3.3.5 Wipe Out

Blizzard announced an extended downtime- one that was supposed to range from 3 PDT to 11 PDT. It’s 6 PDT and the servers are just beginning to come up. Not all servers either, just a few and with a subscription base like Blizzard’s – those servers are already Max Queued. Between holidays, summer raiding blues – entailing various guild members’ vacations, our small bench has nothing but dust on it because we really don’t have one. This doesn’t count the folks that have gotten hacked (for the love of WoW and your character, by a damn authenticator- the “It’ll never happen to me” can easily become “I thought it COULDN’T happen to me”) have cost the guild raiders that are basically out of commission as well. I thought this week, we finally had a solid raid week ahead of us. We’ve planned out a couple of achievements to work on- and were hoping for solid face time on the Lich King (Father’s Day was less than optimal considering we ran 23 folks for the fun stuff we cleared).

Ever just feel like the game is out to get ya? Fire Festival released and our guild leader called the raid around 5:30 CST PM because the deadline kept being extended. It is a positive sign that everything in game is going to be screwed up. Eitrigg still isn’t online – and we’ve lost another full raid week. Last week was Father’s Day, this week the patch, and next week is the 4^th July weekend. As a guild that tries to leave its options open, we’re going to have rethink what we’re going to work in. We still have a few folks wanting the OS3D drake and the trinkets still are very nice from ToC. VoA maybe on the chopping block. We’re just going to have to prioritize although in all honesty – it doesn’t take long. Just food for thought on the raiding scene for NQG.

As a side note, I’ll be putting together a video on HudMap. AVRE and AVR are gone – dust in the wind. If you have them installed, you need to remove them. Ruby Sanctum isn’t active yet, and it won’t be until 3.3.5 is deployed on all realms and Blizzard releases it. Vote Kick changes are in effect, and as stated with AVRe and AVR, the lua has changed some. Now the addons have to catch up. Real ID is live so that will be experimental. One issue about that is allot of people like the anonymity of the internet and game play. Granted, those folks generally don’t fit well in this guild, because quite a few of us are on a first name basis. But with that said, this Real ID will creep out quite a few folks. Also, the 25% buff is now active so those achievements aren’t going to quite as hard as I had figured. Just amazing- with a move like this, it makes me think Cataclysm isn’t that far off. I guess we’ll all wait and see.

The Rusty Key

I'm a avid fisher person in Northrend. If I do nothing else, I do the fishing and cooking daily - and try to remember to transmute a gem. To my surprise, doing "Disarmed" - I caught a Rusty Prison Key. This was something I hadn't heard of previously. I actually went and looked this one up on wowhead.com; I've gotten waterlogged recipes, tiny lock boxes, even the pet from the bag of fishing treasures.. but never a key while fishing for this daily.

I sent the moonshine to Sarifen as usual, and then proceeded to figure out this key. Below Violet Hold, you can see a few grates, and inside there are "rusty lockers". Inside the locker was some junk, but also a couple of BoE Blues. Go AH!

Rumors from wowhead.com listed that it's availability was reputation based (Kirin Tor) but that's not the case folks. It was something a bit unusual to catch while doing a daily. Good luck to you if you're after it!

Downsizing

In an interesting blue post today, I found that in Cataclysm, while 10s/25s do share the same id - you can only shift down. Basically, a 10 man guild can't shift up. The real thought would be is this going to be on a per boss basis, or once you shift down, are you stuck on 10 man versus 25?

How does this work for end bosses? Take for example Lich King. Sure you have a 25 man raiding guild -and you are consistently getting to and working on the end boss- if you have 10 people who are available and want to put in the extra time, do you let them?

How will this impacting ranking sites? If you share the id, what happens on the achievements/ progression marks? I already know of guilds that will halve runs so that both guilds get credit for the 25 man progression/achievement. In this scenario, I could easily see guilds shifting down to 10 to get the credit.

Smokey The Bear

It's that wane time before the expansion, where content has been released, and the population of Warcraft drops as its denizens leave for summer or a break before Cataclysm hits. Yet still.. for those of us that do dailies, if you go to Crystal Song Forest when Awilo Lon'gomba <Grand Master Cooking Trainer> is handing out the Sewer Stew daily, you will tons of forest fires. It just leads me to believe that the people who continue to play have a routine, or set goals they want to accomplish before Cataclysm hits. Until then folks, remember – there's a cooking fire right next to where you have to turn in the quest in the Sewer – and only you can prevent forest fires!

AVR / AVRE Broken in 3.3.5

According to a blue post

This is a notice that we're making changes in 3.3.5 in attempts to break the ability for the AVR (Augmented Virtual Reality) mod to continue functioning. For those unaware, this mod allows players to draw in the 3D space of the game world, which can then be shared with others who are also using the mod. In some cases this manifests itself through drawing/tagging/defacing the game world, but more popularly is used to give visual guides for dungeon and raid encounters.

We're making this change for two reasons. The invasive nature of a mod altering and/or interacting with the game world (virtually or directly) is not intended and not something we will allow. World of Warcraft UI addons are never intended to interact with the game world itself. This is mirrored in our stance and restriction of model and texture alterations. The second reason is that it removes too much player reaction and decision-making while facing dungeon and raid encounters. While some other mods also work to this end, we find that AVR and the act of visualizing strategy within the game world simply goes beyond what we're willing to allow.

The change we're making in attempts to break the functionality is light in its touch and approach. When blocking any functionality we run the risk of affecting other mods, but we've targeted the changes as carefully as possible. If we find that the AVR mod (or any mod attempting to replicate its functions) are usable after 3.3.5 we will take further, more drastic steps.

This is coming from the same people that put sparkles on plants and quest items, updated the maps include giant yellow question marks for quest turn ins, and much more. On the whole the impact isn't that great for skilled players – but it may make the game more of a challenge for some folks that aren't so situationally aware. The nice aspect of this mod was the ability to mark and for it to stay consist throughout the encounter (whereas you have access to smoke flares still) so the issue isn't a large one.

I don't know Bliz.. my stance is that if there is a desire to use functionality to this effect – someone will figure out a way to code around it. Until then, there's already a tentative type replacement for those folks that do rely on the visual cues of AVRE. Enter Hudmap – it's much smaller scale but the effect is similar. This doesn't even go into the aspect of audible cues – what about that twist on things Blizz? Are you sure it's not taking away some reaction time on the part of the player?