How Reallife/Wow disappoints

I heal stuff!
In Wow : One of those wack-a-mole guys right? Well, i guess people like you are needed aswell. Amazing you can stand it.
In RL : So you are a Doctor, you must get payed pretty good... nice... So, ehm.. you're seeing anyone at the moment? /flirt

I protect stuff!
In Wow : You do? Got time for a quick Heroic? We got a good group seriously... all we need is a tank.
In RL : You're sort of a body guard? You're a pretty brave guy then, thats pretty awsome. Or one of those nightshift guys? At least you get payed to sleep right? ;)

I kill stuff!
In Wow : Ah so you are a damage dealer, cool. Whats your average dps?
In RL : What the Fuck? Are you a poucher or something? Or worse.. you.. you.. are a murderer!! Oh my god!! POLICE!

Maybe it's just my point of view but being a healer in real life seems alot more awesome then in game.
More ironcally a healer in real life is likely to see more blood then a tank or dps, unless perhaps you're a Manson i suppose....

I R Legend

It was a few years ago... before the universe i knew got destroyed and i had to start all over again... i'm not exactly sure what happened but when i opened my eyes again me and all my friends where stripped to the bone, every piece of equipment and item we had was gone.
A few of my friends were seasoned enough to have most of their gear magically restored, still left us standing in IF buttnaked.

Before that time i was 29 seasons young although i was tainted by battle, fighting the horde with whatever teammembers i got on one of the battlegrounds they needed me on. I had some pretty good gear, not the best but some more to stand out and be better then the average player. Sure, the Horde send a few of their best geared into battle often which i did my very best to give a hard time but we would lose the battle often anyway.
I had my share of victories.. moments of glory aswell where i managed to strike a blow, steal that lowely Horde's flag and humilate them like they often did us. At other times i stood my ground defending whatever area i assigned myself to and protected it with my life, again with my share of succeses.

I considered myself a lone rogue, a secret weapon in a battle long lost which could shift the balance. It wasn't just brute force ofcourse, where needed i listened to orders when it was better to the outcome or i even played the tactician myself if no other stepped up.
After a while i got people shouting my name when i entered the battlefield... people listened when i devised a plan.. not all of them but now and then enough. I slowly became a legend, i turned into a beacon of hope it seemed even though that wasn't what i considered myself at all.
I was just doing the best i could to help end this war, even it it cost my own life...

After all my battle gear had been taken from me i had withdrew myself from battle, what use would i be? I decided to use the little credit i had left and the few tokens that the robbers had left me and spend it at the quartermasters and get myself at least some gear. In time my friends gave me some spare gold and i was able to restore some other gear and minor enchants but some of the gear was forever lost.
Yesterday after a year or so i entered the battlefield again and how things had changed... people no longer knew my name and the Horde seemed to running around in the best possible gear, even clothies stood their ground to my daggerstabbing action.

I played back in the days where reputation was important, not just among players but also at the factions on the battlefield.. the higher the rep, the better rewards you would be able to buy. Tokens which you would get for entering the fights were just used for more reputation and some experience.
Now suddenly i was left with plenty of credits (honor) but no tokens, it seems it's going to take a long time to get back into this.
Perhaps i should ask one of my friends to run me through an instance for some extra experience so i can to season 38 and get some extra skills and wear some higher level gear. I'm no legend anymore (if i ever was) but i will fight for long lost glory!!!! (and blue gear)

Some Engi love

It seems the first Engineering love has hit the server... after i got slightly disappointed that the Hog might not be an Engineering mount only (still hope it will be), Blizzard has dropped a large number of Engi patterns on the Beta server.

There are quite a few with potential and i'm hoping for more but this baby caught my eye straight away:
Soooo simple, yet so very effective!
Sure it brings nothing new to the table but this will actually save alót of bagspace.. For me it will free up 3 slots as i don't need jumper cables (Shaman) but it also has Flint and Tinder implented, easier acces to fire suddenly.

Okay, Okay.. this not exactly the stuff of legends and not worth taking Engineering over but there seem to be a number of nice trinkets and headpieces again which could be good use for at least the first weeks/months after i hit 80.
Now just give me the Hog and make me able to drive my alts around it in Azeroth aswell and i'm totaly happy!

Back to work now... hardly get around to blogging, grmbll...

Increasing Wow performance

There are some simpel methods to improve your Wow performance, some will reduce your graphics a bit though but others won't or very minimal.
Now i can't guarantee each and everyone to work for you and you would be wise to backup any settings (or write them down at least) before you change them so you can revert to them later. I've tried a number of these settings aswell and i'm between 60 and 100FPS (frames per second) now depending on the zone (you would need at least 30fps to see things run smoothly), my goal is however to make a second Wow-client run smooth aswell so i'm overshooting on purpose.

Run Mediaplayer to increase FPS
For some people running Windows Media Player before starting Wow will reduce loading times, see here or here for more info on that.

Dual core owners edit config for FPS increase
Add SET timingMethod "2" to the config.wtf file in your WTF folder, use Wordpad to edit (or something) and just add it to the end. This is supposed to have to do something with having a Dual core CPU so won't benefit people with single core most likely. You can also try out 1 (which should have the same effect as running WMP), the default is 0.
You can try this out ingame by using: /console timingmethod 1 or /console timingmethod 2

Change some Network adapter settings to reduce Latency
Apart from making sure Blizzard doesn't download the next patch while gaming you can also change some adapter settings to reduce latency, check out on how to do it.

Change ingame visual settings to increase FPS
Gamespot has some nice screens on the difference between various ingame visual settings. Some differences are minimal for worth mentioning performance. Check it out here and here.
I myself did the following (minimal graphic backset):
- Disabled Terrain highlights
- Disabled Full Screen Glow
- Disabled Vertical Sync (+15FPS for me)
On lower end systems reducing Terrain Distance (1 above minimum) helps alot aswell, i prefer it near max myself.

Change Videocard settings to increase FPS
If your card supports Anamorphic Filtering make sure this is NOT set to minimum as it will reduce graphics by alot. Us the ATI control panel to set Anamorphic Filtering, what this filter does is resample all of the graphics to keep them crisp. You can set it as high as 16x, I settled on 8x, but the difference wasn't drastic.

