Sims Fairies, WOW Patch 2.3 and a Little QQ

I haven’t played EQ2 in a few days.  When I played last, I spent most of my time using up the reserve of trading materials I’d saved and quickly reached level 22 Artisan/Provisioner.  When it came to the point of leveling some more, I wasn’t looking forward to hitting ButcherBlock for the third time so my attention wandered back to The Sims 2.  I might have to see if can beg, borrow or steal some assistance in power-leveling passed this zone.  I’m soooooooooooo over doing BB again.

I’ve finally reached a point of having downloaded too much custom Sims 2 content.  I’ve never had this happen before but my current household/family is taking a LONG time to load.  The little community that I’ve built is called Fairyland – sorry, I know it’s bland and trite but I wasn’t feeling overly creative.  All the homes are castles and the two community lots are Harry Potter themed commercial locations I found on the internet.

I have three large families that are managing agricultural estates. There are three household of singles where one manages a tavern on her lot, the other a rustic bakery and the third is messing with a Magician career I found on Sims 2 Mods.  Of the three large estates my favorite is the house where all the women are fairies – wings and all.  I’ve never done a household themed to this extent but I ran across some amazing skins and meshes that I just had to try out.  I paid $10.00 for a 30-day subscription to a site that had the best medieval furnishings and accessories I’ve ever seen.  While the magical aspects of the household are from the Wizard’s Sanctum on Sims Connections.  I’ve had lots of fun decorating and playing these families.  By the way, these are families as in couples.  I don’t do kids in the Sims.

I logged on to WOW the other night to fix whatever might be broken as a result of patch 2.3.  As per usual, recovering your mods and UI after a large patch is a huge pain in the ass.  I always swear that I’m going to bail on the custom stuff and start removing what I don’t absolutely need.  But over time, it all makes it back in there for one reason or another.  *Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr*

Beyond fixing my UI, what took me a long time to do was to update all my druid macros to reflect the new client-side power shifting change.  For non-Druids, this change allows Druids to change forms almost instantly without having to pass thru humanoid form.  So you can go from bear to cat without ever seeing the human form, all you will see now is a puff of smoke.  This change also allows Druids to drink potions and use hearthstones in form, something that we haven’t been able to do like every other class in the game.  From a PVP perspective, the nicest changes is that since shifting frees us from all snare mechanics, you can now un-snare yourself by shifting back into your current form without ever having exposed yourself in the more vulnerable humanoid state.  Good stuff.

The not so good part is that this is a band aid approach and requires people to write macros.  You can do it without macros if you just want to shift out of form and do something, but if you need to pot and go back into form, you have to write a macro. It’s important to note that anything that triggers GCD will prevent you from shifting back into a form. 

The biggest drawback to this client-side implementation versus changing the fundamental game mechanic, to go directly from form to form, is that you can be subject to latency.  Even though you may not see the humanoid form when shifting, you’re going from bear to human to cat, not bear to cat.  Depending on your spec, being caught out there in human form as let’s say a DPS kitty or bear tank, isn’t going to end well for ya.  As for me, I’m happy that I invested the full 5 points in Nature’s Grasp + Improved NG to help trap whatever is on me until I can successfully shift into form.

I tested my reliability just running back and forth in IF, shifting from one form to the next, and at least 15% of the time, I somehow lagged out into human form.
Concerned, I asked in the new global general chat (read trade channel) if any other Druids were seeing this and several people responded, yes.  I tested it out in AV, which has become lag central for the Rampage group and it’s even worse there. When some rogue is up my butt and I’m leaking life from his poisons, the last thing I need is to end up as a night elf when I’m trying to sprint to safety.  Unfortunately, more times than I’d liked, that’s exactly what happened.  Oh well, it is nevertheless an improvement. It’s just too bad that it’s not reliable.  For raiders afraid of fat-fingering out of bear while tanking, they have an option to turn off auto-shifting.  If you need that you’ll have to check the forums. I don’t remember the actual command.

Last item and the saddest of all, is that Alliance totally blows at the new AV.  Blows hard!!!!!!!!  Many people are still trying to race off to Galv and then Drek.  And no matter how many times we lose, or end up rez’g at SP, people can’t understand that defending a graveyard doesn’t mean kill the NPCs then run off.  Somehow defend in the average Alliance player’s mind means, leave three people who will casually defend the node or who are just as likely to abandon it completely, just to chase down one random opponent running in the other direction.

