Patch 2.4 sure is stirring things up! There is all sorts of information to be had, and things to do.

First off, your Thoughts on 2.4. How are you liking the patch? Is there something you love? Something you hate? Some great conversation in a thread I've started.

One of the big changes is the Spirit/Regen model change. It means huge changes for pretty much every mana using class (Yes, even hunters). There is a lot of great discussion in the post that Concillian has going.

Along with that good change, comes one that has nipped at hunters. It seems that Mania has gone over a bunch of reports, and found that Growl is miscasting, causing some Aggro Issues with hunters and their pets. It seems to be nothing more than annoying for the solo'ing hunter, but it is that, indeed.

In a topic that's coming up near and dear to me as I level up a warrior, Amanda Dean asks about those Long Runs you have as a young toon, with no mount and no previous Flight Point. What are some of the longest you fondly or, perhaps, not so fondly recall?

Something a lot of folks are talking about when they discover is is the buff "Sunwell Radiance". Doesn't sound familiar? That's because it's for the mobs in the Sunwell Plateau, the 25man instance introduced this patch. It's very existance has neither been confirmed or denied by Blizzard, but it does seem to be out there, and has a lot of tanks of all varieties talking about the buffs/itemization to come, as it looks like BLizzard is trying to remove the 'Crushing Blow' mechanic from the game.

Speaking of the Sunwell Plateau, WoWjutsu is currently saying that there are 18 guilds in the 'top spots' for the progress race with each guild having kills for the first three bosses in the Sunwell. The race is on to see how fast the raiders can beat their content!

For the PvP'ers, the World Tournament is beginning. Bornakk has a quick post here, and then in that post points you to here if you want to join in the 3v3 battle!

Finally, in keeping with the April Fool's idea, Boubouille has posted that he's finally created a hack that allows you to roll 96+ on any /random 100 roll. Enjoy the day!

So easy. Getting from the Night Elf starting area to the Dwarf starting area at level ... 4? 5?

What's crazy is that I remember meeting you in Loch Modan when you did that...

Ahhh back in the early days of the guild not a day would go by that I did not escort someone through on Sharanna.

Sharanna - Guardian Angel™ since Beta.

Sunwell Radiance is a very interesting mechanic. It's pretty much been confirmed though not by Blizzard.

-25% avoidance is... harsh. To say the least. Most of the early bosses in Sunwell do not crush, which makes that part a non-issue, but it's still a very hefty nerf for the tanks who like stacking Dodge gems.

Why do dodge gems have any relevance here?

No tank in enough gear to handle Sunwell has less than 20% dodge. It's a flat avoidance reduction for everyone.

Simple. Avoidance scales exponentially, thus the more avoidance you have, the harder this hits.

And the best way to stack avoidance is to stack Dodge gems (except for druids).

Long runs? Warlock succubus quest at level 20. For my human warlock, it was a run from Loch Modan to Menethil Harbour, boat to Auberdine, Auberdine to that Tauren town in the middle of the Barrens (!!) and then *back* to northern Ashenvale (!!!). It took *forever*.

According to this, Proudmoore is the first server to reach phase 3 in the Shattered Sun Offensive. Cenarius is a very close second, at 99% right now. This came up in guild chat the other day, how hard it must be to do these dailies on a pvp server. For the curious, the first PvP server on the list is Blackrock, at #12 (87%). The second is Jubei'Thos, a huge jump away at #34 (77%). In last place right now is Blood Furnace, sitting at #224, with 2% in to phase 2.

For the theorycrafters out there, the brains over at Elitist Jerks are starting their Think Tank project. It will likely be a very valuable resource, so head on over and check it out, if you have the chops.

Not all servers report data. Last I looked, Anub'Arak isn't even on the chart.

That's because that is a Europe server and you would need to check here: http://www.gorgonnash.info/index.html for it.

The top European server would be about 12th if there was a combined list. Though of course any ranking needs to be checked against the last time it was updated. If one server was updated 8 hours ago and one was updated 8 minutes ago you can estimate that the 8 hours ago has probably gotten another 2-4% done.

Our server only gets 2-4% done per day it seems like!

Terenas is doing pretty well we seem to float between 40th and 60th depending on when the updates have been. Considering the population on our server has shrunk a bit and we are kinda in the middle of the road for population, I'm pretty happy with the progress.

Sorry to hear you guys aren't moving all that fast. I was surprised to see Stormrage moving as slow as they do with how big their server pop is as well.

There's also a US Anub'Arak, from which most of my guild transferred from, and it's probably still at ~30%.

On phase 1.