More tips

• The following post on the offical forums contain more tips to try if you want to further try to improve:Offical Blizzard Performance guide.
  There are some helpfull tips in there on ATI/Nvidia settings, color depths when using multiple monitors aswell as some links to other testtools and further reads.
  
• Running Windows in a Linux environment should help aswell, more info here.
  
• Update your Video drivers: ATI and Nvidia
  
• Some Video card settings:
  ATI Try turning off Catalyst A.I. in the Catalyst Control Center. If you use an older version, try turning off Overdrive.
  NVIDIA Try turning off Transparency Antialiasing in the NVIDIA Control Panel.
  
• Update your Bios
  
• Disable Windows defender, read more here (Do use some other Spyware blocker then though!)

New Faces

You probably have it in your guild aswell now and then, perhaps even more at the moment, new people joining the guild.
For many raidguilds it's pretty common in this time that people are needed to fill spots in a raid due to Holidays or people just entirely quiting the game either for a long time or just till the expansion, or perhaps even guildquiters (got that rarely ourselves).
So people are recruited, if you're lucky you have some people to choose from or else you'll just have to be happy with what you can lay your greedy little hands on.

Now some of those people just say hi and thats about the last time you hear them say anything... some other people make you feel a shifting in the force.
Suddenly the chat is filled with this new persons chatter, not bad neccesarily but noticeable still. Annoying? Hmmm.. not yet at least.
You know there is a certain mood in the guild and you've grown to love it, the weirdness, the chats.. there is no doubt in what direction you are moving, straight ahead at a comfortable cruise speed on the highway. This new person gives you the feeling you're steering slightly to the left or the right as he/she is finding her/his own comfortable lane.
Instinctively you steer back, trying to get to the previous optimimal course... but is it still?

Fact is that more present people will change your guild but that isn't a bad thing, for them it's probably alot more to get used to then the other way around.
But when you've been playing Mariokart all the time, do you really want to try Crash Team Racing? It might be fun.. come join the dark side yound padawan. Things are likely to change with new people in your guild but it keeps it fresh that way, as long as those people have some common ground and do fit in a bit ofcourse.

When thinking back, we had someone join us half a year ago and we used to make a lot of anal sex jokes at that time (think we still do actually). We soon found out the guy that joined was gay, nothing wrong with that but it made us wonder if he would mind the jokes or not. It changed the way we talked in guildchat for awhile and it slowly evolved into something else, not less perferted though. ;)
So was it a bad thing? I don't think so, just something different which isn't bad in this case.

The trick is to look out for people with such a strong influence that they actually change the atmosphere in your guild all by themselves in a bad way.
Trying to get someone in who you think will fit in is very important because of that, if you love to talk about your fettishes.. don't recruit someone who sells bibles in his free time. Or perhaps if you want to pipe down the sicko's you dó take that guy in. ;)

Making gold with a second account

You've spend your cash on a second account? So how do you make money? Have one toon on follow and do those dailies with two at a time? Do you mine/herb while raiding with your main? Let me tell you how i try to make my raidingmoney.

Dailies x2
Doing dailies isn't fun but at least if you do it with 1 toon on follow you get twice the cash for it for just a little effort more.
The Isle of Quel'Danas has quite a few dailies which can easily be done with a group; bombing quests, kill X belfs, freeing murlocs, getting ley lines but also a few gatherquests which are quickly done.

Grinding for Blues
If you got a good geared level 70 alt you could grind some instances for blue item drops which sell well on the Auction House. I'm going to share my little secret for this with you: Every 7 hours a boss spawns in the Arena outside Diremaul. While there is a risk you get ganked as you become attackable by everyone once you enter, the fight shouldn't take long for a good geared level 70.
I got my second account minimized with my toon parked just outside and an addon running which plays a L70ETC song as soon as a boss spawns. These drops are worth about 60g together but there is a chance something better drops which is worth around 800g.
If you don't got plans for your second account anyway, this might give it some use.

Playing AH
I got a low level alt which is busy selling the stuff i manage to loot aswell as buying stuff which is too cheap and reselling it.
There are guides for this but basicly i use the addon Auctioneer which you can use to scan all items and prices on the AH which will create a database for it. This takes a long while depending on the number of items on the AH (a scan easily takes 14mins on my server) and you need to keep scanning for a while to get accurate prices, aswell keep doing so to keep it accurate.
Auctioneer can also help you find which items are too cheap after a scan so you might be able to resell some.
It's not a glorious way to get rich and is quite boring aswell... profits are often very limited but now and then you might get lucky.
An other way is to dominate a certain market and buy out all the stuff and then put it back on for your own price but this is not my style anyway, takes even more time and has greater risk.

Camping the fair
This method can net you quite some money but it is very time intensive, my girlfriend does this alot. One week each month the Darkmoon fair shows up somewhere . It has various vendors but two of them have limited stock of items which are worth quite a bit on the Auction House, from gems, motes to valuable herbs. These items respawn frequently and you will need to spam the vendors to get to them before other campers do.
Not the most fun that can be had but if you have a toon on a second account standig arround Shatt anyway, might aswell park him at the fair instead.

All methods take up time and none are very fun, some with a better chance on a high outcome aswell.
Best is to try and do it while you do something fun on the other account, then it won't be such a pain... i fish alot on my other account while the raid is getting ready for example and sell dem fishies, won't make me rich but it's often enough to pay for a nights raid.
Don't be hesitant to share any other brilliant ideas with me btw.

