Thank you

 

Greg Ghostcrawler Street lead systems designer for Worlds of Warcraft announced today that after six years of working at Blizzard Entertainment he will be leaving the company. During his time with Blizzard Greg was responsible for a lot of monumental changes in the game. Some were popular, some were not. To Greg's credit he was never afraid to try new things or take the heat if those things didn't work. If something in the game just wasn't up to snuff Greg would be one of the first people to point it out (you just can't beat trolls to the punch). Aside from his many contributions in game, I think the greatest thing that Greg ever did was make himself available to us. Good, bad or just down right trolly, Greg listened to what we all had to say on twitter and responded to us. He did it with humor, he did it with style when most game developers wouldn't be interested in hearing what gamers have to say and I respect the hell out of him for it. Thank you Greg for all the wonderful things you added to the game we all love and for listening to us bitch. Best of luck with whatever comes next and you will be missed.
-Morison

Dungeon Dos and don'ts.

So here's the thing about being in a dungeon. Dungeon groups are made up of three DPS, a healer and a tank those five people are part of a team. As you may guess, things will always go more smoothly if those people work together and follow some simple dos and don'ts.

• The tank sets the pace.

In theory the dungeon guide should set the pace but the truth is that the tank is the one that is running head first into the baddies.  Let him decide where your heading and how fast you'll get their. Trust me it will make things go more smoothly. If this is not followed and the DPS decides to attack new enemies (pull) then their can be consequences, leading to the next rule.

• If you pull it, you tank it.
  

It's very hard to tank, if you make it any harder by drawing in new enemies then you deserve to get smacked around. It's what I like to think of as a learning opportunity.

• If your group can't kill it, don't pull it.

The other side of the coin of the previous rule is, that the tank sets the pace but it dose him no good to pull the entire room at once if the DPS isn't strong enough to kill the baddies before the healer runs out of mana and they all get killed. Start out slow and work your way up on how big a group you pull.

• A group lives and dies on it's healer.
  

If the healer dies, everyone else dies. So protect them no mater what.

• If the healer says "OOM" you stop till they say it's time to go again.

OOM means "out of mana" If the healer has no mana then they can't heal anyone in other words please refer to the previous rule.

• No abuse

Even if your group wipes, don't grief anyone. Remember what your mom told you; "If you can't say anything nice then don't say anything at all.

• Take criticism
  

If your entire group tells you to stop doing something, or change something. Say thanks and do it. Either it will make things go more smoothly or nothing will change and no one can blame you.

• Say thank you.

At the end of your dungeon run say thank you. Even if the group sucks, say thank you. Good manners help.
The most important thing to remember is your their to have fun, and not let your fun ruin someone else's. Play nice with the other children and they'll play nice with you.

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
  -Morison
 
 


 

I want to do all the things.

Cataclysm has earned a reputation as Warcraft's worst expansion despite it's many quality of life improvements (I'm looking at you hunters). Cataclysm gave us transmog, void storage and Looking of Raid. What it didn't give us was adequate end game content, as a result most of us spent the better

part of the last year of the game leveling up alts. Mists of Pandaria on the other hand has given us worlds of things to do at end game; nine heroic dungeons, six normal dungeons, six heroic scenarios, fifteen normal scenarios,  five heroic and normal raids, thirteen raid wings in LFR, four wings in flex raid, nine challenge mode dungeons, nine world bosses, battleground, rated battlegrounds, arena teams, pet battles, transmog runs, proving grounds, your farm at Halfhill, professions, secondary professions (cooking, fishing and archeology ) thirteen reps to grind, brawler's guild and of course leveling alts. That's a lot to do, and with no content seeming to be removed plus the introduction of Garrisons coming in the

