• You’ll almost always know where we are, if we’re not with you.
• We’re good at communicating, and more importantly, listening!
• We always do our homework.
• There’s 10, or even 25 of us to choose from. You’re bound to find something to suit.
• You might get to work with an epic two-handed staff, or a legendary one-handed mace.
• We’re willing to put in long hours a few nights a week to do the job right.
• We always come prepared with food, drinks, potions, and armor.
• Some of us don’t bat an eye at spending a few hundred in a night.
• Whether you’re looking for a one-time encounter or on a recurring schedule, we’re often fine with both.
• If at first we don’t succeed, we’re willing to keep trying, and don’t give up no matter how many times you finish us off.
  
  and finally:
• Two words: video strategies.

Alas, here’s a (fairly compelling) reason not to:

• ‘World firsts’ are almost always bragged about online, with photo evidence to back it up. Sometimes there’s even an unspoken race involved.

Warning: As I gather my thoughts for writing the bulk of this post series, I can assure you that it will probably be quite long-winded. If you don’t care about my thoughts on games that aren’t WoW, feel free to skip them and I shall take no offense.

To try to keep myself from getting burnt out on WoW before Cata, I’ve been spending a lot of my free time outside of Azeroth. I’m still raiding 3-4 nights a week, but instead of leveling alts on my off-duty nights, I’ve been dabbling in other games and even other platforms.

PS3 Games

I picked up Final Fantasy XIII and Heavy Rain, both for PS3, several weeks ago, and just finished Heavy Rain for the first time recently. It was a very powerful, compelling experience and I can’t endorse it enough. If you have a PS3 and you like video games, it’s worth playing; it’s as simple as that. I’ll be returning to it from time to time to see as many endings as possible. You see, there are 4 main characters and a variety of different endings for each of them as the plot plays out, which can branch and go completely different ways based on your decisions.

I’m starting to get sucked in to FFXIII’s story, and adjusting to the combat system, but I don’t love it. It pains me to admit that, but there it is. The fights feel like rushrushrushrushrush, and you’re, well, not exactly penalized for slowing down and thinking things out, but you are rewarded for the opposite. At the end of each fight there is a rating system that is based on how fast you completed the encounter, and (I believe) you are awarded better items when you earn higher ratings. There is also a sort of energy meter that refills much faster when you earn a high rating. You have the option of slowing down the ATB, but as near as I can tell, that makes it nearly impossible to earn better than two stars out of five.

Everquest 2

Finally, we come to the meat of this post’s purpose. A very, very long time ago, perhaps even before the game had any expansions, I had an Everquest 2 account. Even longer ago than that, I had an EverQuest 1 account, where I played as a bard. In my youth, I didn’t have the attention span to reach the level cap on an MMO, which is why I can claim such a long list of previously-played games. At one point or another, I’ve played EQ1, EQ2, Star Wars Galaxies (pre-CU and pre-NGE), The Matrix Online, WoW, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, City of Heroes/Villains, Warhammer Online, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and now I’ve come nearly full-circle and am dabbling with EQ2 again. I’ve probably even forgotten a few.

Fast forward 4-5 years in the game’s life, and I’m playing Everquest 2 again, often with my roommate. After playing WoW for at least 3 years of that timespan, I have a good appreciation for what a polished, mature MMO can offer. In many ways, EQ2 feels just as polished.

I should give the disclaimer that my highest EQ2 toon is only in the teens, and anything I experienced in my first round of play has been summarily forgotten, so this is like playing a brand new game for me. That said, I’m going to describe some of the many contrasts I’ve noticed between EQ2 and WoW, and I must admit that on a shallow examination, I often favor EQ2.

Starting Out

EverQuest has 19 races and 24 classes to choose from. While the races are visually distinct, the classes are not as varied as that number might first sound. There are 4 archetypes: Fighter, Mage, Priest and Scout, and all of the classes stem from these archetypes. Within each archetype, there are three parent classes each with two sub-classes that are similar but still distinct. Classes within each archetype will share some functionality and even some abilities with each other, as will subclasses within a class. It is often easiest to think of the subclasses as generally being either good/evil or offensive/defensive in nature.

What’s interesting to me is that some of the races and some of the classes can belong to either the Good or Evil alignment, which are EQ2′s counterparts to the Horde and Alliance factions. And while the process appears to be quite the endeavor, you can “betray” your alignment and home city and switch sides. Since many classes are explicitly good or evil, this will involve a class change as well. Neutral classes still have the option of changing classes during this process. I find it fascinating that this is available at all, but more than that, I’m shocked that it just takes time and in-game effort, not a micro-transaction of real money.