Being an officer: Optimus style

I'm an officer in my guild and i am one because i feel i'm needed to, not because i want to. I became one because i was needed at that time and i still am because i feel i still contribute in my role. It's kind of the Optimus Prime kind of way i guess (nerd alert!) who filisofy was that a leader was there for his "followers" and not the other way around. (i know it's a fictional person but the idea still sounds good to me)

There are guilds out there with a Guildmaster (or even an council like we have) but where his every wish and idea is rule, it can be no other way.
Things in this guild are quite strict and constant and at times even dictator-like.
I've heared of guilds that even fell apart because of the way guildmasters like that bended the rules in their own favour.
Like i said, there are little benefits for our officers, what we do for our guild often comes out of our playtime but i do think most of our guildies understand that (still there are always a few rotten apples who like to give you a hard time if something doesn't go 100% as intented, we're only human afterall.. but that happens not too often luckily)

Now we don't have a guild like that, we are there for our members and i can't think of any benefit of being an officer besides having something more to read on the forums during the day. The proof of that is that we constantly adapt our rules... perhaps to a point where we have too many rules but in our vision it's the only way to keep things fair to all members with as little as gray-area as possible.
These new rules are actually new ideas how to handle things, most spawn out of something one of our members has said and evolves into something we can work with. Every couple of months there is a new revolutionary idea of which we manage to implent a few into our system.

A few examples of our non-basic rules:

DKP based on Contribution points
How to make a simple system more complex? Add an extra layer. Each raid we give people contribution points, these can be earned by showing on time, and attending at raids.
This system was added for various reasons of which i forgot most already but it did make farm content instances less dkp-friendly. Where in the past people willing to wipe all night on new bosses got less dkp then people just showing for farm content it is evened out now. Also being backup will give you a share of your CP now, we can actually reward people who stay available.
At the end of the week the CP's are translated into dkp giving each person a share of total dkp earned (1 CP can be worth less on a week with less activity, it all stays in balance)

Marks and Gems from the bank
Based on attendance (all tracked in our overcomplete dkp spreadsheet) you get a number of Marks and Epic gems at the end of each month.

Offspec for gold
At first our bank got flooded with Void Crystals till someone asked us why the hell we couldn't think of some way to buy offspec gear without spending that much dkp on it (offspec = 50% of normal dkp price), so this was created.
Basicly when an item drops people can whisper if they want to buy it for dkp (main-spec). If no one wants it people can roll for it for offspec (damage kit for a healer for example), the winner pays the dkpvalue in gold (T6 chest for 300g aint bad right?) unless someone rather spends dkp on it for offspec.
Now the beauty of this system is that people get their share of the money at the end of the month based on attendance, so it's not uncommon to get 90-120g in the mail suddenly.

Buy future pattern drops
Now this is still in the making and perhaps we can't get it fool-proof so it might not ever see the light of day but still it's an idea.
Anyway the idea is that people who buy a pattern from someone outside the guild with which they can craft theirselves a bop- mainspec- upgrade item with.. can have a chance to get (some of) their gold back. If the pattern later actually drops and no other crafter wants it for their mainspec, we will sell it and they will get a share of that in return of the set dkp-cost. The ammount of money they will get depends on the ammount we are able to sell it for.
That's roughly the idea, now to eliminate as many gray-area's as possible so people can't abuse the system or simply misinterpretate aswell as make it as fair as possible to everyone so people who buy the patterns don't get an advantage over non-crafters.

So as you can see we try to make sure the spoils of war don't end up in the guildbank but are fairly spread amongst the guildmembers.
I myself am getting away quite easy and my gametime lost is limited although on the other hand the behind-the-screens-activities cause me quite some frustration now and then which effects my play-fun ofcourse... but our raidleader got it worse.
He gets most of the drama while he is the one who does most for the guild, i don't even do a third of what he does for the guild.
In fact, he's the real Optimus Prime in our guild as he still goes on eventho i am sure at times he'd rather not log on at all. Still he keeps going as his guild needs him, the benefits (like i said, if any) of being an officer don't even come close to the burdens.

Raidbalance aint fun

When the Burning Crusade expansion was released we said goodbye to 40man raids as Blizzard implented 10 and 25man raids.
The logic behind this? 25 people are easier to get together then 40, so far this is the truth... but for what reason?
You'd think that it's all part of their master plan of world domi... eh, to make raiding more accesseable to smaller guilds, groups of friends and casual members. In my oppinion they kind of failed at this at least partially.

First when looking at 10 and 25 man raids... a 25man raid is 2,5 times a 10 man raid (Holy Mathishan Batman!). Remember back in Vanilla Wow where we had 20 and 40 man raids? At least you could simply split up your 40man raidforce but nowadays you either need to have 3 10man raids or 1 25man raid, either way 5 people are likely to be disappointed.
Not completely true ofcourse as i'm actually getting to the actuall problem in our current raids: Raidbalance.

Let's say you have 3 Karazhan raidgroups (each 10man+2 backup) with which you will do 25man (with 6 backup then) raids aswell.
Karazhan requires 2 tanks or at least 1 MT and 1 OT so you would have a total of 6 tanks or if you are lucky 3 tanks and 3 dpswarriors/ferals.
Any idea how many tanks an average raidboss needs? Well in SSC and TK you aint that bad off, most bosses actually require 3 tanks, a fourth even now and then. If you are lucky you can give most of the OT's a spot aswell as regular dps.. so far so good.
When does it go wrong then? Why am i making all the hassle? Well, because of the Black Temple i guess.
First boss requires 1 tank, so you likely have to ditch 2 prot tanks for dps or healers while you needed them on the trash. "Thanks for the help guys! Just wait outside till we're done here ok?"
This whole instance requires to constantly switch out tanks as bosses require between 1 and 3 tanks. Sure some bosses require more healers then others but when you need 9 healers at one and 7 at the next the odds of staying in are still alot better then 1 on 3.
Is it just me or is the way Blizzard has designed bosses totaly retarded? This was drama bound to happen the moment they designed it.
If Blizzard is indeed gonna buff the prot tank's dps they are at least a valid contribution to the raid when not needed to tank, let's pray they will implent this properly in Wrath of the Lich King.

But back to the 40man raids versus the 25man raids. Will this allow more casual players to get a raidspot? I think often it's exactly the contrary!
1 person not performing at his or her fullest is hardly noticed in a 40man raid, this person has almost twice the impact in a 25man raid... let alone in a 10man raid. The result? To get to the better stuff you need to be better yourself aswell, which is likely gonna cost you your raidspot if you can't get to that level or simply don't have the time for it.
So more people raid yeah, good job Blizzard... but most are stuck in the lower raidinstances and the few people in those raids who have the potential are likely quite frustrated and quit the game or try to get in the better raiding guilds, thus setting back the guilds working the lower raid instances again.

