Steady's Gaming Blog

It looks like the Real ID system for World of Warcraft forums is not going to happen. I have to admit that I was not a fan of this system. I have some folks I have played games with for a few years, and I am not sure if they know my real name or not. I think it is important to have some degree of privacy on the internet these days. On the other hand, I also thing that game developers have a right to protect their product from the forum trolls, who usually do not have many valid points, but just rant about useless crap. It is a shame, because there are some good points made sometimes, they just get drowned out by the trolls. Personally I do not use the forums much, every once in awhile I might post a guild recruitment message, or a if I am looking for more for a dungeon run. What usually happens is some troll comes along and posts something stupid, and I will just delete the message and move on.

The truth be told, something has to be done to clean up the forums. I did not think that Real ID was the solution. Blizzard needs to find something a bit less extreme, a bit of middle ground. What that is anyone’s guess; I sure do not know what it is. With that being said, the forums do belong to Blizzard, not the players of the game like some think. If it was me, I might start tossing a few of them out of the forums.

I did see one thing out of this whole episode that really pissed me off. These parasites that were posting information about employees of Blizzard to make a point. The only point you were making were that you were idiots. I don’t care what your point was you, were WRONG. Posting Google maps, and phone numbers and personal information WAS WRONG. I hope that Blizzard finds every one of you, bans you from the game, and pursues every legal avenue they can to prevent you from doing this type of crap again.

This is so distasteful, I hope nothing happens to anyone’s home, or spouse, or god forbid, a child, because one of you idiots were hoping to make a point. I mean really this is a silly game, and a forum. Not real life and you idiots are going to cause some real life pain for some of these folks. They justified this with the statement, “I am just using the information that they are going to use on me.” What a load of crap, if idiots would not abuse this information, and you trolls joined the civilized world, the use of someone’s real name, would not be problem. The problem was not Blizzards; it was the idiots that abused the policy. I noticed not one of you cowards posted you real name with this distasteful information.

Ok, that is enough, that really went on longer then it should have. I hope that Blizzard does find a way to return the forums, and global chat channels back to the civilized players

So my twitter feed this evening is full of information about the new mount you can buy in World of Warcraft. Yes, you too can own a Celestial Steed for the low price of $25.00. One tweet has them selling about 54,000 mounts for every percentage tick in the stock queue. Other estimates have about 120,000 people waiting in the queue to purchase the Steed.

Blizzard Executives Wife “Hi honey how was your day”

Blizzard Executive “Pretty good, we made 300 million dollars today selling a make believe mount.”

Like Blizzard, or hate them, they know how to make money. Trade chat is full of haters today. (Yeah, I am really tired of the nightly argument about Gearscore). The purist, the grinders, the elitist are mad. I heard one of them call Blizzard a Korean money hungry company. Others are complaining about spending days picking their nose for some rep, to get a mount, and now any noob can spend $25.00 for a cool mount. Some are appalled, how dare Blizzard open an online store, and actually sell things. Hello, it is about time. Look around people, show me an MMO that is not selling something to make more money, and I will show you an MMO that is long gone.

Here is my point of view. They are not making you buy the darn thing, so shut up, and go grind some more with your elitist freak friends. No one is making you purchase it, go somewhere with your gear checking elitist, snotty friends, and get a life. Go fight the Lich King or something, but really get out of trade chat. Last time I checked, Blizzard was in the business of making money. Blizzard does a pretty good job of making a pretty good game as well. So I have no problem with them making a few bucks off a silly mount. If you owned a business, and could make more money off selling a silly mount, would you not do it? They own the game, not us; they are free to do as they please. I think it is pure genius; they are selling a ton of these mounts, and making a ton of money. Social networking sites like Twitter, and Facebook, are full of chatter about World of Warcraft today. Bingo, you cannot pay for that type of advertising. Pure genius, raises the profile of World of Warcraft, and make money off of it, makes sense to me.

