The Game Dame

I solemnly promise unto you, dear Reader, that this will be the last post I make about my WoW graphics problem. I know you all are probably very tired of hearing about it, but I wanted to give the story an ending so we can all get closure and move on from the trauma.

Last night I opened the PC, blew out out all the dust and cleaned everything that looked like it could withstand a Swiffering. I booted it up with the case open and ran some heat tests. With no programs running, the card registered 50 degrees Celsius.

With WoW running in windowed mode (so I could see the heat test), it went up to 60 degrees, with 61 being the max I witnessed while fighting with a lot of mobs on the screen. Although my computer did not lock up, it still offered streaky and patterned graphics problems. See the screenshot here:

Thus, I have officially given up trying to run WoW on the Dell. Perhaps after the next “real” patch (like 2.4 or even WotLK), I’ll try to run it again, just in case Blizzard decides to own up and fix it.

In the meantime, I will be playing WoW on the Mac. The truth is, it’s actually a much better playing experience. The Mac has a Hi-Def screen which just blows my mind. (Did you know that the Naga actually have FACES??) It’s also a 19″ widescreen format which gives me a wider view of the playing field. The only downsides are (1) the hard drive is pretty loud when the graphics engine is under load, and (2) I’m using the Mac keyboard instead of my spiffy gaming keyboard. I will probably switch the keyboard soon, though.

Last few rolling restarts on WoW have not fixed my PC’s graphics problems. I think I will try the graphics card fan trick next.

In the meantime, I’ve been leveling a Draenei Shaman on a PvP server. I got to level 20 yesterday with her. Ghost Wolf FTW! Also, I received my first gankage on Monday! A random Blood Elf hunter popped me — or more accurately, her wolf popped me — in the Wetlands as I was trotting through to pick up flight paths. She was ranked “??” to me so I didn’t even fight, just kept running. Then I died. At least my PvP virginity is out of the way now.

Has anyone tried the Kindle yet? What say you?

Still Twittering (tweeting?). You?

Read It Later

You know how you can star an article in your RSS feed reader so you can remember to come back and read it later? Ever wish you could do that with a web page you found? Oh sure, you could Bookmark it into a special folder and come back and read it later. But let’s face it, Bookmarks are kind of a pain in the neck. What if you had a way to “star” certain non-RSS pages so you could remember to read them when you had more time? Here’s a Firefox add-on that will allow you to do just that: Read It Later.

LifeLock

My husband and I had a scare this weekend. We thought our checking account had been compromised to the tune of $500. (Turns out it was a bank error on the labeling of the transaction. Whew!) But between Saturday when we discovered it and Monday morning when I was finally able to talk to the bank, we sweated a great deal. My Dad told me about a service he uses to prevent this type of scenario even occurring. Maybe you’ve seen or heard the ads with the company’s CEO giving out his social security number to everyone because he’s so confident in his service? It’s called LifeLock. Now, I can’t vouch for it because we haven’t signed up for it. Who knows, maybe it’s bunk. After all, , it’s a bit tough to prove a negative. [You know the old joke. "Why are you wearing red tennis shoes?" "To keep the elephants away." "How do you know it works?" "See any elephants??"] Still, I thought I would pass it along in case others have the same issues or fears. We are definitely considering doing it.

Twitter

Lastly, Twitter. Being a Gen-Xer, when I first heard about Twitter, I rolled my eyes and said, in a cranky-old-lady voice, “Those crazy whippersnappers!” I figured it was something the Gen-Yers would like and I would find no use for. When I saw fellow bloggers exchanging Twitter IDs on Blog Azeroth, though, I became intrigued so last week I started fiddling with it. It’s actually pretty fun when you have some people following you and vice versa. (And probably no fun at all if you don’t have anyone on your reading list.) I hooked it into my Google Desktop sidebar and it’s even more fun for me that way because it’s always up. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s like IM + microblogging + Chat + status bar updates + reply-to-all emails. Add those together, taking bits from each, and you’ve got Twitter. Just try it to see if you’ll like it. Follow my “tweet” (I believe that’s the word, god I am so unhip) and see what you think.