I was a bit surprised at this, too. But then, it seems that any interest in the dailies has really dried up in the last couple of days. Makes me wonder if folks know exactly how the dailies work, or not. But there are some of us who run our eligible main and alt through.

We don't really have the population that we used to, for a variety of reasons. We used to be one of the most active servers, but the latest unofficial census data gives the top servers around 35,000 players and Stormrage has ~20k. Terenas and Stormrage are right around the same ballpark these days (Terenas has about 18k players).

Ouch.

That server will probably not hit Phase 4 complete before WOTLK at that rate. I bet in a few weeks they just finish things off automatically for the low-pop servers like that

They've already said that the system includes this. At some point, they'll get pushed to the next phase automatically.

News - April 8

We'll open this up with a look at my favorite class, the Hunter. Danial Whitcomb has rounded up a nice selection of fora posts from the various hunter big names (such as Lactose and Cheeky) about some of the challenges a hunter faces. An often maligned class, this post is certainly a good read on some of the challenges hunters face in the game.

Scott Andrews continues the good articles with one about how to move a casual guild into the raiding scene. It's not as easy as one thinks. He gives some good tips and places to start. Probably the best advice I saw in there was this tidbit: "You can raid as a casual guild, but you can't raid casually." I see this personally elsewhere and it's a trainwreck every time.

What's a post here without a bit of controversy, right? Well, with the new Neck rewards available from the Shattered Sun Offensive, it seems that folks are regretting a choice made a long time ago...Aldor or Scryer. Now, you can change your faction, but it's a long painful grind, generally not really worth it. Of course, plenty of debate about whether or not the procs are one-sided or not ensues.

The final battle has arrived! It's Kel'Thuzad vs Illidan! Who will come out on top! Go cast your vote!

Zach Yonzon chips in with a great article on Eye of the Storm strategies. I have been trying to grind up some honor, recently, and took a couple forays into EotS due to it being an EotS weekend, and getting a couple daily quests there. The...disorganization had me almost ready to start pulling hair out. Folks shouting out 2-3 conflicting strats, while everyone seemed to do whatever they wanted anyhow, while the Horde steamrolled us. I wish I could have pointed folks to this page then.

Most folks who I play with in WoW know the love/hate relationship the RNG and I have with each other. It loves to hate me. But, I figure that for everyone out there like me, there is someone who the RNG loves. (I'm looking at you, Mr. I-Got-A-Mature-Blue-Dragon-Sinew-In-Less-Than-30-Minutes). So it's interesting to see that I'm not the only one the RNG has taken a disliking to.

Hortus has a pretty nice Known 2.4 Issues list up.

Bornakk also lets us know that greens are the new purples again in WotLK. It won't be as bad as it was with the Classic to TBC change, but one of the same general nature is coming. Time to stop raiding now and just kill time in Arena's and BG's....

On a final note, Sons of the Storm is a beautiful WoW inspired gallery site, with artwork well worth checking out.

Thankfully this isn't the case. No matter what your current content is, upgrading your gear is still a good idea. Yes, you'll replace the epics with greens -- but seeing as the stats are better, who cares? You'd replace the epics with better epics anyway.

The better gear you have going into WotLK, the faster you can level, and the faster you can get back into the raiding game. While PvP gear will of course help, it's just not as good as PvE gear -- mainly due to Resilience.

It was a tongue in cheek poke at those who claimed that the world was ending as they were replacing their hard won epics with "crummy greens" that popped up all over the place with TBC's launch.

It wasn't even true in TBC. Naxx gear lasted until level 70. I expect Sunwell Plateau gear will be useful until 80.

Exactly. But having listened to some of the copius amount of whining that was going on in several places, one would have thought that the world was ending. Heck, even BWL gear was good up to 70. I kept the full DS set until I hit 70, and then until I had several pieces of new stuff, so that when I broke the DS set, it was worth it.

I had some BWL gear that was good till 70 on my hunter. Now this was because I didn't have the luck on the better blue drops and since I was exploring the game instead of powering through it there were quest rewards I could have gotten that I wasn't aware of in some cases. But even BWL gear was better than greens and on par with a lot of the blues till nearly level cap even if you were looking to get it replaced as soon as possible.

So I figure that even the MH/TK gear and hence some of the new badge gear will last most of the expansion and as you say Sunwell gear probably till you are in the new raids.

I'm not disagreeing with anything, and I got a chuckle out of Mirajj's statement, just pointing out that even some of the essentially 'intro' raiding gear pre TBC was good for a very long time.

There is no end to the copious amount of whining. People will whine about anything. The sky is always falling.

