I suppose it was unrealistic of me to assume that I could just go quietly into the night. I think I owe everyone an explanation, so here's the best I can manage.
When I set my goal of having all of the content cleared by patch 3.1, I did so for a couple of reasons. I really wanted to find out what I was capable of as a raid leader, and what we were capable of as a guild. I think I understand now very clearly where we sit.
What a lot of people didn't see (and for good reason) is a lot of the political schtuff and discussions that go on behind the scenes as the officers tired to hash out our vision for what we want the guild to be and what we want to do to get there. I think the vision we settled on as you see on the front page of the web site is a good start. It's also not really mine.
I had this misguided notion that I somehow had to "save" the guild. It felt good for me to come back, lead raids, and be the hero, just as I'm sure you all enjoyed the progress we made. In exchange for feel good vibes I was getting from everyone, I was spending hours a day at work doing Warcraft junk. Coming home, eating dinner with the family, putting the kids to bed, and leading a raid. And at the end of the night, in the space of a minute, we go from 30 people online to 10. To me, it looked like raiding was becoming just another job for everyone else. But still, I had to "save" the guild.
Here's another thing you might have figured out about me, in that I'm a perfectionist, a control freak, and sometimes a real asshole. That's why I asked Russokowski to hand over the GM to me. To his credit, he actually thought about it. If the roles had been reversed, I probably would not have been so kind. This is probably for the best, because in addition to being a perfectionist control freak asshole I frequently obsess on something for weeks, months, sometimes years at a time, and right now I am/was obsessing on raiding. I really, really want to build a top-10 raiding guild. I don't think CdC is the vehicle for that, despite my efforts to the contrary, and I think that's fine. Why go out of my way to ruin something that is working perfectly well for the majority of people?
So we have two trains colliding in the night- I'm effectively running a guild that my ego demands I formally run, and at the same time I'm recognizing that I might be running the guild, and my friends, right into a brick wall by going someplace no one but me wants to go. I think I finally just kind of snapped, as I was spending too much of my time getting too invested in something which I did not feel I had ultimate control over. I don't think it's good or bad, but that's what happened.
If I keep playing, I'm probably going to transfer servers-- I'm eyeing up Kel Thuzad right now. I'll post here if I do go. For right now though, I'm just kind of not doing anything for a bit. Burned out at the finish line, I guess. If I change servers and I can find a guild that is doing what I want to do, then I'll be happy to sit back and let someone else drive. If not, then who knows, maybe guild version 3.0.
So since this is the good bye post I should have written this afternoon, here are my good-byes.
Russokowski- you are more of than man than most give you credit for. She's now officially all yours, good luck.
Alorial- You are a natural leader, don't fight your inner asshole :-)
Ballarias- Take care of Alorial ;-) I always thought that you were the one to persuade when something hard came up.
Tlaz and Syphax - I miss you guys already. Enjoy PR and Syphax get a damn facebook account already!
Savaric- It was truly a pleasure working with you and learning from you. You have always had my respect and admiration.
Roselin- I would have asked you to have my bebes, but you have at least 27 of your own to worry about ;-). Also, whack Sav on the back of the head after you read this, just for me :-)
Fethir- Sorry I let you down, boss. You were a diamond in the rough, and glad to have you.
Vahra- if you can not die on Frogger once, you can not die every time :-)
Mythu & Petitpeur- you guys always knew how to keep it light, thanks for that.
Catria- Your timing is impeccable ;-) It was fun getting to know you.
Tyr - I enjoyed our breakfast chats immensely :-)
Kalivan- I don't think I ever gave you enough credit, you're an excellent tank.
Gunthe- keep the ret alive, brotha!
Trianne- I left a big bag of catfood with Gunthe. He can handle all of your pet-taming needs ;-)
Rox- Sorry I never caught up to you, but it wasn't for the lack of trying.
If I haven't mentioned you by name, it's because I'm shitty at things like this.
God speed.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Final
I have actually rolled over into live by this point, so really I am wrapping up my feelings on the game as I continue to level.
WAR really captures the essence of PvP and has succeeded in making it fun, meaningful, and rewarding. And fun. They went even further and found ways to eliminate or minimize the unfun elements. For example, ganking.
