Do you know where your authenticator is?

What’s small, black, and lost somewhere in the abyss?

My authenticator, that’s what! When I took time off from WOW I gingerly put it someplace safe where it wouldn’t be lost. Then I moved.

What happens when you put something away so it won’t be lost? It gets lost.

Shoot!

PSA: On the Business End of a Battle Res

Priestly service announcement.

If you are on the receiving end of a battle res, can you do all of us healers a favor?

Give us a 2 second warning when you take it

Especially true if it’s on an encounter like Ultraxtion where the damage is just pulsing and non-stop. Give us a buffer to target you and spam spells on you so that when you do take the res, one of our spells will stick and bring you out of non-lethal range. It lets the Discipline Priests shield you, it lets the Paladins Holy Shock you, it allows Druids and Shamans to Nature’s Swiftness + some heal you, and Holy Priests can Surge of Light proc + Flash Heal you.

Any other healers irritated by this? In an age where we have a finite number of Rebirths and stuff available, we need to make sure we don’t waste that stuff unnecessarily.

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”
- Wayne Gretzky

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When I hide from Heroics

Over the past few weeks I’ve been running heroics on my paladin (to get raid ready and build offsets) and on my priest (cloth and chaos orbs), and I’ve discovered there seems to be a fluxuating gear and skill level in the dungeon finder.

The best days to run heroics are early in the week: Tues, Wed, Thur.
The worst days tend to be: Fri, Sat, Sun.

My hypothesis is simply that players who want to progress their character will tear through heroics right when they roll over instead of procrastinating. They finish within the first two days, and having invested time into their characters probably don’t need the lower level currency at all.

This leaves players who still need the lower end currency to play together. This would’t be terrible except for folks tend to not be mindful of their gear disparity. They don’t play smarter to compensate for their lower stats. Tanks pull more than they can handle, run off without allowing the healer to drink, folks who could provide replenishment not bothering to change specs to provide it.

I’ve found a higher rate of:
Tanks who quit after a boss doesn’t drop what they want
People who ragequit after a single wipe.
DPS so abysmally low that I could do better DPS in greens. It’s like folks don’t bother to learn anything about which buttons to press.

When I log on during the weekends, I ponder running a heroic, then decide that I’d rather do anything but heroics. I’d fish, level archaeology, level an alt, level a profession, join a pug or do a retro run on a whim, or farm mindlessly instead of heroics.

Hacking worries

I know normally I talk about Lotro on Wednesday but today I have something else on my mind. So the other night I was feeling like playing some Starcraft 2, felt like building marines and blowing stuff up with nukes and the game delivered happily. Yesterday, I was up for some more destruction and hoped in for a quick game.

I then noticed something weird… all my Real Id friends are gone from my friends list… but I don’t pay it much mind. After all, there was a patch recently and it could just be bugged or connection issue with battle net. Nothing to lose sleep over.

Then this morning, Wolfsong contacts me and tells me he noticed my old wow character is now stark naked. Damn…. I’ve been hacked!

Or was I?

See, I went to my Battlenet account and noticed a few weird things. For starters, my WoW account wasn’t reactivated at all… I know from a few friends who got old accounts hacked that said hackers need to reactivate the account to steal it blind. Second weird clue, only my main character is naked. All my other characters are intact… Normally when this happens the hackers empty all the characters…. not just one… So.. how could I have been hacked without even reactivating my account.

To be honest, if it was only WoW I wouldn’t mind so much… sure it’s disturbing to know that you lost all your hard-earned gear even on an inactive account but the real problem for me here is that my Starcraft 2 account is linked there too and I don’t want to lose that one.

So, the investigation is ongoing, I have started the automated recovery process and changed password, put back the authenticator, scan my pc… etc… and I’m praying that it’s only a weird bug thing. Hopefully that’s all it was… a very weird bug

Edit: It was definitively hax. All my Azuremyst chars were hacked and I’m pretty sure I have a key logger on my PC… damnit. Luckily I have auhtenticator for Swtor and I check most of remember account cases so they dont have the combo of account + password but I apparently made a mistake with Sc2 I believe.. sigh… here goes a round of redoing all my passwords

Azeroth’s Next Top Leather and Lace!

So the results are in!!

Results

My Druid won on alliance side

I did try to comment on the thread, however for some reason it just keeps looping back to the main section and doesn’t submit.

But I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who voted and was part of it.

It is so much fun to see the creative things people can put together!!

Mataoka needs to create little blog buttons for people that win !  ehehhe

It’s a new world for the Forsaken

I’ve started a new Horde character on some pretty much random realm – this time an undead Mage, Celreth. I was never able to level a mage high enough, and I always disliked the old Forsaken questlines, especially the ones in Tarren Mill – I remember them as being full of unnecessary violence, poisoning people for no gain and other annoying stuff. I tried to level there a few times before, but always ended up disgusted and flying back to Kalimdor.

