On a whim I decided to take a look at who, well not "who" but from where, people are reading this blog of mine.
In the past, it was clear that the only person who ever accessed this blog was probably me. Since this happens out of necessity when I create, proofread, and edit/update entries in it, this did not bring my ego a huge amount of gratification.
However, this time I noticed that one person or agent each from India, South Korea, Australia, France, and the Netherlands has looked at it; a small but maybe no longer "zero population" audience.
My own nascent ego boost aside, there seems to be substantial grounds for someone else to be proud — though it likely comes as no surprise to them — is Google Chrome.
One third of my readers were using Chrome with about one-sixth each using one of the others: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, or Safari. So based on this incredibly small, narrow sampling, Chrome seems to have way more usage than I expected; at least, under this subject it does.
The identification of the brand of operating system statistically being used was a surprise too. While Microsoft Windows enjoyed 2/3 of the visits, 1/6 each were enjoyed by Macintosh & Linux.
This is a big turnaround from half a dozen years ago when people and businesses were just "presumed" to be using Internet Explorer and running Microsoft Windows.
The World Wide Web was always supposed to be enjoyed from a multitude of different platforms and not just brands but kinds of web browsers. They do not just refer to the latter as "user agents" in all of the technical literature for the pointless sake of vagueness; versatility and diversity has been a goal of web architects and designers for decades.
So there are pleasant conclusions, or at least hypothesis to be drawn from looking at who and what sees my blog.
Now, if I could just get them to do it twice!
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Limited Indulgences for Off-realm Alts — With Caveats
For a fee, Blizzard will transfer your character to another realm. This includes its identity, its gear and other items, and its gold.
Two interesting things resulted from this; addons which had been around and working most of the time for years abruptly broke [and remain significantly broken] and a new, inherently limited way to move gold from one realm to another appeared. [In effect, at the expense of a new technological worm to deal with you get a new economic wormhole to use.]
You are limited in how much you can transfer a given character to a different realm by a limit imposed on how often a character can be transferred. Essentially, there is a "cool down" on this action imposed by the service itself, which is a for-pay service.
Going back for an even longer time, you could volunteer to transfer a character of yours, and its Azerothian belongings, to another realm. This service was and still is actually free. It was a limited, one-way trip with a limited choice of destinations for a limited number of characters; specifically, those on overcrowded realms that were keen to the idea of moving to what are underpopulated realms. Blizzard traditionally offered this service in realms a few brief periods a year; definitely not all the time.
With Battle Pets, Blizzard introduced a nice new feature for doing pet battles. As a reasonable convenience they allow/make all characters in an account share the same Battle Pets.
Now, because duplicates exist by dint of substantial players efforts and expenses on their multiple characters prior to this "sharing" feature — and perhaps other reasons as well — Blizzard made most vendor bought and quest reward Battle Pets sellable. One can use the Trade window, Mail window, or Auction window to give/sell/exchange pets in game.
At least in theory, you can. In practice, huge numbers of players use addons. Addons were written with a reasonable assumption that the way items were represented in the game API (application programming interface) would not change greatly. There was one consistent way that all items were represented so this seemed like a natural assumption.
But the assumption stopped holding as true a couple of months ago when Battle Pets came out.
Battle Pets that are ejected from the Pet Journal, a new feature of the game, always come out as an identical-looking item; one named a "Pet Cage". There is just one item type ID for it. So in terms of the existent APIs, in theory, they could continue working even with the new pets.
In practice, they seem to have problems and throw exceptions during bulk processing (e.g. auction house "scans") and during simple UI event processing such has handling "mouse over" events.
That is not to say that some work has not been done all over a bunch of addons to handle this. However, a surprising number of addons still are fundamentally broken in their primary purpose where ever they are forced to look at Battle Pet "Pet Cage" items.
What they need to do is look beyond the name of the item and even its over type ID and check out the extra details hidden in the item hyperlink that has a new format peculiar to Pet Cages.
Anyway, despite this hiccup in the extremely relevant domain of WoW addons becoming somewhat dysfunctional when Battle Pet items are involved in activities — particularly Auction House enhancement addons, you can now sell your pets across realms. You can, that is, with one constraint.
Someone has to be willing to buy them. You also have to be willing to sell the pet for a price that people are willing to pay in that faction on that realm.
If you or they are not, and you retain more of that particular type of pet in your Pet Journal, then you are pretty much stuck with that Pet Cage as an item which needs to sit in a bank or bag slot until a mutually-agreeable price can be hit upon "someday".
There just is not a lot of such storage space available in WoW except by creating additional characters to use as "banker" alts. The problem there is that you need to earn or stumble upon the [possibly gold-fueled] cooperation of other players to found a guild with that character, or do without a guild bank's worth of slots at its disposal.
So the bright news for longtime players of WoW is that you now have this third way to transfer gold from one realm to another. Taking a step back to regard this new feature objectively, one finds it still has limitations
What is my advice to players who have been playing WoW for a really long time, have a bevy of redundant Battle Pets which they would like to replace with a greater number of unique Battle Pets. and have alts on other realms which are in need of gold?
Study how markets work in the real world in terms of the well known law of "supply & demand"; something you probably already know about. But more importantly, go read up on and think about "arbitrage". It is a way of buying low and selling high, typically across geographic domains [in this case realms] as a way of taking advantage of different market prices on specific items or most items in general.
Ultimately, it would be nice if WoW addons made it possible to quickly look at lists of your WoW Battle Pets and find which pets you have duplicates of, particularly in most cases Level 1 ones, and see what the going successful auction sale prices are on other realms for that specific Battle Pet type.
In the meantime, however, it would just be really nice if all the Auction House addons simply got fully working with Battle Pets instead of generating errors when operating on them.
Once that happens, I see great opportunities despite some inherent and overall benign limitations on a new way to flow your own gold from one realm to another!
So, despite the devils in the details at the moment, there is an exciting new way to transfer some of your gold from one realm to another.
Two interesting things resulted from this; addons which had been around and working most of the time for years abruptly broke [and remain significantly broken] and a new, inherently limited way to move gold from one realm to another appeared. [In effect, at the expense of a new technological worm to deal with you get a new economic wormhole to use.]
You are limited in how much you can transfer a given character to a different realm by a limit imposed on how often a character can be transferred. Essentially, there is a "cool down" on this action imposed by the service itself, which is a for-pay service.
Going back for an even longer time, you could volunteer to transfer a character of yours, and its Azerothian belongings, to another realm. This service was and still is actually free. It was a limited, one-way trip with a limited choice of destinations for a limited number of characters; specifically, those on overcrowded realms that were keen to the idea of moving to what are underpopulated realms. Blizzard traditionally offered this service in realms a few brief periods a year; definitely not all the time.
With Battle Pets, Blizzard introduced a nice new feature for doing pet battles. As a reasonable convenience they allow/make all characters in an account share the same Battle Pets.
Now, because duplicates exist by dint of substantial players efforts and expenses on their multiple characters prior to this "sharing" feature — and perhaps other reasons as well — Blizzard made most vendor bought and quest reward Battle Pets sellable. One can use the Trade window, Mail window, or Auction window to give/sell/exchange pets in game.
At least in theory, you can. In practice, huge numbers of players use addons. Addons were written with a reasonable assumption that the way items were represented in the game API (application programming interface) would not change greatly. There was one consistent way that all items were represented so this seemed like a natural assumption.
But the assumption stopped holding as true a couple of months ago when Battle Pets came out.
Battle Pets that are ejected from the Pet Journal, a new feature of the game, always come out as an identical-looking item; one named a "Pet Cage". There is just one item type ID for it. So in terms of the existent APIs, in theory, they could continue working even with the new pets.
In practice, they seem to have problems and throw exceptions during bulk processing (e.g. auction house "scans") and during simple UI event processing such has handling "mouse over" events.
That is not to say that some work has not been done all over a bunch of addons to handle this. However, a surprising number of addons still are fundamentally broken in their primary purpose where ever they are forced to look at Battle Pet "Pet Cage" items.
What they need to do is look beyond the name of the item and even its over type ID and check out the extra details hidden in the item hyperlink that has a new format peculiar to Pet Cages.
Anyway, despite this hiccup in the extremely relevant domain of WoW addons becoming somewhat dysfunctional when Battle Pet items are involved in activities — particularly Auction House enhancement addons, you can now sell your pets across realms. You can, that is, with one constraint.