Ganking as we know it from WoW does not exist in WAR. There are no pure stealth classes who can pop out of nowhere and eliminate you in 1-2 hits. It almost impossible to fight someone who is far below your level thanks to the chicken mechanic. It is even viable to pick a fight if you run across someone a level or two higher than you. Combat is slow enough that you have time to make some choices. Even healing classes have a damage component to allow them to save themselves, and pure healing classes like the dwarven rune priest are almost indestructible on 1 on 1 combat.
Questing is tied in nicely into the PK aspect of the game. You can get repeatable quests to kill a certain number of enemy players, play a certain scenario (Battleground), or even visit a specific objective inside of an RvR zone (where you are automatically flagged for combat). When you are in the RvR zone, you are automatically buffed to have base stats equivalent to a level x8, which gives you at least a fighting chance against another level. Sure, you can still run across multiple adversaries, but you're pretty much screwed whenever that happens, anyway. Even more importantly, 2 lower level guys stand in very good chances (at least 3:2) of beating a higher level opponent of equal skill. Unless that opponent is a Warrior Priest, because those guys are friggin' OP.
Dead players drop XP, cash, and the occasional random green. Taking control of a keep opens up key vendors in the zone.
If you can find a good group of friends to play with, then WAR is fun. A huge difference is that the solo experience to max level seems hardly worth the trip.
So in summary, WAR has enough fun, and enough depth, to keep me coming back for many more nights to come. I hope to see you all there.
WAR really captures the essence of PvP and has succeeded in making it fun, meaningful, and rewarding. And fun. They went even further and found ways to eliminate or minimize the unfun elements. For example, ganking.
Ganking as we know it from WoW does not exist in WAR. There are no pure stealth classes who can pop out of nowhere and eliminate you in 1-2 hits. It almost impossible to fight someone who is far below your level thanks to the chicken mechanic. It is even viable to pick a fight if you run across someone a level or two higher than you. Combat is slow enough that you have time to make some choices. Even healing classes have a damage component to allow them to save themselves, and pure healing classes like the dwarven rune priest are almost indestructible on 1 on 1 combat.
Questing is tied in nicely into the PK aspect of the game. You can get repeatable quests to kill a certain number of enemy players, play a certain scenario (Battleground), or even visit a specific objective inside of an RvR zone (where you are automatically flagged for combat). When you are in the RvR zone, you are automatically buffed to have base stats equivalent to a level x8, which gives you at least a fighting chance against another level. Sure, you can still run across multiple adversaries, but you're pretty much screwed whenever that happens, anyway. Even more importantly, 2 lower level guys stand in very good chances (at least 3:2) of beating a higher level opponent of equal skill. Unless that opponent is a Warrior Priest, because those guys are friggin' OP.
Dead players drop XP, cash, and the occasional random green. Taking control of a keep opens up key vendors in the zone.
If you can find a good group of friends to play with, then WAR is fun. A huge difference is that the solo experience to max level seems hardly worth the trip.
So in summary, WAR has enough fun, and enough depth, to keep me coming back for many more nights to come. I hope to see you all there.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Part 2
PvP Synergies
Last night we had our first 500-0 scenario victory, and it was really incredible. We had the ideal situation of a well-balanced group against a fairly disorganized opposition. We weren't a full 15 person warband, but there were enough of us on vent that it made a difference, and we held all 3 objectives with zero deaths. The synergies between tanks and healers, in particular, is amazing. Healers can be very durable in 1-on-1 or 2-on-1, and if you have a tank guarding the healer you can really do some amazing things.
For example, in another scenario, Nordenwatch, one of the objectives is to control a flag by the fortress. It works on proximity, like the flags in Eye of the Storm. We had pushed to the next objective but were repulsed, and the only people alive were Snotspigot the goblin shaman (healer/DPS hybrid, ably played by the dwarf formerly known as Daigan) and myself (Chosen, tank class). We managed to stay alive for what felt like forever, but was probably only about a minute and a half, against 5 on 2 odds until our reinforcements rezzed and made it back into the fight. Between taking 50% of his damage, boosting his avoidance and mine with Hold the Line, and snaring all of the melee on Snotspigot (tab, Dizzying Blow)^3, he was able to kite and HoT and keep us both alive. Because we were defending an objective we controlled and were still alive, we kept control. After the fight we were amazed that we had survived, and I think that is going to be one of my definitive Warhammer memories.
