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That was a short 3 months. I apologize for being out for the holidays to all three of my readers. So a few things happened.

Patch 3.2.2 was released and with it a revamped Onyxia encounter. When I say revamped I really mean “We changed her level and added more whelps. Many Whelps. The amount of whelps is now absurd. Seriously, look at all these whelps. And their new elite big brothers that try to kill you while Onyxia flies around.” Other than that, not much has changed. I’ve been main and off tank a couple times. A few times when she landed the Main tank was still killing the spawned elite so I picked her up and tanked her for a little while. All the 10 man pugs I’ve played in downed her first try or second. The loot is now mediocre, and the whole thing feels like a half assed attempt to recycle assets and keep players happy. I really think it would’ve better served Blizzard and the players if there was a reason why she came back from the dead. Say, maybe the Earthwarder now known as Deathwing had somehow harnessed non-necrotic resurrection power and was using it to revitalize his brood. Some dark energy from some long forgotten god maybe? I doubt their Old Gods are spent after only two expansions.

3.3 was a real game changer. With the opening of Icecrown Citadel and the revamp of the Looking For Group system, I think most people are ecstatic. More people want to run dungeons than pvp so opening it up cross realm has made it incredibly easy to hop in a group, down a handful of bosses and get spit back out to whatever you were doing in the regular world. I wasn’t really on board at first. Grouping with people from LFG was a crap shoot anyways, and now it’s opened up to people you never met and will likely never meet again. So far the asshattery has been minimal. I haven’t had a group dissolve prior to downing the last boss on the first or second try. I’ve been able to grab pug after pug after pug and rack up the Emblems of Triumph. So much so that I don’t have anything new to spend it on. Even on my other 80. I’m just buying Crusader Orbs and reselling them until I get enough cash to grab one of the TOC recipes that needs them.

This has got me wondering about the On Demand nature of the game now. You seriously can log in and do ANYTHING in a 1 hour block. Questing is now just something you do while waiting in the LFG queue to kill bosses A, B, C, and D, collect emblems, maybe a piece of epic gear, and then do it all over again. Its placed nearly all players on the same level and killed quite a large portion of the Raid Dungeon economy. Raiders used to be able to peddle things like Crusader Orbs to player that just ran around the world collecting and crafting. Now they’re dirt cheap. Even Primordial Saronite can be obtained by a pug player after a week or two of getting 2 Frost Emblems each day.

Another problem is, you now don’t care much about the where and why of a dungeon. Most groups you’ll end up in have been through dozens of times already and power through without much thought. I’ve had more silent runs than any. Rarely a “Hey” at the start of the dungeon. If you’re lucky you get a “gg” before they leave the group and requeue. I can’t imagine the lower level characters getting a sense of world when they are instantly teleported to a level appropriate dungeon. I almost wish they implemented an attunement before letting players flash in from the other side of the world. I hated having to run new people through BRD to get a core fragment so they could zone into MC, but at least then they’d have to know where the dungeon entrance is. For the life of me I can’t tell you how to get in to ICC. My only way in is to press “I” and click a check box.

They’ve remedied this partially with how the quests work for ICC. You pick up the starting quest in Dalaran and the quest chains through each of the dungeons giving you a purpose for killing each boss and getting a mini-in-game-cinematic explaining the events. Halls of Reflection didn’t feel as dire as I think it was meant to feel. Pit of Saron I don’t really get, and… whatever the other one is called… yeah, there’s really not a narrative that’s compelling there. Maybe it’s due to my rolling with what feels like min-maxers just trying to get their next badge so they can get their new piece of gear that makes the dungeon go that much faster. Somewhere a long the line I just lost the point of the Dungeons other than getting loot.

Back in 1.0 one of my favorite dungeons was Shadowfang Keep. It gave a narrative in several storylines that culminated in you entering the keep, discovering Arugal as he murders the deathstalker you came to find and vanishing. It was a great cinematic moment that gave you a purpose and tied up the narrative of the whole zone. You could argue that all the quests in Icecrown lead up to the final conflict with the Lich King, but it just doesn’t seem like that’s what driving you to complete quests in the zone. The series that has you encroaching on the Citadel never really gets moment the same way Silverpine did. All the threads in the zone don’t push you towards that final conflict. Most of the time you just fuck off to kill some Vrykul, but there’s not a Vrykul dungeon in the 5 man tier of Icecrown.