new Warlords of Draenor expansion it doesn't look like we'll be lacking for any content to keep us busy. This very point spawned a conversation with a guildie recently. He was saying that he was practically dreading the new garrisons feature coming with the expansion because of all the extra time he will have to spend on them with all his extra characters. It was this conversation that got the hamster wheel in my brain turning. At what point dose this stop being a game and starts being a job? I understand wanting to do everything. Blizzards very good at creating compelling content that we all want to take

part in, I also understand wanting to get the most out of the characters that you've leveled up but their are only so many hours in a day and only so many of those can be allocated to playing a game (stupid work wants me to actually earn my paycheck). So where do you draw the line? How much is too much? I think the answer is that you need to scale back when you start to feel obligated to do things in the game not because you want to, or because it's fun but because you "have too". We have been given all these options so that we don't run out of fun things to do. It however was never intended for us to do

all of them at once on eleven characters. If you feel overwhelmed just playing through your dallies on all your alts, maybe you should just play one or two characters at a time. Limit yourself to things that make you happy. When you start to dread the log in screen then it's time to stop playing, or at least stop playing it the way you are.

Remember we're all noobs, some of us just fly the flag a little higher.
-Morison

Tune in Blackwing Tune in Blackwing

For those of you that are new to wow or just newer then Burning Crusade we're very used to the idea that when we want to raid all we have to do is get our team together and head into the instance but that wasn't the case back in the early days of Warcraft. In both the original Worlds of Warcraft and Burning Crusade you had to meet certain requirements before you could enter a raid. If a player beat a dungeon (for our purposes Blackrock Spire) You could enter the raid instance that was actually located within the dungeon it's self.  It was like a reward for beating the dungeon. The problem with this is that if you died in the raid you would be sent outside the dungeon instance and would have to beat the dungeon all over again before you could re-enter the raid. Anyone who's ever been on a progression raid team or even done LFR can tell you why that doesn't work. So Blizzard came up with this "brilliant" idea called attunement. By completing a quest which included beating a

corresponding dungeon and locating a particular item in said dungeon they would be able to attune themselves with that raid and in essence be able to enter it from a separate location. This was before Blizzard decided that the better idea was to just let players go right into the raid (Thank you Blizzard). Somewhere in the past couple of patches Blizzard added new rare battle pets as loot drops to some old raids giving old and new players reasons to go back and see this old content. The only problem is that if you weren't around for these raids the first time you wouldn't have attunement, and the knowledge of how to get attunement is like a theremin, no one has a clue how to make it work. I tell you all this to give context to my story of failure and guide that I'm going to give everyone.

About a week and a half ago I decided that I would try and collect some of the new pets from the Blackwing Lair raid. Not having played during original WOW I didn't have attunement So I headed into Blackrock Spire thinking "Oh I'll figure it out". I was very wrong. As a point of fact I actually got lost in the dungeon for forty-five minuets and had to have a guildie come and tow me in to safety so to speak (Thanks Kell). They helped me clear the dungeon so that I could click the stone at the end and get attunement. Problem, I hadn't picked up the quest to get it so all our work was for not. Sadly she had to go and I was left on my own. I not being able to find the quest giver (Their isn't one for this particular quest. More on that later) was forced to look up this quest and where to get it online. Sadly the website I went to listed almost all the information about this quest incorrectly (costing me another forty minuets) it was around this point that one of my other guildies heard me using some four letter words and asked me what I was doing. You see the quest ( Blackhand's Command) drops off  Scarshield Quartermaster located outside the instance but inside Blackrock Mountain (right where my curser is in the image below)

Accept the quest and proceed into Blackrock Spire. Complete The upper Blackrock dungeon. After you kill General Drakkisath You will spot an orb behind him, click it to complete the quest and earn

attunement. This will allow you to enter the Blackwing Lair raid instance at the opposite end of the hallway from Blackrock Spire instance by clicking on the orb without have to go through any extra steps.

Remember always look before you leap, do your research before you try something your thoroughly unfamiliar with and enjoy.

Remember we're all noobs, Some of us just fly the flag a little higher.

-Morison