[White Wolf] Woah...The Camarilla Returning to Non-Direct White Wolf Control Status?

From White Wolf's The Future of White Wolf announcement/ICC summary:

For the Camarilla specifically:
No more pyramid. We’ve drifted a bit away from you all and have come to realize what a really horrible mistake it was to let that happen. We want to reintroduce ourselves as people, individuals even, who care about what you decide to do with our games, because we truly do. There has just been too much bureaucracy and it needs to end. We’ll keep liaisons on staff here, but this is less about us selling you books and more about you enjoying them.

But how? We’re giving the reigns back to you. You will remain the official World of Darkness fan club, but we’re not going to tell you which of our games to LARP or how to do it. Some of you will undoubtedly return to the Old World of Darkness. That is awesome.

What’s next? A lot of introspection and elbow grease. We urge you to take the coming months to really audit the entire Camarilla structure. How much of the original roots will you salvage? How will you balance the dynamic between old, new and future members? Do there need to be structural changes, rules changes or even cultural changes to reflect the new Camarilla going forward? What is the Cam to you and how would you have it run ideally? This is the perfect opportunity to reforge the Camarilla.

Why change? We want this to be just plain fun again, like the ICC itself. No barriers in the way of your expression in the World of Darkness. Tools to help you organize yourselves, find eachother, and regain that sense of creeping, suspenseful dread together. Bear with us and help guide us, as this is going to be an open dialogue.

It sounds like they're going to allow the Camarilla to go back to what it was before their rather forceful takeover years ago. I'm currently fighting with YouTube to watch the full closing ceremony address from ICC, but it's not really letting me watch it for long before it goes into an endless buffer loop. (Currently, it won't play at all for longer than a minute and a half on any of the clips...)

While I largely got out of the Camarilla after returning to Salt Lake from San Diego, the fiascoes I heard about during the crossing into being controlled directly by White Wolf completely turned me away from renewing my membership/rejoining the Camarilla. I'd kept an active membership while in San Diego, but let it lapse as I returned to Salt Lake since I wasn't too thrilled with the whole "end of the World of Darkness" turn that things had started taking. Don't get me wrong, the Final Nights brought the coolest thing to happen to the World of Darkness since Mage was released (Demon: the Fallen), however, I think it all ended up getting a bit too rushed, and too much change occurred in too short of a time for it to be enjoyable.

I don't much like any of the new World of Darkness settings, though a lot of their new system are good; I really only like the Changeling revamp so far, though the new Geist series is kinda appealing since I really enjoyed the Risen suppliment. While I'd play a Changeling game, I haven't really had any real desire to do the rest. If even if only part of it returns to the Old WoD setting, I'd consider going back.

Curse YouTube. I can't get any more information from ICC because of it's failing. =(

[World of Darkness MMO] ZOMG, It's a Sekrit!

So like, I stumbled upon documentation that proves White Wolf and Crowd Control Productions are working on a World of Darkness MMO, and quite possibly have been since even before their merger in January. However, beyond the original merger documentation and a small statement on CCP's website, I've found jack squat more about the game aside from the fact they're still hiring people for it.

As far as the merger document is concerned, a WoD MMO title was part of the commodities that were acquired in the merger. You can search for MMO or World of Darkness to find the scant details that are listed there.

World of Darkness Developed in Georgia

CCP North America is located just outside of Atlanta in Stone Mountain, Georgia. White Wolf Publishing, which merged with CCP in November 2006, has been headquartered in the Atlanta area since 1991 and has been a leader in the gaming industry ever since. Its flagship property, the World of Darkness, has a rich history of over 18 years of creative development and is now the basis of one of CCP's major virtual world projects. Currently in preproduction, The World of Darkness is the undying heart of the development efforts in CCP's North American office.

Atlanta and the Georgia Department of Economic Development have helped provide CCP with an invaluable strategic foothold in North America. Our Atlanta office serves as an integral component of CCP's international business, allowing for extreme flexibility in adjusting business practices and structures to quickly react to industry trends in order to stay at the forefront of technology and innovation. The Atlanta office houses leadership and support for every aspect of each of CCP's major initiatives, from finance to art direction and from marketing to game design.

The support networks for innovation in Georgia are both substantial and progressive, making Atlanta the perfect home for a virtual world project based on leading technology and unique game design. In March 2009, CCP was named one of the top 10 technology companies in the state by the Technology Association of Georgia. In addition to the fertile business environment, Georgia is filled with many qualified tech professionals, some of whom have joined CCP's growing team. The professional pool remains strong in the area year after year thanks to an abundance of quality local universities who draw top students from around the world. Atlanta has also proven to be a desirable place to relocate for many of new hires filling the over 100 open positions in CCP's global company due to its relatively low cost of living, pleasant weather and metropolitan charm. Those interested in joining CCP's efforts in Atlanta should visit the CCP job website.

That is the statement that is located on the sparse World of Darkness page on CCP's website. I couldn't find anything about it on the White Wolf site. I can't find anything solid on any spoiler sites, however there's chatter about it amid the insiders of the industry since Ryan Dancey became CMO of CCP and physically moved to join them.

Beyond that...it's the best kept secret of the MMO industry at the moment, and perhaps in the longest time.

My friends and I have already discussed it. If they do it right, all other MMOs will fall to the wayside for us. White Wolf is what we played when we were teenagers, it's what we were doing to bond beyond the scene of the dance club we all went to. It was more enjoyable than D&D, it was less of a headache than Palladium, it was our favourite RPG. We've since all moved into the MMO world, and the combination of the two is like a dream for us.

The suspense, it's killing us. XD

October Aion Community Address

(Original Article)

It’s been a month now since Aion opened its doors to players in North America and Europe. In that month, the growth of the game's community has signaled Aion's success. We've received an amazing amount of feedback, both positive and negative. We'd like to reiterate that we've been listening. We have been working around the clock toward solutions to the problems many of you have experienced.

You've told us that it's difficult to advance within certain level ranges. To address this issue, we're planning to raise quest experience, in addition to reevaluating the experience rewards characters gain for individual kills. We understand how frustrating it can be to repetitively kill enemies. Our goal is to limit the need to mindlessly "grind."

In this week's Eye on Community, we answered a question that a player had about client instability. In the reply, we noted that most of the claims stem from the infamous "Crysystem.dll error." We've been working with members of the community to identify the cause of the problem in order to find a permanent solution. Our development team is currently investigating, and will be testing a variety of different short- and long-term solutions. These include adding additional and improved display options to the Aion client, as well as system and memory optimizations.