Someone has to be willing to buy them. You also have to be willing to sell the pet for a price that people are willing to pay in that faction on that realm.
If you or they are not, and you retain more of that particular type of pet in your Pet Journal, then you are pretty much stuck with that Pet Cage as an item which needs to sit in a bank or bag slot until a mutually-agreeable price can be hit upon "someday".
There just is not a lot of such storage space available in WoW except by creating additional characters to use as "banker" alts. The problem there is that you need to earn or stumble upon the [possibly gold-fueled] cooperation of other players to found a guild with that character, or do without a guild bank's worth of slots at its disposal.
So the bright news for longtime players of WoW is that you now have this third way to transfer gold from one realm to another. Taking a step back to regard this new feature objectively, one finds it still has limitations
What is my advice to players who have been playing WoW for a really long time, have a bevy of redundant Battle Pets which they would like to replace with a greater number of unique Battle Pets. and have alts on other realms which are in need of gold?
Study how markets work in the real world in terms of the well known law of "supply & demand"; something you probably already know about. But more importantly, go read up on and think about "arbitrage". It is a way of buying low and selling high, typically across geographic domains [in this case realms] as a way of taking advantage of different market prices on specific items or most items in general.
Ultimately, it would be nice if WoW addons made it possible to quickly look at lists of your WoW Battle Pets and find which pets you have duplicates of, particularly in most cases Level 1 ones, and see what the going successful auction sale prices are on other realms for that specific Battle Pet type.
In the meantime, however, it would just be really nice if all the Auction House addons simply got fully working with Battle Pets instead of generating errors when operating on them.
Once that happens, I see great opportunities despite some inherent and overall benign limitations on a new way to flow your own gold from one realm to another!
So, despite the devils in the details at the moment, there is an exciting new way to transfer some of your gold from one realm to another.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Suffering Security Succotash — Google Chrome attacked via ads on Curse
I really do not have a huge problem with ads served up on web sites save for one problem. They are not secure.
Ads can do almost anything unless publisher/subscriber to the ad service/broker agree to content restrictions & enforce them — and browser makers design/code their web browsers correctly, along with OS vendors that the browsers run on.
Just like the sites we visit themselves, advertisers and ad brokering services need to make sure their entire computing rigamarole does not get compromised.
Sadly, things just do not work out like they are supposed to work out.
On November 1, 2012 Curse.com posted a security bulletin on their web site saying that they had been informed by Google of a JavaScript-injection attack upon Chrome browser users visiting the Curse.com web site.
This event highlights how important it is for web browser developers, advertisers & ad brokers, and web sites to all work together to make sure that malware does not get through.
Until they do this, you are much safer if you block ads in general. This incident shows that, security-wise, the advertising community is "just not there yet" in terms of adequate safety.
What happened in this case was a web advertisement company's computers got hacked, and their computers in turn performed a JavaScript-injection via its ads that were displaying on Curse.com.
If you trust other companies/people's computers too much, then pretty soon you will not be able to trust your own computer. This bad ad incident drives this point home very clearly.
There are ad-blocker extensions for the major web browsers and it is a good idea to use them. When the advertising agencies/clients discover a substantial portion of the intelligent public are blocking their ads, they will feel pressure to make themselves trustworthy. Right now, they are not trustworthy enough.
Ads can do almost anything unless publisher/subscriber to the ad service/broker agree to content restrictions & enforce them — and browser makers design/code their web browsers correctly, along with OS vendors that the browsers run on.
Just like the sites we visit themselves, advertisers and ad brokering services need to make sure their entire computing rigamarole does not get compromised.
Sadly, things just do not work out like they are supposed to work out.
On November 1, 2012 Curse.com posted a security bulletin on their web site saying that they had been informed by Google of a JavaScript-injection attack upon Chrome browser users visiting the Curse.com web site.
This event highlights how important it is for web browser developers, advertisers & ad brokers, and web sites to all work together to make sure that malware does not get through.
Until they do this, you are much safer if you block ads in general. This incident shows that, security-wise, the advertising community is "just not there yet" in terms of adequate safety.
What happened in this case was a web advertisement company's computers got hacked, and their computers in turn performed a JavaScript-injection via its ads that were displaying on Curse.com.
If you trust other companies/people's computers too much, then pretty soon you will not be able to trust your own computer. This bad ad incident drives this point home very clearly.
There are ad-blocker extensions for the major web browsers and it is a good idea to use them. When the advertising agencies/clients discover a substantial portion of the intelligent public are blocking their ads, they will feel pressure to make themselves trustworthy. Right now, they are not trustworthy enough.
Where to get your own level 11 Nether Faerie Dragon
Ever since Blizzard introduced pet battles and the associated 'battle pets', formerly called 'companions', there has been fairly strong interest in getting a bunch of these pets for two different reasons:
They look really cool!
They have different abilities and attributes and battle pets can really kick other battle pets's butts!
You can battle other players's battle pets for fun, or go up against a loner/duo/trio of these out in the wild.
There are a handful of very nice-looking battle pets in the game. Actually, as a credit to their very artistic designers and animators, they are all nice-looking. I should say there are some extremely nice looking battle pets.
Some of these also happen to be extremely potent fighters as well.
Most of the dragonkin battle pets fall into both categories.
Years ago, while out questing on a Horde character in Feralas, I got as what seemed at the time as a lucky drop, a Sprite Darter Hatchling companion. At the time, I think it was a quest reward.
Today, the creature is a world drop. So the odds of getting one now are vanishingly small. Saying it is rare is an understatement. It looks very cool; its hide a study in pastel blues and greens. If you want, read more about these Faerie Dragon creatures from the standpoint of the lore.
It was the first dragonkin battle pet I started leveling. They are quite powerful. You can cast a Moonfire spell which creates one of those 'weather' effects in the battle which lasts 9 rounds. This particular weather effect buffs magic to do more damage. For a dragonkin, that works out really well because they just happen to be stocked with magic abilities.
All this is very cruel to merely mention to you if you are a WoW player and you do not have any dragonkin battle pets yet. So I am going to tell you how to get your own dragonkin pet without spending real money in the Blizzard online store on the web or spending gold in the auction house either.
Fly to Feralas, at the closest flightmaster on the map to Dire Maul. You don't need to go into the instance but you do need to go into the courtyard. The easiest way to reach it is on a flying mount, if you have one. If you do not, then go in the main entrance to the ruins and enter the courtyard.
Inside the courtyard there will be a half dozen of these creatures up almost all the time! I think if you kill one another will take its place within several minutes or so.
One or two people battling them will probably never have to wait for more to spawn, so long as they actually fight each battle and do not forfeit because they do not like the quality of the one they are up against.
I think about 1/4 or 1/5 of the ones I fought were uncommon (green) quality. So far, I have not capture a rare (blue) one yet but I hope will.
Note that these Nether Faerie
These are a semi-transparent aqua-colored creature. If you walk through your capital with on summoned, flittering along beside you, I think you will get some "Where did you get that from?" queries from people who seriously want to know; at least in October 2012. After that, probably most people will know!
If you are really patient, you can capture a level 12 Spawn of Onyxia but be prepared to wait hours for them to appear.
The spot they appear in is in front of Onyxia's cave entrance (dozens of yards north of it) — or just to the left or right of it a couple dozen yard, and this is due east of Mudsprocket. Due east means straight to the right of Mudsprocket on your Dustwallow Marsh zone map.
You can get the Nether Faerie Drake so fast in the Dire Maul ruins in Feralas, I strongly urge you to start there, getting at least an uncommon (green) quality one before you leave that spot. If you just want it for looks and do not care about using it in battles, then you can at a minimum win a poor one your first fight.
Then, head over to Dustwallow Marsh from time to time until you can grab yourself a common (white) or uncommon (green) quality Spawn of Onyxia. You quite likely will not be able to get a better quality one than common the first time you go. It will take many trips, that is many spawnings, before you actually get a blue on.
Remember when you are doing pet battles to capture a particular kind, to use pets in your fight that are not too far above that pet's level in order to capture it. Otherwise, a spell can crit or triple proc and you will be looking at a dead — not captured — would-be pet. Believe me, this has happened to me before!
As you level your battle pets, keep at least a couple at about every 2-3 levels in the game. Someone remarked to me that they were just going to level a few of their pets. That may be a good strategy but sometimes capturing pets is faster because it is very possible then to jump a level this way, particularly at lower levels.
