Saga’s Challenge Day 3; My first day in WoW

My first day in Azeroth.  I wish I could tell you specifics, but it was so long ago that all I have are impressions.  The game definitely made an impact on me, but I think it is safe to say that if you are reading this, your first day and mine probably weren’t that much different.  Or maybe they were, but the impact the game had has definitely given us common ground, no matter how different we may be.

The thing that rings truest in my memory is the sense of awe as I watched the opening cinematic.  I was a dedicated console gamer back then, only dabbling in PC games on a whim.  As I have stated before, I had a small bit of experience with MMO’s before WoW, but I would go so far to say that I was casual to the point of making the most casual seem hardcore.  I had never even played Warcraft before, or any Blizzard PC game for that matter.  The opening cinematic set the bar for me, got the juices flowing.  Images of the epic battles fought with my childhood cronies during Dungeons & Dragons sessions percolated in my cerebellum.   I was hooked before I even knew the first bit of lore or the first aspect of game mechanics.

Dungeons & Dragons was a huge part of my adolescence.  From there, I branched out into other games, such as Star Wars, the Roleplaying Game, and Shadowrun, the latter of which occupied a great deal of time in my late teens and early twenties.  When I joined the Navy at the tender age of twenty-two, I found friends who were also gamers.  A lot of my buddies on-board ship were computer guys, but I had a dedicated cadre that I role-played with.  A little bit of the World of Darkness by White Wolf Studios, but most of our time was spent playing Cyberpunk or a game that my friend Will Borral came up with.  I don’t even know what it was called, but Will was the most incredible game master I have ever gamed with.  I have lost touch with him, but heard that he continued in the Navy, and did some work for Steve Jackson Games.   Anyhow, I digress.  My time in the fantasy world of D&D was behind me.  I had graduated to Gaming in a William Gibson-esque world of Street Samurai and Deckers.  Dwarves, Dragons, and Trolls seemed like child’s play, memories of a time when I didn’t know any better.  After I got out of the Navy, it was hard to settle in to gaming without Will. I was spoiled, no, ruined, by my years of gaming under his creative direction.  I turned to another childhood friend, the video game.  Consoles became my recreation of choice, and I dove in with both feet.  Sure, I had a computer, but that was mostly used for looking up FAQ’s or reading game reviews.  Consoles were much easier, all you had to do was get the game for the right system, and you were pretty much good to go.

So there I was, watching this rifle-toting Dwarf with his bear companion navigate a snowy mountainside, listening to this incredible score that I knew. I had never heard it before, but it sounded just like the soundtrack that played in my head during those early gaming sessions with my friends.  Watching the Elf shift into cat form took me completely unaware, and left such an indelible mark that my first character was a Night Elf Druid, which I still play to this day, although he is Tauren now.  That first day was a marathon gaming session that lasted for nearly 8 hours.  I seem to remember not having any clue what I was doing, and that has not necessarily changed.  Everything was either self-taught, or learned through the patience and kindness of others.   I went in without a single friend in Azeroth, but I have certainly made more than a few in my travels.  Even with knowing nobody in the game, none of the history of Azeroth,  or if there was even a clear-cut way to win, I knew that first day that this game was going to be remarkable, if for no one else other than myself.  Did I have a clue as to how remarkable it would become, and how many millions of people would tread the same digital landscape?  Nope, I sure didn’t.  I don’t think anyone did.   Talk about lightning in a bottle.

Anyhow, that is my memory of my first day in WoW.  Sorry for the wall of text, the rambling, and the really disjointed trip down memory lane.  You know what they say about aging, this first thing to go is the memory, and the second things is…crap, I don’t remember.  Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Gaming!

Oz

Carbonite now totally donation driven…

Just a quick update as I get ready to head into work.  Carbon Based Creations now has version 2.59 of carbonite available for free to download on their website.  Version 3.0 is expected out in a short while.

From the carbonite add-on home page;

In response to the recently announced User Interface Add-On Policy we will no longer be selling a subscription to Carbonite. We are in the process of converting Carbonite to be fully compliant with this new policy and will provide more details when we can.

We would like to thank all our customers for their support and hope we can continue to deliver the product and service that you have come to expect.

2.59 is now available on the downloads page and 3.00 should be out next week.

The Carbonite Team.

Happy Gaming!!

