From the Abbey to Outlands

First they brought us Dailies. Then they increased the number from 10 to 25. Now Blizzard is showing us a strong desire to take money out of the game before the next expansion hits. Blizzard promised previously that they would be bringing in ways to drain money from the economy, and we recently got some good examples of these types of money sinks.

The big money sinks before have been in the form of mounts and crafting items. We have seen titles, expensive items, and other vanity items. Now we see the ultimate waste of pixels in the game, Haris Pilton, will begin selling items that only she and Grifftah could sell, except hers are as over priced as one would expect of an NPC who is a play on Paris Hilton. With some players in the game reportedly hitting the gold cap, it is not in the least bit surprising to see Blizzard near desperate to siphon gold out of the server economies in order to bring them into more reasonable levels.

So, my fellow player, my fellow 70s, what are you planning to spend your riches on? Do you have any riches? Have you spent all you had down to the last copper on an alt or your professions? Does raiding or PvP take all of your money for consumables? I am personally saving my gold at this point. We have no idea what the costs will be for the Death Knight epic mount quest, but if it is anything close to the Paladin one, 500-750g is about the amount that I need to save up.

Add to this the need for a slow mount at 70, and hopefully an epic bird for both my Hunter and Death Knight, and you begin to see that I have no need for money sinks or useless junk to waste my money on. I don't need or want, nor have any desire to buy a 22 slot bag for 1200g, slippers, jewelery, or other crap for thousands of my hard earned gold. I am willing to work a day or two to get a title for my untitled alts. I am willing to work hard to get my crafting up to the ranks they deserve to be at. I am not willing to work hard to waste it on crap from a hussy like Haris Pilton!

I have mentioned a few times that I have now four level 70 characters. There is one thing I have noticed in the leveling from 58-60 all the way up to 70. Medros and Arita almost leveled together. Due to the simultaneous leveling, it was really difficult to learn much toon to toon, and therefore the streamlining to improve leveling was non existent. The only improvements where in the 'where's this mob' type of improvements.

With Ameland, my now 70 Hunter, I learned a lot. I knew about the BoE items that could be used to gain rep quickly, and therefore rep was very easy to gain. Unidentified Plant Parts, Pair of Ivory Tusks, Oshu'Gun Crystal Fragment, and more were farmed up by my two 70s for easy gaining of rep. With those controllable rep grinds out of the way, I began to level my Hunter to 70 and did so relatively quickly. Unfortunately I pretty much seem to have stopped there, having done relatively little with my hunter other than a few rep dailies.

Not that I have worked my second Paladin up to level 70, I have applied all of the lessons I learned from the first 3 70s to this one. I was gathering and buying Plant Parts as soon as I hit Outlands. I arranged runs through Ramparts, Blood Furnace, and Underbog early in those zones. I had enough Tusks to get to friendly with the Consortium and even gift a few to an up and coming guild mate. I fully quested in Zangar in order to maximize the gain from the Nagrand quests, and whenever I fly through Nagrand I help out with the Ring of Bloods.

I have waited to do any warbead turn in's until I was done with all of the Netherstorm quests in Netherstorm. I maximized the leveling I did in each zone to ensure I made a full 2 levels per zone including any instances I did. I will point out that even with the massive rep from the Midsummer Fire Festival, I was on the last quests out of Evergrove before I dinged 70. I did all of my SSO dailies on every day I could, and when time allowed I added to my balance by doing the quests in Netherstorm.

Before I was even done in Netherstorm, though after I hit exalted with SSO, I got enough gold saved up for an epic bird and training, which made the last part of the zone go much, much faster. At roughly 500g per landmass in Netherstorm, it was not difficult at all to work my way toward 5000 without even touching the quests in Shadowmoon.

After 4 times running this progression,  I am finally confident that I have maximized the time and resources it takes to hit 70 in the most efficient manner. This, as I am sure some of you realize, is a very important thing looking ahead. With the maximized leveling I have perfected, and the level 55 starting point of the Death Knight, I am fairly sure I can hit 70 on my Death Knight within a few days of the expansion's release. The only big question that remains, though, is whether I will have a chance to master the 70-80 progression.

How are you preparing your skills and resources to maximize the events that follow the launch of Wrath of the Lich King? 

I was listening to a fellow WoW podcast, and I heard an interesting working of words most of us in WoW use a fair bit. The person was stating that theirs is a Guild that raids, not a raiding guild. I found this a very interesting perspective to apply to the big questions of end game. My guild, the Shadow Walkers, is much like this, but we do much, much more than raid. We RP, PvP, and just play together in the game. We are at minimum a guild that raids.

