Some 3.1 thoughts

For those of you who are World of Warcraft players AND not living under a rock (which ironically some would say all WoW players do, but thats another article), you are aware that a huge patch is incoming. 3.1 will bring lots of changes to lots of classes. My own class/spec (Ret Paladin) is getting all sorts of changes which will change my playstyle quite a bit. My gearing will change completely (sort of) and I have a new rotation to learn as well as a new skill to weave into said rotation. It is very exciting for us paladins, in good ways and bad. Paladin changes aside, the game itself is going to change a lot because Blizzard's new raid progression plans for WotLK will come into play. Naxx and sarth were a joke of course and Malygos was tricky for a few weeks, but nothing was too difficult. Sarth +3 drakes was cleared in mere days or a couple weeks by the best players in the world. This is to be expected of course, while some pugs still wipe in Naxx 10/25 weekly.

This brings me to my point. Blizzard wants players to progress through raids, much the way you progress through jobs. You start out entry level and get promoted based on experience (quite literally in WoW while youre levelling at least) and achievements (again, puns but hilariously relevant) you obtain while working in a given position. My guild cleared naxx10/25 and sarth+0 within a week of Wrath. We were all-stars of the mail room. The big boss noticed and a few months down the road he gave us a new uniform (best in slot everywhere to be seen) and promoted us to Privates in the Ulduar assault squad.

I, for one, am excited about the prospect of wiping on new bosses. All the new paladin changes have ironically made me want to stay in Naxx for a few weeks to clean up some unfinished business with the terrible loot gods. Blizzard has decided that we should not be farming Karaxxramas forever. I agree with this. I hated that I had to farm heroics (even new and exciting ones) or Karazhan for a year because they kept giving us new badge gear. Cant get into 25 man raids? No problem, just run that easy instance youve cleared 18 times. Cant get into t6 raids? NP NP, hit up that heroic MgT. You get t5 level gear + badges for t6.

This was rediculous to me. I appreciate that Blizzard does not want this. I agree and I think its a great change. I am, however, worried that Ulduar will not be as accessible as they think it will be. I have no doubt I will be clearing Ulduar within a few weeks, then moving onto hard modes soon thereafter. My guild rocks and Im not humble about it because theres no need. There are so many guilds better than us, but we raid less than them so we have a good excuse.

I seem to be rambling, but who cares right? Blizzard wants us to time out of instances and move forward. I have a few theories about what will happen when ulduar drops. The first of which is that every Tom, Dick and Harry will think their naxx10/blue gear will be enough for Ulduar non-hard modes. If this is true then Blizzard has failed. If not, then they need to get more gear from 25 mans, but this too seems like a failure. Blizzard wants people to be able to only do 10 mans if thats all they can muster in their small guilds. I do not believe people will be running Ulduar 10 in naxx10 epics. Why? Because anyone still in this sort of gear (spare alts of course) probably is aweful and doesnt care about raiding. I do not mean to say people who dont raid 25 mans are automatically bad, but I do mean to say that at this point in time if you care about raiding you are doing 25 mans for that gear/experience.

The people doing 10 mans are the ones who play once or twice a week for maybe 5-10 hours and pug naxx10 and get half of it done. Thats fine and dandy, but spider and plague wing unfortunately do not carry the same loot as the rest so you end up missing out on a lot of good stuff from the "hard" bosses. The folks who care about raiding and really enjoy it either get frustrated wiping with pugs on 10 mans or move on to 25 mans. The trend right now is to go 10 man then 25 man, but this is not the plan for blizzard. I plan to do both Ulduar 10 and 25 until I get all the achievements for both and claim my shiny new proto drakes.

I think that B has the right idea when they want us to move on from Naxx and only do it on alts or on offnights for fun. Its been done (twice now) and its time to move on. Thats great. What I think they do not understand is that in general, most good players do 25 man raids right now and will not stay in 10 mans forever. This leaves the scrubs to do 10 mans only and wipe endlessly on easy bosses. The other thing is that once Ulduar comes, noone will have any reason to run naxx 10/heroics anymore. Naxx25 will be so easy with ulduar gear that we will be 15 manning it for fun in 2 hours. And we will accrue an inordinate amount of badges that are useless. All those heroic badges you are getting will be worthless. They dont want us to do the same stuff forever, but what else is there to do? Argent tournament dailies? I guess.

