Stepping Out of the Shadows
Aislinana at level 10 - a red-haired pigtailed mage with a simple wand and robe stands on a mountain.
This post was brought to you by sleeplessness, double meanings and the letter N!
I’ve been playing the game for a long time, maybe not as long as some of our readers, but as far back as 2005. For a few years now, every time I wanted to compare my growth as a mage, I always thought back on the stupid mistakes I made as a new mage at 30, or 40. I didn’t know intellect provided spell crit! I didn’t know mages wanted spellpower (although there was relatively none on gear at that point, and given Cataclysm, I was partially anachronistic) and I certainly had no idea about things like macros, strafing, and add-ons.
I hit level 60 very late in the expansion cycle (another term that was relatively unheard of at that point) and got taken on farm status raids like MC and eventually BWL by the giant raid our guild collective ran. I wasn’t a very “good” mage and didn’t consider myself a “raider” until BC. Karazhan, Gruul’s (where I was a mage tank and got to do something important for the first time) is where I really cut my teeth. It is the first time I had a taste of possibly doing good DPS or knowing what that might be. Or that I might have some talent or capacity for being decent. But I was hindered for a long time by still being “new” – we had two new raid teams at that point and I was arguably on the shakier of the two. Eventually I left that team out of frustration and followed my friend (who is now my boyfriend) at the time up to the better progression raid as a back-up. I remember being overwhelmed by some of the hardest fights of the game at the time – Kael’thas taught me about things like focus frames and macros for counterspelling a focus target. I was also held back quite a lot by my computer resources at the time. Trying to do Hyjal and Black Temple competitively was hard at 4 FPS. Survivability was also dicey and so I was definitely a liability to my raid. (Though I managed to do really well on Archimonde!) It made me feel sad and incompetent for a long time but I had fun, even as a back-up, because I felt if I kept showing up, kept proving my worth, they’d enjoy having me along eventually. It wasn’t until I got some loaned parts from my friend Adrine, and consequently had better frame rates and such that I could use more things like cast bar mods and do pretty good DPS. I wasn’t the best but my movement and understanding of fights was increasing. I even pulled threat on a boss one time. The entire raid was so shocked that we all had a good laugh. At that point though, it was fairly hard to get a main slot though – our caster slots were fairly well-filled so I remained just a faithful backup even throughout Sunwell.
Coming into Wrath meant two things: I was no longer a back-up and being responsible in a lot of ways I hadn’t needed to before. It meant I had to be there every raid day, for one. I also had to get on things like raid add-ons and all that jazz. But I levelled quickly to 80 and started doing Naxx as soon as I could. I started hitting Elitist Jerks, talking with other mages and compiling some idea of gear requirements. I got our first and only one of two Turning Tides we ever got in our guild. Part of this was motivated by remembering how long I went without weapon upgrades as a back-up. Part of this was gaining an understanding of what “BIS” meant.
This entire time I’ve been growing, changing and learning more as a mage. But it isn’t until now, at the end of Wrath, that I’ve actually felt like I’ve reached a place where I don’t think of myself as that scared, shitty back-up anymore. It’s taken that long to step out of the long shadows cast by other mages, other players in my raid and mostly my own fears and self-esteem. Funny how this happens only after starting a mage blog, being asked to given my advice on other mages’ gear as well as getting close to BIS 277 gear. For the first time in my entire WoW career, I feel…capable. And it is strange and exciting. Well, as exciting as feeling “good” in a video game does. I still don’t run a damage meter in-game (I only use World of Log parses) and I still don’t think I don’t like arcane that much but I can say I’m decent and capable at 2 PVE specs. I thoroughly understand boss mechanics and feel confident to explain them to people (except Yogg-1 light this week, oops.) I even have a really amazing computer now (for taking screenshots, of course.) This doesn’t mean I still don’t make mistakes though, I think I just understand why they occur better at this point!
I’ve enjoyed being a mage for so long, and I feel that Cataclysm will be yet another level of improvement. I doubt I’ll ever be as good at math as someone like Lhivera or as professional as Ataxus but for where I am at, I think I’m doing alright. I look forward to the challenges that await in the next expansion and I’m glad I’ll have all of you guys right here with me as I make mistakes and learn new things. It’s been a long, strange trip. I’ll just have to keep all of this in mind the next time I start feeling like being a jerk to newer mages or facepalming my head when I see someone gemming for intellect. The one thing I’ll note is that mages nowadays have a lot more help than I did back when I first started out and should avail themselves of it, I know I do! Other than that, I think I’ll be alright.
(My deepest apologies for my radio silence for a while, being an awesome mage also requires having less scary things in your real life going on.)