With the new questlines we got in Cataclysm the old world got revamped and I wanted to see if anything changed. I already saw the damage to Southshore and Hillsbrad on my warrior, but was there any story behind it?

Tirisfal Glades is mostly unchanged for the later part of the zone (at least if you disregard the plague spreaders in every city), but the first few levels are quite enjoyable. Being raised as a new Forsaken by one of the Val’kyr was definitely a surprise.

But even bigger surprises awaited me in Silverpine forest – seeing the place full of Forsaken fortifications and constant fighting with the worgen, witnessing the conversation between Sylvanas and Garrosh, assaulting Gilneas and finally learning who are the new inhabitants of Shadowfang Keep and why would we want to kill them. I don’t want to spoil too many things (thought it probably wouldn’t be a spoiler for too many people anyway), but as a Forsaken my mage has a very good reason to dispose of the three undeads.

And finally, Hillsbrad. After trying out how it is to be a cog in the Forsaken war machine and handing down few quests to idiots, I followed to the places I’ve just sent them. The first area – the Azurelode Mine – was quite boring, killing murlocs and capturing humans, but after going to the second quest hub it suddenly changed a bit – and for the weird. I landed in Hillsbrad in the middle of a quite strange conflict between a Forsaken Master Apothecary and another undead mad sciencist of sorts. It was even more weird that after cleaning one place of awful experiments and destruction of human life I was sent to Soutshore, which was also bombed with the plague – to continue experiments on the plague used by the Forsaken. Maybe the Apothecaries are just afraid that one mad scientist would become the next Putress.

While doing stuff in Southshore I’ve again encountered the last of the “idiots” I’ve gave out quests to at the start of the zone. I was expecting it at this point, seeing that I had to rescue the other two as well, but after finishing the first “idiot” quest I totally didn’t expect the quest chain that followed. The orc introduced as an idiot turned out to be more of a hero than my mage was. Again, not going to spoil it – just go and start Welcome to the Machine and continue the questline. You won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and by the way – it’s totally untrue that there are no reasons to group anymore. Near the yeti cave I’ve encountered a huge elite yeti with more than 5 times my health that’s an objective of a 3-man group quest. Of course I’ve tried soloing it, but that didn’t go very well – my frost nova was on a too long cooldown to reliably CC the yeti, and after I’ve finally got knocked back into some trees I died very quickly to its melee hits.

None of the quests or mobs were terribly hard, but I’m outleveling the zone a bit since I did a few dungeons earlier. I still managed to die a few times though if I wasn’t careful with pulling mobs.

Overall – as surprising and unexpected it is – for the first time I’m enjoying taking my new Forsaken mageling through her storylines. I think I’m gonna make more alts soon to see the rest of the new stuff. But for now, I’ll stick to this one and I hope to see more new stuff on the way. Hopefully it will be as enjoyable as the Kingslayer Orkus’ story.

Things in Mists to get Excited For

By admin, March 20, 2012 0 WoW Shaman

Look at all the non-raid stuff that we can do at max level! I’m so excited for the expansion!

World of Farmcraft – Sweet! I can build my own farm! And it allows me to grow my own herbs and herb while I farm. Now I can really put that farming RP set to use.

Pet battles – Something to do in between wipes or pulls that isn’t Bejeweled. Looks like pets will be unified across all your characters, too (As in account bound). Gotta catch em’ all!

World bosses – We only get two. Not bad.

Scenarios – The more I hear about scenarios, the more I like them. Looks like they’ll fit sizes anywhere from 5 players, to 10, and to 25. It’ll offer some nice alternatives from raiding or if your group happens to be done early that week. It’s possible to score Valor Points out of them as well. Group quests that aren’t technically group quests, basically.

Challenges – Seems like these’ll be super hard to take on. Bronze seems like something achievable for everyone but Silver and Gold will be reserved for the best of the best. Reminds me of the old Star Wars: Rogue Squadron achievements on my N64.

Spirits of beer – The ones that are haunting the Stormstout Brewery? They’re called Alementals. Best name ever.

The new LFR loot rules – So if my understanding of this is correct, you’re not hitting the need roll on each item individually anymore. Rather, you hit the need roll once for just that boss. If you win the roll, the system checks to see if there’s an item for you (for me, like a caster staff). If there isn’t an item for you, tough luck. The other players in your group can no longer affect your roll. You’re also not going to get an item every time.

Female pandas – I… uh, don’t know what words I can use appropriately to describe the pleasure I get from looking at them.

Megadamage – Looks like they’re going with the 40k damage approach on the screen instead of saying 40000.

AoE looting – It’s about time.

But oi! It looks like we’re really close to beta. Probably within the next 2-3 months. There is a remarkable amount of polish and completion here. If I were to hazard a guess, most of the work is being done on the end game content along with more talent systems balance.

What additions and changes are you excited for?

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”
- Wayne Gretzky

Thanks for reading a post from World of Matticus! Check out the Matticast, the official companion podcast!

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