All good things

by Sonofhilary, 12 days ago

My account has officially expired. I think most everyone who actually checks this site knows about it already, but just in case you don't, you do now! I'm going to be starting up preparations for getting my Master's degree starting this year. This summer I'll be taking the GRE. In the Fall and on into the Spring I'll be retaking a few courses I didn't do well enough in my undergrad years. Then next fall it'll actually be on to working on my Master's.

It's definitely true that I could continue to play while working on my Master's. I definitely do a lot better about managing my time compared to Wrath and certainly TBC. However, I think you can tell that my current management style isn't sufficient to sustain the guild. Without a lot of things to do, people won't want to log on. And without people interested in logging in, there's obviously no way for us to continue to progress. So the only way to continue progressing is to sink more of my time into the game to keep people interested enough to keep showing up.

I'll still keep the guild website up and running, so we can always hook up here. I'll also be keeping our vent server going until we see how MoP shakes out at least. I'll probably go ahead and create a new IRL contact info thread in the Member forum. The old thread was from TBC and there are certainly lots of outdated info there. I'll have my facebook info, my RealID info, AIM, and anything else I think that's worth contacting me through. So if you want info like that, just hit the member forum and check that thread!

And for anyone reading this now or in the future, if you need access the the member forum, just post in the Member Forum Access thread in the Public Forum and I'll try and get you hooked up.

BattleTags

by Sonofhilary, 100 days ago

I don't think I ever wrote about this, and I don't know how many of you noticed it yourself, so I figured I'd do a quick write-up about it! The gist of it is that the Diablo 3 developers are class A gentlemen, and they put a significant amount of pressure on the Battle.net team to make them stop being doofusses about everything. In particular, they apparently didn't like the idea of restricting cross-game chat to RealID only, so they made them fix it. And with that, we have BattleTags.

BattleTags are basically RealID without giving your real name and email address to somebody. The system is currently only in place for the Diablo 3 beta, but I reckon it'll roll out to WoW in Mists of Pandaria (or 5.0, more specifically), and to SC2 with the Heart of the Swarm. However, you can set up your BattleTag right now if you want to. Simply go to your battle.net account management page. Right there on the summary page you should see a link to creating your BattleTag, it'll be located underneath Account Details.

Note that the BattleTag system works exactly the same way the SC2 account name system works, in that your name is not guaranteed to be unique. You can choose whatever name you like, and in addition to your name you'll also be given a 4 digit code. When you want somebody to be able to add you to their friend list, just give them your name and your 4 digit friend code. My BattleTag for instance, is Delthis#1586.

Here's the full FAQ on BattleTags, if you want all the details:

http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/battletagfaq#q-1

So yeah, everyone should thank the Diablo 3 team for this. They're the bastion of sanity in the midst of the oftentimes silly new era of Battle.net. You can also thank them when we're able to play Diablo 3 with friends across the world without buying multiple copies of the game for each region (knock on wood).

4.3 Raiding Plans

by Sonofhilary, 171 days ago

So 4.3 ought to be coming out tomorrow. I thought it'd be a good idea to go over the raiding schedule we'll be running with for the next couple of months.

First of all, I really want to get Freezepop's Legendary completed, so we will continue to raid the Firelands at least until that's completed. He's on the second to last part, wherein he has to collect 250 things off of boss corpses. He should have 14-21 from our clear last week, so that leaves another 229 at least. If we can kill more bosses on heroic we can cut down our total number of clears significantly. I intend for us to at least kill Shannox on Heroic each week should we have the composition for it. Hopefully we can push for another boss in the next weeks.

We tend to have a larger pool of people for our Sunday raids, so that will be the day we do Dragon Soul on. We'll keep hitting the Firelands on Mondays. Both will start at the usual time of 7:30.

Also, keep in mind that you are more than welcome to use the new Raid Finder tool to run Dragon Soul as much as you want. The lockouts for the Raid Finder tool are completely separate from the standard lockouts. So you won't be locked out of guild Dragon Soul raids if you use the LFR tool to run it as well.

Now then, here are the LearnToRaid.com video guides for the first three bosses in Dragon Soul. These are for the 25 man versions, but I expect the mechanics will all be the same, just with lower numbers. I reckon we can down them all on our first night if we all come prepared:

1. Morchok


2. Warlord Zon'ozz


3. Yor'sahj the Unsleeping

News worthy of a post

by Sonofhilary, 274 days ago

We've just gotten a pretty good idea of what all will be coming in 4.3, and it looks quite interesting. Read the summary and the full translated interview here:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2418-Patch-4.3-Deathwing-Transmogrifier-Void-Storage

I guess this means we'll have to start farming T2 and T6 gear now, huh? My Paladin would look absolutely fabulous in some farmed T5 though. The choices are practically endless!

I'm also quite pleased that they're going to release three new five mans. Not that I can be arsed to farm heroics anymore, but I may be more interested in doing the new ones a few times at least.

All in all it's looking to be a really tasty patch. It should be released about the same time as Star Wars: The Old Republic, so I think they're trying to put some extra muscle behind this one. They're probably also trying to reverse the subscription losses they've sustained this year, so that's probably a big motivator. I mean, finally developing what is hands down the most requested feature (The Appearance Tab/Transmogrifier) is definitely a good sign.

Also, in case you didn't notice, they backed down on making RealID dungeons a premium feature. It's completed its testing phase, and will remain free. Another good sign. I think Blizzard is really going to try to keep pumping more value into their product to keep from getting decimated by the competition that's coming.