I guess the best thing to do in this conversation would be to define the two forms of the guilds that have a raid component. The first, and far more popular term is Raiding Guild. the way I see a raiding guild is a guild with a mandatory raiding requirement. An example of this could be 'you must raid 4 nights a week. Another could be 'You must raid at least 1 raid a week'. You will note I have put both of these, minimal requirements and mid to hardcore requirements, in the same category. I feel strongly that if your guild had a raid requirement, it is not a guild that raids, but a Raiding Guild.

Another characteristic found commonly in Raiding Guild is that they define themselves by a series of letters and numbers. 'SSC 4/6, TK 3/4, BT 3/9'. While a PvP guild might rank themselves by a different set of numbers, such as '4 x 5v5 2100+', the numbers that the Raiding Guild use are more widely acknowledged as the marker for end game content. My guild? 0/6, 0/4, 0/9. I will not say I am happy that we haven't progressed to that, but I am happy we haven't pushed ourselves into the realm of a Raiding Guild where those numbers make or break us.

while I will not attribute this to *every* Raiding guild, the lack of recruiting morals definitely seems to pervade the raiding structure on my realm. Raiding Guilds do not hesitate to poach, bribe, trick and even swindle players into joining them, even if the player will likely not see beyond farm content for weeks. My guild, with myself as the recruitment lead, has very strict rules on how and under what circumstances we will accept a player. for instance, a player needs to be leaving their guild for decent reasons, and be gone from it for at least 24 hours before we will accept them.

Now to the guild that raids. The guild that raids schedules raids for a few nights a week, and encourages sign up. They will do their best to help those who want to raid with gear, be it in gear selection, questing, or in dungeon crawls for gearing up. unlike a raiding guild, who will often demand their players spend hours on a boss until it is mastered, the guild that raids will devour a place like Karazhan where, once you pass Curator, you can go one of 3 or 4 directions. Wipe a couple times on Shade? Try your hand at Illhoof, or Nightbane, or Chess. Chess is always a good, easy round of loot.

Now that I have defined for you how I see these two different combination's of guilds and raids, I am curious of a few things. First, do you agree? Do you have stuff to add or detract from my points? Where would your guild fall in these categories, or would they be something completely different? Do you aspire to those letters and numbers? Different ones? Would you accept the invitation of a raid guild to leave your guild to join their raid team? Let me know what you think!

Take note that these are alpha talents and changes. These may and likely will change in some way between now and the live release of Wrath of the Lich King, release date unknown. Today we will look at Druids, a class I play. We will look at my other two classes, Paladins and Hunters, when they are alpha released.

Druids. Bear Butt. Boom Turkey. These are two of the common nicknames we have received in the community. Well, soon, that bear butt will look different, though we know not how. Also, we will also get a new Dire Cat, which will also look different from the non Dire appearance. We don't know what either of these will look like, nor what will make the new form so 'Dire', but I am sure most druids are excited about cross spec forms coming. This does not, though, affect the discussion I will make here. Perhaps Aly over at Bitter Roots will blog other trees(pun intended) but I will be talking balance in this post.

There are some really interesting changes coming to the Balance tree, and some even more interesting new talents coming. While there are no small number of things to mention on each side, I will go into the changes to see what points should be used on day 1 of patch 3.0, even before the expansion is launched. Before that, though, here is a link to my planned talent usage. Oh, and here is the talent build I currently use on my Druid, Arita.

Old Becomes New
Brambles - Currently: Increases damage caused by your Thorns and Entangling Roots spells by 25/50/75%. Alpha: Damage from your Thorns, Entangling Roots and attacks from your Treants increased by 25/50/75%, and damage from your Thorns and Treants have a 15% chance to daze the target for 3 sec. Thoughts: The addition of treants and the stun make this a great talent to spec in to, and with the drop of 3 trees, and 30 seconds per cast, you are nearly guaranteed to have that proc at least once.

Nature's Reach - Currently: Increases the range of your balance spells and Faerie Fire(Feral) ability by 10/20%. Alpha: Increases the range of your balance spells and Faerie Fire(Feral) ability by 10/20%, and reduces the threat generated by your Balance spells by 30%. Thoughts: Long overdue threat reduction for Moonkin druids, though for those who are used to being the aggro magnet that stands between a wayward mob and the healers, this could be a problem.