We've heard your unhappiness about the chat spam and bots in Aion and recognize it as an annoying problem. We’ve taken measures to reduce the amount of chat spam you’ll be subjected to and have already seen substantial improvements in this area. We've been expanding our GM customer service staff, and we have also assembled a special team dedicated to hunting down and eliminating botting operations. It's obvious these activities erode your gameplay experience far too much to be acceptable. They also harm us from a business standpoint due to the RMT organizations' frequent use of stolen credit cards.

Many of you have asked us why we haven't spent more time communicating the specifics of our plans. The unfortunate truth is that the same people spamming chat channels and setting up bots are also reading our announcements. In order to keep the enemy in the dark, we cannot be too vocal about our plans to fight back.

We want you to know, though, that we're more dedicated than ever to eliminate chat spam and the use of bots. The good news is that you can help. If you see any suspicious player activity, report it. To quickly report these players, use the /AutoReportHunting feature by typing /AutoReportHunting while a suspicious character is targeted. It's important to note that this system will actually begin to penalize players after they've been reported multiple times. The more of you that use this system—the more effective it will become.

To add more specificity to what we're discussing here, early next week we're going to be releasing details about a game update that will go into further detail about how we’ll be fixing some of these issues, in addition to others.

It’s been an exciting month, and the future of Aion is full of promise. Please continue to send us your feedback and never forget that patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

-The Aion Community Team

Busy Busy

So, like mentioned before, I fail at blogging often. Lately, though, a large part of it has been due to some hectic changes and events going on offline.

My fiance moved back here, we had to find him a job, then we discovered his license has been suspended for a while but he was never informed of such and the drive back here kind of wore out a few bits of his car - the tie rod bushing, the brake pads and the rear break drums. So while everything is fixable, it's going to take two weeks, and I have to drive him to and from work till we hear back from the state of Utah about his license (btw, never move to Utah, it sucks).

My disability hearing was set, much to everyone's surprise as it's been less than a year from the denial, but it's taking a lot of time to finish paperwork, set up the last round of medical appointments on top of regular/ongoing medical appointments and get me back up to the point where I'll actually be able to attend said hearing since one of my recent specialists basically blew me off and avoided treating stuff.

I've been reading a lot, because the fiance has the Earth's Children series, and on days I have appointments or running around to do, I tend to be tired after and relaxing on the couch or the bed tends to be nicer than at the PC. When I do have time and energy to use the PC, I've been playing Aion, though I took advantage of the City Of holiday weekend special - they reactivated all the retail+ accounts, and it was a nice break from re-doing most of the same things in Aion.

That's the bad thing about being involved in a beta. You do a lot of the same things so many times that by the time the game releases, you're really sick of the starter stuff and get highly frustrated before getting to new content.

Regardless, I signed up for the chance to beta test Star Wars: The Old Republic and will be impatiently waiting to hear from BioWare on the matter for who knows how long. ^.^

During the moving of the fiance, we basically stopped role playing in the Harry Potter sim sets in Second Life. There were a couple of uncomfortable RPs that people were trying to push even though they weren't wanted by either of us, and we kept being disappointed by most of the "leadership" of the sim. In the end, we decided to drop it and focus on Aion and reviving our SW:TOR RP sessions, since Tony's time is cut down (comparatively) by work; off-time will probably be spent in City Of or more casual aspects of Second Life that don't demand so much face time.

That's basically what's been going on. I'm going to set aside Mondays (unless there's an event in Aion) to update this thing, and maybe add back in Friday reviews once I'm in the habit again. ^.^

Aion: First Beta Weekend

Well, aside from one of the most pain in the ass installs I've ever dealt with, I got to play in the Beta Weekend for Aion today (and some of Monday).

I downloaded the first patch segment, which was the majority of the game, and it turned out to be corrupt and poofed every time I tried to unpack it. So I had to download it again. All of that plus the additional patches took about all of Friday and all of Saturday. When I woke up today, I could finally install it and around 3:00 I started making my characters.

My friend Zeke is also doing the beta. He ran around on his Chanter-to-be with me, Elyos side, and we got to just after the Daeva Ascension missions. I was trying out the Spiritmaster since he is so big on the Elyos side, and I guess it's alright. I haven't got to play with the actual class much yet.

After he went to bed, I flopped over to my Asmodean Assassin-to-be. The quest lines are similar enough to go at about the same rate EXP wise, but different enough to not be annoying. Zeke had been telling me Scouts were squishy, but after a couple of levels, once I had Swift Edge, Focused Evasion, Counterslash and Surprise Attack...things have been awesome. ^.^

The biggest bitch I have is in all the Abyssal flashback/future sight scenes...even if you're a girl, they all use the title of "Lord" for you. There's something preventing it from checking gender, and selecting the appropriate title in English, or they just haven't added that yet. There are apparently a number of thigns turned off in this round of beta still.

Really wish I'd gotten more time with it. The weekends are only every other weekend right now, so it'll be two weeks before I get to play again. >.<

Yay Beta

So I got up to GameStop and got my Aion beta key card. Pretty card, actually, wouldn't mind the design on a credit card or something, even if that would auto tag me as an avid geek. Zeke sent me the patcher for Aion last night, so now I'm just waiting for it to patch.

Unfortunately, we have shitty Verizon DSL, so it's only gotten to 41% since starting it; it's averaging about 25 - 27 KBs/sec right now, though last night for a while it was around 70 - 80. *le sigh* So even though I have everything set up through NCsoft's account section, I still have to wait. *pouts*

They couldn't have included a fucking disc for this, now could they. >.<

Facebook Games...That Do More Than Waste Time

So I'm an officer for a Facebook group that collects, verifies and posts information about various Facebook applications/games that actually support legitimate offline charities or causes. Most of these focus either on saving animals, the environment or humanitarian interests, and all of them must have transparent dotnations to said causes to be included on the list.

Most of the games are pretty fun, or at least easy enough to do a little bit of clicking through yet still generate enough to create a donation. Please check out the group Games/Applications Supporting Human, Animal & Environmental Causes on Facebook, and if you currently play or decide to start playing one of the listed games, please join the group and share it on your profile as well as leave a review for the games you play.

Namaste.

Oops!

So, I get pretty horrible about blogging sometimes. >.>

Tony, myself and our friend Randy got into doing some play by post RPs via Facebook for our Star Wars: the Old Republic characters, and then Tony and I started trying to get involved with a few things in Second Life, and of course he'd finally get called back to work (after being laid off for 3 months), and then I got sick after going to the Harry Potter 6 midnight showing...so everything kind of screeched to a hault.