If you kill a rare (blue) quality Spawn of Onyxia in a battle because you got in with 2-3 pets that were really too high level to combat it without creaming it instead of capturing it, you will be sad.
When you are feeling really patient someday, you might want to truck back to Feralas and start killing Noxious Whelps. There is a dragonkin battle pet you can get off them but it has a very low drop rate; slightly less than 1/1000. Considering I only see them spawn about 8-10 at a time along 2/3 of the outer banks of the lake in northern Feralas, you are likely going to have to run "ring around the lake" over 100 times.
After about 4, I got bored and decided to move on to Dire Maul which was infinitely more gratifying.
If this post has whetted your appetite for creatures like this, take a look at the list of Dragon Whelps at WoW Companions.
Most people probably already know this but being able to use battle pets in fights requires you to pay 100 golds to the battle pet master trainer, like by the druid trainer in Stormwind or the flightmaster in Orgrimmar, and the character that pays it has to be at least level 5.
The good news is, once this fee is paid, all of your characters on all of your realms on both the Horde and the Alliance faction will be able to do battle pets.
Note if you want to find where a combat pet spawns on a map, take a look at its page on wowhead.com and if you are currently looking at its page on wowpedia.org then click the link on that page that takes you to its wowhead.com page. At the top of the WowHead page for each of them, there is a zone map with silver dots marking the location where the creature usually spawns. That is where you want to go — with a set of appropriate level pets in your three slots!
If you are serious or curious about battle pets, here are three web sites you must visit in order to pretty quickly become an expert.
These 3 sites are produced by people who are well known in the WoW community from other WoW web sites they have had at for a while, and some guest appearances on others' web sites and podcasts.
They look really cool!
They have different abilities and attributes and battle pets can really kick other battle pets's butts!
You can battle other players's battle pets for fun, or go up against a loner/duo/trio of these out in the wild.
There are a handful of very nice-looking battle pets in the game. Actually, as a credit to their very artistic designers and animators, they are all nice-looking. I should say there are some extremely nice looking battle pets.
Some of these also happen to be extremely potent fighters as well.
Most of the dragonkin battle pets fall into both categories.
Years ago, while out questing on a Horde character in Feralas, I got as what seemed at the time as a lucky drop, a Sprite Darter Hatchling companion. At the time, I think it was a quest reward.
Today, the creature is a world drop. So the odds of getting one now are vanishingly small. Saying it is rare is an understatement. It looks very cool; its hide a study in pastel blues and greens. If you want, read more about these Faerie Dragon creatures from the standpoint of the lore.
It was the first dragonkin battle pet I started leveling. They are quite powerful. You can cast a Moonfire spell which creates one of those 'weather' effects in the battle which lasts 9 rounds. This particular weather effect buffs magic to do more damage. For a dragonkin, that works out really well because they just happen to be stocked with magic abilities.
All this is very cruel to merely mention to you if you are a WoW player and you do not have any dragonkin battle pets yet. So I am going to tell you how to get your own dragonkin pet without spending real money in the Blizzard online store on the web or spending gold in the auction house either.
Fly to Feralas, at the closest flightmaster on the map to Dire Maul. You don't need to go into the instance but you do need to go into the courtyard. The easiest way to reach it is on a flying mount, if you have one. If you do not, then go in the main entrance to the ruins and enter the courtyard.
Inside the courtyard there will be a half dozen of these creatures up almost all the time! I think if you kill one another will take its place within several minutes or so.
One or two people battling them will probably never have to wait for more to spawn, so long as they actually fight each battle and do not forfeit because they do not like the quality of the one they are up against.
I think about 1/4 or 1/5 of the ones I fought were uncommon (green) quality. So far, I have not capture a rare (blue) one yet but I hope will.
Note that these Nether Faerie
These are a semi-transparent aqua-colored creature. If you walk through your capital with on summoned, flittering along beside you, I think you will get some "Where did you get that from?" queries from people who seriously want to know; at least in October 2012. After that, probably most people will know!
If you are really patient, you can capture a level 12 Spawn of Onyxia but be prepared to wait hours for them to appear.
The spot they appear in is in front of Onyxia's cave entrance (dozens of yards north of it) — or just to the left or right of it a couple dozen yard, and this is due east of Mudsprocket. Due east means straight to the right of Mudsprocket on your Dustwallow Marsh zone map.
You can get the Nether Faerie Drake so fast in the Dire Maul ruins in Feralas, I strongly urge you to start there, getting at least an uncommon (green) quality one before you leave that spot. If you just want it for looks and do not care about using it in battles, then you can at a minimum win a poor one your first fight.
Then, head over to Dustwallow Marsh from time to time until you can grab yourself a common (white) or uncommon (green) quality Spawn of Onyxia. You quite likely will not be able to get a better quality one than common the first time you go. It will take many trips, that is many spawnings, before you actually get a blue on.
Remember when you are doing pet battles to capture a particular kind, to use pets in your fight that are not too far above that pet's level in order to capture it. Otherwise, a spell can crit or triple proc and you will be looking at a dead — not captured — would-be pet. Believe me, this has happened to me before!
As you level your battle pets, keep at least a couple at about every 2-3 levels in the game. Someone remarked to me that they were just going to level a few of their pets. That may be a good strategy but sometimes capturing pets is faster because it is very possible then to jump a level this way, particularly at lower levels.
If you kill a rare (blue) quality Spawn of Onyxia in a battle because you got in with 2-3 pets that were really too high level to combat it without creaming it instead of capturing it, you will be sad.
When you are feeling really patient someday, you might want to truck back to Feralas and start killing Noxious Whelps. There is a dragonkin battle pet you can get off them but it has a very low drop rate; slightly less than 1/1000. Considering I only see them spawn about 8-10 at a time along 2/3 of the outer banks of the lake in northern Feralas, you are likely going to have to run "ring around the lake" over 100 times.
After about 4, I got bored and decided to move on to Dire Maul which was infinitely more gratifying.
If this post has whetted your appetite for creatures like this, take a look at the list of Dragon Whelps at WoW Companions.
Most people probably already know this but being able to use battle pets in fights requires you to pay 100 golds to the battle pet master trainer, like by the druid trainer in Stormwind or the flightmaster in Orgrimmar, and the character that pays it has to be at least level 5.
The good news is, once this fee is paid, all of your characters on all of your realms on both the Horde and the Alliance faction will be able to do battle pets.
Note if you want to find where a combat pet spawns on a map, take a look at its page on wowhead.com and if you are currently looking at its page on wowpedia.org then click the link on that page that takes you to its wowhead.com page. At the top of the WowHead page for each of them, there is a zone map with silver dots marking the location where the creature usually spawns. That is where you want to go — with a set of appropriate level pets in your three slots!
If you are serious or curious about battle pets, here are three web sites you must visit in order to pretty quickly become an expert.
- Alludra's Pets - she has had a pet blog and a pretty voice for a very long time
- Battle Pet Battles - very nice video podcast (vlog) by author of the Power Word: Gold vlog
- Warcraft Pets - terrific encyclopedia-style web site about battle pets; kind of a wiki meets beastiary (beastopedia?) by Eli who has been producing the most authoritative site about fishing in WoW for years
These 3 sites are produced by people who are well known in the WoW community from other WoW web sites they have had at for a while, and some guest appearances on others' web sites and podcasts.
Getting there faster
World of Warcraft has grown enormously over the years. Not only in terms of the number of users, which is on the order of ten million in recent years — way up from a million or so back when I joined — but in terms of the sheer amount of land and number of dungeons in the game.
So some changes are kind of inevitable in order to keep players playing. People will struggle along for weeks or perhaps months to reach the maximum character level and start to taste the end game content.
However, if it took a year or two to do that then the game would be a lot less popular — and that content a lot less used, let alone seen.
One of the things that has changed in World of Warcraft over the years is the speed at which you can get from one place to another. Not only that but the speed at which you get the ability to speed up your ability to get around has sped up as well.
With the Mists of Pandaria expansion set (and the accompanying WoW 5.x client program) Blizzard has taken some measures to expedite the speed at which people can not only level up but also move around. Some of these changes are pretty exciting.
The game of WoW has also increased its demands on computers to go faster too. The graphics are becoming more and more intense, even at the so called "low" quality graphics settings, which these days actually look pretty good.
If your computer is overheating, make sure if it is a desktop our tower, that it is not right up against the wall. If it is in a hutch then make sure there is adequate air flow in and out.
