Pew pew..... Zzzzzzz...

Drunken Badgers cleared Naxx 25 on our first visit there as a raid. This was awesome - we got many loots and a feeling of satisfaction at our awesomeness. This was lame - when there is no challenge it's a little boring. Well it wasn't a straight one shot of each boss...we had a couple of tries on Thaddius and Gluth before we downed them.

I know Naxx is the entry level raid for Wrath but it was no where near like the challenge we experienced when first starting Karazhan in TBC. There is a discussion going on in our forums at the moment about this very subject. Generally the feeling is - this time round we are an end game experienced team. Many of us have been working together raiding since the Kara days - and therefore it's not so much that the bar has been lowered by Blizz but that we exceed a bar that has been set to allow entry into the game for players who are at the place we were when TBC first came out.

One thing everyone agrees on - we hope Ulduar is released pretty soon before we get bored of current content and that it is more of a challenge.

The remaining challenges for our raid currently are Malygos 25 and Sarth 3D. I'm pretty confident we'll get Malygos soon - our 'clean up raid' got him to 20% last week and that was without all of the A team regulars in the group. Sarth 3D, as was pointed out in the comments of my recent post on fighting Malygos as a hunter, seems to be the fight considered the most challenging by the broader community. So maybe that will take a little longer.

One thing is for sure - I personally need to work on my Heigan dance party skills!

Where's the challenge?

There is such a plethora of bloggers out there now all posting great stuff about the new expansion that it has caused me to feel a little redundant. For the past couple of months I would have an idea for a blog post and then when browsing my regular reads find that someone else has already covered the topic more than adequately. Also y'all write too much! Seriously I am continously about 2 weeks behind on my feeds! I should probably prune my list of feeds back, but I am more likely to increase it since there are so many good blogs out there. This is very much the case given that I am also on the search for new reading material given some changes I have made in terms of game play.

As I've said before, I'm no theory crafter so I really value the work my fellow bloggers do distilling the wisdom of communities like Elitist Jerks into nice clear blog posts that I can learn from.

So what changes have I made? Well, Jezrael my lovely hunter got the love at first and is sitting pretty to enter Naxx 25. Levelling Jez was pretty much cake, I was T6 geared and able to breeze through the content mostly. This is a big difference from TBC where I spent much longer working on gearing for end game content. While my gear level starting Wrath made a difference I think it mainly comes down to the changes Blizz has made with making the rep grind much easier and having no attunements. It has also been interesting to observe the different commentary about the relative difficulty of the content in Wrath.

End game raiders tend to be dissatisfied with what they see as a lack of challenge but I also see posts where mostly non end game raider people talk about the challenges they have faced with regards to certain instances. From my perspective of being in the position of playing with a group of well geared, and more importantly skilled, players the content so far has pretty much been quite easy. To put this in perspective I've done all 10 man content except Malygos & Sarth and all 25 man content except Naxx and Malygos at least once (Sarth with adds down though). So far I agree with Zasp from The Egotistical Priest that Malygos definitely feels like the most epic fight to date.

I keep asking myself - is the content really that much easier than TBC? I've gained access to it more quickly, but this time round I'm end game geared and there are no attunements or serious rep grinds. It's hard for me to make the comparison. I do definitely agree however that the difficulty of trash pulls has been trivialised. Crowd control seems a thing of the past and like Flyv I miss the care and finesse we used to have to use to handle multi mob pulls. These days from a hunter perspective it just feels like 'lolvolley' all the time.

Tomorrow is our first official 25 man Badger Naxx and I'm looking forward to it, but also a little worried that we are going to smash the place easily. Seems strange doesn't it, but I'd like there to be a little challenge to the place at least. Of course I need to remember that Naxx is the entry level raiding encounter for Wrath and appparently is meant to be pretty easy but still. I still have fond memories of wiping on Attumen on our very first Kara raid. It was memorable because it was a challenge. If the challenge is non-existent then I am pretty confident that our raid will lose enthusiasm for it pretty quickly. Hopefully Ulduar will be released soon!

I got a bit diverted by talking about content difficulty I'm afraid when I actually intended to talk about something entirely different! Food for another post.

I am woman

I'm sitting here and wondering how to approach this topic in a balanced way. Mithrilina of A Girl, a Gun and a Stripey Cat recently posted on women in WoW, sharing her not so pleasant experiences of the reactions of male players to the presence of a woman in their raid. Loronar over at 35 Yards Out also posted a response. Some time ago I also read a great post by Lume on the topic.

