As I’m sitting here re-ripping my entire CD collection into MP3’s again (something I should probably detail in another mundane & boring post), it made for a perfect chance to put down a few thoughts I had playing through the beta of Tabula Rasa, well, what little I can stand of it anyway.

With Tabula Rasa, I had the same problem getting into the game as I did with all other sci-fi-oriented or alternative MMORPG’s that tries to defy the traditional fantasy convention. There are a lot of game-related knowledge that doesn’t have to be explained in fantasy-based RPG’s. A lot of conventions are inherited, preached, rehearsed from years and years of fantasy literary work. Even those who aren’t into the whole RPG scene, understand the basic nature of the medieval-derived culture.

Here’s a pack of hungry wolves, they’ll probably bite me. Here’s a dragon, that’s really bad. I have just acquired a new plate mail armor, which is definitely stronger and sturdier than my previous chain mail armor. Picking up a bigger, two-hand sword probably means I do more damage than a one-hand sword, but swings much slower. Learning a new fire spell that shoots out a bigger fireball, is probably better than the one that shoots out a smaller one (unless, the smaller one is a completely different spell with a bigger concentration of heat in a small package!). Lastly, a blacksmith does exactly what a blacksmith does, and a leatherworker or an alchemist is unlikely to be taking care…

Courtesy of WoWInsider again, there are a bunch of news in regards to the upcoming 2.1 patch (that isn’t just relegated to the new instance contents). First up, there are all the profession changes in the new content:

Full 2.1.0 profession patch notes

Then there are some comments that Tigole apparently posted on the Elitist Jerk forum here, that talks about reducing the effectiveness of flasks and retuning the raid bosses. Lastly there are also some tidbits about new Darkmoon Faire cards that’ll be much better than the level 60 trinkets & items.

Most importantly:

Changes to fishing -

• The fishing timer has been reduced from 30 to 20 seconds and it now takes less time to fish.
• The fishing timer can no longer run through its duration without a fish biting.
• Fishing has been removed from Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley.
• You can now fish in Underbog.

Now the world is a better place.

Found this post on WoWinsider:

Instead of going for the usual hunter staples of agility, intellect and attack power, Grimhorn has invested entirely in green plus stamina armor… This has given him a whopping 1074 stamina, which means he has 17134 health (at last count.)

OMG… are you kidding me?!

Following that into the forum thread where he talks about how he plays, you can expect that his pet does most of the killing; but several good points were also made, that many of Hunter’s abilities doesn’t really scale with their stats. For example, all of their stings are just as usable, and even Aimed Shot doesn’t scale much with AP.

This goes to show, with some classes, thinking outside of the box really works well. Perhaps more than anything, it also shows how overpowered Hunters are, in that they actually have the flexibility to persue such an endeavor.

Via WoWInsider

I think part of this tale could be considered ironic. Although in the strictest sense, the word “irony” is often misused to characterize what could purely be coincidental and unfortunate. Even more confusing is the association of irony, “dramatic irony” in particular, as a common device of literary tragedy.

A high school English teacher I once had, made it a point to have a 40-minute class dedicated to the differentiation of the common usage of irony as we know, versus the literary device & meaning of the word. Perhaps it was only fitting, that this particularly bright & dedicated teacher was fired at the end of the semester, due to many student issued complaints about her moodiness; ironic indeed.

Either way, I’m not sure if these particular events in my life qualifies as irony, or maybe coincidence, and for those of us who has more faith in the unseen, perhaps we could call it fate.

As I’ve mentioned before, a surgery scheduled around Christmas was what started me off on World of Warcraft two years ago. That surgery, was a combination of chance, timing, and my own choice. I could’ve had the surgery earlier, or later, but the only time slot that seemed to make sense, was to throw it into the middle of the Christmas season.

However, it also is not the first time I’ve had surgery during the festive seasons. My first surgery (and only other surgery in my life) was also performed around the same time. It was…

With the expansion around the corner, Blizzard saw this as an opportunity to implement a lot of changes which are long overdue. The scripting language engine behind the user interface has been updated to the newest version of LUA, and a lot of UI functionality has been modified. Some of the changes are more or less just for maintenance, some of the changes impacts gameplay greatly.

For example, a very popular addon, Decursive, no longer works. Which doesn’t bother me a bit, not because I don’t often play a class that needs to cleanse/decurse; but there was a long standing tradition for hardcore raiders to not rely too heavily on addons that make choices for you. Decursive was one of those addon that clearly would deteriorate a player’s ability to play the “right way” if used too often. I never used it even when I played my Priest, running through Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. In fact, I much appreciate the fact that Blizzard finally made a strong stance on how people should have to learn certain skills to advance in the game, rather than relying on addons that will perform the duty for them.

What really grinds my gear, in a Peter Griffin-like fashion, is that the patch has been out for almost a month now, and there still isn’t a single reliable and flexible actionbar addon.

The previous “king of actionbar” addon has to be Discord ActionBars. Which is all but defunct given the release of WoW 2.0. The…

I first started playing World of Warcraft two years ago, when I had a surgery scheduled right before Christmas. Given my work schedule at the time, the only sensible way to get a surgery done was to mix it into the Christmas/New Years season and lump it into my vacation to give myself adequate time for recovery.

Knowing that I wouldn’t have very much physical activity for a while, I decided to give World of Warcraft a try. WoW had already been released for several months, and garnered many good reviews. I haven’t been a steady gamer for quite a while, although I dabbled in various MMORPG for a bit (anything from the pre-alpha, beta of Ultimate Online, to a few months in EverQuest amongst other various MMO’s that came and went), I’ve never found any of them to be a satisfying experience. I liked Blizzard’s games from before, and WoW was getting enough good press to garner my interest.

To my surprise, WoW was not only a great MMORPG, but it was a great “game” by any standard. Up to that point, MMO’s has always played second fiddle to your regular PC games. Yes, they have a huge community that may suck you in, but generally the grahpics and gameplay was sub-standard compared to what you would get from a single player experience. WoW was really the first MMO to bring it altogether, great interesting play on a single-player level alongside of the massive world and community. Before you…

Wowhead is holding a contest & giving away 100 beta keys. Several people I know already have beta keys, but if you’re one of those who are still yearning for one, this might be a worthy contest. See more details at — Contest: The Biggest Helper.

Apparently, the guy who brought us Napster is also going to be bringing us a whole new social network for World of Warcraft. The software will be called “Rupture”, and unlike wowhead, thottbot and the likes, it will be able to pull data directly from WoW servers instead of being an externally managed database. Sounds interesting. Read the whole story at WoWInsider.

Read the whole story here.