Mystic Worlds

WOW: Game Mods - Love 'em or Hate 'em?

When I first started playing World of Warcraft I was unfamiliar with the use of game modifications.  There were very few legal ones for Asheron's Call and I'd never delved into writing bots.  For the first few months I didn't bother with modifying my game.  Learning the way of the Warlock and managing my pets was plenty.  As I progressed deeper into contested territory, and enemy encounters were frequent, I began to wonder if people who used mods had any type of advantage over me.  At the very least, having all of there skills accessible, would allow them to attack faster.  Knowing exactly when a cool-down had expired might allow them to coordinate their attacks better - not a big deal, but possibly a small advantage.  Tying multiple actions to a single key, would allow them to focus more on the task at hand, versus fumbling with the mouse and keyboard.  This train of thought eventually led me to investigate class specific game mods and macros.

During the course of my search I came across two web sites for game mods that remain to this day, my primary resource for locating WOW mods. My favorite is World of War.  They have a large selection of mods and the site content is categorized nicely, which makes finding what you need simple.  They also note if the modification has been updated since the most recent patch.  I enjoy World of War so much that it's almost my exclusive resource.  However, on occasion, I do use Curse Gaming.  Curse has a nice compendium of down-loadable game mods but not as many as World of War.  I know many people who swear by Curse, and I like it, but it's my second choice when looking for an add-on.

Some people love mods, while others hate them.  I've been on both ends of the spectrum during my days playing WOW. At first I loaded up with anything and everything that looked interesting, and I liked them all.  That was until a large patch update came and my game interface was so broken that I couldn't play for a week. I was very naive when I started using these mods.  I assumed they would always be updated, and that is not the case.  If you're like me, and you changed your playing style to a significant degree because of the availability of a mod, you're completely screwed when it stops working after a patch.  Even after you get it out of your game so that your UI launches correctly, you may find that you've left a huge gap in your capabilities or preferences.  It was 1.6 that brought my UI to its knees.  It's not that it was a complete surprise, the nature of the changes were predicted to break mods.  The problem was you didn't which mods would be broken or how quickly the developer would release an update.  I swore off mods after getting things straightened out again.  I was still leveling my warlock and time spent fixing a UI, was time not spent grinding. Back in those days, that was heracy to me.

When I was up and running again, I still needed someway of exposing more keys, executing automated sequences of allowable tasks, applying some automated logic for task selection, etc.  Yet, I didn't want anyone's mod back on my computer.  What to do - what to do?  Ah, what is this macro stuff.  I checked out forums and independant sites and decided to try out writing macros.  I wrote and tested a few which worked very well.  After reimplementing the bulk of what I needed via macros, I concluded that they were a much safer way to go.  With no external dependencies, I would only be impacted if Blizzard actually nuked a class specific skill, which I deemed an unlikely event. Nerf sure.  Nuke No. 

Creating a macro is a very straightforward process.  I'd written a simple guide to macros many months ago but can't find it for a re-post to this blog.  The WOW forums are a good resource, as is Wow Viki.  Blizzard has an official UI Customization forum and every class forum that I've visited has a Macros post stickied.  If you want to give it a whirl, start by checking your class forum.  For a few months, playing with a clean version of the game was perfect.  I'd become the key-binding Lady, massively reconfiguring the key mappings for my warlock.  Life was good.  Who needed mods.  Then one day I got a new computer, installed WOW and went raiding.  MFG!  I couldn't do anything.  I think I caused my first raid wipe by attacking a target that I meant to banish.  Note to self; don't try out new game setups for the first time while running Molten Core.  I didn't know how to move, target, bandage myself, execute rarely used skills, etc.  It was a hot mess.  I wanted to leave the raid but as one of only two warlocks, that wasn't an option.

When the raid was over and I was done embarrassing myself, I logged off.  I was pissed at myself for having customized my game to such a degree, and annoyed  that key bindings and macros weren't stored on the server along with the other toon attributes.  It was two days later, when still unable to correctly replicate my setup, that someone told me about the WTF folder.  I'll never forget that it was Dreadlock, a guild officer, who told me what to try.  He was a godsend.  The WTF data was the answer I needed and is a plays a pivotal role in propagating custom setups to different PCs.  If you write macros, re-bind keys and play on different computers, become very familiar with the WTF folder and its contents.  Similar to your Interface | Add Ons directory, you should back-up it up frequently - especially before patches or downloading/installing new mods.