If you want balance in your guild you will need some extra people of each class and often switch them throughout a raidnight.
And actually you will need more people unless you have a very very fanatic guild in which everyone is available each and every raidnight, no holidays allowed.. no break when your girlfriend's dog has died, just raid when you got a fever close to boiling point.
In our case that results in one night having the perfect raid with a bunch sitting on the bench picking their nose while the next we have to bring alts in get the required classes. Okay, okay... it's summer and some people have a pre-expansion depression but still.
Forcing raidbalance this way is really ticking people off and mostly the tanks who are being pushed around like ragdolls.
It's easy to point the finger at the Raidleader but it's not his fault ofcourse, if he/she wouldn't balance the guild chances to take down a boss are lower and he might get the blamegun pointed at him anyway.. a thankless job but thats a different subject.

Let's just pray that Blizzard manages to create boss encounters which don't require constantly swapping raidmembers and still keep it interesting, quite a challenge but that's what we are paying for i guess.

Prot Warrior in the Beta

I'm currently fooling around in the beta and while i've was mostly on my Shaman main i also tried my level 70 Protection Warrior during an instance
To give a bit of an idea of my character and how i play it: My tank is tanked in full T4 gear-equivalent with some Heroic Badges gear so not half bad.
I've often maintanked Karazhan with some of our T6 mains tagging along which rarely took aggro even without a Paladin in the raid or a Shamy using his tranquil air which hopefully says a bit about my threatgeneration. (got threat spec tho)

When doing a 5-man in WotLK with 4 guildmates i took a somewhat simular build with some of the new talents aswell.
Now i must confess i quite missed my macro's but i recreated most halfway through the instance, still things felt a bit akward and i'm suspecting threatgeneration might be a bit lower then usuall... leaving out of consideration that my Warriors threat might be minimalized due to the change in how threat is generated. (as my kit has very little strength but does have Block value and such for threat generation)
My build was probably something like: http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=LiZcZict0e0zcxsgzVo (can't check atm as i'm at work :P)

First thing i noticed was how threat was totaly messed up.
I was with a Ret Paladin which could overtake me on aggro within a second and many times throughout the fight so i used that taunt button more in one run then i normally would on 10 (taunt is more of an oh shit button most of the time). Now the Paladin is supposed to have some bugged talents which makes him do insane damage so can understand this up to some point (was just before latest beta update btw).
The Enhancement Shaman managed to do the same actually.... When starting out with a Shield Slam and a Revenge/Devastate he overtook me straight away. Normally the Shield Slam alone would give me a nice headstart (i never taunt at the pull to keep a mob on me) but it had little effect now.
Either the Warriors threatgeneration is completely messed up, the Threat bonus on Defensive stance aint working yet, the threatreduction on dps classes don't work yet or the new itemisation totaly made my current gear useless (had no Recount or such to check TPS :( ).
Now it has been said that Warriors are still getting their complete overhaul so i'm hoping i can test things again later.
I did get to try the new talents a bit however and the new skills part of that.

Vigilance: Quite nice to use on that constantly overaggro'ing person. I made a macro of it so i could cast it on my target's target (aka, what my mob was attacking), with no CD an it being active untill canceled it seems a pretty impressive skill.
I thought at first it was more of a panic skill but if threat is a problem for a certain player you can simply keep this skill on him/her, shouldn't be needed but i can imagen certain boss fights where this comes in handy.. surely Blizz will think of some uses for it aswell.

Sword and Board: a so-so talent, i think you get more benefit from it if you tank a raidboss and get use Shield Slam more often then you do in your current rotation, which also makes a fixed rotation a thing of the past ofcourse. Don't mind myself.
On trash it's nice to be able to Slam around a bit or build faster threat on the current mob so you got enough headstart and can build threat on the next mob in meantime. For those not stuck in a rotation this is quite helpfull eitherway, then again.. those people are perhaps not the ones who need that threatboost in the first place.

Shockwave: I guess my attackpower wasn't high enough with my Outlands tankgear but it seemed to do very little. I can't even recall i saw any stunning on the mobs and i used it quite a lot, perhaps it isn't finished yet.
Visuall it looked pretty cool altho getting all the enemies in the cone in front of me was tricky, it was easy to be slightly turned away and blast past some or have mobs to close. Then again the people in my group didn't give me much time to backstep to get them neatly lined up so that might help until you are more used to using this spell.

I could see the potential of the Protection Warrior but this far it's far from complete. In the current state it's quite frustrating to play as a tank on a protection Warrior... on an earlier run the Fury Warrior was MT and his threat wasn't much worse then mine and that shouldn't be possible imo, at least not to this extend.
Hopefully they will implent the planned changes soon so i can take another shot at this.

DeathKnight impressions

This weekend i spend some time trying out the Deathknight, firstly i did the complete questchain untill you get out of the instanced zone and enter the actuall world and after that i played around with the other two specs.
Can't say it's much more then a first impression as i ended as a level 57 with many new skills short aswell as a few points to try to top tier talent, still it gave me a good impression of the playstyle and the quests of its current state... but you never know what Blizz is still going to change right?

Quests
The questchain will explain you how you become a "man" of free choice in a series of quests in which you will meet quite a few know lore characters like Mograine, The Lich King himself but also the Baron from Stratholme. The quests themselves are quite versatile, still there are a few "kill X stuff" quests around but with the majority they have tried to offer something new or at least fun.
What also impressed me was that you play in instanced versions of the starting zone, depending on your progress in the questchain. If you have set up a cauldron in a quest it will actually be there from that point on, destroyed stuff will remain destroyed...really adds to the feel that what you did effected the world. I really hope they use this method of story progress more often.
The only downside is that when you finally finish your Deathknight quests after a final epic battle you are left in Eastern Plaguelands, stuck with doing what i've always considered some of the worse quests in Azeroth. Luckily 1 level is easily done and after that you can enter the Outlands on level 58.