I chose a non-PvP server (The Bazaar) for getting my feet wet, and despite some misgivings, I started on a server that has Exchange support. What this means is that SOE has condoned and integrated a service where you can buy in-game currency, items, or even whole characters for real money, all within the TOS of the game. I’m not sure what sort of effects that will have on the server’s economy or player-base, yet.

I wound up choosing a Druid (Warden, specifically) on EQ2 as well. Skimming the EQ2 wiki, it sounds like a very interesting class, just like it is on WoW. There are even many parallels within the spells and abilities.

Combat Differences

One of the first things I’ve noticed about EQ2 is that the combat animations are, by comparison, quite fantastic. I’m used to basic, fairly bland and short casting animations on my Druid, especially when I was just starting out. By the teens, I have three partially-full action bars stuffed with spells and abilities, and as far as I can tell, each has its own unique and very well-done casting/use animation. There are nice touches of little auras around my character, leaves swirling on the ground, that sort of thing.

You can have a second ability queued up to be used after the completion of the one you are currently using, and if you are interrupted by enemy attacks your spells will automatically be re-attempted up to three times. This is the same sort of concept as pushback in WoW, except that your cast bar can be reset entirely.

Spells are nicely varied, although like the choice in classes, they are not as varied as they first appear to be. There are equivalent, but more powerful, spells gained later on that are intended to replace earlier ones, and are just named slightly differently. Within a given spell, however, there are both ranks (I, II, II, etc.) and skill levels (Apprentice, Journeyman, Adept, etc.) The former are gained as you level, while the latter are found as loot or crafted by players. Both increase the magnitude of the effect of the spell appreciably.

Like WoW, the Warden can shapeshift starting at level 10. However, unlike WoW, you unlock three forms at level 10: Tiger, Snow Wolf, and Treant. The Treant is a direct equivalent of Tree of Life form, but what really blew my mind, besides getting all three, is that you can continue casting any spells you like in any form, even hostile ones in Treant or helpful in the two animal forms. All three have extremely well-done models and animations.

Grouping

When grouping with another player, there is a fantastic feature of the game called implied targeting. Very similar functionality can be accomplished with well-crafted macros in WoW, but it is inherent in EQ2. If you have a friendly player targeted and attempt to use a hostile ability or spell, and they have a hostile NPC targeted, your ability will automatically be used on that hostile mob. Similarly, if you have an enemy targeted and attempt to use a helpful spell, and the enemy has a friendly player targeted, it will be used on him or her instead. This made grouping with my roommate on his Assassin incredibly convenient.

Perhaps one of my favorite features of EQ2 thus far is the Mentoring system. A player of any level may group with a player of a lower level, and voluntarily reduce himself to an effective level match that player. This reduces inherent stats and stats from equipment, spell effects and values, etc. However, it does not remove any abilities earned by leveling up, just weakens them. This means that if you’ve got all kinds of awesome spells or combat arts unlocked, you can keep right on using them; they’ll just hit less hard.

There is a tab in your quest log that allows you to view the quests your group members are on, but I haven’t figured out if there’s a way to keep that information on-screen. Nonetheless, it still makes it easier to see what your group members are working on, especially if you are mentoring, and have the memory of a goldfish like me. I’ve long forgotten those quests after an hour or two, trust me.

[Coming soon: Part 2]

WoW Goals

Ithato:

• Find a new 25-man raiding guild FFS – Of all things, my first serious raiding guild of Wrath, Celestial Being, has been resurrected and is currently kicking ass and taking names! We’re 9/12 in ICC-25 and have one 10-man group doing LK attempts and another hitting second or third wing each week.

Tyliman:

• Nothing. Not a one, didn’t accomplish anything I set out to do on Tyliman. He got put on the back burner with my renewed raiding on Ithato and my recent move.

Tharae:

• Ding 58 and head to Outlands – Tharae’s currently languishing at 64.
• Train Riding and get a flying mount
• Heal through 5-10 distinct Outland 5-mans in LFD as I level – only got about 3, didn’t level as often as I planned to

Caffeine

Maintain current trend, avoid all energy drinks altogether and keep caffeinated pop to a minimum.
Went out the window when I started raiding again and gaming a lot more outside of WoW with my new roommate.

Reading

Read at least two e-books that are over 7500 Kindle locations long and at least one more that’s over 5000.
Nope.

iPhone Development

Produce what I consider to be a feature-complete iPhone app or game and begin beta testing amongst my friends who own iPhone/iPod Touches. Will likely be ugly as sin unless @_erica helps me out big-time.
Nope.

