and the release for Warlords of Draenor is.....

11/13/2014.  Yes, I was optimistic and off

        We aren't going to discuss raiding this week.  I took Tuesday off to spend time with my wife and saw "Guardians of the Galaxy" (Awesome, go see it) and Wednesday we didn't have enough folks to field a foray into enemy territory.

      The big news, the announcement of the release date for Warlords.  Yes, I guessed wrong, partially because I wanted the darn thing sooner.  I am convinced though that everyone wanted it sooner, including Blizzard.  However great things came from today's unnecessary announcement.  (Yes I still think they should have just released the info instead of spending extra time on and effort on this.  Not because I believe it has any bearing on when the game comes out etc.. but because it's a pointless dog and pony show.)

      The almost as big news as the release date is that this is blog #100 from me on this site.  I sit here amazed and surprised that I have managed to keep blogging on a weekly basis. (I have only missed one)  Some weeks I have even blogged twice which is why I am here less then two years after starting this.

      I want to actually take the time to thank some people, though I am sure I will miss some as we have an ever growing and changing team, that have worked and influenced my time through Wow as a Raider.

     Aeryn-My wife and partner in crime.  Honestly, I fiddled here and there but never would have started raiding if I hadn't sojourned with her into Midnight.  She is the extrovert to my introvert that has helped build my relationships in WoW.  She is the best priest heals machine I could have sitting next to me and making sure I am seeing everything going on in raid.

     Gwyndolynn- Our guild leader and druid heals machine.  I can't remember what she thought back in Wrath when me and Aeryn stated that the guild should start it's own raid team.  I do know she has been supportive since day one and we have rarely butted heads over things.  She has very rarely missed a raid and has been a solid fixture since we started.

      Magilla- Warrior tank master.  Mag has been tanking and running with us since ICC.  You couldn't ask for a more solid co-tank and raider.  He is always on, ready to rock and lead us into danger.  I think he didn't know what he was getting into when he joined us, but I'm glad he did.

      Shaqia- Shaman heals/enchancement.  He is there making sure no one gets too serious.  Amazing with heals, and getting crazy on dps lately rarely does he miss a raid.  He started raiding with us at teh beginning and has taken a couple of Wow breaks, but I always look forward to him coming back and smashing things.  Then we go raid....

       Scorpiack- Shaman/Warlock.  Scorpy has been mainly a shaman but has recently put away his lightning for demons and fire.  He has always ruled the dps charts in our guild and is happy to destroy anything that gets in our way.  I'm a little more fuzzy but I believe we picked up Scorpy at the end of Wrath, beginning of Cataclysm.

      These five I would consider the core of our team.  They have been running with us solidly for multiple expansions and make even the worst wipe fests of a raid a good time.  I imagine without them I'd have a hard time stepping up and leading the guild to our doom.

      There are more to be mentioned though, we have

       Shojji- Hunter and brudder.  He's been playing Wow a good while but he just really started raiding with us this Xpack.  As a deeps he has grown and is constantly working hard to be better.  I think in time I will be fighting him to stay near the top of the deeps chart.

       Belevina- Bel gets a mention here as he has been in and out of our raids for the last couple of expansions.  His priest deals pain instead of heals and when he's in raid stuff dies a lot more easily.  And he's entertainment!  His sarcastic comments can challenge my own!

      Mynk (Hellscream)- Monk tank from Midnight rising-One of the newer members of our team, she is light, bubbly and brings some good positive happiness to the raid.  She has been a great addition and I am hoping we can keep her into WoD.

      Orheim- His Disc priest makes sure we know what is going on in raid.  He is a good solid healer and when he is in raid everyone knows it.  He is invaluable at times when trying to figure out a wipe, and while I don't always agree with his observations, I love the fact I can always get feedback from him.

     Reighven-He is still playing in the guild but the school monster took him from us.  (Priorities, sheesh, hee hee)  Hopefully sometime we will get him back but the man is one of the best fathers and people I have known and I'm honored to have gotten to meet and spend time with him.

      Amelmi-Another person who has been in and out of our raid team for a couple of expansions.  When he is there the numbers his lock rocks is almost insane.  I'm excited any day he runs with us.

      Cricky- She will always have a special place in my heart.  Cricky hasn't raided with us for a while but she was one of the first people I invited to our guild when I opened it up to more then family, and I feel I have virtually gotten to see her grow up a bit.  She will always be our guild mascot.... because you know young girls don't play Wow so she was a FBI agent the whole time.

      Fantaa-The mother of the guild, literally for some of us.  She doesn't run with us often but she is sure to keep us on the straight and narrow in and out of vent.  She always brings fun with her.

      There are a few more who have been hopping in that I don't know as well yet,  Ainnvar, Aluara, Frosttide, etc...

