zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

• I am currently on forced break from raiding because of work. My shift is in the daytime, which is 12 hours away from my guild’s EST raiding schedule so that means no raiding for me until Wednesday.

• I still need that dagger from Dreamwalker. It sucks when the drops you need are from a boss you don’t kill regularly.

• Watching that Lich King video from Tankspot has influenced me to respec my druid as a tank. Cow has a priest who’s close to my druid’s level so we’ve been running random 5s when we can. While I find tanking as a bear a lot easier than doing the same with my DK, I can’t help but notice how boring it is to watch. From a visual perspective, it’s like everything is happening in slow motion. I’m usually falling asleep after two instances, sometimes one if we fall into a group where I am top DPS.

• I revisited Dragon Age: Origins after finding and reading this solo guide online. I’ve always played the game as a mage because of how OP it is (dropping a fireball in the middle of a tight group never gets old), but the guide said something about using a rogue instead. So I rolled one and I’m surprised to say that it’s been an enjoyable experience so far. It’s not how the game was meant to be played but it feels good to be able to take on hordes of opponents by myself. Of course, doing so using a head-on approach isn’t usually the best way to do it but part of the fun is finding that out and eventually coming up with a solution. I’m not staying true to the guide as I should be though. Stacking traps on top of each other to get cheap kills isn’t above me, for example. This whole solo thing is actually making me think about doing it again, this time using a warrior.

In a move that is sure to generate just as much discussion as the initial decision itself, Mike Morhaime, co-founder and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, has released a statement that says“real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.”

[Source]

Finally.

I got carried.

Real ID. When Blizzard announced that it was implementing it back in the day I thought it was pretty cool. I’d be able to communicate with my real-life friends across factions, realms and even games. It sounded like a convenient way to keep in touch.

Then the patch arrives and here comes the implementation. Frankly, I don’t like it. It just feels wrong to see my real name displayed in-game like that. Sure, my real-life friends know who I am and my online persona is not too different from how I actually am but that isn’t the issue. There’s a reason why we have avatars and usernames. We don’t want everyone to know who we are. We want to play the game and interact with other people yet still remain hidden under the anonymity of our toons.

By revealing that they want to implement the Real ID system to the forums as well, Blizzard is effectively removing our choice to be anonymous. You want to post? Then you have to identify who you are. It’s going to be an effective way to remove trolling, sure, but it’s also going to kill their forums. It’s not worth revealing who you are just to ask where Mankrik’s wife is or how to tank properly.

Now, I don’t post in the forums very often. In fact, I rarely visit it. My reasons are purely circumstantial; at work, where I am most likely to view it, our corporate firewall is blocking it. At home, I’d rather play the game than go to the forums. In short, this issue doesn’t affect me directly. This leads us to the simple solution: if you don’t want your real name displayed in the forums, then don’t post there. It’s as easy as that. Yet here we are, raising a collective voice.

I’m going to end this with a question. What if Blizzard/Activision goes further? For example, what if they automatically create forum accounts with your Real ID readily available and they modify the ToS so that it’s mandatory, something you have to agree to in order to play their games? I know I’m creating a possible worst case scenario here but it’s a thought. I’ve been a fan of Blizzard for a long time now but this whole mess makes me think that it’s having an identity crisis wherein it wants to be the Facebook of gaming.

I tried the Remote Auction House app on my iPod Touch back when it was in beta and I’m happy to say that it works really well. The interface is intuitive and well-designed, making it easy to navigate. With a little patience, you can find what you’re looking for and get to where you want to go without consulting a manual. Getting into the actual AH action is a breeze as well. Buying, selling and re-selling are all easy to do.

For me, the simplest way to judge it was to ask this question: was I able to make money from it? The answer is yes, I was. By playing around with the app I made about 200 gold in two days. It’s not much, but for someone who hardly makes any money from the AH, it was a lot. Is it worth paying the extra money for? It depends.

Let me try to answer that by telling you what I like about it. First of all, let me mention that I don’t spend a lot of time with the in-game AH. On Sin, I buy flasks and whatever gems are needed for the JC daily from it. That’s it. Second, the things I should be selling are scattered on different toons. My mage usually has some leftover enchanting materials that can be sold, my bank alt has extra stuff that fits that bill too, etc. The point here is that I’m usually too lazy to swap back and forth to find what I need. The Remote Auction House makes that part easy. Just select a toon and his or her inventory will open just like that. You can then select whatever you want to sell, make competitive price adjustments and post away. Plus, there’s the added benefit of being able to do so at any time of the day, as long as you have an Internet connection. It’s one hell of a way to waste time. Instead of playing that game on your iPhone, load up the RAH and make your posts. I like to think of it as a very productive way to waste your time.

On another hand, I can’t imagine anyone who spends serious time in the AH needing the app. They’ve already got the in-game one working for them so having a mobile version of it is likely unnecessary.

Blizzard opened Ruby Sanctum this week so it’s time for another strategy guide. Let’s focus on the final boss of the raid, Halion.

Phase 1

Like any dragon boss, Halion has a cleave and a tail swipe so you want to stand on the side of one of his hind legs and DPS from there. He will put a debuff on a random raid member called Fiery Combustion. The best way to handle it is to run and head for the outer wall, then wait for someone to dispel it from you (you can use Cloak of Shadows to remove it yourself). The reason behind this is because there’s a secondary effect that you don’t want to spread to the raid. Running to the outside wall minimizes the chances of doing that. Watch out for Meteor Strike as well. There’s a visual effect that looks like a ripple of fire that indicates where it’s going to drop. Avoid it, then stay out of the fire that spreads from it.

At 75% HP, he’ll go to phase 2.

Phase 2

Welcome to the Twilight Phase. Give your tanks a couple of seconds to pick him up (Tricks if it’s up, of course), then DPS the boss. The debuff to watch out for here is Soul Consumption. The same strategy applies; if you get it, run to the outside wall, have it dispelled (again, Cloak works), then resume DPSing.

The second thing to watch out for here is that there are two orbs orbiting the outside wall. At some point you’ll get a warning, followed by the appearance of a purple beam connecting the two orbs. This is the Twilight Cutter. Regardless of how might think of the color purple, this beam will kill you if you stand in it.

At 50% HP, Halion moves to phase 3.

Phase 3

There are now two versions of Halion, one in the physical realm (phase 1) and another in the twilight realm (phase 2). Your raid leader will you which phase to go to but the point here is that both versions have to have the same amount of HP as much as possible. So if physical Halion is at 48% HP, twilight Halion has to be the same or very close to it. Otherwise, he’ll regenerate. He retains his abilities in both phases, so aside from watching his health, both groups have to deal with the debuffs, the meteors and the cutters.