Naming violations in WoW
Earlier this week, a poster on WoW_Ladies made a comment about how she often reports names in violation of the naming policies using the in-game ticket feature. While it takes a few days for her to get an automated GM response, she would go back to the toons’ armory pages to see that nothing had changed. I’m sure most of us have found a toon’s name that was completely out of line; some of us ignored it and kept playing, some of us, like that LJ poster, spoke up and tried to change it.
The naming policies of WoW are multi-tiered. “Highly inappropriate” encompasses racial, ethnic, or national slurs; mentions of extreme sexuality or violence; references to sexual orientation (note: Blizzard prohibits names which “refer to any aspect of sexual orientation pertaining to themselves or other players” — meaning that even gay-positive names are in violation); or any name containing obscene or vulgar language. Interestingly, names which are designed to harass another user or a Blizzard employee fall in the middle tier of infractions: it’s apparently worse to name your toon “Sapphiclover” than it is to name it “Metaneiraisfat”. (Don’t register that name; it’s probably too many characters.) The other rules are largely ignored by the gaming population: no trademarked words, no references to famous people alive or dead, no phrases (e.g., “Iamacow”), no real world titles (so “Sirmixalot” violates two of those rules). Players are also encouraged to create names that fit within the gaming universe: naming your blood elf hunter “Legolas” doesn’t work in the world of Azeroth. But, again, people are pretty lenient about these: I think it’s safe to say that most quality players ignore anyone with a name like that as being subpar.
But let’s go back to the top tier of offenses — “Highly Inappropriate”. (Trigger warning: sexual, homophobic and racial slurs are used, as well as terms referencing sexual assault.) › Continue reading
What’s in a main?
I started playing WoW in January of 2008, following a pretty intense break-up. (Because the best cure for a broken heart is a socially crippling hobby, amirite?) Meta was the first character I rolled, the first character I got to 70 on, and the first character I raided with. I lucked out in that a guild on my server actually needed a mage in T6/SWP content: I was in the process of leveling up a resto shaman so I could be more appealing to recruiting guilds, but a guild actually took me to Black Temple instead of just summoning me to ZA to drop a table and then booting me from the raid. I worked hard to make sure I’d be a good raider: read pages upon pages of theorycrafting, redid my professions over and over (including leveling tailoring to max twice), picked up badge gear, and happily respecced to provide whatever buff my raid needed. Most people I knew in my raiding guild had a few alts, but very few of them at max level, and even fewer had toons that could manage anything besides half a Kara run. Having an alt who could do T5/T6 content was virtually unheard of on my server, apart from the top guild who’d take their own alts in on farm content.
After a few months on the raiding scene, I finally got my priest up to 70, but by then the 3.0 nerf was in place and I could take her COH-spamming butt into Kara and Mag’s with no problems at all. When Wrath hit, I leveled up my mage, got plenty of heirloom pieces, and managed to get my warrior to 80 before Ulduar hit. I started tanking Naxx 10 and 25 on my off-nights, and gearing her up past the first hurdle of getting def-capped for raids was no problem at all. Badge gear was even easier to get than at the end of BC.
Now we’re near the end of the expansion: Cata looms on the horizon. › Continue reading
The Frosty, Refreshing Side of Cataclysm
Empowered Fire is very happy to have renowned frost theorycrafter Lhivera guest post for us on the changes happening in Cataclysm. See, we don’t hate frost mages!
The Frost tree is undergoing some pretty significant evolution in the Cataclysm beta. While there are still significant changes to come, I thought I’d provide an overview of the changes as they stand so far.
Damage: It Doesn’t Matter Yet
Before going into details, I wanted to address this subject that keeps coming up in discussions: it is far too early to start worrying about whether Frost’s DPS is going to measure up to that of Arcane, Fire and other DPS specs. Blizzard has not even attempted to balance the numbers at this point. That’s generally something that happens toward the end of beta, and we’re nowhere near that yet.
What’s going on now is the process of creating a rotation that both works and feels right, using the right number of spells and a set of expected talents. They’re trying to make certain that Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Deep Freeze, Frostfire Orb and Ice Lance all fit into Frost’s DPS process gracefully. It doesn’t matter yet how much damage the rotation does, only that all these spells have a place in it.
If a spell performs too poorly to fit into the rotation, that’s a problem. If a spell performs so well that it drives other spells out of the rotation, that’s a problem. Getting them balanced with each other is the current task. Only after that, which may still be weeks away, will they begin worrying about balancing total DPS.
New mage forums!