It seems to me that the reaction of men to women in the game is directly proportional to their level of maturity. Just like real life really, boys do go through that ZOMG girls stage. I think it's probably reasonable to posit the converse - that the reaction of women to this kind of behaviour is proportional to their age and experience in real life. Because girls do go through that stage in their development of ZOMG boys too and dealing with how to react to these kinds of situations.

I feel that we women are sometimes guilty of helping reinforce these behaviours and stereotypes. What do I mean by that? Well, it's a thorny issue, but I believe that you shouldn't hide your gender. You don't have to advertise it but why refuse to talk on vent just because you're female? How is that empowered? I do understand that many women want to avoid unwanted attention in game, but then how do you deal in real life with the idiot men out there? Personally I don't hide my gender; I don't advertise it but I have no compunctions about talking on vent. If someone acts stupid I shut them down, just as I would in real life.

If you're a women and playing with a group of people who don't respect you because of your gender then you should GTFO and find a group who will. Same as in real life.

Respect anytime shouldn't be about gender, it should be about the qualities that you as a player and person bring to the table, and I believe that goes both ways.

In short, if you are a female gamer I exhort you to stand tall and proud, the best way to deal with stereotypes is to debunk them.

Be an asset to your raid

Being part of a raid group is more than having the gear and the consumables, it's also about having the attitude. In this post I want to talk about the things you can bring to the table as a raider that can make you an asset to the group. I've posted before about what not to do as a lvl 70 raiding hunter, the raid consumables you should be carrying as a hunter, and how raid management impacts on raid success, but this post is about being a non-leader raider of any class.

Raiding is a group effort and at the higher end of the game success is dependent on everyone working as a team. As I state above, this goes beyond being geared and packing your consumables. Following is my list of things that will make you an asset to your raid. If you are new to a raid group and hoping to be taken on as a regular this list of behaviours is, in my opinion, critical to your chances of being added to the permanent roster. However, all members of the raid should demonstrate them. In the DB raid we care more about your attitude than we necessarily do about your gear. Gear can be upgraded, asshattery is often ingrained.

Pay attention
You might be enjoying looking around at the scenery of new content, you might be horsing around throwing leather balls and voodoo skulls at your fellow raiders (I'm looking at YOU Emelin) but it is critical that you pay attention to the instructions and information imparted by the raid leaderership. This information is likely to be imparted both over vent (or your voice software of choice) or via in game chat so it's important to pay attention to both. For instance, in our raid we have a specific in-game channel for the hunters where I will impart instructions so as to not clutter up vent. If you are new to the raid you should check with someone playing the same role whether there is a relevant channel that you need to join.

Follow instructions
A relevant follow on from the point above - so you paid attention, but did you retain the information? If you retained it are you going to act on it? You better. You'd didn't get invited so that you could completely ignore the instructions issued by the people leading the raid. Many boss encounters require everyone to perform their part to make the fight a success, Gruul, Magtheridon, Lady Vashj, Kael and Archimonde to name some obvious ones. It's ok to make mistakes in execution - but if you have blindly ignored what your role is in favour of what you want to do don't expect to be invited back.

You may be right, you may be wrong (you may be crazy)
You might have made in depth studies of strategies and youtube vids, you might have run it many times with a different group, but that does not automatically make you the expert on how to handle a particular fight. Which is not to say that your input is not important. Timing when you deliver that input however is. Talking over the top of the raid leader when they are communicating strategy is not the best way to endear yourself. If you have a valid point to make wait for an appropriate pause or send a tell directly to the raid leader (or your class leader). Even better - strategy discussion should take place on the forums rather than 60 seconds before the pull if at all possible. Naturally there are situations when strategy needs to be adjusted on the fly but lengthy strategy discussions are better handled in a forum. No one enjoys 20 minutes of back and forth discussion before a pull.

Raid synergy is more important than your e-peen
As a hunter maximising damage is all about sticking to a precise rotation, however that may not add anything to the group. Scorpid sting is a great dot for tough bosses and Imp Hunters Mark contributes to the melee damage as well. Similiar scenarios apply to all classes. Be prepared and willing to do what is needed to contribute to overall group synergy. Raid leaders spend time working out the best way to group players based on spec and class, so use what you've got to help the raid not just yourself. Our raid doesn't insist on specific builds based on some ideal of the best raid make up but we have been known to ask if a person will be willing to respec to assist with the raid synergy and the respec cost is carried by the guild bank. We're also open to you wanting to try out a different spec to see how it works out. Of course there are exceptions, if you're the MT with the best main tanking gear of all tanks in the raid we'll try and convince you to stay prot, at least until another tank can be geared equivalently. Ultimately we all want to down the bosses right? So it makes sense for everyone to bring everything they can to the table to make that happen.

