The Gold Headache

It is 2007 and that means that The Burning Crusade is getting so close that I can almost touch it. After playing the closed beta I have to admit that I am really eager to get to play TBC on live rather than on beta where it means so to speak nothing. Though after taking two characters to level 70, I have gained a lot of knowledge and experience that will help me when I finally get my hands on the real deal.
However, there is one thing that bothers me about TBC - the price of the epic flying mount. I have already given up any hope of getting one on anything but my main character, but I am still miles away from racking up the money needed. Even if they sort out the faction issue that will reduce the price, I am easily looking at around 5500 gold to get a swift gryphon. That is a LOT of money. I am not even close to that amount on live.
"But you don't NEED to buy one!" some might say. True, but in order to get into the Tempest Keep instances, you do. And yes, you will want to get into Tempest Keep, because not only does it generate reputation for one of the most important factions, but it is also required to get the Master's Key to get into Karazhan (and other keys, for that matter).
"But the regular flying mounts are a lot cheaper!" other people might add. Yes, they are. But their flying speed is 60% versus the 280% of a swift flying mount, so you can see why they are so cheap. And the difference is so huge that I even went farming in beta to buy a swift one for my second level 70.
Thanks to this, my last weeks of playing before TBC will be done on live, where I will be farming, farming, farming. While I know that I will be making some money while levelling from 60 to 70, I also know that I will want a swift flying mount the second I hit 70. So my goal is to get up to at least 3000 gold before the expansion hits, hopefully more.
If I manage to get to 3000 before TBC is released, I would say there is a realistic chance I might reach my goal, even though I will probably be totally broke after buying a swift gryphon. I understand that Blizzard want them to be somewhat hard to get, but at the same time, I think the price at the moment is too high. Few people can afford to shell out 5500 gold on a mount without a crazy amount of farming.
So who benefits from this? My guess: Chinese gold farmers.



Healing in TBC

One of the changes in The Burning Crusade that will affect me the most is probably the change they have done to the scaling of +heal. Over the past year or so, I have accumulated quite a bit of +heal gear, and my spec is also centered around getting maximum heal in order to be able to downrank the spells I use.
The gear I normally wear has around +1000 healing and 90 mp5, and this makes me one of the priests that can heal indefinitely using low ranks. http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=38173821, this is bad.
So, this is to change. The bonus for +heal will be reduced significantly when downranking, to the extent where the spells that I commonly use to conserve mana and minimise overheal, heal rank 1/2, are so to speak useless. In general, +heal is not even close to as good as mana regen is. Yet most of the healing gear is stacked up on +heal.
The biggest problem I have though, is that I kind of fail to see the problem. Obviously it is true that well-geared paladins, priests and druids can keep up their healing for ages. However, this is in a perfect environment, where the tanks never take any burst damage. If you play at a high level, instances are just not like that.
According to the reasoning behind changing the way +heal works, I should obviously never have to use consumables such as mana pots, mageblood pots or mana oil. I can heal indefinitely, can't I?
Hahahahahahaha.
My guild has been farming Naxxramas for many weeks now, and we still use consumables for several of the fights. I don't even want to think about how much more I would have to use if I couldn't rank down to conserve mana. And it is not like I just healbot and click one button indefinitely. On my bars, I have every rank of every heal spell, and I choose which one to cast in any given situation.
When instancing in TBC, I noticed how the lower rank spells hardly healed at all. With the overall increased stamina and the high damage output of the mobs, in particular in the level 70 instances, using high ranks is often the only option. Boy does that run you out of mana fast. Inner Focus, mana potions and downranking at least to greater heal rank 1 helped, but I have to admit that I wonder how lesser geared healers would fare in those instances.
I wonder how the raid instances in TBC will be, and I am looking forward to trying them out. Though I hope that Blizzard made the encounters match their nerf of +heal. If not, I fear that at least some healers will get tired of spending fortunes in consumables, and reroll or quit.
The irony of it all is of course that with all the greater heals I am casting, I have found myself switching out Faith for 8-piece Transcendence. So much for working hard to get tier 3...



