees for healing, they really need to be different ways of doing the same job.  I think they hit the nail on the head with 3.0.  We have had what you might say a few setbacks in some of the changes, but none of them have been devastating to me, I still enjoy the spec.  So for Cataclysm I hope we can progress even more forward with the prevention/mitigation with the spec.

There are two new mechanics to the redesign of the talent system.  One is the removal of percentage based talents, which will be something you get automatically as you add points in a tree.  The other is the idea of Mastery, which is something your spec is meant to be good at.  They are adding a stat that allows your Mastery ability to increase.  This stat will be cool because you could have a piece of gear that might be good for a healer or DPS, that has this stat and it will do something different for whomever is wearing it.  They also said they were going to split up talents that too many things stacked together, an example of this right now is probably Renewed Hope, it is both a talent that gives extra crit to spells on people with weakened soul, and makes it so your raid gets 3% less damage for 20 seconds when you cast PW:Shield.  I imagine those will be split.

Of the talents that will be removed or altered in Disc I imagine it will be Twin Discipline, Meditation, Improved PW:Shield, Mental Agility, Mental Strength, Enlightenment, and Focused Power.  I’m curious about Twin Discipline and Mental Agility, because while they are straight percentage talents, they are very specific to Instant spells.  I’m hoping that Disc maintains its larger mana pool over Holy with Mental Strength which would be built into the tree.  The changes to spell power and Mental Strength would finally make Disc scale a bit better which is the main complaint of the Disc haters.

Now as they remove talents and they said they wanted to add more fun, interesting talents to replace them.  Also the splitting of the talents up will help as well.  This should let you create more interesting custom builds.  One of the ideas that came from Blizzard that got a lot of people excited was Power Word: Barrier.   I know a lot of people want this idea to just go away, but given the upcoming changes I think this is the perfect time to add a new iconic, deep Disc spell.  I think the original idea for PW:Barrier was was a spell that through a PW:Shield on everyone.  I wanted something different, then eventually we got Soul Warding which made that moot anyways.  Now what I wanted from PW:Barrier was some giant bubble shield.  What I later settled on the best idea was to have a huge bubble you placed on the ground that would dampen AOE effects.  After finally experiencing EoE pictured in the above screenshot is similar to something I’d like for Disc.  So the spell would have a radical similar to Mass dispel that let you place the shield, it would remain in that location for a fixed time and say reduce all AOE effects to everyone in the bubble by 75%.  You could even have the bubble shrink out of existence like it does in EoE.  Put an appropriate cooldown, and mana cost on it and we would have a fun interesting spell that would give a new mechanic for raid leaders to play with

If I could have them rethink any existing talent in Disc I would go with Grace.  My main problem with Grace is that it is not controllable at all by me.  If I am tank healing but need to save someone quick with Penance, which is awesome for that I have to remove grace from my tank and then get it back on when I can again. I would prefer Grace to be just a single target buff that we can place on one person of our choosing.  Plus I always had a problem with the duration, so having a longer duration on that buff would be great as well.  The reason being is it only gets applied with a few spells, I like to use all my spells not just the they put on Grace. That simple change would please me greatly.

I have a lot more to add about Disc in Cataclysm, but I believe I will save it for another post.  I think for me it is just key that they continue to stick with the current themes of Disc.  I want to keep my larger mana pool, extra speed (haste,pi,fast heals), and damage absorption/mitigation.

I know Holy DPS is never going to be a full fledged damage spec like Shadow.  However I would like to start a campaign to maybe have a bit more flavor added to it for those of us that like it.  I think given the redesign of the talent system with the added Mastery system, now is the time to bring this up.  They will likely be pulling a lot of talents out that will just become automatic and free up some space in the trees.  This should open up space for some more interesting options that they were talking about they wanted.

I think what turned me off on Shadow was after I geared for it and really started using it was that it wasn’t flashy enough.  Just like I couldn’t take Affliction on my Warlock, Shadow is just the same.  When I decided to give up on Shadow I realized that I would be giving up ever seriously DPSing on my Priest.  Back in the BC days I would actually occasionally DPS as Holy, most people thought I was crazy, but at that time with a lot of drinking I could come close to what other classes/specs could do if not beat them.  Now unfortunately it just isn’t possible with Holy to do this.  I am comfortable using it just as my questing/leveling spec though and since I have Dual spec all is good

They kept modifying the Smite glyph over time which means they must know some of us like to use Holy.  They finally got it right with that Glyph too.  The change last patch to Holy Nova glyph making it do more damage as well was a welcome change.  I don’t have a defining 3rd glyph that goes well with Holy DPS, I would hope for a Holy Fire glyph that does something interesting

If I could dream a little larger even I would like to see a new Holy DPS spell.  This is super unlikely since Shadow wouldn’t be able to use it, but I said it was a Dream   I really enjoyed Chastise before they took it away.  It was a cool spell while it lasted during its very short life.  It was really fun on Deathwing for PvP especially when it had the interrupt on it.  I finally didn’t feel completely powerless to stop casting   Even with a 30 second cooldown it was a fun spell.  Having that spell make a come back would totally rock.

Well these are my pipe dreams on the Holy DPS front.  If you agree with anything I’m saying hear help me spread the word Maybe someone at Blizzard will hear and at least have it in the back of their minds for the upcoming changes!

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.