Ending it.

It was to be expected after so much time with no new posts... i'm ending it.
The reason? More then one i suppose.

While i had a great time getting to 80 in the WotLK expansion, i found my time to post limited. Once i did have the time i had minimized my Wow time that inspiration was at an all time low.
I find myself logging on a lot less then i used to, mostly just to get on time to raid.
Yesterday i stepped down as an officer aswell... while i was still active on the forums i often ended up in heated discussions/fights to try to get the guild in the direction i thought was right. (wasn't alone there luckily)
So to not drive myself insane it figured it was time to do what i felt was best for me and went back to being a regular member, something i tried to do before but there was too much to be sorted still.. while now most things are close to completion.
Quite a load fell of my shoulders, just hope it didn't land on someone elses :P

I'm guessing i will slowly get more fun out of playing Wow now i start to see it like a game again instead of a second job. Otherwise i suppose i just focus a bit more recent found hobby; Warhammer 40k.
Thus far i've only assembled and painted some models, perhaps i won't like the game itsself... but otherwise there is always the faithfull TV with my savings of series like BSG, SG-1, Supernatural, TSCC, etcetera.
Perhaps my Xbox requires some attention aswell, plenty to do for a nerd like me. ;)

Anyway, thanks for reading all and wishing you fun in the virtual world of Azeroth aswell as the world out there!

Brainless questing? Why sure!

Just like many many others i've stepped on to the Lich King's soil yesterday... i had done it before in the beta but this time it actually mattered.
What else was new was that i was actually gonna do some questing and not just pass through area's but would go to where ever the quests would take me.
In just half a level of XP i've already seen quite a few things i missed when glancing the area before and many of the quests are really good fun, something i couldn't have commented on earlier aswell.

I'm more a picture-guy though... often a movie is more about how pretty it looks then the storyline, my brain gets tortured at work already and i'm often too tired to go deep into lore or a story. (although in weekends i make more time for that) As there are thousands of quests in Wow, reading them all would drive me nuts and thus i pick out the few details i need and then simply accept them.
When really lazy i even look up the coordinates on Wowhead. (which is quite often too be honest)

Just before WotLK was released i installed a new addon to help me with this luxerous life of ignorance and yesterday evening i got to try it out for the first time:
Carbonite!
I'm not sure i can ever go without this addon anymore i must say, it's not perfect and you are still required to read your quests (or at least those details) but it saves you sooo much time searching where to go!

What it basicly does is replace your regular map with a google-earth style map (although you can turn that off aswell), add a small map on your screen, replace questtracking and add a direction marker with distance to your quest objective. (the quest selected in the quest tracking list)
On the minimap it also marks area's in different colors where the quests take place, that way you know where to go to not just for your current selected quest but of others aswell... that way you can simply plan your own route. If you need to be in more then 1 area for a quest, that is shown aswell (matching colors per quest)
When done it will show the Questionmarks on the map aswell, not just in range but all over the (world)map. It even remembers where you were able to take a quest but you didn't.
Apart from the area where the quest takes place it adds some minor info of what to kill or what to look for when mousing over the new mini-map marked area's.
Like i said, that info is limited so i still catch myself checking out Wowhead now and then, i've come to a few area's not knowing where to find an item or wether to kill mobs till it dropped.



In meanwhile i found some addons that solved that problem aswell on The Big Bear Butt making a lazy quester's life complete: Lightheaded and DoubleWide, BBB has a very short description on them or you could use the direct links for more info and/or download.
There are way more options in it (even more if you buy the full version) and i'm still trying to figure that all out. Do be warned that it is my most memory consuming addon i got at the moment. ;)

Zombie Battleground!

With the zombies gone i was thinking just how it was and what a shame it would be that this would be gone and lost to us now, at least untill they decide to re-use it for the next expansion.
And suddenly an idea sprang to mind: A Zombie Battleground!
Maybe you could see it as a PvP thing but with some tweaking i might actually be on an idea here.

Imagen people joining the Zombie Battleground, let's call it the Mall for now.... it wouldn't matter what the Alliance-Horde ratio was but the server tries to balance it a bit but if queues become too long it will be less and less worried about the ratio. What the system should do is get as many people of the same server in the Mall, it's more fun infecting people you know right?

So let's say we're going for a 25 man battleground. I'd say that 5 of those players are regular players and the other 20 hunt them down.
If you die by the hand of a zombie, you become one aswell (obviously) and if a zombie dies it becomes a regular player.
Zombies wouldn't need to eat to stay alive but if they eat they will get a stackable buff, i'm suggesting a minor speed and an increased ranged of their Retch (the gascloud "spit" which slows players down and infect them if they stand in it too long.
Hitting a player will still infect them as it did but this time the debuff lasts 5 minutes and each hit will take an extra 10seconds off that.
It is not cleansable except by two pools of Holy water and opposite ends of the battlefield, when you get cleansed you will get a debuff, not allowing cleansing for the next 3 minutes. (this should avoid people camping in the pool)

There are 3 rounds, a point for the zombies if they manage to zombiefy all the players and a point for the players if they manage to kill all the zombies.
After each round 5 other people start out as regular players, not everyone will get a shot at killing zombies straight from the start but that shouldn't be too much of a problem
So it's best out of 3. If we would like to keep this in a PvP setting it would be possible to award points, as it's impossible to either reward zombies or players so they get points per round and time played till the end (either winning or losing it) and they get points per zombie kill or player turning.
As players might be limited it's harder for zombies to turn someone so they get points for infecting players aswell and every hit they manage to put in, lowering the infection timer.

