How to Survive... the PuG

The art of the PuG (Pick up Group) is a very delicate art to master. Sure, one could always find a guild and avoid PuG-ing by running with guildies, but such good guilds are hard to come by on my server. So, I ended up PuG-ing, especially when I got to endgame and had to start gearing up in Heroics. My guild of friends had appearantly spontaneously gone on hiatus, so I was left all by my lonesome to find groups to run with.

The key to surviving a PuG with your sanity intact is your mindset going in. Don't expect an efficient, well-oiled machine. Things are going to take a while to start up, and it's going to take a few minutes for players to get used to one another's play styles. As weird as it sounds, the best raid/party leaders aren't necessarily the ones who are nice to everybody. They're the ones who push just a bit harder than you want.

PuG-ing raids and dungeons are two, completely different animals. Particularly if you're pugging a raid, things are going to take a while. This should be expected. However, there is definitely a fine line between normal downtime and having to wait half an hour between attempts on Patchwerk. In fact, if your raid is wiping on old Patchy, there's probably something wrong. A key skill is reading the signs on how the raid is progressing. As long as it's constant, things will probably be okay. If things are stop and go, stop and go, you might want to consider (this is important) POLITELY bowing out.

Dungeons don't take nearly as long as raids to put together, but they do seem to fall apart much easier. A heroic group wipes once and all the sudden the healer's like 'DONE!' and leaves the group and hearths out. Then all the rest of us look at each other and shrug sadly, and I make a portal to Dalaran. People just don't mind leaving a dungeon group as much, perhaps because they know it's not all that hard to find one. People don't leave raids because they've been saved to that raid; they can't just go join another in trade chat. It's hard to say how to aid this problem. If you get in a group and the tank or healer is inexperienced, the group is going to fall apart really fast, no matter what you do as a bystander. The only thing in that situation is to be positive, and be confident with the rest of the group that you can find someone else to replace the noob. Otherwise, you're pretty much stuck.

The other possible piece of advice is obvious. Take some friends into heroics. Even if you wipe a few times, friends don't bail on friends. Or, go with some guildies. Especially in a larger guild, there's sure to be at least one who'll help you out. And above all, if you do find a good group, whether in LFG or with friends, run more than one instance with them. You can do two or three instances with a good group in the time it would've taken you to do one with a bad group. Also, be polite while you're in the group. That one jackass in the group just makes everyone want to quit and log off for a while to find something to take their aggression out on. Which isn't good for progression. Be polite, and be effective at your job, and someone will invite you back for another round of boss-beating fun.

Overall, just be patient with this whole ridiculous business. Just think about the goal: get enough decent blues to not be a total hinderance in a raid. Find a good guild, get a raid schedule going, and pretty soon, you'll be in some shiny new purples, ready for Ulduar.

UI's for dummies

When you first start your first character ever, just playing the game is pretty awe-inspiring. There's so much to learn, so much you don't know about the simplest aspects of the game, that changing the UI doesn't even cross your mind. One needs to learn to use the darn thing before modifying it, after all. However, when that newly minted character first gets a quest to go into Ragefire Chasm, there might be a few things lacking. Once you start getting a few more bags to store your stuff, the regular old system just doesn't seem to cut it so much. And when you ding 80, you learn it's pretty valuable to know just how much damage you're doing. Luckily, some very smart people have made it so the rest of us noobs can change the default UI and get some stuff done.

The one thing any raider or PvPer needs NOW is information. Whether it be a new phase of a boss encounter, GET OUT OF THE FIRE!!, or what class your opponents are in the arena, we need info and we need it fast. Also, it's good if all the information sources we have are sort of clustered together, so that it's easy for our eyes to take it in all in quick order. For me, I posistion Recount right near my spells and all the action, so I know how effective I'm being at any moment, and how big the risk of some hard-ass pug leader kicking me out of the raid for sluggish DPS is. For healers, it might be the raid frames, so they know who's dying, or for tanks, it might be... I dunno, Omen or something. (That's how much tanking knowledge I have.)