And there are so many more I could mention who are gone.

Bromli, Deadlysinner, Wickedsavior, Lotauna, Khallon, and Ithuriol, and so many more that I know I'm forgetting.

Thank you all for making Wow a good part of my life.

I will see you in raid.

Dizzty/Lag/Lazyeye.

   

     
   

   

One more to 100.... (Raid update week of 8/4/2014)

That's right.  My next blog will be number one hundred.  That amazes me a little.

          Tuesday we started wing one again.  Blew the place up and managed to down Galakras too.  We have people still getting a little gear here and there, but the content is getting somewhat old.  I enjoy running with the folks we have, the banter etc.. when we are doing easier content, but we need to move ahead.

          Wednesday we didn't have enough folks show to raid.  Instead we did a group LFR together and downed Garrosh.  It was LFR, but we still had fun and chatted the time away.  It is important in my opinion when the raid doesn't happen to still do something with the folks who show and want to be involved.  Hopefully next week we will do better.

        We are now four days away from the announcement of when the next expansion is going to drop.  This is going to give us a timeline on how soon we need to finish SoO if we are going to finish it.  I won't lie, if it is coming quickly enough part of me debates calling off raids until the next expansion.  I want to keep people involved, but I am getting tired of pushing people, only to have them leave for another raid team when they get built up, or to have people just not study or learn the fights.

      My biggest frustration is that people do leave for the team that is more advanced, pushing content quicker, and making bigger kills.  Part of it is the nature of the beast, but it seems these folks leave at the moments when we are pushing forward and killing things as well, just not as quick.  I don't know if I am insane to expect some sort of loyalty out of people (and don't get me wrong, we have a lot of loyal people)  But if you look back to us as a ten man team, there were 3 spots or so that have changed through the expansion several times.  That is 30% of the teams, dynamics, etc...  When someone leaves it hurts us.

      I think flex has maybe hurt our expectations a bit.  Right now we still have two consistent people who top the charts at over 200k. (There are others, but they aren't there every raid.) I would have hoped by now that those top 2 dps would have had to work harder to keep that spot at the top, but no one else is excelling as high.  There has been time and opportunity, but it isn't happening.  Honestly, if we weren't a casual raid team I would be trimming folks.

     Part of the problem is we have people who have recently swapped specs, people who are lower geared etc.. because they are just getting started.  I yearn for the day though that I have to fight not to be number 5 on the dps chart because everyone is blowing crap up.  I don't consider myself a great raider by any means, but I studied my class, did my homework, and now I blow stuff up.  There is no reason anyone working consistently on the same class shouldn't be able to as well.

      That is my griping for the moment.  Let us see what the future holds.  The announcement is Thursday this week, so we get to find out after our second day of raid.  I am looking forward to seeing what it brings.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

P.S.  Any ideas for Blog #100 next week would be appreciated.  I want to think of something special for it.

And it's announced to be announced for Warlords of Draenor! (Raid update for the week of 7/27/2014)

Well, it was going to be a boring week....

      This week we started wing one again.  (I am having a love hate relationship with this wing.  I want to be done with it, at the same time some of our most fun raids as a group have happened here recently.)
We had a few new players to gear, so I stayed on Lazyeye and we blew the place up.  Well, until Sha and then we couldn't get a couple of bugs worked out and he blew us up.  But that was ok.

      Wednesday night we one shot Sha in the face and moved all the way through wing 2.  We have a very smooth run, even one shotting Shamans again.  (Me and Magilla I think have worked out a great system up top for the second boss as we use the three tank method)  Nazgrim took a couple of tries, but it was a good night for all.

       I am still stuck in the conundrum of whether or not we should just stick to the first couple of wings and get some newbies more geared, or keep pushing the last two wings every other week.  I know how it feels to run with a group that is not as organized or doing as well as your normal group is.  It can be frustrating and I know we have lost a couple of raiders over this.  I do think back to the fact that the original thought to our raiding was, that we were going to have fun.  We are accomplishing this a lot of the time when we are running the beginning content.

     This week though we have received the amazing announcement of and announcement.  That is right.  On August 14th, 9:30 am pst we get an announcement of the street date for Warlords of Draenor.  The almighty announcement of the announcement has spoken.  They could have just done an announcement of the date and released the cinematic for the new expansion, but it is so much more powerful when you announce your announcement before hand so people can gather and be announced too from your announcement.

      If you can't tell, I am rolling my eyes at this announcement of an announcement which is pretty much whipped up to give us some news.  Not just any news, but news that we are getting news in the form of and announcement of an announcement.  /eye roll.

     I love Blizzard.  They make great games and I like if not love most of them.  When I see something like this that is just an excuse to garnish some publicity it kinda rubs me the wrong way.  I think they would have gotten just as much response doing a normal release of the trailer and the date on the same day and flooding media sites with it.