Personally I am not going to purchase one. It is too expensive for my taste. I am not a collector. I have a few mounts that I use, and they meet my needs. So I see no reason to spend $25.00 for another mount. Maybe it is my graphics (which are pretty good), but I do not think that the Celestial Steed looks all that good. In fact, it looks rather crude to me. I do not sit around Stormwind, and show off my mounts to others. So I really have no reason to purchase the mount.

I hope that Blizzard takes all that money, upgrades some of their hardware, and reinvests it into World of Warcraft. It will make an already good game, even better to play. You elitists out there need to figure it out. You are not making World of Warcraft better, you are making it worse. In fact you are killing the game off with your snotty attitudes. The causal gamer is making World of Warcraft popular again. You are becoming as extinct as that free mount you spend days grinding for

Just a few interesting tweets today, that I wanted to share with others..

First, the good folks at wow.com have created an impressive list of resources for World of Warcraft. You have been warned, be prepared to spend a few hours looking at websites. Lots of good World of Warcraft information here. Nice to have all this info in one place, a must have bookmark for anyone that plays World of Warcraft.

Wow.com, Guide to Wow resources

Second, City of Heroes updated the Going Rogue website today. Calvin Scott and Ghouls are introduced, are they friend or foe? Nobody knows. Just more fluff, still no hard facts. Come on Paragon, I need some facts here, enough fluff.

Going Rogue

So that is my Twitter Roll for today, everyone have a great gaming day.

My merry band of World of Warcraft players (all four of us) ran Gnomeregan a few weeks ago. The only trouble we had was getting into the darn instance. I know that Blizzard is working on this, but man it is frustrating standing at the entrance to an instance, and not being able to get in. So here are a few friendly pointers. Again, this is not a full blown guide, just a few helpful pointers from a noob (me).

1. In the Damaged tunnel, stand back. Watch out for the explosions, and falling rocks. No need to enter the cave either. The mobs will come out and fight you.

2. Watch what you sell in the Clean room. I auto sell junk, I sold my red punch card. When we got to the Engineering Labs, I did not have the right card.

3. When you leave the Launch Bay, use the high path, the one all the way to the left when facing the passage way. You will come to a passage that leads to the left. This is to the Engineering Lab. Very simple, only have to kill a few mobs to get to the final punch card upgrade.

4. Kill those little mobile alert systems fast. It seemed to be if he gets his little “alert, alert” message out three times, an ambush will occur.

5. Stay together and organized, there are a lot of patrols in this instance. Especially in the passageways that have an upper and lower path. Try not to aggro the lower path if you are on the upper one, it will not be pretty.

6. It is nice to have a hunter with cheetah speed. In the last room, have them send their pet in to fight the boss, while they run around and push the red buttons at the bottom of the bomb dispensing machines. This will stop they bombs from dropping, and they hurt.

So far this is my favorite instance that we have ran. It was funny, good xp, and pretty challenging. Have fun.

The Stepping Stones ran the Stormwind Stockades the other night. Either the group I am running with is really getting good, or this instance was really easy. I think it is a bit of both. This instance was really not very exciting or profitable. So here are a few simple pointers.

1. Skip it if you must, the loot was poor, level 24 elites, dropping level 18 gear. Really poor loot and we are not loot hounds, but man even we like to make a bit of gold once in a while.

2. It is very small, and the XP is not very good……

3. Only problem we had was Dextren Ward, he feared the silly priest (me), and I attracted a few adds, and got myself killed. A silly mistake made by me. (Our other problem was one member of our party was dropped by the server, and could not get in for ten minutes, the authentication bug, but hopefully they will fix that soon.)

4. The big prize at the end of the Rainbow is the Seal of Wrynn at the end of the Lescover Incident quest chain, which started with a letter off the body of Edwn VanCleef in the Deadmines. The stockade riots quest is a step in this chain. Which is fine, you can complete that quest very easily. The problem is the seventh mission in the quest “Infiltrating the Castle”. It has some sort of bug, because Tyrion in the garden at Stormwind Keep garden after two days still does not have a question mark over his head. Some type of bug.

5. The mobs respawn very fast, so you can rack up a bit of easy XP, which we did for a bit waiting for one party member to be get back on line past the authentication bug.

