The Angry Guild Leader

Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Today, we step back a little and look at endgame in the context of sports.

The time is nigh. You’ve brought down the hellish tank called Flame Leviathan, released Razorscale from unimagine torment, and put down Ignis the Furnace Master. With fire in your bellies and laughter in your voice, you’ve shuddered and deconstructed the Deconstructor. You’ve right clicked the teleportation widget, and have brought yourself to the Antechamber of Ulduar.

We’ll be talking, in this installment of Ready Check, about:

• Kologarn
• The Assembly of Iron, and
• Auriaya

The first trash mobs in this area aren’t too bad. You can have a Warlock banish the elemental, which might save your tank a little angst. When you see the big guys (Rune Etched Sentries), you might want to brush up a bit of coordination. The big guys place fire runes on the ground. In the grand tradition of raids everywhere, don’t stand in the runes’ circles or you’ll die. The big guys also jump around, so this is a “cuddle” fight — if everyone’s standing on top of the tank, you’ll have a little easier time of it.

I actually like to go up the stairs right away, and go face down . . .

Continue reading Ready Check: Kologarn, Iron Council, Auriaya

Ready Check: Kologarn, Iron Council, Auriaya originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:00:00 EST.

Group healing is one of those assignments that’s often necessary but also easily forgotten. Many raid leaders whether they’re leading pickup groups or guild raids often forget to establish specific group healing assignments. I include myself in the category of forgetful leaders.

Group healing back then

Naxx really spoiled us. It was extremely easy to just tell healers to raid heal and brute force heal our way through the various encounters. Sure we’d have dedicated tank healers but I know I never designated specific group healers.

Why?

Because there was never a need to. Raid healing was very simple. Coordination wasn’t even needed at all. Target players, hit healing spells and call it a day. It was quite easy to “faceroll” your way to victory as a healer. Healers did not have to be assigned to heal group 1 or group 2 or so on because a smart heal would just happen to land on a player who desperately needed it (Chain Heal or Circle of Healing as an example).

Continue reading Raid Rx: Importance of group assigned healing

Raid Rx: Importance of group assigned healing originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:00:00 EST.

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW’s newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.

It takes all kinds (of players) to make a (game) world – but now that Blizzard is shaping game content specifically to slingshot players into endgame raiding content, it’s easy to get the impression that raiding is “the” way to play WoW. New players seem expected to sail through the levels and zip gleefully into PuGs or a raiding guild. All those “accessible” raids and achievements and gear are suddenly sounding more and more like “requirements.” DPS minimums, required achievements and Armory checks serve as your credentials to get into groups. Everywhere a new level 80 turns, there’s something new to measure up to.

So what if you don’t know where to start? What if you miss the mark in the wrong group with the wrong players – will you forever be known as a “scrub”? Will you find yourself blacklisted from the PuG circuit? Is it still practically possible to gear up and catch up? What if you can’t get into a successful progression guild? Will you be labeled an oddball or outsider? What if you can’t break in – or what if you decide you don’t want to?

Continue reading WoW Rookie: You’re doing it wrong

WoW Rookie: You’re doing it wrong originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:00:00 EST.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves, Guilds, Odds and ends, Instances, Humor, Raiding, Guildwatch, Bosses

Picture it: you’re raiding along with a PuG run by a guild called, say, Logos et Ethos. Things are going well — your first piece of loot drops, and people start rolling on it. But then the master looter from the guild throws this in guild chat: “we will begin the bidding at 100g.” Yes, apparently it’s an auction run, and they didn’t tell anyone. The scene above unfolds — people curse out the guild, leave the raid, and Poemaster pulls out the caps lock to try and keep his guild’s secret fundraiser going.

That drama and more in this week’s Guildwatch, along with stories of downed bosses and recruiting from around the realms. Send us your tips (especially drama, we always love a good chat screenshot) to guildwatch@wow.com, and click through the link below to read more.

Continue reading Guildwatch: Paydirt in the drama mine

Guildwatch: Paydirt in the drama mine originally appeared on WoW.com on Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting piece up looking at travel in massively multiplayer games, and while the analysis is really about travel in all MMOs, of course World of Warcraft gets placed front and center — with the notable exceptions of Mages and Warlock summons, it’s a game that squarely places you in its vast world, and asks you to make some solid decisions about where you want to be. While travel has certainly gotten easier (and will continue to do so), it’s still an important part of the world — sometimes, when you’re in a backwater zone and your hearthstone is down and there’s no summons available to you, you’ve just got to get on a griffon and put the time in to fly around.

Why is that? Why can’t we just teleport around at will to places we’ve been before (a la Fallout 3 or Fable 2, if you’ve ever played those games)? Why does Blizzard make us traverse the wide world? RPS lands on two solutions: either they just want you to play the game more (certainly possible, especially since big worlds with long travel times and subscription fees are a trademark of the MMO genre), or they’re just being jerks about it. But their panelists, and Blizzard, have offered one more suggestion: they want this world to feel vast, and one way to do that is to make you move around it rather than warp anywhere you want at a moment’s notice.

