Honor's Code

SWTOR Beta Weekend Impressions

2011-11-21T00:24:00.001-05:00

I plan on rolling on the Republic side at Launch, so I rolled on the Sith side for my Weekend Beta. This way I got to experience the classes, but not spoil any of the story. The classes in SWTOR are exact mirrors, so when I play my Sith Warrior, I’m playing the same class as a Jedi Knight. Some of the names and animations of the spells are different, but mechanically they are identical.

Over the weekend, I played a Bounty Hunter, an Imperial Agent and a Sith Warrior. I spent the least amount of time on the Agent. I don’t know if my graphics card wasn’t working right, or I just didn’t understand how cover worked, but I never saw any of the cover icons I had seen in the videos. When I hit cover, my agent simply knelt down. and my action bar changed. The powers available in cover were far more powerful than those available outside of cover, but by the time I had gotten in cover and was ready to attack, some Bounty Hunter came by and shot the guy I was targeting.

The next class I tried was the Bounty Hunter. I had just watched the Trooper versus Agent video and I loved the toolkit the Trooper had. Bounty Hunter is the Trooper's mirror. It took me a while to get used to the Bounty Hunters resource system, called Heat. It’s sort of like Rage in reverse. Most of your attacks generate heat, and once you have filled your heat bar, you can’t use any attack that generates heat until you cool down enough. Heat slowly dissipates over time if you don’t use any heat generating attacks. The bounty hunter combat was fun, but the most impressive thing about the class was the story. The bounty hunter had the best story of any class i played.

I spent most of my playtime with the Sith Warrior and he did not disappoint. The combat system was fun and the most intuitive. The Sith Warrior works on Rage points (Jedi Knights call them Focus points). You have a basic attack that generates Rage points, and stronger attacks that use Rage points. I don’t think you get any rage points for being hit. Rage points carry over from battle to battle but they do slowly dissipate if you aren’t in combat for a while.

The Warrior was the only class that I got far enough in the weekend to get my first companion on, and it was a game changing experience. My companion was very well written. She was at the level of Jaheria, or Imoen, or Bastilla. As you make choices you can see her affection going up or down. I would make a choice and see her affection go down and regret it, and try to make a different choice the next time around. She also provided a Ranged DPS character and helped out with combat.

Companions, story and faithfulness to the IP were definite strengths of SWTOR. Another refreshing change from my recent WoW leveling was that I could over pull and actually die. Taking on mobs of my level was fairly easy, but even one level more than me proved very difficult. I never was in danger of out leveling an area, if anything I almost needed more experience, and grinding random mobs to keep up with where the quests were sending me. The experience point curve feels very tightly balanced.

Of course, not everything was perfect, this is still beta after all. There were a couple of graphical bugs, and I’m hoping they get fixed before launch, although it was suggested to me that I should update my video card drives. I have an old ATI 4800 series, and for the most part it handled the game well. There was one quest that didn’t trigger, but reloading solved that.

The major design flaw I saw was that Bounty Hunters and Agents both start on the same world, Hutta, while Sith Warriors and Sith Inquisitors both start on Korriban. This could be a problem because if you and friend start the game, and he wants to be a force class and you want a tech class, you won’t be able to adventure together until the early teens. Imagine there was no way to get from Teldrasil to Goldshire, and you rolled a human and wanted to play with a friend who rolled a Night Elf. There wasn’t any way I could find to get from Korriban to Hutta before you get your ship and to do that you have to progress through your class story to at least level 10.

The other issue I was was that because of the load on the servers, they broke into shards, or instances similar to what I saw in Champions Online. So I might be in Korriban-1 while my friend was in Korriban-6. Getting together was a little tricky to figure out at first, but we managed. There is a ridiculously long cool down on changing shards that i really hope gets reduced by the time we go live.

I didn’t get far enough to get my advanced class or try a Flashpoint (SWTOR equivalent of a dungeon). I’m hoping I”ll be able to do that in the upcoming weekend. (Stephen Reid, community manager for SWTOR confirmed our characters from the last weekend will carry over!)

I think @Linedan from my Twitter followers said it best, It’s a good game, but do not try to compare it to the insane excessive hype that’s flying around. That’s unrealistic.

Speculation: Role Breakdown at SWTOR End Game

2011-11-17T21:05:00.001-05:00

It has been announced that part of the SWTOR will be Operations. These are large, PVE encounters, and are basically the functional equivalent of raids from other MMOs. The model I was familiar with from my days in World of Warcraft was 10 man raids and 25 man raids. SWTOR is going to alter that mix a bit by using 8 man teams, and 16 man teams. We also know from the descriptions of the various classes that SWTOR will use the classic Trinity system of Tank, Healer, and DPS.

How will your typical team break down into the roles? We know group composition will be determined by encounter design. Unfortunately, all that information is locked up tight behind the NDA, but if we look at the World of Warcraft example, the typical 10 man was 2 tanks, 2 or 3 healers, and 5 or 6 DPS. The 25 man had more flexibility with 2 or 3 tanks, 7 to 9 healers, and 13 to 16 DPS. In the later expansions, 2 tanks became the norm in both 10 man and 25 man content.

Let’s assume for the purposes of this discussion that SWTOR Operations will employ 2 tanks in both the 8 man and 16 man environments. With that baseline established, it should be a simple exercise to figure out the number of healers, and then the remaining spots will be filled by DPS. If we have 2 healers in our 8 man team, that leaves 4 spots for DPS, but this really puts some stress on the healers. If there is raid wide damage, and we saw an example of this in the blow back ability the giant robot did in the Eternity Vault video at E3, then the two healers are responsible for both tanks, as well as the raid. They could split this up by having 1 healer cover both tanks, and the other healer cover the raid damage, or each healer would cover a single tank and fill in on raid damage as needed. Either way, the healers are going to be very busy.

I know in Warcraft 10 man teams sometimes ran two healers, but in our group we nearly always ran 3 on new content. This still left half the raid for DPS, but look at what happens if you do that in an 8 man team. Now you have only 3 spots left for DPS. If the boss has an enrage timer, will 3 dps be able to beat it? Even if the boss doesn’t, will 3 dps be able to do enough damage before the healers run out of force, or whatever mechanic the healers are using to power their spells? I think that will lead to the default configuration being 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 dps, and really put on onus on healers doing their job well.

8 to 16 scales up much more easily than 10 to 25. We could try a model that simply doubles the 8 man team to make our 16 man team. That would leave us with 4 tanks, 4 healers, and 8 dps, but I don’t think that is how it will work out. I’m assuming that the same encounters will be used for both 8 and 16 man teams, and given what we’ve seen from Warcraft, the number of tanks generally holds steady. So we will again have just 2 tanks in our 16 man. Those extra two spots probably go to healers, or one healer and one dps, so your alignment looks like 2 tanks, 4 healers, and 8 dps or 2 tanks, 3 healers, and 9 dps.