Here's the rundown of geekdom lately!


Star Wars: The Old Republic
We made our main characters, and started work on the Star Wars: The Old Republic RP Wiki profiles, which are largely done but not entirely so. You can view Aradia's profile, Wyntier's profile, Malickai's profile, Arrio's profile, Tsukasa's profile or Angeli's profile already, though not all of them have been linked to the Characters page of the wiki yet.

Almost all of Aradia's biography are summaries of the play by post RPs we did for our background. We have just a few more sections to RP through and the back history will be complete, however since Tony started working again, we ended up taking a break from this for a bit. I'm working on setting up the next round of PBP-RP, but with the differing work schedules of Tony, Randy and Alex, they will take longer and require an actual post order.

Tony, myself and Randy made recreations of our SW:TOR characters in Second Life, not only so that we could add images to our profiles (which I am still working on), but so that we could do some real time RP to get a better feel of the character personalities. However, with the way the Galacitc Unity RP sims are set up, it's proving a bit difficult as most people do not give anyone who comes into play as a Master level Force user the time of day, apparently to the point of the player not being allowed to prove that they're not just god-modding. While I can understand the hesitence when encountering a character that no one knows coming into play as a Master Sith or Master Jedi, I personally can't bring myself to auto-discredit them over it - I'd rather give them the chance to prove they can RP it well, without it being a god-mod crutch.

So we basically are having to tweak our characters, by hiding behind the "Republic" personae we created for them in our PBPs - Wyntier's will end up having to play off being an untrained Force Sensitive Omwati scientists, and Aradia will end up having to pretend to be a wandering Jedi. The state of the various governments in the GU setting is unstable and chaotic, and since Wyn and Dia were previously out of touch due to their research projects, they decided to sit back and see what exactly is happening with the galaxy before chosing a side. We'll probably eventually go over to the Sith if someone can RP bringing Wyntier into training and prove that the Sith are actual worth our time, as there is apparently a bit of a rift between the Sith groups in the GU. Moderately defeats the purpose of trying to real time RP the characters, but hopefully not for too long.


Harry Potter
My friend Jason got tickets to the midnight showing of Harry Potter, so I went along with him and a few of his friends to see it. Personally, I didn't like the movie all that much. It felt very slow compared to the prior movies and the book itself, and they left out and rearranged too much of it for my liking. There was a lot of cool things they left out, some of which are directly tied into the seventh/eighth movies and seventh book that I can't really figure out how they're going to justify and/or correct for the final movies.

Tony was also not impressed, and actually fell asleep during the show when he tried to watch it in the theatre, though he did later on catch it over the internet, which only solidified his dislike of the new film. It's also starting to get into the space of the books that Tony has previous umbrage with, as a lot of things don't quite make logical sense, and several of the sub-plots kind of fall apart when you actually look at them past the Order of Phoenix's midway point; I think it gives him a sort of default dislike of the movies from here on out.

So when I mentioned something about the Potterverse based RP sim in Second Life I'd looked into back in February of 2008, he got fairly interested. Once we got the new information, as the Hogwarts Reborn group had merged with another group to make Hogwarts United, we made up some characters and began the (long) admissions process. They don't use meters like the GU, so they actually want character sheets, along with out of character interviews. I already had my interview, and have moved into the process of getting my "special ability" approved, while Tony's heard nothing; apparently his interviewer is in the UK, but they never seem to be on at the same time anyways. Once he gets his PC back, he's going to be contacting the head of the Admissions department to see about getting a different interviewer.

Hogwarts United has had 200+ applications this month, so...that explains the wait to a degree, but it's still silly long as it's been over two weeks, I think.


World of Warcraft
Back in May, as you can see if you look in the blog's archives, Tony and I began leveling up characters on Hydraxis so we could join our long time friend Tas' guild. The guild itself was only barely getting started, and supposedly wanted to be a progression raid guild that worked off of a casual schedule; they really had nothing in place that was needed for a raid guild, so I started filtering them all the stuff I'd collected about running guilds in general and raid guilds in specific.

Initially, I was trying to divide up my time between Hydraxis and Steamwheedle Cartel, however as it became more and more obvious that the guild on Hydraxis needed work and Tony suddenly had more time due to being laid off, I ended up spending a lot of time on Hydraxis and doing shit to make the guild we joined into a decent raiding guild.

It didn't exactly work out, as the actual guild leader failed to see the reason behind several things, which may or may not have also been unclear with the general guild members either. I wrote a very lengthy explanation on why some things needed to be done, even if they were not "fair" to the few PUG'd individuals that would be brought on raids, why there needed to be gear requirements so people who work hard aren't carrying people, and a few other things. Essentially, people wanted a progression raid guild, but weren't willing to do the work that went with it and I really didn't want to stick around in a sub-par guild.

This lead to the group of us who had come over from the Horde side of the game leaving that guild, and while Randy and Ford could easily go back to their guilds, Tony and I are kind of left in limbo as his prior main is on a PVP server (and I don't like being on a PVP server) and due to issues with an ex-boyfriend, I don't really feel comfortable about going back to Steamwheedle Cartel; we don't have the money right now for either of us to transfer anyways, neither raid force on either server really needs the character classes we have anyways, and we enjoy playing the game together so just logging into our respective servers wasn't really sounding very appealing. Tony also put a shit ton of work into his new Mage, and would prefer to be using that character for playing and raiding.

I looked into several different guilds on Hydraxis as best I could, however the ones with charters and loot systems we liked were all too far along in progression for us to join them, or when I contacted their leadership, they just didn't need a mage and a shadow priest.

Then I got screwed over by a change in an automatic bill I wasn't aware of, so I had to let my account lapse anyways. Since we're still largely in the situation as we were before I couldn't pay for it, neither one of us has bothered reactivating our accounts. If we have the money for it, we might reactivate our accounts when they bring the Faction Changes live since then Tony could play his mage but we could be Horde like all of the people we know. I don't know what server we'd go with, because our friends are split up on different servers ATM, though there was some talk of moving to Malfurion when the Faction Changes go live as a bunch of his friends from the Alliance are going Horde and moving there.

As much as I miss playing sometimes, I just really haven't felt the urge to play WoW again all that much because of it all.


Random Other Gaming
For the past few days, Tony's been without his computer due to a screw up by the place he'd been purchasing it through. He went and made what he was given the impression of being the final payment for the computer, as the salesman had told him that he didn't have to pay anything else...when there was actually 60.00 left on the account from (more than likely) accrued interest.