Our friend Gazimoff of Mana Obscura has started a forum community for all of us mages! It’s still in beta, but feel free to stop by, register, and start talking with lots of other mages. A lot of bloggers you may know have signed up, and we have the full gamut of players from alt mages who haven’t yet learned riding skill to mages who are bravely attacking hard mode ICC each week. So whether you’ve just rolled a mage and are learning the ropes or you’ve been slinging fireballs since Vanilla, come check out the forums and chat with us! Aislinana and I both signed up on day one, so you can see us there.
The forums are designed to be friendly and inclusive: all mages are welcome and any sort of discrimination or slurs are not permitted. (Well, we do make fun of warlocks.) I know I’m already loving the opportunity to converse with other mages I’ve followed and respected from everything about theorycrafting to keybinds to the ever-changing Cataclysm mechanics. Hope to see you there!
A Tree Grows in Beta – 31 Point Talents and Specializations
An image of the new 31 point talent trees for mages from beta.
On Tuesday, the latest beta build (build 12479) got rolled out along with some major changes – not only did Deepholm get opened up for level testing, but the new 31 point talent trees that the boards have been buzzing about since Zarhym dropped the bomb a week ago. My first thought on seeing the new trees was, “Oh my god, is that it?” (Insert “That’s what she said” joke here.) They really are very small, very concentrated. But are they enough? It looks like Blizzard really does want to pare down most of the passivity and go straight for novelty, fun stuff and power. But most people, like me, are definitely questioning how useful some of these talents will be.
At first glance, it looks like there are still a very straight division between “PVP” and “PVE” talents, with the exception being that you have to take some of the fun (or PVP-oriented) talents to flesh out a PVE/raiding build. While this might provide slight utility or benefits to raiders, it makes me wonder how useful they truly will be over the long run. Things like Improved Blink definitely have a place considering how high movement fights are right now in ICC, but will that change in Cataclysm?
MMO-Champion has provided a talent calculator for the new builds here, if you want to look for yourself: http://wowtal.com.
Let’s take a look at some of the talents and specialization aspects of the new trees.
I guess it doesn’t bend that way!
I dunno what happened with the site, but I am aware that there is a problem. I’m looking into it. Unfortunately, my web prowess seems to have peaked around 1999 so if I end up replacing it with a Geocities look-alike with animated gifs proclaiming we’re under construction, well, you’ll know why.
Things in the works: more beta streaming and commentary from Ais, a post about warrior tanking for heroics and 10 mans, and a post about the evolution of a feminist gamer. Good stuff, we hope!
If anyone can offer me assistance, feel free to hit me up on the Twitter: @MetaneiraB. Until then, I’ll be randomly poking at buttons until I either fix the site or produce the entire works of Shakespeare.
Edit – Fixed! Another problem solved by my own ingenuity and hard work, and not at all by pure luck.
I’m still just Metaneira.
Real names on forums will not be going live.
I can’t express how grateful I am to hear this. Both Aislinana and I canceled our accounts yesterday in protest over the decision to link real names to our accounts when posting on the forums. Many, many bloggers, forum denizens, and even non-WoW players spoke out against the decision, and I’m glad that we were heard. (You know something’s big when your friends or relatives who only dimly know you play this game forward you links about the controversy.)
Ais and I are in voice chat right now, almost giddy. Yes, there are still major problems with RealID: there are still exploitable security holes, the friend-of-a-friend “feature” still causes concern, and while it works cross-games, cross-servers, cross-factions, it is not cross-regional (a shame since I have a couple of good WoW friends across the pond with whom I would trust my RealID info). But … yesterday we were mourning a game we loved because the security risk was too high a price to pay for our own enjoyment. So many of our friends and guildmates canceled their accounts within the past few days, people we had planned on playing with into Cataclysm. Now we feel we can do that again. Our guild will still be alive (and as Northrend Commonwealth, not Tatooine Commonwealth), we’ll still have internet dragons to slay. There are still issues with the system, and I’m still not comfortable with the whole “you got your Facebook in my video game” ethos they’re moving towards, but at least today I feel like Metaneira can go back home.
Ais will be streaming some beta stuff today, I believe (she stopped when I called her to cheer about the change), and I’ll likely be joining her soon. But right now we’re just figuring out how to re-up our accounts:
Ais: How do you un-unsubscribe?
Meta: I don’t know, I’ve never done it!
See you in Azeroth, mages and friends. Welcome home.
RealID and Forums: Your Name, Please
Blizzard, I’m so beyond disappointed in you right that it physically hurts.
Today Blizzard announced that in the near future, with the release of Starcraft II and Cataclysm, no doubt, that RealID will be implemented on the forums to further display your real life name next to all of your posts. This has already created an outcry louder and stronger than any other in the Blizzard community in the past and revealed a hotbed of further cynicism and aggression towards RealID.