One conclusion this line of thinking leads to is that one of the issues we saw in World of Warcraft repeats in Old Republic. You have a need for many tanks in your Flashpoints, but you need far less tanks in your Operations. In Warcraft, this helped contribute to a tank shortage in the Flashpoint level content, called Heroics or simply 5 mans. We could see a similar dynamic in Old Republic where, as a tank, you were practically begged for in Flashpoints, but have a hard time finding a spot in a raid/Operation.

Old Republic appears to have borrowed heavily from World of Warcraft in its design, thereby inheriting its strong market appeal, but also inheriting its issues.

Living for the Weekend

2011-11-10T22:42:00.001-05:00

If you follow my Twitter feed @TedtheThird, you know I was one of the people picked to test Star Wars the Old Republic this weekend. Friday night, I will be actually play the game I’ve been waiting 3 years to play. When I downloaded the client, I noticed I was a little short on hard drive space, so I made it official and uninstalled World of Warcraft. It’s been a great ride, but it’s really over now.

The first question I asked myself is what I was going to play for beta. My plan all along has been to roll a Jedi Knight Guardian at launch, but do I want to play him during beta? On the plus side, I could start to get familiar with the class, and it’s combat capabilities and see how I like it.The downside is i really don’t want to spoil the story for launch .I will be in the first or second day of early access since i activated my preorder code about 5 hours after the preorder went on sale.

I don’t plan on playing a Sith character right now. After my Guardian, the next class I want to play is a Smuggler Sharpshooter. So what i”m thinking right now is I’ll play a Sith Warrior Juggernaut for beta. It will allow me to get a feel for the class since the Juggernaut and the Guardian are essentially the same class with different names for their spells, but it will allow me to keep the story fresh for launch. I’m not going to mess with crafting, just too short a time to worry with that.

I plan on writing a non NDA breaking blog post on Monday to let you know about my experiences, but this highlights a little problem the invite caused. Once I play beta, I can’t talk about it until the NDA is lifted. That’s going to make it really hard to blog about SWTOR without using knowledge i gained in game. I don’t want to jeopardize my account, so I won’t be leaking anything here, but as soon as the NDA is lifted I’ll let you know everything I found out.

The 3 Tanks of SWTOR

2011-11-08T22:13:00.001-05:00

As we are getting closer to launch, I wanted to start honing in on the tank classes for Star Wars the Old Republic. Very little is known about the actual tanking mechanics to anyone not in the beta, and those people ain’t talking. The information in this post was compiled from two interviews with Lead System designer, Georg Zoeller, one with Republic Trooper, and one on Red Rancor.

We know that there are 3 tank classes in the game with different names depending on whether they fight for Republic and Sith.

Trooper Vanguard / Bounty Hunter Power Tech
Jedi Consular Shadow / Sith Inquisitor Assassian
Jedi Knight Guardian / Sith Warrior Juggernaut

For simplicity, I’m going to use the Republic names since that will be the side of my ‘main’ in SWTOR, but everything I say about one AC is true too of the mirror, so if I talk about Guardians, I mean that same things apply to Juggernauts.

We know that the goal of the Devs is for each tank to be viable in the main tank role. This isn’t vanilla WoW where we had one true tank (Warrior) and two sort of tanks (Druids and Paladins).

Georg Zoeller said, "All tank specs in the game are designed to function as a main tank. There are no 'off tanks' by design in the game, that would involve players intentionally choosing such a role by speccing hybrid.By design, all tank capable ACs can spec to be fully capable main tanks. There are no 'off tanks' unless you intentionally spend your skill points into different trees.”

This is a great goal, but we will have to wait until the NDA is lifted to see how well that goal is being accomplished in end game Operations.

Shadow

Now the Shadow was assumed to be an avoidance tank, and in past MMOs, that tanking model has not faired well. But Georg gave Red Rancor a little ‘not so fast’.

He said, “Shadow and Assassin rely a bit more on avoidance in their tanking ability mix than other Advanced Classes. The actual contribution of avoidance to Jedi Shadow/Sith Assassin survivability is only about 5% higher than for other Advanced Classes. They also have some active defenses that can increase their survivability and mitigate incoming burst damage if needed.”

The active defenses makes me think of the model of the World of Warcraft Death Knight who have swung from wildly overpowered to struggling underpowered as they were tweaked and balanced from patch to patch. The Shadow does get more of his survivability from avoidance, but not a whole lot more, so perhaps he will not fall prey to the issues that have affected other evasion type tanks.

There seems to be already be a little of the ‘Shadow can’t tank’ feeling to the game because dedicated Shadow tanks launched MainTankasin. If the name looks familiar, it should, as it harkens back to the Maintankadin, which was the site dedicated to proving Paladins could be viable tanks in WoW. The fact that a group of Assassins would want to launch this site gives credence to having to fight for the notion that Shadows are viable.

Guardian

The assumption about the Guardian/Warrior was that they would be mitigation tanks, like the World of Warcraft Warrior. I have yet to find any source from a Dev that talks about the model for the Guardian/Juggernaut tank. This concerns me.

Vanguard

What we do know from the Republic Trooper article is that Troopers are definitely mitigation tanks. Zoeller, in the interview with Republic Trooper said, “their tanking ability is based more upon absorption and shielding and less about avoidance, making them the slightly more predictable tanks (Medics love that).”

I find this highly concerning for Guardians and Shadows. Being the most predictable tank is a huge advantage, and could very well signal that Troopers will be the default MT of SWTOR, and the Troopers advantages don’t stop there.

Again Zoeller to Republic Trooper, “Unlike the Guardian and the Shadow, the Vanguard is capable of building threat even from range, giving them the limited but marked ability of tanking at a distance.”

This is another concern, as most veteran MMO players know the innate advantage ranged has over melee. Zoeller said, “Since this is a Star Wars game, and most enemies in Star Wars utilize ranged weapons such as blaster rifles, cannons or grenade launchers, the Vanguard’s ability to draw attention from range also emerged as a distinct advantage over melee bound classes like the Jedi Guardian, who have to close from range to create initial threat.”

But this had some drawbacks as well. It was tough to tell who was actually tanking. It also made it difficult for the Trooper to perform some of the mob positioning necessary for tanks to do. So they decided to nerf the troopers range.

Zoeller said, “we’ve solved this problem by moving the ‘sweet zone’ for tanking on the Vanguard into mid-range, allowing for strategic use of ranged attacks while keeping him in the thick of the action.”

What is interesting in all this discussion of ranged and melee is the discovery that SWTOR doesn’t have different rules for ranged and melee threat. In Warcraft, it is easier for melee characters to pull threat on a mob than ranged characters. Zoeller said, “there are no special calculations made in the threat calculation logic that would favor melee over ranged damage.”

I hope we get some new information on the mechanics of the Jedi Guardian soon so we can really round out our understanding of the three tanks. I am rooting for the Developers to accomplish their goal and have three viable relatively balanced tanks for end game Operations.