Last night we had our first 500-0 scenario victory, and it was really incredible. We had the ideal situation of a well-balanced group against a fairly disorganized opposition. We weren't a full 15 person warband, but there were enough of us on vent that it made a difference, and we held all 3 objectives with zero deaths. The synergies between tanks and healers, in particular, is amazing. Healers can be very durable in 1-on-1 or 2-on-1, and if you have a tank guarding the healer you can really do some amazing things.
For example, in another scenario, Nordenwatch, one of the objectives is to control a flag by the fortress. It works on proximity, like the flags in Eye of the Storm. We had pushed to the next objective but were repulsed, and the only people alive were Snotspigot the goblin shaman (healer/DPS hybrid, ably played by the dwarf formerly known as Daigan) and myself (Chosen, tank class). We managed to stay alive for what felt like forever, but was probably only about a minute and a half, against 5 on 2 odds until our reinforcements rezzed and made it back into the fight. Between taking 50% of his damage, boosting his avoidance and mine with Hold the Line, and snaring all of the melee on Snotspigot (tab, Dizzying Blow)^3, he was able to kite and HoT and keep us both alive. Because we were defending an objective we controlled and were still alive, we kept control. After the fight we were amazed that we had survived, and I think that is going to be one of my definitive Warhammer memories.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Warhammer Online Beta impressions, Part 1
The quests are really well done, at least for the starting areas (only level 6 or so on a couple of characters, and I am not trying to go too far just because I'm going to have to redo it at launch). One nice thing is that if you have to kill something for a drop it's a 100% drop rate. Quest hubs are obvious, and there are highlighted areas on the mini-map that indicate what regions you need to look in to see stuff. The starting zones seem a little more compact, as well, so I feel like there is less time spent running through empty space. You might have heard about the Public Quest feature, which is really great, as well.
The way a PQ works is you wander into a zone and a little alert pops up on your screen indicating that there is a public quest going on and you have the option of participating. When the quest is over, you get a standing based on how much you contributed to the completion, whether it's damage or healing done. The server then does a roll /1000, and you get a bonus based on your preliminary standing (my best finish was 4th, and I got +200 or something). Your final score determines if you're eligible for loot, and there are loot bags down to 9 or 10, with better quality rewards the better you finish. Another nice thing is that the loot bags contain a bunch of different stuff, and you get to pick one- so if you get a piece of armor that's not an upgrade, you can always take cash or a pot. The PQs restart every 2 minutes, so you can do them as often as you like.
The graphics and spell effects are more indicative of a newer game; but the downside is that you might want more beefy hardware to play. The races and careers (classes) are all very flavorful and pretty true to the Warhammer IP. For example, the Dark Elves are the merciless, haughty, backstabbing branch of the elf family. They were banished from the main High Elf homeland, but have come back to lay siege. The 3rd quest hub is right on the front lines of what looks like a successful siege, and the Dark Elves are mostly just mopping up some resistance. One of your quests is to go open up a cage where the NPCs keep their giant lizard mounts so they can go and eat some of the defenders. So you open the cage, the lizard plods over and eats a very whiny High Elf, and all of the NPCs laugh.
You could conceivably PvE your way through the game, at least to the end, but PvP is actually very well executed. Most standard servers are not open RvR- you have to be in a contested area to be automatically flagged. Starting at level 1, you can queue for a scenario, which is a lot like a battleground. When you join the scenario you are given the stats of a level 8, but no abilities. However because you can get experience in scenarios you could level doing nothing but that (although it would be slower than questing). I actually did that when I first got started, and it was entertaining. Then you can take a break, level and train some more, and then queue up for a scenario. You can queue from anywhere, so you can go quest, pop into a scenario, and then it drops you right back to where you were so you can finish questing. You also earn Renown, which is more like PvP experience more than honor, so you are leveling up on 2 fronts. As you gain renown you can buy renown gear, but is usable for questing and so forth.