Blood
Considered the DPS spec and this is what i used to level at first. It offers quite some damage aswell as offer some healing abilities to yourself and your group. At higher level you get some more area abilities and ofcourse you can put some points in either the Frost of the Unholy. The top tier talent in Blood is a flying sword which mimicks your attacks as long as you have runic power which is basicly your rage. It won't double your dps as you won't be able to use runic power at that point for your own attacks but there are still the skills that require runes which you can use.
Without much doubt this will be the best PVE spec in raids aswell as re-assure smooth and fast leveling.

Frost
This is considered the Tank build with more magic/physical damage reduction in it (some in the other trees aswell so going a bit into Blood should be required). What i noticed with this spec sofar is the somewhat more limited options then with Blood or Unholy, this will give tanks some more freedom to watch surroundings i guess so that helps.
But don't set it aside for just tanking, i skipped most of the tank talents and i quickly noticed the ammount of control you would get with this spec.. almost as if you are a frostmage but with armor and a kickass sword. With the freezing and slowing talents it's quite possible to kite some harder mobs to death, i've tried it on a couple of mobs and although i didn't spec in slowing mobs with my frost spells it was quite hard of them to even lay a finger on me.
It somewhat depends on some proccing luck ofcourse.
When doing mobs one on one the Bloodspec will be slightly faster but if you plan to tank later on with your deathknight, do give Frost a try with leveling.

Unholy
I'd like to call this the Fun spec myself. When speccing into this you lower you CD on Ghoul summoning aswell as lengthen the duration. It also adds a petbar so you have more control over your pet aswell as have some extra skills, without this talent the Ghoul will just do as he pleases which can be quite annoying. People say this is the PvP spec and i did see quite a few potential skills for that, but if you would choose this spec for leveling you are in for quite a few smiles on your face... exploding corpses, leaping and selfdestruction Ghouls.. what more do i need to say.
I could easily take on a group of 4-5 with this spec and come out with half my health.
The other specs will have more AE abilities aswell on higher level but they won't have exploding corpses which is an absolute blast.
This spec offered the most options so far and has the smallest chance to turn into couple button bashing gameplay.

Conclusion
Bloodspec should be your choice if you want to perform at your best in a PVE raid as DPS, Frost would be the spec to go if you love tanking in either 5mans or raids and Unholy is your spec if you either PvP or mostly solo.
However... each spec has some talents which would be worthwhile having one of that spec in a raid, mostly in the form of party healing or resistances.
Also, some builds complement each other.. having more then one deathknight in your raid will boost each others potential. The Blood dps spec becomes alot better when bringing an Unholy DK along for example.
If you want my oppinion; I'd likely level as Unholy as it seemed the most fun in the small time i played. However if you plan your DK to be your main, do level with the spec that will be your final spec as much as possible because each tree has quite different playstyles and the experience will help you at 80.

Buying Gold the right way?

You know what i got against buying gold? The way its aquired!
People likely got hacked, stripped to the bone and their belongings where melted down into gold bars which then are offered to the people out there willing to trade their Euros/Dollars/Yen for the virtuall currency.
Buying gold will simply feed that market, as long as people keep buying gold.. people will get hacked, we are the ones that keep it alive.
Ofcourse there are farmers aswell who gather gold by grinding the same mob over and over again and while the gold that is generated that way might cause some inflation it won't cost you your gear in the end, but there is no way to make sure your bought gold is hack-free is it?

So i was wondering... if i was sure the gold was hack-free, would i be more willing to spend my real life money on it? Sure it's still illegal but at least i'm not risking someone getting hacked, although i risk getting my account shut down.
Would i change my game by gold in a way i am not supposed to?
Suppose i sell ingame materials and charge gold for it and make a large a sum of gold that way, thats nothing weird is it?
I however have little to offer ingame, at least nothing which don't require me to grind for it first... and then i might just aswell simply do dailies and get the gold. When i trade gold with someone for real life cash, that's pretty save isn't it? If a guildy has more gold then he can burn i can buy some off him without any risk getting my account banned, we can always say it was a donation.. nothing against that.

But how about game balance? I'm thinking nothing changes, if either my guildy spends the money i buy or i do it for him.. doesn't matter does it?
It's like giving gold to your alt only this time there is some payment done outside Wow without any possible concequences ingame, no hackers cleaning out other people... no farmers overspooling the Auction House and messing up prices or what ever other inflation/deflation of currency.

I still feel like i'm cheating on the game, like using one of those trainers or cheatcodes on a game to finish it in no time.. kind of a waste of a good game that way. Then again, if Wow is all about grinding like it is currently to be able to raid.. do i even want to play it?
On the other hand, say i'm buying 10k gold now to get me out of debts and make sure i got some cash to burn, what stops me from doing it again later on when i'm low on cash again? I might change the way i play this game, instead of grinding for some mats i'll just buy them on the AH and then buy new gold with real money. At least in the past you would get punished by Godzilla if you typed "fund" too often....

Sounds very tempting still doesn't it? Risk free gold with no concequences, well... perhaps just for yourself then.

Addicted to WotLK

-Warning, contains spoilers!-



After hours of spamming the inlogscreen of the beta i finally came in with little time to spare before the planned bedtime, actually it was past that already as i intended to go to bed early. I quickly met up with 4 guildies who managed to get in a bit earlier (log-in server was giving many of us problems), redid my UI, keybindings and talent quickly and made my way up to Stormwind.
One of the guys who was online yesterday already suggested we did the first instance Utgarde Keep which is located in the startarea on the east, the Howling Fjord.
Most of us went over to the new SW Harbors which is HUGE! I went by it pretty fast as my time was limited but it was a city of its own with at least a ship which could take you straight to Auberdine so no more running through dangerous Wetlands with your level 10 Nightelf if you want to see Ironforge.

I took the ship and i ended up at the western startarea in Northrend; Borean Tundra. I guess the ship that leaves from Theramore would have gone to the Howling Fjord. There is also supposed to be a Turtleship in between the two points but we decided to take an oldfashion roadtrip since three other party members ended up there aswell.
It took quite a drive to get on the other side, Northrend is rather big... i'd say about 10minutes or so. The highest mob i encountered was level 73 and was quite easy despite my mediocre gear (Kara/S1) and my bad key setup.