Oz

More from the Carbonite Devs, unofficially, or course…

Yet another “personal” message from Fataal, the only Carbonite Dev to post anything about the possibilities that the add-on has in store.  This is a direct quote from his forum post;

A personal message from me (not CBC):

Carbonite will most likely be around in some form surviving on donations. As the incentive to develop addons decreases, the quality and amount will go down. Many hardcore addon developers have already said they will probably be spending less or no time on their addons. Serious software developers will gravitate toward the best platforms for their software and wow just took a nosedive on that list.

Hobbies are fun when you spend a few hours a week on something, but as many people like my wife will tell you, when you take a hobby and do it 30-50 hours a week, it becomes a job. Jobs are jobs and they have lots of parts that are not fun. My wife had fun taking and editing pictures of our kids, but when she started doing it for friends and then strangers many times a week, it developed all those not fun parts that made it a job. If she did not make money from it, she would not be doing it.

I have several game projects I have been wanting to spend time on. They look very attractive now.

As the saying goes “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely”. That is why monopolies are almost always evil self serving entities.

As the Bible says “A workman is worthy of his wages”. Addon authors are certainly worthy of theirs.

Shawn

Now, I could be totally wrong here, but I don’t think that this was an off-the-cuff response.   It has been nearly a week since the policy update, and this is his second post regarding it.  I’m not saying the guy isn’t upset, but this is no emtional rant.  I like the “evil enitity” bit, and the Bible quote added just the right amount of drama.  He even intimated that Blizzard was a monopoly.  Hmm, let’s look at that…

According to the Random House Dictionary;

mo⋅nop⋅o⋅ly

noun, plural -lies.
1.     exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.
2.     an exclusive privilege to carry on a business, traffic, or service, granted by a government.
3.     the exclusive possession or control of something.
4.     something that is the subject of such control, as a commodity or service.
5.     a company or group that has such control.
6.     the market condition that exists when there is only one seller.

Since Blizzard doesn’t make the only MMORPG on the market, they do not qualify as a monopoly, if that is what he was going for.  If he was referring to their absolute, (and at times draconian,) control of what can take place in their game, thereby controlling the” market condition” that is World of Warcraft, all I can say is “um, ya think?!“

Blizzard has time and again made it VERY clear that they do not want real-money transactions finding their way into the game.  You can be banned for buying or selling gold.  Account sharing is also a bannable offense.  How does account sharing figure in?  Easy.  Power leveling services.  Okay, maybe that is a stretch, but it makes sense if you look at it hard enough. So a subscription based add-on is definitely not in their realm of thought.  And, since we are playing in their backyard, they do get to make the rules.

Anyways, I know that this is an emotionally charged topic for a great many people.  Heck, on the Carbonite forums, there is even a call for a petition to send to Blizzard about canceling accounts over this.  But even though Fataal’s post was not an official statement, I can’t help but admire the guy’s ability as a wordsmith.  Nothing like a little fire and brimstone to get the villagers riled up.

Well, I have rambled enough for one post, methinks. Time to get back to the grind.  Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Gaming!

Oz

Carbonite Devs break their silence…well, sort of.

Last Friday, after Blizz posted its new UI add-on policy, many dev authors and wow players alike grabbed torches and pitchforks and stormed the official wow forums.  Some of the arguments were intelligent and thought provoking, while others quickly degenerated into finger-pointing and name calling.  The mod community is as divided as America was during the Civil War.  Many Devs are discontinuing their mods in protest, ans still others have stated that they will continue to author and distribute their mods.  Surprisingly to some, a great many of the modders who are protesting are authors who have ever charged for their add ons.

One of the main suspects in the blame storming for this new policy, Carbon Based Creations, the makers of Carbonite, has been strangely mute.  The carbonite forums have been teeming with people rallying in support of the add-on, pledging to donate as long as the add-on stays current, and begging for soemthing from CBC.  But until this afternoon, not a peep from the Devs.  They have pulled Carbonite off of Curse, WowInterface, and you can no longer directly download it from their site.  The website is still up, and the Devs are still active on other threads in the forums, but anything related to this, they are shying away from like the plague.  Finally this afternoon, Faatal, one of the CBC Devs, posted this.  Nothing groundbreaking, and he pointedly posted this as a personal note in a completely new thread.  Complete legal defensive maneuvering, methinks.  Does this mean that litigation is in the near future?  Maybe so.

In an interesting side-note.  Carbonite apparently stopped offering the free version of Carbonite Quest in early March.  As long as I can remember them being on the scene, they have always had the free version and the premium version.  But without announcement or fanfare, the free version vanishes.  Some are calling bait and switch, and others are saying they are completely justified.  Apparently, Blizzard disagrees with the latter.