Another big difference is that there is no mana or rage, everything uses action points (AP). The closest analogy is the Rogue energy bar; it continually refreshes and is drained by doing stuff. Health and AP regenerate quickly when you're out of combat, so there is no sitting and drinking (which is disconcerting for about 5 minutes, and then you're sold).
PvP is balanced around 4 archetypes: Tanks, Melee DPS, Ranged (or caster) DPS, and healers.
Tanks are effectively PvP crowd control. As you level up you get a bunch of snares and knock backs. Plus, the game has limited collision (3 seconds and then someone can push through you), so you can literally be a meat shield. You also get a PvP taunt (which debuffs an opposing player until they attack you), as well a a guard ability that lets you eat some damage taken by a buddy. Sword and Board is very strong, because you can block ranged attacks and spells. If you queue for a scenario at level 1, that's going to be your biggest contribution is just trying to get in front of squishier people and take some of the heat.
Melee DPS tend to be squishier but can absolutely shred people under the right circumstances. I haven't tried a straight mDPS class yet, but I can tell you that I had a caster get repeatedly shredded by one. :-)
Healers have some interesting implementations. There really aren't a lot of what we would recognize as pure healers. The Dark Elves have a melee healer who heals by doing DPS, the Orks have a shaman that builds up healing power by doing damage, and builds up damage by doing healing, and the Chaos (humans) have another melee Healer. Healers in general seem to be extremely durable, even against a pure DPS class, and well-played melee healers (especially when guarded by a tank) are really, really tough to deal with.
Ranged DPS comes in some interesting varieties. The Orks have a hunter-type class called a Squig Herder that summons these little mouths with legs. They were recently buffed and people are calling this the new cheese class. I tried one for a bit and while levelling my squig had at one time 6 mobs on him and shrugged it off while I plinked them down. The Chaos folks have a guy who floats on a permanent disc called the Magus. He drops demons in a little summoning circle who function a lot like stationary gun turrents. It's a neat kind of mechanic as it gives you some versatility for offense or defense. The Dark Elves have a Sorceress who has a combo-point spell system. As you cast spells you build up dark energy, which increases the chance that you'll take some backlash damage, but also allows you to nuke someone when you have the points built up. This is probably the closest to a pure mage class. And the Ork's caster DPS is also their healer, the Shaman.
The cons: the solo experience is probably not going to be as viable as it is in WoW. While there is nothing that prevents you from soloing quests and scenarios, the game strongly encourages you to guild. With the PvP focus communication and teamwork are even more important, and you're not going to get that from a PUG. The only other question mark I have is what is the end game going to feel like. The pinnacle of the WAR experience is supposed to be capital city sieges. I have no idea how well this is going to work. It was well tested, and people who played it said it was extremely fun, but it's supposed to be a major accomplishment, so it happens infrequently. Level cap is a long way off, but it's something to definitely think about.
The other thing I don't like is that you get a lot of the same annoyances from WoW BGs in these scenarios. These all tend to be a consequence of the people involved, unfortunately, which is all the more reason to guild up. PUGs in scenarios tend to get absolutely demolished, so even if you're under levelled you can still be a lot more successful if you're organized. In this way I think the game actually succeeds more than WoW because the rewards for teamwork and skillful play are more evident.
Right now I'm rolling with the Axis guild (Destruction) on Tyrion server (www.axis-guild.com), which for former Watchmen has Petunia as the GM, with Daigan, Pzar, and Trian also playing. I will definitely play the game at least through November, at which point I will have to decide if Lich King is going to pull me back. I actually enjoy PvE raiding, so I'm going to have to see if organized RvR is going to be enjoyable enough to keep me coming back.
Overall the game is pretty well polished, and remarkably stable. Not WoW levels of stability yet, so there are some occasional crashes to desktop, but overall it's quite playable. I imagine you would want a reasonably new computer to really enjoy the game, as 5 FPS is probably fatal in RvR, but I would ask around in that case. It feels similar enough to WoW that you can comfortably jump in and start doing stuff without reading any documentation, and a lot of the conventions are the same. The atmosphere and storyline/quest execution is all top notch, and the PvP has some noticeable improvements. It feels like a solid addition to the MMO field, but it's not going to kill WoW by any stretch.