Curse you, Icecrown Citadel, for ruining what should’ve been a perfectly productive month.

WoW Goals

Ithato:

• Nothing :<

Tyliman:

• Ding 80 (1-7-2010)
• Maxed out Mining
• Maxed out Jewelcrafting
• Superior achievement
• 2500-3000 DPS in heroics: I’m starting to see 4000+ on some bosses in Heroics

Reading

• Re-read Neuromancer

Caffeine

• Reduce caffeine intake as close to 0 as possible – 0 energy drinks, 3 bottles of Mountain Dew since January 18th, 2010

New Goals For February

WoW Goals

Ithato:

• Find a new 25-man raiding guild FFS

Tyliman:

• 5000 DPS on a raid/heroic boss
• Epic achievement, which includes getting rid of my last two blues
• Complete at least one full 10- or 25-man raid as DPS without failing at melee strategies
• Tank a heroic

Tharae:

• Ding 58 and head to Outlands
• Train Riding and get a flying mount
• Heal through 5-10 distinct Outland 5-mans in LFD as I level
• (This one is stretching it, but) ding 68 and head to Northrend

Caffeine

Maintain current trend, avoid all energy drinks altogether and keep caffeinated pop to a minimum.

Reading

Read at least two e-books that are over 7500 Kindle locations long and at least one more that’s over 5000.

iPhone Development

Produce what I consider to be a feature-complete iPhone app or game and begin beta testing amongst my friends who own iPhone/iPod Touches. Will likely be ugly as sin unless @_erica helps me out big-time.

Reading back over all of this it looks like a lot to bite off at once, especially with my potential move to a new apartment in the next few weeks. I hope I’m not setting myself up to fail.

Ithato:

• Clear second ICC-10 wing and possibly third depending on the date it drops
• Get as much ICC-25 experience as I’m able to as a “free agent” healer
• Replace the Forethought Talisman and Egg of Mortal Essence I use variously as my second trinket, preferably with Solace of the Fallen
• Try and replace any other items with level under 232

No such luck on any of these. I’ve been raiding very infrequently on Ithato, and mostly use him as the breadwinner these days along with doing my daily random. Tyliman and my two baby toons (Tharae and Manterfel) take up almost all of my WoW time.

Tyliman:

• Ding 80 – just over a level left! (1-7-2010)
• Level Mining to Master (300+)
• Level Jewelcrafting to Artisan (225+)
• Superior achievement
• 2500-3000 DPS in heroics: I’ve gotten over 3k on a few boss fights here and there in the last week, mostly thanks to my shiny new Tyrannical Beheader

Reading

• Finish Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden
• Finish re-reading Neuromancer and read Count Zero, both by William Gibson

New Goal

I’ve started this one late in the game (Monday, January 18th, to be precise) but anyway:

• Reduce caffeine intake as close to 0 as possible

I’ve done this in the past for a few months at a time. Like most younger gamers, I mostly live off of Mountain Dew and energy drinks. (Bawls, Monster Import, and red Sobe No Fear are my current favorites.) It’s getting to an unhealthy level, it would seem, as I’m starting to wake up with headaches and I’ve been sleeping very poorly. So, I’m giving caffeine the boot…again.

Most caffeine-free pop sucks. I’m a pretty big fan of Squirt and Faygo Rock & Rye though, but I understand the latter is almost exclusive to Michigan.

WoW Goals

Ithato:

• Clear second ICC-10 wing and possibly third depending on the date it drops
• Get as much ICC-25 experience as I’m able to as a “free agent” healer
• Replace the Forethought Talisman and Egg of Mortal Essence I use variously as my second trinket, preferably with Solace of the Fallen
• Try and replace any other items with level under 232

Tyliman:

• Ding 80 – just over a level left!
• Level Mining to Master (300+)
• Level Jewelcrafting to Artisan (225+)
• Superior achievement; hell, maybe even Epic with the way they hand out purpz in heroics these days
• 2500-3000 DPS in heroics; I’m doing ~1800-2000 in normals in quest greens/blues already, and I’m a baddy DK!

Reading

• Finish Arthas: Rise of the Lich King by Christie Golden
• Finish re-reading Neuromancer and read Count Zero, both by William Gibson

Should be a busy month, eh?