So back on Monday, while Tony was at work, the company showed up to collect the computer, and his roommate had a stupid moment and just let them in without contacting Tony about it first. When he got home, he found he had no computer, and the next day found out why aside from his roommate's dumbass moment. Unfortunately, his place of employment fucked up on paying him, and have been slower than slugs about correcting the problem, so he has no way of getting it back until his paycheck gets straightened out. That was supposed to be today (after it was supposed to be Tuesday), but the dumb bitch in payroll has had issues being competent and apparently won't have it till tomorrow even though she's had more than a week to take care of it.

In the interim of boredom that has occurred because of it, I've been playing random free to play MMOs, but none of them are holding my attention that well. I love how Requiem looks, I like the storylines of Guild Wars and Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, and I like the general play and systems of Runes of Magic and World of Kung Fu, but after a point, without other people they either get boring or I just can't do anything because it requires a group.


Aion
Last week I pre-ordered this in hopes of getting into the Beta, like the main site advertised. I popped by the local GameStop, threw a few dollars down on it, and naively assumed that my beta info was on the receipt that was handed to me as nothing else was given to me. I was extremely rushed at that point, as Wal-Mart had taken forever and a week to get my medicine pick up ready, and I had to go pick up mom from work but was running out of time before I had to be there. I never looked at the receipt till I got home, and found there was no beta info on it. After poking around NCsoft's site and talking to my friend Zeke, who also pre-ordered, I found out they were supposed to give me a plastic case with a beta key card in it.

So tomorrow I get to call and find out why I wasn't given the beta key card case or told that they were out of them before doing the pre-order. I'm a little ticked about it, but apparently the server is only open every other weekend at the moment, so there's not a huge loss - as long as I get the key tomorrow, I can d/l the software and log in for this weekend's beta round.

I'm hoping that after all the betas, we can keep our characters like they did for Lineage II and I think they did it for one of the Guild Wars. One can only do newbie quests so many times before they get too boring and unbearable.

At least I know I'll have Zeke to play the beta weekend with. ^.^

Star Wars: Lightsaber Combat Forms

So I got really bored and wrote a Lightsaber Combat Form quiz for Facebook, based on an old Quizilla quiz that was linked on the SW:TOR boards. The questions were based on the quiz, however the answers went more in depth and the forms that actually have two style variants were separated.

Yes...I'm a geek, especially for Star Wars.

WoW: The Bitch of Raid Gearing

So we got 80 on our Alliance mains, which is all well and good but...now comes the painful process of gearing for raids.

I'm stuck with having to for sure gear for two specs - they need me running Disc until we find a good Disc priest to take my place there, while my actual main spec is Shadow, so I need to acquire the gear for that as well.

I've theorycrafted out the best possible sets of gear for a Disc Priest, a Shadow Priest and a Frostfire crit happy Mage. Tony's gear is going to require 6 more Ebonweave cloths while my Shadow set is going to take 10 more, barring I don't get something in Naxx or Arch that is better. And then we're looking at 6 Titansteel, 6 Infinite Dusts and 2 Frozen Orbs for Tony's Spellblade, 4 Titanium, 8 Dragon's Eyes, 8 Eternal Water, 8 Eternal Air and 2 Frozen Orbs for our Titanium Spellshock Rings, on top of another 2 Titanium, 1 Eternal Water and 4 Northsea Pearls for his Ring of Northern Tears.

Lots of mats, and lots of Heroics to be had, though I get the feeling they want to drag us into the Naxx10 on Wednesday even if we're not geared for it. Which would suck, with the level of expectation everyone seems to have of us.

But, no more having to grind out quests to level until the sunrises...just need to grind out quests so that I can make Deathchill cloaks. >.<

E3 Trailers

At first, I was going through and just searching title by title for these, then I just gave up and went through all of G4TV's YouTubes for E3. I'll be adding more commentary to these Soon(tm).

WoW: Almost There...

Last night, Tony and I got our characters to 78. We're almost 80, and the work to get raid ready will be so much easier than leveling from 1 - 80 has been. We have basic and cold weather flying, so we can get around to finish up the quests in Sholazar, Storm Peaks and Icecrown. Between the quests and the start of our rep grind dailies, we should be able to get the gold for dual specs and whatever materials we need for gearing. Once we're geared, the dailies gold will start going towards getting epic flying, which means having to grind out a bunch of faction in BC so we can get more epic mounts.

We both have largely been able to keep up on our tradeskills. I'm hoping to be able to get enough frostweave and infinite dusts to grind out my tailoring to 440 so that I can make our craftables shit. We unfortunately have to get Loremaster of Northrend ASAP so that I can make our damn Deathchill Cloaks, but Tony isn't too against the idea of doing that many quests. Enchanting isn't a huge rush, considering Dave (the guild leader) already has max enchanting and can cover any enchants that I don't have.

Unforunately, RAWR has been dead since the last patch, so I can't fine tune theorycraft our gear now that we're closer to level cap and raid preparations. I'm waiting impatiently for the developers to update the program so I can get cracking on the last bit of tuning I want to do pre-raid.

So I should be able to start putting more up here soon. I have a couple of MMOs I want to review and a few Facebook games to talk about.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Well, I haven't posted much for a couple of reasons.

Recently, I started the long and confusing work of planning my own wedding, which is taking a lot more than I expected, as I didn't really know anything beyond what I wanted for the ceremony itself...there's sooo much crap that goes into making a wedding happen.

Secondly, Tony (my fiancee) plays WoW as well, however he began a character on the same server as our long time friend Tas. Since WoW is one of the only ways we can spend time together until he moves back here, I made a new Shadow Priest on the same server - hence the long guide to Shadow Priests finally being mostly finished.

We're already into Outlands, and we should be into Northrend by this coming week, if not sooner. We'll probably get 65 or 66 tonight, as we average about 2 - 3 levels a day. Oddly enough, our professions are staying almost the same level as our characters. =)

WoW: Ixy's Shadow Priest Guide

Introduction
Shadow priest is perhaps my most beloved class/spec in the game. I played it way, way back before there was even much use for it. Every time I've come back to WoW, I've picked up a shadow priest as at least an alt, and then eventually devoted a ton of time into Teiris.

This will be updated as things change for our spec, as we discuss and dissect the class together on this board. A lot of it will be drawn from other sources in the beginning and throughout it's maintenance.