They don’t seem to calculate the lost progression time of having to ride back to the front from SP while avoiding a turtle at SH and a Horde occupied IBGY.  By the time we take IB back, Horde is entrenched at FW and hugging the RH mound like it’s the last virgin.  Time lost ousting them if you can and more importantly now, lost lives on your side during the sqirmish, which equate to lost reinforcements equals a big fat loss for Alliance.  I did several 30+ minute AVs whre I gained less than 50 honor reward at the end.  You’d think Alliance would buy a clue.

I’m convinced that the average Alliance player isn’t even reading BG chat.  Or worse, can’t read it because they’re too young or don’t read English!  The alternative is just too appalling – players so freakin’ idiotic that no amount to telling them, pleading with them and screaming at them changes their behavior, as they repeat the same dumb ass mistakes over and over.  One would think that leaving AV with less than 100 honor points for over thirty minutes of game time would be all the incentive needed to force a change. But if one thought that, one would be wrong. *Cries big salty Alliance QQ tears of pain and humiliation*

Comments

[stargrace]

If you're looking for some power leveling hon, all you have to do is poke me in game, we can get you to the 35+ range in 2 hours or so. I don't typically offer to level this way, but I know you've already played through these levels a few times, and it can't be fun a 3rd or 4th time.

[Capn John]

I suspect many players are still just leeching honor from AV. They're not playing, they're watching TV, chatting on the phone, Alt-Tabbing out to check email, and giving WoW & AV just enough attention to avoid revealing themselves as an AFK Honor Farmer.

I'm sorry for your losses, but thanks for the heads-up. I did a few pre-2.3 AVs on my 55 Rogue, hoping to win one so I could get the Heartseeker Xbow with its nice Rogue-friendly buffs, but lost all three AVs. At 60 I was considering going back in on the hope that things had changed, but if Alliance still have no clue how to win AV I think I'll just forget all about it and the Heartseeker.

[Saylah]

Level 30-something in a few hours?? I'm definitely going to take you up on your offer Star this weekend. Hopefully, you'll be playing at some point over the long weekend.

Capn, AV is just painful - at least in the Rampage Battlegroup. Unless you have patience and don't care if you lose a lot and get very little honor compared to previous AV, then skip it until you have the stomach for it.

[Kinless]

I know the Rampage battlegroup from the Horde side. I was recently trying to amass a little honor to pick up a Season 1 Arena weapon when they go on sale to the masses tomorrow.

Anyway, from what I see, it's kind of the same thing for us.

I follow the group to Stonehearth Graveyard. (Someone's grabbed the SH bunker. It's always seen burning so I'll assume we're defending it.)

After grabbing (but not securing the SH graveyard) a group will pull off and go down to kill Balinda and her guards. Coming back up from that Icewing Bunker is captured/being captured, and a group of us have proceeded up to Stormpike Graveyard. We always take it, and they always attempt to retake it. Even before securing the graveyard we'll head for the Aid Station. We take the Aid Station and there's been a few pesky defenders (die hards) but, yeah, it's always the same story, a Horde win.

And that's shocking because it was typically always an Alliance win before the patches. The change to the AFK system got the Horde out of the cave, and this patch really nails it.

Why are Horde so much tighter than Alliance? Smaller community that works better together to achieve goals? That'd be great, if true.

50 Honor, though, seems really too low. I thought I saw 200-300 Alliance, 300-400 Horde in our latest games. With only 50 you've barely killed a Lt.

Are your wins throught loss of Reinforcements, i.e. Horde defending, or by killing Drekk? I know the wins I've seen were by us killing Van. (I think I saw one Horde loss, I was down defending Frostwolf and we lost our last reinforcements.)

[Saylah]

You think 50 is low, what about a big fat ZERO HONOR. Yes, I've been in a few of those and according to other bitching in BG chat they've been in many of them.

To be in AV for 30+ minutes and get no honor is just insanely stupid. I dropped my healing spec and went Shadow, so that I could at least defend what I was trying to tell them is the right thing to do. When you're holy you have no choice but to follow the crowd even if they are all idiots.

I got tired of being alone at IBGY waiting for it to cap as a Holy priest. I mean what the hell was I going to do when Horde arrived??? Tell them bad jokes and heal them to death? Sad, Sad, Sad state of affairs.

[Relmstein]

At least the queue times for all the other battlegrounds are decent now. Also I see less people leaving battlegrounds mid way through the game. Before 2.3 it seem like the alliance was continually replacing players as they left when their AV queue popped. Now with AV games giving much less honor people actually play the other battlegrounds all the way through. Unfortunately I'm starting to see AFKers move from Alterac Valley to Arathi Baisin as they follow the game that gives them the best chance at free honor.

[Chloe]

i didn't read it but i want to DOWNLOAD a fairy sim on sims 2 pets and by the way do even know the sims