The What-The-F*ck folder (I'm sure that's what the acronym is for *smile*.  One day a developer's custom setup got hosed or he needed some attribute that wasn't on the server and screamed, "WTF!") is located in the main World of Warcraft files directory.  Inside of this folder you will find your Accounts folder, inside of which you'll have folders for accounts that have been played from that machine.  The character folders within contain the local variables that store your toon specific macros and key bindings. If you've setup your toon on a particular PC and then need to play on another, just copy the appropriate character folder from WTF, on to the secondary PC and voila - life as it was, minus any mods.  This is crucial in my household where we have 4 WOW accounts and only 3 PC capable of running WOW with reasonable performance.  Everyone needs to be able to play their toon from whichever PC is available at any given time.  The need to play roving toons is another reason that I strayed away from mods.  Keeping 3 PCs updated with everyone's mods was just too insane.

So when did I start using some mods again?  When CT Raid became required for the end-game instances.  I wasn't happy about "having" to use a mod.  Our games had been clean for months at that point and I loved not having to update anything after a patch.  Then Whisper Cast became required and that pissed me off some more, for reasons other than maintaining a mod.  I didn't want to be a robot and couldn't understand why doing it fast was more important than "doing" it.  Why play a game if you just want to be a robot? I really dislike botting anything - legal or not, it removes the RPG and immersion from the game, so I'm not sure what the point of being there is when you do that.  But that's a rant for a different day.  Next Warlocks had to have CountDoom to track their banish timer.  So while downloading that, I grabbed a couple of other mods and the flood gate to modding my game re-opened.  Before I knew it, I had like 15 mods back to being a core part of my game.  It was all good.  I had a new PC too.  One purchased specifically for playing MMOs and it screamed it's customized ass off.  I was happy - until 1.9 broke everything again.

I think it was 1.9, also called the Mod Breaker Patch (masked mob events).  Whatever it was, it was drama.  Even CT Raid went down for the count.  It wasn't a surprise however.  We all knew it was coming.  Other mods, some of them favorites, were rendered eternally useless and have since disappeared from development. I cursed myself. I cursed Blizzard, and went back to a clean version of WOW.

With the exception of CT Raid, WhisperCast and Titan, my only other mods are for crafting.  Crafting mods can come, go, whatever - they don't impact how I play the game.  I'm betting that many of the so-called required raiding mods will disappear over time, including and hopefully, Vent and TeamSpeak.  In patch 1.11, some of the core features used from CT Raid were added to WOW.  Regardless, I doubt modding will ever stop completely.  It's fun to be able to customize your game.  The wiz-bang nerds, geeks, game freaks, closet developers, etc., will always have a desire to modify games that support customization.  And there will always be something the developers left out, that the players want in for convenience - kill some aspect of button mashing or monotony that an insane designer thought was going to be fun but isn't.

Even though mods are fun, I'm still staying away from them for the most part.  I don't play enough anymore to be bothered chasing down mod updates after patches.  Anyway, I've discovered a new way of having a little customization fun - UI skins.  This is a much safer way of giving my game a new face and it's only aesthetic. If it breaks I can disable it and go my merry way.  Here's the skin that I'm currently in (pic below).  This is the one I want to have when I feel like downloading and configurint it.

No Game Time

I've be stolen by the beasts of burden, working until all hours of the night.  I've had a chance to listen to a podcast here and there, but no game time.  I hope to spend sometime this weekend looking at the games that are in open BETA to see if I can sneak in somewhere.

WOW: Horde Pally and Alliance Shaman - Blizzard's Slip is Showing

In case you've been hiding under a rock, get ready.  The Burning Crusade expansion is giving a Paladin class to Horde and a Shaman class to Alliance.  I don't care how they are making this fit into the lore, this is a completely BORKED idea and approach.  All this says to me is that Blizzard knew people wanted a new class but they didn't have any planned for the expansion.  So what do you do?  You expose an existing class to each faction.  No new balancing or skills necessary - it's a ready made class opportunity.  I'm shocked that they hadn't forseen the need for new classes and hadn't planned any for BC, but even more so, that they decided to do this as an answer.  WOW - and I don't mean that in a good way.  All this announcement does is make me think of the many posts I've read recently about the lack of innovation in the current monster games.  I'm boggled and dismayed.

Somewhere lovers of Warcraft lore who have left this plane of existence, and are off in the next, are turning in their graves.

