Skywatcher

Gads. I'm old.

Well shucks, I need to check here more often. I've not seen much of you lately, Orcala, but I'll still miss ya. I hope you don't actually delete the characters, since you never know. Besides, letting them exist means that somewhere, Orcala's enjoying retirement in Azeroth. Do keep in touch if you can.

I finally got around to trying out the game. I'm not sure it's my cup of tea, though I don't dislike it. 'Course, after a half dozen or so matches in tutorial mode, I can't figure out how to get into the versus AI mode. I keep getting told my character doesn't qualify or something.

It's a small version of the Orc on a wolf statue that they have out in front of Blizzard's HQ.

Yeah, Blizz sent me one. I'm not gonna complain, though it does kind of also indicate a lack of a life on my part.

A fine holiday to you all. May you get lots of great presents. Obviously, I was a good bull this year:

I mentioned the holiday related post I made on the general forums last night. I figured I'd share the link to it for anyone who is interested. It's just silly, long-winded stuff: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/15699460746#1 Happy Winters Veil all!

I'd mentioned in another thread that I'd probably be moving Sky to Niveus Lepus, the guild with whom I raided in MoP and am raiding with in WoD. It's time I finally made that switch. It's just not an easy thing for me to do. I've never been a guild hopper. Boven and the others'll still be Skullcrushers, but I still feel a bit guilty in a way moving one character elsewhere.

For any who're returning to the game for patch 6 or Warlords, or even those who never left, there are a couple graphics-related issues that existed on the beta and which are now live that may or may not affect you. The first is the return of full screen glow. Originally, there was an option in the graphics menue to toggle it off. That option disappeared in WotLK, but the console command to switch it on or off remained. In WoD beta, the console command didn't work. So far, in patch 6.0x, the command does still work. For those of us with kinda sensitive eyes, disabling full screen glow makes a huge difference in game. Not only aren't bright objects/areas washed out (and sometimes downright glare-y), but turning the glow off also allows you to see a bit more detail in the models and environments. To turn glow off, the command is: /console ffxglow 0 Unfortunately, the setting seems to revert now and then when zoning or logging off. The second issue affects computers with SLI or Crossfire (though I've read that some people with single AMD cards experience it too). What happens is that they sky and water start to flicker, looking like an old tv with the vertical hold messed up. It's incredibly annoying, and I really have to wonder if it might even be dangerous to epileptics. On the plus side, there's another console command that stops the flickering. On the downside, it's an extremely temporary fix, since the flickering will resume fairly quickly. Sometimes it'll start back up within seconds. The problem was reported many times during beta, but Blizzard hasn't gotten around to implementing a fix. Officially, Blizzard doesn't support Crossfire or SLI. I think the only reason they responded to the complaints once 6.0 went live is because some people with single AMD graphics cards were reporting it as well. Right now, the only official solution is to disable SLI/Crossfire, which kinda sucks for folks who play other games that take advantage of those. The command to (very temporarily) stop the sky flickering is: /console skycloudLOD 0 Personally, I created a general macro for all my characters. It's: /console skycloudLOD 0 /console ffxglow 0 I tend to spam that a good bit while moving around in the world. Hopefully, nobody here is having either problem, but any of you do, then those two commands should help a bit.

Can't we have this expansion, instead? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL6ajtF5Q9M

The female Tauren models are pretty nice, too, though I'm not keen on the nose and upper lip. Here's my female Tauren shammy on the live server: And here she is on the beta server: Those bring up another change that Blizz made that I very much don't like. The console command to turn off full screen glow doesn't work in beta. Originally, you could toggle it off and on via the graphics control panel in game. They removed it back around WotLK, but you could still enter a /console command to toggle it. Ever since I learned about it, I've had it switched off. It just made things look a bit fuzzy and was really annoying when around fires and bright lights in the game. It's part of what made everything blurry when you were 'drunk' in game or when running back to your body after dying. You can't turn it off now. It's permanantly on. In the two pictures above, the effect it has is noticeable on the bulletin board behind Klarisse, specifically in the fires and very much in the paper pinned to the board behind her. I've noticed that I can't play the beta for more than 45 minutes to an hour without feeling some eye strain. I think that's directly related to the full screen glow effect being turned on. Kinda sad that the thing that may finally make me stop playing WoW is a graphics setting.

Just thought I'd post a minor update. I haven't been spending tons of time in beta. Mostly I've hopped onto premade 100s to try out some of the class changes and tame some of the new pets. My opinions of the classes so far, based upon limited playtime (these're all using a premade level 100 character): Hunter: I poked around with Survival and BM. Haven't tried Marksman. They both seem to do well enough. Honestly, though, there's not tons of difference between them as far as playtyle goes. To me, they feel very similar, as if they're really just the same thing with slightly different names for the special shots. Shaman: I've mostly poked around as Elemental, since that's the spec I use right now for raiding. It feels a bit awkward. Not being able to cast lightning bolt while moving is just clunky and a real pain. It's not so bad for questing and such, but in a dungeonor raid fight that involves mobility, it's going to be a royal pain. The spec is very dependent upon instants and procs and just doesn't have enough of either in the beta in my opinion. As for enhancement, it seems to put out solid dps. I don't know that it'll have the top of the charts damage that it has in MoP, but it's probably still going to far outperform elemental. Warrior: I tried Arms at first and found I really wasn't liking it. The loss of rage generation via Mortal Strike is a big hit. Perhaps in longer fights it won't be as much of an issue, but it's easy to get rage-starved as Arms. The removal of a number of other abilities makes it even worse. I found myself standing there just doing white autoattack damage while hoping a proc'd light up. It took a while, but I finally got around to trying Protection as well. Since I was just going to spend time at target dummies or randomly beating things up out in the wild, I decided to spec for Gladiator Stance. For any who've not heard of that, it's a level 100 talent that makes what is pretty much a Prot DPS spec. Wow. It may not have quite the dps of Arms or Fury, but it feels danged close. It's also a heck of a lot more fun than plain prot. There are still some rage issues and the mechanics are reminiscent of Arms in MoP. Wait for an ability to come off cooldown and spam in as many of a second ability as you can while the debuff on the target is still up. Haste is finally going to be useful for warriors again. Huzzah! It also means getting to carry a shield all the time, which I like.

The Timeless Isle is the most recent 'catchup gear' stuff they put into the game. The Northern Barrens and Dominance Offensive campaigns were the earlier ones. They're intended to get folks geared up for LFR level endgame raiding. The gated reputation stuff was one of the biggest complaints folks had about MoP. Originally, you couldn't even *start* on some of the reps until you'd gotten enough rep with the Golden Lotus. Thank goodness that's no longer the case. I hate to say it, but I may end up moving some of my characters to NL in or just before WoD, though it's hard for me to even consider leaving CS.

I'm still around, though my raiding main is my shaman who is in my own lil vanity guild. I may move her over to Niveus Lepus in the expansion, just because they're the ones with whom I raid. I'm often on Boven or one of my other Skullcrusher alts. Most of the time, I'm the only person in the guild around. Kinda makes me sad.

A friend who is in the alpha/beta/whatever for Heroes of the Storm sent me a link last night to a video of one of the characters you can play. Upon watching it, I decided that I really must give HotS a try: There are three appearances available for him: the one in the video, a glam rock look, and country/western. So, yeah, Tauren, warrior, does very well with a tanky/cc build, says clever stuff....I know who I wanna play.