Eye of Eternity is a great instance

I was reading this post on Larisa's blog and one of the end of year rewards really bugged me. Eye of Eternity was awarded least successful raid of Wrath so far. Without going into the merits of EoE just yet, I doubt I am the only person who thinks TOC is the worst raid Blizzard has ever made. TOC should win hand's down, lazy design, repetitive, some unoriginal encounters and forcing PVP. It made me quit raiding! So TOC is the clear winner for me.

Back to Eye of Eternity I find it frustrating how people are quick to judge the raid. Possibly my best memories of this expansion come from my guild conquering Malygos. The fight itself is my favourite style of boss, one with clearly differing phases. My favourite bosses in Wrath have been ones with phased fights, Malygos, Yogg-Saron and Mimiron. They're probably the only fights in the expansion who have any sustained challenge to them, and even now lazy raiders can cause a wipe there. There's a certain joy in nailing one of the phases, and then slowly improving until you have perfected each phase for the first kill. Malygos really set the standard for the phased fights in this expansion, and I'm certain the Arthas encounter will be like this, which is an exciting thought.

As for the three phases themselves, I found them all amazing. The first one was a gear check. If you don't have enough health, dps or healing on your gear, progress was going to be slow. Death Knights were given a chance to shine by death gripping the sparks. The first time I realised I could Killing Spree out of the air phases, I had to give myself a pat on the back for the extra dps I would be doing on the ground; every second counted if we wanted to get to Phase 2 fast enough.
Phase 2 was a dream for melee, flying around on magic UFO type things killing crazy mobs? Yes please! And then for the ground to collapse underneath you and ride a dragon to help kill a crazed one. The fight felt very cinematic, and being part of this epic fantasy battle was special. I remember how many nights my guild spent trying to kill him, and finally downing him was a real rush. As far as strictly 10 man progression raiding guilds went, we had arrived.

I feel the real unpopularity of this raid is not down to the vehicle mechanic at all, but actually down to bad players. Firstly for the first three or four months of the expansion this was the only un-pugable raid, and for players fast becoming familiar with face-rolling content, one wipe is unacceptable. The tendency was to blame it on so-called bad mechanics, than admit their own failure. The raid was not even very difficult despite the initial gear check, but it did require coordination and perfection. In ten man we knew we couldn't afford to lose anyone, so healing had to be perfect and players had to be careful not to be clumsy and lower their health (if we didn't have a priest, we even took health scrolls). The dps our gear gave us did not afford us any slip ups, or we would hit enrage. PuGs were going to struggle with this one. People should understand this was the final (normal mode) boss of the initial Wrath content, it was not meant to be easy or pugable. Certainly all three phased fights I've mentioned were unpugable for many months, because attempting to coordinate these with strangers is next to impossible unless higher level gear is carrying you.

The vehicle part of this fight is also criticized by people, but again I think this is a failure of the community rather than the fight itself. The ease of this stage is laughable if you spend ten minutes actually figuring it out rather than blindly spamming all buttons and dying fast. The first thing I would normally do is set /follow on our raid healer, this let me focus on doing my job rather than worrying about flying around, and I think half our raid did this because they were comfortable with that. As for the actual combat element, all I had to do was spam combo points just like my rogue, and leave some energy for defending myself. Oculus pre-nerf was actually far more challenging than this. Blizzard even made a daily quest for us to learn this overly simplistic mechanic, but this was beyond a large chunk of players ability.

Larisa says TOC was better because it offered fancy loot; I know Malygos dropped the Best-in-Slot BOE rogue ring which sold for 10k, so the gear was pretty damn good for my guild and we made a habit of farming Malygos once a week (usually one shotted after our first kill). She also says people didn't run it because it was unpopular, but I maintain it was because of it's difficulty; TOC is hugely unpopular but everyone runs it for free and easy gear. In fact one of it's major failings is that each week's staggered release of bosses were farmable so soon. This was never the case for Malygos; with the approach to casual 10 man raiding, you needed to be in a guild that had a very small core of raiders who had geared up fast rather than a spread of less well geared players, to even attempt Malygos. Hatred for content will never stop people from running it if gear rewards are promised; difficulty will.

Sometimes I do feel sorry for Blizzard, everyone is screaming for harder content but anything that takes more than five minutes work is bad. Maybe I am being overly arrogant about my personal experiences in this raid, but the vast majority of my guild have very similar feelings on how much they enjoyed the Malygos fight, so I definitely think it has more to do with how you approached it.