Lunar Guidance - Currently: Increases your spell damage and healing by 8/16/25% of your total Intellect. Alpha: Increases your spell damage and healing by 4/8/12% of your total Intellect. Thoughts: Unnecessary nerf to damage, though hopefully we will see some other stuff or changes coming to make up for this.

Dreamstate - Currently: Placed next to Moonkin Form on tier 7. Alpha: Placed next to Moonfury on Tier 6. Thoughts: Good spell, available earlier in the tree and allowing for earlier mana regen boost. Good change for leveling turkeys.

New Hotness
Improved Moonkin Form - Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 33/66/100% chance to gain 20% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for 10 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every few seconds. Tier 7. Thoughts: This will officially make Moonkins the must-have-in-my-group part of a raid set up when working out the casters, both healers and dps.

Owlkin Frenzy - Attacks done to you while in Moonkin form have a 5/10/15% chance to cause you to go into a Frenzy, increasing your damage by 10%  and causes you to be immune to pushback while casting balance spells. Lasts 10 seconds. Tier 8. Thoughts: This will make for a very interesting time soloing on my turkey, that's for sure-

Eclipse - When you critically hit with Starfire, you have a 20/40/60% chance of increasing the damage done by Wrath by 10%. When you critically hit with Wrath, you have a 20/40/60% chance of increasing the damage done by Starfire by 10%. Effect lasts 30 seconds and has a 2 min cooldown. Tier 9. Thoughts: Might be a good spell if you opened with Starfire until this procced, then switched to Wrath once the mob was coming at you, or used Wrath on a boss to minimize threat and then near death you used Starfire for the big numbers. Should be fun!

Typhoon - You summon a violent Typhoon that does 530 Nature damage when in contact with hostile targets, knocking them back 5 yards. 20 second cooldown. Tier 9. Thoughts: I assume this is an AoE, though unsure if it will be above the turkey by nature or if it will give a location choice like Hurricane. As it has a range, I assume it is like Hurricane, but that could, incredibly, mean it would be a 20 yard from the caster circle effect, which would be.... wow!

Gale Winds - Increases damage done by your Hurricane and Typhoon spells by 25/50%, and increases the range of Cyclone by 10/20%. Tier 9. Thoughts: Many folks were already angry in PvP about the current yardage of Cyclone, and this will only make that worse. The first part will be nice, especially if there are fights like the worms in Kara or Magister's Terrace in the expansion. 50% more damage on lightning bolts that, by the end, already leave the targets within a moonfire of death? Hell yes I'll take it!

Nature's Fury - Your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance of applying the Nature's Fury debuff on the target. The Nature's Fury debuff increases Nature and Arcane damage done to the target by 2%. Lasts 12 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times. Tier 10. Thoughts: I like the 100%. All I would need to do is keep casting Wrath throughout the fight and the debuff would never die. Arcane Missiles, and I suspect some Shammy spells, would benefit from this.

Starfall - You summon a flurry of stars from the sky on all targets within 30 yard of the caster, each doing 500 to 580 Arcane damage, and an additional 170 arcane to all nearby targets within 5 years. Maximum 20 stars. Lasts 10 seconds. Tier 11(Final point). Thoughts: Whoa. We saw this in Warcraft 3 from Tyrande(interestingly a priestess) and it looked awesome. It sounds like this would not be a Volley like AoE, but more like the stars will fall on hostile targets only, not just randomly. Also, the nearby targets bit is a little confusing. It is like if you have like 5 or so targets all grouped within 5 yards, coming at you, it will not only do initial damage to each, but proximity to each other damage? I want to see this!

As you can tell, I have a... few opinions on this specific tree. As you will also notice, there is some changes over in the Resto tree. I have currently 13 points, and that will be lowered to 2. Not only because Improved Mark is changing to 2 points from 5, but I also don't think that the other spells will be that big of a deal in this current tree. I'll spend 2 over there, and save the other 11 for some of the changed, and more of the awesome new stuff coming in Wrath of the Lich King. Stay tuned, eventually, for the Paladin and Hunter tree reviews.  

I have noticed a high occurrence of flash ads on sites lately. These are not unusual, in their essence. The problem with flash ads is that either by limitations of code or intentional omission, they often do not display a URL. When these appear on game sites, especially ones which are a haven for WoW players like DeathKnight.info, I grow incredibly concerned about my security. Until I have an Authenticator in my hands, I will remain very cautious of my security.

