So, last night I logged into WoW after a few days and I noticed that the Free Migration away from Grim Batol was open. Later on I found out that a few guilds had already moved away, including my old guild EX.
Now, GB has been a server that has given us quite a few headaches as of late. It's incredibly full and it's not unusual to get home at 7pm and only being able to login at 8:30pm because there's a 700++ queue up. Besides that, on big patch day, it's also very usual to get 15 minute wait periods while doing instances, because everyone is doing them. Also, Dalaran changed its name to Lagaran.
And lo and behold, Dalaran was actually enjoyable last night, after a lot of people moved away. It reminded me a bit of when I migrated to GB from Burning Blade, when we migrated in a hurry because the server became empty in 24 hours (very old technical problems with that server).
I'm wondering if I'll migrate or not... I'm quite considering changing my rogue to the Horde, but if I do so or simply migrate, that's one less character to help me with my saronite farm.
Meh, we'll see... only got until tomorrow to make up my mind though... I wonder if the GB Horde is also migrating a lot.
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
Monday, January 25, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Unholy vs Blood
No, I'm not going emo or goth or anything like that. I'm talking about WoW.
Last night, me and my Death Knight Class Leader decided to have a little run on the training dummies in Ebon Hold. We were testing how the current Blood and Unholy specs fair out against one another. One went Unholy, the other Blood and then we swapped.
I went Unholy first and, being Blood all of my DK "career", I had some trouble with the new rotation. But eventually I caught up with it and even managed to hit the 5.1k mark (keep in mind this is without any raid buffs and target debuffs) for a bit, but averaged out at 4.5k. When I tried Blood, I achieved higher numbers, but that can be explained by being more used to it. My CL confirmed my observations.
I always knew that Blood was too "bursty", as in the majority of the higher numbers come from the huge dps spike we get every 90 seconds from the DRW (spikes in the order of 20k DPS are not that uncommon when the planets align themselves), but what I failed to realize is that the sustained damage is a bit way too low. Unholy builds in 3.3 can now greatly compensate for this and outperform Blood easily. Unholy doesn't have much burst, but it does have considerable sustained damage.
So I decided to raid with my new Unholy build and my CL went Blood. I was actually expecting that Blood would scale better with raid buffs, but apparently Unholy also got the upper hand on this. I easily reached the 7-8k margin and this is in ToC25 gear. I can only imagine the sort of scalling I will get once I farm Shadow's Edge and 2pT10. It might be just me, but the set bonuses in T10 just feel... awesome, especially after the 4pT9 nerf.
If you care for combat logs, here's the link to WoL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/28j4suev4v0fdhr7/
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
Last night, me and my Death Knight Class Leader decided to have a little run on the training dummies in Ebon Hold. We were testing how the current Blood and Unholy specs fair out against one another. One went Unholy, the other Blood and then we swapped.
I went Unholy first and, being Blood all of my DK "career", I had some trouble with the new rotation. But eventually I caught up with it and even managed to hit the 5.1k mark (keep in mind this is without any raid buffs and target debuffs) for a bit, but averaged out at 4.5k. When I tried Blood, I achieved higher numbers, but that can be explained by being more used to it. My CL confirmed my observations.
I always knew that Blood was too "bursty", as in the majority of the higher numbers come from the huge dps spike we get every 90 seconds from the DRW (spikes in the order of 20k DPS are not that uncommon when the planets align themselves), but what I failed to realize is that the sustained damage is a bit way too low. Unholy builds in 3.3 can now greatly compensate for this and outperform Blood easily. Unholy doesn't have much burst, but it does have considerable sustained damage.
So I decided to raid with my new Unholy build and my CL went Blood. I was actually expecting that Blood would scale better with raid buffs, but apparently Unholy also got the upper hand on this. I easily reached the 7-8k margin and this is in ToC25 gear. I can only imagine the sort of scalling I will get once I farm Shadow's Edge and 2pT10. It might be just me, but the set bonuses in T10 just feel... awesome, especially after the 4pT9 nerf.
If you care for combat logs, here's the link to WoL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/28j4suev4v0fdhr7/
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
Monday, January 18, 2010
Stella, oh Stella!