    On the bright side this re-enforces my belief that the expansion is coming out in September or October.  Normally they have announced the new expansion's release date with in a couple months of the drop date.  I predict we are getting 6.0 at the end of August, and that the game itself will launch the last week of September.  Let's see how close I come.

Well, that is it for this week.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Inclusiveness in Wow and Other Video Games. (and raid update week of 7/21/2014)

I feel this topic has been beat to death.  however, I want to weigh in my two cents.  First, raid update.

      Tuesday we tried starting wing 3.  After some complications etc.. I hopped on my Pally Tank Lag and we managed to down Malkorak.  We managed a couple shots at Treasures but ended up falling short for the night.

      Wednesday we opted to start from where we finished.  Not going to lie, things just wouldn't balance out and we couldn't manage to get the boss down.  It didn't help raid stopped a bit early as the raid leader was sick.  When his sickness finally defeated him, we went home without any new bosses.

      Not going to lie, it was a sadly regressive week, but next week will be better.

      Now on to my topic, and it's considered hot button but here we go.  I am going to try and write this from a somewhat neutral position politically because if I wanted to talk politics, I would make a political blog.

      As a prospective writer I am faced with a choice every time I start a new project.  Who are going to be my characters?  What are they going to be like? How do they talk? How do they act?  How do they look? Who do they love?

      This part of character creation is important because it flavors what you write, what decisions (Good and bad) your characters make.  If you put in something that doesn't belong there with the character it feels forced, and out of place.  This leads to stereotyping and poor characters.  You want to make racist decisions for a black character into your story, work to make him black.  Same goes for LBGT characters, if you want a bad stereotyped character force one in to echo an agenda and most people will end up with a horrible character that is out of place and offensive.

      The truth is inclusiveness is very important.  But not at the price of story or character.  If it makes sense to make a character any race or lifestyle by all means do it.  If you want to add that flavor in anyway, I say write your piece then add the race/lifestyle after you have finished your work if it isn't important to the story.  If the focus of your story obviously is going to be around race/lifestyle don't write your characters to fit the "normal modes."

      This goes for video games as well.  I want good strong characters of different races, sexes, and lifestyles.  I don't want stereotypical lazy writing or characters that seem out of place because they don't fit.  So when it works, do it.

       My worry is that the pressure for games, books, and shows to be inclusive is going to do some damage in the short term as more and more demand for inclusiveness is pushed.  If you are crusading for this, please be careful what you wish for because bad stereotypes can push unrealistic expectations in the real world.  (Because some people do believe all they read and see is real)  I would rather there was a steady and slow approach to this than we were introduced to a bunch of bad characters that damages society's notions of any group.

      I am also going to get myself in trouble by asking this next question.  When will there be enough inclusiveness?

      Looking at the census about 14.1% of the United States is black.  Does that mean that when 14.1 percent of actors in movies and T.V. shows are black we are being representative? Or do we push the bar beyond that?  Same with other races and lifestyles, do we go for a realistic number? Or in order to support minorities do we push further until we get an unrealistic mix of characters in our media all in the name of inclusiveness?

Most of all, what do you think?  I would love to hear feedback on this topic.  If you have a well thought out answer I will listen.  If you leave an answer full of hate and vitriol towards any group, I will delete your comment.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye

I'm pondering.

We are wandering through no man's land

      Tuesday we did wing one again.  Yes, again.  I hopped on my mage this time so I could try something a little different and we of course got through the whole experience roughly intact.  We only did the one wing as it was a late start to say the least.  It was a pleasant experience though, the mood was high and we still are pushing to get some gear for some lower geared folks.

      Wednesday we went straight to wing 2, and cleared the wing by the end of the night.  This time I took my hunter to help push through the higher life pulls and the raid went rough at first, then got moving well.  I was very frustrated when Galakras took us 3 or 4 pulls to down as we died to simple mistakes more then once.  We then one shot Iron Juggs, had our best pull and one shot ever on Dark Shaman, and got Nazgrim down at the end of the night on our second pull.

      Next week we are starting on wing 3 again.  If we down it in one night we will smack Blackfuse around again.

     I am really fighting the feeling of being stagnant right now.  I feel we have been stuck in the same place for months now, and looking back at posts, I'm not wrong.  There is that saying that something has got to give, well for me I am feeling it more and more.  I try to be positive but this is one of those moments where I debate if I'm holding the raid team together for Warlords, or if I actually think we are going to progress further.

      The people we are gearing are giving me some hope, but I can only hope we can push further soon.  We are running out of time before WOD launches, and soon it will be upon us.  At that point we will take a break from raiding while we all level to 100, then will start all over again.  I won't lie, I look forward to this small break as the beginning of the expansions is normally the only break I take from raiding.  We could continue to push stuff at that time, but it seems silly to work on raid content when we could be leveling and gearing at a relevant level.