My Beta Blog

I just dinged 65.
It may not be the best place to start a blog about the beta testing for The Burning Crusade, but this is nonetheless where I start. I dinged 65 today as I was questing in Nagrand, one of the areas in Outland. After killing a bunch of birds and some wild elekks, I turned them in only to find that I lacked 100 experience to level up. Another wild elekk died, I dinged. Yay.
For some time now, the test servers have been up and running, giving content-hungry and curious players a sneak peek at what will be The Burning Crusade. I am one of those people. With all instances in the current game on farm, new and exciting material is tempting.
At first, I wasn't too happy about the whole levelling thing. With three level 60 priests, levelling them all to 70 sounded like a royal pain in the ass. I still think it is, but at least levelling one character seems like something that is not going to be too hard.
At 60, my priest became a lowbie again once she entered the Hellfire realm. In order to make levelling easier, I chose to spec shadow - a spec I had never before had on that character, as I actually grinded through the levels as discipline/holy. Shadow proved to be very efficient though, in particular when grinding alone. Each mob gives 550-ish experience, and spirit tap made me able to go on forever without drinking.
My damage gear isn't all that good though. I very much a PvE player, and healing gear is what I have gone for. Six pieces of Faith and more than +1000 healing doesn't help that much when you want to "melt faces". When I transferred, my dps gear consisted of two pieces of Oracle and Burrower's Bracers, that was it. Well, I had a Claw of Chromaggus without an offhand to go with it, so I chose to use Anathema instead.
Fortunately, you don't need fantastic gear to be able to get by in Outland. Sure, it gives you a little advantage like for instance better regeneration and the such, but in one of the first instance runs I did, we had a tank who was wearing Lightforge (!) and some healing greens. And we actually did pretty okay.
Apart from the fact that I spent six-ish hours levelling herbalism from 1 to 375 in order to be able to level my alchemy, it didn't take long to hit level 61. In general, levelling has gone much smoother than I expected. Quests normally give 7000-ish rep, and you don't lose much experience from partying for instances. There are plenty of quests as well, though some drop rates are pretty crappy, which may prove a problem come release.
Then again, I might just live inside the instances for a few days to avoid the initial rush of people questing in the starting area of Outland. We will see.



Freak of Nature

The other day I was at a party with work. I am rather new as I switched jobs just before the summer holiday, and over a few drinks, this one colleague asked me what I was doing outside of work. So I told him about gaming.
It was funny. The guy looked dumbstruck when I explained how I was the manager of a team, how my players were on contract with salaries and how some gamers in general can make a living out of computer games.
"But our nature is so great and it is so sad if they don't get to experience this!" he complained. "When I get off work, the first thing I do is to get out and enjoy our beautiful nature!"
So I had to explain to him that computer gaming IS their job, and that he actually spends a lot of time in front of a computer too, for his work. It is really not different from any office job except from that these people are doing something they really love doing - playing games. And when they are not working, they will do other stuff, including going out and enjoying what Mother Nature has to offer.
For some reason, my colleague continued to shake his head and mumble stuff about nature. To him, gaming and using computers for something other than "normal" work is bad. In spite of me saying that when the gamers have time off they do regular stuff like going out and being with friends, he was seriously worried that the gamers I was talking about might never go outside.
Obviously I didn't say that I personally spend almost all my work time AND my spare time away from nature. Last time I came in close contact with nature I had itchy mosquito bites on my arms, legs and face that lasted for days. There are bugs in nature, and I don't like bugs. Whenever I walk around near trees or sit down in the grass, I can't help but think about how there are nasty insects everywhere. That is why I prefer computers and indoor sports.
I guess my colleague is like the father in Calvin and Hobbes, thinking that being in close contact with nature builds your character. Though I have to admit that if I wanted to build character, I would probably have done so by playing World of Warcraft - even if that makes me a freak of nature in the eyes of nature freaks.