Let's start this post with a little backstory:
In 2003, I went to spend Christmas with my family in the USA. While there, we made a trip to a local BIG STORE (removed the name out of my own paranoia) for some quick shopping. I took the opportunity to browse through the local tech gadgets, since they were cheaper than here in Portugal. As I was walking down an aisle, I felt this big object impacting against my right shoulder and sliding down my arm, making a big *thump* when it hit the ground.
Looking at it, I noticed it was this big cardboard box (about 4 times as big as an old 16' PC monitor) that fell down from one of the top shelves. I heard some hasty steps coming from the other aisle and was greeted by a *VERY* anxious employee. The poor creature was almost pale white, asking if everything was ok, if I had injured myself. Apparently, she had shifted the box too much and it caused it to fall down. Even after I told her that everything was fine, she kept on asking if I was ok. Afterwards, I just went to meet the rest of my family, finding the employee's behaviour strange, but not giving it much thought.
Fast forward to present day:
Someone linked me the URL for The Stella Awards (http://www.stellaawards.com), a site that serves as a compilation of lawsuits across the USA, some of them quite outrageous. And, reading the site, I was thrown back to that aisle on THAT BIG STORE. That's what the poor creature was so terrified about: that I would sue her and the store.
And while I wouldn't be one to make such a ridiculous lawsuit, after reading the awards (where a person actually managed to sue a store for not warning that there were wild squirrels in the vicinity), I get the distinct feeling that I could've walked away from that with a few hundred thousand (if not a few million) extra dollars in my wallet. It's almost like that box was my lottery ticket.
Now... this scares the living bejesus out of me! That one could've used such a dumb excuse to sue someone for large amounts of cash! But I've got to be honest: while this may be downright wrong, it's an imaginative way to make a quick buck! At least in the cases where people find small excuses for this. There is another set of lawsuits that just show how stupid people really are (like suing a hospital for causing you "undue" stress when you see doctors rushing to save your family member).
As I was writing this, I specified the name of the store where I was. Due to my paranoia and realizing that specifying it was a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory if someone related to the store found it, I decided to edit it out.
But truth be told, there is a small, "weasel" part of me that wonders if he could go back and actually sue the store for that outlandish concept that the box had scarred me mentally and that I was no longer able to walk down a supermarket aisle out of fear...
...and then there's the rational and decent part of me that wants to smack that other part of me with my baseball bat.
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
In 2003, I went to spend Christmas with my family in the USA. While there, we made a trip to a local BIG STORE (removed the name out of my own paranoia) for some quick shopping. I took the opportunity to browse through the local tech gadgets, since they were cheaper than here in Portugal. As I was walking down an aisle, I felt this big object impacting against my right shoulder and sliding down my arm, making a big *thump* when it hit the ground.
Looking at it, I noticed it was this big cardboard box (about 4 times as big as an old 16' PC monitor) that fell down from one of the top shelves. I heard some hasty steps coming from the other aisle and was greeted by a *VERY* anxious employee. The poor creature was almost pale white, asking if everything was ok, if I had injured myself. Apparently, she had shifted the box too much and it caused it to fall down. Even after I told her that everything was fine, she kept on asking if I was ok. Afterwards, I just went to meet the rest of my family, finding the employee's behaviour strange, but not giving it much thought.
Fast forward to present day:
Someone linked me the URL for The Stella Awards (http://www.stellaawards.com), a site that serves as a compilation of lawsuits across the USA, some of them quite outrageous. And, reading the site, I was thrown back to that aisle on THAT BIG STORE. That's what the poor creature was so terrified about: that I would sue her and the store.
And while I wouldn't be one to make such a ridiculous lawsuit, after reading the awards (where a person actually managed to sue a store for not warning that there were wild squirrels in the vicinity), I get the distinct feeling that I could've walked away from that with a few hundred thousand (if not a few million) extra dollars in my wallet. It's almost like that box was my lottery ticket.
Now... this scares the living bejesus out of me! That one could've used such a dumb excuse to sue someone for large amounts of cash! But I've got to be honest: while this may be downright wrong, it's an imaginative way to make a quick buck! At least in the cases where people find small excuses for this. There is another set of lawsuits that just show how stupid people really are (like suing a hospital for causing you "undue" stress when you see doctors rushing to save your family member).
As I was writing this, I specified the name of the store where I was. Due to my paranoia and realizing that specifying it was a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory if someone related to the store found it, I decided to edit it out.
