Today, my awesome old man priest Philionel stomped on Imperator Mar’gok’s dumb ogre face. >:D Not only is it my first end boss kill (on a difficulty harder than LFR) of this expansion, but my first end boss kill in current content, ever, as a healer. (And as Alliance, too!)
Considering how all my previous raid full clears was as DPS and as a Horde character, yeah, this is a big freaking deal. :D Though, as you can see, Kopii Yoshi is clearly quite capable of pewpewing her way to Mar’gok’s doorstep, it’s just that the way her guild’s raid scheduling and team assignments worked out is that she didn’t get to participate in their first Mar’gok kill. Oh well. I imagine she’ll stomp on his face eventually.
But, yes. First end boss kill of WoD, first one EVER as a healer and as Alliance. It’s hard to imagine I used to be such a giant chicken about raid healing. :P
“But Yoshi, you’re in that tiny-ass Alliance guild with your big brother, did you REALLY PuG raid that stuff? Aren’t PuG raid leaders predominantly impatient jerks?” Only if you count OpenRaid as PuG. Which… I kinda don’t anymore. My Alliance characters raid with EOTT (Elder of the Thing), which is supposed to be a portmanteau/cross-server coalition of two guilds (Elderwind and Fellowship of the Thing) but in practice is actually a three-way alliance between those two and and a third guild Havoc, plus whatever scragglers and free agents we pick up along the way (like me :P). As soon as my brother gets his machine back up (or gets a new one), I hope to introduce him to EOTT as well, since it’d definitely scratch his itch to get back into raiding.
I haven’t even texted him yet, to gloat. I could so easily do that. He probably wouldn’t believe me, either, or say I got carried (which I most definitely did not) since he’s used to me being a dumb, unskilled pocket healer during transmog runs. Once he sees that “1 Imperator Mar’gok kills (Normal Highmaul)” notation in my record (and that Phil’s caught up to Yoshi‘s ilvl) he’ll rocket to the moon. Hah! I think I’ll just keep quiet until he shows up and be all “oh, I already stomped on Mar’gok’s face, what” and see what happens. XD
In other news, Yoshi Day Episode 31 is incoming. HOPEFULLY the parental management doesn’t ruin it like they did last year’s with their drama, because I would really like to enjoy my birthday this time. I don’t want to become one of those cranky people who hates their birthdays because of stupid stuff. Birthdays are about leveling up in real life and getting awesome food and CAKE. Who doesn’t like cake?! (well, aside from those with diabetes)
When I raid (well, more like LFR) that day, I’m totally going to plop cakes alongside the feasts. ;D
I’m also going to buy a level 90 boost for my recently-dusted-off Tauren priest because circumstances have suggested that we are going to need additional raid healers in my Horde guild and FAST, and it coincides well with my having facepunched my Healer Performance Anxiety.
In Patch 6.1, Blizzard is adding the ability to tweet from inside World of Warcraft. While people have been tweeting about their WoW experience well before this, the integration of Twitter into the game will streamline the process considerably, and will be useful to players with low-end machines, for whom alt-tabbing to tweet is not practical.
Needless to say, this upcoming addition is not without controversy. Now, it’s not possible to please everyone, and there will always be some people who are vehemently against any kind of social network intermingling with their MMOs (strange considering that MMOs themselves are a form of social media, but eh). While I agree that Patch 6.1 is otherwise very light on content (which I will address later on), the amount of negativity rooted in willful, petulant ignorance is ASTOUNDING. That YouTube video up there? Don’t read the comments. Even if you agree with the backlash, the amount of over-the-top anger is enough to make your brain hurt. I say this as someone who regularly goes diving into comments on controversial things.
(disclaimer going forward: I am painter, not a game developer, programmer or even a “social media guru.” What I know about this subject is a result of years of observation and a hell of a lot of tech podcasts.)
The most common complaint is that Twitter integration is somehow “taking away” from Actual Content (quests, dungeon and raid development), which does not make sense because anyone who knows Twitter knows that it has an API that is very easy to implement. So easy, in fact, that in all likelihood it took probably less than a couple days to drop the API code in as well as a little more user interface work to pretty it up. This was most likely handled by someone on the Battle.net/User Interface branch rather than someone who handles graphics, class balancing, dungeon/raid development, or quest design. It is not practical to assign someone who deals with graphics to work on class balancing, you would be better served putting a monkey on a keyboard.