Efficiency also comes in the form of bag mods. I really hate having to sift around my huge Frostweave bags (and one Dragon-Hide Bag) to find that one stack of Infinite Dust I need to give to the enchanter. The solution: ArkInventory. Hooray! Organization also comes in the form of Dominos, a bar mod. No, not that kind of bar. An action bar. Another time-saver is Auctioneer, an AH mod that helps you buy and sell with ease.

Of course, it's all useless if your UI doesn't look good. Looking good is part of a nice, streamlined UI that helps you get stuff done. And it'd better be pleasant to look at, if your going to be looking at it hours each day. The biggest thing is consistancy. Most mods can be configured to look at least sort of similar to one another, so it's relatively simple to make a cohesive-looking UI. Also, don't let your screen get too cluttered. If you're soloing, you don't need Omen or Recount. Both mods can be told to go the hell away when not in group or raid, and can also be told to come back again when you are. This goes a long way in making a screen look nice.

A good UI is like a good book. It should have the bookish equivalent of bent pages, tattered covers, and coffee stains. These things are what makes that book yours. Part of the reason to change the screen is to make it yours. Don't use Dominos to put to double rows of buttons on the bottom and two columns on the right side. That might be what you're used to, but change it up a little. Put a column on either side, if that's what you think will work the best. I saw one UI that had no buttons on it at all; the guy decided he didn't need any additional information when he was soloing. All he had was the map, essentially. Do whatever you like, and whatever you think makes you a better player.

Bringing the players up

Once again, I was thinking today that it's kind of weird how Naxx was imported from the original game. I know that Blizzard did it because there were very few players who actually saw Naxx in its original context, but it's still kind of odd to think that some people have seen Patchwerk a thousand times. Somehow this got around to this point: in the end of Burning Crusade, Blizzard nerfed all the high end content so even low-end raiders could see things like Sunwell Plateau. They brought the content down to the players' levels. They are doing the opposite with the emblem changes in that they are bringing the players gear up to the level of, essentially, 25-man Ulduar. This doesn't mean everyone can waltz into the brand new content in the Argent Tournament; players still need the skill and experience they squire in Naxx and Ulduar, but this change eases their passing. And... that's it. Just a thought.

For all those who don't understand Twitter

The boiled-down reason for Twitter is "tell people what you're doing". This leads people to comment, "Well, I don't want to hear about when people are going to the bathroom". To all those who say that, bite me. Only assholes tweet when they're taking a shit.

Now we can get to what Twitter actually is. Twitter is a way to connect to people. For the most part you can follow whomever you want. It can be used for any number of things, from keeping up with family and friends, to keeping up with blogs and podcasts, as I do. Lately, a big part of Twitter is keeping up with current events. For example, Michael Jackson passed away about a week ago. Googling "Michael Jackson" really did no good; you may get a Wikipedia link, links to his music, but probably nothing on what's happening RIGHT NOW. If one wants to learn about something happening RIGHT NOW, one goes to Twitter and searches the subject. A whole list of things that people have tweeted and re-tweeted comes up, and things like that spread like wildfire. Twitter embodies web 2.0 in that it is an instant thing. A search like the one I described above is a snapshot of an instant in time, rather than a culumnation of things, like a Google search.

Then, there's the general arguement against technology that it's better to interact with people face to face. While this is always true, there are many, many times when such meetings are simply not possible. I might be out of town, cut off from friends and family in general. Sure, I can call or text, but that's a very singular act. I can tweet and theorhetically communicate with everyone at once. Or, I can follow people from around the web and around the world, people I would never have met otherwise. Same goes for WoW. There's a girl in my guild who I would consider a friend, to a certain extent without ever meeting her. I never would have met her or anything without this thing that I do.

Yes, there are times when everyone should disconnect, and yes, it is usually better to get together with friends and go to dinner and have a good time, but this technology allows otherwise impossible relationships and impossible communication. If you still can't see the worth in that, then bah humbug. I'll make sure and tell you the next time I'm on the crapper.

Natal? That's kids' stuff.