Shadow priests have been moving towards a more heavily DPS oriented spec for a long while now; the emphasis on utility was decreased when Vampiric Touch was transformed into a replenishment ability, and said replenishment was handed out to other classes.

There will be several focuses to this thread - gearing for entry level raids, gearing for 25 man raids, talents and rotations, etc.

This is obviously a massive work in progress. Aside from finding all of the basic information, I am comparing items, building talent trees, creating item sets, and formatting it all into something that looks pretty on the forums. I'm going to try to toss out a bit of everything at first, especially the spell rotations and gearing bits for starting raiders.

Credits
ElitistJerks.com
WoWhead.com
MaxDPS.com
Amaterasura of Hydraxis/Teiris of Steamwheedle Cartel
Serephyne of Steamwheedle Cartel



Stat Math
Our stat priorities have changed several times over the course of WoW's existence; this portion will probably be updated again at some point as they continue to move Shadow Priests into a heavier DPS role.

Currently, we want to get gear with the following stats, in this order:
Hit (Until Capped)
Crit
Haste
Spirit
Intelligence
Everything Else

Combat Ratings:
1% crit = 45.9 critical strike rating
1% hit = 26.23 hit rating
1% haste = 32.79 haste rating

1% crit = 166.67 intellect

3/3 Shadow Focus & 3/3 Misery Shadow Priest Hit Cap is 11% or around 289 at level 80. If you are a Draenei Priest, you can deduct another 1% from your hit cap.


Regen:
5 * 0.005575 * sqrt{Int} * Spirit = OO5SR regen



Gems
Gems will of course be varied depending upon what gear you have. This is merely a list of suggestions for quick referencing!

Red:
Runed Stormjewel - 23 Spellpower
Runed Scarlet Ruby - 19 Spellpower

Yellow:
Rigid Stormjewel - 23 Hit

Orange:
Veiled Monarch Topaz - 9 Spellpower, 8 Hit Rating
Potent Monarch Topaz - 9 Spellpower, 8 Critical Strike Rating
Reckless Monarch Topaz - 9 Spellpower, 8 Haste Rating
Luminous Monarch Topaz - 9 Spellpower, 8 Intellect

All gems with a * indicate Epic gems that have not yet been released/discovered on Live Servers.


Glyphs
Major
The first two glyphs you get should be Shadow and Shadow Word: Pain. The third glyph can be taken up by Mind Flay or by Fade, depending upon your play style. MF will make it so you have about a 34 yard range, but Fade will let you drop aggro more often.

Glyph of Shadow - While in Shadowform, your spell critical strikes increase your spellpower by 10% of your Spirit for 10 seconds.

Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain - Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.

Glyph of Dispersion - Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 45 seconds.

Glyph of Fade - Increases the duration and cooldown of your Fade spell by 50%.

Glyph of Mind Flay - Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but it only reduces the target's movement speed by 10%.

Minor
Aside from the obvious Shadowfiend and Fading, there's really not a lot of good minor glyphs out there for priests in general, and Shadow priests in specific. The Levitate glyph is nice for bag space, though...

Glyph of Shadowfiend - Receive 5% of your maximum mana if your Shadowfiend dies from damage.

Glyph of Fading - Reduces the mana cost of your Fade spell by 30%.

Glyph of Levitate - Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent.


Consumables
Elixir of Major Shadow Power - Increase Shadow spell power by 55 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.

Spellpower Elixir - Increase spell power by 58 for 1 hour. Battle Elixir.

Elixir of Draenic Wisdom - Increase Intellect and Spirit by 30 for 1 hour. Guardian Elixir.

Elixir of Might Thoughts - Increase Intellect by 45 for 1 hour. Guardian Elixir.

Elixir of Spirit - Increase Spirit by 50 for 1 hour. Guardian Elixir.

Flask of the Frost Wyrm - Increases spell power by 125 for 1.00 hour. Counts as both a Battle and Guardian elixir. This effect persists through death.

Tender Shoveltusk Steak - Restores 15000 health over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 46 Spell Power and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Firecracker Salmon - Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 46 Spell Power and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Fish Feast - Set out a great feast that will feed your party! Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 80 Attack Power, 46 Spell Power and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Spiced Worm Burger - Restores 15000 health over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 40 Critical Strike Rating and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Spicy Blue Nettlefish - Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 40 Critical Strike Rating and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Very Burnt Worg - Restores 15000 health over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 40 Haste Rating and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.

Imperial Manta Ray Steak - Restores 15000 health and 12960 mana over 30 sec. If you spend at least 10 seconds eating you will become well fed and gain 40 Haste Rating and 40 Stamina for 1.00 hour.



Talent Builds
Preserved for Reference - Historical Specs
There were a few ways you could spec a shadow priest for raiding, though they were all quite similar at their cores.

Ye Olde Shadow Spec - This build leaves you with 2 extra points that can be used in a number of ways. The most common are 2 into Imp VE, or Shadow Affinity which is not really required on single target raid bosses but may help on groups of raid mobs.

Mental Agility Shadow Spec - This build cuts out Veiled Shadows, and a bit of Twisted Faith in favour of Mental Agility in the Disc tree. This allows for a slight damage increase, however since you only should need to cast Shadow Word: Pain once per mob you target, you're left with only two instant cast spells - Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Death.

Improved Divine Spirit Shadow Spec - This build may be invalidated shortly when Divine Spirit is folded into our regular abilities. While this build allows for Imp DS (which grants us more spirit, and adds spellpower equal to 100% of our spirit), it forgoes the self mana regen talent Dispersion and all of Twisted Faith.

Current Builds
Shadow Priest - With the new 3.1 patch, there really is little reason to delve to far into the Discipline tree much. This is how the spec looks, though some people will change around the two points in Improved Shadowform for max'd out Twisted Faith. I personally find the reduced pushback better due to the heavy use of Mind Flay.



Spells and Rotations
Current Spells
Devouring Plague (Rank 9)
25% of base mana
30 yd range
Instant cast
24 sec cooldown
Afflicts the target with a disease that causes 1376 Shadow damage over 24 sec. 15% of damage caused by the Devouring Plague heals the caster.


Vampiric Touch (Rank 5)
16% of base mana
30 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Causes 850 Shadow damage over 15 sec to your target and causes up to 10 party or raid members to gain 0.25% of their maximum mana per second when you deal damage from Mind Blast. In addition, if the Vampiric Touch is dispelled it will cause 680 damage to the afflicted target.


Vampiric Embrace
30 yd range
Instant
Afflicts your target with Shadow energy that causes you to be healed for 15% and other party members to be healed for 3% of any Shadow spell damage you deal for 5 min.