Silence is frequently golden
This is probably a particular niggle of mine, but there is nothing more irritating than to have people going randomly on and on and on over vent especially when strategy and instructions are being communicated. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing more fun than some silly talk - but timing is everything. We also don't need to hear externalisations of every single thought running through your head during a fight. Vent should be about communicating key pieces of information. If we're on a break and you want to talk about how amazing Usain Bolt is please feel free (I mean, the guy is amazing) but when it's time to pull, game faces people!

Don't forget to pack your sense of humour
So I'm laying out all this serious stuff, because working effectively as a team is srs bsns but that doesn't mean you should park your sense of humour at the door. If you're not having fun, if you're getting uptight about wipes, this will communicate itself to the group and impact on the atmosphere of the raid. One of the things that makes my raid so enjoyable is the fun we have and the relaxed atmosphere. But remember, in relation to the points I make above - timing is everything.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Just about every item I've discussed comes down to respect in the end. It's a tenet for the real world that stands up just as well in the virtual - treat others in the way you would wish to be treated. Respect is about listening, about humility, about not pushing yourself forward to the detriment of others. Gaining respect is about being confident without being an asshat, about walking your talk and respecting others. Loot greed will not earn you respect, being new to the raid and immediately telling everyone what they are doing wrong will not earn you respect, lack of attention and unwillingness to cooperate will not earn you respect. Ultimately if anyone takes one thing away from this post I would like it to be that successful teamwork is essentially about mutual respect.

Which means of course there's a flipside too. You as a raider shouldn't put up with being treated with disrespect by your fellow raiders or the raid leadership.


*5 awesome points to those who can identify the 2 song references and the lady in the picture, seriously it's not exactly hard...

Raiding at the right time?

So just for the record the post title is a play on Paul Simon's song 'Born at the right time' not 'Bjorn at the right time' which is a travesty of nature. Ok Euridipes? :P

Down amongst the mobs
A drunken guild is found
Their eyes are red and bleary
For there are beers being downed

Never been hardcore
Never been leet
Never had to face burn out fear
Nothing demanded
Of the player who tries
The raid warning chimes
And the whole group whispering
Raiding at the right time

Me and my guildies we are relaxed people
We like to raid when we want
See all the content
All the way from Kara to the temple
I see them in Shattrath
Getting those enchants
They ask me for gem cuts
Their Jewelcrafting friend

Never been hardcore
Never been leet
Never had to face burn out fear
Nothing demanded
Of the player who tries
The raid warning chimes
And the whole group whispering
Raiding at the right time

Too many people on the pre-lich king down
Too many raiders say they can't find the time
The Outlands groan
Every time another raider gives up

But down amongst the mobs
A drunken guild is found
Their eyes are red and bleary
For there are beers being downed

Never been hardcore
Never been leet
Never had to face burn out fear
Nothing demanded
Of the player who tries
The raid warning chimes
And the whole group whispering
Raiding at the right time

Ok so that's, I'm pretty confident, a fairly sucktacular parody of the song. Oh well, you can all tell me how lame it is in the comments and I'll have a good giggle *grin*

But amid the lameness there is a topic I want to address. I've read in my many locations recently of guilds with recruiting woes, of people feeling burnt out with lich king looming and current content staring to pall, of leadership problems within people's existing raids and people who want to raid but can't seem to find their niche. I feel for the people experiencing these issues but I can't say I'm one of them. So I ask myself why?

Right now recruitment has never been better for the Drunken Badger raid. We have plenty of people applying to raid with us and a pretty solid regular roster. Why is this? I think it boils down to a couple of things:

Word of mouth
We've been successful (some might say very successful) in T5 and the word has got out. We went to Mt Hyjal for the first time this week and although we had quite a few undergeared subs due to the fourth of July holiday we downed both Rage Winterchill and Anetheron and came within decent distance of Kaz'rogal.

I could be ungracious and say that the Sunwell/T6 raiders are now seeing us as a good group to 'slum' with and do some raiding on their alts who aren't committed to more hard core raids. But there is actually at least one T6 experienced raider I know who has joined us in preference over their previous raid. Why?