6. So far, the lamest instance we have been in, which is just compounded by the lack of being able to finish the Lescover Incident quest chain. Will the achievement looks pretty cool, so was not a total loss.

We are off to the Razorfen Kraul, next week. I really hope it is a bit more of a challenge.

Last night the Stepping Stones ran the Blackfathom Deeps instance. I was a bit worried, as we are running with just four players; I also thought we were a bit low. Alas, I had nothing to worry about, as we completed it with only one team wipe, and as usual that was because we did something stupid. So just a few pointers/observations, again I am not an expert, just some noob observations that might be helpful.

1. Lots of runners in here, have some way of stopping those nasty murlocs from running, collecting up their buddies and returning.

2. In the first room, you have to go to the far end of the room, and jump from stone to stone. We have trouble with this for some reason. We have trouble jumping, took us a few attempts to be successful.

3. Spread out when fighting Lady Servess, she has a nasty Cone attack, Forked Lightning that can be very painful.

4. After killing Gelihast, make sure and use the shrine behind him. It gives a 60 minute buff that increases Intellect, and Sprit by 5, and gives a plus 15 to all Frost Damage. Our Frost mage was pretty sure this shrine needed to be included in all instances. . If you wipe, on the way back, touch the shrine again, to get the buff again.

5. Use the wall in the room that Twilight Lord Kelris is in to pull the mobs in the room behind it. After clearing out most of the rooms, we then killed Kelris very easily.

6. To open the door, you have to right click on the four candles in the middle of the room. Do them one at a time, not all four at once like we did. Each candle spawns a mob, was our only team wipe.

7. Aku’mia, was really not hard at all. Just have your healer keep the tanks health up, and also dispel the poison attack he has, and this fight is very easy.

8. Shrine at the end of the room where a dwarf will give you a teleportation to Darnassus, were two of the quests for the instance can be turned in.

9. All the quests for this instance were sharable, so if you want one person can collect them all up before you start, you can. The xp, was pretty good in this instance, most gained two levels.

Hope this helps, we are taking a week off, some folks are on vacation next week, so we might run a few battlegrounds with just three players. On the 22nd of July, we are heading to the Stromwind Stockades.

The Stepping Stones ran the Shadow Fang Keep instance last night. We did really well, just had one team wipe, that that was due to a run away bear. We were a bit on the high side, level wise on this one, so that helped us a bit as well. Our usual group of four a paladin, priest, mage, and hunter. So going to list just a few more simple tips that might be helpful to anyone running this instance.

1. Have someone that can remove curses. We had a mage, and he spent most of his time, and mana in between fights removing a curse from someone. Lots of nasty curses in this one, Baron Silverlane puts a curse on you that reduces healing by 75%, pretty painful. We use a paladin as a tank; he had to have a curse remover. A well geared warrior might be able to make it, without a curse remover.

2. A priest is pretty useful as well. He can shackle undead which is very handy to have. Also dispel magic gets a lot of work in this instance. Then again, I always think you need a priest in every instance.

3. Don’t take too many casters as your main damage dealers. The shadowfangs cast these nasty immune to magic shields. Going to need some good old fashions steel blades to kill them.

4. The human undead cast silence a lot. This is a real pain, so healers and casters, keep you distance so you are able to heal, and deal damage.

5. Run it with horde characters. The Alliance do not have any quests, other the paladin quest. So it is a bit light on XP on the Alliance side.

6. Archmage Arugal is a mage, and a fun fight. Be prepared for someone other then the tank to draw some aggro. First he will turn someone into a werewolf , in our case it was the tank, we morphed him. Second Arugal is going to blink a few times away from the tank, and someone else is going to have aggro for a bit, so be prepared.

Hope this helps, next week we are headed for the Blackfathom Deeps…..

The Stepping Stones, our merry band of Wednesday night World of Warcraft players finished the Deadmines, our first instance last night. It was our second attempt, as last week we did not get past Captain Greenskin, so we returned for a second try this week.
We had a lot of fun running this instance again. We had a team of four, a priest, hunter, paladin, and mage, all our levels were 20 -22.

