WoW Log 28 Dec 07

Well I hope everyone has had an enjoyable Christmas.  I can’t complain really, Santa decided to bring me a late present, perhaps it was because he was so busy he figured I could wait a couple days and surprise me with a gift left on my porch…What was this gift?  Well it was a Logitech G15 gaming keyboard.  I am happy I got it, I am still tinkering with the different macros and bindings.  I went to the logitech.com website and downloaded the latest software and got everything installed, it automatically detected my two games I am currently playing, WoW and Enemy Territory Quake Wars without a hitch.  When I started up WoW the LCD display immediately showed me my current character’s stats, which is very cool.  Overall I am happy with the keyboard, the litup keys are nice too because I prefer to game in a dimly lit environment most of the time.  Usually the only light I have is from the television playing in the background.

Also, I picked up a new mod from the curse gaming mod site, it is simply called Quest Helper and it does just that, it helps you complete quests showing you the quickest routes and where to go and what to do.  In a way it makes questing too easy, but I have to say it makes life much easier, I have taken a lot less time looking up quest information on wowhead now giving me more time to get stuff done.

Tabeyus is level 65 now, I have done a couple guild runs into the Blood Furnace as a tank of course and I think I am getting better at it.  Last night there was 4 of us, our main tank a warrior, a priest, a hunter and myself and besides a few hiccups we owned the place.  I got a new set of shoulders off the last boss, rounding out my feralness quite well.  I can’t wait to get flying form…traveling through the outlands on the ground isn’t so bad, but could be so much better with air travel.  I managed to reach level 375 in alchemy over the past few days by buying the required mats to make the dreamless sleep potion.  One less thing to worry about later.

I also started doing a few daily quests with Giznad, since he has nothing better to do he might as well earn some gold for me, so I have been doing the Skyguard quests taking out the Skettis eggs and escorting the prisoner.  It is an easy way to get 20 gold every day.

Helzbelz is now level 26 and playing him has been a learning experience, testing out my healing abilities while in a group has been fun, I have found that the holy shield is my best defense in almost every situation besides when I want to make a jump from a high distance it doesn’t protect me from taking damage.  I am going to go with a shadow priest build for leveling and I might change that once I get to a higher level.

Until next time friends I will be lost in the grind and I hope everyone has a Happy New Year.