Relaxed Attitude
Don't get me wrong - we take our raiding seriously. We're prepared, we address performance issues and we do our research, but we also enjoy a drink or two while we raid and have a good time, bringing our sense of humour to the raid as well as our consumables and etc. There has never ever been a situation where the raid leader has bawled anyone out on vent. We don't roll that way. If we wipe we assess the situation and tweak our strategy. We don't play the blame game and we don't call people out in a negative way in public channels. It's the whole group too, we don't tolerate total asshats no matter how well they're geared - everyone brings their A attitude with their A game. Which is not to say that I'm not sometimes gnashing my teeth by the end of the raid because we're all getting tired - but there is a strong level of mutual respect and maturity amongst the group so no-one freaks out. Well, really freaks out in a long-term bad affect on everyone kind of way hehe.

Raid scheduling
From what I can tell we are one of the few raiding guilds at the T5/T6 (we've just started T6 last week) level who only raid this content once a week. We have other Kara/ZA runs during the week and might throw together a random Gruuls/Mags but just the one T6 25 man raid. This makes it easier for a lot of people who can't commit to heavier schedules, which from what I read of the woes of those people who want to raid this content but are time poor, makes us a pretty attractive proposition.

Leadership
I've been reading Chick GM and Lume the Mad lately - two excellent blogs written by guild leaders, and their ruminations on leadership have got me thinking about the leadership within the Drunken Badgers. We don't precisely have an extremely structured hierarchy. We have 4 to 5 people who have been willing to take on leadership roles and they coordinate loot, raid strategies, performance issues and recruitment. But from where I'm sitting I feel that the guild, and the raid are run on reasonably democratic lines. We generally come up with a plan and then raise it with the guild/raiders where it affects them for discussion (although at the end of the day the leadership team will make a final call if required). An example of this approach is the way we moved to T6 content. It was stated that once 17/25 regular raiders voted to move to T6 then we'd do T5 for 2 more weeks and then move to T6. A thread was maintained in the forums and people who didn't post were polled in game. Once the requisite number was reached we moved. I believe this is a successful approach because people feel empowered - they are part of the decision making, there's no arbitrary ruling handed down from on high, the process is quite transparent. However - there are structures put in place by the leadership to facilitate this.

So I find myself in a good spot. I'm not feeling disillusioned with the pre-expansion blues because I'm working at and achieving things I want to within the game - seeing new content. I'm hoping to get a bear mount before the expansion simply because it's a goal to aim for. I think this comes down to being part of a group that's doing things successfully right now. I remember that pre-TBC I was subbing every week with a group doing MC/ZG/AQ-20 and that was kinda cool - but I was just a sub. I spent most of my time doing BG's because there didn't seem any point doing anything else. I think that's perhaps where a lot of people are at now. To be honest I kind of feel the amount of hype and overload of information about the expansion is partly to blame for people's growing feelings of ennui. I tend to ignore the flood of information out there, nothing is completely certain yet and I'm busy enjoying the here and now, the future will take care of itself.

Lassira over at The Hunter's Mark has made a couple of posts recently about being casual by circumstance and in the most recent post talks about leaving a guild if it's not going in the direction you want to be. I couldn't agree more. When TBC came out I was a member of a small guild of RL friends, we barely had enough toons to run instances let alone raid. I knew that I wanted to raid and the whole 'reset' of TBC was a good chance to start putting the wheels in motion to achieve that goal. A chunk of the guild had disappeared horde side and weren't interested in raiding really anyway so I convinced Emelin that we should leave, and leave we did, joining up with the Badgers who at the time had a grand total of 5 toons in their guild but had the same goals we did. It was the right choice to make. Be proactive in attaining your goals - you can make it happen I promise.

Random musings

I always think of some many topics to blog about during the day and try to remember to make notes of them so I can eventually get around to writing said posts. I also think of specific snippets which don't really make a whole post. Hence random musing time!

Shout out to the Twisted Nether Blogcast guys Fim and Bre! I had no idea you talked about my recent post about raiding laziness on episode 5, whee! If you haven't checked this blogcast out I urge you to do so - it's chock full of goodness. It was interesting to hear Fim and Bre's views on the whole laziness issue, they had a slightly different take on it from me - talking about the differences between alts going through farm content as opposed to new raiders but not really touching on the issue of people who have been in the guild for some time and raiding for some time but who still make no real effort to gem or enchant - except to say that if people aren't pulling their weight they have no compunctions about telling them to lift their game. I want to hear Bre's firm voice *grin*.