If you use a laptop then put it on a tray with some cooling grooves underneath it and never use it on a blanket, sofa, bed, carpet, or the like without such a tray. Obviously, the little "feet" numbs under the corners of a laptop computer will not be standing off if the material beneath them is a soft fabric. You want to make sure there is always room and air for your computer to "breathe". These things are running at upwards of three gigahertz these days! Three billion CPU clock cycles per second generates quite a lot of heat.
Competing games to WoW come and go. Most never come close to the number of subscribers that WoW has. Those that have garnered a lot of attention before and just after they came out gained a lot of interest and subscribers for a while. But they quickly gave out.
WoW makes everything in gaming go fast, apparently.
Funny how that works out.
So some changes are kind of inevitable in order to keep players playing. People will struggle along for weeks or perhaps months to reach the maximum character level and start to taste the end game content.
However, if it took a year or two to do that then the game would be a lot less popular — and that content a lot less used, let alone seen.
One of the things that has changed in World of Warcraft over the years is the speed at which you can get from one place to another. Not only that but the speed at which you get the ability to speed up your ability to get around has sped up as well.
With the Mists of Pandaria expansion set (and the accompanying WoW 5.x client program) Blizzard has taken some measures to expedite the speed at which people can not only level up but also move around. Some of these changes are pretty exciting.
- Druids can obtain a glyph from inscribers that lets them carry a rider while in druid travel form.
- Those who do one of the special offers to bring friends to the game get a mount that turns them into a passenger-carrying flying mount.
- Going from one character level to the next goes faster all the way up to level 85.
- Gaining guild XP goes extremely quickly. Daily & Holiday quests dole out 60,000 guild XP.
- With so many towns/inns in the game, doing the holiday quests (Hallows End, New Year, etc.) that send you to a slew of places to meet someone, collect something, or the like now offers the possibility of leveling your character and guild both very quickly.
The game of WoW has also increased its demands on computers to go faster too. The graphics are becoming more and more intense, even at the so called "low" quality graphics settings, which these days actually look pretty good.
If your computer is overheating, make sure if it is a desktop our tower, that it is not right up against the wall. If it is in a hutch then make sure there is adequate air flow in and out.
If you use a laptop then put it on a tray with some cooling grooves underneath it and never use it on a blanket, sofa, bed, carpet, or the like without such a tray. Obviously, the little "feet" numbs under the corners of a laptop computer will not be standing off if the material beneath them is a soft fabric. You want to make sure there is always room and air for your computer to "breathe". These things are running at upwards of three gigahertz these days! Three billion CPU clock cycles per second generates quite a lot of heat.
Competing games to WoW come and go. Most never come close to the number of subscribers that WoW has. Those that have garnered a lot of attention before and just after they came out gained a lot of interest and subscribers for a while. But they quickly gave out.
WoW makes everything in gaming go fast, apparently.
Funny how that works out.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
MoP patch; that did not work, but wait this did
My MoP patch (WoW 5.0.4 client) for preparing World of Warcraft for next month's Mists of Pandaria did not install tonight. At first, that is.
I subsequently did two things after exiting the Blizzard software, of course. They seemed to fix the problem.
Hope this helps someone. :)
I also tossed a few invectives into the air, did a fair bit of reading of technical support and customer complaint pages, and dutifully turned in a technical support request.
I think it was the two steps above that really turned things around. My WoW installation seems to have worked fine after taking these measures.
The three outstanding actions I have to take now are:
I subsequently did two things after exiting the Blizzard software, of course. They seemed to fix the problem.
- Backed up and deleted 3 folders from World of Warcraft folder (Cache, Interface, WTF).
- Ran a Repair utility that was in my World of Warcraft folder someplace (it seems to be gone now). It really did the trick. It would seem to be important to do delete the infamous three folders of the apocalypse noted above first, of course.
Hope this helps someone. :)
I also tossed a few invectives into the air, did a fair bit of reading of technical support and customer complaint pages, and dutifully turned in a technical support request.
I think it was the two steps above that really turned things around. My WoW installation seems to have worked fine after taking these measures.
The three outstanding actions I have to take now are:
- Let Blizzard customer service know the problem has been solved.
- Download WoW 5.0.4 compatible versions of my favorite addons during the course of this month, starting with the ones that are available as of tonight.
- Wait for Mists of Pandaria coming out on September 25, 2012 in order to unlock the newest major parts of the World of Warcraft game.
I know how frustrating software problems can be for everyone involved. I hope this tip sheet helps alleviate some of the Worldwide Aggro against software. 8-)
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Big changes to classes in World of Warcraft arrive with Mists of Pandaria
I read 5 Important Mists of Pandaria Changes, a terrific article at Ten Ton Hammer.
Some pretty earth-shaking, never the likes of seen before kind of changes are bring made to World of Warcraft with the introduction of Mists of Pandaria expansion and the WoW 5.0 game client.
While they are not exactly terrible, they do have a slight jaw-dropping effect on long time players of the game, at least this player.
The mana pool size is apparently going to be fixed based on the character, not based on the character's gear. The spec, in particular the role of the spec, can affect how much mana a player gets. But no longer will the amount of Intellect the character has alter their Maximum Mana value.
I am pretty shocked. This is not as big a change as when the hunter class went from using Mana & Spirit to using Focus & Haste for power and power regeneration. However, it is still pretty big, and it affects a lot more than just one class.
From reading the article, though, this new approach to mana kind of levels the playing field for healers, so to speak. It does, however, seem to make Intellect less of a "wonder stat" for casters, particularly healers. I look forward to learning how Spirit works in WoW 5 and then MoP with respect to mana regeneration.
If I cannot up my mana pool size with Intellect, or for that matter, anything else anymore — then I am going to look to not only continue to magnify the power of my casting — still done with Intellect — but also ensure my mana regeneration rate is very, very good.
In general, that is how we have been playing healers for a long time. I was pretty well with how well it has been working on my healers and casters in Cataclysm. I hope this new nerf is not too painful a blow.
Early in the morning, my characters were still available via the WoW mobile client, and they showed the old character profile. Now, they have become unavailable in it; server is not responding to connection requests.
Speaking of things being down for maintenance, the WowWiki.com web site seems to be operating normally this morning but the WowPedia.org web site is showing signs of some kind of overhaul, with images apparently moving or going inaccessible and the server sometimes not responding.
There are other sites that will no doubt be unaffected by WoW's restructuring and simply continue to report on it. I expect that will be the case with WowInsider (wow.joystiq.com). They published a good article several months ago describing What has Changed with MoP's introduction. It sounds like there is a tab in the spell book for each player now that describes how their class has changed.
Speaking of changes, WoW Insider published another article that speaks of some other changes in the game.
One change is the removal of the limit on daily quests. Personally, I have a passel of characters, and even when I focus on one character for a day, I rarely got much more than half of the 25 that have been the daily limit for a long time. But some people are very into doing daily quests, and doing them each day. I hope they do not become to busy to reply to whispers, or breathe!
One change that sounds kind of interesting is the addition of a farm. Yes, you will be able to run a simulated farm of your own in the game.
As someone who played "sims" (simulation games) off and on for the past 20 years, albeit mostly off fo r sure, this sounds kind of neat.
WoW is getting a lot of games within its master MMO RPG; games that are somewhat farmville, plants vs. zombies, and pokimon-like.
For a company whose main business line until decades ago was water, there is nothing watered down about the gaming in WoW. If anything, with additions like these, Blizzard and its overarching owner, Vivendi, are concentrating the gaming offerings, adding more diverse games into the mix for some alternative flavors.
Some pretty earth-shaking, never the likes of seen before kind of changes are bring made to World of Warcraft with the introduction of Mists of Pandaria expansion and the WoW 5.0 game client.
While they are not exactly terrible, they do have a slight jaw-dropping effect on long time players of the game, at least this player.
The mana pool size is apparently going to be fixed based on the character, not based on the character's gear. The spec, in particular the role of the spec, can affect how much mana a player gets. But no longer will the amount of Intellect the character has alter their Maximum Mana value.
I am pretty shocked. This is not as big a change as when the hunter class went from using Mana & Spirit to using Focus & Haste for power and power regeneration. However, it is still pretty big, and it affects a lot more than just one class.
From reading the article, though, this new approach to mana kind of levels the playing field for healers, so to speak. It does, however, seem to make Intellect less of a "wonder stat" for casters, particularly healers. I look forward to learning how Spirit works in WoW 5 and then MoP with respect to mana regeneration.