Then again, that’s some deep psychology, and sometimes you just want to get in an instance with your friends and fight (hence the recent changes to summoning anywhere, queueing from anywhere, and so on). Travel definitely serves a purpose in MMOs, but the genre has shown in the past few years that while instant travel all the time might shrink the world a little too much, sometimes you just need to get to where you want to be.

Fast travel, and why it’s hard to find in MMO games originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:00:00 EST.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s great news about Engineering in Patch 3.2, Community Manager Zarhym has clarified a number of changes and what they mean for Engineers.

The first clarification was for those concerned about how to acquired the schematic for Jeeves, the new multitalented robot butler. The list of changes indicated that the schematic could be acquired from “inside” another Northrend mechanical. Zarhym expounded when pressed about it:

Just to clarify, the Jeeves schematic has a chance to be “skinned” by engineers off of any level 70+ mechanical units. The drop rate starts incredibly low, but increases substantially based on the level and difficulty of the mechanical unit. So Ulduar bosses that can be “skinned” by engineers have a much better chance of dropping the schematic than lower-level mechanical units found in Northrend.

That’s great news! It’s available for non-raiders at (Zarhym says) a very reasonable drop rate, but since raiders will get the most use out of it, mechanical raid bosses are much more likely to drop it than a mechagnome in Borean Tundra.

Following that, he also announced a number of changes, which are listed after the break.

Continue reading Clarification on upcoming Engineering changes in 3.2

Clarification on upcoming Engineering changes in 3.2 originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:00:00 EST.

Long ago I made my predictions about the changes that would be coming in WOW. I just didn’t think that it would come so fast. For those of you who don’t remember, I stated that within a year, because of the changes being made out of fear or competition, you will not recognize this game. I wouldn’t be surprised if some people were dizzy with all of the changes coming into play.  Finally, however, there is one that I agree with

Players will now be able to trade soulbound items with other raid or group members that were eligible for the loot. This system will work like the Item Buy Back system and allow 2 hours for players to trade an item after it has been looted. Players who choose to enchant or add gems to the item will get one last confirmation before losing the ability to trade the item.

This is a great change for both sides. For Blizzard, this helps in not having to pay GMs to deal with every mis-loot that happens in a raid, and for the players, the problem is easily solved on the spot. Even within our guild, there are times when people mistakenly choose a piece and then wish to give it to someone else, and now they can!

This post originally appeared on The Angry Guild Leader on Jun 30, 2009 @ 10:47 PST.

Allison Robert of wow.com has created this video look into the new night elf druid forms.

“ I’ve also included an extended shot of the NE cat form’s run animation, as it’s one of the things that really distinguishes thebigger, sleeker cat model from its live counterpart. Unfortunately, they haven’t fixed the bug where one of the bear models (the one linked to the NE’s green hair) is unavailable(you’ll get the black bear form instead), so only 4 of the 5 new bear colors could be included here.

If you’re unable to play this with audio, the pertinent commentary is that: a). I tried to keep the camera as close as possible to help people appreciate the detail, mostly because: b). A lot of the subtler color distinctions just don’t come across very well on the capture, and I think I spent too much time trying to get every angle as a result: c). The forms are really gorgeous, and the NE cat in motion is lovely, and: d). I’m still a dork.”

For years it has been a running joke that the level 11 elite Hogger should be a high level raid boss. Every server will have heard talk of a 40-man Hogger run or re-rolling a bunch of level 1’s just to tackle this insurmountable foe. He is surely the scourge of Alliance toons everywhere simply because he is the first elite we encounter as we explore Elwynn. Well, it seems Blizzard have listened, Boubouille over at MMO Champion has been datamining the 3.2 patch files and has discovered tidbits about some of the bosses we’ll be fighting. Indeed the most interesting part involves memories of past encounters — including Hogger. Yes, you can also fight Algalon, Onyxia, Illidan and Edwin VanCleef but Hogger is the most important. What confuses me though is whose memories are you fighting? Those of your own past encounters or those of one of the Argent Crusade? If it’s the former, what happens if you’ve not fought said boss? What if you’re Horde?

But I digress. While you can bet Hogger won’t be a level 11 anymore, it’s a shocking revelation. While we know Blizzard pays attention to what WoW players are saying, it’s nice to be reminded of that. So I want to know your reactions? Is it a good thing for Blizzard to pander to player’s whims? Do you think reminding players where they came from and their past triumphs is a good thing? Not so keen? Is it just an excuse to be lazy and rehash old content? Tell us, constant readers, and drop your thoughts in the box below.

Breakfast topic: When Blizzard listens originally appeared on WoW.com on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:00:00 EST.