I had my misgivings about even the implementation of the RealID “friends list” feature because it seemingly had glaring security and personal privacy issues. I have even tried it out for the purposes of seeing how bad the system was and reporting it back to you, but this unfortunately came up before I could even address it. Blizzard purported not even a couple weeks ago that RealID was to be used for “real life friends” and people you could “trust with sensitive real life information.” So how does this fit into that scheme? It doesn’t, and it seems like this has all been calculated and figured out long before this went public. I’ve had some fun using the RealID system on my friends list, even with my concerns, even with people who aren’t my real life friends. While it felt a little weird exposing my real life name to some people that I had known only in-game, these were all people I had a vested personal interest in over a long period of time – cross-server buddies I knew from Elitist Jerks, guildmates who often played alts, and friends I knew strongly in other guilds via Wow Ladies. There were already some issues I didn’t like – the friends of friends feature being the biggest. I did have random people add me from X’s friends list and therefore thought I was a guildmate with X on another server. The conversations with a RealID and a third person I didn’t know exposed my real name to them. These were all minor, however, and at this time I’ve had no substantial problems with the service.
This however, is another kettle of fish.
I’m appalled at the idea that this is resulting from a systemic problem with flaming and trolls and that using personal accountability with real life names will somehow reform this. On the long, slippery curve to online transparency, a lot of people will have their liberties and privacy crushed, and many more people will be hurt than will be harmed before everything is said and done. While it is nice to think that the utopian online society has everyone being responsible because of their real names being used as tentative collateral in the social contract, it ultimately fails because of people with privilege. Privilege to disregard or not understand that there are still very few consequences for the aggressor and quite a lot of consequences for the aggressed. Anonymity is not only a glamor that one uses to express themselves on Internet, or a cloak by which to hide behind, but a form of security that some people quite desperately need for both their sanity and their personal safety. As we’ve seen in the past couple of years, the incidence of personal information being abused has gone up and there’s still very little protections for people who are caught up in this mess, despite the complete shift of the social media from anonymous to real life identification.
It makes me sad that Blizzard is participating in this with RealID. It speaks unquestionably of a privilege that Blizzard as a company has to not understand its players wants and needs, nor its support staff. For everyone on the general forums crowing about having a non-unique name, there’s quite a few who do. There’s quite a few people who’ve been the targets of Internet harassment and stalking (myself included), quite a few people who would have liked to use the service but now cannot. There’s also quite a few people who wish to use an Internet handle due to the fact that their legal name is no longer an option or appropriate to their identity. There’s quite a few people who are not legally allowed to have their name displayed on the Internet.
What happens to all of these people? Why were these people not considered? I can’t say that this is a vocal minority anymore, Blizzard. And it saddens me that you’ve gone so far now and done so little for the people who’ve gotten you there. By creating this use of the service, not only have they silenced the trolls, but they’ve also effectively silenced everyone else who cares enough about their identity and safety (and jobs! who knew!) to keep their real name safe. In their rush to be the next Facebook (despite being a stupid gaming company), they’ve made an incredibly stupid move. Whether or not I continue to support Blizzard, the company who’s been helping me through my own harassment, remains to be seen. This is an incredibly hurtful blow to their user base.
Empowered Fire Does Beta – In Real Time!
So the Blizzard finally lifted the NDA it has had on the Cataclysm beta, and that means the Empowered Fire can finally start talking about all the things you want to know about. We’re currently trying to get Metaneira in the beta with me, since I was lucky enough to be in alpha. Sorry that we haven’t been immediately on top of ALL of the information coming out of the various WoW media sites – updated talent trees, new spells and mastery, etc. There’s a lot of stuff to sort through and test but I figured out an awesome thing that we can do in the meantime and for the next couple of months – live beta streaming.
I set up a video account on Justin.tv, which will allow us to stream stuff that I do in beta and will be streaming at random times during the week, but mostly on the nights when I don’t have raids or during the day. If you want to know when a stream is going live, just go to our Twitter (@empoweredfire) and watch for updates on when and what is going on. If you want to ask questions or suggest something you want to see, use the hashtag #efdoesbeta or chat in provided stream page. This is all a new experiment so bear with me as I try to figure out how this all works!
First official stream event will be Tuesday, July 6th at 7 PM Eastern Standard time – Goblin Starting Zone.
I will be rolling another goblin mage and going through the first 10 or more levels so people can see how the starting zone looks.
Hopefully this is as exciting for you guys as it is for me, and cross your fingers that this works as intended. Be sure to check Twitter and the stream at random times to see when I’m just random streaming from Cataclysm Beta.
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