Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

I was working late and played Brad Paisley’s "I’m gonna miss her."  It made me laugh and I told Jaimie about it.  There are people who act as if MMO players spending too much time on an activity deemed to be trivial is something new and horrifying.  At best it’s a new coat of varnish on something old.

It is pretty much a given that people will spend time on activities that others sneer at as a waste of time.  The problem comes when someone spends time and money on something to the extent of losing a greater good.  In the song, Brad Paisley chooses fishing over his girl.  For MMOs people choose to pursue virtual goods when they could easily be obtaining tangible goods with the same effort.  Why choose a lesser good over a greater one?

I see two possible answers.  First, the one who chooses wrongly is defective in some way (addict, sinner, short-term thinker).   Second, the supposed greater good isn’t actually as good as it’s advertised to be.

If we take the first case, society’s goal should be to cure the defective person so they can choose rightly.  This cure can run the gamut from attempting to gently show them the error of their ways to torture.  Where do we draw the line and live with people making bad choices?  In some ways, this view absolves the one who chooses wrongly.  It’s not their fault - they’re victims of original sin, bad brain chemistry, or a poor upbringing.

In the second case it’s simply that different people value things differently.  Is that purple sword worth the $50 you could have earned by putting in a little more overtime?  Is that big walleye worth the weekend you could have spend with your lover?    If you subscribe to an absolute value viewpoint (e.g. spending time with your sweetheart is ALWAYS better than catching that big fish), the judger can absolve themselves.  "I was perfect for her, but she was addicted to shopping" rather than admitting that maybe you weren’t perfect for her (and maybe she spent so much time shopping to avoid you). 

Given the way that I swing philosophically, I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between.  There are some things that are simply more valuable than others.  There are a lot of things whose value is relative, depending on the situation and the person doing the choosing.  How much leeway we are to be allowed in our choices is a determination made by society, which in turn has to balance stability and growth. Now we need some genius to come up with a unified theory of humanity let us decide how many addicts (and of what kinds) should be tolerated. 

"Warning: Effective immediately, everything is more complex than was previously thought. "

The List to Beat All Lists: Top 20 Productivity Lists to Rock Your Tasks is a very large list of productivity tips. I think I’ll follow the author’s advice and read through these a few at a time.

Many years ago, mp3.com was a fine place to fine free legal music. Bouncing around at random, I picked up a track called Kingsword by Heather Dale. I played it a couple of times and liked it. Jaimie liked it a lot and she played it over and over again. After a fair stretch, we still weren’t sick of it so we ordered one of Heather Dale’s CDs. Over the course of the next few years we bought the rest of her CDs and saw her live at a local show. We pre-ordered one of her CDs and have bought each one as it came out. We’ve purchased a couple of her CDs as gifts for friends and family. All because of one free song.

If you enjoy beautiful vocals and Celtic music, check out Heather Dale.

Our guild alliance went into Gruul’s lair last night for the first time and cleared the whole thing. It was a very impressive performance. High King Maulgar took us three tries (plus one premature pull). Gruul himself only took us two tries. It was amazingly smooth for our first 25 man run. This was the first time that many of the raiders had ever run anything bigger than 10 mans. About a third of the raiders had run Gruul’s before on other characters, so that helped. We had to PUG 5 people to fill out the raid and they performed their roles admirably.

The progress that has been made is incredible. When we rerolled on Quel’dorei, my goals were to get to 70, run the 5 mans and maybe hit a few heroics. Now we’ve done almost all the heroics, cleared Karazhan in a night, downed 3 of the six Zul’Aman bosses (so far), and cleared Gruul’s our first night there. Sleep Deprived and The Train have worked together admirably for over 5 months now and we’re still going strong.

I recently ran Blackrock Spire with some 55ish people from our guild alliance. We ran Upper Blackrock Spire, then Lower Blackrock Spire. It was fun to see the old place again. I have a lot of memories of running it back when 60 was the level cap.

One fine day when I was questing in Felwood on my priest, I got a whisper for a pick up group for Upper Balckrock Spire. Three pulls in and I got the first piece of my Devout set, the Devout Belt. As the only priest, it was mine!

We ran Upper Blackrock Spire many times as a guild. One of the first times we downed the end boss, Jaimie’s mage was the last one standing. We got a screenshot of the kill and Tinder soloing Drak was a guild legend.

For a sadder memory, Lower Blackrock Spire saw the death of our second guild. (We were only in the first one for a week when most of the guild switched.) In the middle of a run, just as we were pulling the giant wolves, our guild master logged on, promoted the druid in our group to GM, then logged off. A week or two later, our guild disbanded and we joined Legion of the Dragon - our first raiding guild.