Gearing up again in ICC

I had a bucket load of luck during the first part of Wrath, and was in some of the best rogue gear. My luck really seemed to fall away dramatically after that, in Ulduar I had no leather drops at all despite going for a solid 3 months without skipping a raid and being at every guild first kill. This combined with burn out, and a sub-par raid in 3.2 made me take a few month break from raiding. Icecrown has really got me back into the scene though. Most of the first bosses have two or three bits of gear useful for me, and so far I've had a couple drops. Also unlike in Ulduar the badges are actually useful and there are also reputation rewards. Icecrowns gear structure seems to be great, although my Ele Shammy friend would disagree. RNG also seems to be smiling on our raid, so far both me and the other rogue have had both one hand axe drops. Our ten man raid is way overloaded with people who share the same or similar loot (two rogues, two druids, three hunters, one Death Knight who all regularly raid), but despite this I've already got a few drops.

Today was also my birthday, and I treated myself by spending my 95 badges on the Tier 10 head. People have really disliked most of the rogue helms in Wrath, and this is true to form. I actually love them, I think they really stand out unlike most classes who have very generic designs. Considering I mainly got the head to show off my gigantic e-peen, I'm very happy and will be AFK'ing in Ironforge to show off. I've also switched to Axe-Axe spec, the first time I've not had Fist-Dagger in this expansion. I have to say changing to such a simple rotation is going to take me some time to get familiar with. Thanks to some of my guildies who made my birthday pretty enjoyable, tears and all.

Christmas and New Year has really made our raid team inconsistent though. Last week we PuG'd three healers and this week one healer and the other two guildies in off-specs (blue gear and all). Despite this things have not been too bad. Last week we cleared ICC fairly comfortably. This week we started late and didn't really have the correct composition or gear to down Saurfang. People do seem to be needlessly tense though, I'm sure if we can kill General Vezax on our first ever attempt, we don't need practice on interrupting. Still can't complain and raids should be back to normal from next week.

Bag space and mounts are irrelevant

I remember in TBC, I was delighted when the 22 slots were released and bought four on patch day for a crazy 1200g each. With 3.3 we saw the release of 24 slot bags for 3000g, and despite being much richer now I realise saving my money for Cataclysm is the wiser choice. As an engineer, I always have the mailbox or repair bot to save the day. Even non-engineers have the the Tundra mount and Argent squire. Failing that you can buy the Kirin Tor ring, for even more easy access to the capital city for vendoring or the Tournament tabard to get to Icecrown. Which leads on to travel...

Some of my crazy (poor) friends did not bother buying cold weather flying, and always got summoned to raids or heroics (summoned after every wipe in Naxx is fail though). With 3.3 it's a very valid option, you can get to any HC with a click of the dungeon finder. As an Engineer I even have transport to five of the zones at very convenient locations. Despite having a shiny 310 speed mount, I've barely touched it. Blizz really have made our life easy this expansion. I wonder how they will deal with transport in Cataclysm where the zones seem to be very vastly spread in the old world.

Is playing the Auction House morally wrong?

I was having a conversation with a few of my guildies, and one of them said he would rather go out farming than playing the AH. He likened it to being a banker. I don't really agree with him at all to be honest. Unlike the real world where people are disadvantaged at birth, WoW is an equal playing field which is limited by your time investment to the game. From gold to gear, everything is determined by how much time you put in the game. Playing the AH takes time, and I don't see why it's wrong to be rewarded for spending your time in the Auction House than say in a raid. At least with the AH your destiny is in your hands, and not some egotistical pug raid leader or a drop percentage.

Furthermore, I don't think morals have any roll in video games. Sure it's in our best interests to be nice so we get picked to raids, or make friends but that's as far as it goes. The WoW community is extremely selfish by it's very nature, the entire game is built around being better than the person next to you. Apart from the 20-30 people I have a quality friendship with in game, I don't owe anyone else anything. It's not like they will be going out of their way to do me favours, so I don't see why I should send them all whispers "hey don't buy this item now, its cheaper on Fridays".

So far this patch I'm 20k Gold up, not counting any outgoings like spending 1k on the new Kirin Tor ring or repair bills. The vast majority of this has been made by purchasing an item on the AH, modifying it, and then re-selling. Most people should be aware they can do this change themselves, but they are lazy and willing to pay more for the final product. It's like paying for a service and not the item.

I will admit that most of my views on the game are a complete 180 from my behaviour even a year ago. I was a very social care-bear style player, but making a shift to progression raiding has changed my opinion on many elements of the game and community. Ultimately we will only care about what's in our own interests, which is not necessarily a negative thing. Most people deep down only help guildies because it benefits them in some way; helping that person will help your guild progress in the future, or you might be able to call in favours in the future. I think it's naive to think otherwise.

Dungeon Finder achievements

I was doing a random heroic today for my daily two frost badges, and the other 2 dps and healer were from the same guild. Before the final boss in Halls of Stone, one of the people in the guild suggested we try Abuse the Ooze achievement, which requires fairly high DPS. The problem was one of the guys from the guild was clearly an alt or a new 80 in mainly blue gear doing less DPS than the tank. I didn't feel like we had the dps for it, and didn't want to waste my time & money on an achievement I already have. I was polite, but the healer said "fine we won't do it, but I'm not healing you through the boss fight either". People really need to realise holding PuGs to ransom is pathetic, if you want an achievement make a group for it, or do it with your own guild. Don't expect people to go out of their way for you.