Right now I surf on my laptop and game on my desktop, still being incredibly careful what I download and where I surf to. You never know if a trojan will know to look for zip files or other known packaging used in the Mod community. I do not know if the URL issue is a coded one or a Flash based flaw, but I refuse to risk myself and my account on the chance of a cool product or game that is marketed to people like me.

Add to this the chance of so far unknown holes in Flash or other multimedia ad methods, the prevalence of gold farming, leveling guide, and power leveling ads on any site that has Warcraft or MMO in it's keywords, and you really become concerned about clicking much of any link on the sites you visit online.

I wonder, though, a I paranoid? I know a lot of folks thing that all these big security measures that even the less secure take are too much, and I go much further in my own technology. Would you go so far as to refuse to click any Flash based links? Would you take security measures like weekly trojan searches, multi PC use, and other such measures? Or are you one of the many that thinks a decent browser and some addons for it is enough?

No, it is not Starcraft 2. Not Diablo 3 either, though both would be very worthy of pre order if they were able to be. No, in this I refer to Wrath of the Lich King. I was planning, originally, to wait until the CE was announced, but I decided, since I was near EB and had $5, I would pop in and get my name in for the next expansion. I also talked game with a fellow WoW fan, a woman no less, and we exchanged theories on the expansion, Blizzcon, and more.

While I was there I also clarified the process and speed I would need to use to get my name in for a CE of the Wrath of the Lich King when it is announced, though I will be checking every couple of weeks for any updates. I didn't catch the name of the attractive young lady behind the counter, but I think we could have possibly come up with what might be the utter pinnacle of WoW content progression.

First, they need to get a beta out. Soon. No, not Soon™ as per the forums. Second, they need to sell tickets soon for Blizzcon. At the same time, they would announce that Wrath went gold, somewhere in the time frame of late August. They would then announce that the release date for Wrath would be October 10, 2008. Yes, the first day of Blizzcon, or even the 11th, so it could be a perfect midnight launch. Then, either at the opening ceremony, or at the closing, Mike Morhaim would announce the next expansion. Well, what do ya think?

Yesterday I posted a thread about the Blizzard Authenticator being sold out on the General forums, and the thread got to 3 pages before Blizzard put their own sticky about the topic, and even addressed the US only concerns I have previously expressed. The thread, though, was dominated by one clear message which I found both foolhardy and completely misinformed. Add to that a healthy dose of 'WTF' factor, and you begin to see a really disturbing picture of the WoW community.

The first bit that really annoyed me was from Celada of Lothar. 

Its a false sense of security... Nothing beat knowledge and a litle bit of common sense. You can about 100% protect yourself with

Firefox
-addons
--FlashBlock
--Adblock Plus
--Noscript

Celeda, you talk about a false sense of security? Tell me the FCC and many other government agencies from around the world have a false sense of security in this form of multi layer authentication. You have a false sense of security if you think that such measures have any form of security to them. With new bugs and holes being found all the time, all it takes is a single day of being unpatched for your computer to be infected with a keylogger. How many mod sites have found trojans in their code? Almost all of them, and everyone has them as trusted.

Next up we have Celeda's response to my points about a true false sense of security coming from Firefox:

Ive been playing this game since beta never once been keylogged
Cause im not stupid enough to click any links i dont know

Blizz can sell false sense of security all day, that cant sell common sense and they cannot cure stupid

Just because you have not, does not mean you will not. Past actions do not dictate future results, especially with the rising value of WoW account info ont he black market.

Now to this gem from Kybeorie of Baelgun

Clue:

Someone has a trojan on your computer.
You have the authenticator.
They can't login to your wow account, but they are STILL LOGGING YOUR KEYS. The difference is that now you don't know it, because your wow account is ok. So you go merrily about your business, while your mother is now sending some money "you need to borrow", because you said so in an email, to some address far away

All due respect, Kybeorie, if you are using those Firefox addons as your only protection from trojans and keyloggers, you deserve to be scammed. Also, if your mother can't pick up a phone and check with you to make sure a sudden 'I need money' email is real, well, then your mom needs some lessons in common sense, cause I know my mom is smart enough to actually talk to me when I ask to borrow money.

In the end, this is not the be all and end all of protection, but it is not a false sense of security. This is a very secure additional form of security for your WoW account. If you feel your Firefox plus addons method of security is fine, great. It just means that when Blizzard does start shipping these to Canada, I won't have to wait in line behind you to get mine. I, though, will be very comfortable paying a lowly $7 USD for this increased measure of security.