I'd like to give a recent example, but I'm afraid someone will whine about it

Indeed. My mage is still pretty much in the gear he hit 70 in (the exception is the bracers):

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xm...hen+Ring&n=Szar

Of that gear, I have two 60 epics, and I only just replaced a ring from 60 as well.

While I was replacing gear all the time while levelling, the idea that you'll replace it all before hitting the cap is almost absurd.

Here is a preview of what is bound to happen soon after the anvil is done:

http://xs226.xs.to/xs226/08152/badgevendor752.jpg

Imagine a PvP server. Multiply skeletons by eleventy.

Yes, in terms of fighting the more difficult monsters...

(You can probably see the "but" coming from a zillion miles away ) BUT, coming from a PvP server where we're outnumbered roughly 3 to 1, you'd be nigh-suicidal to wander around in PvE gear EVER. It's pretty much a requirement to do dailies or anything "out and about" as alliance to have 200+ resilience, otherwise you're simply going to get slaughtered over and over, since the horde are so used to their "ground superiority" (thinking Air Superiority in a modern war context, haha) that they'll attack anything on sight.

Apr 15 News
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We start the day off with a wonderful find by NiteFox over on the Lounge forums. Seems a warlock over on Aman'thul tries to scam the GM's. It takes a bit of time, but the Blizzard response (About halfway down the first page) is utterly wonderful, and full of "own". Folks often don't remember it, but Blizz can see what you are doing in their game, all the time. If you are thinking about not acting in a manner that's acceptable, you don't "get away with it"...it can catch up to you months down the road.

For the curious, it seems that Illidian was not prepared, and Kel'Thuzad emerges the winner of WoWInsider's Two Bosses Enter contest.

It looks like some info about the Brutal Gladiator's Gear (Arena Season 4) has been sussed out via clever use of the Armory. What's left some folks choking is the steep Personal Rating requirement on the epeen parts of this gear. Some are for it, some are against it, and if it goes live, it'll be a lot harder to get, for sure.

Scott Andrews continues his series on making Raiding work with a Casual guild. It is again a very good read, and what I have seen to be one of the hardest parts of raiding in general. Getting folks to buy in, and be ready for when they do go. . Lots of good suggestions and ideas in here, but the main problem still comes down to getting everyone ready and in there.

Mike Schramm has an interesting breakfast topic, what are your favorite/least favorite mobs to grind? Having been one of the few on my server to complete the Winterspring FrostSaber quest before it got ruined, I'd have to say that qualifies as both for me. The reward, an armorless epic frostsaber was everything I thought it'd be, and it's still one of my most 'prized' WoW 'possessions'. However, The grind to get it was horrible, made worse by the fact that a lot of the time, I was competing for the needed kills against either a terrible drop rate, or one to three gold farmers.

After a couple false alarms by the Burning Legion and Area 52 servers, it seems that Proudmoore continues to lead the way in the Shattered Sun Offensive, being the first server to actually reach Phase 4. My server has come along nicely, and gotten the badge vendor up. Expensive gear, but she's been kept quite busy. As well, Premonition on the Alleria server is credited with the First US Kill of the Eredar Twins.

On a topic designed to create discussion, it's asked How Expensive is your DPS? As in, are you cheap dps to mainain, or does it cost you a pretty penny to do the damage you do. Of course the debate rages across all sorts of boundaries. Do consumables count or not? Are repairs part of your dps? Do you get heals? Is the need for heals considered an expense at your dps? Interesting topic, I found.

On a PvP server, I'd much rather be leveling 70-80 in PvP gear, then PvE stuff.

April 20 News

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Well, over the weekend, Adam Holinsky has sure stirred things up over at WoW Insider. He first wrote Why PvE has been, and will always be, the only real game. He follows that up a bit later with Why the PvP game exists in WoW, and why it's a good thing. As you can imagine, the commentary section goes nuts, with rabid fans of both sides coming out to voice their pleasure or dissent with the line of thought in the Op/Ed style articles. I won't go into my personal feeling on this topic (though the sharp eyed among you may find them in the commentary section...) but it seems to me that a lot of folks are getting worked up over this, and I've long wondered why. PvP'er's claim that their game is the "one true skill", and raiding requires only watching Deadly Boss Mods and/or Omen while PvE'er's claim that PvE is the only "one true skill" as so much is required to make it go right. While arguments abound on both sides, I find it an interesting look at the two main sections of the WoW community, and despite playing the same game in the end, how hard it seems to be for these two sides to even consider co-existing.

I never understood why they can't coexist.