The way a PQ works is you wander into a zone and a little alert pops up on your screen indicating that there is a public quest going on and you have the option of participating. When the quest is over, you get a standing based on how much you contributed to the completion, whether it's damage or healing done. The server then does a roll /1000, and you get a bonus based on your preliminary standing (my best finish was 4th, and I got +200 or something). Your final score determines if you're eligible for loot, and there are loot bags down to 9 or 10, with better quality rewards the better you finish. Another nice thing is that the loot bags contain a bunch of different stuff, and you get to pick one- so if you get a piece of armor that's not an upgrade, you can always take cash or a pot. The PQs restart every 2 minutes, so you can do them as often as you like.
The graphics and spell effects are more indicative of a newer game; but the downside is that you might want more beefy hardware to play. The races and careers (classes) are all very flavorful and pretty true to the Warhammer IP. For example, the Dark Elves are the merciless, haughty, backstabbing branch of the elf family. They were banished from the main High Elf homeland, but have come back to lay siege. The 3rd quest hub is right on the front lines of what looks like a successful siege, and the Dark Elves are mostly just mopping up some resistance. One of your quests is to go open up a cage where the NPCs keep their giant lizard mounts so they can go and eat some of the defenders. So you open the cage, the lizard plods over and eats a very whiny High Elf, and all of the NPCs laugh.
You could conceivably PvE your way through the game, at least to the end, but PvP is actually very well executed. Most standard servers are not open RvR- you have to be in a contested area to be automatically flagged. Starting at level 1, you can queue for a scenario, which is a lot like a battleground. When you join the scenario you are given the stats of a level 8, but no abilities. However because you can get experience in scenarios you could level doing nothing but that (although it would be slower than questing). I actually did that when I first got started, and it was entertaining. Then you can take a break, level and train some more, and then queue up for a scenario. You can queue from anywhere, so you can go quest, pop into a scenario, and then it drops you right back to where you were so you can finish questing. You also earn Renown, which is more like PvP experience more than honor, so you are leveling up on 2 fronts. As you gain renown you can buy renown gear, but is usable for questing and so forth.
Another big difference is that there is no mana or rage, everything uses action points (AP). The closest analogy is the Rogue energy bar; it continually refreshes and is drained by doing stuff. Health and AP regenerate quickly when you're out of combat, so there is no sitting and drinking (which is disconcerting for about 5 minutes, and then you're sold).
PvP is balanced around 4 archetypes: Tanks, Melee DPS, Ranged (or caster) DPS, and healers.
Tanks are effectively PvP crowd control. As you level up you get a bunch of snares and knock backs. Plus, the game has limited collision (3 seconds and then someone can push through you), so you can literally be a meat shield. You also get a PvP taunt (which debuffs an opposing player until they attack you), as well a a guard ability that lets you eat some damage taken by a buddy. Sword and Board is very strong, because you can block ranged attacks and spells. If you queue for a scenario at level 1, that's going to be your biggest contribution is just trying to get in front of squishier people and take some of the heat.
Melee DPS tend to be squishier but can absolutely shred people under the right circumstances. I haven't tried a straight mDPS class yet, but I can tell you that I had a caster get repeatedly shredded by one. :-)
Healers have some interesting implementations. There really aren't a lot of what we would recognize as pure healers. The Dark Elves have a melee healer who heals by doing DPS, the Orks have a shaman that builds up healing power by doing damage, and builds up damage by doing healing, and the Chaos (humans) have another melee Healer. Healers in general seem to be extremely durable, even against a pure DPS class, and well-played melee healers (especially when guarded by a tank) are really, really tough to deal with.
