The rogue class in World of Warcraft is basically all about rapidly ending the life of something in the game. In PvP the word "rapidly" can often be changed to "abruptly".
The rogue class is incredibly sensitive to gear. The statistics of the character have dramatic effects on outcomes.
Rogues can be very rewarding to play. I have noticed I do not see them in dungeons as often as I did half a decade or so ago. However, I still see them in battlegrounds.
Nevertheless, they are good for both PvE and PvP play. One resource available to rogues to help pick out and evaluate gear, glyphs, and talent points is a web site named Shadowcraft.
If you have a rogue character that you play in WoW, you should take a look at the site and see how you can max out your gear and tactics so you can get the effects you want.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
YouTube retooled leads to Undermine Journal reacquaintance
Institutions of the Web really outdid themselves from my perspective this week. I was very impressed by 4 of them in the course of a quarter of an hour today.
First, I learned on social news site Digg from news content site Discovery that web superstar Google has completely retooled the user interface of social video web portal site YouTube.
While there, and encouraged to poke around and look for some new feeds to subscribe to I learned that The Undermine Journal has a YouTube account with a feed on it to which I could subscribe. So I did.
While watching the introductory TUJ tutorial video, I learned about some neat little features in The Undermine Journal web site that I had overlooked.
The video was uploaded at the end of October, making it just over a month old. It was new to me, and contributed to my overall impression this evening that the Web has really evolved this autumn.
I think this is the way the web is supposed to work. Lots of different sites and services all working together in a smooth, open, non-monolithic fashion.
It is kind of funny I got acquainted with these neat TUJ features thanks to a YouTube web site facelift getting announced on Digg. But that is the way the Web works.
First, I learned on social news site Digg from news content site Discovery that web superstar Google has completely retooled the user interface of social video web portal site YouTube.
While there, and encouraged to poke around and look for some new feeds to subscribe to I learned that The Undermine Journal has a YouTube account with a feed on it to which I could subscribe. So I did.
While watching the introductory TUJ tutorial video, I learned about some neat little features in The Undermine Journal web site that I had overlooked.
The video was uploaded at the end of October, making it just over a month old. It was new to me, and contributed to my overall impression this evening that the Web has really evolved this autumn.
I think this is the way the web is supposed to work. Lots of different sites and services all working together in a smooth, open, non-monolithic fashion.
It is kind of funny I got acquainted with these neat TUJ features thanks to a YouTube web site facelift getting announced on Digg. But that is the way the Web works.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Darkmoon Faire Reborn
Blizzard has pretty much done away with a lot of the concrete details of the Darkmoon Faire as part of the 4.3 patch that seems to be rolling out today.
I am not laughing or crying over this. I do have some regret that I did not farm more of the tribute items to turn in for more reputation.
On the one hand, I probably could have gotten a lot more reputation if I really focussed on collecting and crafting the necessary items. Now, that I have finally converted a bunch of my alts into bankers it would be practical to do. I now have storage to stockpile the items, at least. However, I was just a little too late with that conversion to do this, it seems.
On the other hand, I did not get too badly burned by this change.
For one thing, I was not stockpiling a giant quantity of the now obsolete tickets. I had a hunch they would be going away and that hunch proved right according to the latest WoW Insider and Wowpedia Darkmoon Island information.
The other thing that bolsters my mood is that I did do a little farming and decently organized turn-ins of the tribute items this autumn. So when Darkmoon Faire opens at its new location in a few days, I can at least poke my head in with higher than Neutral reputation on a few characters.
One thing that really makes me happy is the items that the tickets bought are probably going away.
Those items were decent when the Faire debuted. For the past few years they were kind of a joke for people who had already been playing WoW for years. New characters or not, longtime players are just not going to be all that excited with a 14-slot bag when their tailor is able to create 20+ slot bags for all of their characters.
Basically, when I was turning in tickets this year, I considered the items I got back little more than vendor trash.
The change is a reminder that the joke is on any of us who collect quest and tribute items and hold onto them for a long time. It seems a lot of them are destined to vanish or be turned to grays. Best to farm enough to top off the amount needed to do a turn-in, turn it in, and get your reputation points. Holding onto a couple here or there for ages is likely just to take up valuable bank space with this ultimately never get used.
It sounds like more than a few grins lie in store for all of us who venture into Darkmoon Faire at its new island locale, Darkmoon Island.
I am not laughing or crying over this. I do have some regret that I did not farm more of the tribute items to turn in for more reputation.