So I am just going to share a few observations about this Instance. None of this will be earth shattering, but it might help someone who is new at this, like we were.

1. Read the Deadmines Instance guide on the Wow wiki. Lots for good information, also pick up all the quests listed in the guide. Plan ahead, some of them require running a few quests before hand. Also the last few quests in the Brotherhood chain, are best ran with a team.

2. Have plenty of food, drink, and have your gear repaired. Make sure you have plenty of arrows, on one run, our hunter ran out of them.

3. Most of the bosses are pretty fair fights. Just be patient, let your tank pull the adds, to clear out the boss rooms before you attack the boss.

4. You have to kill Sneed twice, first his Shredder and then Sneed.

5. After every boss is dead, an ambush will spawn. Wait for it to show up, it might take a few minutes. It is not good if you have moved on, are fighting a mob, and the patrol shows up behind you.

6. If you have a team wipe, wait inside the entrance of the instance for your teammates, buff up and travel together. There will be some elite patrols that have spawned; traveling alone will just get you killed.

7. In the Goblin foundry, hug the wall, and pull to it. Stay out of the middle of the room. The goblins in this room, have a pet, Remote-controlled Golems, which are a pain. Try to kill the engineers fast, or interrupt the spell they use to call these pets.

8. Two assassins spawn when you approach Mr. Smite. Kill them first. Mr. Smite will stun you when his health reaches certain levels, if the assassins are still alive when he stuns you, they will most likely kill you. He just runs to the chest at the bottom of the ramp and changes weapons, so if the assassins are dead, you will most likely survive the stuns.

9. I made a fatal error at Mr. Smite, as the priest, I thought it was a good ideal to Psychic Scream the assassins, which would make them run away. Bad idea, they did run away, and came back with friends, caused the only team wipe we had. Just kill the assassins as fast as you can.

10. Captain Greenskin is a pain. Be careful, stay on the ramp below the top deck. Watch as he circles the deck, when you see him pass, send the tank up to pull down the adds on the deck. Do this three or four times until all the adds are gone, then fight him and his two guards. Be careful, he will aggro fairly easy. The first time we were in here, we were standing on the deck below him, and aggored every thing, was a team wipe.

11. Kill Edwin VanCleef, first, do not worry about the guards he spawns, the faster you kill him, the less he spawns.

12. Have fun, get on vent if you can, is a huge advantage to be able to talk to each other.

So these are just a few pointers from a noob perspective, like I said before, just a few things that might be helpful to someone running this instance for the first time. Now we are off to the Shadowfang Keep, to kick some undead butt.

As I get closer to reaching the level cap on one of my characters in World of Warcraft, I am a bit confused about thinks like Daily quests, and how to get reputation in certain areas. Also today is the beginning of the Midsummers Fire Festival, and I am really confused about what to do to get all the cool titles and gear. Also because I am not a big PVPer, and no one likes my gear enough for raids, it is one of the few ways I will be able to get the achievement What a long, Strange Trips its Been, which gives you the super cool Violet Proto Drake, a super fast flying mount.

So I found this cool guide Dugi’s Dailies and event guide. Wow is all I can say. This was worth every dime. A very well done guide that makes this very confusing event, crystal clear. The detailed guide to all the bonfires is just amazing.

You can take a look at the guide on the link below. In fact I have purchased most of Dugi’s guides, and have to say that all of them are some of the best I have ever seen. So take a look at them all if you get a chance.

Dugi’s Dailies adn Event Guide

I try to post a state of the moonbase/combat engineers at the beginning of each month, to let my gaming community know what we had done well that month, and what we need to work on. As well as the goals for the next month, thank you’s to people who have helped out that month. This month I have even posted a note about looking for some leadership for the group. So click on any of the posts below to see that information. I hope is that some one will wonder in here, and be so impressed that they will want to join the community. One can only hope.

State of Combat Engineers/Moonbase-May
Goals for the Month of June
Good job for the Month of May
Leadership Opportunties