Ranged DPS comes in some interesting varieties. The Orks have a hunter-type class called a Squig Herder that summons these little mouths with legs. They were recently buffed and people are calling this the new cheese class. I tried one for a bit and while levelling my squig had at one time 6 mobs on him and shrugged it off while I plinked them down. The Chaos folks have a guy who floats on a permanent disc called the Magus. He drops demons in a little summoning circle who function a lot like stationary gun turrents. It's a neat kind of mechanic as it gives you some versatility for offense or defense. The Dark Elves have a Sorceress who has a combo-point spell system. As you cast spells you build up dark energy, which increases the chance that you'll take some backlash damage, but also allows you to nuke someone when you have the points built up. This is probably the closest to a pure mage class. And the Ork's caster DPS is also their healer, the Shaman.
The cons: the solo experience is probably not going to be as viable as it is in WoW. While there is nothing that prevents you from soloing quests and scenarios, the game strongly encourages you to guild. With the PvP focus communication and teamwork are even more important, and you're not going to get that from a PUG. The only other question mark I have is what is the end game going to feel like. The pinnacle of the WAR experience is supposed to be capital city sieges. I have no idea how well this is going to work. It was well tested, and people who played it said it was extremely fun, but it's supposed to be a major accomplishment, so it happens infrequently. Level cap is a long way off, but it's something to definitely think about.
The other thing I don't like is that you get a lot of the same annoyances from WoW BGs in these scenarios. These all tend to be a consequence of the people involved, unfortunately, which is all the more reason to guild up. PUGs in scenarios tend to get absolutely demolished, so even if you're under levelled you can still be a lot more successful if you're organized. In this way I think the game actually succeeds more than WoW because the rewards for teamwork and skillful play are more evident.
Right now I'm rolling with the Axis guild (Destruction) on Tyrion server (www.axis-guild.com), which for former Watchmen has Petunia as the GM, with Daigan, Pzar, and Trian also playing. I will definitely play the game at least through November, at which point I will have to decide if Lich King is going to pull me back. I actually enjoy PvE raiding, so I'm going to have to see if organized RvR is going to be enjoyable enough to keep me coming back.
Overall the game is pretty well polished, and remarkably stable. Not WoW levels of stability yet, so there are some occasional crashes to desktop, but overall it's quite playable. I imagine you would want a reasonably new computer to really enjoy the game, as 5 FPS is probably fatal in RvR, but I would ask around in that case. It feels similar enough to WoW that you can comfortably jump in and start doing stuff without reading any documentation, and a lot of the conventions are the same. The atmosphere and storyline/quest execution is all top notch, and the PvP has some noticeable improvements. It feels like a solid addition to the MMO field, but it's not going to kill WoW by any stretch.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Vista's UAC and World of Warcraft
I recently bought a toy computer to play games on, and it happened to come with Vista Super Premium Mocha Lattechino. I've got a techie background so I figured I would give it a go.
My first major decision was that I was going to try to live life as just a normal, unprivileged user. So after setting up the admin account, I made a nice ordinary user account for me. I then tried installing Ventrilo and was pleasantly surprised when it started asking me for password prompts. Welcome to something approaching multi-layer security!
Long story short, I install WoW and Wowmatrix (my addon manager of choice) and go to town. I launch the game from Wowmatrix, everything seems fine. I quit to uninstall some addons, and when I relaunch WoW none of my addons load. Yowza.
So I try to open an addon folder, and the first thing that happens is that UAC kicks in and asks me for my password. Hrm. So by now I am getting the picture that WoW runs in an unprivileged state (which is normal), but then it subsequently does not have the privs necessary to read the addons, which were installed by an admin-privileged instance of Wowmatrix.
All of my folders were set to read-only, and I would try to unset them and it would not stick--UAC kept reverting them. After a fair amount of cursing and some research, I determined that I essentially had 3 options:
After switching to the admin account while keeping my account open (another feature I'm glad they copied shamelessly from Apple, who copied it shamelessly from the Unix world), I found Wow.exe and went to properties > security tab > advanced > and checked the "run as admin for all users" box. Switching back and I confirmed that, voila, all of my addons were working.
I do have to type another password now whenever I launch WoW, but I feel that is a small price to pay for having a less-vulnerable system. Microsoft has finally caught up to the rest of the world in its approach to security, and I would commend them for that. I think better documentation, however, would go a long way towards allowing people to understand what is going on.