Back to gaming on the next blog post.

By popular demand, I give you My Toons.  Also conveniently located in a tab at the top of the site.  Feel free to write a prescription for alt-itis.

Back to the responses to my Call for Topics post. A nice reader named one5ive7even asks:

I’ve started a Shammy alt and I’m currently at level 16. I’ve played a shaman in Beta upto 40 but that was a loooong time ago.

I’m interested in being a healer, but I’m concered at the limited tools available, especially at the low levels. I’m heading into RFC tonight with some RL mates and with only a 2.5 second cast heal I think I’m going to struggle.

A respec is on the cards I think to get imp healing wave to make it a 2 second cast. At least until I can pick up Lesser Healing Wave at 20.

Any comments, tips on low level shammy healing would be appreciated.

I hope this reply isn’t too late! How did RFC go? I’m guessing it probably wasn’t that bad, depending on what level you and your pals were. Despite the long heal time, you are dealing with rather low-level mobs so it’s completely do-able. Speed is not too much in demand in that level of instance.

Executive Summary

Heal early and often, stay out of the line of fire and save your mana for healing.

Non-Executive Version (The One with Details)

To compensate for the longer casting times on the healing waves, I try to keep everyone hovering at about half of their HP, even if it means that I don’t do any DPS at all. That way, it’s difficult to get into a really bad situation where you need speed.

Hopefully, you brought potions and you’ve been working on your First Aid and you can apply bandages if your mana gets low. (Make sure your mates also bring pots and bandages for themselves! Make them heal themselves between fights or after being rezzed.)

Try not to use your mana for DPS unless you guys are really winging through the instance with no problems. You can go ahead and bonk things, but that will mean you need to start heals sooner than if you’re standing in the back of the party because your heals will be interrupted by hits.

Only a small part of the strategy at this level depends on your spec. I healed low dungeons just fine with an Elemental spec. However, I didn’t use much firepower so I could save on mana. Enhancement spec might be able to stay in for hand-to-hand a bit better than other specs, but if you’re the main healer you probably still want to stay back so your healing waves don’t get interrupted too much.

I hope this helps. Anyone else have other tips for lowbie shaman healing?

In December 2006, I got to interview for a job at Blizzard. I was so excited that I nearly peed my pants for every day before the interview. (That takes a lot of Mountain Dew, I tell ya.) I was applying for a job that I thought would be a slam-dunk for me: Subscription Marketing Manager. I mean, hell, that’s exactly what I did in my last job and it was finally a way to transition into the gaming field. I even had an inside angle: a friend of mine had worked with the Director of Marketing back when they were both at Sierra. Unfortunately, friends, it was not to be. I don’t know if they’d already picked someone internally and they were just interviewing me as a courtesy, or if they thought I was “too” something — old, young, white, ugly, pretty, fat, skinny, or… female. It certainly wasn’t because I was unqualified: I excelled at every skill required and had exactly the prescribed background.  I cried my eyes out when I heard I hadn’t gotten the job. I was depressed for weeks.

Okay, but that’s just the lead-in for my question. One of the bits of information I got in the course of the interview conversation was that they believe (according to their “market research”) that only 5% of their subscribers are female. By this I mean that they think only 5% of the account holders, not toons, are female, which is their justification for primarily male marketing. I was flabbergasted. At that time in my WoW gaming life, I didn’t even know any male players! All my friends were female in Real Life (RL). I know this because I’d had various forms of proof from each of them, including voice chat. They told me, patronizingly, “Oh you just think they’re female. But are they really?” Of course, it’s an interview situation so I’m not going to argue with them, but this stat has stuck with me ever since then.

My question for you, readers, is what do YOU think the RL percentage breakdown is for males and females playing WoW? Do you think the Blizzard Boys are right? If not, what do you personally think the breakdown is?