Guest Post “End Game”

2011-11-07T21:51:00.001-05:00

Short post today, as today’s actual post is a guest post I did on Mana Obscura on why the End Game is so vital to MMOs. Check it out.

Finding a Champion

2011-11-01T22:21:00.001-04:00

I’ve started playing Champions Online. It’s a fun game and a nice change of pace from WoW. I got a chance to try out Champions Online when they went free to play. I downloaded the client and had a blast trying out various classes.

My 3 favorites are my Behemoth, my Fist character and my custom “gold” Power Armor. Picking a ‘main’ toon has been difficult but I think it’s going to be my Behemoth.

Since I wanted to try it out for a month I subscribed to the gold package, but I think I will go back to the Free to Play “Silver”. I can still play my Fist and my Behemoth but I won’t be able to play my custom Power Armor.

This is my Fist character that I named Rokushijo Satsuma, or Roku for short. This is a martial arts type of hero like from the Bruce Lee movies. I based Roku on the Street Fighter character of Ryu, but the costume editor had it limitations especially in modeling Roku’s leggings.

Fist was a fun melee DPS type of archetype. His combat was pretty repetitive with spamming his Thundering Kick ability. This was a more fun concept than it was a character. I might come back to him at some point in the future.

This is my Behemoth character. Behemoth is an archetype that models Super Heroes like The Incredible Hulk, Thing from Fantastic Four, and Juggernaut from X-Men. You are basically big and strong and beat people down with your bare fists or by throwing environmental objects at them. I chose to model my Behemoth character after Colossus from the X-Men. Colossus is a lesser known super hero. I messed up my first attempt at making his costume and he ended up looking like Captain Planet, but I like his current costume much better.

Behemoth has a lot of fun powers where you end up basically hitting guys across the screen. It is also very ‘warrior-like’ with abilities like Thunderclap and Shockwave.

Behemoth is horrible in PVP in my experience. Melee in general doesn’t do well. When you have characters that can fly and have multiple ways of creating and maintaining distance on you, it’s very hard to make any headway. Probably the worst offender if Teleport which allows a character to disappear, move and reappear. However, if you quick on your keys, with a little server lag, you can disappear and reappear without ever showing up in the world and heal up before you reenter combat. It’s very frustrating.

But few things in Champions Online are as fun as picking up the enemies nukes and throwing them back at him.

This is the “gold” character I made to try out the freeform hero. There really wasn’t an archetype that harkens back to the Power Armor of Iron Man, or a Mecha suit. My Power Armor is named SAMAS (Strategic Ariel Military Assault Suit). I did the best job I could to match him to the SAMAS from the Pen and Paper Role Playing Game RIFTS. He combines much of what I enjoyed from Behemoth, but also has a ton of ranged tools. He’s a little bit of tank, and a little bit of firepower. When I turn on all of his weapons systems, there is much destruction and fun to be had.This is basically what I would have made my main in CO, but once SWTOR come out I won’t be able to maintain my “gold” status so I’ll be playing my Behemoth more.

Misty Thoughts

2011-10-26T00:17:00.002-04:00

The problem with blogging late is all the good puns are already used.
The interwebs are all a twitter with news from Blizzcon. For me, Blizzcon was a strange sort of out of body experience. This was the first expansion for World of Warcraft that I knew I'd be taking a pass on before it was even announced.
Here are my general thoughts:

If for whatever reason SWTOR is a bust, or I'm no longer engaged with it by the time Pandaria is released, it is good to know that Blizzard's opus will still there, and with some interesting new content.
Talents are broken! Major redesign! which expansion have that NOT said this. Probably only Burning Crusade.
Pokemon for companion pets. Congratulations, you've won the Path of the titans award for feature most likely to be axed before launch.
Death Knight asphyxiate, also known as Force Choke. I've been noting how similar some SWTOR abilities are to WoW abilities. Blizzard says we can play that game, too.
The Annual Pass is a really a brilliant piece of marketing. I've always maintained that you don't get to be a multi billion dollar company without some smart people working for you. Blizzard shows me that this is true. A free game is a pretty good win for all gamers. When evil corporations compete, gamers win?
If you were planning on playing Diablo and on the fence on WoW, this is a sweet offer.
If, like me, Diablo (1,2 or 3) never really sparked much interest, this won't be much of an incentive.
There is a some fine print, a couple of provisos, some quip pro quos you should be aware of before you plunk down for the Annual Pass. It may be billed monthly, but you are locked in for a year, and this effectively ties to your Diablo account to WoW account (though your combined Blizzard account). Keep in mind that D3 requires you to be online, even in single player mode. If you get Diablo free, and then cancel WoW, you lose your Diablo access as well. ~~This is true even after the Annual Pass expiries, if I'm reading the fine print right.~~ Looks like I wasn't. You only lose Diablo III access if you don't fulfill the entire year of the Annual Pass.
I can't think of anyway to say this without it sounding snarky, but does this smell of a little desperation from Blizzard boys? Nah, can't be.
Okay, Pandas. Love him or hate 'em. I love 'em. Seriously. If I was still playing WoW, I'd think long and hard about making Honorshammer (now an 84 Warrior) a Panda.
Monks. Chalk up another for the things they devs said would never happen that happened.
Let's see they can be Tanks, Melee DPS, and Healers. Where have I seen that before. OH that's right, that's the exact role mix of the Paladin class. May Blizzard have much more luck in designing Paladins 2.0 than the first 3 or 4 times around.
Monks build up Chi, and then use it power Light side or Dark side powers. You can't make this kind of stuff up. I think somebody at Blizzard HQ got a beta invite to SWTOR. (Who do I have to pay off or kill off to get a dang invite? /frustrated) Honestly, if I was still playing WoW, I'd be sorely tempted by the Monk class.
How about all that information on the new active tanking model?
/crickets
Or all the cool stuff they announced about Titan, their next gen MMO
/crickets

Apropos of nothing, I cancelled my account three weeks ago, and tonight was the first time I’ve really missed it. But the calculus hasn’t changed. I have a hard time putting time into a game and character I know I’m abandoning in 56 days.
Right moving on.

SWTOR Press Embargo Lifted

2011-10-20T23:21:00.001-04:00

The press embargo lifted on Old Republic today. This isn’t the NDA. That is still in effect. The press embargo is on professional gaming sites like Massively, IGN, etc. The lifting of the embargo basically means they can now post articles from their time in beta. Basically what BioWare is doing is giving the press a head start so they can get their articles out. Likely the next step is the lifting of the NDA, and then a deluge of blogs, Facebook, and twitter posts from people who have been in beta. You lucky dogs, I hate you all, well, not really. But my jealousy makes me powerful.

I find the timing of the lifting of the embargo interesting. The sort of thing that makes you go “hmmm”. You see Friday is the start of the Blizzcon which is Blizzard’s big annual convention. By lifting the embargo the day before, BioWare has ensured a flood of new information on the Old Republic to compete with any big reveals coming out of Blizzcon. I wonder how much conversation on the show floor among the participants will be dominated by TOR news?