The tinfoil hat argument is that Twitter is sponsoring said integration, which is also nonsensical: Twitter does not pay developers to implement their service (that’s what the publicly-available API is for) and is actually more likely to buy out third-party developers to absorb their engineers and code. See: the multitudes of third-party Twitter clients over the years that have been acquired by Twitter itself (e.g. Tweety).
There is the claim that Twitter is being forced on the player. This is also not true. You have to opt in through the game settings and link a Twitter account (just like everything else that allows you to link a Twitter account) in order for it to work. Though, I imagine that the mere presence of an “enable Twitter” setting to some is enough to count as “you’re forcing me to tweet.” This leads into the perception that “nobody asked for Twitter integration.” Maybe not on the forums (WoW or fan-run), but… you know, there are other avenues for collecting feedback, right? Email, Facebook and, yes, the many Twitter accounts operated by Blizzard employees. Maybe the demand was not so much through loud forum posts and more of a subtle “gosh, I wish I could tweet from inside the game, it would be so nice” sentiment gleaned from tweets and other things. Yeah. “Nobody asked for Twitter integration, this was forced on us.” Sure. Whatever you say.
SO much Picard Double Facepalm. See what I mean about “negativity rooted in willful ignorance?”
The best part is when there are some detractors petty enough to actually call for some of these programmers to lose their jobs over Twitter integration. Really? If that describes you, I hope you’re ready to explain to their families that they’re down one– or their only– source of income and may suffer great financial hardship because they implemented a feature you don’t like, and that this makes you realize how terrible this makes you look, then you will probably need to get unsecured loans uk bad credit to get away with the situation. To learn more about loans and finances, visit https://www.paydaychampion.com/payday-loans-online-no-credit-check/ for more details. You’re possibly, no, definitely worse than those who have openly declared their intent to register Twitter accounts for the express purpose of trolling and harassing Blizzard employees over Twitter integration.
Yes, Patch 6.1 does not have a whole lot to offer in terms of content. That part I will not disagree with people about. That said, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some demand in the past for a major patch that is light on content in exchange for more class balancing, bug fixes, graphics tweaks and QoL (quality of life) updates… all of which describe Patch 6.1 very well, actually. And yet, now that we are given such a patch, it’s being dismissed as possibly the “Worst X.1 Patch EVER.” I guess all this does is reiterate that people really don’t know what they want (even when asked what they would do instead, they respond in very broad generalities, many of which are not really possible to do in the timeframe it takes to put out a major patch) and will complain irrationally about EVERYTHING.
As for me, I most definitely welcome the addition of Twitter. I tweet a lot about things that go in in game, and the ability to attach and crop screencaps is especially nice because it saves me from having to fish up a screencap (it’s annoying in both Windows and OS X) and crop it in an outside program and such.
As for that SELFIE camera toy, maybe I’ll pass on that. I will agree that the whole “duckface” part of it is a bit too much. …well, for Yoshi from Super Smash Flash 2 game, anyway. Somehow I can see Phil, Hynderia and Leslie using the camera, though. Man, ESPECIALLY Leslie– silly Bronze Dragon is SILLY.
In addition to shoving Hynderia off the level 100 cliff, I also did the same to my hunter Reimarael (as you could guess, she is the WoW incarnation of the Rei Dragonia character, though unlike other instances, Rei is not Hikaru’s mother here because Hikaru does not exist, but instead Rei and Dinah are twin sisters. Mind boggling!). It didn’t take long because Rei was already around lvl 96, so it was just a couple days worth of questing. It also helped that because I was sitting on a giant pile of resources, I could justify buying the EXP booster potions to speed the process along even moreso. I ended up taking Lone Wolf as her lvl 100 talent, mostly out of paranoia about pet aggro during dungeons and raids. Also it allows me to choose which buff I want, rather than what the pet comes with.
This leaves Leslie and Dinah to bring up to level cap. Leslie is already at 94, so again, it won’t take long (Gorgrond, Talador, just enough of Spires of Arak to get Admiral Taylor– because, dammit, Jamieson Price! one of the Kings of Ham and Cheese Sandwiches alongside Cam Clarke!– and then Nagrand). Dinah, however… could be a bit of a problem because she’s barely touched Pandaria and I really don’t want to slog through that again. Uuuugh. I may just Pet Battle my way out of there, if only to fend off temptation to buy the lvl 90 boost.