On the one hand, I probably could have gotten a lot more reputation if I really focussed on collecting and crafting the necessary items. Now, that I have finally converted a bunch of my alts into bankers it would be practical to do. I now have storage to stockpile the items, at least. However, I was just a little too late with that conversion to do this, it seems.
On the other hand, I did not get too badly burned by this change.
For one thing, I was not stockpiling a giant quantity of the now obsolete tickets. I had a hunch they would be going away and that hunch proved right according to the latest WoW Insider and Wowpedia Darkmoon Island information.
The other thing that bolsters my mood is that I did do a little farming and decently organized turn-ins of the tribute items this autumn. So when Darkmoon Faire opens at its new location in a few days, I can at least poke my head in with higher than Neutral reputation on a few characters.
One thing that really makes me happy is the items that the tickets bought are probably going away.
Those items were decent when the Faire debuted. For the past few years they were kind of a joke for people who had already been playing WoW for years. New characters or not, longtime players are just not going to be all that excited with a 14-slot bag when their tailor is able to create 20+ slot bags for all of their characters.
Basically, when I was turning in tickets this year, I considered the items I got back little more than vendor trash.
The change is a reminder that the joke is on any of us who collect quest and tribute items and hold onto them for a long time. It seems a lot of them are destined to vanish or be turned to grays. Best to farm enough to top off the amount needed to do a turn-in, turn it in, and get your reputation points. Holding onto a couple here or there for ages is likely just to take up valuable bank space with this ultimately never get used.
It sounds like more than a few grins lie in store for all of us who venture into Darkmoon Faire at its new island locale, Darkmoon Island.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Allegation of slave labor in Chinese prison lodged in news media
At the very least, major US & UK news media outlets - and others - have picked up a story that touches a lot of wires: human rights, slave labor, direct violation of national laws in the country they occurred, and who knows what else will pop up in coming days or weeks?
As you probably heard by this point, a man has said that he was a prisoner in a China and that his guards forced him and others to play WoW in a manner known as "gold farming".
Gold farming is playing WoW for profit. Illicit profits, it turns out.
Gold farming is illegal in China. You are not allowed to trade virtual currency there for real currency. So it is going to be a little inconvenient, if not downright cognitive dissonance if guards at a state-run prison forced people in their custody to do it.
It also interferes with the game. Some things gold farmers do negatively impact a bunch of the players on the realm (server cluster) where the misconduct occurs.
The activity is misconduct because it breaks the terms of service that let you get onto the game in the first place.
But it gets even worse if the gold farming activity - the collection of the virtual assets or vending of them for real assets - is facilitated by computer hacking. And then if the income is not declared but hidden, then that is another can of worms. And if it violates international trade agreements - and I have no idea what they are or if it does, then that aggravates more people.
It seems like it is a human rights thing too.
- Chinese prison hard labor includes MMO gold farming (Geek.com)
- China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work (Guardian.co.uk)
- Gold-farming in a Chinese forced-labor camp (BoingBoing.net)
- Video Game 'Gold Farming' and Chinese Prison Labor (TheAtlanticWire.com)
- Chinese prisoners forced into online 'gold farming' (GMANews.tv)
- Inside the economy of virtual currency (IBTimes.com)
As you probably heard by this point, a man has said that he was a prisoner in a China and that his guards forced him and others to play WoW in a manner known as "gold farming".
Gold farming is playing WoW for profit. Illicit profits, it turns out.
Gold farming is illegal in China. You are not allowed to trade virtual currency there for real currency. So it is going to be a little inconvenient, if not downright cognitive dissonance if guards at a state-run prison forced people in their custody to do it.
It also interferes with the game. Some things gold farmers do negatively impact a bunch of the players on the realm (server cluster) where the misconduct occurs.
The activity is misconduct because it breaks the terms of service that let you get onto the game in the first place.
But it gets even worse if the gold farming activity - the collection of the virtual assets or vending of them for real assets - is facilitated by computer hacking. And then if the income is not declared but hidden, then that is another can of worms. And if it violates international trade agreements - and I have no idea what they are or if it does, then that aggravates more people.
It seems like it is a human rights thing too.
I do not know what the US government or UN stance on this particular event is. I have not read if it has been investigated yet.
Once it is, I imagine the US State Department would say something about it. They seem to be the voice of the US regarding non-military situations in other countries. It would be interesting to see if this is a UN human rights issue or not.
The last time the US brought up a serious harm being perpetrated directly against people by Chinese institutions, the Chinese government executed its product safety minister.
So it is a little hard to predict what will happen in prison administration officialdom if the allegations turn out to be really true.
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