WOW: Road to 300 Enchanting is Paved with Your Own Gold

Finally, I'm level 300 Enchanting on my Warlock.  This was a long and bitter road, peppered with time-sinks and a large investment of my own gold.  So frustrating at times, that I gave up again and again, until being stuck at 266 burned a hole in my gut that I just couldn’t stand any longer.  This past weekend I made up my mind to finish out – one way or another I would get to level 300. 

It cost me 320 gold to complete my last 34 points.  I might have gotten 10g in tips along the way but I don’t think it was that much.  Depression sank in as I began having to sell my stashes of dusts, shards and Mooncloth on the Auction House at discount prices to fund this little adventure.  Why did I have to sell my own items in order to do the enchants?  It seems that the average player has become spoiled and inconsiderate.  They’ve become accustomed to getting free enchants (including the comps) from others that are desperate to level this profession.  As a result, someone trying to charge even the smallest amount or request that the comps be provided, is jeered like a thief.  At one point I was advertising, “Free enchants – just bring comps.”  Someone replied that if they had to get the comps it wasn’t free.  I said, “Enchanting is a profession, not Social Services.  If you can’t even be bothered to provide the comps, then you don’t need the enchant.”

I’ve heard from many, that people expect the low-level enchants to be free because we use them as skill-ups.  Excuse me?? Do you get low-level alchemy pots, armor, weapons, tailored items or anything else player-crafted for free just because it was a skill-up item?  I think not!  Are people standing in IF giving away free Iron, Tin, Peace blooms, Silver leaf, etc?  No.  All of these items are sold on the AH for a small compensation to the player pursuing the profession.  Why would enchanting be any different?

I don’t think the players who thoughtlessly expect these low-level enchants for free realize, that they are the VERY reason that Enchanters charge so much for the level 300 enchantments.  It’s to recover our lost time and the huge cost incurred on the way up.  We are jaded by the end of this profession and have little compassion for people that were rude and selfish to us, as we endeavored to reach the level cap.  Still, I think it’s unfair that regardless, Enchanters are forced to spam in order to sell.  I really wish Blizzard would package the enchants similar to the Totem concept adopted in AC2 or Scrolls in EQ.  Yes, the comps are expensive and you don’t’ always have them to make an item to sell.  However, when you *do* have them, you should be able to sell the item on the AH like every-other-profession.

To some players 320g might not be a lot.  It was to me.  All I’ve done on Saylah, when I even been on Saylah, is raid these past few months.  And raiding is pure cost – potions, buff food, bandages and repair bills.  You get great loot, when you are the person who wins the loot, but you don’t have vendor/trash items given to you to help pay for the raiding.  I wasn’t playing my Warlock which meant I wasn’t farming to pay for raiding.  I was, and am still, using saved gold, Mooncloth and DE’d items to keep Saylah solvent.  Finishing out Enchanting has made a huge dent in my savings, not to mention the minor twinking here-n-there for my Priest.  Oh well, just as in real life – you can’t take it with you so spend with abandon. *Smile*

The one shining gem in the situation is that I’d won the +15 AGI enchant during our early days in AQ20.  If I can get a few of the other dropped recipes like +22 Mana, Fiery or Crusader, I will be set.  Notwithstanding having to spam to sell the enchants, I’ll make my gold back and then some.  Not everyone was an ass about the enchants.  There were a few people that brought the comps without a word, two or three who tipped and one that left a couple of extra Illusion dust as a tip. I noted their names and told them that they could have the +15 AGI enchant for free when they had the comps.

The last thing I did before signing off with my 300 skill-points was to fight my way to the trainer in Uldaman to train the standard Artisan level enchants. Might I say, that this is another pain-in-the-ass about this profession. Me and Blue-boi fumbled around a bit until I found the right pit, burned the little scorpions then out came shy Annora, the Enchanting Trainer. 

I'm not pretty set with professions across my three toons.  I have 300 Herbs x2, 300 Alchemy, 300 Tailor x2 and 300 Enchanter.  If I can just get the others at least into their 50s I can make some decent money off the harvestable drops and rarer recipies.

Laughing at You, Laughing with Me

Okay, it's official.  You people are sick!  You're all just as whiney and cantankerous as I am.  Of all the things I’ve posted about - over all these months, the post that got the most views and was linked to from dozens and dozens of forums, was the “Top 10 Lies about Priests”.  How hysterical is that?

