Category: linkfest

Rades’ fabul(or)ous Guide to making your WoW screenshots look great. Always wondered how Rades (and the hopefully-only-temporarily-retired Cynwise – how great is that Deathwing shot) managed to make screen-caps look so good.

Another week of food for thought.

• Beautifully crafted reflections on becoming The Loremaster from Linedan at Panzercow
• Epic Slant wants to be Uninstanced – arguing the instancing of everything has removed community
• Shock! An established blogger, Suzina at Kill Ten Rats, admits openly to buying gold! The blogosphere erupts in various degrees of finger pointing.
• An old post from Syp on the Guild Wars Pre-Searing community, a fascinating player driven development
• Vene dominates all comers with another great, thoughtful, analytic post on the Philosophy of Tank Gear Choices and a comment in the official Cataclysm Tank Cooldown thread. His posts are always rock solid, just wish there were more about we lowly 5 manners 🙂
• Handy new www resources page on wow.com
• I might just redirect this entire blog to Righteous Orbs. So funny.

Sad news this week with the death of Alex Chilton, vocalist with legendary band Big Star. Many many great tunes, listen to them covered at  at Cover Lay Down, then go buy #1 Record.

The (half) weekly roundup:

• Spinks mounts a nice defence of TotC as a raid trainer, given “it’s not possible to really learn how to play your class in heroics any more” – and bemoans Blizzard’s lack of in game mechanisms for player to player coaching.
• Alison Roberts, still the best wow.com writer by a mile, on how hard it is to learn to tank given the high expectations of LFD: “Everyone wants an experienced professional. Nobody wants to be there for the learning process”
• Chastity at Righteous Orbs likes the ICC buff and doesn’t care about the boasting: “it seems that somehow, in the minds of a great many people, the moment somebody gets the World First Arthas kill that’s it, and Wrath is all over bar shouting”
• Rob Pardo, Blizz Supremo, presents an interesting insight into Blizzard’s design processes: “Easy to learn and almost impossible to master / Make everything overpowered”. Worth flicking through all the slides at the end.
• Ferrel at Epic Slant wants to slow down the levelling race: “MMORPGs need to adopt the Dungeons & Dragons model once more where the game is less about reaching the next level and more about enjoying the ride”. Ties in with his earlier argument to stop level cap increases as the higher the cap the bigger the mountain facing new players: “Additional levels also stratify the player base and create a level disparity”
• For all of y’all DKs out there, Gravity is taking a stab at creating the definitive DK forums

In other news, Civ V was announced, and at the GDC Civ creator/god Sid Meier discussed  why everything game devs know is wrong.

Deep thoughts from the week past:

• Tankspot founder Ciderhelm emerges from a long silence with a detailed analysis of the future of raiding. Well worth the read, including thoughtful responses from Lore (who disagrees) and others.
• On a similar topic, Spinks thinks it might be time to bring back 40 man raiding – otherwise cross-server raid PUGs are doomed. Spinks also chimes into Cider’s discussion with some  well argued points.
• Another developer twitter chat covered at wow.com.
• There’s a reference in the chat to the wow fan at the Winter Olympics who wants Ghostcrawler’s promised Moose. Apparently not fake!
• Gravity takes on the chat challenge and investigates is threat fun?
• Veneretio defends Gearscore for PUGs – or says at least  it’s no worse that what we used to have
• Anyone been to GM island?

For the aspiring wordsmiths out there, the Guardian polls authors for their Ten Rules for Writing Fiction – apparently the first 12 years are the worst…

After last week’s tank-parison, this week it’s tank-pug-hell:

• Spinks encounters the dreaded Knockback Man! Lots of yelling ensues.
• Tarsus groups with people who don’t understand corners. More yelling.
• Tamarind on the other hand has an against-all-odds ICC PUG success. No yelling required!
• protflashes also has a delightful RFC PUG – despite earning the Huntard title mid run 🙂
• Scattered Shots retaliates by creating an Extreme Solo Hunter spec. No Huntard here.
• Still Huntering, sad to hear Pike is leaving WoW – but great news that it’s for positive reasons.
• Syp realises raiding hurts his head.
• Great Bear 101 Guide by Allison Robert, easily the best writer on wow.com

And Devo are back! Fantastic Mark Mothersbaugh interview from 2008 on Phawker too, for those that want to dig deeper. Which is everyone, right?

Read it and weep:

• It’s Tank-parison week: BBB covers Druids vs Paladins, WoW in an Hour looks at Paladins vs Warriors.
• Achtung Panzercow on new 80’s tanking Heroics in LFD
• BioBreak has LFD struggles before catching purple fever, Tobold doesn’t agree it’s a struggle, and no-one is following my Normal Mode plan 🙂
• Tankspot on LK Hard Mode progressions, and Cat predictions
• Jump on Contact present a nice infographic on the real world cost of EVE Online ships
• Interesting new site from Epic Advice, EpicPlan.com allows you to map out your Boss strategies
• Critical QQ psychoanalyses WoW’s in/competent players
• Righteous Orbs picks the wrong toon name
• Official factoids: 70% of trial players don’t get past level 10, and WoW’s 11.5 million playerbase is exactly the same as a year ago

And today’s offtopic, Music Machinery works out who the real drummers are.

Time for another round of weekly reading goodness:

• He’s a sociopath so it feels a bit wrong giving him publicity, but the Goblin is proving gear is no object to Heroic Icecrown, despite what the LFD gear rating says.
• Heroic’s in Blues? Pah, this guy is soloing Heroic Icecrown.
• And to complete the triplet, wow.com chimes in on Gear vs Skill – and raid buffs
• The beginning of the end of ever being offline: AH access on the web/iPhone. Is the fact that it may be a “premium” service a hint at things to come?
• Ensidia get World First 25 Man LK kill! Oh, no they don’t. Actually, they’re banned for cheating. But did they? No. Yes Oh, maybe they did. Etc, etc. Meanwhile Paragon actually do it legit.
• Pink Pigtail coins a new expression: Saronite Slaves
• Older Gamer reaches the Emblem “What now” Plateau – and rolls up a new alt 🙂
• Warrior tanks simplify with 3.2.2
• Bio Break forgot Tauren!
• Wired on games training athletes, including a classic Madden move being replayed in the NFL.
• Time to roll our your Proto Drake seekers for the Love is in the Air festival. Wowhead & wow.com have you covered.

Offtopic post of the week: the Sports Guys on supporting officially tortured teams. Anyone in Sydney will empathise when I say the North Sydney Bears are my team, and they more than qualify. Sigh.

Interesting articles of the week:

• Righteous Orbs on accidental Raid leading
• BioBreak on hitting the Level 80 Wall – ‘grats and kudos on the brilliant choice of picture for the post 😉
• Tank Like a Girl Storms Icecrown Citadel
• Tanking Tips on Fast Paced LFG
• Blessing of Kings on constructive criticism in PuGs
• Tanking for Dummies on learning to tank
• Ghostcrawler on Tank AoE design (20% Devastate buff incoming)
• Wow.com on Raid vs PuG skill expectations and evil DPS meters
• BigBearButt on the joy of the unpredictable pen & paper RPG (the linked comic is perfect)
• Warcraft Econ proves fishing isn’t just for the insane!

And completely /offtopic, a beautifully designed site that captures Movie title screens.