It fills a strange niche for me, the weird overlapping area between e-mail, IM, IRC and traditional forums. I’ve had some lively conversations on Wave about topics like the Wheel of Time book series, book recommendations, website development and updates, and WoW addons. It lends itself fairly well to realtime conversations, but still keeps things in a tree hierarchy of replies. As an added bonus, you’re able to review the whole thing later if you so desire. It still bogs down when the wave is particularly active or has many current viewers, but it has some pretty serious potential. I think by far the biggest missing functionality is that of moderation, followed by contact groups. Oh, and if it would let me actually keep @_erica on my contact list, that’d be nice too.

Back to the other two complaints, there is no simple way (that I’ve found) to add a certain sub-set of your contacts to a wave in one go; you’ll have to add them one-by-one. More importantly to me, there is also no way at all right now to restrict things like:

• Who can create new “blips”, or posts
• Who can edit blips and whose blips they may edit, besides their own
• Who can be added to (and thus able to view/reply to) the wave
• Whether wave/blip content can be copied to new waves

This limits my usage of it here and there, but I’m sure these features are all coming later.

A colleague of mine mentioned that he’d love to see one well-integrated interface to Google Wave, GMail and Google Chat all in one (probably cluttered ^_^) window. That does sound like a decent idea.

How about you folks? Do you use Google Wave frequently? How does your usage compare with when you first gained access to the preview? Have you found any really cool or handy ways of using Wave? Is there anything you think is really missing, or preventing you from using it thus far?

It’s been almost two months now since I was part of a guild regularly doing 25-man content, so I’ve been able to get away with using a bastardized catch-all Resto spec, leaving my other spec slot free for whatever tomfoolery I wished. (Lately, this has been bear tanking.) So, I’m returning to my old ways, of optimizing top-to-bottom for a given role, with regards to my talents. I’ll be using two somewhat distinct, and highly focused builds to fill either the role of raid healing or tank healing as need arises.

Tank Healing

The first, my tank-healing build, is 14/0/57. Using the Glyph of Nourish, Glyph of Innervate, and Glyph of Swiftmend, it is tailored to HoT up my chosen tank(s) and then bombard him with big-number, high-crit Nourishes. The only real allowance I’ve made for the changes in 3.2 is adding Empowered Touch to the mix, for the extra 20% of spellpower added to my Nourishes (along with the original 40% of spellpower to Healing Touch.)

I’ve sometimes comtemplated rocking out my 4-piece Tier 7.5 set in this build to nearly duplicate the effect of the Nourish Glyph: “Your Nourish heals an additional 5% for each of your heal over time effects present on the target.” (Lifebloom counts as one HoT whether it’s a single stack, double or triple.)

Raid Healing

For the purposes of raid healing, I’m using 11/0/60 with glyphed Healing Touch, Swiftmend, and Wild Growth. I can hit up to 6 targets with my AoE heal, cast sub-1.0 second Healing Touches for anywhere up to ~11K crits, and Swiftmend all those Rejuvs I’m tossing out to the raid. This build will really shine if I ever get that elusive fourth piece of tier 8, which will add an extra instant Rejuv tick to the target as soon as it’s cast, healing for upwards of 2K and then another ~12K over 15 seconds. Since 3.1 I’ve dropped Revitalize in favor of Living Seed, as my glyphed HT gets tossed around a lot and has a great crit rate.

I’m still adjusting to the new Innervate mechanics, but I so seldom need to Innervate myself anyway that it hasn’t tripped me up yet.

All that having been said, looking forward to getting back into 25-man content again!

Cross-posted via email from Shane’s Posterous

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT INC

Anywho, I’m back from a brief, voluntary hiatus, although my return wasn’t really planned, nor was my leaving announced to the general public. Back at the end of June, I was in a position to inherit leadership of the guild I’d raided with since mid-January, Celestial Being. We were raiding Ulduar-25 three nights a week, and had gotten as far as Mimiron phase 4 when the summer raiding slump earned another victim. Our attendance was slipping, tempers and egos were running high, and I had a lot of other stuff going on IRL that I won’t bore you with. But suffice to say, I called it quits, intending on not playing WoW for a healthy amount of time. This was basically the last nail in the coffin for CB, which is something I still regret somewhat.

My annoying, wonderful friends kept talking about the game, and wanting me to play again, and I still had a bunch of time left because my account renewed a few days before I made the decision to quit. I played my lowbie paladin Tharae here and there, maybe one day a week, and healed the odd Heroic on Ithato for my buddies. I played a lot of offline games in the meantime, and had a brief fling with EVE Online as a one-player-two-Podder mining team. That game…I could write pages about my forays with that game.