Utgarde Keep itsself was quite a maze to get in at first but the architecture was quite impressive. We did the instance with a Fury Tank, Ret Pala, 2x Enh. Shamans and a Holy Pala... it was brutal! I was the lowest geared one with the rest having T6 gear mostly and we just tore through the trash without use of any crowdcontroll. It didn't take long before we got overconfident and pulled 3 thrashgroups at a time and managed to wipe, probably would have pulled it off with a fully functional UI, keybindings and macro's but in this case it was just a tad too much.
The rest went rather smooth and the instance looked quite cool, apart from a couple of eye pleasers it was a pretty straight forward one.. no alternative routes and a minimalistic design and quite a few simular trashmobs. Enjoyable though.
Altho the instance is quite large, the rooms aint packed with trash so you get through it pretty quick.. the bosses were doable without much knowledge of tactics as long as the dps is as mad as ours. That didn't work for the final boss however and we had to find a tactic that worked for us, enable some enemy castbars due to lack of emotes or bossmods and then we took him down.
The instance took us about one hour, could have gone faster if we wouldn't have messed around too much.

My day ended at 1 'o Clock and i was beat! I still am now i'm sitting behind my desk at work,... and the worse thing is; i can't think of anything else.
I need to do some foodshopping later and go to the hairdresser (not the ingame one) Sathurdaymorning but i already find myself looking for excuses...
I'm like a zombie but instead of craving for brains i crave for Wrath of the Lich King, omg... why on earth did i get this beta key?

I'm in!

You are either gonna hear alot on the expansion on this blog or not a thing at all... depends on just how much fun it's going to be. :)
Seems my preperations for the expansions are going to be on hold for now, but at least i will know what to prepare for.

Am i the only beggar around here?

It's not that i ask for gold, i'd even feel embarresed if i would take gold from others if they would offer... i'd probably wouldn't accept even. If only some guy that quit the game ran in to me and unloaded his riches onto me.
The thing is, i 'm having quite some trouble getting cash lately on the server my Alliance mains are on. I played the Auction House a bit (mostly looked for underpriced items) on my Horde and i made quite some money with it... but people are either smarter at the Alliance side or (more likely) there are already a number of people watching the AH more frequently then i do.
Sure i get a bargain now and then but more then 15-20g profit isn't made.

And what about dailies? Ow how i hate those.. but still i drag my sorry ass to the plateau and do about 7 of the quests there every day before the raid. That gives me 130g as nowadays i got a second toon on follow (some functions hotkeyed so he aint totaly useless) aswell as 2 flasks to use in SWP.
It might not be much but this should net me with nearly 1000g a week right? True but to buy my new main an epic mount i got pursuaded to loan 2000g of a guildy, who assured me i would get the money back alot faster with it.
He's in no hurry to get the gold back but i'm hoping i can repay him within two weeks as i hate to have debts, even ingame.

It wont be long after i repay my debt that i will stop doing those boring dailies once again which result in somewhat limited funds once again.
For some reason i hear that people all around me have gold in the thousands, my own girlfriend recently reached 10k and for some guildies even that is peanuts. One of the guys bought numerous Gigantique Bag's for his main and alts which costs 1200g each, which shows he has some gold to burn. This guy can do dailies with 3 toons at the same time and he does probably close to 25 each day which is close to 750g a day then i guess, i wish i wouldn't go mental after the first 2 dailies.
Some other guy is constantly mining and gathering herbs, he spams my Gatherer addon constantly so no doubt about that.

What is it that those other people have no problem grinding dailies, mining/herbing, playing the AH while i get sick and tired of it just by thinking of it.
This aint a game, it's bloody work! If Blizzard would sell gold (and i'm glad they dont) i would likely spend some RL cash on it now and then, i won't do that now as i will not support goldfarmers/hackers/whatever other evil out there to mess up the game.
I just want a forever fun daily which doesn't take too much time and pays well, but that would only increase prices any more.
Bah... guess i just have to bit my lip and do my daily chores.

HEEL FFS!

So i'm a T6 geared Hunter and suddenly i find myself logging my Shaman, spec him Resto.. spend a small forture on enchants, gems and whatever else is needed and i head into a Heroic Instance. Before that the most healing i had done was on my Moonkin Druid in Zul'Farak once or twice.
What made me do it? A possible mainswitch. (i don't see BRK do that ;-) )

A Resto Shaman was needed, i had a Shaman alt (Enhancement but still) and people trusting that i would be able to pick it up quite fast and even like it.
I had my doubts... but wanted to try it anyway, eventho the idea of abbandoning my Hunter who has been my main since the very beginning pained me.
That Heroic went pretty smooth, not so much because of me but because of my party members including a T6 geared tank who hardly took a hit. (my GF btw... a T6 tank, now many won't be able to repeat that :P And No, she's not for sale!)
How i learned that 5-man, in the end i had a pretty good idea how things worked. The Karazhan raid after that granted me with even more experience, sure some people died but it were mostly the over aggro'ing locks who went down like a Pornstar.
After that run i thought of a few macro's i missed, macro's who would make my life easier hopefully.

The next run i did was Black Temple... a fresh healer in mostly Karazhan gear stepping foot in the Black Temple, again something that doesn't happen too often i suppose. In the beginning i barely outhealed the tank but as we got further and further into the instance i found myself getting faster, adapted better to unexpected things and quicker to decide who to heal first. I walked out that instance with 6 BT Epics and i helped at every boss apart from Illidan where my Hunter was needed. It was Great!!! I wasn't, but the experience was.

Ow healing is alot tricker then expected and i caught myself shouting out "CRAP!" quite often if someone died, even if it was a person not assigned to me.
Sure it's a bit of wack-a-mole but it does give some rewarding feeling when the people assingned to you remain standing when the boss isn't.

In my quest for a better heal setup i got adviced a number of addons of which i am currently using the following:
Healbot Continued", which gives you defineable healthbars and functions under your mousebuttons.
Instant Health, basicly this helps refresh the info you receive on people's health faster.
Quartz, a defineable castbar which i moved close to the healthbars to better time heals as it shows how much earlier you can start casting the next spell based on your latency.

