Today marks the 1st birthday of Mists of Pandaria, or as I like to call it, Pandacraft. Like many Warcrafters, I was very skeptical when the expansion was announced at Blizzcon 2011. Pandas? Really? I was ready to quit the game not just because of this announcement but because I was having a hard time trying to raid and this announcement just made too much badness incoming. SWTOR seemed the saviour!  Thankfully, SWTOR failed me andI found a new guild that was raiding at times that ere compatible with my shift work. I decided to stay around and see what Pandacraft would bring.

I tested the beta and it looked cool but looks alone wouldn't be enough to make the whole idea of Panda's seem like a great expansion focus. On the PTR I played very little as I don't like to burn myself out on the content before it matters so I dodn't know what the content was going to be like, but the good news was it didn't look too gimmicky, certainly not like Kung-Fu Panda. The date was announced as September 25th and I was as ready as I would ever be. I'll admit I was nervously excited as I really expected it to suck and if it did I was going to lose a fantastic guild and the game I loved in the next few weeks.

To compound matters, my guild, Exhumed of Shadosong EU, decided to get the World Last kill of heroic Deathwing (we like to think that but it is a complete guess) minutes before the expansion was about to hit. The servers didn't go down as they had previously, to give us access to the new content, Blizz had mastered a new tech to allow things to be done seemlessly. Then at midnight server time the launch happened and we went to Pandaria. The usual lag ensued but hey we were there!

The mad rush to level showed, what looked like awesome content. This was good. I was happy, everyone else was happy too. We dinged 90 and then we discovered the biggest problem, it wasn't Pandas it was dailies and retarded rep grinds. 

Oh how I loathe Halfhill and the beauty of the Valley of the Four Winds. Why, cooking dailies. Then there was the Golden Lotus dailies/rep grind argh!!!! Why was I doing the Golden Lotus dailies? Well as an OCD enchanter I wanted all the enchant recipes and they also happened to be the best wrist and weapon enchants. And for that I need exalted with the Shado Pan. Except I couldn't get rep with the Shado Pan because I needed to be given access to them by repping up with the Golden Lotus who also didn't like me enough to get access to all the quests!

By the end of the first week the Exhumed team was ready for raiding, we had found that the 5man  heroics were not too hard, scenarios were easy and with the abundance of dailies valour was capped easily. Eventually the rep grind ended and Exhumed and I got into the cycle of dailies, heroics, sceanrios and raiding. 

The raiding content in Pandacraft has been fantastic and I'll have to admit looking at the tier 14 and tier 15 content it has probably been the best raiding expansion ever. Sure there is still nothing to touch the likes of Ulduar or Karazhan but likewise there has been no Hyjal Summit or Crusader's Colisieum.

The expansion has also given us pet battles, something I expected to suck and has proven me wrong there too as they are great fun and a distraction from the main focus of the game, clever stuff Blizzard keeping us in your game when we may be bored of your game.

Scenarios were something that I did get excited about, until we got them. I was expecting scenarios to replace group quests at all levels and these would be a great way of delivering the epic end of zone questing experience from Vanilla without the annoyance of having to spam general chat with stuff like "LFM Dun Modr quests" for an hour before giving up hope and just moving to the next zone. Sadly their implementation was less epic and they are just dull running them much beyond the second or third time.

I thought I'd save the best till last. The feature that I have enjoyed most this past 12 months has been Challenge Mode Dungeons. These are awesome and I really would love to see this feature expanded upon to include ALL 5 man content ever released. Not only is this really fun content to run it is challenging. It is how I like my 5 mans. It makes you play your class to its maximum potential, it makes you CC, it makes you think and yes it maks the elitist prick part of me smile because I know that every Joe Schmoo won't be able to do it and I want it to stay that way and, thankfully, so does Blizzard.

My hopes for the next 12 months are that we will have the next expansion around Easter, I really don't want more than 6 months running Siege of Orgrimmar (or any other raid to be honest) but I don't think that will happen and if anything I expect that it will be summer when the expansion hits.

So that's my fly by review of this expansion's 1st year, what have your highlights been? What features have you loved? and loathed? I'd love to hear from you guys either via Twitter or in the comments below.

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Apologies for this actually being a Tuesday screenshot, work, Timeless Isle and slacking  stopped me :( However, in better news, after 4 weeks stuck up a tree in Hyjal waiting for Ban'thalos to spawn he did, this morning and after a failed attempt on successfully tamed him on my 2nd try!

For those who may be wondering, his name is the Native American Indian word for owl. more »

Recently I have become a bit concerned with how badly my PC is running WoW so I have done a bit of researching around on how to boost this performance without spending a shed load of cash.