I am finding it even more difficult to keep up with my blog feeds these days. So many good blogs and so little time to read, comment and also actually write some decent content myself. I like to comment but am finding that I'm so intent on reading so many feeds that I'm spending less time commenting. This must be addressed!

In a non wow related note - I would like to take traditional advertising agencies out the back and beat them with lead piping in the shape of comic sans font for the monstrosities of website design they visit on their hapless clients

Hanging out in the BA chat room with a bunch of great fellow bloggers has been awesome fun - although I have to make sure I don't spend too much time chatting since I'm at work at the time. It's cool to get to talk directly to many of the bloggers I read. I've also added a whole bunch of new blogs to my feed (hence my issue above heh) and I'm getting inspired to write some posts on my view of several topics floating around in the nether.

That's it for my random musings, thanks for stopping by!

Progression vs farm raiding and laziness

Throughout the history of the DB guild Jez has always been in progression raids. By that I mean that from the moment we started Kara way back when it has always been a new content experience for Jez along with the rest of the raiders in the guild.

Not so long ago due to having enough Aussie time zone folks in guild we were able to start running a week night Karazhan. Initially Jez went on this raid, primarily to help out and then when 2.4 came out, for badges as well. Several of the people in that raid were/are T4/T5 geared which really helped out the other 'Kara entry level' players. Now that Sephiroh is 70 I am running her rather than Jez for these groups.

One of the things that several people have noticed about some of the members of our Kara raid is that they don't seem to bother to get their gear enchanted, or gemmed, or even work on gearing up outside of Kara. Since I'm now taking a newer 70 through Kara I'm wondering whether the fact that these people were able to pretty much get carried through Kara as they geared up hasn't given them a sense of urgency or feeling a requirement to do this. On Jez I do everything I can to make sure I can perform to the level the content demands - gems, enchants, consumables etc. On Seph I haven't felt this pressure because the raid group is already strong.

It's got me thinking. If a player experiences their own progression via farm raiding does this lead to a tendency towards laziness in terms of gear itemisation and etc?

I'd just like to point out that I'm definitely working towards getting enchants and etc on Seph hehe. I put good blue level gems into the epics she has and I use armour kits since I don't have enchants yet, which I'm working on farming the mats for. One symptom here is also that once I levelled her I took her straight into Karazhan and therefore I'm still working on the rep I need for things like the shoulder and head armours etc. The other people who I'm talking about though have been 70 for months now.

It's just a different experience for me to have a second 70, perhaps other people have different experiences? Perhaps it's also a playstyle thing, perhaps these people just aren't interested in progression style raiding?

In terms of the regular Kara group it is somewhat frustrating for me since I would much prefer to be doing ZA rather than Kara but I'm concerned that the group will not have the chops to succeed there - and part of this is definitely due to the sort of apathy I'm talking about here.

Revisiting Night Elf lore and culture

I got such great responses from Andrew and Cynra to my post on night elf culture that I really felt I wanted to follow up with a 'response' post as it were.

I'd like to clarify my position. I wasn't arguing that elves aren't presented as namby pamby anywhere but specifically that, (in my opinion) elves are not presented as namby pamby in Tolkien and Warcraft. I guess as sub-text to that I consider Tolkien's work as seminal in regards to how elves are presented in fantasy fiction - for the most part.

Yes there are a lot of people whose perception of elves is that they are 'light as thistle down' airy-fairy types.

I don't think these people know anything much about celtic mythology or read much fantasy fiction. I do think they probably have seen quite a lot of Disney though.

As regards comments on Faerie, I almost included a whole section on the Tuatha De Danaan in my last post (often referred to as the Sidhe, which is the name for the barrows they agreed to inhabit but not originally of the folk themselves) but the post was becoming quite an essay. I'd argue, as Cynra does, that the Sidhe are not at all benevolent or child-like. Disney AGAIN. 'Popular culture' tends to 'sanitise' mythology. Look at fairy-tales for instance, the tale of Red Riding Hood is at it's root the story of a girl's journey to womanhood (ie menustration) - but over time has been diluted to it's present form. I'd argue that the same thing has happened to fairies. I could get a little more 'I was a humanities student' and argue that the main sanitising factor in western culture is the Church - to increase it's relevance and power it devalues and dilutes alternative values and beliefs. But I won't because this is a blog about Warcraft not cultural theory and I would have to get seriously academic on you all and riddle this post with citations and a biblography and I've got motes of water to farm! Heh.