If I cannot up my mana pool size with Intellect, or for that matter, anything else anymore — then I am going to look to not only continue to magnify the power of my casting — still done with Intellect — but also ensure my mana regeneration rate is very, very good.
In general, that is how we have been playing healers for a long time. I was pretty well with how well it has been working on my healers and casters in Cataclysm. I hope this new nerf is not too painful a blow.
Early in the morning, my characters were still available via the WoW mobile client, and they showed the old character profile. Now, they have become unavailable in it; server is not responding to connection requests.
Speaking of things being down for maintenance, the WowWiki.com web site seems to be operating normally this morning but the WowPedia.org web site is showing signs of some kind of overhaul, with images apparently moving or going inaccessible and the server sometimes not responding.
There are other sites that will no doubt be unaffected by WoW's restructuring and simply continue to report on it. I expect that will be the case with WowInsider (wow.joystiq.com). They published a good article several months ago describing What has Changed with MoP's introduction. It sounds like there is a tab in the spell book for each player now that describes how their class has changed.
Speaking of changes, WoW Insider published another article that speaks of some other changes in the game.
One change is the removal of the limit on daily quests. Personally, I have a passel of characters, and even when I focus on one character for a day, I rarely got much more than half of the 25 that have been the daily limit for a long time. But some people are very into doing daily quests, and doing them each day. I hope they do not become to busy to reply to whispers, or breathe!
One change that sounds kind of interesting is the addition of a farm. Yes, you will be able to run a simulated farm of your own in the game.
As someone who played "sims" (simulation games) off and on for the past 20 years, albeit mostly off fo r sure, this sounds kind of neat.
WoW is getting a lot of games within its master MMO RPG; games that are somewhat farmville, plants vs. zombies, and pokimon-like.
For a company whose main business line until decades ago was water, there is nothing watered down about the gaming in WoW. If anything, with additions like these, Blizzard and its overarching owner, Vivendi, are concentrating the gaming offerings, adding more diverse games into the mix for some alternative flavors.
Obsidian Nightwing: one great free mount
When you invite a friend back into the game, or indulge yourself, you get a really nice flying mount. This mount is unlike any that has been in the game before.
For one thing, it looks really cool in a brand new way. For another, you actually become the flying mount.
Here is some information on the Obsidian Nightwing mount. Not bad, eh?
For one thing, it looks really cool in a brand new way. For another, you actually become the flying mount.
Here is some information on the Obsidian Nightwing mount. Not bad, eh?
Mount/pets problem solved almost as soon as it arose
I noticed with disappointment this summer that a Death Knight I had created earlier in the year but not really played much had not kept his companions and the celestial steed mount I had bought in his mailbox forever, waiting for him to access it for the first time before starting their 29-day countdown.
Apparently, if you go a month without opening mailbox on that character, the items are never there and you never get them. While it seems like the 29-day countdown cloak didn't start until you opened the mailbox for the first time, this other rule kind of trumps all.
The bad news for me was discovered a few weeks ago when I belatedly decided to level up my languishing Death Knight on the Earthen Ring PvP/RP realm from 55 or 56 to 58 and send him out in the world.
Near the end of your phased questing, there is a working mailbox available to you during one of the quests you do. It is situated in a town, near a horse raising area.
Well, when I got to that area this month, my Death Knight had no mail. I was kind of shocked. I was really counting on that riding/flying mount.
I was really happy to learn this morning that when WoW hops back up off the surgeon's table this evening, my DK is going to automatically "know" how to summon the Celestial Steed flying mount.
I guess my worse case scenario is that I will have to level a level 8 or so character to level 20, if the pan battle.net account mount/pet learning does not work across realms for some reason. One way or another, my Death Knight, which is currently at level 60, shall be able to fly!
I think this particular DK of mine is something of a coup.
I chose his professions to be mining and blacksmithing. This makes it fairly easy for me to create some weapons and armors for my other characters on that realm, as well as make some items which can be disenchanted into enchanting mats.
These are not huge capabilities but they could be convenient.
Mainly, I want him to be able to craft his own WoLK and Cataclysm gear. Blacksmithing allows the creation of some very nice plate armor. The DK "blues" armor he got doing his DK starter zone quests will be fine for him as he levels through BC content and perhaps picks up a few better items doing quests or dungeons at some point along the way.
But after BC, it is really handy to be an accomplished blacksmith. I have already tried this out with another DK which is now at level 81 or so. It works really well.
Being able to sell ore and bars is a nice ability too. I plan on using that to finance some of his and my alts gold-spending on that realm. Plus, being able to share some ore and perhaps get something back in return would be a very nice way to get involved in the social and trade scene on my realm.
There are some exciting, well known guilds on Earthen Realm, and they have made mutually beneficial sharing almost a science, it sounds like. Maybe science is not the right word, but as I understand it, they have made collaboration a really positive force. I really want to experience that in the game with respect to a profession or two.
What they do is have materials/crafting swap meets every month where people give what they have to other people in the guild, and everyone just sort of helps each other out.
And all that goes back to my main original point which is that my Death Knight on Earthing Ring really needs to be able to fly! I made him a Frost spec DK so he can fly really fast. That is handy for a miner; very handy.
I am hoping that when the servers come back up again, the Pale Horse talent that lets frost DKs ride/fly mounts really quickly has not been pushed high up in the talents hierarchy, out of reach of a level 60 character. I guess I will know this evening if that is the case.
Update (Aug. 28, 2012): I just read in several forums on the web that the Pale Horse (faster riding speed) which Frost Knights could get by spending a talent point is now a baked in (inherent) feature of the Death Knight class. Apparently, as of WoW 5 and/or MoP, all DKs will simple ride/fly really fast, regardless of their spec or talent points chosen. Hurray!
Apparently, if you go a month without opening mailbox on that character, the items are never there and you never get them. While it seems like the 29-day countdown cloak didn't start until you opened the mailbox for the first time, this other rule kind of trumps all.
The bad news for me was discovered a few weeks ago when I belatedly decided to level up my languishing Death Knight on the Earthen Ring PvP/RP realm from 55 or 56 to 58 and send him out in the world.
Near the end of your phased questing, there is a working mailbox available to you during one of the quests you do. It is situated in a town, near a horse raising area.
Well, when I got to that area this month, my Death Knight had no mail. I was kind of shocked. I was really counting on that riding/flying mount.
I was really happy to learn this morning that when WoW hops back up off the surgeon's table this evening, my DK is going to automatically "know" how to summon the Celestial Steed flying mount.
I guess my worse case scenario is that I will have to level a level 8 or so character to level 20, if the pan battle.net account mount/pet learning does not work across realms for some reason. One way or another, my Death Knight, which is currently at level 60, shall be able to fly!
I think this particular DK of mine is something of a coup.
I chose his professions to be mining and blacksmithing. This makes it fairly easy for me to create some weapons and armors for my other characters on that realm, as well as make some items which can be disenchanted into enchanting mats.
These are not huge capabilities but they could be convenient.
Mainly, I want him to be able to craft his own WoLK and Cataclysm gear. Blacksmithing allows the creation of some very nice plate armor. The DK "blues" armor he got doing his DK starter zone quests will be fine for him as he levels through BC content and perhaps picks up a few better items doing quests or dungeons at some point along the way.
But after BC, it is really handy to be an accomplished blacksmith. I have already tried this out with another DK which is now at level 81 or so. It works really well.
Being able to sell ore and bars is a nice ability too. I plan on using that to finance some of his and my alts gold-spending on that realm. Plus, being able to share some ore and perhaps get something back in return would be a very nice way to get involved in the social and trade scene on my realm.
There are some exciting, well known guilds on Earthen Realm, and they have made mutually beneficial sharing almost a science, it sounds like. Maybe science is not the right word, but as I understand it, they have made collaboration a really positive force. I really want to experience that in the game with respect to a profession or two.
What they do is have materials/crafting swap meets every month where people give what they have to other people in the guild, and everyone just sort of helps each other out.
And all that goes back to my main original point which is that my Death Knight on Earthing Ring really needs to be able to fly! I made him a Frost spec DK so he can fly really fast. That is handy for a miner; very handy.
I am hoping that when the servers come back up again, the Pale Horse talent that lets frost DKs ride/fly mounts really quickly has not been pushed high up in the talents hierarchy, out of reach of a level 60 character. I guess I will know this evening if that is the case.
