Recently in Incoming! Category

We are currently in the beta phase of the next expansion, as you are all well aware. All of the classes have new talent trees, and some have spectacular abilities that totally kick ass. Some, not so much. I understand that some all players want those OMFG abilities to be seen. Not all will get them. Some may get them eventually. Everyone wants a Divine Storm, a Titan's Grip, a Beast Mastery, a Typhoon to be given to their class. Not everyone can. This is a fact of life that we will just have to struggle to accept and live with.

The way I see it, having a Hunter, 2 Paladins, and a Druid at 70, is that the big skills are being given to those classes and specs within classes that really, really need them. Hunters have long been the mockery of gaming. Ret Paladins too have suffered being the butt of all DPS jokes. Many raiders seem to feel that Moonturkey are carried, not doing real damage or contributing much to a run other than the aura. I play all of this. I see why we are getting the OMFG talents. We need them.

In a most recent Ask the Beta Tester segment on WoW Insider, their rogue columnist said that Rogues aren't getting any must have talents. He admitted that they will still do massive damage in any raid or group. No doubt rests in my mind that without the changes to Paladins in Wrath, Rogues would still be the hands down favorite for any raid or group. As it stands now, I have a small chance I could win out if their was a choice in a raid, especially with buffs to auras which make them raid wide and the talents and improvements to Retribution Aura that I have taken in the Retribution tree.

Changes to spell power will definitely affect Arita, my druid(renamed Aritas due to name change), but I am trying to get Medros to Dalaran in order to see the amazing city of magic. He only just dinged 71 last night, so it will be a bit until he hits the 74 minimum, but I will then spend some time learning the druid abilities to see how they do in solo and group play. I pretty much stuck to the prospective talent tree I posted about, and I will be sure to report here when I begin doing more than mere fedex quests on the Doomkin.

Hunters. Huntards many call us. Too easy to play, too streamlined, too anti group. We are the most insulted group, and the least wanted in groups. In fact, I think that if a raid were to choose between a Hunter and a Doomkin, they would likely choose feather over fur. Not to mention that hunters are almost never allowed to bring out their biggest asset, their pets, in most raid or group encounters. While Beast Mastery will undoubtedly be the most popular hunter spec in Wrath, cause let's be honest, who doesn't want to tame a Devilsaur, but Chimera Shot and Explosive Shot seem to have some promise. I will be looking at my Hunter last in the line of alts I will bring to the beta.

I guess what I am trying to say is, if your class isn't broke, don't expect a fix. Blizzard is giving clothies spell power, which will automatically give you a buff in that all that juicy healing gear that used to drop will now be usable. They are still working on classes from the Death Knight on down, so don't think that just cause we might have a cinematic, that the beta is over, cause it's not. This change. Things will continue to change. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.

You may have wondered where I have been these last few days. Well, I have been away from blog. AFB. I love the beta. I wish I was in it. I want to be testing and trying and learning. I want to poke and prod and see what breaks. I want to see what is good, and bad, and learn from the beta. Sadly, as I said, I am not in the beta yet. Therefore I must rely on the reporting of sites like Deathknight.info, WoW Insider, wotlkwiki.info, and MMO Champion.

While the WoWHead wrath Talent Calculators are good, they just can't adjust to the changing state of talents on the beta realms. Reminiscent of the original beta, Hunters and Paladins are the last to have received their Wrath talents, and therefore the talents for these classes are changing often. Within a day or two of my recent piece on the Retribution tree for Paladins, the layout of the tree I spent days writing a post about, as well as several critical items in it, were changed.

I wouldn't choose Art of War for any money now. My prospective tree breaks by tier 4. I do not know of anywhere that keeps a record of the talent trees as they change from patch to hot fix to beta round. Dire Cat Form was 'wrongly stated' since it will just be a Cat Form version 2, with a new look via inscription, apparently. Yes, just because Tom Chilton, Lead Game Designer for World of Warcraft, says that something is coming, doesn't mean a thing. Can't count on 'it's coming' from anyone at all, it seems.

So, I guess you could say that I am tired of being bitten by the Beta bug. Sure, more pet slots, spell based mounts and vanity pets, and all the great abilities coming, or stated they will be coming, are here, or in the next patch, all of this looks awesome. And all of it is a single patch from being gone, as well. Maybe the vanity pet and mount system is too tech intensive. Maybe the pet slots make a hunter just too over powered. Maybe... maybe this is beta, and it's just not worth blogging about? Yeah, I think that might be it. 

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?