The last runs i did were to Sunwell Plateau and i must say i held my own. The other Resto Shaman showed me the meters afterwards and i was a good second just below him, eventho i know the meters say alot less for healers then they do for dps.. it at least shows me i was more often quicker with landing heals then before. Ofcourse the investments i made in my gear (crafted bracers, boots from badges, Epic (haste) gems, expensive enchants) payed off aswell.

2Accounts1Pc - part1

This about something called dual boxing/multi boxing or whatever other slang there is for it.. except i'll be using 1 PC here.
Yep that's right, i got myself a second account for a number of reasons:
1. I need some gold to get my new main an epic flyer.
2. My new main is a healer so could use some help doing quests.
3. I will be leveling 2 toons to 70 when WotLK comes out to save myself some time.
Perhaps i will drop my second account after that but for now i got something new to toy with.
In a couple of posts i will try to explain how i've set up things, what i used and how i did it.
Part one starts below:


Hardware preperations
Now what helps is a second monitor but it isn't required at all. When your pc aint as fast it's probably better to keep your slave account minimized which has the extra benefit that you can keep your main wow client maxized (non-windowed) which makes it run quite a bit faser, difference on my pc is easily 15FPS. Depending on how you intend to controll your slave later that is something to consider.
I'll be using it windowed so i can always move my mouse to my second screen for either interaction with the other account or a webbrowser.

I myself intend to controll my 2nd character with my first keyboard and for that i bought a keyboard with extra keys: the Logitech G11 which is basicly the G15 without LCD screen.

You will need to check if your PC has enough RAM, at least 2GB for 2 accounts and a dualcore might help aswell although i must confess i have no idea what is exactly needed. I myself got 2,66Ghz dualcore, 4GB RAM and a X1950 Pro videocard from ATI.. no high end system at all.


Creating the Second account
Buy yourself a second copy of Wow first, perhaps with The Burning Crusade aswell if needed. You can either buy one of the so called "Treasure Chests" which contain both in the shop or simply order your key online. I bought mine at Gamecards EU who deliver in the US aswell btw. After i used my visa (can use various other methods like Paypal aswell) they called me to verify the first payment and i got the keys within 5mins by mail... if things take long, just use the chatbox on the site and you will get an answer straight away.
After that go to the official Wow site and create a new account, likely on the top right. After creating your normal account enter the account and upgrade the account using the Burning Crusade key.


Setting up the Second account
Best is to copy the directory you installed Wow in to an other physical diskdrive. It is possible to run Wow twice out of one folder but running it from two different spots will improve performance. Make sure it are actually two different drives, not one harddisk split.


Addons
The addon i installed first was Multiboxer V2 (direct download here.
Install this addon in both Wow clients.
This addon will add all sort of helpfull options like autofollow, auto-accepting rezzes, invites, quests and trades from friends, redirects whispers, aswell as a few other helpfull things.


Macro's
A few essential macro's to use:
Follow, follows the leader in the party. You can also replace party1 with a name ofcourse
/target party1

Assist, uses the same target as the leader in the party. Can again replace party1 with a name.
/assist party1

Trade accept, might be helpfull when using the Multiboxer addon as you can request a tradewindow accepting without a keypress is not allowed.
/script AcceptTrade();

More macro's here.


This will basicly make it possible to easily go arround town with the other toon in your slipstream, nice for boosting a lower level alt or do some of those dailies which don't have drops.
Don't forget to put Loot on Free for all. You can also copy an existing toon of yours to your other account aswell by the way, costs € 20,- in Europe. Both accounts need to be on the same persons name however.

I wil continue in next post with more detailed info how i have/will setup things using my G11 keyboard and Keyclone, making your second toon pitch in aswelll.
For those who want more info already or info about multi pc boxing, check out www.dual-boxing.com.

While the corpse is still fresh

We've run into something weird this week... Guild corpse camping i suppose you could call it.

Let me start with explaining the situation on recruitment: We never adress people in other guilds, ever! People simply come to us if they want to join us.
Apart from the idea that we don't like poachers it also makes sure that we get people who actually have made up their mind theirselves that they want to join us. As we cleared Black Temple and as an added bonus our good name, we do get our share of skilled players to apply.

But now with the holidays and the pre-expansion down we are in need of a few extra raiders. As our guild is build on more then just progress but on friendship and fun aswell, we have very few leavers. Actually we only need extra people as current members are stepping back to a more casual level or quit the game completely. The only person we had gquit this year was a new recruit who decided to go raid with friends and even he wanted to get back in later on. So we are looking for a good few who not only want to do the effort but have matching personalities aswell.. a tricky combo at times but we feel it works. This is what keeps us together as a guild and a raidforce even when things are a bit slow.

We aint the only ones having a slow time actually, other raidgroups on our server are also suffering and some are even experiencing leave-waves.
Guilds are falling apart and people are running for the lifeboats, peddeling to the nearest other raiding guild to get the last remaining seats. Yep, it's every man and woman (and child) for themselves. Just a few days ago i've heared about another guild which is basicly disbandig which is a saddening thing on itsself ofcourse.
Suddenly i found myself thinking "Hey, that might result in a few nice applies!" as they are on about equall progression level. Straight after followed by the weird feeling that i was about to pick someone's corpse.... and we might not be the only one trying to get their share of capable raiders when this other ship sinks. It's time to throw out some lifelines and see what grabs on, if they are lucky it is skilled and social enough for us not to throw it back into the cold water.
"Ow look, we caught a gnome...." "THROW IT BACK! THROW IT BACK!"

My Alt wears T6!

I'll have to share some info with you guys first.. something i've held back before due to security reasons....
I've probably bored you before with the fact that i was thinking to mainswitch as i was pretty tired of playing my Hunter, now this plan was schedualed for the expansion but something occured suddenly.