Update (Aug. 28, 2012): I just read in several forums on the web that the Pale Horse (faster riding speed) which Frost Knights could get by spending a talent point is now a baked in (inherent) feature of the Death Knight class. Apparently, as of WoW 5 and/or MoP, all DKs will simple ride/fly really fast, regardless of their spec or talent points chosen. Hurray!
War is on in World of Warcraft 5 (MoP)
Blizzard has made it very daunting to attack cities unless you are pretty well geared, these days. Gone, it seems are the days when you would get ganked at a mailbox in your main city by some rogue in the middle of a Friday or Saturday night.
Blizzard is supposedly going to allow players an easier time of attacking towns than they had in the past couple years.
So World PvP is going to be kind of making a comeback.
Got a slew of things done before closing bell on WoW Cataclysm
The Cataclysm chapter of the World of Warcraft saga began to draw to a close last night.
At 3 a.m. California (Blizzard HQ) time, 6 a.m. east coast time, Blizzard closed the curtains on Cataclysm in preparation for the opening act of Mists of Pandaria — the upcoming WoW expansion which will go live September 25, 2012.
In four weeks, World of Warcraft players will be able to create Pandarian race characters. The Pandarians are humanoid pandas.
While the night elf characters have a strong oriental influence to their architecture, MoP takes things a step farther. The new race's environments seem decidedly Chinese. And what could seem more Chinese than a race of panda bears in the game?
The flip side of "in with the new" is "out with the old". Today, after hiatus that will last most of the daylight hours, Blizzard will be getting rid of some things which directly and indirectly affect a lot of players; their characters, their gold-making, and so on.
Here are some highlights of what are going away:
Alliance mages are going to be a little inconvenienced by the destruction of Theramore. It is one of the not so many cities to which they can create a teleportation portal to from anyplace in the world, or simply teleport themselves to if they are not in a party: Teleport Theramore (spell).
The things I wanted to do this month were:
All in all, it seems like Blizzard takes its game franchise very seriously, fun as it is for them and their fans.
Each 'expansion' of the game has been accompanied by a month or so of something really special going on a some place(s) in the existing world of the game, prior to the introduction of a new place and the inception of a way to reach that place.
Blizzard seems to carefully plan not just the transportation mechanisms to the new area added by the expansion, but also carefully design and script a storyline addition and setting change that will act as a transition from the old way things were to the new place and way to get there. They are magnificent storytellers and artists, not just programmers or game designers.
What amazes me is how much effort they must put forth to create a not so small amount of content that will exist for just over a couple dozen days. I imagine that creates a drumbeat of urgency and practicality for the entire creative and technical staff during the project of creating a new expansion set.
It must create a little sense of nostalgia for the staff that when the new expansion fully goes live, something not incredibly tiny that they breathed some effort into will be retired forever after only one month on the job, so to speak.
I kind of know how they feel. Just getting moderately ready for this new expansion (MoP) in terms of unloading/transforming things that I wanted to protect from becoming grays, getting enough bank slot space and bag space to hold not just current items but as yet non-existant items that I would need to accumulate this autumn as the effort to raise character levels and crafting profession levels from 85->90 and 525->?.
I have not really seen a lot of information about crafting professions' new recipes/patterns being introduced in MoP. I did find a general preview of some Inscription additions. Like a lot of people, I am waiting to see what is published at CraftersTome when the time is right, so I can study it properly.
As for the economics of the new professions' items, The Undermine Journal is going to be one of my stops. I read this week that there is going to be a MoP edition of WoW-popular web site. And I just now discovered a MoP edition of WowHead!
It is amazing how people put such real world skills into play when describing what the status and changes are n World of Warcraft. In a small way, I find this kind of a big laugh — in a nice way.
A lot of people beta tested Mists of Panderia and the corresponding WoW 5.0 game client this year. I was not one of them, for several reasons. I did not want to fill up my hard disk with two versions of the game, worry about managing two populations of addons, and level characters in the temporary beta world while still trying to accomplish things in the real non-beata world. It is funny, but a lot of people apparently do not mind all of those drawbacks.
With WoW 5, the beta and the live versions of the game will have much less redundancy. So, I might try the beta of some point releases out at some point this year or next. It certainly makes the prospect less daunting.
At 3 a.m. California (Blizzard HQ) time, 6 a.m. east coast time, Blizzard closed the curtains on Cataclysm in preparation for the opening act of Mists of Pandaria — the upcoming WoW expansion which will go live September 25, 2012.
In four weeks, World of Warcraft players will be able to create Pandarian race characters. The Pandarians are humanoid pandas.
While the night elf characters have a strong oriental influence to their architecture, MoP takes things a step farther. The new race's environments seem decidedly Chinese. And what could seem more Chinese than a race of panda bears in the game?
The flip side of "in with the new" is "out with the old". Today, after hiatus that will last most of the daylight hours, Blizzard will be getting rid of some things which directly and indirectly affect a lot of players; their characters, their gold-making, and so on.
Here are some highlights of what are going away:
- fade to gray, relics going away — no longer something you can equip, these pieces of armor for paladins, death knights, shamans, and druids will be phased out
- you ain't got that slot; no, you not not not — there was a slot no every character's 'profile' window that showed all of his gear; armor, weapons, and a slot next to his 1 or 2 weapons for relics (toast!) or ranged weapons (guns, bows, crossbows, wands, thrown) … this slot goes away and non-relic weapons will be moved to the regular weapon slot if they are to be used at all by a character.
Relics were kind of expensive to make but it was possible to make high level ones using inscription, then disenchant them into a Heavenly Shard. That enchanting material could then be sold in the auction house (AH) for what used to be about 100 golds during most of Cataclysm. Seems like that will no longer be possible.
Here are some highlights of major boons for players starting either now or when MoP goes live:
- all these companions shall be yours — all of your characters on the same battle.net account will be able to summon the pets that any of them have learned [not sure if this happens today or in a month]
- non-combat pets shall be able to do combat against each other [in a month, I think]
- huge world event will pit Horde vs. Alliance at Theramore Isle on the continent of Kalimdor — Theramore is destroyed
Alliance mages are going to be a little inconvenienced by the destruction of Theramore. It is one of the not so many cities to which they can create a teleportation portal to from anyplace in the world, or simply teleport themselves to if they are not in a party: Teleport Theramore (spell).
The things I wanted to do this month were:
- disenchant the unbound (BoE) relics I had lying around (done)
- do battlegrounds (did some though more would have been better) to farm honor/conquest points
- do instances (did some though would love to have done tons more) to farm justice/valor points
- level some characters (raised a priest from 70 to 81, a couple mages from WoLK levels to mid-80s, a hunter from mid-60s to low 70s)
- bought more tabbed pages in my banker characters' guild banks (latest one just two minutes before the server shut down)
- created at least 4 more bags for one of my characters to use (he needed bigger bags badly)
- rescued items from in game mailboxes (only have 2-3 characters with any items in mail which will "expire" [auto delete] within next couple of days and no mail is expiring within next 24 hours
- updated some addons (unfortunately, vast majority of addons seem to not yet have been updated to MoP WoW 5.0 game client that goes live today)
- free up a ton of disk space on my computer (at one point I had over 25 GB free this month which is more free disk space than I have had in years) so that the game client can unpack/install itself today
- find out if anything other than relics was going to turn into a pretty valueless, unusable "gray" item (was unable to find any mentions of this but I am kind of uneasy since with most expansions I had stacks of items suddenly 'go bad' in my bank)
All in all, it seems like Blizzard takes its game franchise very seriously, fun as it is for them and their fans.
Each 'expansion' of the game has been accompanied by a month or so of something really special going on a some place(s) in the existing world of the game, prior to the introduction of a new place and the inception of a way to reach that place.
Blizzard seems to carefully plan not just the transportation mechanisms to the new area added by the expansion, but also carefully design and script a storyline addition and setting change that will act as a transition from the old way things were to the new place and way to get there. They are magnificent storytellers and artists, not just programmers or game designers.
What amazes me is how much effort they must put forth to create a not so small amount of content that will exist for just over a couple dozen days. I imagine that creates a drumbeat of urgency and practicality for the entire creative and technical staff during the project of creating a new expansion set.
It must create a little sense of nostalgia for the staff that when the new expansion fully goes live, something not incredibly tiny that they breathed some effort into will be retired forever after only one month on the job, so to speak.