My PC specs are:

• Case: Novatech Gaming Case with 3x Scythe 1900rpm120mm Fans (1x exhaust 2x intake)
• Power Supply: Novatech 750w
• CPU: AMD Bulldozer FX-8 Eight Core 8150 Processor
• Heatsink: Cooler Master TX3 Evo (with 2x Scythe PWM 92mm Fans in push/pull config)
• Motherboard    GIGABYTE GA-770T-USB3 AM3
• Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3
• Graphics Card: Palit GeForce GT 630 1GB GDDR3
• HDD: SanDisk 128GB Solid State Hard Drive + Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA HDD
• Monitors: 1x 23" Samsung (1920x1080) and 1x 19" Dell (1440x960)
• ADSL: 2MB connection (I'm 8km from my exchange, so best I can get until fibre comes)

Nothing amazing but also nothing really crappy and it does deliver a reasonable rendition of WoW. However, over the summer the system had been running hot, 28C at idle, 42C when running WoW and in LFR the temp would rise to 48-50C and my FPS would vary between 10 and 60 FPS in LFR depending on activity. In normal 10 man raids I vary between 45 and 60 FPS. My graphics settings were custom running through the list my settings were:

• Display Mode: Windowed
• Resolution: 1920x1080 (Wide)
• Multisampling: 8x
• Vertical Sync: Disabled
• Texture Resolution: High
• Texture Filtering: 8x Anisotropic
• Projected Textures: Enabled
• View Distance: Ultra
• Environmental Detail: Ultra
• Ground Cluter: High
• Shadow Quality: High
• Liquid Detail: High
• Sunshafts: High
• Particle Density: High
• SSAO: Disabled
• Triple Buffering: Disabled
• Reduce Input Lag: Disabled
• Hardware Cursor: Enabled
• Graphics API: DirectX 11
• Max Foreground FPS: 60
• Max Background FPS: 8

The biggest concern was that I was cooking my unclocked CPU and that this was killing my FPS as I knew from previous research that the main cause of performance loss while playing WoW is the CPU battering that WoW does.As my ADSL runs at a pitiful 2MB, I had already installed the Leatrix Latency Fix to ensure that I was getting the lowest latency possible. This is a registry hack, which according to the author "will reduce your online gaming latency significantly by increasing the frequency of TCP acknowledgements sent to the game server. For the technically minded, this is a program which will modify TCPAckFrequency."

Then while listening to the Bitter and Salty podcast (yes it is a WoW podcast!) they were discussing a similar issue and provided a link in their show notes to a pair of fixes (fix 1 and fix 2) they found on the official forums. They made interesting reading and made some suggestions about moving a few in game tasks directly to the graphics card software. I followed the instructions and amended the setting in my NVIDIA Control Panel and the below settings in game:

• Multisampling: 1x
• View Distance: High
• Environmental Detail: High
• Ground Cluter: High
• Shadow Quality: Fair
• Liquid Detail: Good
• Sunshafts: Disabled
• Particle Density: Good

These changes make minimal graphical difference to the game but still gave me a great performance boost as I was now running between 30 and 60 FPS in LFR depending on activity. In normal 10 man raids I vary between 50 and 60 FPS. My temperatures were unchanged. So I did some reading and found that my CPU was most likely being forced to run as a 4 core processor by Windows and looking at the task manager performance module confirmed this to be the case. A quick registry tweak (shown below) fixed that but the temps still sat in the mid 40s when running WoW. 

I also discovered that my CPU was badly configured as by overclocking it I could raise the performance and lower the temperatures by dropping the voltage (all beyond me but the instructions were simple to follow). I ended up with a smoother running PC that was now running about 5C lower.  

CPU cooler with dust jacket. Not good.

Ultimately with a big enough improvement I was happy esecially as the room ambient temperature was hovering around the 20-25C most of the time. 

But two weeks after making the change my BIOS battery decided to die and I had to replace it. Upon opening my case I was presented with a nasty surprise as my CPU cooler was covered in dust, I wish I had not gone into "ERMGHERD PARNICK" mode when I saw it and cleaned it off before thinking about a photo but the one here is a good representation.

Needless to say since cleaning the cooler up (and adding a 2nd fan to suck air through the CPU cooler in addition to the one that was blowing air through the PC is a lot happier and now sits at room ambient temperature when not under load and around 28C when playing WoW.

So next on my shopping list for my PC are some heavy duty dust filters, although I am concerned that they will reduce my air flow and increase temperatures but it can't be as bad as a layer of dust! Can it?

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Duane has returned this week and to be honest he is wearing my patience down. For my newer readers, he is not a real person, he is merely a character I have created to represent "my typical guildmate". This post contains not one incident but two! 

Duane#1 is an old time guildy, he has a history of declaring himself as a wannabe raider but also has a history of changing his main, random afks, turning up late having to leave mid way through the raid and has been generally unreliable. Our progression team is also looking for a hunter and Duane decided he wanted to try out. Exhumed has 2 raid teams and we always start people off in the lesser progressed raids so we can get a look at them and give them a chance to gear up before we let them into the progression team. Duane started his trial by turning up 10 minutes late, then taking afks and left early. He then repeated this the next raid and in the 3rd one he was 10 mins late again so I replaced him and told him I wasn't going to accept him into the progress team, at which point he decided to realm transfer the hunter to find a raid team that was compatible with his available times.