The Blizzard guys are very busy with Blizzcon prep and by releasing the day before, at the height of preparations, they give Blizzard little time to respond, if they would have been inclined to do so anyway. I think Blizzard will largely ignore SWTOR outside of maybe some snarky remark by one of the Blizzard big wigs at the keynote or opening ceremonies.

Surprisingly, I find myself reticent to dive too deeply into these new articles on the Old Republic. Part of what excites me about the game is the newness. New systems, new zones, new mobs, new everything. Every bit of prerelease information I get will take a little bit away from the awe of the new things I’m going to see.

My main concern is story spoilers. One of the best moments I’ve ever had in the video game was the big reveal/plot twist in the original Old Republic. If I had known that going in, it would have changed everything about how I experienced the game, and it impacted every one of my replays. So I really want to avoid story spoilers. But at the same time, I’m very curious about the systems that I’m going to be experiencing over the next couple of months.

Here’s a quick sampling from around the interwebs of what is being said.

The Escapist: “BioWare's promised to bring meaningful storytelling to the MMO genre and, based on the starting planets at least, that promise has been fulfilled.”

Massively : “Here is his final thoughts :At the end of the day, TOR surpassed my expectations a wee bit. I loved the world design and enjoyed the leveling gameplay for what it was, but I found the story elements unnecessary at best (and downright distracting at worst). Ultimately the early portions of the game are well-made and it's likely going to keep Star Wars nuts and themeparkers happy for a while. For those of us who realize that MMOs were meant to be more than casual combat games, though, I'm afraid Sir Alec Guinness said it best when he said this is not the MMO we're looking for.”

My personal favorite came from 1UP.

1UP: “It's World of Warcraft with Lightsabers, and it's amazing" & "It's not groundbreaking, but it sure is fun."

Ask a Jedi has a great roundup of all the coverage here:

http://www.askajedi.com/2011/10/20/press-testing-embargo-coverage-roundup/

Christmas can’t get here soon enough!

SWTOR Character Creation Part II – Advanced Classes

2011-10-11T23:58:00.000-04:00

(Disclaimer: game is still in beta, subject to change, blah, blah, blah)
The character creation process in SWTOR is a series of cascading decisions that renders you with a character that is hopefully sufficiently custom.

Last time, we talked about the base or story class. Today, I want to talk about taking your character to next level, literally. At level 10, you get to pick your advanced class (AC). While at first glance, this may seem reminiscent of the specialization choice from World of Warcraft, I think you will find that the AC is much closer to what most MMOs call a class. Generally, a specialization in World of Warcraft limits you to one trinity role. Feral Druids, I see your paws up in the air, I know, now put them down. In SWTOR, each Advanced Class has one or two trinity roles it can spec into.

Let's look at the Republic Advanced classes. Jedi Knights choose between the Guardian AC (Tank/DPS) and the Sentinel AC (DPS). Jedi Consolers choose between the Sage AC (Heal/DPS) and the Shadow AC (Tank/DPS). Troopers choose between the Vanguard AC (Tank/DPS) and the Commando AC (Heal/DPS). Smugglers choose between the Scoundrel AC (Heal/DPS) and the Sharpshooter AC (DPS).

Your advance class opens up three skill trees. Two are exclusive to your advanced class, and one is shared with the other advance class available to your story class. Let's look at an example. The Jedi Knight Guardian advanced class trees are Vigilance, Defense, and Focus. Vigilance is your single blade dps tree like the Warrior's Arms tree in WoW. Defense is the tanking tree. Focus is a lightsaber techniques tree and is also available to the Jedi Knight Sentinel. In addition to Focus, the Sentinel has access to the Watchman and Combat trees which enhance his fighting ability.

At the time of this writing, respecs work like vanilla WoW. You go back to your capital city (Coruscant for the Republic and Dromond Kaas for the Sith) and pay an ever increasing fee to switch specs. It is important to note that this is for changing your spec within your advanced class. For example, this respec would be used to change your Tank specialized Guardian into a DPS specialized Guardian.

The cost for changing your advanced class scales with level and according to Devs, it becomes prohibitively expensive after about level 30. This is changing from a Guardian to a Sentinel. (See disclaimer) Once you pick your Advanced Class, that's what you are.

The fly in the ointment will be balance. The developers have stated their goal that Guardian and Sentinel DPS are close enough to be viable, but the devil as usual is in the details. The natural question then is why pick a Sentinel if the Guardian can do comparable DPS and switch to tank, but the Sentinel can only dps. First point is the devs have communicated the cost in time and credits of the respec is not trivial. I think this is somewhat naive. One of the first requests that will be made after launch is a way to teleport back to Coruscant, or teleport to the raid. Cost will be group sourced as necessary. In WoW, I had many a specialization paid for by the guild.

The answer the devs are hoping for to the question of why would any one be a Sentinel is: because their character concept is a Jedi who dual wields. Only Sentinel's can do that, and if your fantasy is to be like Anakin dual wielding lightsabers, you'll pick a Sentinel, and be very happy with our choice. Character concepts harkens back to our pen and paper days playing RPGs. I’m curious to see how they translate into the MMO space.

Today’s Post

2011-10-06T23:47:00.001-04:00

I'm going to delay what I was going to post today until Monday, because today I want to talk about the passing of Steve Jobs. You can read my thoughts over on my Writer’s blog.

Worth 1000 Words

2011-10-05T21:39:00.002-04:00

Sometimes pictures really are:

SWTOR Character Creation Guide Part I: Story Class

2011-10-04T22:29:00.001-04:00

(Disclaimer: game is still in beta, subject to change, blah, blah, blah)

The character creation process in SWTOR is a series of cascading decisions that renders you with a character that is hopefully sufficiently custom.

When most people think about creating a character in an RPG, the question of race and role/class is usually foremost. While SWTOR has all three components, the way it breaks down might not be readily apparent to those who haven’t read deeply on the game yet.

This first choice is your story class. There are 8 possibilities, 4 per faction. On the Republic side, your choices are Jedi Knight, Jedi Consoler, Smuggler and Trooper. On the Sith side, the choices are Sith Warrior, Sith Inquisitor, Imperial Agent and Bounty Hunter. This choice determines the you class story which guides you throughout the entire game in a series of 3 chapters. Each chapter is longer than the original KOTOR, if you played that. Unlike other MMOs the majority of the game is made up of class specific quests, and each class has its own story. If you play as a Jedi Knight, and then you reroll as a different class, say a Smuggler, you will see a completely different set of quests*.

*I’m going to digress for a just a moment to correct a bit of hype. The devs are fond of saying that you won’t repeat a single quest if you reroll and that’s technically true, as long as you change factions. If you reroll on the same faction, you will see some of the same quests. There are three kinds of quests in SWTOR: Class Quests, World Quests, and Galaxy Quests. Class quests which are specific to your story class. World quests which are quests everyone of your faction gets on that world. Galaxy quests span multiple planets and again are the same for everyone on your faction. So if you reroll in the same faction, you will repeat the world quests and galaxy quests.

