I'll say it again

The 1/3 Rule

1/3 Raiders
1/3 PVP
1/3 Casual

Blizzard addressed the last by revamping old zones.  But to it basically amounted to a reboot.  They should have instead changed a quarter/half of those zones into 80-100 zones and let people keep questing on the characters they are invested in.  Doing a reboot was basically a formula for getting people to leave.

And burnout.. why are people burned out? I am pretty sure it comes down to the stat where in LK you only had to farm 5 hours for an item, and now its like 20 hours.  I need to come up with better numbers, but that's the basic gist.

Easy content = more players, conversely
Harder content = less players.

Update

I'm still disgruntled at the difficulty level in Cata.

* Do ten quests for a fraction of a bar
* Rewards difficult to obtain
* End game difficult to obtain
* Enchants difficult to obtain
* Gems difficult to obtain
* Materials for professions difficult to obtain
* Class mechanics changed

Is anything easy to get?  No.

What have been the results?

* Raider burnout
* PVE burnout
* PVP burnout

What would have been better:

* Refactor some old areas (Desolace, Silithus, Dark Portal) into 85-95 areas.
* Keep old class mechanics.
* Materials easier to level (keep epic patterns/materials difficult to obtain).
* Keep old gear appearance (ie Lithe Boots) in game, by
* Allow people to change gear to look like anything you have in bank
* Free drake mount for buying Cata

I do think I am burned out. I will probably take a vacation in Aug (end of sub) for a bit.

Huh?

Worked on a low level hunter yesterday... was kicking much ass in battlegrounds.

I guess my post-cata projects have been:
Priest 1-30
Paladin 1-15
Hunter 1-16
Assorted paladins, of which, I still have:
32 Paladin
24 Paladin
20 Paladin

Thing is, like the Blessing of Kings blogs says, I fell in love with a Paladin class and they went and changed it.  Where it used to be... burst damage, cooldowns, burst damage (very FPS), now it is like combo point, combo point, wait, combo point, wait, finishing move.

I DON'T WANT TO PLAY A ROGUE!!!

Which makes me think what is left to play, and the only close that comes close to a FPS-style is... hunter. I still like Warlock (the better farming class of anything), but Paladin is definitely dead.  And that makes me sad.

Progress

BDF Hunter 80 >> 81

FC Paladin 10 >> 15

FC Rogue 51 >> 52

Doings

Stacycat [BE Paladin] 4 >> 7
Tamranger [NE Hunter] 2 >> 6
Caycath [BE Priest] 84 >> 85

Attack of the Nuubs

I started the following:

Night elf Hunter (BG twink)
BE Hunter (BG twink)
BE Paladin (80 #10)

My noob-fu will be dyno-mite!

Need bank alts.

Raid idea

Green
Yellow
Orange

idk. I think starter raids need to be easier.

Design win

They would have been better off just bumping the 1-60 to 80-110, and then instead of making everything brutal on raiders, scaled everything better with new sets of raid instances coming out every 3 months and tripling JP and VP rewards to get let the rest of the non-leets catch up.  As it is, Firelands may have to do for June-November and possibly one more raid until the next expansion in 2012, if it comes on time.

burn

I think I've hit a slight burn out phase.

85 Lock
84 Priest
80 Hunter
80 Mage
80 DK
81 Paladin
81 Paladin
80 Paladin
21 Hunter (alliance tourist)

I started another belf hunter so I could mess around in the battlegrounds.  Should be fun for ganks.  idk... not really motivated atm.

Hmm

So I turned on parental controls to see how many hours per week I am playing. I guess close to 20, about average (2 per night plus extras).  Last week was a freak occurrence because I was out sick two days.

Sun: 3 hours
Mon: 0 hours
Tues: 1 hour
Wed: 0 hours
Thurs: 3.5 hours
Fri: *DQ*
Sat: 5.9 hours

Total: 13.4 h
Average @6d: 2.2 h per day

If you remove Thursday to get a better image, then we have:
Total: 9.9 h
Average @5d: 1.98 h per day

No time in that to raid...

Rift

RIFT has failed.

Okay, that's a bit premature.  To be honest, I'm not a RIFT player, but the press and release seems to have gone off great and I hope it does.  What's got me thinking about RIFT is the comparisons between WOW and specifically how people have been bashing it for being "too easy"/"people will come back to WOW".  What that argument really shows is the schizophrenic nature of WOW as an "easy game"/"hard game".  In LK it way super easy, of course, because Kotick leaned on some heads to get more subs.  I guess he is tooling around more with his next toy Titan, because they've gone back to hard in Cata.  What hard mode really means is:

* Must have lots of time, aka grind, to do something of substance (hpug, raid)
* Big grind to play end game

What easy mode brings is:

* Lower barrier to playing (novices, new players, etc)
* Low or no grind
* Casual play times (1 hour per night, etc)

If we are to infer anything from LK is that easy mode = hordes of players (big subs) and hard mode = a few, elite players (opposite).

Back to RIFT, clearly they are going for easy mode/big subs... which shoots right back at their critics... what is wrong with easy mode?

DK Update

78 achieved on 3-12-2011.
79 achieved on 3-13-2011.

Other things I am doing:
- Started a jewelcrafter.  Got to plevel 50 on 160 bars of copper.  To advance more, I need probably another 200 copper and 200 tin.  OMG.  So fail fail fail.
- Started collecting 3 tempered saronite 8p armour sets just in case I want to level 3 more tanks. I have feet, pants, belt and chest. FYI, I don't actually need the helm since you get The Crusader's Resolution from doing a few measly quests in IC.
- 60/95 on champion seals so I can get me an heirloom bow.

Hah Blizz

It's been observed that Blizzard loves Facebook.  It tried to implement social utilities and sort of tie into the social game (Facebook: collect more friend).  Well. Despite it being shot down by the community, how do you think Blizzard would go about pursuing a web based forum where you can display your (virtual) character, events and ingame connections?

The wowarmory.

The next question is how could they make it more like facebook?
* Like/dislike events, gear, etc.
* Friend people
* Comments

Other thoughts?

I want it!

Shadowwell
AOE, just burns anything that gets within 30 yards for xyz damage.

Soulwell
Something for disc priests.

And how about a real mass pw:shield...
Everyone in the raid gets a PW:Shield that prevents abc damage.

Friday update

Warlock >> Did some Uldum quests and got honored with Ramakhen (333 ring)
Pal_1 >> Vashjir quests. Obtained Fine Toothed Comb and Petrified Spider Crab.
Pal_2 >> Vashjir quests. Obtained Fine Toothed Comb and Petrified Spider Crab.
Pal_2 >> Ran Heroic COS.

Update

84 Priest!

Sorry I had to abandon you vashjir... I will get back to you. I just need more rep with Ramakhen and Dragonmaw Clan.

Update

Current
85 BE Warlock
80 BE Mage
80 BE Paladin
80 BE Hunter
75 BE Death Knight

(Realm 2)
84 BE Priest
81 BE Paladin
80 BE Paladin

Goal
85 BE Warlock
80 BE Mage
80 BE Paladin
80 BE Hunter
80 BE Death Knight

(Realm 2)
85 BE Priest
81 BE Paladin
80 BE Paladin
80 BE Paladin
80 BE Paladin