Yesterday we were short a man for our 2nd team run and were facing Megaera with 2 healers and average DPS. This meant we were looking for a really good DPS or a 3rd healer and Duane shouts up in /g saying he'd like to join on his DK who was in PVP gear and an average ilvl of 483. I told him we needed someone with much better gear or a healer. After 30 minutes of trying to fiond the right person, we made the decision to cancel the raid. Just after this I got had the following conversation with Duane:

Duane: not raiding? 

Me: No, cant get a team capable of taking down Megaera  

Duane: now kids back at school im capable of being here more now gearing up dk atm bored of hunter  

Me: How long before you're bored of that?  

Duane: wont be I get the impression tht u guys are not my greatest fans?  

Me: It is not that but you have a history of changing your mind, getting bored with toons and when joining raids disappearing mid way through when we raid we need someone we can depend on to turn up, do a good job and not keep other people waiting around  

Duane: only wen kids on holidays its hard for me to find time u must understand tht. but normally all i need is 2 mins at 8:30 to put kids to bed and thts it, u will see i will prove myself 

Me: That I understand completely, but as a raid leader I can't be pissing 8 people off to accommodate 1 persons RL needs  

Duane: true tht but 2 mins at 8:30 is all i will need ever,  i have alot more time play with intference now 

Me: But if that is in the middle of a rid that isn't good enough  

Duane: so u wont accept 2 mins at 8:30 to put my kids to bed? so im really not gonna get a chance to raid here really then?  

Me: No, because it interupts the flow of a raid we have a scheduled raid break at 2130 UK if you're wanting a break before that we would have to take a break 30 mins in to the raid. We have a set raid time because it fits the lifestyle of most guild members, many like myself are here because of that. Sadly we cannot make things fit for everyone 

Duane: totally cool, I messed it up for myself really 

Shortly after the conversation ended he /gquit and logged off. It saddens me to lose guildmates but to be honest losing someone that can't accept that the guild can't be shaped to their personal circumstances at everyone else's loss is something I can live with.

Then today Duane#2, a recent recruit to Exhumed who has signed up for a few RBGs and a raid once (if my memory serves me right. /w me and the conversation was:    

Duane: what is the min ilvl for the 2nd raid team? really need to start gearing up  

Me: With Siege coming this weekit is 520ish 

Duane: for 2nd team?  

Me: Well 1st and 2nd team will be doing same content so ilevel is the same  

Duane: im sitting on 480 and no more drops from lfr but i cant get that from LFR apparently, been looking on boss loots 

Me: You could have been signing up for the Sun/Mon runs and spending your valor on the 522 gear from the rep vendors 

Duane: i have been but dont have enough valor atm for another peice 

Me: You have not signed for many runs otherwise as a healer you would have got in the team

Duane: i have been and for pvp BG's also been on the website alot 

Me: And if you valor capped each week and had been running 4x ToT lfr you would have better than 480 ilevel  

Duane: im unlucky with drops if they drop at all,i have [Contender's Wyrmhide Leggings]+ [Hurricane Belt]+2x trinkets pulling my ilvl down thats all

Me: You have killed Jonrokh x1, Horridonx1 and Councilx2 in ToT lfr on Duane. That means you have not tried to gear up  

Duane: hmmmm, deffo run more LFR than that  

Me: with only 4 boss kills you cant claim to be unlucky  

Duane: iv deffo ran LFR more times than that, im missing some achi also that i should have from running all the bosses in LFR, I'll run LFR this week, the reset is tomorrow 

Me: Well you'll still be a long way off the min level. We'll probably run a flex raid Monday that you could join  

Duane: ok  

Me: Ideally you'd need to be close to 500 but depending on who signs it won't be a major problem if you're a bit under 

Duane: i will try and gear as much as i can  

Me: and sign up for the raids on the calendar, you should also gem and enchant your gear 

Duane: i am working on it, my JC is 600 but my enchant is 450+  

Me: You're not working on it, nothing is gemmed or enachanted  

Duane: so im working on it  

Me: The AH has all the stuff and there are JC and enchanters in the guild that will do the enchants and cuts for free if you give them the mats  

Duane: Duane is busy fighting against Looking For Raid - Megaera (100%, 25/25 people alive)

Duane#2 actually upset me more than Duane#1, because I can't stand being lied to, His gear is shown below as grabbed by Mr Robot, and currently sits at ilevel 480, unenchanted and ungemmed:

His raid experience is also far from awe inspiring (see below), and with a total of 4 boss kills in Throne of Thunder LFR I'd hardly call getting no loot unlucky.