It’s almost like they weren’t sure you were going to face the Lich King in the end. How thefuck did that happen?

I found this to be an interesting read (I found it via the great Zen of Design). A life time ago I found myself working in in game support for an MMO that had a fairly stringent harassment policy. Inevitably there was, at least once a week, some claiming that by removing them from the game I was violating their right to free speech and that they were going to sue us. I’d remove them and include our legal contact information in the email that explained to them that they violated the EULA.

Social interaction is something I’ve always found enthralling in online game. At one point when Gabe at Penny Arcade was getting stomped in Warcraft 3, he said “good game.” The obvious response he got from the other player was “I want to shit on your mothers chest.” This is the norm for most online game interactions. I think the Greater internet fuckwad theory covers it.

I’m all for free speech. If some asshole tells me not to cuss I typically tell them to fuck off. I’m all for protecting speech, even speech I disagree with. The thing is, MMOs are like private clubs complete with membership fees and secret handshakes. If you mouth off in a private club, management tosses your dumb ass out on the street and revokes your membership with no refund. While you can’t get back in to said private club since they know your face, MMOs are just another purchase to get back in.

Anyone with too much disposable income can make a game of getting punted from an MMO. Hell, even if you don’t have disposable income, most have trial accounts readily available as long as you have an email account which can be infinitely iterated.

“But my country club lets me cuss!” Those are the rules of the country club. I’m sure that certain behaviors are not allowed in said country club and it’s usually determined by the people that are members. My MMO’s have a target demographic of teen and up, and our friends at the ESRB have determine that naughty words aren’t ok for kids under 17. Allowing profanity in a game means you’re limiting the number of people that are “allowed” to play it. Most games will scrap content to get a lighter rating from the ESRB. In the case of MMOs, they have to enforce a specific behavior.

I still find it hilarious that someone actually took the free speech argument to court. I’m curious what kind of idiot lawyer thought they could win the case.

This past weekend I made a terrible mistake. You see, a few months back my girlfriend’s account was compromised due to a keylogger and to further protect both of our account I got a Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app for my iphone. Now my account has that extra layer of protection from unauthorized access. Apparently this is protects from authorized access as well.

So the terrible mistake was upgrading my iphone. I backed up my apps, data, etc. I actually have 3 or 4 backups of my iphone so I thought I was covered. After restoring my apps I sat down to do the brewfest token grind and found out that I couldn’t log in.

Now, I double and triple checked my backups and the application itself. Everything seemed in order. Maybe it was an issue with auth in general. Nope, no forum posts. So I filled out the web support form and waited until monday to phone into support.

The phone lines opened at 8am and I got a busy signal from 8am to 8:25am. From 8:25am to 9:05am I sat on hold listening to the goddamned Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft sound tracks. It was a 40 minute kick in the balls reminding me “Hey, don’t you wish you were playing our games instead of sitting in the phone queue?”

So, after over an hour of sitting on the phone waiting I spent two minutes talking to the rep who sent me an email with links and instructions in it. What the hell? Granted, he was incredibly pleasant and apologetic for the whole two minutes, but why the hell did I spend an hour waiting to get a goddamned email? The website listed my issue specifically and instead of just linking to a faq that says “Fill out and fax/email these goddamned forms” it says “call our terribly overburdened phone support team and waste their goddamned so they can send you an email with directions that should just be on this site.”

The account recovery process Blizzard has set up is so convoluted, it would be easier for someone to get all my bank information that to gain access to my Blizzard account. Recovering my student loan credentials is more streamlined and for the record, Sallie Mae is fucking bankrupt while Blizzard grosses over a billion dollars a year.

Overall I’m just pissed that I didn’t do anything wrong, and now don’t have access to my account for several days, plus the added headache of trying to jump through hoops to regain access. Granted, good security requires hoops to be jumped through to protect your account, but this is just plain stupid. There was no reason for me to have to call. I didn’t provide any information that wasn’t required by the forms I was emailed. Blizzard makes fantastic games, but really, they need to get some intelligent people in support and empower them to streamline this shit.

