And then s**t got real!

Nuff said. I'll let you know when I receive my invite.

About Mists of Pandaria

If you've been anywhere near me over the past two days, you would have heard me talking about the big press conference Blizzard held, regarding the new World of Warcraft expansion.
Why?
Because this is the biggest information dump we've had since last years Blizzcon! Seriously, there's probably five or six, maybe ten pages of raw information to sort through when you get it all!
So in the interest of convenience, I've compiled some of the more awesome things together in to a list, with my thoughts on why they're here and how they'll change the game, which I like to call...

Lists of Pandaria.

About my new Hunter.

I've never played a Hunter before, not seriously at least.
Before I moved to Fundrak, I had a level 15 Orc Hunter on Firetree, who I have deleted because "eh".
Now, I'm trying again. I've got a level 17 Worgen Hunter, and I'm slightly bored of the Mastiff, because a dog with a dog is just dog, dog.
But not just any pet will do, oh no.
It's got to be awesome. It has to be one of the most amazing pets ever. In fact, I even got a little help from some friends of mine to give me a few tips on decision making.

And Then I Had No Addons

After what I would describe as a clusterfuck of a patch last week, whether Blizzards fault or my own I'm honestly not sure which, I was unable to play WoW for a week or so.
During this week, I played Minecraft, played the TCG with Annine and got back in to miniature wargaming.

Once I got back on to WoW (aka the past 24 hours) I completely forgot about updating Addons before tanking an HoT dungeon.
Now, not that these things are hard, but when you don't have any addons telling you anything, I noticed it gets a bit trickier.

About accidental death.

Every guild has one. That one guy, no matter how talented a player he is, no matter what his gear is like, you can count on him to die nine times out of ten, or your money back.

In our guild, that guy is Grimknight, who wishes to remain nameless.
Molten Core? He died there while 85.
Regular Cataclysm dungeons at a 380+ ilvl? Check.
Managing to fall off his mount and die in Stormwind while I'm writing this article? Oh yeah.

But do we bag him out for it? Of course we do, we wouldn't be a proper guild if we didn't.
Do we get shitty about it? Nah.
Do we stop him raiding with us because of it? Sweet Celestia no!
Do we try and help him? Sometimes, when it wouldn't be funnier just to watch him die.

But the best part about it?
He gets in on the joke, he knows that sometimes, bad things are gonna happen in a raid, and there's nothing you can do about it.

So I thought I'd take some time to talk about how you can improve your survivability, no matter what sort of hairy situations you get yourself in to.

And then Blizzard screwed something up.

I've had my launcher open, "optimizing" my files since 10am.
It's now 8pm, and the bar has not moved an inch. Not even a millimeter of movement.
Nothing.
Nada.
Zip.

So to wile away the hours, I'm playing Minecraft. Enjoy my treehouse, still WIP.

**EDIT**



Apparently whining on the internet works, because it's started moving. It's moving slowly, but it's moving...

And it kind of got me thinking...

What sort of mentality separates the raiders from the non-raiders? I don't mean just the whole "x weapon + y talent = z increase in DPS, I worked this out on the beta using this advanced formula you've probably never heard of" (eltists are hipsters in my mind, they were farming heroic Deathwing before it was cool).

I mean what drives them to do it. The rewards from it aren't tangible, they can't be taken out from the game and put on your resume (25m raid leader should so get me a preference above other candidates. It's a tough thing to get 25 people doing what you want them to do), your title can't be put on your drivers license and your rare mount driven down the street.
Your significant other or your family wont care that you just managed to beat that other shaman's dps even though he was superior in gear to you.
Yet still, people spend hours each week grinding out at that next boss, waiting for that next drop.
But why?

My reason would be that, while most of my friends in the Real World (terrible graphics, buggy game-play and botters galore, I wouldn't recommend it) don't care too much about my in-game achievements, the ones I play with do.
I feel their envy when I stride around on my Raven Lord, even if it is just all in my head.
Humans are creatures that enjoy schadenfreude. That's the gaining of happiness from the misery of others, for those of you playing at home. Not only do we enjoy it, but hell, we created a word that describes it.

It could just be simple psychology, the way people become addicted to gambling and slot machines. Humans try to find order and patterns in most everything we do, whether or not there is order there. We know there is no order on a roulette table, that the little ball will land on whichever part of the wheel it damn well pleases. But it's landed on black the last four times, surely it can't land on black again, can it? Better put my money on red and - ah shit. Black.
The roulette ball has no memory of which color or number it just landed on, and it has no preference to which one it lands on next.
Just as the loot tables in a raid or dungeon.
Neither is there a memory of what dropped last week, there is no guarantee it wont have the exact same table this week.

This could be the reason people go in to these raids, week after week, getting that next big upgrade, those next +10 points or that next shiny mount. It's the fact you don't know it's going to happen. It could, but that doesn't mean it will.

Maybe I'm getting to analytical of it...