So, the guy has put in zero effort and is now expecting a spot in our Siege of Orgrimmar raids. Call me mean but I really can't see the point in carrying people through content when they're simply too lazy to help themselves. Although as you'll see at the end, he did get off his ass and go straight into LFR, although it is too little too late I fear.

Is this typical of my guild? No thankfully, but I think it is typical of the entitled casual that the game encourages now by throwing loot around like sweeties and these guys just don't realise the impact gear has on their performance. Sure if you're a world first raider type you probably could compete in such gear and if I'm missing out on a player of that calibre, I'll regret it when I find out he's moving to Method or Paragon next month.This all reminds me of an excellent parody by Sharm.......

Am I being mean?  If you think I am I'd love to hear how you would deal with the situation.

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Been threatening to share my Trade Skill Master 2.0 import strings for a while so I finally got of my rear end and decided to make it a reality. As I have many strings, I have decided to split them into the sub sections, This post will give you the imports for what I call Materials, and I'll deal with them purely in alphabetical order of my names.

The first is "Archaeology", this includes all of the keystones such as the Dwarf Rune Stone:

52843,63127,63128,64392,64394,64395,64396,64397,79868,79869,95373

Next up is "Cloth" this includes bolts of cloth as well as the base item such as Runecloth and Bolt of Runecloth:

14047,14256,21840,21877,24271,2589,2592,33470,41510,41511,4306,4338,4339,53010,53643,72988,82441

My "CraftingSpecials" contains items that are used in craft but don't fall into any other category, (e.g. Shadow Silk)

10285,11382,12804,12809,12811,13422,13926,14227,15409,17010,17011,17056,17202,17203,21881,23572,30183,31080,3182,32428,34249,40199,42253,43102,4337,4402,45087,47556,49908,52078,5373,5500,5635,6358,6359,6530,69237,7077,7079,71998,7971,80433,814,83064,94289

All my enchanting mats are grouped together into a group called "Dusts". Here you will find things like Lesser Magic Essence:

10938,10939,10940,10978,10998,11082,11083,11084,11134,11135,11137,11138,11139,11174,11175,11176,11177,11178,14343,14344,16202,16203,16204,22445,22446,22447,22450,34052,34053,34054,34055,34056,34057,52555,52718,52719,52720,52722,74247,74248,74249,74250,74252

"Elementals" is a group that does not contain shaman pets but rather items such as Living Essence as these drop from elementals:

10286,12803,12808,21884,21885,21886,22451,22452,22456,22457,22572,22573,22574,22575,22576,22577,22578,23571,35622,35623,35624,35625,35627,36860,37700,37701,37702,37703,37704,37705,52325,52326,52327,52328,52329,54464,7067,7069,7070,7075,7076,7078,7080,7082,7972

All the raw mats for crafting gems are found in my unimaginatively entitled "Gems" group, in which you'll find things like Black Diamond:

11754,1206,1210,12361,12363,12364,12799,12800,1529,1705,18335,21929,23077,23079,23107,23112,23436,23437,23438,23440,23441,24243,24478,24479,32227,32228,32229,32230,32231,32249,36783,36784,36917,36918,36920,36921,36923,36924,36926,36927,36929,36930,36932,36933,3864,39998,42225,52177,52178,52179,52180,52181,52182,52196,5498,7081,71805,71806,71807,71808,71809,71810,76130,76131,76133,76134,76135,76136,76140,76141,774,7909,7910,818

For making buff food and drinks you need "Groceries", here I include everything a cook would need, unless you're cooking your books!, like Lean Wolf Flank and 100 Year Old Soy Sauce;

1015,1080,1179,12037,12184,12202,12203,12204,12205,12206,12207,12208,12223,13754,13755,13756,13757,13758,13759,13760,13888,13889,13893,1468,159,17194,17196,18255,20424,21024,21071,21153,2251,22644,23676,24477,2593,2594,2595,2596,2672,2673,2674,2675,2677,2678,2680,27422,27425,27429,27435,27437,27438,27439,27515,27516,27668,27669,27671,27674,27677,27678,27681,27682,27854,27860,2886,2924,31670,31671,3173,33444,33823,33824,3404,34412,34736,35562,35948,35949,3667,36782,3685,3712,3730,3731,41800,41801,41802,41803,41805,41806,41807,41808,41809,41810,41812,41813,43007,43009,43010,43011,43012,43013,43501,44834,44835,44853,44854,44855,44940,4537,4603,4655,46784,5051,53062,53063,53064,53065,53066,53067,53068,53069,53070,53071,53072,5465,5466,5467,5468,5469,5470,5471,5503,5504,58262,58265,58278,60838,62778,62779,62780,62781,62782,62783,62784,62785,62786,62791,6289,6291,6303,6308,6317,6361,6362,67229,6889,723,74659,74660,74661,74662,74832,74833,74834,74837,74838,74839,74840,74841,74842,74843,74844,74845,74846,74847,74848,74849,74850,74851,74852,74853,74854,74856,74857,74859,74860,74861,74863,74864,74865,74866,75014,769,7974,81403,81405,81414,8150,8365,85506,85583,85584,85585,98111,98116,98118