Suffice it to say, I firmly believe that the lore within the game does not by intention present night elves in the mold of 'Disney' and that it is instead, the perception of players and their interpretation of elves through the filter of western culture that interprets them as such.

Night Elf culture: just tree hugging hippies?

I happen to work with a couple of avid role players of the old school table top variety. One of them also plays a lot of Warcraft and the other has dabbled in WoW but is mainly a Neverwinter Nights player. Unsuprisingly a lot of our non work related conversations revolve around roleplaying and Warcraft. It's not unusual for our other workmates to come across us in the kitchen deep in a conversation laced with acronyms and terms which they find completely unintelligible.

I've been using these two guys as an excellent sounding board for some of my ideas about Jez's character description and back story and recently we got into a discussion about how Night Elf culture is presented in Warcraft and the presentation of elves generally in fantasy fiction.

I consider myself pretty widely read in the fantasy fiction arena - it is, and has been, my genre of choice for many many years now (how unsuprising that I should play a game like Warcraft). However I'm not very widely read as regards the lore of Warcraft itself. Most of what I know has been gleaned from the quest dialogue in game. Yes that's right I am one of the people who reads all of the quest text. Of course! It's one of the aspects of the game that I find very appealing.

**a little intermission music**

I started writing this post before work this morning and found some time today to do a little research and also continue the discussion, this time specifically about night elves.

The opinion presented by my esteemed work colleagues is that elves generally in fantasy fiction are presented as namby pamby tree hugging hippies. I bristled immediately as I admit that, yes, I am a fan of the elven races. You can keep your short smelly dwarves thank you very much. In the interests of disclosure I should mention that of my two friends, one plays a warlock and the other favours rogues. Yup. We can probably dismiss their argument right now *grin*.

When I think of elves in the fantasy world a specific representation come to mind: the elves of Tolkien's world. In my opinion (and the opinion of many others) this representation is one of the foundations for elves in modern fantasy fiction.

In Tolkien the elves are not particularly aligned with nature and are certainly not namby pamby. They follow various crafts and their culture includes both warriors and healers. They built great civilisations and while capable of acts of great valor they were by no means perfect.

Enter Warcraft's representation of elves which I would argue draws strongly on Tolkien influences. If we consider the lore of Warcraft itself - the night elves were initially the creators of a powerful civilisation centred around the Well of Eternity. They were powerful magic users and their delving into the mysteries of the Well was what alerted the Burning Legion to its' existence.

As fall out from the arrival of the Burning Legion and the destruction of Archimonde the elves split into three distinct groups with the kaldorei or night elves eschewing arcane magics in favour of more nature based magics. They saw their role as the protection of the land and their people from further corruption by the Burning Legion.

This might perhaps sound like the night elves are namby pamby but let's think about the methods they use. Tyrande actually broke Illidan free from his prison to attain his aid in defeating the legion. The Silverwing Sentinels are in constant skirmish with the Horde over their deforestation. Some Farstriders are known to kill strangers who breach too far into the woods of Ashenvale. Hardly namby pamby.

The quests that you undertake as a night elf character in the game may well at surface level appear to be about 'saving X from the corruption of Y" but looking a little further below the surface reveals a culture that will use just about any means necessary to protect their world.

An exception to the emphasis on Tolkien influence is the role of the druid in night elf culture. My friends see druids particularly as the embodiment of namby pamby tree-hugginess and whilst I have no problems with hugging a treekin any day of the week I do also take umbrage to this opinion.

The night elf druids in Warcraft are, in my opinion (again, I'm just full of opionions) influenced by the druids of Celtic mythology. Following the druidic path is not easy. It requires great mental strength and fortitude. I mean let's face it, nature does not always wear a pleasing aspect. It's not all flowers and bumble-bees. Nature can also be incredibly powerful and destructive - think of the voraciousness of a forest fire or the implacable force of an earthquake. If one is going to train to have power over nature it's going to require a lot of self discipline. An example of this willpower is the agreement of the druids led by Malfurion to spend centuries in hibernation within their barrows as their spirits wandered the Emerald dream.

I rest my case.