Avatar

I watched the new James Cameron film Avatar today. This is one of the most expensive films ever made, and you can certainly see where the money was spent. I won't go into much detail about the plot because the trailer is on TV every few seconds. The world Cameron creates is spectacular, and as a WoW fan I hope they use the same technology in the Warcraft film, some areas could almost be Nagrand or Crystalsong Forest. The film isn't without some minor flaws, at times you can't tell if he's going for a kick ass sci-fi flick, or something more philosophical; I think Cameron's Terminator 2 certainly had that Box-office appeal combined with interesting story perfected. I think even this is nitpicking though and it comes very close to having T2's balance.

This was actually the first film I saw in an IMAX 3D screen, and despite initial hesitations I enjoyed the experience. I usually don't wear sunglasses because they give me a headache type irritation and as soon as I put the 3D glasses on I started to get this. Luckily I stopped feeling this after a few minutes. I've avoided watching any of the 3D releases over the last year or two (My Bloody Valentine 3D, The Final Destination , etc) because it seemed a bit gimmicky to me. This film however was hyped at being especially made for a 3D presentation and I must say they did a great job. Without exaggerating I felt like I was on the planet and it was a very immersing experience. I think watching it in IMAX really made this film stand out for me as a real cinema experience, and I'm not sure I will appreciate it as much when it's released on DVD, but that's a huge compliment.

I think 2009 really needed this film, because overall it's been a poor year at the cinema. Avatar is not my favourite film of the year, that honour goes to Pixar's Up, but it's closely tying Michael Jackson's This Is It, Star Trek and Inglourious Basterds. Those are the only real stand out films, and it will take some time to rid the memories of Wolverine and Taken. On the plus side for 2009, it's not close to 2007 in the garbage charts (Norbit, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Mr. Bean's Holiday, Evan Almighty) but then 2007 had some real classics.

UI trouble

I finally have a UI I'm super happy with possibly for the first time since Wrath came out (yes I have been lazy). But now one of the add-ons is not letting me use set focus (which is pretty vital for one of my raid macros). It's strange that so many add-ons cause problems for set focus, and I really wish the makers would test for this damn bug. Last time I tried Spartan UI, it had problems with this issue, which is a glaring flaw for a raid orientated UI add-on. The main issue I have now is I will have to switch all the 20-30 add-ons off one by one to figure out which one is causing the trouble. Great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Multi-boxing project

I did Recruit-a-Friend leveling/boosting with a guild friend several months ago, and I enjoyed it, so decided to go one step further and multibox. I started four new accounts 10 days ago which run very smoothly on my 27 inch iMac i7 Quad core. The plan was to get all the classes I don't have to level 60 (warrior, warlock, pally and priest). Because I'll be boosting myself, I've decided to get four rogues to level 60 instead because it's easier to leave them stealthed and AFK in dungeons. Once they're 60, I'll have 120 free levels, which I will use to get the warrior, lock, pally and priest to 60 (I've already managed to level them to 30, so they'll get 30 free levels each, and I'm done). The rogues are now level 10 and ready to hit Deadmines. Maybe I'll post a multi-boxing guide next week.

No Death Knight yet

My character sheet currently reads Rogues (80 and 59), Shammy (80), Druid (70), Mage (61), Hunter (55) and Warlock, Pally, Priest & Warrior (all 30). The only one missing is the Death Knight. Before Wrath I was very eager to level one, because of the fun looking start zone and a free alt to get professions on (one of the main reasons I have alts in the first place). But I missed the boat on them and by the time I was happy with where my main was, most of my friends had already leveled their DK's. And I'm hesitant to level a character on my own. I might have lots of alts, but most of them have been done with friends, via free levels, boosted or grinding BGs. Besides the rogues, I'm pretty clueless with most of my alts and they're just professions alts. I do plan on keeping two accounts in the long run, so I'll have space for two DKs, so hopefully I can do one with my sister and another with a guildie who happens to have one still sitting uplayed at 55.

Pharoahe's blog

I'm Pharoahe, and I play a Level 80 Rogue on Doomhammer EU. I've had a couple of WoW blogs before, but I usually get too worried about having posts of high standards, and then give up. So this blog will be a lot more simple. I won't be worried about checking every single sentence for grammatical errors. The blog posts might sometimes be long and informative, and at other times just simple ideas I have in my head of a few sentences. What can you expect? At the moment I'm mainly raiding in ICC, leveling loads of alts with recruit a friend, and making a bucket load of gold on the auction house. So you can expect me to be talking on those subjects, negatively and positively. Often I will go off-topic and the posts will not be WoW related. I can be a bit straightforward at times, so avoid this blog if you're scared of an opinion or two.