According to the writer of the isheepthings blog, the Blizzard Authenticator, after about two and a half days on sale, is listed on the Blizzard store as sold out. This all happened with no Canadian being able to order one themselves unless they had a US shipping address. There are those who advise that Canadians go and order from the European store, but to my knowledge the Authenticator was never available from there, only showing Sold Out for the entire duration.

[Update: Blizzard has now posted both about the sell out and the lack of availability to Canadians. Thank you Blizzard for answering the questions I and others had.]

Incoming is a regular part of From the Abbey to Outlands where the author will rant at length about a topic that is frustrating or aggravating in the World of Warcraft. Keep reading for more, we have a Rant Incoming!

You may have heard that the new Blizzard Authenticator is now available for purchase from the Blizzard Store. It's a great little device which will increase account security an enormous amount, and could potentially be the catalyst to the elimination of the account hacking going on by Gold Sellers. That is, of course, if everyone can get it, which they can't. "This product can only be shipped to the United States." is what you will see if you go to the Authenticator item page I linked to before. Now, however, there is an item page on the European Blizzard Store, which does not limit where it can be shipped, though the item is not yet actively for sale.

The following is an email I sent to Blizzard's billing department after getting off the phone with a rep who pretty much had no clue why it wasn't for sale to Canadians, and was guessing distribution issues.

I would like to express my frustration that Blizzard is not shipping the new Authenticator to Canada. This device is a great idea, and should increase the security of accounts substantially, but it cannot do that if we cannot buy it. I fail to see why the USA and Europe are the only are the only areas who are allowed to maintain the highest level of security on their accounts, while other countries must sit back and simply hope their accounts don't get hacked. I guess one has to question if, in addition to contests, Blizzard has a complete lack of respect that extends to not caring about our security. I am sad to see this come to pass.

I look forward to a response from Blizzard, even if it only comes in the form of a change in that policy so that we here in Canada can enjoy the same level of security as others in the US and EU.

[Update: Blizzard has now posted both about the sell out and the lack of availability to Canadians. Thank you Blizzard for answering the questions I and others had.]

Incoming is a regular part of From the Abbey to Outlands where the author will rant at length about a topic that is frustrating or aggravating in the World of Warcraft. Keep reading for more, we have a Rant Incoming!

You can't win for losing. For months, since the big account hacking started in World of Warcraft, people have been complaining and whining and raising the ire of their fellow players that Blizzard couldn't, or wouldn't do more for their and their friend's accounts. They felt that Blizzard had to have something it could do in order to prevent people from losing all the stuff they spent ages working to get.

Earlier this week, Blizzard announced they are making available the Blizzard Authenticator. The device, available soon for a measly $7 USD from the Blizzard store, is connected to your account once you register the serial number. Once the device is connected to your account, you will need to use it on every login. To use it, you press the button on it, and then type the generated 6 digit code along with your username and password into the WoW client.

Called two-factor authentication and branded SecurID by RSA, this format is a truly innovative and extremely difficult to break method of authentication, only vulnerable to spoofed authentication attacks. As those are fairly complex and time based attacks, I doubt more than one or two attempts will be made to spoof these. I have to hope and assume Blizzard has had the forethought to program the authentication system around the hole.

As you might have guessed, I support this measure by Blizzard a great deal. While this is a long time in coming, I am sure that any decent techie will tell you that such systems take a lot of time to program just right. For a feature like this, I would happily give Blizzard as much time as they need to get it just right. I am really hoping that these key fobs will be a huge hit and bought by millions of people and take a major chunk out of the profitability of attempted account theft and the Trojan attacks that accompany them.

So the same day I post about my support of this move by Blizzard, you can imagine my surprise when I go to the General Forums and see a thread slamming Blizzard for charging people to secure their(Blizzard's) property, since our characters are Blizzard's property. Let me see if I get these arguments straight. Blizzard needs to do something to protect the weeks/months/years of time players have put in, but it's not worth $7 to protect the weeks/months/years of time players have put in?

Folks, I have some sad, disturbing, or possibly even shocking news for you. If you are going to play this game without the Authenticator device, unless of course you are a Canadian like me who cannot get it(*shakes fist angrily*), you deserve to be the new juicy target of the hackers eager to get as many of the last remaining insecure accounts out there. I am even considering finding a way to import these things to Canada if Blizzard gives us no way to get one delivered up here, or at least make them available from gamer stores in the country.

Blizzard has done their part to put the focus on account security, now will you? What is your /played and gear and efforts in World of Warcraft worth to you?