Journey of a UI part two: getting your raid on

Here is part two of my 'journey of a UI' series. Part one showed examples of how the default UI changes over time as you level and start participating in more complex activities such as instances. In this post I'm going to look at the UI when default components are no longer being used.

I didn't really start serious raiding until after TBC came out as I've mentioned before. I was running with a regular pick up group for ZG, MC and AQ20 prior and had some interface mods in play at the time. That said I'm going to skip past that period (mainly because I don't have any screen shots >.>) to discuss my interface as it stood a few weeks ago. In essence it was pretty similar back then anyway - I just changed the mods I used in some cases due to lack of support or a new and better (imo) alternative being introduced.

Compared to the screenshots of my previous post the UI has changed a lot, and has become a lot more cluttered. I like to have a lot of information available at a glance rather than having to hit a key to display a panel with the information or even mouse over an object on screen.

When I decided to change my UI I wanted to retain the amount of information I am able to access but with a much cleaner layout. I also wanted to decrease the memory footprint of my mods if possible too.

So here are the before and after shots:

Before

After

The area of the UI that has changed the most is the bottom of the screen. I wanted to streamline the look of my UI and keep all the frames and etc grouped together. This serves two purposes. My eye has less distance to travel across the screen for certain pieces of information and I've created a clear separation between the 'Heads up display' and the area of the screen where the game action is taking place.

Many people also like to move their toon frame and focus/target frame to sit at the top of the bottom panel. This means your eye needs to do even less work to keep track of important information like your health/mana and that of your target. I may well make this change in the future. As it is I have purposely only changed the location of key items bit by bit to allow myself time to get used to new locations and therefore 'eye patterns' of these elements.

The distance that your eye has to move over the screen to pick up information and the time it takes is something considered key by PVPers in particular. Anything that will give you an edge as regards reaction times in PVP shouldn't be overlooked. Megan from Out of Mana has written a great post on the role of UI layout in PVP.

This same thinking can also be applied to website design which is something I'm involved in as part of my RL job. When working on a site redesign it's important that you don't change the layout of key features so much that regular users become confused about where they are located. The site should look different but still be familiar enough to navigate easily. The other related and important consideration is that like items should be grouped together logically and in a clear hierarchy. The faster and more easily a user can locate and use elements of your site the more enjoyable their experience and the higher their satisfaction.

One of the most powerful aspects of Warcraft is the ability to customise the UI to suit your individuality - whether it be playstyle or sense of style. Interestingly although there are myriads of disaster custom UIs out there where people have gone crazy with colour, custom artwork, unit frames and informational elements resulting in a complete mess, those people seeking to achieve the most 'usable' layout often seem to arrive at similiar results.

An important consideration in UI layout is playstyle. Do you click or use hotkeys? Some users of hotkeys have them so well memorised that their UI is extremely minimal with very few items on the screen. It's also possible to set up action bar bindings to change which action bar appears depending on what action is taking place in game - such as PVP combat, PVE combat or out of combat. I haven't set this up myself. Clickers seem to tend towards having larger action bar buttons (more click space of course) and how they arrange these buttons will be influenced by the role they play. For instance a healer who is a clicker may have their action buttons arranged right next to the party or raid unit frames so that their mouse has the smallest distance to travel.

I'd love to be able to gather lots of examples of people's UIs and information about their play style and role to further explore this topic. For now I think this post has become long enough, and so in the next post I'll discuss the mods I use. Since I use so many that discussion may well get split into a couple of posts too.

When all the world was young

A friend of mine from my former piratical days has just recently started playing Warcraft. She's subscribed and is up to level 13 on her human mage. Talking with her is reminding me of what it was like when I first started playing. There was so much to learn and so much to see!

I will have to make sure that I don't either overwhelm her with information or try and force her to play a particular way. I told her that Frost was the best spec for levelling and she responded that she had put her points in Arcane. Rather than scream Nooooooooooooo at her down the interweb tubes and demand she change to Frost I smiled and said that if she's having fun with it then she should stay with it.

It's easy to forget the innocence of that first period of playing. Maybe some people go into the game researching and min-maxxing from the get go. I'm glad I enjoyed a time of just running around with my icy weapon enchant and my gear with +strength clueless of my noobery but I enjoying my explorations in Azeroth immensely.

I could really make the comparison to being a kid and all full of fun and curiosity and then end game when you grow up and get a mortgage for your flying mount and work for an employer called 'end game progression' that involves raiding and farming all the live long day (and/or night).

Sometimes it's good to stop and smell the roses I think.