I've seen both sides, though: people who claim that PvP is all there is, and if you don't have a good arena rating it doesn't mean squat what you've done in PvE. Meanwhile, there are those who consider PvP'ers a bunch of dimwitted morons who spend all day checking their epeens. The truth is, as always, somewhere in the middle.

Being in an Illidan-killing guild doesn't mean you're a great player. Having a full set of Season 3 gear doesn't mean you're a great player either. In both cases, you can be carried by better players towards those goals. I'm living proof!

A lot of it may come from insecurity. I see many players who, being poor at PvP, declare it as beneath them and that they "hate it." They consistently insult those who like to arena, calling it "welfare epics" and that it's played by kiddies. I shake my head at that...it's just a game. When a player first starts to raid, they suck at it. When a player first starts to PvP, they suck at it. The difference is that when you suck at PvE, you get curbstomped by computer-controlled, emotionless NPCs. When you suck at PvP, you get curbstomped by other players, and some people can't handle that. I really think it's an emotional block that gets in the way.

Learning to be good at PvP is just like learning to be good at PvE. It takes time and experience, and a willingness to get wafflestomped a lot. If a player's ego can't handle that, they turn sour on the whole experience very quickly and never go back.

There are total asshats in PvP. Guess what, there are total asshats in PvE, too: players whose ego is tied to the guild they're in and what it has accomplished. I've seen fantastic PvP'ers who couldn't run PvE instances to save their lives, because they were terrible at it. I've seen godlike PvE raiders who couldn't get higher than the 1500's in arenas. They are two completely different skillsets, yes, but you know what?

The best players I've ever met are those who are good at both. There are aspects from each facet of the game that you can take away to make you better at the other one. Knowledge of what other classes are capable of, situational awareness, response time - all of these translate well to both disciplines. I know that my play in arenas has improved my abilities in raiding, and vice-versa. Anecdotal evidence, yes, but I've heard the same from scores of other players as well.

This is why I encourage everyone to form arena teams and just play. Leave the ego at the door, and you might learn something along the way.

-Bolty

I loathe pvp. I refuse to pvp. However, I never see anyone discuss the reason, nor do I believe many would even understand the sentiment. It is the converse of the above. "When you're good at PvP, you curbstomp other players, and some people can't handle that." I would probably suck at PvP, but what if I actually became good at it. I know there is a real person controlling that other toon. What if being beaten totally ruins their day? Sure, they put themselves into the game, but that doesn't mean they are emotionally good with it. Maybe their friends coerced them into it. "You wussy, PvP with us!" Perhaps they are pushed into it because Blizzard designed an encounter that requires a PvP reward. "You aren't going to be rostered for this raid unless you PvP to get the trinket, even though there are other ways to handle the encounter." Whatever the reason, they don't want to be curbstomped and I don't want to do so. It is within my control only to keep myself out of that equation. I don't care one bit that my little group of pixels is laying there dead on the screen. In PvP, it doesn't even cost a repair bill (correct?). I don't want to do that to another player, simple as that.

I can see where this feeling can come from, Loch. I think it's born of a perception of the aspect of "death" in the game that comes in PvE.

In PvE, when your character dies, it has impact. Right off the bat, any food/elixir buffs you had are lost. 10% of your items' durability is lost, which can add up to a serious amount of cash over the course of an evening - as any raider is fully aware of. Your character is spawned at a graveyard and you are forced to run back to your corpse, which in some cases can amount to several minutes' time lost. After ressing, you have to heal/mana back up and reapply buffs, which adds another significant time chunk. In short, it sucks. Yes, compared to old games like Everquest which gave you an experience penalty for dying, it's tame. But there's a reason why World of Warcraft's subscriber base is so much larger, isn't there?

In PvP, when your character dies, it has almost no impact whatsoever. You do not lose item durability. If you're in a battleground, you respawn at a graveyard within 30 seconds automatically, set to full health and mana, and given five seconds to apply whatever buffs you like at no mana cost. In short, the time between player death and player being back in the game is never more than roughly 30 seconds. This is not done as a penalty, but rather as a method for the other team to get a little bit of time after a kill to perform a task, namely grabbing a flag or taking a battleground node.

I haven't checked lately, but Cleoboltra has something like 30,000+ lifetime HK's. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a lot compared to anyone who has gone through the pre-TBC honor grind. Now, let's say for the sake of argument that I am the most amazingest PvP god ever, and for every 10 HKs I have, I've died once. If you play in battleground PuGs a lot, this would be a high and unlikely ratio. I wouldn't call it accurate at all in my case, from all the PuGs I've run in where the other side is smart enough to kill the healer first...