All the flowers lovingly picked by my herbalist get sold under a group called, "Herbs" whicch includes pretty flowers such as Icecap;

1288,13463,13464,13465,13466,13467,13468,22785,22786,22787,22789,22790,22791,22792,22793,22794,23117,2447,2449,2450,2452,2453,3355,3356,3357,3358,3369,36901,36903,36904,36905,36906,36907,36908,37921,3818,3819,3820,3821,41814,4625,52983,52984,52985,52986,52987,52988,5637,6522,72234,72235,72237,72238,76137,765,785,79010,79011,8153,8831,8838,8839,8845,8846,9262

The group called "Leather" contains all the goods my skinner retrieves from the corpses of dead beasts from around the world of Azeroth, including classics such as Light Leather:

12607,15407,15408,15410,15412,15414,15415,15416,15417,17012,21887,2318,2319,23793,25649,25699,25700,25707,25708,2934,29539,29547,29548,33567,33568,38425,38557,38558,38561,4232,4234,4235,4255,4304,44128,4461,52976,52977,52979,52980,52982,5784,5785,6470,6471,72120,72162,7286,7392,783,79101,8154,8165,8167,8169,8170,8171

"Ores" contains all the products of mining a ore node (except gems as they have their own group) so Dense Stone is included as well as Thorium Ore:

10620,11371,12359,12360,12365,12655,22202,22203,23427,23445,23446,23447,23448,23449,23573,2771,2772,2835,2836,2838,2840,2841,2842,3164,3575,3577,36909,36913,36916,37663,3858,3859,3860,41163,51950,52185,52186,53038,53039,54849,58480,6037,72092,72093,72094,72095,72096,72103,7912

The group called "Pigments" includes pigments and inks so items like  Ivory Ink as well as Alabaster Pigment are found within:

37101,39151,39334,39338,39339,39340,39341,39342,39343,39469,43103,43104,43105,43106,43107,43108,43109,61979,61980,62323,67319,67335,79251,79253,79740

I have an experimental group called "Seeds" that contains all the seeds sold at Halfhill Market. They sell surprisingly well, especially Scallion Seeds:

79102,80590,80591,80592,80593,80594,80595,89326,89328,89329

Lastly is the group I call "Vendor" which covers all sorts of random stuff that is used by professions (e.g. Pink Dye), you're unlucky to stumble across these items on the AH but if you see them and see others making coin from them why not try your luck.

10290,10647,11291,14341,18567,2320,2321,2324,2325,2604,2605,2880,3371,3466,38426,38682,39354,39684,40533,4289,4291,4340,4341,4342,4399,4400,44499,44500,44501,4470,52188,5956,6217,6260,6261,63388,64670,65892,65893,7005,79249,83092,8343,9260

That finishes the first batch of my import strings. I don't claim these lists to be perfect and they don't all include every item possible but if they are not, they are missing very few items. If you find an incorrectly placed or missing item, please feel free to comment below.

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I have been lusting after the Fiery Warhorse's Reins ever since Burning Crusade when my old guildmate Cheiftan won one on an alt run through Karazhan. I really don't want to add up the number of kills I have on Attumen across my account (which incidentally is only post TBC) but as a finger in the air I'd say that I have run it an average of 3 times a week for the past 5 years which puts my guesstimated kill count at over 700.

However as the screenshot shows that has finally ended with my monk, Wilkini being the lucky toon. Am I happy? Oh hell yeah, although it will mean I have to now farm Netherweave Cloth in Sethekk Halls now as I can focus on the big blue chicken there. more »

Been a couple of topics in guild chat this week that have raised the head of the terms of hardcore and casual and it has caused some lengthy discussions, so I thought it worthwhile to put over my vuews on the matter.

Firstly I'll come out and say that these terms are only in our heads. If you think you are a casual gamer, then you probably are, if you think I am hardcore while I think I am casual then you're right again but so am I. Confused? If not you're unlikely to read beyond here so /wave. 

If you're still with me, thanks and sorry for confusing you. You're probably wondering how could we both be right if I'm both hardcore and casual at the same time. Well my friend the reason is because we share different definitions of what is a hardcore gamer.