Larisa’s post on Why Do I WoW? struck a lot of chords with me. 

Like her, I really wasn’t that into team play growing up.  I still find myself repelled by most group activities.  Doing things with a team and enjoying it gives me some perspective on those who love doing things with other people.

The way WoW makes self-improvement fun is also a critical part of my enjoyment of the game.  The Ferrett had a post way back when about wishing that leveling skills in real life were as quantifiable as leveling skills in an RPG.  (Sorry I can’t find the specific post.)  In WoW it’s easy to see when your character has gotten better at something - a number scrolls across your screen.  Once you reach max levels and you’re not getting those number you can start setting specific goals pretty easily, e.g. "I will not let the warlock pull off of me this evening."  The goals are achievable and concrete.

Having a world to explore is a lot of fun.  That was one of my favorite things about moving to a new area in real life - finding all the neat new places that are out there.  I’m not likely to move soon so WoW gives a bit of an outlet to my wanderlust.

I wouldn’t identify the kicks as a big reason for me to play WoW.  A big crit can be fun and it’s exhilarating to down a new boss, but I don’t think that’s enough to keep pulling me back.

Socializing is another of the big reasons I play WoW.  Many eons ago I told a college friend that I would love to do my socializing via typing on a computer network.  Now I can!  As a bonus, I get to play games while socializing and games have always been one of my favorite ways of connecting with people.

I’ve identified other reasons that I play WoW in previous posts, but I’d have to say that I strongly empathize with four out of Larisa’s five.

Soundsnap is  a collection of sound effects.  This might prove useful at some point - maybe if I decide to edit the kids’ movies.  (via Download Squad)

I like Lifehacker’s Hive Five feature where they have people recommend their top five application for a given task. This week it’s Five Best File Syncing Tools. I could probably use a tool like this - a lot would depend on how awkward these are to use.

Scott Berkun has a post on the pleasure of turning things off.  When you read through the comments, people generally agree that turning computers/internet connections off is the way to go.  I disagree.

The crux for me is his statement that "The real world, when done right, kicks the virtual worlds ass."  The trouble is that the real world is so rarely done right.  I’d prefer to be a hero with all the money I can spend in the real world to paying bills and working a desk job.  I’d rather work at gaining fame with group of people than do the the dishes every night.  How can I make sure the real world is done right? 

It’s not as though this is a new thing.  Back in 1651, Hobbes described the natural state of man as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.  In many ways we have been layering virtual worlds on top of the world that is since the days of the very first humans.  Computers and the Internet are just the latest instruments serving our desire to distance ourselves from reality.  Without a certain disregard for what is, humanity’s crowning achievements would not exist. 

There are few people out there that would not benefit from switching off a things in their lives.  Just consider which things you are switching off.  "Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime." - Heinlein

I spent the day at the Crop Diagnostic School. I actually tend to learn stuff there. Sadly today was not a good day for me to attend - I was grouchy and unsociable. I learned that soybeans can take up 250 lbs n/acre if they don’t have nodules. I learned about using a zero fertilizer strip to divide fields into zones for better crop management. The numbers for organic farming look really good - I want to remember to mention it to Faith to pass on to her brother, Tim.

It’s strange but I think if I were to resume playing my priest, Flint, I could do a better job than I did when he was my main character.  It would take me a bit to get back into the swing of healing and my first few runs would doubtless be scary things.  However, I think I have a better grasp of how to play than I did back then.

Flint was my first max level character (twice).  It’s not surprising that I would make some really noobish mistakes, such as the time I mind controlled a Dark Iron dwarf in Gnomergon, ran him over the nearest ledge, and watched in horror as he pulled most of the rest of the instance. The simple fact that I’ve had more practice means that I play better.

There are a lot of resources out there that I didn’t know about on Flint.  Heck, there are a lot of resources out there that didn’t exist when I was playing Flint.  Loot lists, message boards, theorycrafting, rotations, macros, and strategy guides have all helped tremendously.  Now I know why I shouldn’t be rolling on that spell crit mace against a paladin.  I did a decent amount of research while playing Flint, but nothing compared to the research I’m doing now. 

Having leveled a warrior, paladin, and hunter to max level and getting a warlock, shaman, and druid a decent chunk of the way there means that I have a better idea how the different classes are played.  There was one warrior that annoyed the crap out of me because he wouldn’t watch mana bars at all.  Now I know why he loved to chain pull and I am aware that I don’t NEED to have full mana for every trash mob pull in an instance.