Back to Azeroth

Well, friends, gamers and anonymous visitors to the site, I have some news to share, whether that is good or bad who knows, but let me get on with it.  I decided to go ahead and get resurrected in the World of Warcraft.  A friend of mine sent me a scroll and I accepted and installed the game and downloaded the Burning Crusade, saved me from having the install it using the 4 CD’s since I didn’t get the DVD version.
The updating process actually was taking a while once I logged in so I went and found the file online, I think the 2.3 patch was around 692mb and took me about 45 minutes to download.  Compared to Lord of the Rings Online the game files seem to be a bit quicker to update, perhaps because Blizzard has had plenty of experience with updates or who knows…but the total process of installing, downloading, updating took somewhere around 2 hours maybe.
Of course, I can’t play WoW without a good UI mod, the trusted compilation I used forever was from LedMirage.net.  So, I went ahead and logged on the site and downloaded the latest version and installed that.  Now, I think I am ready to fire it up.
I login to the game and decided to start with my level 70 hunter, at first the mods were all default and there were all kinds of things on my screen, the quest minion was taking up a big part of the screen, so I found the setting to turn that off.  Then of course, the hotbars needed tweaking, the addon that does that is fubar, much easier to use then the previous program, which I don’t remember the name of it right now.  So, I do all the initial setting up and go to Ironforge and check my bank, I forgot how much crap I had collected…some of it useful, most of it I don’t know, but half of my bags are full of quest related items…jeez.
I use my hearthstone and go to Shattrath and remember how much fun it is having a flying mount…weeee!  I checked my friends list and there was actually a friend who was online that I remember, I sent a message and got a warm reply asking where I had been…hehe  It has been since March now and this person still remembers me, that is always nice.  I also remember being in a guild, I checked the guild tab and see that they haven’t disbanded but they have made a new guild, I went ahead and /gquit anyway, time for a fresh start.  The only thing that I really recall when I left was trying to level my pig I got from the eastern plaguelands.  So I went out and grinded on some beasts just getting a feel for my skills and remembering how to play until that old, so I decided to logon to my old friend, Tabeyus, my druid.
I login and the very first thing I see is a night elf rogue dancing wearing nothing but skivvies and of course I have to laugh, then she asks, “Do I have cameltoe?”.  I have no response…it is kind of strange, being gone for months and coming back to see that staring at you…surreal I would say.
I was still an officer in the old lost guild, Absolution, but once again, I am starting over new here, so /gquit.  The first thing I am trying to do is remember all of these quests I have started and where I need to go to do them.  So a quick trip to Thottbot.com helps out a lot.  Tab was level 61 and had just recently respecced from healing to feral.  I really enjoy the feral aspect of being a druid, going from either being a DPS dealing cat to a tanking bear is really fun.  After running around a little while in Hellfire Peninsula doing quests, (and making about 70 gold in a few hours) I went to the auction hall to see if I could upgrade a few items for cheap.  The gear I was wearing came mostly from drops in either Scholomance or Blackrock Depths, I ended up replacing about half of my gear for under 40 gold.  I also remember getting a lot of upgrades from questing in the Burning Crusade, so I don’t want to go all out wasting my money.
I found a level 61 hunter who was doing a group quest there in Hellfire and we ended up making friends, I am assuming it is a she, she said she was female and I have no way of proving that or not, so I will call her she for now…Over the span of the couple days I spent questing we did quite a bit of them either together or with a group.  I managed to pull of two ramparts runs and I got a nice new mace out of that.  I was the main tank for a blood furnace run and I now remember why I dislike PuG’s so much.  The group itself as a whole was fine, it was just the amount of time it took for us to get a complete group and actually start the run, the rogue we started with was AFK from the very beginning and would show up long enough to kill a single group of mobs just to leave for another 20 minutes…that went on up until the first boss, then he was booted.  We got by the first boss and took a break, total time invested in the run at that point was about an hour and a half.  We got another level 62 feral druid, he had about 8k health points compared to my mere 6600 hp.  But because the leader of the group thought I could use the “learning” I remained main tank and that was fine with me.  Then, after another 30 minutes go by we are halfway to the second boss and our healer, a paladin leaves abruptly.  We took another break and got a really good level 66 healing paladin, he was really good and knew what he was doing.  We burned through the second boss and finally made our way down to the last, forgive me for not recalling names, I don’t have a photographic memory, but right before the fight our fearless leader asks the paladin to remove the added shadow damage magic from us or we could die…the paladin said he has never done it before and that we would be fine, the leader simply states, Just do it.  The paladin replies saying, “You think I don’t know how to play this boss?”.  That was the last thing said, and so the fight begins, I charge in and take on the agro and the boss says, come closer, we all run for it, and he spews out this massive aoe cloud of stuff, we end up owning him and we are done…whatever dropped I didn’t need, it was a 2 handed axe, but at least I completed the exploration of the blood furnace quest.
I had to take a break after that almost 4 hour escapade into the bowels of hell…no it wasn’t that bad.
Oh yeah, I ended up joining my hunter friends guild, Pug repellant.  I thought that was a pretty funny name and she seems nice enough.  I am so happy to see a guild bank, that was really neat, there is a set amount of gold you can withdrawal daily for whatever you need and you can take out items so many times.  I deposited 20 gold in there since I am generous and don’t have a big need for it right now.
One really funny thing, and this one caught me off guard, was I was online last night doing a few quests in the marsh and I get a tell from someone in the guild asking if I was in the guild Absolution and I replied, yes, thinking that was odd, and he replied saying it was Tedrian, he was a druid in the guild and we were both level 60’s with the same gear and everything, I said wow, that is cool…what are the odds of that?  The character in the guild is his daughters, I asked if he was all decked in epic gear, he said yeah, he has been playing raiding and all that since last year.  It is funny how small the world really can be, you never know who you will run into out there.  I was thinking also, what if I hadn’t taken a break from WoW?  Would I be in a raiding guild?  Well, I don’t regret anything; I had a lot of fun in Middle Earth and made some good friends, after all that is an important part of playing MMO’s I think.

LotRO UI Tweaking

Some of you might recall my post way back when I discussed my current settings on my PC for LotRO. Well in case you don’t, let me refresh your memory.I originally started out with the detect optimal settings for my computer, which it set the graphics to low on about everything. I went in and tweaked a few things, moved a few things to medium, etc…well, ever since the release of Chapter 10, and a few changes I made to my PC, which I have since rectified, I was having a lot of lag/ stuttering issues, especially in Bree and other highly populated areas. The last straw was when the last homely house in rivendell had vanished…I mean come on…you don’t have to add insult to injury now.

So, last night I decided to change my graphical settings to gain a few more fps and better overall quality experience. The biggest change I made was taking my screen resolution down from 1280×1024 to 1024×768. The next thing I did, which was mandatory due to the resize of my screen was use the UI scale on almost everything on my screen. See screenshots below:

        

I had to test out my changes and was filled with glee as I was in a full fellowship in all out battle for a good hour and a half with no lag issues at all, plus the quality of the graphics seemed more vibrant and fluid.