Mind Flay (Rank 9)
9% of base mana
20 yd range
Channeled
Assault the target's mind with Shadow energy, causing 588 Shadow damage over 3 sec and slowing their movement speed by 50%.


Shadow Word: Pain (Rank 12)
22% of base mana
30 yd range
Instant cast
A word of darkness that causes 1380 Shadow damage over 18 sec.


Raiding Spell Rotation
By and large, full spell rotations only work on boss mobs - trash is usually dead way to quickly for them to matter. That being said, we're going to first look at what you may be able to pull off on a trash mob followed by what to be doing with bosses.

Trash Mobs
While we'd like to think that trash mobs have enough HP for a full rotation, they typically don't. Most trash mobs in instances and raids and even soloing will be dead before the fourth spell lands, so we need less spells to crank out some DPS and pull off a Replenishment.

I suggest putting up a Vampiric Touch, and immediately hitting a Ming Blast to trigger replenishment. From there you can throw out a Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay a bit until the mob is dead or Mind Blast is back up.

If there are groups of mobs, you can always pick a focus target and lay down Mind Sear for some mindless DPS.

Boss Mobs
This type of mob will have more health, and aside from their own special tricks which you will need to take into consideration. This is where you will have time to use an opening spell rotation, and a maintenance rotation.

You'll want to open each boss mob up with this rotation: Devouring Plague (SW 1), Vampiric Touch (SW 2), Vampiric Embrace, Mind Blast (SW 3), Mind Flay/Mind Sear (SW 4/5), Shadow Word: Pain.

Now, there may be some question as to why Shadow Word: Pain is appearing so late in the rotation; by going through five spells prior to dropping SW:P, you get a maximized SW:P on the boss being refreshed every time you do Mind Flay/Sear.

From there, you start prioritizing your spells like this: Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague, Mind Blast, Mind Flay/Sear. This is your basic maintenance rotation for the rest of that boss fight.

If SW:P drops for some reason, refresh it manually. If you lose Shadow Weaving x5 due to repositioning, begin the opening rotation again to bring it back up, and then come back into the maintenance rotation.



Pre-Raiding Gear
This research was done using Rawr with the following settings:
13/0/58 Talent Spec
Buffs - Divine Spirit, Improved PW: Fortitude, Shadow Protection, Heroic Presence (not really counted), Misery, Spellpower Elixir, Elixir of Draenic Wisdom, Hit Food
+3 (Boss) Relative Level
100% FSR time
6 Minute Fight
100ms Game/Brain Latency
100% Effect from Shadowfiend/Replenishment/JoW
2% Focus on Survivability
Above mentioned Spell Priority/Rotation

This is the top end version of the gear available before raiding. Now, one might not realistically get all of this before raiding, but it is what you should be shooting for - if something's an upgrade but not the Best in Slot, take it for now and if you get better later on, great!



Naxxramas, Eye of Eternity, Obsidian Sanctum Gear
This research was done using Rawr with the following settings:
13/0/58 Talent Spec
Buffs - Divine Spirit, Improved PW: Fortitude, Shadow Protection, Heroic Presence (not really counted), Misery, Flask of the Frost Wyrm, Hit Food (Naxx10) or SP Food
+3 (Boss) Relative Level
100% FSR time
6 Minute Fight
100ms Game/Brain Latency
100% Effect from Shadowfiend/Replenishment/JoW
2% Focus on Survivability
Above mentioned Spell Priority/Rotation

For these gear sets, the Overall value was used to determine the best in slot items. Overall value balances burst DPS, sustained DPS, and survivability which is technically not optimized for any specific playstyle. I tried to keep these as "neutral" as possible, however I plan on including a Burst DPS set and Sustained DPS set using all of the gear available to a raider from these three zones.

10 Man Naxxramas Set
25 Man Naxxramas Set
Complete Pre-Ulduar Set

Now, the complete Pre-Ulduar Set pulls from all of the instances including the additional drakes in Obsidian Sanctum which does include Sarth +3D drops. If your guild is not dropping Sarth +3D to get the bracer, stick with the Punctillious Binding from prior sets.



Ulduar Gear
With how scattered and incomplete the Ulduar item information is so far, this will take a few weeks to develop and get posted - half the items aren't listing from their proper bosses or modes, and half of them are not even showing up in Theorycrafting websites.

So Caught Up...!

Well, a week and a half ago, I fell down a flight of stairs so that's one reason why I haven't made much in the way of posting like I should.

I'm also trying to figure out what format I want to do the MMO/Major Game posts, and haven't found a writing style or format that I like yet, so that's not going up just yet.

What time I have been able to get on the PC has gone towards WoW's new raid zone, Ulduar and leveling Alliance characters with a few old friends on Hydraxis. And this addicting little browser based game called Civony. >.>

But I should be able to get back into the swing of things this week. My bruised tailbone only hurts a lot when I try to lean back, so it's basically become a crash course in perfect posture!

WOTC DOWNLOAD RECOVERY DAY, APRIL 15TH

By now, you have probably learned that Wizards of the Coast recently decided to cease the sale of digital download versions of their books. This means that RPGNow and DriveThruRPG will no longer be able to offer you future downloads of Wizards titles you have purchased.

We are offering you a final 24-hour period in which to re-download copies of any Wizards of the Coast files you have purchased from us in the past. If there are any titles you purchased, and you need a new copy of the file for your personal archive, this is your last chance to get it.

This 24-hour period will begin at 10:00 AM EST (U.S.A. Eastern Time Zone), Wednesday, April 15th and will conclude at 10:00 AM EST on Tuesday, April 16th.

During this time you may visit DriveThruRPG or RPGNow, log in, and click the My Account link found in the upper right corner of the site. Or just visit one of these links:
DriveThruRPG http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/account.php
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For the “My Account” page you will find your order history and download links, including a handy option to view all products updated since your last download of that title (for example a file that was updated with errata since you last downloaded it). During your visit, we certainly invite you to take a look around and see all the titles we have to offer for rpg PDF fans.

As always, thank you for your continuing support of all that we do, and we welcome your feedback and any questions you may have.

Sincerely,

Sean Patrick Fannon

DriveThruRPG and RPGNow

Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

As my 'sister' always says on this day...Happy Zombie Jesus Day!

I never was a big fan of the whole worshipping someone who had supposedly died and returned from the dead. Most people who do that are regarded as Zombies or at the very best, Vampires so the idea that one gets it's own holiday is just a little, you know...insane!