This choice of story class will also determine which model of starship you’ll be flying around in. Despite my love for the Republic, even I must admit that the Sith ships look cooler on the whole.

An example of a Sith Ship:

An example of a Republic Ship:

Really, no contest.

Your choice for your trinity role is still fairly open at this point. The only caveats are if you want to heal, you can’t pick Jedi Knight, or Sith Warrior. If you want to tank, you can’t pick Smugger or Imperial Agent. That’s it.

You will be able to customize facial features, hair, tattoos and other aspect of your appearance. Already you could have two very different characters, even if you chose the same story class. At level 10, you get to pick your advanced class (AC). This is closer to what most MMOs call a class. Each advanced class has one or two trinity roles it can spec into.

Next up, we’ll look at the Advanced Classes more in-depth.

No Longer Viable

2011-10-03T00:18:00.001-04:00

I talked to my raid team leader last night, and it’s apparent that our raid team is no longer viable. Our raid leader is going to take some time and decides what he wants to do. I’m doing the same. Wich did a fantastic job of running our raid team, but he couldn’t keep guys interested in the game. We simply took too many loses, too quickly to recover.

The question now what do I do. I seem to be at a crossroads. I still enjoy raiding and haven't even seen the last two bosses in Firelands.

The first problem is I really have no desire to continue raiding on my Hunter. I switched from tanking on my Paladin Tank to DPS as a Hunter for Cataclysm. I've done okay but it's clear to me I'm struggling as a DPS. For some reason the Hunter rotation just didn’t click with me. I don’t know why. I was fighting to stay out of the 5 hole when we ran two tanks and struggled to stay out of 6 hole when we ran one.

I tried switched from SV to Marks with the idea being a higher ceiling would let me achieve better numbers. It didn’t help. When we would bring in other hunters they would out dps me even though I out geared them. I’ve went on EJ, TKA Something, Warcraft Hunter’s Union, but my numbers didn’t improve much. Something just wasn’t clicking.

So I don’t want to continue on the Hunter, but I would like to keep raiding. My preferred toon would be my Warrior, but he's got more greens than a house salad.

One option is to gear him up and try to find a new raid team. But we are about 10 or 11 weeks away from SWTOR's release. Does it make any sense to try to find a new team when I'm less than 3 months out from changing games?

If I don’t try to keep raiding, is there any point in keeping my account active?

But what if SWTOR gets delayed?

Another option would be to try for Trade Chat PuGs. I don’t know how well they are doing on my realm, but getting in one might be hard without the necessary Achievements.

Bottom line is I like raiding. It's something I still want to do and I still have months until Star Wars.

I’d love to hear any suggestions or advice you might have?

We Have a Date

2011-09-27T00:17:00.001-04:00

So by now you may have heard that BioWare made the big announcement over the weekend. We know the release date for The Old Republic – 12/20/2011. I don’t think the date had anything to do with Blizzard’s own announcement of moving Diablo III back to 2012. The plan all along was to put Deathwing (and transmogrification) up against Star Wars. I’ll be starting a little earlier thanks to my pre-order. No one knows just how early yet, probably a weekend or so. I’ll need it because Tython, the starting world for Jedi Knights, and Jedi Consolers, is going to be crushed on opening day with Jedi.

I came to WoW late, around patch 1.9. I’ve never played an MMO at launch. This should be an experience.

In the meantime, the question now is what do I do with my last 3 months in WoW? I’d love to finish the Firelands. I just hope my team can put it together long enough to get that done.

Tough Spot

2011-09-21T22:20:00.001-04:00

My raid team is in tough spot. Attendance has been a constant thorn pretty much the entire expansion, but it’s becoming more of a roadblock than thorn now. We are a team that has been raiding since Karazhan. We've had some attrition over the years, but we've kept it together pretty well. It was never mechanics that held us back this tier, it was attendance. We have been constantly battling burnout from our team members, and struggling to fill raids. That's what held us back in Firelands more than anything else.

I understand it. We've been at this a long time and everyone reaches their time when they say no mas. Of the last 6 attempts we’ve made at raiding, we fielded a team twice. I have to take some responsibility for this myself as I’ve only been able to raid one day a week for the past 4 weeks due to work, and the new night we tried was a night I simply couldn’t raid. But even with me there we are not fielding a full team.

I'm holding out hope for our team, but to borrow from an Old Testament story, the ‘writing is on the wall.’

SWTOR: Jedi Knight Powers from the Esseles Walkthrough

2011-09-07T00:27:00.001-04:00

BioWare recently released a walkthrough of the Esseles Flashpoint. Darth Hater did a wonderful job with their dissection of the video and they were able to pickup several of the Jedi Knight powers used in the walkthrough. All the screenshots here are taken from Darth Hater’s dissection.

It is important to remember that Esseles is a low level Flashpoint. The characters are around level 10. They classes haven’t broken into their advanced classes. This is like a Deadmines or a Ragefire Chasm.

Here we see what will likely be the Jedi Knight’s main nuke. It works for both Guardians and Sentinels, with the Sentinel getting more damage by striking with both blades. The attack is channeled which means the Knight will need to keep his target in range for the duration. I don’t know if you can move while channeling, but if you can’t I can see JKs getting kited a ton.

This is an AoE (Area of Effect) attack. Guardian’s will use this for multi-target aggro, Sentinels for multi-target damage. This is pretty close to the Whirlwind attack of the World of Warcraft Warrior.

Every class in TOR gets an out of combat ability to heal. For Jedi Knight’s this is called Introspection. It makes you think of the scene in Phantom Menace where Qui-Gon kneels and meditates while waiting for the shields separating him from Darth Maul to go down. This is similar to bandaging or drinking that you see in World of Warcraft.

Now we begin to see some of the tanking skills, but remember these are available to both Guardians (Tanks) and Sentinels (DPS). We don’t know the exact effects of parry and deflect. When you parry/deflect do you take zero damage or just reduced damage? If it’s no damage, this could work out to a 50% damage reduction depending on your natural parry percentage and the luck of the dice. So while Sentinel’s could use this, you’ve got to think that Guardian’s will have a higher base chance to parry.

This almost feels like a tanking skill, but I think that is because it reminds me so much of the Revenge ability of the World of Warcraft Warrior. Guardians are more likely to parry and deflect so I imaging this skill will be available more for Guardians than Sentinels.

Kicking Down the Gates

2011-09-06T00:20:00.001-04:00

After our successful kill of Lord Ryloth, Devolve sets its sights on Alysrazor. Technically, we are now in Ambivalence, but I still think of our team as Devolve. Our attempts on Alysrazor went….poorly. So after clearing the farm bosses (I love that Ryloth is on farm) we headed over to Baleroc instead.

We didn’t have an ideal composition for Baleroc with two hunters, but we went after him anyway. Hunters aren’t great for Baleroc because sometimes the crystals that DPS have to soak are too close in to allow Hunters to dps. Blizzard really needs to eliminate the minimum range on Hunters, especially when it causes encounter specific issues like this.