I'll now describe me as a gamer. I started gaming at the tender age of 3 playing card games and board games, and am now 43, I started playing video games back in 1977 with Pong on a console, moved into computer gaming back in 1981 (snake on the ZX81), got my first handheld game (Astro Wars) in 1981, got my first PC in 1990 (an Amsrad PCW8512). In 1999 I got a Playstation and played racing games and sport sims before moving on to games like Grand Theft Auto until 2005 when I got introduced to World of Warcraft since then I have had very brief flings with other MMOs but have focused 99% of all my gaming into World of Warcraft which can consist of daily amounts of 7 hours or more on my days off work and 4-5 hours on a night when I return home from work. My character is always fully gemmed and enchanted and wears the best gear I can lay my hands on.

Does that make me hardcore?

I have researched this a bit and the most common theme for a definition of a hardcore gamer, in order of frequency given around the Internet, are:

1. The gamer must play a lot of different games;
2. The gamer must have professional gaming skills;
3. The gamer must play 'their game' for hours each day;
4. The gamer must play MMOs;
5. The gamer must put their heart and soul into their gaming;
6. The gamer just wants to win;
7. The gamer has played games of all types for many years;

Lets look at these in detail and score myself in each one.

The gamer must play a lot of different games;

For the most common reason to be a hardcore gamer I fail horribly, as I only dabble in other games like SWTOR and LOL. (Hardcore 0 - 1 Casual)

The gamer must have professional gaming skills;
I raid a a respectable level on a below average server and am OK at PVP. But I AM a keyboard turner although I do keybind 95% of all my abilities. I can hardly be defind as a professional skilled gamer. (Hardcore 0 - 2 Casual)

The gamer must play 'their game' for hours each day;
Yeah I play WoW too much most days, no way I can claim casual here. (Hardcore 1 - 2 Casual)

The gamer must play MMOs;
erm got me again, infact I really only play MMOs . (Hardcore 2 - 2 Casual)

The gamer must put their heart and soul into their gaming;
I play too much, blog about WoW, am a raid leader, guild officer and listen to hours of podcasts each week all about WoW and gaming in general. (Hardcore 3 - 2 Casual)

The gamer just wants to win;
For me I want to win but I also want to have fun. Losing lessens fun and I'm sure nobody plays to lose. But If I had to choose winning all the time and not having fun or just having fun and winning half the time I'd choose winning half the time and fun. (Hardcore 3 - 3 Casual)

The gamer has played games of all types for many years; 
Well a simple read through my gaming resume prooves that, but then so has my sister, my Mum, my Dad and my wife so while I notch one up for hardcore here, it really proves 1 of 2 things, this measure is bad or we're all hardcore gamers. (Hardcore 4 - 3 Casual).

So there we have it a narrow margin win for me being a hardcore gamer. However, scoring my Mum against these criteria she also scores a 4-3 win for being hardcore. The ones she differs on to myself are that she plays many games but no MMOs.

Do you think there are other criteria that could be used? I'd love to know how you scored and how you rated me from my gaming resume. more »

Sometimes real life can be cruel and recently it seems to have conspired to throw everything at me which has resulted in less than optimal time in WoW and almost crippled my blogging for the past 2 weeks. Then this week TSM2 got launched and that has devoured a huge amount of time learning that and then setting it up 3 times (long boring story I won't tell yet). 

The good news there though i that the 3rd incarnation of my set up is far superior the the first 2 and worlds ahead of the TSM1 set up. Rather than risk having to spend a 4th period of 3 hours setting up TSM, I decided to back up all my groups and fortunately that will give me a lot of content to provide through the blog so the exercise wasn't a complete waste.

A quick plug for Sapu and his team over at TradeSkillMaster.com and the Consortium Forums who deserve a huge thank you from everyone that uses or has used TSM. If you're not a user and are heavily into gold making using your professions then you really should give it a look. I won't lie, the learning curve is steep but there are many fantastic guides out there in the community. Below is a few I have used this week after discovering them on the Consortium forum's "Read First" post:

TSM2 Video Guides

• TSM 2.0 Guides by @PhatLewts
• Basic How To Videos from PowerWordGold

TSM2 Written Guides

• Installation and user Guide from @Cryan
• TSM 2.0 Teaser including basic functionality guide from @PhatLewts
• Nice review guide from Marcus TY
• A look into groups and operations by @Kathroman

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This weeks screenshot was taken while waiting for Galleon to spawn. Wow is apparently in decline, the folks of Silvermoon EU would like to disagree.

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Recently a forum post on our guild website prompted me to put together a short guide to farming cloth and rather than let it fester there I thought I'd share it here.

In my experience, farming cloth is often the best option because it is often very expensives, particularly Frostweave and Embersilk. Therefore, the profits on crafted items, the cost of leveling kits and the cost of your own power leveling  make buying cloth inefficient. Therefore farming is needed. But where do you farm the cloth you need? 

With the advent of cross realm zones, the best spots are often being used by levelers and we don't want to upset them by running in and AoEing down half the zone and steal their kills or let them steal ours! 

Therefore I prefer to hit an instance of the appropriate level un til I have hit the 5 instances per hour cap when I will go and farm the world area, respecting any levelers in the area, until my cap has reset. My recommended farming spots are below.