Raid leading has taught me even more about the different classes and how to get people to work together.  I was good at healing my group, but terrible at carrying out any other heal assignment.  I would get nervous whenever someone’s health would drop and would toss out heals to unassigned targets.  That’s fine every once in a while, but not as a general practice.  I’ve learned to trust my teammates to do their jobs while I focus on doing mine.

Now I want to roll up a priest to apply the lessons that I’ve learned.  Maybe I’ll do that once my other toons make it up to 70 (or next time I want another alt). 

From what I can see this patch isn’t going to affect me much. Sadly I just bought mounts for my druid and and shaman last week so that’s 60g each down the drain. Given that they both have travel forms, I probably would have waited had I known the patch was coming out this soon. Ah well, between daily quests and the Auction House it’s not like 120g is what it used to be.

The Newb Zone is a podcast for new World of Warcraft players. If I convince anyone else to start playing Warcraft, this may be a good way to get them off to a good start. (via Epic Dolls

The people I’d like most to get playing would be my parents. I really doubt it would happen as neither of them is into computer games. What I might do is wait till the winter doldrums set in and see if my mom would give it a try then. (I’m scared of what might happen if if dad started playing - he tends to throw himself into whatever he does already. )

I won the Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable from Moroes while healing on my paladin for our second group. I switched back to prot to speed run some five mans and discovered midrun that I’d forgotten to gem it. Oops! Maintankadin :: Gems and Enchantments: A short guide confirmed that I should be gemming this up for stamina. Now to find a couple of Solid Empyrean Sapphires to gem it up.

I tried to email Brandon from Microsoft to see if he could help me out with my Windows Live Writer problem. Sadly my emails got bounced as spam. Hopefully he reads this.

You left a comment on my blog asking me to email you regarding my problems with Windows Live Writer. For some reason, it looks like the default font is roughly 25% of the size it should be in Windows Live Writer. Fonts for styles such as Heading1 look fine. The font looks fine on the blog under Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera. It’s only in Windows Live Writer that the default font looks small. I’ve tried updating the style from the weblog and reinstalling Windows Live Writer.

I tried to send you a detailed description, but your spam filter blocked it. The default font is showing up at about a quarter of the proper size but only in Windows Live Writer.

PlusHeal, a new healing community, has a nice list of the Healing Gear Drops from Kara for all the healing classes. My paladin respecs every week from prot to holy and back so it’s good to know what gear I’m looking for.

Our guild alliance has downed two more Zul’Aman bosses. We downed the eagle boss and the lynx boss for the first time last night. The timer for the bear boss went off while we were fighting him, so we’re getting awfully close for that too. We’re making very steady, solid progress. I would estimate that in another month or two we should be through the whole thing.

The problem is that we’re running out of content. Between the two guilds we can field a total of 25 raiding players. However, it’s rare that we have more than a dozen raiders on at a time. It’s hard enough filling out the 10s raids, let alone the 25s. Once we clear Zul’Aman, I expect that we’ll be clearing it weekly. Assuming another month to get the timed runs, we’re looking at 3 months and we’ll be done with the challenges we can take on. If Wrath isn’t on the near horizon by the end of October, we’re going to be stuck running the same things over and over.

There is hope - The Train is actively recruiting and has picked up some quality players in the last while. If there is enough recruiting, we may move on to 25s. The rest of Zul’Aman may prove more challenging than I anticipate, which would keep us busy a while longer. Who knows, Wrath may even be out this year and we’ll have a ton of new stuff to play with.

We have a couple of people in our guild alliance who are interested in raid leading.  I thought I’d give them a hand by pointing out some useful posts and tips.

Strategies

As a raid leader, your key task is to provide a strategy for raids.  I find that Bosskillers generally provides solid guides.  The nicest thing about his site is the links to other guides, including video guides.  I’ve found that Pillage has a lot of very detailed guides.  What makes Pillage’s guides so useful is that they cover trash mobs as well.  When you don’t need a full guide - just something to refresh your memory - WoWWiki is the place to go.

Addons

There are a number of addons out there that make life easier for a raid leader.  Here are a few that I’ve found particularly useful.

ORA2 provides information about the raid’s status, cooldowns, main tanks, main assists, and so on.  A lot of the functionality has been rolled into the default UI, but ORA2 provides a better interface and some enhanced functionality.