Even still, that would mean that I've died over three thousand times. In PvP, you kill a lot, and you die a lot. It's really not personal. Only the emotionally unstable get too tied up in who kills who and who is killed by who, unless they're dealing with the ultra-high-end arena PvP. As an example, when I'm PvPing, I don't notice players' names as much as I notice "Resto Druid, Hunter, SL/SL Warlock, Warrior, Shadowstep Rogue." It's akin to farming mobs in PvE - here comes Fire Elemental #4529, hopefully it'll have a Fire Mote this time. Who I'm fighting in PvP is irrelevant, and for 99% of the playerbase it's the same thing the other way. They don't go "woo hoo! I killed Cleoboltra, I rock!" They think "whew, annoying Discipline Priest finally down." 30 seconds later I'm back in the match and we're going at it all over again.

It's really more akin to a first-person shooter match. You kill someone, you get killed, everyone respawns, so what. This is exacerbated by the fact that a great majority of players who log in to a battleground are just looking to get honor or marks to buy another PvP item; they're not emotionally invested in who wins or loses, who kills or is killed, beyond allowing them to reach their target honor/marks faster. In fact, it's that soulless grind nature of battlegrounds that engenders the most complaints: nobody really cares, they just want honor. People will be apt to throw the game and let the other side win rather than play a long, drawn out close match, because ultimately they'll get more honor by losing quickly and queuing again than by playing an hour-long epic battle (which they may lose anyway).

I guess my conclusion is that you're not ruining someone else's day by killing them in PvP. It's happened to them a lot. A lot. And in turn, they've killed a lot. Matches are short, most everyone doesn't care who's who, and you find something you can enjoy with it, whether it's playing defense, charging into enemies, or just plain sheeping people like crazy. Meanwhile, you'll start learning a lot about other classes, and finding their strengths and weaknesses against you.

-Bolty

Eh. I've arenaed... once? Well, ten times for one week's worth of points, anyways. BGed just enough to get my Insignia for Archimonde, and that was painful enough. And I play "OP" classes - Mage, Warlock, Druid. I still hate PvP!

I don't know - maybe arena can teach you to watch out more, but really, should you not know what there is to raiding by the time you reach high end content? You touch on situational awareness; I'm WAY more aware in a raid than in a BG, simply because in a BG I'm busy running away from (*cough* Kiting!) 3 horde pretty much all the time, whereas in a raid I'm usually zoomed all the way out, have the luxury of standing still more often than not, and while automatically doing my DPS cycle (whoo, muscle memory) I'm looking around for stuff that'll kill me, people I'm too near, people I'm too far from, things I should be doing, etc. etc. Shade of Aran and Bloodboil taught me more about situational awareness than arenas and BGs ever did, or, I'm pretty sure, ever would even if I played them more.

So no, I don't think the two spheres have to interact. If I want to PvP, I go play an FPS. There's no problems with class balance when you can switch classes every time you die Which I do often enough! But do I begrudge WoW PvPers? Only when pvp buffs/nerfs impact PvE, and that's a fairly common view I think. How hard would it be to have zone-wide flags in Arena and BGs where certain stuff is changed? They could've implemented the life tap nerf that way. Meh. Water under the bridge, that.

Believe it or not but you do learn in pvp to do much the same thing all while being more mobile. I play with my view zoomed out so I can keep an eye out for those nasty rogues that like to get the jump on me while I'm standing still to heal.

Uhh, kay? How is that different than what I'm doing at the moment in any raid?

"while being more mobile" implies that raiders have some sort of compunction for standing still - far from it, I can't really think of many fights off hand where I get to stand still. Akama and Kaz'rogal come to mind and that's pretty much it? Perhaps Mother? I know I'm getting pretty defensive, but it's the most often played card in these types of discussions - that somehow PvP is a magically fluid, mobile beast, while PvE is standing still and blasting things.

No... I'm standing there, zoomed out, watching for a "rogue", which in my case is a targetted AoE, or a cue to go stand somewhere and do something. I can't really tell the difference in terms of "skill" at situational awareness.

On the flip side of the coin, I also can't think of any fight where you do NOTHING but run for the whole fight, either. So arena teaching me to run away at full tilt, keeping CoEx on everything and running out of LoS, doesn't really help my raiding either.

Edit: I r fail spelling.