I kind of know how they feel. Just getting moderately ready for this new expansion (MoP) in terms of unloading/transforming things that I wanted to protect from becoming grays, getting enough bank slot space and bag space to hold not just current items but as yet non-existant items that I would need to accumulate this autumn as the effort to raise character levels and crafting profession levels from 85->90 and 525->?.
I have not really seen a lot of information about crafting professions' new recipes/patterns being introduced in MoP. I did find a general preview of some Inscription additions. Like a lot of people, I am waiting to see what is published at CraftersTome when the time is right, so I can study it properly.
As for the economics of the new professions' items, The Undermine Journal is going to be one of my stops. I read this week that there is going to be a MoP edition of WoW-popular web site. And I just now discovered a MoP edition of WowHead!
It is amazing how people put such real world skills into play when describing what the status and changes are n World of Warcraft. In a small way, I find this kind of a big laugh — in a nice way.
A lot of people beta tested Mists of Panderia and the corresponding WoW 5.0 game client this year. I was not one of them, for several reasons. I did not want to fill up my hard disk with two versions of the game, worry about managing two populations of addons, and level characters in the temporary beta world while still trying to accomplish things in the real non-beata world. It is funny, but a lot of people apparently do not mind all of those drawbacks.
With WoW 5, the beta and the live versions of the game will have much less redundancy. So, I might try the beta of some point releases out at some point this year or next. It certainly makes the prospect less daunting.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
WeakAuras addon demands attention
Last week a player that is a little older and a lot wiser in the game of WoW than myself recommended I upgrade from PowerAuras to WeakAuras.
Daunted by the implied weakness of the addon and his admonition it was hard to set up without getting a glop of configuration data from him or someone else, I took note that I should learn about this.
However, I felt I should hold off on downloading and installing it. Not to mention I was pretty dependent on PowerAuras for my Death Knight game play.
I read some articles on WeakAuras and it sounds like something I should at least try. It is more powerful than PowerAuras in some major ways, it puts less of a load on the computer running it, and it looks like something which you can tinker with to fit your individual tastes.
When I started playing WoW years ago, I played it in a straightforward fashion:
Later, I added buying and eventually making my own glyphs as something that helped by characters' effectiveness.
But that really is not enough. At the higher levels of the game, not only your character has to evolve but your own gameplay as well.
You need to respond to events as they occur — and do it quickly.
These events can occur almost invisibly, nearly out of the corner of your eye as small icons in action buttons on the lower or right edges of the screen as well as buff/debuff icons in the upper left & right areas of the screen come and go.
The nice thing about these addons is that they make it easy to see things that it is easy to miss without them. And since you need to act instantly not to mention reliably upon those things, it behooves you to try them out.
More info:
I just want to add one more thing. As we learned this month, even Blizzard gets hacked. So be careful about where you get your addons from and what addons you get.
Daunted by the implied weakness of the addon and his admonition it was hard to set up without getting a glop of configuration data from him or someone else, I took note that I should learn about this.
However, I felt I should hold off on downloading and installing it. Not to mention I was pretty dependent on PowerAuras for my Death Knight game play.
I read some articles on WeakAuras and it sounds like something I should at least try. It is more powerful than PowerAuras in some major ways, it puts less of a load on the computer running it, and it looks like something which you can tinker with to fit your individual tastes.
When I started playing WoW years ago, I played it in a straightforward fashion:
- find a few series of spells that worked well together to deal damage, heal myself, or heal others
- get gear with increasingly higher stats of the type I needed
- spend talent points to increase the benefits of the spells I most often used or needed to work better in a pinch
- repeat
Later, I added buying and eventually making my own glyphs as something that helped by characters' effectiveness.
But that really is not enough. At the higher levels of the game, not only your character has to evolve but your own gameplay as well.
You need to respond to events as they occur — and do it quickly.
These events can occur almost invisibly, nearly out of the corner of your eye as small icons in action buttons on the lower or right edges of the screen as well as buff/debuff icons in the upper left & right areas of the screen come and go.
The nice thing about these addons is that they make it easy to see things that it is easy to miss without them. And since you need to act instantly not to mention reliably upon those things, it behooves you to try them out.
More info:
- WeakAuras home (WowAce)
- WeakAuras tutorial (WowAce)
- WeakAuras details on curse.com
- WeakAuras article at WowInsider
- WeakAuras tutorial by Jaded Alt
- Letting Go of Power Auras by Kaelynn (wonderful walkthrough of the config panels) and some examples (e.g. shadow priest and restoration shaman)
- WeakAuras how to install (youtube)
- WeakAuras tutorial: Day 1 (youtube) — day 1 of many days!
- WeakAuras tutorial: appendix 1. Mind blast and Starsurge examples (youtube)
- Weak Auras: Warlock | Fel Concentration blog (put into practice on a warlock)
I just want to add one more thing. As we learned this month, even Blizzard gets hacked. So be careful about where you get your addons from and what addons you get.
Mists of Pandaria approaches
Mists of Pandaria is going to go live in a matter of weeks. This marks version 5 of World of Warcraft.
I came across the patch notes published several weeks ago for 5.0.4 which went live of the PTR (public test realm) at that time.
Some of the improvements which I had not seen announced before are positively wonderful:
abilities learned automatically now so class trainers only needed when you are doing something special like re-spec (hopefully, this does away with buying spells)
looting becomes AoE so when you loot one dead mob, you in effect loot all dead mobs nearby that you have looting rights upon (some tanks are really surprised when they leave a snail trail of dead mobs across a room and run out that the healer needs to run back and forth again to loot said mobs but soon no more)
ranged weapons are becoming more powerful (great for me because I have a lot of warlocks, mages, and priests who use wands and hunters who use bows)
But there is some really bad news too:
ranged weapon & relic slots of been removed; there is simply a weapon slot (what???)
prime glyphs are gone (what??? what about all the ones I just bought or paid to learn to make on my inscriber?)
At this point I am a little less than thrilled that he live date for WoW 5.0 client is so near and that MoP will be going live not long after that.
On the one hand, I have more max level characters than I did when any previous release debuted. But on the other, I have not checked out the PTR or the release notes about WoW 5. From what I have learned this week, I will need to do a little reading or asking around to figure out what things I need to do to prepare in game for the WoW 5 live date.
Old Chinese proverb: May you live in interesting times.
Or was that a curse?
I came across the patch notes published several weeks ago for 5.0.4 which went live of the PTR (public test realm) at that time.
Some of the improvements which I had not seen announced before are positively wonderful:
abilities learned automatically now so class trainers only needed when you are doing something special like re-spec (hopefully, this does away with buying spells)
looting becomes AoE so when you loot one dead mob, you in effect loot all dead mobs nearby that you have looting rights upon (some tanks are really surprised when they leave a snail trail of dead mobs across a room and run out that the healer needs to run back and forth again to loot said mobs but soon no more)
ranged weapons are becoming more powerful (great for me because I have a lot of warlocks, mages, and priests who use wands and hunters who use bows)
But there is some really bad news too:
ranged weapon & relic slots of been removed; there is simply a weapon slot (what???)
prime glyphs are gone (what??? what about all the ones I just bought or paid to learn to make on my inscriber?)
At this point I am a little less than thrilled that he live date for WoW 5.0 client is so near and that MoP will be going live not long after that.
On the one hand, I have more max level characters than I did when any previous release debuted. But on the other, I have not checked out the PTR or the release notes about WoW 5. From what I have learned this week, I will need to do a little reading or asking around to figure out what things I need to do to prepare in game for the WoW 5 live date.
Old Chinese proverb: May you live in interesting times.
Or was that a curse?
Blizzard backtracks on Real ID some
A couple of years ago, Blizzard introduced their Real ID scheme which was supposed to increase personal responsibility in the community.
Since that time, many, many so-called PC computers have been compromised my malware, users have willingly handed over their account passwords to banned [and crooked] "power leveling" services, and Blizzard itself has allowed — in the broadest sense of the word — millions of computer users email addresses to be copied off the corporation's computers.
In addition, scams have been going on quietly for months or years which piece together data which is allowed to fall through the cracks from different online businesses to destroy data and potentially commit robbery.
Lately, the scams have not been quiet. One reporter who worked for a tech news publication had their online identities snatched and their personal data including a large number of digital photos destroyed.
Not so funny, is it?
Suddenly, sharing one's name or email address with anyone when it is not vital to do so seems like not a very good idea.