Linen Cloth
Level : 5-15
Instance: Deadmines
World: Gnolls in Westfall

Wool Cloth
Level : 20-26
Instance: Stockades
World: undead in Raven Hill Crypts

Silk Cloth
Level : 33-38
Instance: Scarlet Monastery
World: cultists Eastern Plaguelands

Mageweave Cloth
Level : 40-48
Instance: Dire Maul North
World: ogres in Badlands

Runecloth
Level : 51-58
Instance: Blackrock Spire
World: undead Gilnaens in Blasted Lands

Netherweave Cloth
Level : 60-70
Instance: Shadow Labs
World: demon hunters on Black Temple roof (not the instance!)

Frostweave Cloth
Level : 70-80
Instance: Utgarde Keep/Pinnacle
World: Converted Heroes in Icecrown

Embersilk Cloth
Level : 80-85
Instance: Grim Batol (don't do the bombing run)
World: Tol Barad (anything except the spiders!)

Have you got better suggestions? If so I'd love to hear them. more »

I recently stumbled upon an article on World of Matticus, that claimed Tanks and Healers Should Get The Biggest Rewards which was written by Gordon of the We Fly Spitfires blog back in 2010 and it got me thinking.

We know there is shortage of tanks and healers to allow the masses of DPS to run Raid Finder and heroic 5 man content and that is in part because the roles of tanks and healers are more highly pressurised. This is because a 5 man needs only 1 tank and 1 healer and therefore any slack is instantly noticed compared to 1 of the 3 DPS who can be carried by the other 2 performing the same role. In LFR the gap is even bigger for tanks and slightly less for healers but again DPS get away lightly because there are 16 DPS that can carry one slacker.

Blizzard seems to have given up trying to incentivise healers and tanks and have now fixed the problem with scenarios and while that will fix the problem of long queue times for DPS will it fix the problem of too few healers and tanks? I doubt it. In fact I would suspect that it will actually make the issue worse as those DPS that used to queue as healer reluctantly in 5 mans now will switch back to DPS mode.

What I believe will resolve the issue is a different reward system for tanks and healers and not just the Call to Arms guff we got before, which in my opinion, failed horribly. What would work is extra rewards in terms of valor points, say an extra 25% when you queue up as a tank and healer. To avoid people abusing the system, it would be necessary for people to be automatically respecced into their tank/healing spec upon zoning into the instance and then being locked into the spec until they zone out of that instance. 

The other issue that such a reward system would create is that tanks and healers would cap faster than DPS and then not queue, therefore a possible solution would be for these extra points to be added to the cap so if a tank/healer chooses to earn all their valor via LFR/LFD they would end up with a 1250 weekly valor cap. This would enable them to gear up slightly faster and then spend their valor points on off-spec gear which gives them a better experience outside of the dungeons and raids.

As a healer such a system would not encourage me to change my play style but then I predominantly play tanks and healers because I like fast queues and am not afraid of the pressure. However, I suspect the lure of extra loot would encourage some DPS to go beyond their comfort zone and actually try out these vital roles and discover that it really is neither scary nor hard.

I'd love to know your views on this suggestion, especially if you are a serial DPS player. Would this system make you more likely to heal or tank? If not why not? And what would encourage you to try tanking/healing? If nothing would encourage you why not?

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Blizzard announced a few weeks ago that they were adding in more items to the Blizzard Store for us to buy and use in-game. They also announced they were testing, on the PTR, an XP bonus elixir that they would be selling, initially Asia, that works like the Elixir of Ancient Knowledge and 3 transmog helms (which all look awful in my opinion but that is not the point here).The naysayers have been out predicting this is the beginning of the end of the World of Warcraft and that Blizzard are cashing in now before it keels over and dies.

This all sounds very familiar, remember "that retarded horse"? Watch the video below from Totalbiscuit if you need a reminder.

Well that was April 15th 2010, the same predictions were made then, especially with the likes of Rift and SWtOR that were coming soon. Did WoW die? I don't think it did, subs have dropped since then but it wasn't due to the Blizzard Store and most of the drop has come in Asia where they pay to play by the hour not use the monthly subscription model and as the game gets easier for people to get to the end, some players that get there don't feel the need to carry on buying game time.

Despite what people may whine about these items robbing us, the players, of more heroic dungeons and more playable content it really doesn't. Does a helm graphic take the same time as a heroic 5 man dungeon? I certainly hope not. Heck if everything that Blizzard have put into the store so far takes the same time as it would for them to heroic up an old 5 man dungeon I would be shocked.

The store has added more mounts and pets and people continue to buy them and personally I welcome that.Why? Because Blizzard are making huge amounts of money selling these items and while they are doing that my monthly subscription stays at the same price today as it was back in 2005 when I started playing the game £8.99 which is $15 in the US and EU.