Anyway, here is a little breakdown of the latest changes they brought to the UI settings in Chapter 10:

User Interface

New/Changed Options

• There is a new ‘Try On’ button in the vendor ‘buy’ dialog screen. Pressing the button will equip the item for the avatar in the dressing room (“Does this make my butt look fat?).
• You can now disable the Dread/Hope FX! The option is “Enable Dread Effects” located in the “Special Effects Options” section of the “UI Settings” option tab.
• Added a new UI option, “Floating Text Always On Top” that will force floating labels for characters to always draw on top of 3D objects (Legacy behavior.)
• Added a new UI option, “Floating Text Size” that allows you to change the size of text that appears above characters and objects.
• There is now a way to select your tracked mob and the tracked mobs of the hunters in your fellowship (if they have the trait active). See the Key Bindings option page and look for Select Next Tracked and Select Previous Tracked
• Added a Reputation panel to the Character UI.
• The Dressing Room key mapping is now under the Panels section.
• You can now click anywhere on a raid member’s pet vitals to select that pet.
• The ESC key now properly closes text item windows when reading notes and such.
• There’s no longer a re-bindable key mapping for “Drop Camera,” which wasn’t usable anyway.
• Added a new bindable input action for the fellowship maneuver assist button.
• Now the fellowship maneuver UI buttons can be fully mapped, so no more mouse clicks!
• Added a new Combat Option so you can disable skill buttons being used to target nearest enemy if you do not have a selection when pressed.
• The key binding for Item Sell Locking is set to (Ctrl+T) by default now
• Added new key bindings for assisting individual Fellowship members. These default to SHIFT+F2 through SHIFT+F6.
• Vault bags do not automatically show themselves when the vault is opened. You can open all vault bags by pressing the “I” button (default)

UI Skinning

• There are a whole ton of new art assets that can be skinned! See the updated UISkinArtPack.zip (available on lotro.com after August 20) for samples!
• Fixed the bug where you had to replace one image in order to get image repositioning to work.
• There are two new keywords in the SkinDefinition.xml file that you can use to identify the origin that an element should scale from. These new keywords are ScaleOriginX and ScaleOriginY.

Lord of the Rings Online EULA

Curiosity was getting the better of me. Since a lot of the traffic to my blog is from people searching for a LotRO addon I thought I would find out what is actually allowed in the game. I won’t post the whole EULA, but if you are curious you can read the Codemasters Code of Conduct HERE.

Here is what the CoC or EULA states:

You may not create, post, use or distribute any utilities, emulators or other third party software tools (including, without limitation, macroing programs, botting programs, server emulators, client hacks, map hacks, and data gathering utilities).

So, all those little nice addons that we became so dependent on in WoW aren’t allowed to be used in LotRO. I really wish there was a way to put notes on the maps in the game, but oh well, we adapt and overcome. Out of all the addons I used in WoW I really miss auctioneer the most. Although the economy is still in the infant stages it would be nice to know the average price for a stack of sturdy leather or some gold ore.

I wonder what the deciding factor behind the decision to ban all macro programs was. Most likely it is to eliminate any power leveling and keep the bots at a minimum.

I have to say I feel that the power leveling service provider’s shouldn’t be allowed to operate with no consequences. I know many times I would find and report what I thought were characters who were bots, sometimes they would disappear for a while and then I would see them again. I guess as long as there is a market for these things and money is changing hands it will be an eternal battle with no real solution in clear sight.

LotRO Log 14 May 07

The weekend was busy for me, didn’t get much time logged in the game, but that’s alright. I reached level 20 yesterday in the lonelands. I find myself being overly careful at times playing Abellio my loremaster. I have died more times since arriving in the lonelands than I care to mention almost always to do poor execution on my part. I know my weaknesses more and am realizing the full potential of my class. It is imperative I keep my bear alive or else when surrounded by 3 or more mob’s I will go down. Although I am defensively weak character my pet and firepower are very capable of handling 3 mob’s at one time.

I finally took the time to find a new skin for my UI. It is called the Spirit of Elfwood and can be found HERE. I really like the way it is put together, almost minimal in appearance, but very functional at the same time. Here are some screenshots:

I also was invited into the kinship Strength In Numbers by my friend Dagfinnr. I am looking forward to the adventures that lay ahead of us. I am the only Loremaster in the kinship at this time, which makes me feel kind of special…heh

The quests I am doing now in the lonelands are new to me, and I am getting back that since of adventure again that I had lost before. I can’t wait to team up with some kinmates and finish a lot of fellowship quests. One I am really looking forward to is taking back Weathertop.

I found myself climbing the giant hill and I stopped and noticed the sunrise early Saturday morning…

Very nice, I had to pause for a moment and just enjoy the peacefulness I felt. I sensed that my bear, JoeMama, was trying to communicate with me somehow, maybe it’s the link we share not Master and pet, but brothers in this wartorn land just trying to find our way through it alive. I heard the words in my head, they simply said, seek friend and you will find…I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but I think time will help me understand what this beast has to offer me.