So this spring Blizzard rolled out BattleTag. It sounds like a very good, timely feature indeed.
No longer will it be necessary to share your email address with someone to use Real ID. Instead, you can simply give them your BattleTag.
Your BattleTag is a unique moniker you create yourself [e.g. "DarkRaider"] and a number which is generated by Blizzard. While your moniker may not be unique, in combination with the number [e.g. 567925] Blizzard gives you to go along with it, it is totally unique.
Example: DarkRaider#567925
I am not laughing. I think this is a cool idea.
Since that time, many, many so-called PC computers have been compromised my malware, users have willingly handed over their account passwords to banned [and crooked] "power leveling" services, and Blizzard itself has allowed — in the broadest sense of the word — millions of computer users email addresses to be copied off the corporation's computers.
In addition, scams have been going on quietly for months or years which piece together data which is allowed to fall through the cracks from different online businesses to destroy data and potentially commit robbery.
Lately, the scams have not been quiet. One reporter who worked for a tech news publication had their online identities snatched and their personal data including a large number of digital photos destroyed.
Not so funny, is it?
Suddenly, sharing one's name or email address with anyone when it is not vital to do so seems like not a very good idea.
So this spring Blizzard rolled out BattleTag. It sounds like a very good, timely feature indeed.
No longer will it be necessary to share your email address with someone to use Real ID. Instead, you can simply give them your BattleTag.
Your BattleTag is a unique moniker you create yourself [e.g. "DarkRaider"] and a number which is generated by Blizzard. While your moniker may not be unique, in combination with the number [e.g. 567925] Blizzard gives you to go along with it, it is totally unique.
Example: DarkRaider#567925
I am not laughing. I think this is a cool idea.
Blizzard gets hacked and nobody is laughing
Blizzard detected an illegal intrusion on their internal network and announced the unfortunate situation to their World of Warcraft community of users [i.e. customers] in August 2012.
A fair bit of information was stolen and more than one piece of it could be harmful elsewhere now or in the future for some people, it seems fairly obvious.
The security question(s)' answer were stolen. The email address(es) were stolen, although which email addresses (account, Real ID, what) were stolen is not clearly spelled out. Encrypted copies of passwords were stolen, though it didn't say if this included only the current password or older ones as well.
Along with that, some important information about the Authenticator dynamic password generating electronic devices owned by many users was stolen.
Users have been asked to change their security question/answer, change their password, and go through a special procedure with their Authenticator devices. Everything is handled on Blizzard's web site, of course, so people should not traipse through randomly sourced web sites and emails.
Combined with the recent revelations on procedural hacks of customers service request handling involving Apple, Google, and Amazon web sites — some powerful lessons are taught. Also, some really disturbing questions are raised.
The biggest revelation is this one: do companies honestly think that they live in their own universe and that they do not share customers with other companies and service organizations?
The useful days of the "security question" is fast running out. In fact, I would say it is expiring now. The fact is, security question & answer pairs become pretty useless once they start getting stolen en masse, by the millions, from professional web sites or other businesses/organizations.
Well, they have been.
So, the cat is out of the bag, the horse has run out of the barn, and so on. Now, the problem is several fold.
First off, there is not a record of what these questions and answers were and if there was, the companies who get ripped off are not showing them to the users themselves. Not even what the previous question was.
That seems like a problem. It is becoming an unwieldy burden for users to keep track of every security question they have ever used at any web site, employer, etc. But to be secure given that they deal with businesses that seem like security failures, they are going to need to start doing that.
This means, that users are going to in effect be writing an intimate biography of arcane details of their life. And yes, since it will include so many details they are going to have to write it all down on a piece of paper or store it on a computer or storage device.
This is what crooks are stealing from in the first place; and doing so quite successfully.
The second problem is what if all of the personal questions in one set of choices you are offered are ones you have already answered before?
Under the current regime, compromise of seemingly trustworthy businesses being the norm not the exception, you would be disinclined to reuse a question+answer pair. The number of choices you are offered is increasingly paltry; could be as few as 4 or 5.
What do you do — make up a fake answer to one of the questions?
Of course because those asking it had no right and claimed no right to know the real answer. So now one has to keep an endlessly growing, reality-based, semi-fictitious autobiography at hand.
How crazy is that?
When praxis goes asymptotic on the absurdity scale; it is time to reset the game, change the rules, redo the practices including the underlying philosophies and approaches that led to the cul de sac in the first place. No need to "go there" again, right? Or to any other dead end approximately the same as it.
The third issue is privacy itself. What right does some company have to know the first name of the second girl you ever kissed, one of your pet's names, what cars you bought, what places you lived, and what you best friends' names were?
Where I came from, that is called "prying". There is an old phrase, "Loose lips sink ships" from back in the World War days.
Well, um, since these companies store this information for millions of people on computers that unknown outsiders are allowed to break into, it seems like they have the loosest lips on the globe.
If they are collecting information they had no right to in the first place, and they cannot hold onto it any better than a freshman trying to catch a bacon slathered pigskin then something has to completely change.
That means either:
- the procedures suck and are far outdated for a world where the quality/efficacy of computer/network/media security is lamentable, or
- the organizational entities suck and have to change or be changed to suck less
- the computer criminals and their tools suck and have to be removed from the field of play
I'm not speaking of Blizzard, at least not particularly. And I am not just talking about individual organizations or individual people either.
I am speaking of all computer-using and data-collecting organizations. Wake up. You failed hard.
Privacy of users and security of computers is now worse than when you set out to create your security measures & policies. Not only are people and their data slipping down a hill but the hill is eroding under them at the same time they are going down it.
I read an article earlier this year where a manager at a huge organization responsible for computer security described current computer security practices as "unsustainable". I agree.
In fact, it has been obvious for years so it is refreshing to hear someone say it and I hope that people saying it is not all we have to look forward to for the coming years.
Unsustainable connotes failed and doomed to increasing disaster in a number of disciplines today.
I do not think that computer security is absent from that list. When you read the word "unsustainable" take note and see if that connotation might apply. If it does, beware.
What is going on now is games within games, Jeux Sans Frontières.
And that is bad.
Boundaries have effectively been removed from the field.
Most rules, fair play, good conduct, and security will now increasingly do something most people will find perplexing: backfire, and additively at that. I have noticed an alarming uptick in circumvention in the news this year by a broad gamut of entities. It is one thing to make a deal with the devil; quite another to emulate him.
If things are not uprighted quickly, then good sportsmanship will be punished and bad sportsmanship will be rewarded.
It is that kind of an environment that imbues everything with corruption very swiftly. In a field like computers, where logic and truth are what everything depends upon, reliability will go out the door.
That will be no fun at all, and you cannot come back from that place. Once corruption becomes systemic it becomes endemic. The society of computers across the globe is rapidly becoming corrupted and untrustworthy.
So looking at the big picture of a whole travel itinerary, and not as separate scenes in isolated snapshot photos seen through a pinhole camera … I am not laughing. Potentially, someone holds enough pieces to solve millions or billions of puzzles that were never meant to be solved and basically clear almost every kind of chip from the table that there is.
I think there are crimes that just cannot be imagined which can be perpetrated against individual entities/industries/persons and industries/nations/markets/cooperatives.
Remember the old saying, "To err is human but to really screw things up you need a computer"?
Yeah, think about that on a global scale. When one organization has a loss of user's private data and/or credentials then everyone's potential to suffer escalates, and that person's potential to suffer everywhere rises as well.
But when a lot do it, and these loses are going off constantly all over, well then you have a different sort of proposition. It's a chain reaction, as in nuclear.
The only difference is the data is credentials, private, and sensitive data. That data can unlock, pervert, steal, copy, or destroy all sorts of assets.
Instead of runaway fission of atoms by displaced neutrons what you have is runaway unification of data by deftly copied/processed/transferred and then deftly placed data.
The result is not a meltdown, though it would feel like one for 99.99% of people. It would be more like a remaking of the world in terms of ownership, rights, capabilities, control, and so on.
We don't have to guess what that would be like in real life. MMOs have shown how that plays out in terms of robbed individual and group in game back accounts, personal possessions; theft of privileges from authorities/owners; loss of standing in the community at least for a short time, and so on.
Data theft; it is not a little crime at all. And it is almost never isolated either; especially for assets guarded by policies defined under the current practicum.
Maxwell's demon is out of the simulation and really into reality. Crime is heating up and the effects are going to be chilling on the other side of things.
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