Now balance is a hard te determine thing, depends alot on the player(s)... but also the battlefield is important, you don't want too open spaces so zombies are getting AE'd from miles away. Then again a good chase might be good fun aswell, Zombies working together might pick up enough speed to get out of AE anyway.
We also want to avoid people "freeing" their zombie buddies who willingly let them get slaughtered to turn to the other side, this might cause to end rounds to fast aswell.
The least we can do to counter this is make zombies rez as zombies when they self-explode, after a period of time they will be able to self-rez on the very spot they died to make sure they keep somewhat together with the pack. The self-explode should get a longer CD because of this, perhaps 3mins or so.
This ability does make it possible for a single zombie to infect a large pack of players and turn the tide so to speak if the zombies are limited. Players can cleanse themselves in a pool but a second exploding zombie can end everything then... perhaps some CD tweaking on cleansing is needed then.

A different problem might be for melee classes, perhaps those should standard be zombies but they might miss playing the opposite side.
This made me wonder if we should shift the context of the Mall, perhaps make zombies near unkilleable and create more of a zombie chase where players just need to stay away from them as long as possible till the round timer ends.
We could also some tricks like some ammo crates with grenades around the battlefield which have alot more effect then the average AoE making it a must to get this weapon. Or Magic missile launchers with a CD and limited ammo... Perhaps barring yourself in is good for the suspense aswell trying to delay the zombies from reaching you while you try to take a shot at them. Killing zombies while barred in (which is also trapped once the zombies have hit the door often enough to break it) should be alot harder then when out in the open, zombies stacking Retch at such a point might be enough.

Ow soo many possibilities! Quite some tweaking required i'll bet but wouldn't it be the ideal partygame to play with your guild?
Now to just get my idea to Blizz someway.

Zombie Bomber

I've been a jerk this weekend... and i had more fun that i had in such a long time in this silly game.
I'll start with confessing what i did first, i found it quite creative but i'm guessing i'm not the only one who thought of it..
First you would get infected by the zombie debuff, after 10mins (later this became 5 and is currently even shorter) you would turn into a zombie. Faster if you would bubble, iceblock, use stoneform or.... die.
What i would do is get infected in Shattrah and then take my flying mount and would go find a player in Hellfire or Zangermarsh, the trick was to find a somewhat lower level player as zombies are quite underpowered and i wanted to have a reasonable chance at turning this player into a zombie aswell.

What surprised me the most was how many players were surprised by this ambush. Sure cratering next to someone and then turning into a zombie was easy enough and i'm pretty sure 99% didn't see that one comming, but how people reacted after that was completely hillarious.
Most started running away straigth away, some stopped now and then checking out what exactly i was.. scared but still curious.
Some run off just a bit, thinking i would "deaggro" or something while i just kept comming closer while. I chased a few through a quarter of the zone only to catch them in a town offguard (not afk), dieing in the progress but not before showing that person the dark side first.

Now to appologize for my jerk-being: Did i regret it? Hmm.. i think not, i had tremendous fun so i would lie if i said if i wouldn't do it again.
I did however do this just once for every person i encountered, horde and alliance alike, and 9 out of 10 were even amused by the thrill of the fight or even pleasantly surprised that they got to play a zombie aswell. Of two angry people i got one even said sorry for being rude (after i said i was just teasing and wouldn't bother him again), the other guy was italian which i found out after googling what he said which was apparently something people say when they are quite upset.
My appology landed on deaf mans ears there aswell i think, still.. i had fun and most people i "bothered" had aswell.

I personally love being a zombie and causing some havoc... i do realise however that other people might not like it at all. I've killed a flightmaster and when i wanted to take a different flightmaster somewhere else i found out it was dead aswell, which made me once again realise what other people found annoying about this event once more. But i just grinned about it myself, i caused trouble myself so i plan to take whatever inconvenience that is dealt to me and take it like a man... or like a zombie.

Dead > being alive!

Zombies in Wow!!! How cool is that?
I'm assuming here you have haven't totaly missed it, for those who did and didn't read it anywhere else: part of the expansion "opening" is a spreading plague which will turn people into zombies which can only be cured by death.
Being a zombie gives you a bunch of new skills (and disables your regular) and you have the ability to create more zombies from players and npc's, that is if they don't kill you first! Zerging like a good pack of zombies is the secret as been shown in many movies already.
Phase 2 has already started making it easier to get infected (infection can get cured, when you die or when the timer runs out you get zombified), some more info here.

I caused some havoc in Westfall where i was a poor lonesome Zombie for quite a while, killing/turning lowbies and NPC's. Reinforcements quickly arrived and my spree was ended. As a zombie you are quite a bit more fragile and a 1 on 1 fight with a level 70 almost always ends in defeat.
But not before infecting a few people, Boom! (exploding zombies.... currently not just for Deathknights!)

Later that evening i was bunched up with a group of 15+ zombies where we tried to take Goldshire. But before reaching that i was in a smaller cluster of 5 and an overconfident Paladin came to end our little rampage. Now imagen that Pala running away with just 200 health, chased by a couple of zombies... i myself was laughing my head off. Near Goldshire we found our ending as quite a few level 70's started nuking us down, we managed to turn a handfull and a number even made a run for it (got to love a good chase, works up the appatite) but the living, both players as npc's, were just too strong for the attractive bunch.
Great fun once again, just don't try to get at it alone as you will get disappointed.

I myself am hoping this plague will become more aggressive, evening the odds a bit for the zombies...
Anyway, if you are looking for me tomorrow... i'm running around in green clouds looking for tasty flesh with a mild fear flavour. Yum!