They have also stated that Lesser Charms of Good Fortune will also be purchasable and while that is getting close to the point I would call foul I still see no major issue as these are so easy to obtain if you play the game that hitting the weekly "need" of 50 happens in no time at all.

The line that must not be crossed is the one where you can buy a real advantage such as non-cosmetic items (armour, weapons, buffs) or actual content that gives unique items that grant extra power. This then means that rich players have a competitive advantage over the poor ones and then that only applies if the game is NOT Free2Play.

Personally I have bought no mounts or pets from the store, I have spent about £150 on transfers and faction changes though and I did subscribe to the Remote application when that was a paid service. However, I'll be looking at the XP elixir closely. If it persists through death and is "the right price" I'll be very tempted.

I'll not condemn those that keep buying "That Retarded Horse" or the "Golden Penis" mount though I do think you're stupid for spending that amount of money on a mount you'll not use much after the first few weeks. The real fools are those that paid thousands of pounds for a spectral tiger mount, that surely is a sign of someone having more money than sense. If I had that kind of extra money spare I can thing of a thousand better ways to spend it than on a bunch of pixels in a game.

If you have ever bought a mount or pet from the pet store did you regret it afterwards? I'd love to hear your story if you did. If you haven't bought anything from the store, have you been tempted? Are you waiting for the right "thing" to be there?

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This week I have mostly been doing Brawlers Guild and have finally gotten to rank 7 on Evlyxx. I had previously been stuck at rank 2 boss Kirrawk. Past that point there was only one boss that was remotely difficult, Yikkan Izu, the 1st rank 6 opponent who was a complete nightmare and took me 30 tries before I got lucky with procs that gave me many instant Mind Blasts and Mind Spike in quick succession allowing me to burn him down while running away from what seemed like hundreds of adds.

Compared to my warlock, who got rank 7 earlier the same day while I just face rolled the challengers thrown at her the priest is at a distinct disadvantage.

If I were designing Brawler’s Guild I would make 2 changes. Remove the ability to use pets and normalise gear.

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Anyone following this blog from day 1 will know that the reason for me starting to blog was to write about my progress in WoW and while that has sort of happened I've never really caught up with my pre-blogging story. My last installment was, as has become tradition, many months ago and in it I got got to the beginning of the Trial of the Crusader in terms of game progression and had just switch guilds leaving Encore and joining Quercus. Anyway, the story so far can be read in the following posts The Backstory: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13 and Part 14.

Quercus were more the type of guild I was accustomed to being in albeit it ranked a few places lower on the Tier 7 progress than Deadwood, but they were actively raiding and were a progression type guild. The folks there were a friendly bunch and, as expected were damned fine raiders too. They also knew how to have fun and that meant an awful lot to me as that was something that never seemed to happen in Encore and had slowly vanished in Deadwood as the guild slowly died. The only remotely odd thing was that the guild leader was absent as she was away in the US but her husband was leading the guild and doing a good job in my opinion.

The raiding schedule was hectic though in the 3 nights we raided we cleared Ulduar on 25 (as they were attempting to get the guild's 2nd Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings) and Trial of the Crusader on Normal and Heroic. The "off" nights were spent raiding Ulduar 10 working on hard modes in 2 groups and Trial of the Crusader (normal and heroic) in 10 man. Back then that didn't feel like a chore, mainly because my work schedule allowed it and because the guys were fun to be with following the mantra "work hard, play hard". In early December the guild leader returned from her break and things almost instantly took a more serious note when raiding but as Icecrown Citadel had just been launched I just put that down to us having to learn new fights rather than simply farming known content with the exception of heroic Trial of the Crusader (25).

The first boss in ICC, Lord Marrowgar died in the first week and boss #2, Lady Deathwhisper, died in the 2nd as did the Loot Ship. Saurfang slowed the guild down a bit and it was this that seemed to be the catalyst that saw a character change in the guild leader, as she became very rude with people and I remember her kicking a tank mid-raid for making a small mistake. A friend who I had encouraged to join the guild was so angry at this act that he left the raid and quit the guild instantly. It was at this point that I too decided to look for another guild, a process that took me only 2 weeks and during those 2 weeks the mood of the guild changed dramatically. A few days before I had got accepted into my new guild, Immersion, I was guild kicked without any explanation and to this day I don't know why, but can only assume that she found out about my application. This was proof enough to me that I was lucky to be out of the guild.

Today Quercus are one of the best progressed raiding guilds on Shadowsong EU despite having the guild leader still at the helm with some of the same faces that were there in Wrath. Hopefully, the guild leader was just going through a bad patch in her life and is now a friendly and likable person. However, she remains the only person I have encountered in game that I have ever had feelings of pure hatred towards. It doesn't make me feel big or clever however, she was the real inspiration at me starting this blog so I guess in someways I owe an awful lot to her. So Myrgthe I salute you!

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