I have now met my weekly quota for qq. Lakini would be so proud.

We assigned 3 dps to the first crystal rotation and 3 dps to the second. I was in the second group following our Moonkin and Warlock. Both of those guys could take quite a few stacks so the time I spent soaking was minimal.

We wiped a few times as we got the crystal mechanic down, and then our biggest obstacle became the Decimation Blade. This attack takes your tank down to 10% and you’ve got like 5 seconds to get him back up to over 90 or the next Decimation Blade is going to take him down. Baleroc is a one tank fight so if he bites it, it’s game over for the raid.

Our current tank corps consists of two Paladins. Both of these guys took up the shield after watching how much fun I had with it, and it makes me proud watching them tank bosses down like a champ. It took a couple more wipes for our healers to get the timing of Decimation Blade down. We run two Holy Paladins along with a Resto Shaman. Yes, there’s a LOT of pink in our raid frames - our Lock struggles for shoulders.

I don’t know what clicked in our healers but they did a fantastic job and got us through each and every Decimation Blade, and Baleroc coughed up his purples. It was a cloth and leather night.

We couldn’t go poke Staghelm because Alysrazor was still up, but now we sit at 4/7 in Firelands. Our goal remains to kill normal Rag before 4.3. Here’s hoping we make it!

Jedi Knights

2011-09-01T23:33:00.001-04:00

I was not selected for the first Beta Weekend. This is disappointing, but I can always hope for next weekend.

In the mean time, let’s talk Jedi Knights. I think everyone has known on some level that Jedi Knights would be a playable class in Star Wars: The Old Republic. This is MY class, my intended ‘main’. I’ve been interested when the other classes were revealed, but my attention is riveted on the Jedi.

Here’s the official class page: http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/classes/jedi-knight

Valiant, Determined, Guardian of Peace

A symbol of hope in dark times, the Jedi Knight stands for the legacy of the Jedi Order—more than twenty-thousand years of protecting the Republic and keeping the peace across the galaxy. Though Jedi Knights have served as generals, guerilla fighters, and warriors for generations, their legendary combat prowess faces its greatest test during this age.

Through years of disciplined training and meditation, the Jedi Knight hones body and mind into perfect harmony. Combining the foresight of the Force with unrivaled reflexes and practiced physical precision, the Knight turns combat into an art form, gracefully executing acrobatic feats in tandem with elegant lightsaber tactics.

A source of inspiration to allies and intimidation to adversaries, the Jedi Knight’s presence is welcome in any confrontation. The Order’s long history of fighting for justice has earned the trust of countless friends and the hate of innumerable enemies. Few, though, are foolish enough to challenge a seasoned Jedi Knight unless they have the skills and technology to even the odds.

That sounds like a very cool class.

There is a little bit on the site about the Jedi’s combat.

Whether defending allies by deflecting a barrage of blaster-fire or charging in to challenge a Sith Lord, the Knight’s role is crucial in any conflict. The Jedi Knight enjoys the benefit of ancient teachings that have been passed down through hundreds of generations. Combining these time-tested maneuvers with the natural guidance of the Force, the Knight is capable of achieving extraordinary feats.

Just as we saw with the Sith Warrior, it looks like Jedi Knight will be able to deflect Blaster Bolts from range.

Focusing body and mind, the Knight is capable of blasting opponents with a powerful wave of Force energy, knocking them off their feet. More powerful Jedi Knights have even been known to practice this technique against large groups.

It looks like Jedi will have some sort of Force Push that will be a knockdown. At higher levels, it will affect entire groups. Remember that you will be fighting multiple targets in TOR to give it that ‘heroic’ feel.

Combining physical prowess and Force focus, the Knight can throw his lightsaber in spinning arc to strike enemies at a distance. Practice and mastery of this maneuver enables the Knight to ensure his saber returns to his hand after its lethal circuit.

We get Lightsaber throw!

We’ve also seen a very cool Force Charge. It looks like some sort of attack where we fly through the air and launch a devastating blow on our enemy. It looks very cool.

We know that at level 10, the Jedi Knight graduate into two Advanced Classes: the tank focused, single saber Guardians, and the melee dps dual lightsaber wielding Sentinel. SWTOR will allow you to switch Advanced Classes but it has an expense in credits (in game currency). The current model is that it starts cheap and gets more expensive with level to the point it becomes prohibitive at around level 30. The level cap is 50.

The Guardian will be my path, and most of what I post here will be about Guardian Tanks in SWTOR.

I am really excited to see the Jedi Knight revealed as a playable class for TOR. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Driving and Crying

2011-08-23T21:01:00.001-04:00

Last Tuesday, we headed into Firelands. We currently have two bosses down, Shannox and Beth'ilac. I'm not sure I'd say on farm, but we usually get them both down each week. We are working on Lord Ryloth. Shannox and Beth were both one shots. I don't remember that happening before. We actually had some new trash to clear. It's trash that is tied to Shannox and usually it has despawned before we get to it. We figured it out pretty quick and began to march up the hill to Lord Ryloth.

I really don't like this fight. There is so much going on, and I need to be in about three places at once. Our melee dps takes care of steering. With our current raid composition we usually have all the buffs and debuffs covered so I go with a my cat, a Stranglethorn panther, named CamNation. Yes, I’m a Carolina Panthers, and Auburn university fan. How often does the favorite player from your college team get to play for your favorite NFL team? Pretty cool, huh?

I have two macros from my pet.

/tar Left Foot
/petattack

/tar Right Foot
/petattack

I listen for which foot the driver wants dps on and hit the appropriate macro. While Cam is chewing away on Ryloth, I'm helping out on Sparks, and Fragments. Sparks need to be dpsed down. If you don't kill them fast enough, they will charge one of your team members and do damage equal to whatever hit points they have left. Fragments are a bunch of little elementals that we have to AoE. There's also fire on the ground that moves that you have to avoid. It brings back bad memories of Archimonde.

I spend a ton of time running around getting in range of Sparks, or Fragments, and trying to avoid fire. We use a single tank, so I try to help out by misdirecting the Fragments to him as often as I can.

We had been stymied by Ryloth for a couple of weeks. We'd die just about every way possible on this fight. We'd die to fire, die to stomp, die to adds, die to bad driving. At some point in nearly every attempt, Lory Ryloth moves in front of me and blocks my whole screen. I can't see a thing and invariably that's when I get caught in a fire trail and boom, dead dwarf. Also the fire trails are not considered AoEs, so it would end up killing Cam. Being MM, I didn't bother rezzing him most of the time.

Of course, we had never killed Ryloth.

Then we go in Tuesday night, and the fight is going well. We're dpsing down adds and steering him to volcanoes. I don't know how Wich keeps everything straight, cause I'm doing well just to keep track of the adds I'm supposed to be shooting, but he called for the healers to get everyone topped because Ryloth did some big AoE, and then got big and fiery all over. The adds despawned and we poured all our DPS into him. He toppled over and gave up his loot. After a moment, we looked around and realized we had just one shot him.

