Editing vids and why Sony Vegas hates me

I thought I'd write and explain a little bit about why my vids are so few and far between at the moment. I know a lot of people are waiting for Part 2 of my "Scepter of the Shifting Sands" movie (link to Part 1 here, also avalible on warcraftmovies.com).

The big issue I have with the videomaking process at the moment is limitations with my computer hardware. Sony Vegas is operating quite slow on the system I have available today and that makes working on a project the scale of my "Scepter of the Shifting Sands" movie most taxing. I will however not let that stop me of course and I will keep working on it.

I have a lot of other projects lined up that I want to get to working on but I feel it is important to finish this movie before I start with something else, exceptions might be smaller simpler vids I can throw together just for the fun of it like boss kills or exploration vids.

Why the 4.1 "Call to Arms" is really bad

Blizzard recently announced that they will implement a new feature in the upcomming 4.1 patch, this feature will be called "Call to Arms" (Link). This is an improvement of the LFG aka dungeonfinder feature, that is already implemented, and is aimed to resolve the very long queue times that the dps classes are having to deal with in cataclysm heroic dungeons.
This feature will reward the class (tank, healer or dps) that is in shortest supply in the dungeonfinder, at the time of entering the queue, with an extra lootbag after finishing the dungeon. This to motivate basically tanks and healers (since dps are not really in short supply) to queue for heroics more. To be eligible to recive this lootbag the player must have entered the queue on his/her own and not as a part of a group.

Now this in itself has upset some people that are saying things like: 'So the classes that only have 5 sec queue-times are to on top of that going to get extra loot?' or 'This will cause everyone to roll tanks and then we will have tons of tanks that can't tank making PuG's worse'.
However what has gotten a lot of people upset is what is going to be in the actual lootbags.

Blizzards april fools (updated)

This is always something I look forward to, this and their x-mas spoof. Just goes to show how groovy and how in touch with the community Blizzard really are. By far the best game company around.

Links.
Dungeon helper: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/dungeon-helper/
New dungeon!: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/game/dungeon/tomb-of-immortal-darkness
Horadric app: http://eu.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/horadrapp/#horadrapp-disclaimer

Starcraft 2 on consoles:

Wonder if there is a page where one can see all past april fools and other such things? I know they had one for their x-mas stuff back in the day...

Moar fools:
Paragon vs Ragnaros Heroic Strategy: http://www.paragon.fi/articles/sneak-peek-ragnaros-firelord

How to build up your DPS in raids

 This is going to be some of my thoughts on the subject of damage per second. This is not aimed at bleeding edge raiders, they should know this. Note that I do not claim that this is the only way to do things.

Raid DPS.

First and foremost it is important to note that in a raid environment it is your raid dps that matters most. To some of you this is perhaps obvious but it is very common that people just focus on their own personal results.

Why is this important to state? Because there are ways to increase your own dps by sacrificing potential gains to the raid. Example: not applying sunders or shattering throw as a dps warrior. Not doing that extra work will, most likely, improve your personal dps but lower the raid dps and in the end it might cost you that important boss kill.

How to tackle this? Find out what raid buffs and boss debuffs you have and see if they’re already covered. To continue with our dps warrior, if you have a warrior tank in the raid you will not have to stack sunders for example since he will do that automatically through devastate. Once you have gone through your abilities and you see what your need to worry about, and what not to, you can move on to what you can do to improve yourself.

The reintroduction of long, difficult and time consuming questlines

We all remember certain questlines.

Linkens “It’s a secret to everybody” or “You are Rakh’likh, Demon”, "The Scepter of the Shifting Sands" or some of the old attunement quests.

We remember them not because of the loot we got in the end or the experience points they gave, we remember them because of their epic scale and how much we had to work and travel to complete them. They where not something everyone did, in some cases very few got around to completing them (for example Dungeon Set 2).

A lot of old old-world quests had you traveling all over Azeroth. Some of these where just normal quests that where just annoying to complete and completely broke you off from the area you where questing in to deliver some package or something to someone on the other side of the world. For just normal quests this was not very good.

However for end level questlines that the developers had put extra time in to developing and that had a great story this was very cool.

The reason this was so cool was because it brought depth to the world around you, it made it feel more alive. A lot of them made sure to be annoying and difficult, this was a great thing since that made you feel as if though you had actually completed something special. Another huge factor in this was how they often started off as unassuming average quests that didn’t seem like anything special and also how “un required” the quest rewards where.

When Cataclysm came and remade the old world and its quests most, if not all, of these kind of questlines where lost. They might have been breaking with what the forward jump in time that occurred and changes to the zones had brought, they might have been dropped due to the fact that they did not bring any end game rewards or they might have been dropped because of the fact that they where too messy for newer players to complete.

Cataclysm quests where at first very appealing and interesting to me due to how streamlined they where, but after a while I realized that it was all a railroad. Jump on and ride along but no choices are allowed.

Where is the forsaken in Kalimdor that in the middle of a questing zone convinces me to take up the banner of the banshee queen as an undercover agent and travel to Eastern Kingdoms to start a whole new line of quests instead?

Why can’t I choose a faction to support and, maybe not exclusively, quest for all over Azeroth from for example level 15 to 60 (tabards don’t give faction specific quests) and upon reaching exalted get access to a specific questline (levels 58, 68, 78 and 85) with a unique reward?

In summary.

Generally questing should not be a pain, but sometimes it should!

Do you miss your first months in WoW?

Just before Cataclysm hit I recreated one of the first screenshots I ever took in WoW. Back when the world was unknown and fresh.


I took ages leveling and stopped regularly just to check out side quests that where below my level. Like The Mithril Order quests, so much mithril and thorium. I miss that time.


What really has changed for me with WoW I think is time. Back when I was leveling my first character I had no end goal or other reason to hurry up. I was, and still am, a non social player. I like doing as much as I can on my own. This helped to shield me from information about endgame content, and for that matter any information on what was around the corner. Everything was so new.


I think a lot of people that perhaps raid or pvp at max level, or even just players that have been playing for a long while, easily get very cynical and upset about either Blizzard or WoW itself. I have recently been feeling unhappy with the game, a lot because of what Cataclysm did to it but more on that in another post.


I belive that players really have to just stop and take a breath now and then. Perhaps start a non guild alt without heirlooms that one only levels through quests or whatever is prefered but always focusing on the moment instead of fighting to get to some end goal.


If people did that I would bet that the WoW community, being utterly childish and aweful atm, would be a nicer thing to partake in and be a part of.

A new vid series maybe?

I've been thinking about starting a series of vids that focus on a little side hobby I have in WoW. Filling up my bankspace, well filling it up with interesting and shiny stuff really.

This whole collecting thing I think started when I did the warrior quest for the whirlwind weapon. I picked the sword of course and noticed that this was a weapon that looked very different from the other sword-looking swords I'd had before that (this was my first ever character in WoW so everything was new). When the time came for me to separate from it in favor of a better weapon I just could not vendor it. Ever since it has dwelled in my bank, a memory of simpler times.

That was how it all started.
After that sword many other things came and went in my bank, hard choices where made and less shiny stuff was taken out back and dealt with. In later days a lot more have been entering my vaults. A lot of stuff I have can no longer me attained, many things went the way of the Dodo when Cata came.

Anyway my idea with these new vids would be to show people the cool stuff that is out there and some of the history surrounding the items, Ashkandi anyone? And to show people that they can get items that are a big part of the history of WoW.
Also just to share with other collectors out there and speculate what Blizzard might remove next so that swift action can be taken. And perhaps to entice more people to get bigger bankbags.