The Game Dame

First, let me say, Arugal and all his bastidge sons are dead, thanks to the Green Poxed last night. Here is proof. Please click to enjoy the full size animated beauty of modern dance.

The green troll person in the middle is Abuto, my Poxer. This was our third unique instance together and I am learning my role slowly, bit by bit. Some takeaways from last night.

• Do not make the tank wish he could aggro the rogue. It’s poor form.
• Stay in front of the target if running around the back of him means aggroing the entire room. Even if you’re specced to kick booty from the back. Just stand in front and like it.
• Use the tab key or the attack key to target the next mob. Do not embarrass yourself by accidentally looting before the battle is over. Dude! You know better than that!
• Do NOT get all giggly when you see your first locked trunk. This just makes everyone roll their eyes.
• If it’s not an upgrade, pass all the greens to the Enchanter.
• Thank your healers for brilliantly keeping you alive, despite all the above! /mwah!
• Try not to breathe in deeply behind the bear butt. You think that -100 weapon skill curse was bad?? Not even!
• Patience is a virtue.
• When in doubt, just stab something in the middle of the pack.

For those reading in RSS, here’s my new blog header.

Last week I posted my thoughts on the lower levels of druids versus shamans. Since then I have leveled the druid to 22 and I have some extra comments to make.

Cat Form Rocks!

I had been whining about not being able to stop casters and Wara commented that he just usually tries to DPS them to death. At level 19 I couldn’t imagine how I could do this very well against one opponent, much less two. However, the magic of level 20 for a druid is beyond compare! Cat form exponentially improves your ability to fight (and avoid fights with Prowl). The improvement was so dramatic that I had to go out and take on three mobs at once to prove to myself how awesome I was. Of course, I still find myself switching forms a lot to heal or outlast mobs, but Wara is right: once you get cat form the speed with which you can kill makes casters pretty irrelevant.

Truth be told, if cat form hadn’t come as such an upgrade, I probably would’ve stopped playing the druid. What appeals to me very much about this class is its ability to use every play style in the game. You can be a caster, a melee fighter, or use stealth — or some combination of all three. It makes the class very fun to play with its ability to solve the puzzles of combat in multiple ways depending on how you feel at the moment.

Today I can only offer you this: “An Engineer’s Guide To Cats”.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHXBL6bzAR4]

Okay, people, I need your help! I’ve been trying to get a job at Blizzard for 1.5 years now and Monday I applied for the position of Associate Producer of Analytics for Online Technologies — a job that seems to have been written right from my resume. I’ve applied through their email address and also through a recruiter for Blizzard that I found on LinkedIn. But now I want your help! Do any of you know anyone at Blizzard who could at least get my resume in front of the hiring manager (not just HR or a recruiter)? Even better, do you know anyone in the Online Technologies department? If so, go to my Contact page and shoot me an email. I’d really appreciate it! Thanks!

I’m starting a “Versus” series that will share with you my dirty little secrets from my recent bout of altitis. Since my main is a shaman, I’m going to compare the alts I’ve been playing to how it is to play a shammy. Hopefully this will encourage other folks to try out the shaman class — or at the very least give an insight into why the class doesn’t suit your play style.

I’ve been dying (and terrified!) to know how I would do on a PvP server and after reading some posts about what classes do best in PvP, I tried a Rogue and a Druid. Today I’m writing about my PvP Druid, Minnietaur on Gul’Dan server.

On PvP Servers

First, my impressions of the PvP server. There is way more dueling than I’ve ever been exposed to. Everyone duels everyone all the time. I’ve only dueled once so far (I don’t accept duels from people more than 1 level above me at this point) against a level 19 warlock. He pwned me. That Fear spell is the worst. I have to figure out how to counter that on the druid. At least he was nice about it and didn’t taunt me. Which is another thing that seems to be common on this server: trash talking and general jerkiness. “Every dork for himself” kind of atmosphere.

Now, I’m used to the Crossroads being attacked fairly often on Normal and RP servers, but Gul’Dan takes it to an entirely new level. You can hardly see the mailbox for the skeletons piled around it and you have to do a LOT of walking because the flightmaster is almost always dead. I wish there was some way to suppress “The Crossroads is being attacked!!!” in chat because it’s just a constant scroll. The flip side of this alarmism is that there are an unusual amount of 50+ Hordies often milling about so, strangely, I don’t feel as unsafe as you might think. One level 70 even summoned Furious Mister Pinchy for us lowbies to have fun wailing on. It was pretty funny, but we did manage to down him after about, oh, 30 minutes. (Contrary to what WoWWiki says, FMP did not start attacking us until we attacked him. He was just this ginormous lobster standing by the mailbox, essentially hanging out and minding his own business.)

Honor Able

I have been attacked once and so far it’s my only fight with an Alliance member. (I’m going to make you wait in suspense to find out who won. Heh.) At level 10, as you know, Druids must go to Moonglade to jump through some hoops to get Bear Form. Da bear ftw! Now, what I didn’t realize was that Moonglade is contested territory, so the minute I teleport there, I’m flagged for PvP. This somewhat terrifies me, but I figure, “hey, it’s Moonglade! We’re all druid brothers and sisters! How bad could it be?”