We found out the next day he had seen some nerfs. I think the biggest one that helped us was his stomp not knocking people back. We lost people in other attempts from stomp knocking them into fire. The other big help was the burning down of his armor faster, shortening the fight. Less time we have, the less time things can go wrong.

I don't really care that they nerfed him. We didn't have the option to do the fight any other way than the way it was presented to us. We had been hitting our head against him for a couple of weeks and I know people were getting frustrated. It was nice to get him down, nerf or no.

Tinfoil Hat Time

2011-08-18T00:26:00.001-04:00

Okay, tin foil hat time.

So Tuesday, I mentioned that I thought BioWare was planning on a short window from announcement to release because they wanted to keep any of their competitors from bringing out something in the same time frame that could take away from their launch. I said they were wrong, and now I'll explain what I meant.

I think Blizzard is ready and waiting for the release date announcement. They already have a content package ready to go to counter SWTOR. if you recall, one of the mysteries of Patch 4.2 was what happened to the other half of it. We were supposed to get two raids, a Firelands raid, and an Abyssal Maw raid. We got some line from Blizzard about how it wasn't ready or something. Honestly I don't even remember. I think it is ready and Blizzard is holding it. They will unveil the Abyssal Maw as a mini patch to go right after SWTOR's launch is announced.

Of course Kaplan has to go poo poo my theory by stating Abyssal Maw was dropped because the story wasn't good enough. Come on, when has Blizzard dropped anything because of story? His comment will be long forgotten when they release Abyssal Maw. Besides, when has a silly little thing like the facts ever derailed a juicy conspiracy theory?

I have to be careful to not see everything Blizzard and BioWare are doing as jockeying for position in the MMO Market. It's just hard not to. You've got the established old bull, and now you've got this young upstart trying to horn in. Case in point is the new Transmogrified Blizzard has announced for 4.3. BioWare has stated there won't be an appearance tab in SWTOR. What a great way for blizzard to have a feature they know SWTOR won't have. It also allows them to leverage all the old classic art images they've used over the years.

Honestly, if I was still playing Honorshammer as my main, I'd be a lot more excited about the transmogrified than I am. Although, I do have a nearly full set of T2 on my Hunter including Rhok'delar. It would be pretty cool to raid in that.

Star Wars: The Old Republic Release Date

2011-08-16T20:57:00.001-04:00

Man, I can't wait until the Google spiders get a hold of that title.

One of the most talked about topics surrounding Star Wars: The Old Republic is the release date. What they have said publically is Holiday 2011 which covers pretty much anything from October to the end of the year.

I never expected a release date at E3, but for a while I've pinned my hopes on getting a release date at PAX Prime (AUG 26th - AUG 28th). The BioWare guys have shown an affection for PAX, even granting permission for one of the Penny Arcade writers write about his Beta experiences. BioWare has used PAX EAST and PAX PRIME for many of the major announcements about the game. Letting PAX be the show where the release date is revealed makes sense. PAX PRIME is about 10 weeks from the middle of November, which gives BioWare a nice ramp up window.

I've sinced backed off that idea. I don't think we'll get a release date at PAX PRIME. I've been following the game for over a year now, and I believe BioWare when they say they can't give the release date because they don't know what it is yet. There is still one vital piece of data BioWare needs before they can settle on the release date, and that is the stress test. We are going to see that stress test in September with the Beta weekends. These will be large invite Beta events lasting just a weekend making for an idea stress test.

BioWare has to see the results from that stress test before deciding on a date. If the results are good, they will go full steam ahead for launch. If those results are not good, SWTOR could be pushed into 2012. (que "Price Is Right" you lose music). But let's go with the glass half full. If the first weekend goes well, then BioWare waits for the second weekend. They may even wait for third. That puts them with high confidence in the stress test results in late September. EA's John Riccitiello has stated they want about a 4 to 6 week window between announcing the release date and go live. This is too short, they hope, for any of their competitors to launch something to compete with their release. They are wrong, but I'll talk about that tomorrow.

So 4 to 6 weeks from last of September puts us in late October to early November. My personal guess for the release date is November 8th through the 15th. We'll see how close I get.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

2011-08-14T19:45:00.001-04:00

I mentioned when I came back I wouldn’t be blogging exclusively about World of Warcraft. There’s another game that has my attention, and that game is Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). The game is currently in beta testing, but still under the NDA. That means that people in the beta can’t talk about it, other than to confirm there is a beta and they are in it.

There is a beta.

I ain’t in it.

(This is my sad face.)

Here’s a quick introduction to SWTOR if you aren’t familiar with it. Basically, it’s BioWare plus MMO plus Star Wars. From BioWare’s Dennis Dickenson “It's a spiritual sequel to the KotOR games and focuses heavily on bringing BioWare story into the MMO space. It features a highly polished and fluent evolution of traditional MMO combat systems. It has the bells and whistles of a modern MMO, it's faithful to the IP and universe it's set in and it features BioWare's signature features such as story, companions, etc."

SWTOR has two factions: the Sith (Red) and the Republic (Blue). This is sort of like the Horde and the Alliance. Each faction thinks they are doing what is right.

There are 4 classes in the game. The game boasts 8, but it’s actually 4 with different names depending on whether they are Sith or Republic. The names for the classes are Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior, Jedi Consoler/Sith Inquisitor, Smuggler/Imperial Agent, and Trooper/Bounty Hunter.

It will be a story driven MMO. Every character and NPC will have voice over. You don’t need to read the quest text, you listen to it. The story is driven by key choices that you, the player, make.

The game is set thousands of years before the movies and 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic. There is a galactic war going on between the Jedi and the Sith. This was a time in the Star Wars lore long before the Sith instituted the ‘Rule of Two’. This rule was quoted by Yoda during The Phantom Menace: “Only two there are, a master and an apprentice.” During the time that The Old Republic is set, there are literally armies of Jedi and Sith fighting.

Each class is has its own quests. The game is broken down into Class Quests, World Quests and Galaxy Quests (loved that movie). There are no repeated quests if you cross faction. Play through as a Republic Trooper and then if you play a Bounty Hunter, you won’t see a single quest repeated. That’s pretty cool.

The Smuggler and the Agent use a special combat system called Cover. You have certain abilities that you can only use in Cover and you get a defensive bonus against people attacking you.

The game also features a morality system, which I think of like alignment from my pen and paper role playing days. Each decision you make will give you Light side points or Dark side points. As you accumulate more Light side or Dark side points, you will get access to bonus powers. Some gear has been shown to require you to have a certain amount of Light or Dark points. Yes, Sith players can earn Light side points, and Republic players can earn Dark side points if they choose.

Combat is very similar to World of Warcraft. You have a hot bar with different abilities your character can use. It’s fast paced, and you are taking on groups of 2 to 4 enemies at once. It looks like a ton of fun.

