Friday, January 23, 2009
Back to Priest
I'm back to playing my priest on bg9 for those of you in the know as double arcane mage is making me hate the game. If you're a nonbad priest, I'll run with you here on Dodgestrike. Otherwise you can find me on CS or GB. Radikalnoise will be shifting back to mostly non WoW content as who really cares until end of season anyways.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Nerd Dramas
Earlier, I mentioned I had little intention to say much about yesterday's patch; however, it's a bit hard to not at least briefly comment on the madness of the past 34 hours.
The biggest fuckshow of all shows in which there has been fucking has been the arena rating system "revamp." Basically, you can't lose PR from losses anymore and players are hitting 3k-3.5k PR. In addition, the points you earn seem pretty random; I've heard that they are basically treating your team as your rating and you're earning or losing based on your opponent's inflated PR, but I'm not entirely sure this reflects personal experience. The current system does basically ensure if you play enough, your team rating will rise, and your PR will skyrocket -- it's obviously broken, but I'm not exactly sure what is the problem. Some players are able to win 10 points games and lose only 1-2 for losses, my experience has been basically that wins and losses are both about 3-4 points.
Also of note is the failed implementation of some of the engineering improvements. The Hyperspeed Accelerators were supposd to have their CD reduced to 1 minute in addition to the additional 2 seconds on use, but their CD remains at two minutes. The Gnomish Lightning Generator was supposed to become instant cast, but remains a 1 second cast. With really no meaningful improvements to the profession and the severely less powerful rocket boots, engineering's plus side is a 2 second rocket boots at the cost of 3% bonus critical strike damage and about 50 spell power; I'm not sure it is justified.
Obviously, bugs like the pally BoP shared CD bug, the lack of stable Wintergrasp, and a myriad of other less serious bugs abound, but it is really the arena rating bug that I think is the most troubling. Roll back ratings to before Tuesday? Retroactively calculate what the ratings should be? Set personal ratings equal to team ratings and hope it all works out later? This is one of the bigger errors I've seen so far with the Arena system -- I'm a little surprised players aren't raging more about it. It would be the largest scale rollback to date in WoW if they go ahead with a full rollback.
I expect that Blizzard will employ its usual "I'm sorry you're angry about the arena system messup" strategy -- gentlemen, this is a good tactic. It's not an admission of fault or even a real apology; as much blame is placed on the players for REACTING as Blizzard for FUCKING UP. It's the equivalent of apologizing to your gf with "I'm sorry I made you overreact like that." You ARE apologizing but you're also blaming the victim. Class.
Huge dramas will abound no matter what Blizzard decides -- the path of least resistance is probably a rating and personal rating rollback.
The biggest fuckshow of all shows in which there has been fucking has been the arena rating system "revamp." Basically, you can't lose PR from losses anymore and players are hitting 3k-3.5k PR. In addition, the points you earn seem pretty random; I've heard that they are basically treating your team as your rating and you're earning or losing based on your opponent's inflated PR, but I'm not entirely sure this reflects personal experience. The current system does basically ensure if you play enough, your team rating will rise, and your PR will skyrocket -- it's obviously broken, but I'm not exactly sure what is the problem. Some players are able to win 10 points games and lose only 1-2 for losses, my experience has been basically that wins and losses are both about 3-4 points.
Also of note is the failed implementation of some of the engineering improvements. The Hyperspeed Accelerators were supposd to have their CD reduced to 1 minute in addition to the additional 2 seconds on use, but their CD remains at two minutes. The Gnomish Lightning Generator was supposed to become instant cast, but remains a 1 second cast. With really no meaningful improvements to the profession and the severely less powerful rocket boots, engineering's plus side is a 2 second rocket boots at the cost of 3% bonus critical strike damage and about 50 spell power; I'm not sure it is justified.
Obviously, bugs like the pally BoP shared CD bug, the lack of stable Wintergrasp, and a myriad of other less serious bugs abound, but it is really the arena rating bug that I think is the most troubling. Roll back ratings to before Tuesday? Retroactively calculate what the ratings should be? Set personal ratings equal to team ratings and hope it all works out later? This is one of the bigger errors I've seen so far with the Arena system -- I'm a little surprised players aren't raging more about it. It would be the largest scale rollback to date in WoW if they go ahead with a full rollback.
I expect that Blizzard will employ its usual "I'm sorry you're angry about the arena system messup" strategy -- gentlemen, this is a good tactic. It's not an admission of fault or even a real apology; as much blame is placed on the players for REACTING as Blizzard for FUCKING UP. It's the equivalent of apologizing to your gf with "I'm sorry I made you overreact like that." You ARE apologizing but you're also blaming the victim. Class.
Huge dramas will abound no matter what Blizzard decides -- the path of least resistance is probably a rating and personal rating rollback.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Patch Day
I have really nothing to say about it yet. I'm cynical that it will change much, favorably at least, but we shall see.
I know I've promised the third part of the Allie piece, it's finished, but needs work. I've been polishing and touching up some of the older stuff -- not really sure what I plan to do with any of it.
As some of you are perhaps aware, it's bonus season for hedge funds over the next few weeks, which means added face time and less nerd time. I'd like to get back to posting more creative stuff here moving forward in 09 -- for those who hate the comic-y stuff and want a return to the cynical noir stuff, bear with me.
BARE WITH ME BRO
I know I've promised the third part of the Allie piece, it's finished, but needs work. I've been polishing and touching up some of the older stuff -- not really sure what I plan to do with any of it.
As some of you are perhaps aware, it's bonus season for hedge funds over the next few weeks, which means added face time and less nerd time. I'd like to get back to posting more creative stuff here moving forward in 09 -- for those who hate the comic-y stuff and want a return to the cynical noir stuff, bear with me.
BARE WITH ME BRO
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