I was just listening to a podcast, and they were talking a little bit about the new motion technology by Sony and Microsoft. I was thinking: what's weird about this? Two or three years ago, Nintendo was talking about their motion technology, in the form of the Wii. Back then, I was still solely a console gamer, and I played mostly on the Gamecube, though I did have a PS2. I was excited about it, but I remember everyone else being very skeptical; the controller was just so different, how will this fit in, etc. I don't remember many people being all out excited, like many are now about the new stuff coming out.

So why are people so much more excited? To me, a fairly serious gamer, the Wii is mostly a flop. It's a win for Nintendo, since they've sold sooo many, but for the gamer, it doesn't do much. There are a few good games, mostly those made by Nintendo, standbys like Zelda and Mario Galaxy, that made very good use of the motion controls. Others, like Fire Emblem and Super Smash Bros. barely use the motion controls at all. But for the majority of the games I've seen for the Wii, the best descriptive word is "gimmicky". It pains me to say it, as a former Nintendo lover, but it's true. The Wii has become a console almost solely for casual gamers, something I don't really consider myself anymore. Nintendo aimed at a specific market, and that's what they got.

For me, the new ideas presented by Microsoft and Somy are no different. If possible, Project Natal is even more fake and gimmicky. If you think you look stupid waving a controller around, just wait until you're flailing your arms around like a drunkard on ice. Honestly, I think both companies are doing this for money. This is a concept that has already been proven to work. Cater to non-gamers and you open up a huge new market, all willing to spend ridiculous amounts on obnoxious peripherals. They are doing this because Nintendo is making money hand over fist and truth is, they're not making nearly as much as they want to. It shows just how much the business side of the industry has taken over: there are precious few companies who can do what they think is best for the GAME, rather than that which is best for the company. And still make money.

Now, this is not to say that this concept can't work. Perhaps game developers will actually make cool games for these new devices; I don't know. The precedent is, features like this produce lame games that let you pet some virtual puppy's head. I don't see any good shooters or RPGs coming for Project Natal. Virtual puppies are all well and good, but I don't see this as the future of gaming.

Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone's having a great holiday! Fire up the grill and have some rocking burgers or something. I'm partial to hot dogs at other peoples' BBQs, because most peoples' burger cooking skills just aren't up to par. Hard to screw up a hot dog. On a side note, does anyone think it's weird that this day is the only day that we say "4th of July" instead of like, "September 5th"? It goes along with that thing where they have day/month/year in every place except America, where we have month/day/year. Why are we always the odd duck out? Oh well. That's what makes us unique. So go blow some stuff up.

Etsy FTW!

I find that a surprising amount of people don't know about this gem of a website, so it's definitely worth mentioning. Etsy is a website where, like Blogger, people can create their own webpage. The difference is, rather than writing, people can sell items through the website. For what I'm sure is a small fee, Etsy gives people a webpage, puts featured items on their frontpage and in email newsletters, and facilitates payments between sellers and buyers. Buyers can get their products out there and make some good money on what, for most, is a simple hobby. The result is an indie mecca. People sell everything from clothes and jewelry to custom-made webpages and furniture.

The best thing is I feel like I'm supporting a real person rather than a faceless company. Most sellers are very personable, and will customize many orders to your personal needs. If you want a necklace, but want a longer chain length, it's usually no problem. Often, the seller will make the change with no extra cost to you. I buy mostly jewelry from the site, since there's so much individual, unique jewelry of all kinds on the website. There is some excellent clothing to be bought, but it's somewhat more of a slippery slope. There's a lot of clothing of... questionable taste, and it can be a lot to wade through some days. It may be easier to look for something specific than to simply browse the clothing listings, however. A friend of mine had tremendous success finding a cute little dress for prom, for example.

The only problem I've had is shipping. Most sellers send their wares through regular post. This can mean both a long wait and a potential lost package. One of the necklaces I ordered got lost, but luckily the seller was really nice and sent a new one. This could be avoided by asking the seller to ship the package by Fed-Ex or some such thing, but it will likely cost you more. It may be a small price to pay for the time saved though, especially if you need the item in a speedy manner.

So, when looking for some jewelry that will make you stand out from the crowd, or for a piece of handmade clothing for a price second-to-none, you now know where to go. Etsy.