I honestly don’t know which side I am siding with.  I wholeheartedly agree that the Mod writers should be free to do with their code as they see fit to a degree.  I also believe that Blizzard has every right to dictate what can or cannot happen in game.  I guess only time will tell.

I will try and make more sense of all this as more information surfaces.

Happy Gaming!

Oz.

P.S. I salute all the mod authors, no matter what their stance is on this issue.  I thank each and every one of you for taking the time to try and make this game just that much better.  And a special thanks to all the authors who have stated that they will be continuing support of their add-ons.  /tip hat.

The Future of Add-ons; Blizzard’s new policy.

I popped onto the carbonite site just a few minutes ago to check my version.  I had paid for the full-featured carbonite, but my subscription had expired.  I was about to renew, when I came across a forum post entitled “The Future of Carbonite.”  After years of browsing the WoW forums, I don’t put too much stock in what passes for “news” in most forum posts, but I figured I would check it out.

Lo and behold, Blizz just implemented new policy that formalizes design and distribution guidelines for add-ons.  You can read the entire policy here. I won’t go into gory details, but suffice it to say, times, they are a changin’.   I would like to point out a couple of key points.

Right at the top of the pile of guidelines, Blizzard states that add-ons must be free of charge.  This includes add-ons that have “light” versions and “premium” versions.  Funny how this is timed, since I just had to update my curse client to the new “premium trial” version.

I know a great many of the add-ons out there are completely free, and most of the developers maintian their addons out of pride, a sense of duty to the community, or some other intangible that eludes me.  And I am eternally grateful to them.  I donate where and when I can.  So many of these will be largely nonplussed by this develpment.  But addons such as carbonite, the various leveling guides I have discussed here, and the like, may well be closing down shop.  I don’t mean to hit the panic button, but this could turn into a glider type scenario where warden detects said add-on running in game, and you could forseeably get the perma-ban.

Aside from the free guideline, Blizz also states that add-on codes must be completely visible,  may not negatively impact realms or players (?!?) and may not solicit for donations IN GAME. The policy does allow for donations to be solicited on add-on websites or distribution sites.  I had to bold the in game portion, because some people on the carbonite forums missed that part.  You can solicit all the donations you want to, as long as your add-on doesn’t do it in the actual game.  That was welcome to hear.

The announcement apparantly came out on Friday, so it will be interesting to see how this shapes up.  I will be following this closely, and updating here whenever I come upon more information.  Hopefully this won’t be too damaging to the mod community, but there are a few that I would think would be in danger of shutting down.

More to come, folks, more to come.

Happy Gaming!!

Oz

Eh, it really just isn’t that important.

I beg your forgiveness for my last post.  Guild drama is just that, drama.  And that, my friends, is something I definitely do not want to promote here.  So I took a little time off from writing, played a little wow, and started dabbling a little in photo editing.  I hope to have  a new header image up each day, and hope even more that my somewhat meager skills will grow as I muck about with it.

So what have I been doing in game?  Playing a little on my Death Knight, a little on my Shaman, and a LOT on my army of alts.  I am attempting to level a pally again, as well as a warrior.  And, for the first time ever, I have managed to get a priest to level 40.  Shadow Form is pretty darned cool.

With so much of my focus being on my alts, I have not really been making much gold in game.  I have been doing my gathering, but in order to turn a profit, you kind of have to put those mats up for sale.  My little auction house mule is gathering dust, and I really need to empty out his mailbox before passers-by start noticing the backlog and mark me as an easy target for a late night BnE run.

That said, I am off to dip my toe in Icecrown realm’s economy.  I have an epic flyer to buy for a certain Death Knight, and gold just doesn’t grow on trees.

Happy Gaming!!

Oz

Mini-post; Zygor’s guide.

Still writing the post about my experience with endgame raiding.  Hopefully that will be up later today.

But, I realized that I haven’t commented on the newest leveling guide I have taken for a spin.  When I leveled my Alliance Death Knight, I tried Zygor’s guide, and I have to say, I really really liked it.  Another in-game guide like the Brian Kopp guide, but this one felt a little more polished.  I highly recommend giving this little mod a try.  For those interested, you can find it here.

Zygor has a guide for both Alliance and Horde, purchased seperately.  I have not tried the Horde guide, but I would go so far as to say that as good as the Alliance guide is, the Horde guide has to be good.