What I mean to say is that PvP can train you to use that muscle memory you use in pve while also teaching you the situational awareness you need to survive fights. And when I mean 'you' I mean the generic 'you' not you personally. It sounds like you've developed the skills you need for situational awareness in pve - whereas in my raiding group we still have folks who stand in fires. >.>

You know what... point taken. Sorry

I still believe, though, that the best way to learn how to survive in PvE is to... PvE. *gasp* I'm very wary of people telling raiders to go arena because it'll make them a better raider. Perhaps, but to use a rather weak metaphor, I'd rather they learn how to play football directly, instead of teaching them how to play rugby and then applying those skills to football. Yes, they're similar - but, as even Bolty admitted, they're still different skillsets.

There are raid encounters in the game that are more than sufficient to teach all the right lessons, again my favourite example is bloodboil. Talk about having to be situationally aware and mobile. I see no need to substitute PvP to learn how to raid - if you enjoy PvP, then I'm sure you can carry some lessons into raiding, though.

True enough, but one can supplement the other. Especially when raid times are typically set in stone, while arena/PvP times can be more dynamic.

(Or, to use your analogy: Football is played in the Spring, and Rugby in the fall. At least at my college)

When we were first getting into raiding as a guild, and to some extent with newer raiders now, I certainly noticed that it was the good PVP'ers that had the keyboard bindings, mouse movement skills, and awareness to really shine in our raids.

These days, I'm guessing that there are a lot more interesting 5-man heroic encounters to help reinforce good practices as well (by design).

Excellent point about mixing the two because raid opportunities are much more limited than arena play and battleground play. I was trying to think of a good explanation for why comingling the two is useful, assuming you enjoy both.

In my case, I learned to PVP on my level 60 rogue, my original main, and because of that went to a combination of mouse movement and hotkeys easily strikable with my left hand in normal typing position and my right hand never leaving the mouse that has translated very well across changing mains to a warlock, and now a prot paladin in a raid setting. (I was a dagger rogue, and mouse movement is the fastest way to turn, which was quite important to get behind folks when you couldn't stun them first).

PVP battleground play is a great place to learn to tab target effectively as well, if you ever have trouble finding a desired target when your screen is crowded and mouse clicking with the "v" key options turned on isn't quite cutting it.

*Edited to remove about 100,000 uses of the word ", however" at the end of sentences. What's wrong with me today?

I realize I'm currently barking up the wrong tree with this reply since you understand the issues at hand but I'm commenting on it anyway just because I feel like it.

A better metaphor is probably American football players taking dance or martial arts. Something that appears completely different but does give you translatable skills. In the case of the metaphor, balance, flexability, reaction timing, body awareness. Things that are very useful to a football player but are easier to hone outside of playing football because you don't have to try and do other things at the same time in some situations. And in many cases they aren't strictly needed to be successful, but the best players train up every edge they can get.

Morde pointed out many of the WoW specific skills in his post. You don't have to use the mouse for movement to be a very good PvE player and you don't need it to be above average in PvP. But I'm convinced as a 90% keyboard turner that to be the very best you do. The way WoW implements mouse movement is still horribly awkward for me though even after playing a full week with key bindings set up so that I had to use the mouse for movement or I wasn't moving. My hands are too big and I simply don't have a mouse that makes it comfortable to have a button pressed that much. Toggling free mouse is awkward too. I'm very comfortable in FPS games with mouse movement because you don't generally need the mouse to do other things like you do in WoW. But as mentioned PvP success is even more difficult without this skill. I'll never be more than above average at PvP because I can't get myself to be used to how WoW deals with it unless I get a different mouse or want really bad carpel tunnel.

And you are completely correct that a person that only PvPs will not develop the whole PvE skill set. But the very best PvP players can generally translate into PvE better than poor PvP players. The argument goes the other way. The very best PvE players are generally above average at PvP too and they translate into PvP better than an average PvE player. The reason is because they do share skill sets. Generally the very best PvE players have set up good interfaces and keybindings and such that you need in PvP.


I know my interface is not optimal for either PvE or PvP. The problem is if I put 2 hours into making it better I'll end up not wanting to play the game for another 24 hours or so. For some reason it really sucks the fun out of the game for me in the short term even if it makes the long term more fun. I think I understand why too. It's a game. The aspects that feel remotely like work I avoid regardless of how much nicer the gaming experience may be after they are done. I rarely PvP just to get honor or marks. I PvP when I feel like that type of entertainment. I don't do daily quests every day. I them when I feel like doing them. I rarely play the auction house to make money even though when I do I'm quite good at it and can make gold quickly. I don't even raid as much as I can because sometimes I don't want to. Though lately I raid less because I don't want to do the prep work that being the best in a raid requires. I don't want to get the consumables, I don't want to read up on the encounters. I'm very honest about this with the people I raid with. If they don't want me along because of that I'm very understanding of it. Of course I treat my toon as an alt when I do get on a raid because of this. I only get loot if no one else wants it, etc.