      I am excited more and more about the upcoming expansion.  From what I've played of the starting zones it's not Orc heavy.  It's Orc and Draenei heavy.  The alliance starting zone is fantastic and shiny new.  Garrison's feel good.  They are interactive, but so far don't seem to be a bogged down quest hub like it was feared they might be.  (Golden Lotus 2.0, no thank you)

      The NPCs are good so far.  Lots of familiar faces, and a lot of new ones are everywhere.  I wanted to write a blog about the inclusiveness of the game, but I feel this is getting over hashed right now and I don't have a lot to add to that argument other then to stir up some dirt pointlessly.  (I have opinions on this, but I would need a lot of space from a long rant.  I have that here, but I'm not ready to let it out.)

     Next week will be a new week. I'm hoping to see some progress that lightens my heart.  Either way, I will be diving headfirst into the fray.

Lag/Dizzty/Lazyeye.

Endings to Beginnings

This week was a short raid week.

      Tuesday we didn't raid because I was celebrating 14 wonderful years with my wife.

       Wednesday was pretty good.  We had some new blood so we went back and just nuked stuff from wing 1 to half way through wing 2.  We downed Iron Juggs and called it a night.  While we didn't really push any boundaries or progression,  we did have fun and it was a good feeling raid.  We also pulled in two new toons to start gearing and working towards crazy DPS status.

       I really think we are getting closer to the point where WoD drops.  If it is a September/October drop like I have predicted, that means 6.0 will be in all likelyhood dropping in August/September.  That means, we could be a little over a month away from having the first major patch walking into the expansion.

      The beta itself feels pretty good.  Yes, there are still plenty of bugs and glitches that are happening, but for the most part it has looked good.  There are things they have added that I enjoy, like the outline of whatever you are targeted on glowing to all the cameos from people we knew in BC.  (Seeing Akama as a proper Draenei is weird)

      The class changes are taking some getting used to as well.  Playing a hunter without leading with serpent sting, or having to keep Slice and Dice up on a rogue is strange.  I understand why they took these buttons out, but it feels like something is missing in my rotations.  We will have to see how it all turns out.

       It's been a long week with work etc.. this week.  So I am keeping it short.  Oh, one of my favorite things about the Beta thought, is captions like, Amazing in game event here....

Lag/Lazyeye/Dizzty.

Shaky ground.

Sometimes, things go well and I still worry.

     Tuesday night this week we started on Wing 3.  Though we wiped on Spoils once, and Thok a couple of times we got all the way through and to finish the wing.  What this doesn't say in that sentence is we felt like a cohesive group and things felt smooth as we worked through the wing.  Spirits were good and Everyone seemed to be doing their job just fine.  (My favorite part was the second pull on Spoils where Shaqia and Scorpiack both accidentally dropped on the wrong sides and it balanced things perfectly to get the boss down.)

     Wednesday was not a great night.  Blackfuse is still killing us and it's still from stupid little mistakes.  I had the opportunity to tank this fight for the first time on Lag and it was interesting to me to see how it worked from that perspective.  Believe it or not, this is the first time I've actually wanted Blizzard to leave fire on the floor.  I had a couple of moments where I was tanking the add in fire, then the fire would fade, then the next line of fire would fade as I pulled the add over as well.   We didn't get the boss down.  But I feel once again we are closer.  Shojji now had the conveyor belts down, and when Scorpy got there the belts went smooth.  We just need to work on staying alive down below long enough to punch through.

       Despite this, I feel the group is smoothing out again.  We are getting to another point where we are going to start making progression soon as things are smoothing out.  My worry is that this means we are going to lose a person or two soon as this seems to be the pattern we have been fighting.  Group gets going smooth and starts moving forward, someone leaves to go to another team or leave wow until the next expansion.  My pure hope is that next Xpack we manage to get a team of 15 people or so and maintain it so if someone leaves we don't have to worry about it when a person or two leaves.

       I am looking forward to previewing the raids a little in the beta as well if I get to that point.  As I play mainly alliance, I am mainly working horde on the Beta so as not to ruin my experience on leveling later.  I have not had a lot of time to work there this week, but am hoping to get back in this next week.  I know beta is a lot different from what gets dropped later, but this may help I hope.

      There are things I want to discuss about the Beta at length, but right now seems a bit premature.  It's strange playing a Rogue who doesn't have to keep up slice and dice.  Hunters feel weird not opening with serpent sting.  There are other things like that that seem just different.  The content itself so far is pretty good.  The best part, wait for it,

     We are actually getting some Draenei lore.  Yes, it's coming.. holy crap we are getting some.

Lazyeye.