Pessimistic

I've never liked solo. One of the main reasons is that I am a bad loser, though not in the sense that I swear and curse at my opponent and call him a noob and lucker or worse. Quite on the contrary, when I lose too much I get demoralised and end up getting the totally wrong mindset, one where I have more or less lost before I even start playing.
I'm quite the pessimist. When I played Magic: the Gathering, I always imagined that my opponent had the perfect counter in his hand, at all times. Of course that was far from the truth, most of the time my opponent would have a just as crappy hand as myself or perhaps a worse one. Though I kept outplaying myself in my head by constantly thinking my opponent had better cards and more luck than me, something that prevented me from taking the calculated risks that could win me games.
While I know perfectly well that both players start with equal opportunities (more or less, at least) and that my opponent can't just automatically counter whatever I do, my pessimism from Magic has carried over to Warcraft. I always expect my opponents to have the best possible counters to my units, to be able to creep faster than me and to be generally better.
I remember one of my first solo games ever. It had taken me ages to gather enough courage to press that play button, and finally I did it. When the load screen came up, I was terrified, and when the game started, I was almost shaking. Of course, I messed everything up. I screwed up the build order, forgot all my plans and ended up losing badly to another Orc player.
My next game was different. It was on Lost Temple, and my opponent was Night Elf. This time I managed to get my build right, and when I went scouting, I located the Night Elf base. My opponent had gone for the Demon Hunter and made Archers from one Ancient of War.
I decided to try some harassment, and I went over and sent my Spirit Wolves after the Archers. One by one they fell down, then the Demon Hunter fell and, frustrated, my opponent uprooted his Tree of Life to try and fend off my Far Seer and my Grunts.
Now I didn't play many solo games after that, and I still don't like solo at all. Though I won that game, and it taught me a valuable lesson: There ARE players out there that are even worse than myself.



Travel Fever

Last night I booked my ticket to Leipzig, Germany for the Games Convention. I'm going there to do coverage of the various events that will take place during the GC, including the European Nations Championship.
When I was a kid, I remember that whenever I got close to travelling, I would feel the travel fever rising and I would prepare long in advance, saving up the clothes I wanted to bring, making lists of what I had to remember and really looking forward to going. Normally, sleeping the night before would be very hard.
I am not sure exactly when it happened, but probably around the time I was doing coverage for Magic: the Gathering. Travelling happened quite frequently, and it was not a vacation, quite on the contrary, it was most often several days with more than twelve hours of hard work every day. And while I am not a big sight-seer, I have to admit I've been to many places without seeing much else than a hotel room, a convention hall and whatever lay between them.
Nowadays, I can be off to Asia without really feeling excited about it. I don't have any travel fever, I don't spend a lot of time preparing, I pack a few hours before leaving for the airport and I sleep like a baby the night before unless I have an early flight, then I often pull an all-nighter as I'm quite the night owl.
Travelling has become pretty common for me. The other day, while waiting at the airport for my plane home from my week of work in Oslo, this guy came over and handed me a survey. One of the questions was how many times I'd travelled over the past twelve months. I had no idea what the number was, but I think I just jotted down twelve roundtrips altogether, which gives me an average of one trip per month. The number may even be higher.
So far this year I've flown to places seven times. Add in the trip to Leipzig, and that's eight in as many months. The last part of the year may be busy as well. Soon, events will be lined up, and I should be able to go at least to a few of the following; CPL UK in Sheffield, BlizzCon in Anaheim, USA, World Cyber Games in Singapore, CPL World Tour Finals in New York City, USA, CPL Winter in Dallas, and WC3L Season 8 Finals probably in Cologne, Germany.
While I do feel privileged and while I am sure it will be fun travelling a lot, I still don't feel the thrill of it that I did when I was a kid. The last time I felt something before travelling was probably a year or two ago. For the first time in ages I was going on a vacation, not just going somewhere to work. And all of a sudden, the travel fever came back.
I wonder when the next time will be.