That is a PvE skillset to me. Being able to deal with the prep work it takes, I don't have it anymore in this game. Fortunately the PvE game is easy enough and my skill set good enough that folks can fill me in on what I need to know as we go along so I don't slow us down, and there is a group out there that lets me tag along to see the content anyway. I even get to go on a few learning nights. I can slap some gold in the guild bank and get consumables out of it and not feel as bad about it.

I think you are being generous in saying it only irrationally matters to 1% of the players. But, it doesn't matter. It could be 50% or 1% or .001%. If it is possible to be the only one that does, it is not for me. I feel bad enough when my frostbolt hits that elemental that was hunter marked after I cast it, right up until he scolds me for taking "his" mob. Call me a nice guy or a wuss, they are interchangeable, but that's the way it is.

April 22 News
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We start today with a laugh, showing the perils of ganking.

After laughing there, you can wander over to the Blizzard Boards. There is a very interesting case of ninja'ing there. A mage rolled on the +stam warrior trinket over a warrior "for her PvP set". The mage doesn't think she's done anything wrong, and the thread gets enormous.

Scott Andrews continues his article series on Raiding with a Casual Guild.

Ishida007 has spotted some WotLK screenshot leaks that look pretty neat. With it in Alpha stage of the Beta testing, one wonders how far off it is.

My work schedule's kept me from raiding for over a year now, and even before that I was a big PvPer. So at this point, PvP is pretty much all I do with the game. I kind of agree with you, and I kind of agree with Bolty.

I do watch names. I take account of who I'm fighting, and try to remember who they are, in case I fight them again. It's less worthwhile since cross-server battlegrounds rolled around, but still I do see the same people a lot of the times, and I like to know I'm fighting somebody I recognize who might recognize me. This is partly because of basic ego stroking. I don't necessarily want them to get angry and hate me, but when I kill someone I want them to know that I did it, and I want them to know that I can do it again. I want them to pop open the BG tab and go, "Oh god, not that guy!" and warn the rest of the group that they need to take me down first. Basically, I just want recognition. And at the same time, when I see somebody rocking faces and taking names, I give them the same sort of recognition. I don't necessarily get that kind of recognition, since I just don't play enough anymore, to get the high end PvP gear, or to know all of the tricks people are using against me and exactly what I need to do about them, like I did at 60 back in the day. But it's still a goal. I like to have nemeses. And to be one.

But all the same, death in BGs just doesn't matter to me. My main was a mage at 60 for two years. Back then I took Aimed Shots for 1500 over my max hp. A rogue could catch me during a global cooldown and kill me before it ended. I was one-shotted by pretty much every class there is. When you stack spell damage to the detriment of everything else, and start rolling into places with 3200 hp, then you get a pretty cavalier opinion of death. Bolty is correct in that there just has to be some emotional detachment for people to do this very a significant length of time without wanting to throw themselves off a roof. And I know I've played games where it seems like people get really pissed off, but honestly it's just not my fault that they get worked up over it.

And I am generally the nicest guy around, too. I mean, hell, I remember once I was playing a single player RPG and had to do one of those everpresent, "you get to do a trial, yay!" parts they keep putting in, and I ended up telling the judge the wrong guy was guilty. I continued playing for a few hours, but eventually I just felt so damned bad about that NPC that I had to start the whole game over.

Well, as a heavy PvP'er, and a former raider (Kael'thas downed on my last day of raiding, back in November )... I have enjoyed both sides of the game. Being a long-time gamer, raiding to me has been mainly about 'beating the game', like you would in say a single-player game; but it involves a significant social aspect to it as well, in that you have to work together with a other people to make it happen. And while that is in a large part what makes it enjoyable, it's also been a source of significant stress... such that due to changes in job situation and scheduling, I decided to call it quits for 25-man raids at least. I sort of miss the whole getting-everyone-together-as-a-group to accomplish something aspect, but certain frustrations I definitely don't miss.

PvP as mentioned is definitely a lot more manageable on an uncertain schedule. And while I try stay fairly competitive; to me it's all about the battle, not whether I win or lose or what I get out of it. That's probably why I find the whole "let them win I want my free mark" attitude so disgusting. And as mentioned... you do have to not take things personally with deaths to your character... from my FPS history I guess I'm used to that. PvP with its constantly changing situations offers dynamics that no raid encounter does... I enjoy that. Arenas I must admit I find limiting... and hence not quite as fun. The whole drive to be competitive leads to preferred team/spec setups which take away from the dynamics. I still play them (and as a feral druid, no less... I'm here for the fight, not for the do-whatever-it-takes-to-'win', afterall), but quite honestly I miss the days of more world PvP and battlegrounds...