When i was airing my ideas about mainswitching to my Shaman some officers said they wouldn't mind if i switched straight away if only i would go Resto.
Healing? Not something i've done before but people in my guild who knew about this possible mainchange said i would be able to do it and even like it.
The idea of switching straight away and not having to wait till WotLK was quite appealing to me and it brought another advantage: if i wouldn't like it afterall i could always mainswitch to a different toon when the expansion came out as the field was leveled anyway!
Worse case scenario i wouldn't like playing it and had to sit it out till the expansion but then again, i didn't like playing the Hunter much either.

After a weekend in Paris (WWI08) where i talked to several guildies, including some (ex)healers... i switched specs and enchanted/gemmed all my off-role healing kit i gathered in Karazhan. The idea was to try it out first before making the switch official.
I started out with an Heroic and while i pretty sucked at the start, i had the idea that i was getting better and better at the end.. ofcourse having a T6 tank along helped alot aswell to ease the pain. Straight after i entered Karazhan first time as a healer and i had to adapt and learn quickly there aswell.
Things didn't go perfect but as one of 2 healers we managed quite a bit.

The next step was to try out a 25man raid. The raidleader decided that i could step in on the first few bosses in Black Temple, probably as a bad player didn't have too much effect there. ;-) In the beginning i was shamefully low on the meters but i started picking up soon, getting better at every pull... and more importantly; enjoying it aswell.
I ended up doing every boss apart from Illidan where my Hunter was needed and while doing that i ended up with 6 Black Temple Epics, including the T6 legs! At the last boss i did i managed to outheal quite a few healers which might not be as hard using Chain Heal but don't forget my inexperience and poorer gear.... i won't applaud myself just yet but it showed me i had actually improved quite a bit in just a few days.

At the end of this reset i will make my decission; either i'll switch to the Shaman or i'll stay on the Hunter. That leaves me with just 2 more nights on which i can try my skills in heroics/raids.
Either way i choose i can savely say: "My Alt wears T6!"

Refining my macro's

Yesterday i had a testrun with my healer in nothing less then Black Temple! I managed to try out my leet healing skills (sarcasm intented) and my macro's. One thing i can across was how i wanted to apply Earth Shield. I wanted to be able to toss it to random people easier, when someone was suddenly taking damage for a longer period of time.. at an AoE pull for example.
Below refined macro should be able to do that at a targeted person while holding control, giving it prio over the focus target.

/cast [nomodifier,target=focus,exists,nodead] Earth Shield; [nomodifier] Earth Shield
/stopmacro [nomodifier]
/cast [modifier:ctrl,target=target,help] Earth Shield
/stopmacro [modifier:control]
/focus [modifier:shift]
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Focus target set!")

The other thing i wanted to do is to easier heal people "in the field". I had a mouse over macro for that:
#showtooltip Lesser Healing Wave
/cast [help,exists] [target=mouseover,help,exists] [target=player] Lesser Healing Wave

The problem was that an already targeted player would get priority, often a good thing ofcourse if you like to wave that mouse around. But this way i had to get rid of my current target which was often a boss to keep an eye on his abilities. Another refinement required.
#showtooltip Lesser Healing Wave
/cast [nomodifier,help,exists] [nomodifier,target=mouseover,help,exists] [nomodifier,target=player] Lesser Healing Wave
/cast [modifier,target=mouseover,help,exists] [modifier,help,exists] [modifier,target=player] Lesser Healing Wave

Pretty simple actually, just hold shift/ctrl/alt it will use a different order of casting the spell.
I could also add a 3rd line with Alt as modifier with a prio healing myself, will have to test ingame if i can have that many letters in the macro tho.

Reclaimer: Above macro's have to be tested still.

First time Healer

Yesterday i respecced my shaman Restoration. I gemmed and enchanted all my offspec kit, which was luckily 80% epic from earlier Kara runs, and i went into Heroic Mechanar. I was lucky that the tank was T6 geared so healing was pretty much a breeze apart from the times one of the two locks overaggro'd. First thing i noticed: i would die alot. Every broken sheep or untanked mob would come straight for me and try to hammer away the little health i got (something to work on).

I'm sure some deaths were to blaim on me as i was constantly looking for buttons and had trouble deciding who to prioritize. I forgot Earthshield on the tank, forgot Water shield for myself and to drop totems quite often... it was all too much!
But every mob and boss we did i felt i was getting more and more in control. Slowly i was seeing some logic in the things i needed to do and the addon that was supposed to make my life easier actually started doing so.
Someone else in the party noticed my quick improvement aswell.

After a succesfull run (lets ignore those deaths shall we?) i joined the Karazhan alt run of that evening. Quickly i had to resort my healing addon which went a bit beserk when joining a raid (reloud UI did the trick i found out later) and not much later we were on our way.
The one tank we had was well geared but was playing on a older laptop so had some latency issues, which resulted in a few more deaths on my behalf as i hoped for. I felt i didn't do half bad besides the crappy tanking of loose adds i ended up doing and letting a few people that overaggro'd die... by the time we did Opera i had to heartstone out as i was 80% red, resulting in 30g repaircosts.
Quite a few wipes happened, most of them by ninja pulls by others then the tank, both healers dieing on trash or (an old time favorite) moving in the fucking Flame Wreath!

Either way i learned alot. I became more confident and learned how and when to use what... many fine tunement is needed ofcourse but Nature's Swiftness was one of the tools i quickly learened to love.
Earthshield needs a different sollution.. while the addon i used (Healbot) had a key-combination in it, it didn't feel quick enough so i was thinking of a macro:

/cast [nomodifier,target=focus,exists,nodead] Earthshield; [nomodifier] Earthshield
/stopmacro [nomodifier:shift]
/focus [modifier:shift]
/script DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage("Focus target set!")

I actually adapted a Misdirect macro which i made for my Hunter but this should work aswell. Set the MT as focus target using Shift, using the macro will them ES him no matter who i have targeted. If he's dead he will ES my current target and oterwise myself if it's hostile.
Am considering to make a bypass key... for example if i held ALT it would do ES on my current target even if there is a focus target, but let's try this first.
I've also planned to keybind some more keys, Watershield again (which i replaced with Nature's Swiftness) and perhaps Earthshield aswell.

More to learn in the upcomming days, so far it's pretty cool... having the balance of life in your fingertips... MWOEHAHAHA!