I think Blizzard is on the right track by not forcing its players into the same dungeons, but at the moment in time, thats what we are used to doing. We all ran kara countless times in BC and we had fun really. It was a great instance. People just are not going to know what to do when Ulduar comes out. Are you geared enough for Ulduar? Maybe? Noone really knows and pugs will try it the day it drops, guaranteed. And they will complain and complain and it will get nerfed. Then it will be naxx all over again. This is equivalent to getting demoted to mailboy and doing the same thing everyday. Which is fine and pays the bills...but even if you get paid the same (new gear that increases with standard of living changes every year), its still boring to have no stimulation. I hope they keep the difficulty up with Ulduar and dont bitch out and nerf it. I want to wipe. I want pugs to be discouraged and run naxx25 instead of complaining about Ulduar for months to come.

Collectivist vs. Individualist cultures

In World of Warcraft, there are places where people take place in player versus player combat called battlegrounds. What happens is teams of Alliance players battle against Horde players for control over areas of the battleground or assault the team's bunkers etc. The reason I mention this is because they are very frustrating sometimes. They are frustrating because many players join these battlegrounds and play solely for themselves. This implies an extreme individualism on the part of these players. What I am curious about is this: Does this take place on the Korean servers as well? East Asia is renowned for their collectivist nature, especially in China and Japan. The irony of this of course is that by playing as a team, the individual player is rewarded with honor and tokens which can be turned into even more honor! So why ever play selfishly in a battleground? I think its because a lot of people who pvp have a hard time getting over tunnel vision. They see enemies and attack, instead of going past and helping the team win. This is a result of not being able to see past ones own glory on the battlefield. Its why we need captains and generals in the army. Its why there is a chain of command all the way down to officers and sergeants etc.

This may be a stretch of the imagination, but it is a very intersting phenomenon that I believe takes place at all levels of consciousness and human activity. There have been papers written about World of Warcraft and its implications for society etc and I believe they are something we should be considering in serious scientific debates and talks.

Job Hunting

I seem to have an interesting mix of skills which is suited to something very specific. The key to finding a job is finding your niche. This is pronounced neesh, not nitch like some will tell you. You dont say ball-et for ballet do you? Though we do say llama and not "yama" like it should be pronounced. But I digress. I am trying to find my niche in the job market. I have some strange and difficult to quantify skills such as being able to do sudoku very quickly.

This hardly seems like a marketable skill, but I think companies look for this sort of thing in order to find diamonds in the rough who can be molded and taught to use these skills for something great. I also believe that I can concisely get my point across in text, but maybe not in person. There are many others, some less marketable than others I am sure. I also do this thing where I correct grammar (despite of course using poor grammar on occasion). News reporters do it all the time and I would be a good person to look through the teleprompter and pick out mistakes. Or maybe write the teleprompter...prompts.

So, I am looking for jobs currently and I have gotten one interview so far. I think it went well; and I really love the company so far. It's great when you read on their website all sorts of ways the company helps the employees and provides services to them. Their products are great too and they are expanding even in this shaky economy. I have no really commented on the economic situation of the US in this blog yet, but perhaps I will later.

Perhaps you are wondering how I am doing in WoW? I am doing just peachy. I have been working on my mage and rogue recently (levelling the rogue to 80) mostly with their pvp gearing. PvP I think has the potential to be the best part of WoW, but it is striken by one unchangeable phenomenon: the different scales possible. 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, etc etc. Some classes are better at 1v1 than others. Some are amazing in 5v5 arena, but aweful in 2v2. So poor Blizzard is in the unfortunate position of having to make 10 classes feel powerful, but not too powerful in EVERY aspect of the game. Not only pvp, but pve as well. Its quite daunting and it bothers me greatly when people QQ on the forums about how X class sucks against Y and why is Z better than all of them? And blizzard makes $10m / month, WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH THAT MONEY?!

Its so ignorant and I will not even explain why it is incorrect to fault Blizzard for this. Suffice it to say, I enjoy WoW quite a bit. I enjoy al lthe things I can do and all the accomplishments within the game that can be gotten. It gives me a sense of direction and goals, which makes me work (and play) a lot better. We have now circled back to my job qualifications: I am very goal oriented. If I am not shooting for something, I find it difficult to concentrate or enjoy doing work or play just for the purpose of doing it. Whether this is a strength of a weakness, I am not sure. I believe that if I can figure out a way to develop my own goals within an otherwise goalless activity that I can create an environment where I work efficiently and effectively.

That's all for now, but since I am only working part-time, hopefully I will be able to post more of my thoughts on here. Wish me luck on this job I interviewed for!