But truth be told, there is a small, "weasel" part of me that wonders if he could go back and actually sue the store for that outlandish concept that the box had scarred me mentally and that I was no longer able to walk down a supermarket aisle out of fear...
...and then there's the rational and decent part of me that wants to smack that other part of me with my baseball bat.
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
WoW related news
So, this weekend I decided to geek out completely and just chill out. Had plans to actually go outside, but the nasty weather quickly changed my mind.
Played a little bit of everything, with special focus on WoW. I'm currently farming the primordial saronites to craft my Shadow's Edge and, at the same time, trying to equip my rogue for a decent 10-man setup. The two goals are a bit counter-productive though, since every 20 emblems I use on my rogue means that I lose 200g on my run for the saronites (selling gems, that is)... but heck, WoW *really* gets incredibly annoying and boring once you simply use whatever play time to generate income.
Once I get home I should have enough gold from the AH to buy another saronite and that makes it 4. Got enough emblems on the DK to buy another 6, 2 on the rogue, 1 on the mage and almost 1 on the warrior... that brings the total up to 14... I'm over halfway there!! :D
I know the changes to craft Shadowmourne are very slim, but hey... it's not like WoW has any more worthwhile goals nowadays.
In IRL terms, my personal projects are slowly... as in, snail slowly, forming and taking shape. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but if these things come to light, it will be worth it.
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
Played a little bit of everything, with special focus on WoW. I'm currently farming the primordial saronites to craft my Shadow's Edge and, at the same time, trying to equip my rogue for a decent 10-man setup. The two goals are a bit counter-productive though, since every 20 emblems I use on my rogue means that I lose 200g on my run for the saronites (selling gems, that is)... but heck, WoW *really* gets incredibly annoying and boring once you simply use whatever play time to generate income.
Once I get home I should have enough gold from the AH to buy another saronite and that makes it 4. Got enough emblems on the DK to buy another 6, 2 on the rogue, 1 on the mage and almost 1 on the warrior... that brings the total up to 14... I'm over halfway there!! :D
I know the changes to craft Shadowmourne are very slim, but hey... it's not like WoW has any more worthwhile goals nowadays.
In IRL terms, my personal projects are slowly... as in, snail slowly, forming and taking shape. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but if these things come to light, it will be worth it.
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
Friday, January 08, 2010
Defacing
So for everyone that didn't catch it, it was reported yesterday that the European Union website had been "hacked" (more along the lines of defacing, not exactly hacking) and that the picture of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Zapatero had been changed to Rowan Atkinson's face.
In related news, the website of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also hit, but instead of different images, the "hackers" left a few messages, as told by Mahmoud, making references to Michael Jackson, an incident during Iranian elections last year and also Ayatollah.
Now, this sort of thing might sound funny... and well, in Zapatero's case, it does make you giggle a bit. CNN is reporting it as a case where hackers can install backdoor programs into your computers. I think differently. The issue I have with this is the reasoning behind this sort of action. I compare this to people defacing election candidate's pictures with mustaches and fake beards.
The underlying emotion is that people don't like that person or disagree with something they've done or said. And, in today's political world, one can't really blame anyone for being a bit ticked off. Politicians are corrupt, financial interests take priority over basic rights, such as healthcare or education and "Law&Order" is almost a myth.
But just as important as having solid reasoning behind being angry at something is the manner in which you express yourself. What good is an opinion if you can't express it in what is widely regarded as a civilized fashion?
Now, I'm not a prime example of "coolness". There have been times where I let myself get emotional in debates and I lose track of objectivity, falling into a spiral of mutual insulting that leads nowhere other than me losing a valid argument over a dumb and emotional move on my behalf.
But is the realization that we can fall down like this, reason to ignore everything and go overall ballistic... or is it reason to continue to try and make a civilized argument? There are so many actions one can take in these regards, that letting yourself drop down to a level where you can only deface a site to make your point across... I don't know, it just sounds dumb as hell.
I share the opinion that there are two kinds of actions: the immediate, not thought-through action that leads to an emotional response in the moment, but lacks momentum to carry it's weight forward... and the more organized action, that might not have an impact at the moment due to several reasons (red tape, for example), but is so strong in itself that it carries a lot of momentum, making certain people take notice of it and your efforts, and that can create a snowball effect, that leads to actual change.
I vote for the second kind of action.
I'll see you around! ;)
Kiauze
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