So now, it was a gradual process, but I’m back to playing quasi-regularly. Tharae is up to level 42 at the time of this writing. Some of my closest friends from Celestial Being and/or the real world decided to make their own guild, and I got dragged along for the ride, and somehow wound up an officer again. I don’t really have any responsibilities, aside from volunteering to host/admin our forums and a Vent server through TypeFrag.

We’re just big enough to do Ulduar-10 regularly, and I’ve learned that I highly, highly enjoy the lower stress and better, er, intimacy of 10-man raiding. There’s a lot more room for goofing off in vent and raid chat when 7 or 8 of you are seasoned veterans of Ulduar-25, and when all 10 of you seem to be highly competent. I really enjoy the whole crowd we have and it’s only going to get better as time goes on.

Due to the aforementioned kickassery, we cleared up through to General Vezax in two nights in our first lockout, and last night we cleared up to General V again in a single 2.5-hour raid, our second week in. Really looking forward to getting more attempts on him tomorrow night, because last week we almost had him. Big shout-out to some of our members, like Ampharos, Aliatris, Quintas and Khulgar/Kyliana, who all hadn’t seen Ulduar before and still listen/learn well enough to be 1-shotting bosses all night last night.

I’d never seen anything past Mimiron in 25-man nor 10-man prior to this, so it’s all very new and exciting, even though it means I need to be watching TankSpot vids and reading boss strats again.

As far as loot and gear goes, I’m still sitting pretty decent in terms of gear, although I thank the FSM every day that I can shift into Tree and not have to stare at my god-awful Soot-Covered Mantle. It clashes hard with all the rest of my gear. I currently have 3/5 T8.5, and I keep getting bad luck with token drops on Freya/Thorim for either my shoulders or gloves. I want that elusive 4-pc bonus so bad!

• Heroic: Siege of Ulduar – Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, Ignis and XT-002 defeated. Earned May 5th.
• Heroic: Orbital Bombardment – Left 1 tower up on Flame Leviathan. Earned May 6th.
• Heroic: Staying Buffed All Winter – Earn all proximity-based buffs at the same time during the Hodir encounter. Earned May 14th.
• Heroic: I Have The Coolest Friends – Defeat Hodir with all friendly NPCs surviving the encounter. Earned May 19th.
• Heroic: Shutout – Default Flame Leviathan without causing a System Shutdown by launching passengers to attack turrets. Earned May 20th.
• Heroic: Cheese the Freeze – Defeat Hodir without any raid members dying to Flash Freeze. Earned May 21st. Great job, guys!

Lately I’ve been using World of Logs alongside the venerable WowWebStats for our guild’s metrics. I really like certain aspects of both and think they compliment each other well. One feature of WoL that really made me say “Neato!” was the real-time logging available in the client. You can have it monitor your combat log file as you raid and it will periodically update the data online, allowing you to i.e. quickly and painlessly view your last pull in great detail.

Recent Loot

• Igniter Rod – circa May 13th.
• Conqueror’s Nightsong Robe – May 18th
• Rapture – May 19th

Those last two after enchants and gems have me peaking at well over 2600 +healing in raid.

Misc Stuff
Several officers in my guild, Celestial Being, have had various life issues come up and been forced to cut way back on their playing time or stop altogether. That left us down to two officers who were on for every single raid, along with lots of Veterans. Monday night, however, a former officer was re-promoted, as he was moving and would again be able to make every raid. On top of that, they promoted me! I’m now an officer as well. I hope to be able to provide good input into guild policies and raid-wide decisions and such, without being that overbearing, know-it-all new officer that everyone loves to hate.

I’ve also got a web development hobby project going, but I’ve got to keep it hush-hush for now. It is entirely WoW-related, as well as somewhat guild-centric. No, it is not another social network or profile tool. Expect more news soon as I grow more satisfied with it. As a bit of teaser info, I’m developing it on OSX, in Ruby on Rails, and using HAML/SASS, Passenger and Capistrano for deployment (for now) and hosting it on Debian Linux. The code used to be freely available on GitHub, but I’ve gotten such positive feedback from the people who’ve gotten a look-see that I changed my mind about that. That move was based on two decisions: I don’t want to leave myself open to exploitation and get my ideas stolen, and I’d like the option of being able to monetize the project should it make it that far.

So, consider this also an unofficial call for help from my fellow web developers out there in the WoW/Twitter community. I’m still polishing my CSS and Javascript (mostly jQuery) skills, so if you’re good at that stuff, or particularly if you yourself have worked with Rails, feel free to leave me a comment. I may have questions for you from time to time, and I always love getting feedback from different folks.