Zombies...who in their right mind celebrates Zombies?!

=P

For the more material minded out there, Happy Get Tons of Pastel Candy day!

You've gotten a ton of jelly beans, chocolate rabbits, peanut butter eggs, and those oh so annoying hard boiled and coloured eggs. Your Easter basket is a tribute to Capitalism, and will soon be showing itself on your hips and ass. But hey, it tastes good, so who cares, right?

We won't tell anyone about the stuff animals your mom got you...but hey, chics'll dig them!

Facebook Game of the Week: Battle Stations

A few of my "Facebook games only friends" have been sending me requests for this game for a long while now, however with the generic text they used, it really sounded like it was some sort of atypical war game, which I never really have been into.

My WoW guild mate Viseraeth plays it though, and got Kilo playing it, and I found out it's actually a huge Steampunk Anime style game, with some mechanics that don't exist in a lot of the other Facebook RPGs.
Battle Stations is actually a Flash based game, so it's a lot more graphical than most Facebook RPGs including battle animations! While there is not much you can to to customize your little Captain avatar, your airship is completely customizable, and will change its apppearance every time you add a feature or upgrade ship type.

The Battle Stations interface is fairly straightforward, even for being completely graphical. After you press the Start Game button, which loads you into the actual Flash game, you end up on the main game screen. Here you have several visible stats and options, as well as a nifty little animated window showing your ship and it's current setting/conditions.

The Ship window is the most noticeable thing on this page, since it is dead center and completely animated. Next to the Ship window is the image of your Captain avatar, which changes depending upon what class you have selected, and as you level, which class advancements you take. Just above your Captain is a box with some very basic stats - your Captain's name, your Ship's name and the amount of EXP you have toward your next level.

At the top of the main area are listings for your other important stats. The first is your AP or Action Points, which allow you to do everything from fixing your ship to questing to exploring. Next is the area showing how much Gold or in game currency you have available to you, followed by the amounts of materials (Wood, Ore and Plasma Rock) you have. Next is your Ship's hit points, displaying current hit points and overall hit points of your ship. Lastly, there is a listing of your current Level, which of course will change as you get more experience in the game.

Below the Stats bar is your Navigation bar. The Home option will always bring you back to this first page we're looking at, while the rest will take you deeper into the game itself. Once you navigate away from the Home page, the bars will sometimes switch places, and the Navigation bar will be above the Stats bar.

The first option is for Quests. Quests are a good way to start out gaining experience and resources, and often have interesting little facts about the world Battle Stations is set in. There are two different types of Quests - the Story Quest and the Side Quest. Story Quests will largely give you information about the world around you and reward you with experience and money, while Side Quests will get you anything from Wood and Ore to Ship upgrades and parts. Every Quest costs a set amount of AP, and initially you can do a whole lot of Quests before you run out of AP.

One type of Quest is called Exploration. This allows you to basically free roam the skies, sometimes giving you the option to PvP or battle NPC ships, resulting in varying amounts of EXP and resources. A combination of regular Questing and Exploration will help you get started as a new Captain, so don't discount one for the other.

During your Quest or Exploration, you may encounter another Ship. These can be NPC or PvP encounters. When an encounter occurs, a new screen will appear showing both ships zipping through the air and attacking one another. At the bottom of the encounter is a bar that shows the ships progress through the encounter - if either ship reaches the end of this bar, the encounter ends and you either survive and escape or your enemy survives and escapes. You have no direct control over these encounters beyond what you do to upgrade your Ship and it's Equipment, so definitely pay attention to the Hanger information!

The second option is for Ports and Shops. The starter city of Tylerion has three different sub-options, while other cities and areas may have more or less options. Any type of Shipyard will allow you to buy a different ship using Gold and/or Resources, while Armories will allow you to buy gear to outfit your ship with and you may find other types of shops or stops like Taverns, where you can talk to NPCs and buy drinks.

The next option is your Captain option. This is where you will go to spend your Stat Points whenever you level, or to look at the record of various game achievements you have gotten, as well as editing your Captain's biography. Aside from your three primary Stats that you will level up as the game progresses, you can see how many Wins and Losses you've had, how many Battle Stations friends you have, your total Experience to date, your current location and lastly the date you joined the game.

The Hanger option is one of the more complex screens in the Battle Stations game, because it manages several different things involving your Ship. The first two things you can do on this page is Repair your Ship using AP if it has taken damage via Quests or PvP, or you can salvage it for AP if your Ship has been sunk at all. The repairs of course scale based on your ship's damage, but I've yet to have so much damage I didn't have or regenerate the AP to cover them.

The bulk of the Hanger menu covers your Ship and it's Equipement. Your ship can be upgraded two different ways - by improving the general stats of your current ship or buy skipping over to the Shipyard and getting an entirely different class of ship. Both of these options take Gold and Resources, however if you like the layout of your Ship it allows you to just upgrade the Ship itself rather than move on to a completely different style.

Your Ship has several different Equipment options. Each ship does have a maximum weight limit, and a set number of Weapons it can support, so these things will always be changing based on your Ship's type and upgrade level while there are some set slots that will not change quite as often. Aside from Weapons, every Ship has a Sail, an Engine, a Figurehead, a Hull and a Stabilizer. There are also options for a Custom Captain and Custom Ship, however I personally have not unlocked the items for these options.

Upgrading your Ship's Equipment will affect it's statistics in battle in terms of survivability, maneuvering and damage output. A combination of Weapon types can keep you able to damage a ship that has protection against different types, so it may not always be a wise idea to have the biggest, most expensive gunnery in every Weapon slot. Take time with building your Ship, making it stable yet versatile!

The Crew page has a couple of different sub-options. You can go to a page to Invite your friends to the game, and I suggest including a personal message when you do because of how vague of a description the default message gives. You can Recalculate your crew if you've added a friend who hasn't shown up on the list yet, though the game seems pretty good about managing your connections. The Friends option allows you to see the rankings of your friends based on their levels and ships.

The last Crew option is to Manage your Crew. Each ship has a few different positions that you can give to your friends, like First Mate and Quartermaster. Everyone who does not have a specific position will be listed as a Deck Hand, which still help you out as far as numbers and stats go, so don't discount yourself if you find your friends have left you as a Deck Hand.

The Market option lets you do a number of things from transmuting items into other items, to player trades and exchanges. Transmuting is definately a nice option if you're having trouble finding a material via Quests and Exploration as is trading things with other players or buying them from other players.