Until a few days ago, I couldn’t have told you if anyone besides the six or so of you who regularly comment here, were the only readers or not.  It’s never dawned on me to look at the site stats.  I write about the games I play because I must.  *Smile*  I can’t seem to not write about them.  Anyway, while fumbling around in the publishing control panel the other day, I ran across the site statistics.  I was happily surprised, then immediately curious, when I saw all the referring URLs pointing to the “Priest” post.

I followed the referring URLs and saw links in at least 30 guild forums, where people were laughing, arguing and commenting about that particular post.  I was shocked at how many guild forums allowed me to see the posts by tracking back.  Not sure if they realize that their forums are accessible in that manner.  Of course, many were blocked to me as they required a guild log-in, so I couldn’t see what people were sayings but was gratified that someone thought the list/rant worthy of post on their own forums.

Tripping into the stats page made my day.  It was a fun and pleasant surprise.  Thanks to the other bloggers that link to me in their blog rolls.  Thanks to Brent at Virgin Worlds who links to me.  Thanks to the other administrators of news aggregators for carrying Mystic Worlds in their RSS feeds.  Big thanks to all of you that take the time to comment.

Thank you, thank you and thank you, for taking the time to stop by!

Calling All Fan/Fantasy Fiction

You may have read in one post or another that I'm a closet wannabe fantasy fiction writer.  I stress wannabe, as I've yet to develop the discipline to write anything on a regular basis.  And writing fiction regularly is a requirement for improving ones skills.  That means my skills are still way down on the suck end of the scale.  Nevertheless, I still dream of doing it and perhaps one day, I'll write more than I dream. *Smile*

I've decided that I like my current blog format for...well...blogging.  That leaves me with a site revamp paid for and deployed that has no content.  Here's where you come in.  *Door creaks open and cobwebs rustle*  I'm going to host fantasy and fan fiction on Mystic Worlds II.  Ignore any content on there right now.  It's only test entries.  What I want are links to really good fan-fiction, scifi/fantasy fiction and comics.  The format and media don't matter as long as it's fantasy or scifi related.  Cool machinima counts too, which I'm willing to host, but not link to.  There are lots of sites linking to machinima. I don't need to be one more.

Once I clean-up the test content, I will be able to host full fiction submissions in .pdf format, direct posts to the site in .html format or just links to the fiction on another site.  Whatever - doesn't matter to me.  My goal is to highlight the best of the best, and in doing so, inspire myself and others to continue down the arduous and often lonely road of writing.

If you'd like to be included in the right-hand sidebar, send me an image w/ an embedded title similar to what I have there currently for consideration.  Place the words "Banner Consideration" in the email subject lines so I don't lose it as Junk Mail.

WOW: Adventuring - Just for the Sake Of

Adventuring – purely for the sake of doing so, seems less prevalent in the World of Warcraft. I’m not sure why that it is. I just know that it is. The death penalty is no higher in WOW than any other MMO, so why do I rarely feel the need to explore?

In AC2 and EQ2 exploration was a normal part of my routine. With no other objective in mind, I would mount up and ride. Or jump into the sea and swim as far as I could go, and randomly visit small islands scattered throughout the world. You know that "something" is there and it was fun to see what that something might be.

I rarely do that in WOW. I visit places that I have an explicit need to for grinding, questing, harvesting, etc. Rarely will I take the time to visit a far off place just because. Why is that? Is Azeroth bigger in scale than Dereth and Norrath? Even in the heavily instance and restrictive world of Guild Wars I tried venturing off the beaten path to discover the unknown. No need to even mention EVE Online. Exploration is a given in that environment.

Only two reasons come to mind when I think about why I don’t do that in WOW. First is perhaps the PVP environment. It’s the only game where I’ve leveled on PVP servers. A corpse run because of ganking would likely take away the fun of exploring. It’s annoying enough when you need to be where you’re at, let alone, doing it over much of nothing. However, I’m thinking that the primary reason is that Azeroth is not a beautiful place. It’s pretty with amazing graphics, but it’s not the most scenic of games. I’ve seen some really cool things but nothing that’s taken my breath away. Nothing that I’ve felt I would have been less for not having seen.

The odd thing is that there are some very interesting details built into the WOW environment – iconic references, pieces of lore, threads of NPC lives, etc. I wish they would make some of them interactive. When I see an exotic looking tome lying around, I should be able to read it – discover some lore. I’d love to collect some of these inanimate items. They don’t need to possess any monetary value for them to worthy of collecting. Let’s have some game content that is there simply to serve as fantasy fluff. Ya know – a little role playing for this mammoth mmoRPG.