On a related note, Joana’s Horde leveling guide has finally come out with an in game mod.  I haven’t tried the 70 to 80 guide, but downloaded the 1-70 guide.  I wasn’t really impressed with this one.  My advice, if you have already purchased Joana’s guide, go ahead and try it as the 1-70 in game mod is a free update.  The 70-80 portion is a separate purchase, and if the other mod is any indication of its quality, I would skip it.  Just my two cents.

Okay, back to work on my other post.  Gotta have something to do while waiting on the realms to come back up.

Oz

The problem with blogging…

As I stated in my last post, I haven’t updated in a long while.  So why come back?

Easy, I love to write, and I am presumptuous enough to think that there are people out there masochistic enough to read my ramblings.  And as of yesterday, I found I have some small talent at expressing opinions that others share but are often times uncomfortable to voice.   More on that with my next post.

Recently, I have discovered a plethora of new (to me) podcasts out there covering the World of Warcraft.  Now, I have always wanted to get into radio, (actually, I wanted to get into television, but was told I had a “Radio Face”,) and podcasting intrigued me from the first time I heard about it.  But, I have no experience or know-how, and I know how to write.  So, back to blogging it is.

When I stumble onto a new show, I try and find the first show and listen chronologically.  If the first or second show doesn’t grab me, then I don’t bother listening further.  To both my pleasure and dismay, I have found three podcasts that I am enjoying immensely, and am trying to race to current episodes on each of these shows.  Two of the shows I mentioned in my previous post, Bind On Equip and the Grind. The final find, Wowcast, I completely left out of that list, for no other reason other than sheer stupidity.  BoE thankfully is a relative newcomer to WoW podcasts, with only 14 episodes out, and I am about halfway through the past shows.  Both the Grind and Wowcast have a larger archives (38 and 42 shows respectively.) and are going to take me a bit longer to get current with.

What does this have to do with blogging?  I am so caught up in catching up, I don’t have time to catch up.  So, the shows that inspire me to write are keeping me from writing.  Nice little catch-22, isn’t it?  Now you see the quandry.

Next post:  How the World of Warcraft Turns.  The dichotomy of Casual and Endgame. Can they co-exist?

Back in Action!!

Quick update.  After a LONG absence, I will be back, posting my thoughts, rants and observations about the World of Warcraft.  From what I am doing in game, to which podcasts I am listening to.

Quick suggestions for podcasts;

Bind on Equip Podcast

The Grind Podcast

The WoW Insider Show

Big Red Kitty

The Instance

How I WoW

Casually Hardcore

Updated Characters;

Ozznoxious the level 80 Nelf Death Knight   (Icecrown)

Ozmoziz the level 75 Draenei Shaman  (Icecrown)

Stabsmcnabbs the level 65 Nelf Rogue  (Icecrown)

More to come later in the day!

Happy Gaming!

Oz

Mission Statement

Hey all. I have been playing World of Warcraft since about 4 months after it first launched. I currently have one level 65 Orc Rogue on a PVP server, a 42 Night Elf Druid on a PVE server, and a level 12 Draenei Priest on a RP server. Actually, I have many more toons than that, but those are the ones I enjoy the most currently.

After years of playing, I have yet to have a character reach max level, and I seem to all too often be right above the poverty line after training every other level. My rogue is pretty close to level 66, but I find I have just lost my forward momentum with him. After doing some searching online, I keep seeing a few guides that are constantly being pimped as the next coming of the messiah. I have often been tempted to buy one here or there, but can’t seem to find anyone who has used one and really given any real commentary to their usefulness.

I know I can’t be the only WOW enthusiast out there who hasn’t wondered about them, so I am going to bite the bullet and purchase one and try it out. And I am going to blog my experiences with said guides. I will not be posting the actual tips from these guides, as I don’t want to be sued or anything like that. But, if I come across one that is particularly useful (or even downright horrible,) I will post my honest thoughts about them. I hope to become a resource for other World of Warcraft enthusiasts finding themselves in the predicament that I am in now.

Since I have a severe case of altoholism, I am at my max limit for characters on my account. So I am opting to start of with a gold making guide. Yes, I could buy gold from a gold farmer, but something about that just feels slimy. I would rather pay someone for tips on how to make the money in-game myself legally. There are more than a few of these guides out there, so I am going to just pick one that seems like a decent deal. Not going by price, but presentation.

I plan on posting every couple of days, but I do have a life outside of WOW, so if I go a little longer, please bear with me.

Now, I am going shopping for guides. I will let you know what I find.

Oz