To add insult to injury, after I already got the email and confirmed that I could access my account, I got an email reply to my initial submission from the web form that I sent on Sunday telling me to email someone else or call in. Their web form sent my info to the wrong department. Had I not called in I’d still be hosed right now, which is incredibly disappointing. I guess Blizzard didn’t get their 10 million + subscribers based on customer support. For a company that makes complex programs dedicated to player interaction I found the support system worked about as well as the game servers on patch day. I give it one out of five stars.

Protection

• Righteous Fury: The bonus threat from Holy spells caused by this talent has been reduced from 90% to 80%.
• Ardent Defender: This talent now reduces damage taken below 35% health by 7/13/20% instead of 10/20/30%.
• Blessing of Sanctuary: This blessing now grants 10% strength in addition to its current effects. Also, the strength and stamina bonuses from this blessing will no longer be lost when Blessing of Kings is removed.
• Judgements of the Just: The reduction in cooldown to Hammer of Justice provided by this talent has been reduced to 5/10 seconds instead of 10/20 seconds.
• Touched by the Light: This talent now provides 20/40/60% of the paladin’s strength as spell power instead of 10/20/30% of the paladin’s stamina.

Retribution

• Seal of Command: This ability now chains to strike up to 2 additional targets when it is triggered by an attack that can only strike a single target.
• Seal of Corruption and Seal of Vengeance: These seals will now only use the debuff stacks generated by the attacking paladin to determine the damage done by the seal and by the judgement.

Items

• The Black Heart: This item’s animation has been changed and no longer resembles Hand of Protection.
• Libram of Obstruction: The buff to block value from this relic is now exclusive with the buff to block value from Libram of the Sacred Shield; it is impossible to have both buffs at once.
• Libram of the Sacred Shield: The block value buff from this relic has been increased to match its item level.
• Relics: All buffs provided by relics (idols, librams, totems and sigils) now share an exclusive category such that gaining a buff from one of these items will remove all other buffs gained from items in this category.

There were only a few changes that differed from the previous notes I posted. Righteous Fury is still getting nerfed, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be a nerf over all. The 10% threat loss being made up by the bonus strength from the new Blessing of Sanctuary.

Ardent Defender got a much needed nerf. It was insanely powerful last patch and the 1/3rd reduction isn’t too bad. It certainly reduces the effective health gain, but I don’t think anyone is going to think twice about it being part of their build. It’s just too good of a get out of jail free card that I’ve had proc on many an occasion.

Touched by the Light and Blessing of Sanctuary I think make this patch a wash in buff/vs nerf. Blessing of Sanctuary now gives 10% strength as well as stamina. That 10% strength is going to increase our damage output and threat. Holy damage and subsequent threat is slightly reduced by the new Touched by the Light, due to most protection armor sets having more than twice as much stamina as strength. Still, while that equals a slight reduction in spellpower, the extra damage/threat from the bonus strength from Blessing of Sanctuary about evens it out. I’m sure we’ll start seeing more Strength gems in red sockets instead of Stamina gems if threat becomes an issue.

I tanked a few instances post patch and it does seem like my DPS is greater than before the patch. No one has been able to peel a boss or a trash mob off of me (except another Paladin that forgot to turn of Righteous Fury while ret spec).

Overall I don’t feel like much has changed. This has to be one of the lighter tweaks Blizzard has done to the class, though to be honest, lately all of the tweaks have seemed slight. There haven’t been sweeping changes like in the early days where entire talent trees were scrapped and people had to relearn how to play their class. If you think I’m completely wrong… well there’s a comment section here for that reason.

The Kalu’ak Tuskarr present some interesting moral and ethical questions to players that I fear is wasted on the majority of players. the repeatable quest Planning for the Future begs the question of players “Will you kidnap children every day for several weeks so you can get a sweet fishing pole and a Penguin pet?”  What the hell does Trapper Mau’i plan on doing with all those kids anyways? Do you really think his intentions are honorable or do you think that baby Wolvar are a delicacy to the Tuskarr race?

Sometimes I just think it’s best to let nature run it’s course and these Walrus bastards should be murdered at the hands of the parents who have lost their children. Why can’t I ally myself with the Wolvar and get some good, old fashioned retribution?