So I trot over to talk to this Great Bear Spirit dude who is supposed to teach me the bear ways and whatnot and… OMG! Another level 10 druid! But it’s a night elf! His name is in red and everything! But he’s talking to the GBS so I decide to let him live. I sit down across from him and wait my turn with the Spirit.

Well, Night Elf boy is taking forever with the GBS so I go up to the Spirit and start talking to it. In the MIDDLE of my discussion, Night Elf Drood attacks me! Rat Bastidge!! Oh, man, it is ON! I blast the crud out of him with my nasty mace which I’d just purchased at the AH and then he starts running away! Cowardly icehole! Dear readers, I am playing a druid, at peace with the earth and her creatures. Should I let him run like the little girl he is? Or chase him and kill him till he’s dead?

Oh, he’s so dead.

And in about 2 mace-bonks, he was. And I got my very first 2 honor points!

The moral of the story is don’t mess with a druid when she’s gettin’ her bear on. Especially if she left you alone in the first place.

Hmpf!

Class Comparison

Now to the original reason for this post. How does being a druid compare to being a shaman at these low levels? Being hybrids, they are fairly similar. However, the resto-specced druid wasn’t as good with mana as the elemental-specced shaman. Bear form is definitely nice, but it’s balanced by the earth totems the shammy has. One big difference was the ability to stop spell casters. The druid is sorely lacking in comparison to the shammy on this one. Shammy can cast Earth Shock quickly and often. Also, it’s tougher for the druid to stop shifty buggers from running away (Sludge Fen, anyone?) The druid can use Entangling Roots, but the cast time is longer than Frost Shock or the Earthbind Totem (both instant) and the druid can’t use the roots indoors or in caves. The one thing I will give the druid, though, is the ability in bear form to Swipe multiple enemies at once. That’s a very nice feature.

In case there was confusion over the tone of the last post, I’m not quitting the blog yet. Just “wrasslin” with some motivational issues. No impending doom meant.

The PC’s video card is really dying. I play WoW on the Mac but do everything else on the PC and right now I’m writing through a pink vertical line on my screen. I get dots all over the place too. I need to do some research on video cards and buy a new one. *sigh*

Happy Tax Day

and

HAPPY 15th BIRTHDAY TO MY KITTIES, CALVIN & HOBBES!

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=zchM-znxuoc]

Yes, I’ve been AWOL; it wasn’t your imagination. It started when I went on vacation (no computer) and then it just kind of snowballed from there. Instead of writing a lovely coherent bit of prose, I’m just going to knock out some bullet points so you get the gist.

Personal Items

• Went to my step-sister’s wedding in St. Augustine, Florida, where most of my father’s family lives. I spent a large portion of my life there. Instead of being a fun time, it was melancholy and depressing.
• Working on getting my act together since quitting my job. I’m actually enjoying the hell out of it.
• My cat, Calvin, developed a sore on his side due to his allergy to plastic combined with his new habit of lounging in our beanbag. (Don’t ask. Cats are weird.) Then he strained his leg muscles trying to get out of taking a pill. Vet trips = vet bills + sad kitty.
• Went to a Bruce Springsteen concert right after we got back from vacation. According to the reviews, that show was one of his most amazing concerts in a long time. You can see some clips of it here.
• Been working on drawing and some Flash animation:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/GN8d23XGJ04]

WoW Thoughts

• I think I’ve figured out why I have altitis. I think I’m bored with WoW. Yep. I think I keep creating alts because I get bored. I also think I prefer primarily solo play since finding a good guild or a good PuG is so immensely difficult. The trouble with preferring solo play is that once you reach a certain level — say, over 60 where Slig is at — you really can’t progress forward in the game without a decently large social group. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-social. I really love playing with the Pox Arcanum folks and the Orc family and whatnot. It’s just that coordinating times is difficult and balancing how much time that I want to play the game versus how long others want to play is like walking a tightrope.
• I also think that I’m using games as an escape from more productive, adult things in my life. I’m trying to journal about that now so I can get to the bottom of it.

Blog Malaise

• I started this blog because I was a game design student and I wanted to get a press pass to the GDC this year.  Since then, I have had to quit school (for now? forever? I don’t know) and I did NOT go to the GDC because of work commitments.   I have also since quit the job that made it so I couldn’t attend the conference.  (No causality there.  At least, I don’t think so.)
• Since I’m getting a bit bored with WoW and I’m not sure about where my future is going, I have no idea what to write about on a blog called “The Game Dame.”
• I’m not sure if I ever really had a blog identity that distinguishes me from other bloggers.
• I’m also not sure what I contribute to the WoW blogging community.  I’m not super geeky, offering equipment specs or detailed raid strategies.  I haven’t got any super-deep insights into the game either since I’m a fairly casual, solo player.

I guess what I’m trying to say over all is that I’m a bit lost in my life as a blogger.  Any thoughts on the above?  Any ideas that might help me figure out where I’m going?