RaidBuffStatus give a complete overview of the Raid’s Buff Status.  Does the hunter have an aspect up?  Did that freshly resurrected warlock get a new int buff?  Is someone ignoring your pleas for full raid buffs before a tough boss?  Did people "forget" consumables again?  A quick Ctrl-Click and you can whisper the buffer to remind them.  If you feel like being less discreet about it, you can let the raid know who’s slacking off.  About the only things this doesn’t seem to track is weapon buffs (oils/blacksmith stones), healthstones, and soulstones. 

Deadly Boss Mods and BigWigs provide critical information for boss fights.  As raid leader you need to know when a boss is about to use their special abilities and these addons help you keep track of that. 

GuildRaidSnapShot in combination with our guild site lets you do two very useful things.  First it keeps track of who was at a raid.  Second, it tracks the epics that drop.  If you install this addon, it will prompt you for a DKP value, just leave the field blank and hit enter.  After a raid, you will have to go to our site and upload the snapshot.  Once you have uploaded the snapshot, you can click on the "Purge" button the pops up next time you log in.

There are addons to help you with marking targets - I personally find it just as easy to keybind the symbols and use that.

Loot Systems

Now we start to get into the really messy stuff.  What makes loot systems messy is that we try to make them fair. 

Is it fair that the priest who’s been there for every raid, supplied consumables and enchants to everyone, and has played with great skill loses a roll for a cloth belt to a PUGed shaman who happens to be resto for this week’s raid but is going back to enhancement next week? 

Is it fair when a new rogue loses a str/agi/attack power dagger to a priest who likes the way it looks but who has been around long enough to have the points needed to bid on it?  These are the types of situations that loot systems are intended to regulate.

Thus far, we’ve been using need/greed rolls for loot.  It’s the simplest system to implement, but as in the priest example above, it can lead to gross unfairness. 

Here are some overviews of loot systems.
DKP Loot Systems
Other Loot Systems
Saraid Article on DKP

We’re going to stick with rolls for now, but this is something we really need to think about particularly as we move into 25 person raids. 

WoW Web Stats

WoW Web Stats is a very useful tool.  I don’t place a lot of faith in Damage/Healing meters. (How to top the healing meters )  However, they can provide some feedback.  If you’re DPS and you’re not staying ahead of the holy priest, there’s a problem.  If you’re a prot warrior and you have 3 times as many shield slams as revenges, there’s a problem (hangs head in shame).  Big Red Kitty has a guide to an earlier version of WoW Web Stats - just jump down to step 10 as a lot has changed for the previous 9 steps. 

I will post a detailed guide for anyone who needs to upload a WoW Web Stats Report.

Player Gear/Spec Evaluation

We haven’t made a big deal out of spec, all we ask is that raiders be specced for their role.  Don’t show up in a resto spec and plan to DPS.  Don’t show up looking to tank as a paladin without Holy Shield.  Do a search on WoW Wiki for [class] builds to see some of the standard builds.  Go to Elitist Jerks to see what are key talents for a given class/spec.  If someone wants to fill a role while not having speced for it, they can expect to be greeted with skepticism and will have to work harder to prove themselves.  (Off specs can work, I knew a holy paladin who was an amazing tank in the pre-BC days when paladins were only supposed to be cleansebots.) 

Some quick evaluations tools are be.imba and WoW Heroes.  These are very valuable to raid leaders.  These tools will let you know that Raider X is geared up enough to run Black Temple while Raider Y isn’t geared up enough for Karazhan.  Note that these tools depend on what is visible in the armory and that they are only estimates.  If your prot warrior logs out in his DPS gear, he’s going to have a terrible score.  As Warshrike demonstrated last week, a DPS that’s undergeared for Kara can still rock the damage charts in Zul’Aman when played by a skilled player. 

THE END

There’s more to be said, but this should give you a good start.  I have a lot of fun raid leading and I hope you do too!

I have a long post I want to write so I thought I’d use Windows Live Writer to work on it.  For some reason, it’s decided that I should be seeing my posts at 25% zoom.  I don’t want to squint at the screen as I write.  I have dug through all the options I can find, I’ve searched for help both on the wider Internet and on the Windows Live Write site to no avail.  Bye bye Window Live Write!

ChangeThis Newsletter: 48.05 Success-Driven Philosophy: Finding Clarity of Purpose and Achieving Arete Through Philosophical Examination by Joshua Goldman & Jason Shen despite the somewhat cheesy and overly long title looks to have some interesting thoughts. I think I may try out some of the proposed explorations and methods.

I’ve always had a soft spot for philosophy since reading Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy. For some reason, I find reading about philosophy very comforting. In my university days, philosophy classes were some of my favorites. I don’t know if I have the energy to pursue studying philosophy right now, but I would like to get back to it.