Bad Winners

He was 18 years old, but when the judge blew his whistle and ended the game, he sat down in the green grass and let his tears flow freely. The score was 0-1 in favour of the opposing team, and one of his teammates had missed on a penalty kick that most likely would have won them the match.
It was the semi-finals of Norway Cup, one of the world's biggest football tournaments, and that one goal was what kept him from reaching his biggest dream. So he sat down and cried, while his father tried to comfort him.
For every winner, there will be a bunch of losers in his trail, disappointed and disheartened. Though most of the time, the losers shake hands with the winners or walk away quietly, and the winners celebrate their victory without making fun of the losers.
Online gaming is more or less just like this. When you play, someone has to win and someone has to lose. And most of the time, the loser will say GG or leave quietly while the winner replies or takes his victory in peace. But there is also a bunch of players who will say GG and start trash-talking when they are winning.
If you are losing, it is more understandable that you are disappointed and that you may throw out an excuse, a cry of imbalance or an insult in the heat of the moment. Not that it is a good thing, but at least a person who just won is less vulnerable to such comments than a person who just lost.
This is why it is so hard to grasp is why the winners feel the need to discourage the losers and make them feel bad by trash talking and name-calling. I can't even begin to count the number of people who, while winning a game, started calling me a noob, threw insults at me or cockily asked me to leave. Some would probably say that because they got flamed when they lost, they have the right to take revenge when they win. But there is really no excuse that is good enough.
Imagine that same 18-year-old boy, on the football field, crying because his dream of reaching the finals got crushed with one late goal. Now imagine the winning team coming over to him while he is sitting there, laughing at him, telling him to just quit and how bad he is at football.
Bad winners are much, much worse than bad losers.




The Cost of Internet

This past week I have been in Oslo for work, covering one of the world's biggest football tournaments - that would be soccer for Americans. Stuck in a hotel room that in itself is pretty nice (though I could have done without the power outage while I was in the shower and the false fire alarm that went off at 7:30 am one morning and forced evacuation of the whole hotel), I discovered how Norway is lagging behind other countries at least in one way.
Internet.
I came to the hotel early Sunday and a receptionist told me I could not check in until later, which is fair enough. So I asked about internet connection, as I had read on the hotel website that there would be broadband in the rooms. She denied this, and referred me to a wireless system where I would have to pay NOK 100 (around 12,5 Euros) for four hours. Once I logged on, the timer was on and could not been stopped even if I only wanted to spend five minutes on something.
Addicted as I am, I cursed silently, bought one of the cards that would give me that access, and chose to save it until that evening. Though when I finally got back to the hotel after a long day at work, I found that the woman had lied. In my room, there was a nice and blue tp cable and on my TV, I could see that it would cost me 12,5 Euro for a whole day.
All of a sudden, that seemed cheap to me compared to that same price for four hours, and I opened my connection and had internet all evening.
What is somewhat ironic is I have been in Korea where they had free internet and even a computer available in each room. Even in China, where the internet connection is pretty bad, they had free internet in each room at the hotel where I stayed. Yet in Norway, one of the richest countries of the world, we have to pay 25 percent of what a broadband connection will cost for one month at home, in order to log on for one day.
Someone on IRC, I can't recall who, told me perhaps this is why Norway is such a rich country. While I have a feeling that a lot of oil in the North Sea might just be a bigger factor, I guess the same oil is part of the reason why the cost of the internet is so high.
Good thing work will pay for me, or else this could have ended up as an expensive week.

http://www.sk-gaming.com/rss/blog/KidArctica

• All
• January 2007 (1)
• November 2006 (1)
• October 2006 (1)
• August 2005 (5)