Once your Captain reaches level 25, you can join a Clan and participate in the Clan Wars feature of Battle Stations. Clan members don't attack you anymore, which cuts out some of your PvP competition, and the benefits that Clans provide will help you progress through the game.

The Help option is rather self explanatory, so I'm going to skip it. =P

The last option is called Ocho, which is a 'currency' that you can buy with real world cash to spend on items in game that are considered premium. You can get fluff items like Ship Skins or spend your Ocho Points to refresh your AP or Resources stocks. While I myself don't use the option, some players do just to get the skins.

So far, I'm really digging Battle Stations, though the AP regen is at a rate that really allows for me to play it for a bit once a day, which is nice most days and aggravating other days!

Design Score: A+.
Game Play Score: A
Graphics Score: A+
Replayability: A-
Bonus: B+, sometimes the game kills the Facebook native navigation options or has minor Flash errors but gets bonus points for bothering with a Flash game at all.

Overall Score: A

WoW: Yet Another Night of Fail Attendance

Yet again, we didn't have a lot of people on for raiding tonight. We actually had I believe the lowest attendance for a 25 man raid night yet - we only had something like 16 or 17 people total well after our typical raid invite time.

So we ended up having a damn night off, which is even more frustrating because of the holiday weekend so we're probably not going to see OS25 or Maly25 this week - both of which people actually need gear from that we've had little chance to see.

The problem is a bunch of people basically got the majority of their either Best in Slot or nearly so gear, and decided that they no longer needed to attend the raids. This mentality is bullshit, because they're not the only ones who needed gear AND they're not in the best gear they can be in. These same people are going to come back after Ulduar drops and want to raid again, so they can get new gear and start their 'vacation' all over again.

This is also causing other problems.

Since we've been lacking people, we've had to shuffle around our schedule and do a lot of 10 man instances instead of the 25 mans, or do some of the 20 people and under achievements instead. This has left some of our newer raiders agitated because they end up not being able to raid with the guild since they were not on when we did the 10 mans impromptu. And of course, they complain about it, and essentially ask for the gear requirements to be lowered since we need people anyways, which upsets the core raiders who do show up and who do work for their upgrades.

Needless to say, lately WoW has been less than enjoyable, which is why Kilo and I haven't really done much beyond raid preparations and showing up for raids that we don't end up doing something other than what we thought we were going to...

LOLcats Networking >.>

I got around to making an ICanHasCheezburger.com account, so I can just favourite my LOLs instead of having to download and rename every single one I find funny. They have a friends feature so stop by my LOLcats Profile and add me!

Site Updates: Story Blogs Added

The other night, I decided to import all of my MMO/RPG/LARP stories to their own blogs. Each blog is for a different character, and the blogs are grouped to the left according to what game they are from.

I'm still doing the layout formatting and stuff, so expect them to change over time!

Requiem: So I was Reminded Why Helping Newbs Might be Bad...

I'm not opposed to answering questions in an MMO, especially when they're about something like the Requiem item upgrade system. It's definitely not that straightforward at first, and the crafting materials can be a little vague about what they are used for unless you go hunting through the websites or wikis for the game.

So when this random, half naked Kruxena in one of the first few outposts asks about my glowing sword, and then of course about the Item Upgrade System, I'm not surprised and actually gave him a fairly good TL:DR version of the crafting system. Shrug off the interruption and continue on my marry way with Kilo.

Later on, when we get to the Cargo Field for our last scroll quests before reaching level 20, we run into the same newbie. He's still not really all that geared, and he's pretty hesitant to actually hit the mobs in the area - they're all level 19 - 20+. He's a rogue, he's new and he's not really all that well geared it seems, so again we just shrug and continue with what we're doing.

After watching us slaughter a few of the huge golems we needed for a scroll quest, the newb rogue asks, "u want 2 party?".

First of all, I cannot stand the while "texting speak" thing. If you're not using at least decent spelling I'm so not going to respond to you because my Inner Literature Student is too busy ranting about your language in Foamy the Squirrel's voice.

Kilo, being a bit extroverted compared to myself in these kinds of situations, says "Only if you bring the cocain."...and the rogue asks about where to find cocain IN GAME. O.o

Next he quips off about how he's level 15!

To save him some stress, I explain that he should be down in the pond area outside the South Watchtower doing the hand-spider/stalk monster/scorpidile quests since they're more the appropriate level for him - I'm so not into carrying people in MMOs.

He then says, "i hate quests" which is something a lot of people don't like in MMOs, and then follows it up with "will quests level me?".

...
....
.....

Requiem starts you out on a quest chain that will level you to about level 7 or so without killing a god damn thing, which also teaches you about the game itself. From there, numerous amounts of NPCs have quest, and there are scroll quests you can obtain as well - like any MMO, it's leveling is centered around quests!

I point out that quests are really the easiest and only way to actually level in the game, and Kilo and I promptly start ignoring him and work on killing off our quest monsters while /facepalming in RL. >.<

LOLcats...GAIA?! WTF.

I wanted to make a couple of little Gaia Dreams avatars of myself and this is what I came up with for the day to day look - note that Gaia Online apparently has LOLcats, in particular Ceiling Cat!

The reach of ICanHasCheezburger.com is far! I totally would never expect to see something like a LOLcat in a silly online P4P MMO!

Gaia Dream Avatars!

While I was backing up all my characters' EQ2 stories, I hit a thread that I'd started, basically showing some mini-avatars of my characters using the Gaia Dream Avatar Builder website. So...here are the WoW versions!

First, Teiris of the Light and Shadow Mistress Teiris!










Next we have Onona in her old Demon Hunter clothing.










And now for Seresu and her spooky steed...










And Anezka and her Succubus!

WoW Druidic Humor

Requiem Skill Builds

Even though Requiem: Bloodymare appears to be based on the same engine Lineage II uses, the class scaling appears to be a little different, though admittedly I never got too terribly high level in Lineage II.

Since we've been playing a lot and I actually like the game itself, I've decided to work on making some builds for my characters, since skill resets are Item Mall only items (as far as we can tell). For some classes, there's a Skill Calculator that is fairly decent, but seems to be complete only to about level 60. The other Skill Calculator was on Rockiem, which has been abandoned by it's creators, and making an account doesn't seem to work so I can't even use it or back it up.

So I made the Requiem: Bloodymare Skill Builds blog so that I'm not constantly cluttering up this blog, and so that there's a more focused collection than available on the forums. The forums are great and all, but having to sift through each classes' forum to find what I want sucks!