It's a game... gotta have fun, or what's the point in playing? Obviously, what is 'fun' is goind to be different for every person... but that's what I enjoy.

I used to think I didn't really like PvP. And still, I'm not the biggest fan of Battlegrounds, where it always feels to me like victory and defeat lie almost completely on the random-ish whim of the queue. I mean, I know I'm not very good, so I don't help much on that front, but even if I was, what can you do when people are just using dumb strategies? If there's one thing I have learned about battlegrounds, it's that you can't go off alone, so singlehandedly carrying a team is infeasible.

When I thought about it though, World PvP, or at least, the sort-of-fair kind, has always been a love of mine. I don't think I have any fonder memory of this game than a skirmish I had years ago on my lowbie druid in the Charred Vale. A few Tauren popped up when I was fighting a mob a couple levels higher than I was, and while running I managed to find a couple of Alliance players who were also questing nearby. For about fifteen minutes we battled through the woods, and I healed and clawed my way through a few quests and these enemy players. At the conclusion was an immensely satisfying feeling. Although I didn't miss getting shanked and ganked by 60's (now 70's, of course) while leveling my characters on Stormrage, the lack of interaction with the opposing faction has always disappointed me (though it'd help if there were any horde, har har).

Arena is something I've just picked up in the past few weeks, since most random people aren't really looking to get destroyed alongside a Resto Shaman in PvP Blues. In the end though, holding out for a team of people I "know," whether intentionally or not, has really given me a positive experience overall. Arena matches are a chance to sit down for an hour and do something different. I don't have to look at all the stuff I have on-screen for raids, I get to watch the action and try to figure out how I can do the most good. And unlike other stuff, I don't have anything to be frustrated about when I die; there's no consumables wasted, the repair costs are tiny, and another round is just a brief queue away. The best part for me is just the experience of interacting with people I've spent time with in raids in a different way, and I don't see myself ever getting uptight about the gear...I just always think of this and laugh. I really hope to do more Arena matches because even if I never get very good it's something I can enjoy any time, briefly, without worrying about anything.


This really spoke to me. Right now, I play too much; I really wanted to get caught up with people I play with, to at least some degree, and then when my Shaman hit 70 and stopped getting gear upgrades practically every day, I started to work on my Paladin again. Now she's 70, and starting to close in on the level I'm trying to get to for her (ready for Kara and Heroics, and ultimately ZA...I'd be happy just to get there and surprised to go further).

But really, this is close to where I'd like to see myself. I really enjoy raiding right now, but not so much the preparation, which basically equates to farming up at least 100g for each session to cover food, flasks, and repairs. 2.4 actually eased this for me a lot, since I can stack up LPS's with Void Shatter and then auction them when they're most overpriced, sparing myself several of the dailies that I enjoy the least because of my slow killing speed. I really only make myself enough gold to cover expenses and I'm okay with the fact that I won't be flying around really fast before WotLK (if then!). I just hope I'll be satisfied with what I have, soon, and getting the most enjoyment out of my playing time while letting the mouse rest a little more.

News for April 24

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When Drysc announces the S4 Requirements and Arena Changes, it's...not too well received by the gaming populace. Biggest of all is the announcement that some of the gear that would be purchasable only with honor will now carry with them also an Arena rating requirement. Doorf starts it off with Keep your ESport out of my Battlegrounds, and it snowballs from there quite quickly. Many are seeing this as the death knell to the casual Arena team. Time will tell.

I am in favor of top ranked arena players having distinguishing gear/mounts as a reward for their accomplishments, just as I was for having Field Marshal gear and a battle ram for being a Field Marshal, and I was livid that Blizzard would then give Field Marshal gear away to anyone. However putting arena rating requirements on honor items is the second most discouraging change the developers have yet come up with (the first being the normalization of hunter pets). I read through nine pages of the WoW forum thread. I sincerely hope this change does not go live. One suggestion I could make is to remove arenas from the normal WoW game entirely and limit arena to arena servers.

They might actually reconsider that gear when they actually see it.

They are, basically, Sunwell Isle set recolours. Personally, when the original sets were leaked I defended them to the dismissive crowds, because they actually did look good. Not spectacular, but good.

Then the S4 recolours were rolled out and, ugh, dear lord...