As for Kopii Yoshi, she’s cleared 6 out of 7 of the Highmaul bosses on Normal. We’re devoting Saturday’s raid session to stomping on Imperator Mar’gok’s dumb ogre face. I don’t know if there’s an achievement for clearing Highmaul Normal, but if there is it would be very, VERY helpful for “normal” Yoshi, who is stuck having to PUG raid because my Alliance guild is, uh… just me and my brother at this point, and I don’t have friends who main Alliance and could therefore let us tag along on guild runs. And, well, if you’ve used Group Finder, people are super demanding even for Normal, I’ve even seen some listings that demand Ahead of the Curve just to run Normal mode! What the hell? But, yeah, if I could have some kind of proof I’ve done all of Highmaul Normal, even if it was on my Horde counterpart, it might let me placate some of those fussy PUG raid leaders enough to get me in. I won’t be like my brother and wallow in despair at not being able to raid for lack of people!
ahem
Aside from throwing Rei into LFR for gear, I need to send her transmog hunting. Mainly for bows, because pretty much the rest of her look is done. Much like with Phil, it looks like my search will take me into old Outland raids. Being a hunter, I don’t think Rei will have any trouble!
(seriously, I have other things to talk about, I just need to organize them better. Soon!)
So, uh… yeah. That kinda happened! Hello 2015, when did YOU happen?
Needless to say, I’ve been playing lots and lots of WoW, WAY more than since my last post. As of this writing, I have 4 lvl 100 characters: Yoshi, Phil, Kopii Yoshi and, as of a couple days ago, Hynderia.
Hynderia is a character from my ginormous OC pile I don’t bring out very often. Well, for one thing, she didn’t really exist before I started playing WoW. I came up with her as a replacement for Hikaru, my primary OC who normally takes on the melee DPS/tank role in MMOs (in addition to, you know, being the main character of the original stories she’s in)– however, because of the lore in WoW and gameplay limitations, it would have been impossible to roll Hikaru and retain her race and special abilities in any satisfactory capacity. WoW DOES have Black Dragons, and while they are (like just about every other fictional depiction) depicted as being evil, I could have worked around that. But there would have been no way to retain Hikaru’s hyper-regeneration, there is no such player-usable effect on a melee DPS character.
12/17. Aka “PHIL DAY,” doods, because old man is awesome no matter the universe he appears in. Also I’ve this thing about not letting father’s birthday pass by unnoticed and therefore risk fading into oblivion. >_>;;;
Where last year the Phil Day pic was in Ragnarok TWILIGHT and had old man Phil Paring and some Prinnies, this time it’s the WoW incarnation of Phil (on the right with DELICIOUS CAKE) going pub-raiding with his space goat BFF Akaycia. (Robert’s shammy. And as badass as his Armory entry makes him look, he really is that silly ingame. :P)
I got a small second wind earlier after nibbling on PBJs, so I went and did the above wireframe. (And if you’re wondering… I’m not too happy with the snowball fight Snowscheme right now, I’ll figure something out.) I’ll otherwise make no excuses– I’ve totally been eyes-deep in Cataclysm to do much drawing. >_>; I’ll try not to lurk in bed so much and ink this before logging in tonight, if only to see my brother WTF at it. XD
Also, I need to set up cookie bombs and such. Slow Yoshi is slooooow. :P
Why I Like Twitter Integration in World of Warcraft (or, Hyperbole is for Winners)
Wednesday, February 11th, 2015In Patch 6.1, Blizzard is adding the ability to tweet from inside World of Warcraft. While people have been tweeting about their WoW experience well before this, the integration of Twitter into the game will streamline the process considerably, and will be useful to players with low-end machines, for whom alt-tabbing to tweet is not practical.
Needless to say, this upcoming addition is not without controversy. Now, it’s not possible to please everyone, and there will always be some people who are vehemently against any kind of social network intermingling with their MMOs (strange considering that MMOs themselves are a form of social media, but eh). While I agree that Patch 6.1 is otherwise very light on content (which I will address later on), the amount of negativity rooted in willful, petulant ignorance is ASTOUNDING. That YouTube video up there? Don’t read the comments. Even if you agree with the backlash, the amount of over-the-top anger is enough to make your brain hurt. I say this as someone who regularly goes diving into comments on controversial things.