Every class seems to have multiple forms of crowd control spells. Every class has an out of combat heal, and rez. Consolers/Inquisitors have an in combat rez. At level 10 you move from your base class into your Advanced Class. For example, Jedi Knights can graduate into Guardians, (Tanks), or Sentinels (dual wield Damage Dealer). This is similar to the specialization system in WoW.

There are three classes capable of specializing in tanking. The Trooper (Advanced Class called Vanguards), the Jedi Knight (AC called Guardians), and the Jedi Consular(AC called Shadows). Guardians and Vanguards appear to be typical mitigation tanks with heavy armor. Shadows are evasion tanks with high dodge.

I will mostly be talking about the Jedi Knight (Guardian) class as that is the class I’m most interested in.

What WoW players might think of as instances or dungeons are called Flashpoints. A flashpoint is a small, story-based mission, that requires a group. In WoW, dungeons need 5 players. SWTOR flashpoints require 4.

When you get to maximum level, you can do Operations. This is, is a large story based mission that requires a large group. We called these Raids in WoW. WoW raids come in two sizes, 25 players and 10 players. SWTOR Operations also come in two sizes, 8 players and 16 players.

Battlegrounds are called Warzones. I don’t have too much interest in them, because I’m not much into PVP, but I am intrigued at the way they are handling Tanks. All tanks get a skill known as Guard which can be cast on a friendly player and makes them take 50% less damage while the tank is alive. A pvp taunt? Sort of.

If you want to learn more about the game, you can check www.swtor.com, which are the official forums. The have some striking and unwanted similarities to the WoW official forums.

I get most of my information from a blog called DarthHater. It’s a good read and you should check it our if you want to know more about the game.

What I Did on Summer Vacation

2011-08-11T23:19:00.001-04:00

So what have I been up to for the last 6 months or so? I've continued playing World of Warcraft. When we last left our intrepid heroes, they were halfway through Tier 11 content and had just made the switch from Horde to Alliance. We were starting over on a new server. Essentially, we became a guild within a guild, something many predicted would happen when the perks were announced. We operate completely autonomously as a raid team. Nothing changed there. Our PVP players were able to join the Rated Battleground teams of the larger guild.

I think the guild merger worked out well for all involved.

We continued to make progress through Tier 11 but as we got closer to the end, the attendance problems continued to plague us. We lost many raid nights because our 11 man team couldn't field 10 raiders. We were frustrated, but we were hesitant to recruit. It takes a certain type of person to mesh well into Devolve, and Wich was concerned about getting too big.

I had been leveling my Shaman on Altar of Storm in a guild with some old friends from my Mal Katai days. I watched the guild for a solid month. Raids would be scheduled and then either not happen, or bail after attempts on Magmaw. You remember him, the first boss in BWD. The guild decided they lacked to the DPS to kill him. For weeks I watched and no raids were scheduled or attempted. One night, after yet another cancelled raid in Devolve, I decided to stop being frustrated and start taking action.

My plan was simple. I was going to see if my old Mal Katai friends were still interested in raiding. I approached Wich, our Raid leader, with the idea. He was still concerned about the team getting too big, but he gave me the green light to talk to them. There were three friends from Mal Katai on Altar. Trelic, Raistilan, and Celoria. They don't actually play those toon anymore, but those were the toons I came to know them by. It turned out they were interested in raiding, and within about a week they had transferred to Arygos and joined us for the end of Tier 11.

We didn't actually finish Tier 11 until the first night of Tier 12 when we downed Nefarian in one of those epic battles where the tank dies at like 3% and everyone runs around like mad praying the DoTs can finish him off. Somehow we survived. That was the first night in a long time I really missed blogging.

Of course, we had traded one problem for another. Our raid team now had 14 members. Instead of cancelling raid nights due to lack of attendance, we were sitting people. To me, this was a much better problem to have. I have to give Wich credit here, because he did something I've never seen a raid leader do in my 5 years playing WoW. He sat himself on a couple of occasions. Sitting always causes a little drama, but for the most part our team has accepted it well.

We've struggled a bit getting started in Tier 12. We had some turnover, not in members, but in toons. Our Feral Druid got frustrated with the relatively squishiness of Bears and became a Death Knight. I've switched my Hunter over from Survival to Marksman. I've done a couple of raids as Beast Mastery when we didn't have a Mage or Shaman around.

Currently we sit at 2/7, though we expect Ryloth to die soon, if not tonight.

Tap…..Tap….Tap

2011-08-10T22:57:00.001-04:00

Is this thing still on?

It’s been about a six month break. I enjoyed it. I can’t imagine many people still check this site. Maybe you’re getting this in a feed reader.

Hello, again!

I won’t be blogging soley about World of Warcraft. There are other games that have my attention. I’m going to talk about them, too.

Hey, blogosphere!

IT’S HAMMERTIME!!

Honors Code Post Script

2011-03-28T23:59:00.001-04:00

When I stopped writing Honors Code, I had several people ask me to let them know if I started up another blog. Since I have, in fact, started up a new blog, I thought this medium would be the best way to let my former readers know about it.

The blog is called: Ted the Third. (It’s a working title.)

Its not a World of Warcraft blog, or even a general gamming and MMO blog. My new blog focuses on a new pursuit of mine. It’s actually not a new pursuit, but it has become more of a focus. The blog talks about my dream to try to become a professional, published writer. It talks about what I’m writing, what I’m learning, and what I’m struggling with. I also sometimes go off-topic and talk about news, or current events. The obligatory first post will fill you in on most of the details.

Actually, I’ve started up two blogs, but after some consideration, I’ve decided to keep the Daddy blog private. If you really want to read the Daddy blog, drop me an email and I’ll send you a link.

I’m still playing WoW. My Hunter is 6/12. The biggest news is my Hunter is no longer an Orc, nor is he on Altar of Storms. We made the very difficult decision, as a guild, to transfer servers. Every guild on Altar of Storms is short of raiders, and recruiting heavily, especially for healers. After several weeks of trying, we determined that AoS wasn't the best place for our raid group anymore. On of our members came to us from a server called Arygos. His old guild there had a 10 man group that was going strong. It seemed like recruitment would be easier on Arygos, and the guild had some people that could become part of our group to fill holes. We knew from our member who had come from Arygos that these guys were compatible with our guild culture.

We will maintain our own 10 man group, with our own rules for invites and loot. I'm hoping for the best.

Personally, I was thrilled by the prospect of being a Dwarf again. It's odd how excited I got about that. When I finally logged into Arygos as a Dwarf, I spammed /cheer, /charge and then /silly. Then I went and go me a bit ole skin of Dwarven Stout.

My Hunter was the only toon I moved. Everyone else is still over on AoS.

I’ve also started leveling up a Dwarf Shaman to hang out in a guild with some old friends from Mal Katai, and to say hi to old friends from Dominion. He’s in his early fifties, and Enhancement is silly amounts of fun at this level.