[digg=http://digg.com/pc_games/WoW_Insider_features_Blog_Azeroth]Woooooot! How exciting! Our new little WoW blogger forum called Blog Azeroth is being featured on WoW Insider today. Go Phaelia and Valenna!

Thanks to Link pointing me toward WoWWiki’s macro guide, I may have uncovered another problem I’m having with WoW. Of course, maybe it’s THE problem, I don’t know. Either way, I’ve discovered I’m missing some folders and files that WoWWiki thinks that I ought to have. (I’m so grateful to Link; he continues to bail me out of one problem after another!)

Here’s an excerpt of what WoWWiki wants me to find in order to get to my macros:

Until Blizzard decides to store macros on the server, you must copy your World of WarcraftWTFAccountYouraccountname folder between computers.

Now here’s a picture of what my folders actually look like.

“WTF?” WTF, indeed!! Call me crazy, but this seems Bad to me. There’s nothing there!

I guess my next step is to use InstallShield to completely wipe WoW off my PC and reinstall all over again. (I reinstalled once during this graphics thing but I did not uninstall first.)

/sigh

In other news, I found out through Matticus that there’s a new forum for WoW bloggers to share brainspace called Blog Azeroth, started up by Phaelia at Resto4Life. How utterly yummy and cool! Such a brilliant idea… I hope I don’t spend more time on the forums than I do on my blog!

Okay all you shammy players out there… Your Deep Question For Today (not that it gets much deeper than the last post):

What is the plural of the word shaman? Is it shamans, shamen, or shamen (like sheep or deer)?

How do you prefer to pluralize it?

Nibuca at Mystic Chicanery mused on an interesting topic last week: impermanent death. I’ll wait for you to go read her premise and then come back to me…

…and we’re waiting, and we’re waiting…

Okay! Glad to have you back.

In WoW (and most games for that matter), death is not a permanent situation. At worst, it costs money and time, making it merely an annoyance that you’d rather avoid. However, the punishment for death is not so steep that you don’t try some stupid or fun things in-game once in a while just to see if you can do them. Or, if you’re me, you could simply be a klutz and walk right off of The Great Lift accidentally.

That was quite a trip, by the way. In mid-fall, it was actually kind of fun — like skydiving. But when I first stepped off, I remembered thinking, “Oh crap, this is not going to end well.” I got this horrible sinking feeling that said, with devastating certainty, “I’m not going to get out of this alive.” Adrenaline rushed through me and my brain raced to see if there was anything I could do to avoid death. Turns out, of course, I couldn’t. (Although, at least I gave my group a reason to laugh their heads off.) Eventually you accept the fact that you’re going to die and just wait it out.

After that fall, I began to wonder if that’s what really goes through your mind in a near-death (or actual death) situation in real life. Is there that sinking feeling of, “This isn’t going to end well,” where you can no longer deny that your life will end? As we walk around making mistakes in real life, most of us are in denial of facing the Ultimate Consequence of anything. This denial probably exists as a survival mechanism (no, I’m not punning) because if we were to go around convinced that we’re going to die all the time, we’d never leave the house. As a result, there is always some optimistic, arrogant part of our brains whispering, “There has to be a way out of this. I just need to figure it out.”

There are, actually, some religions that preach what amounts to an impermanent death. Christianity, Bhuddism, and some philosophical schools which bend in that direction also.

I wonder if it’s death that we’re really afraid of — or are we simply afraid pain and suffering we believe must go along with it? If death is impermanent does that take away the fear of the pain and suffering? For example, would more people jump off of buildings just to see what it was like — knowing that they could resurrect after dying — or would the simple fear of the pain of breaking all your bones and splatting on the pavement pretty much prevent people from doing that anyway? And what about people with suicidal impulses? The idea of impermanent death pretty much harshes any of their urges.

So those are my thoughts.  How do you, dear readers, think life would be life if death were impermanent?