(disclaimer going forward: I am painter, not a game developer, programmer or even a “social media guru.” What I know about this subject is a result of years of observation and a hell of a lot of tech podcasts.)
The most common complaint is that Twitter integration is somehow “taking away” from Actual Content (quests, dungeon and raid development), which does not make sense because anyone who knows Twitter knows that it has an API that is very easy to implement. So easy, in fact, that in all likelihood it took probably less than a couple days to drop the API code in as well as a little more user interface work to pretty it up. This was most likely handled by someone on the Battle.net/User Interface branch rather than someone who handles graphics, class balancing, dungeon/raid development, or quest design. It is not practical to assign someone who deals with graphics to work on class balancing, you would be better served putting a monkey on a keyboard.
The tinfoil hat argument is that Twitter is sponsoring said integration, which is also nonsensical: Twitter does not pay developers to implement their service (that’s what the publicly-available API is for) and is actually more likely to buy out third-party developers to absorb their engineers and code. See: the multitudes of third-party Twitter clients over the years that have been acquired by Twitter itself (e.g. Tweety).
There is the claim that Twitter is being forced on the player. This is also not true. You have to opt in through the game settings and link a Twitter account (just like everything else that allows you to link a Twitter account) in order for it to work. Though, I imagine that the mere presence of an “enable Twitter” setting to some is enough to count as “you’re forcing me to tweet.” This leads into the perception that “nobody asked for Twitter integration.” Maybe not on the forums (WoW or fan-run), but… you know, there are other avenues for collecting feedback, right? Email, Facebook and, yes, the many Twitter accounts operated by Blizzard employees. Maybe the demand was not so much through loud forum posts and more of a subtle “gosh, I wish I could tweet from inside the game, it would be so nice” sentiment gleaned from tweets and other things. Yeah. “Nobody asked for Twitter integration, this was forced on us.” Sure. Whatever you say.
SO much Picard Double Facepalm. See what I mean about “negativity rooted in willful ignorance?”
The best part is when there are some detractors petty enough to actually call for some of these programmers to lose their jobs over Twitter integration. Really? If that describes you, I hope you’re ready to explain to their families that they’re down one– or their only– source of income and may suffer great financial hardship because they implemented a feature you don’t like, and that this makes you realize how terrible this makes you look, then you will probably need to get unsecured loans uk bad credit to get away with the situation. To learn more about loans and finances, visit https://www.paydaychampion.com/payday-loans-online-no-credit-check/ for more details. You’re possibly, no, definitely worse than those who have openly declared their intent to register Twitter accounts for the express purpose of trolling and harassing Blizzard employees over Twitter integration.
Yes, Patch 6.1 does not have a whole lot to offer in terms of content. That part I will not disagree with people about. That said, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some demand in the past for a major patch that is light on content in exchange for more class balancing, bug fixes, graphics tweaks and QoL (quality of life) updates… all of which describe Patch 6.1 very well, actually. And yet, now that we are given such a patch, it’s being dismissed as possibly the “Worst X.1 Patch EVER.” I guess all this does is reiterate that people really don’t know what they want (even when asked what they would do instead, they respond in very broad generalities, many of which are not really possible to do in the timeframe it takes to put out a major patch) and will complain irrationally about EVERYTHING.
As for me, I most definitely welcome the addition of Twitter. I tweet a lot about things that go in in game, and the ability to attach and crop screencaps is especially nice because it saves me from having to fish up a screencap (it’s annoying in both Windows and OS X) and crop it in an outside program and such.
As for that SELFIE camera toy, maybe I’ll pass on that. I will agree that the whole “duckface” part of it is a bit too much. …well, for Yoshi from Super Smash Flash 2 game, anyway. Somehow I can see Phil, Hynderia and Leslie using the camera, though. Man, ESPECIALLY Leslie– silly Bronze Dragon is SILLY.
In closing… dear players opposed to Twitter Integration: it’s okay to not like things. Please don’t be hyperbolic jerks about it. (that video REALLY needs to be required viewing for posting on forums or anything else.)
Tags:don't read the youtube comments, people are whiny, twitter, video, warcraft
Posted in journal | Comments Closed