Are You Waiting Too?

Relmstein did a really nice post about, "Potential WOW Killers"...

Its a slow day in the MMO world and nothing new seems to be happening. Probably all the developers are still hung over from that company 4th of July picnic and we're just lucky that the servers are still up. Anyways I decided to take a cue from the professional media outlets and do what they do on a slow news day. Make stuff up! Ummmm ... I mean explore a small news story and then pump it up with exaggeration and personal opinions until its almost interesting...  Read more here

I've Been Thinking...

It may soon be time for my sustained forays into virtual worlds to take a back seat. When purely honest moments materialize, I realize that not all of my current gaming apathy is WOW's lack of endurance for casual players, nor is it a complete dearth of alternatives. Could it be - yet I dare to say it, time to move on from the desire to find so much pleasure in these fantasy worlds and once again embrace real life?  I need to get back to writing and let go of the drive-by and passive experience of MMORPGs. I've wrestled with this dilemma for quite some time. I've never really made up my mind about which writing venue I really want to pursue - novels, short stories, plays. All I know for sure is that it would be fantasy. But just as I'm on the brink of deciding, I say to myself, "Eh, go play a game and have some fun. Isn't life enough work?" I have no real chance of changing careers. I've already done that twice and at my age, you don't get many do-overs. One kid in college and my son entering next year, financial suicide isn't an option.  Huge career risks are equally off limits.  Although on a daily basis, I silently threaten to throw it all away, and go live in a cabin in the woods.

I'm a trice published author of technical gobbility-gook. Isn't that enough? I should just rededicate myself to work (employed by a telcom giant), increase my 401K contributions and call it a day. Deciding it's all down hill from here would let me work the long hours with less friction, come home to my family in the evening and spend whatever leisure time I can squeeze-out whacking things in MMO bliss. Sometimes I think, "Yeah, let's slide down the hill without a fight." Other times I say, "Never can tell. You beat the big "C", so all bets are off. You can do it, if you really want it."

Looking at the clock I see that it's nearing midnight. I consider the long day ahead.  I know that having less than an optimal amount of sleep makes me even more evil than usual at work.  I won't be making any decisions tonight, but I've been thinking...

Comments have been intentionally blocked to prevent feedback on this self-indulgent musing.

What's a Mother To Do?

Yesterday my son came into my office and asked if AC2 was really still offline. I responded with a laugh and asked why he wanted to know. He responded that he was sick of WOW. What could I say other than, "I was sick of it several months ago." I didnt have any advice for another game to try. We'd done a short stint on EQ2, GW and EVE, none of which captured his attention - nor mine for that matter. I told him that we were in a bit of a summer MMORPG drought and that some exciting games were coming in the next few months. I hope that wasn't a complete lie and that something will prove that WOW isn't the only choice for a highly populated game.

I'm sure there are other games that we could try. However, I don't really want to spend the time or the money on games that might not last for long or get enough players to populate their realms convincingly enough. He's not a solo player and part of the excitement of MMOs is massive amounts of players. We need something other than WOW to be able to command that type of audience. We surfed the net for a while and I showed him Lineage 2 and RF Online. I've heard good things about them except for the grinding, which he's not a big fan of doing. And he's decidedly against anything that isn't fantasy now. How strange - when I first pried his tight fists off the x-box controller and loosed his grip on Halo/Halo 2, he laughed heartily at the idea of playing a fantasy game. Now holding a gun in a game is taboo to him.

So what's a mother to do, when she and son have grown apathetic on WOW but still want that exciting MMO experience? Dunno. Perhaps we will never have that magic of the first MMO together. Those few and precious times when we bonded over something that was just between us. When his inclination to play side-by-side with me in a game was mightier than his friends, sports, the streets and even pretty little teenage girls. *smile*

He's invested a lot more time in WOW than I have. I was shocked at how long he was able to sustain his excitement. But 5 level 60s later, and only 40-man raids that he can't do during the school year and insane amounts of PVP grinding for honor, he's finally throwing in the towel. His level 60s are Hunter, Pally, Warrior and Rogue. The only thing he seemed interested in was playing my warlock for a bit. So I availed myself of the new transfer service and moved my Warlock to a spare account on Illidan.  I'll keep my priest and hunter together for their professions, but will only continue to level the priest. Other than that I told him, "Ah well, it's summer. Go outside and get some sun."