So if you happen to stumble across this page in your Google search for Vista UAC and World of Warcraft / WoW problems (gratuitous keyword reusage), I hope you find it useful.
My first major decision was that I was going to try to live life as just a normal, unprivileged user. So after setting up the admin account, I made a nice ordinary user account for me. I then tried installing Ventrilo and was pleasantly surprised when it started asking me for password prompts. Welcome to something approaching multi-layer security!
Long story short, I install WoW and Wowmatrix (my addon manager of choice) and go to town. I launch the game from Wowmatrix, everything seems fine. I quit to uninstall some addons, and when I relaunch WoW none of my addons load. Yowza.
So I try to open an addon folder, and the first thing that happens is that UAC kicks in and asks me for my password. Hrm. So by now I am getting the picture that WoW runs in an unprivileged state (which is normal), but then it subsequently does not have the privs necessary to read the addons, which were installed by an admin-privileged instance of Wowmatrix.
All of my folders were set to read-only, and I would try to unset them and it would not stick--UAC kept reverting them. After a fair amount of cursing and some research, I determined that I essentially had 3 options:
- Disable UAC entirely
- Make my user account an admin account
- Grant WoW (and ancilliary programs) the ability to execute as admin
After switching to the admin account while keeping my account open (another feature I'm glad they copied shamelessly from Apple, who copied it shamelessly from the Unix world), I found Wow.exe and went to properties > security tab > advanced > and checked the "run as admin for all users" box. Switching back and I confirmed that, voila, all of my addons were working.
I do have to type another password now whenever I launch WoW, but I feel that is a small price to pay for having a less-vulnerable system. Microsoft has finally caught up to the rest of the world in its approach to security, and I would commend them for that. I think better documentation, however, would go a long way towards allowing people to understand what is going on.
So if you happen to stumble across this page in your Google search for Vista UAC and World of Warcraft / WoW problems (gratuitous keyword reusage), I hope you find it useful.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
I have a Mistress...
...and her name is Warhammer Online.
The astounding lack of vision and communication regarding the Paladin class in general and Ret paladins in particular is only highlighted more by this post at Warhammer Alliance:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61523
I'll wait.
Not that long, I have ADD.
I've been in the corporate world for a good long time, and I realize that the more power and influence you have, the less you should say. I also realize that you can't make all of the people happy all of the time. What is missing, however, is a lot of the "Why". Everyone wants to know Why, and someone (even if not the devs themselves) should be able to articulate that response. Kudos to Mythic for understanding that.
The astounding lack of vision and communication regarding the Paladin class in general and Ret paladins in particular is only highlighted more by this post at Warhammer Alliance:
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61523
I'll wait.
Not that long, I have ADD.
I've been in the corporate world for a good long time, and I realize that the more power and influence you have, the less you should say. I also realize that you can't make all of the people happy all of the time. What is missing, however, is a lot of the "Why". Everyone wants to know Why, and someone (even if not the devs themselves) should be able to articulate that response. Kudos to Mythic for understanding that.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
I am made of pure Fail
Everyone has horrible pick-up group experiences. Everyone thinks everyone else is terrible. Chances are though, that at some point it's been you.
Lat night I offered to help 2 guild mates get through normal Magister's Terrace. "Find a healer, and I'll tank for you" I offered. Well they did, and off we went. Our group was Tankadin, Holydin, Elemental Shaman, Hunter, Rogue. Not my preferred group (no real AoE damage), but 2 cc classes, so it seemed workable.
My first clue that we were going to be horrible was that the holydin was really undergeared. Mostly greens, with the engineering helm. No problem, I thought, I would just use (shudder) crowd control to help him keep up. Never mind that Kael is hard for a good paladin to heal...
We wipe on the third trash pull when our hunter (who, to his credit, had never been in the zone before) face-pulled the trash pack on the other side of the tree while I was busy marking the pull in front of us.
The shaman send me a tell "If we wipe on the first boss I am out of here".
First boss goes down easy, and we actually power through Vex in one shot, although me and the holy are the only ones left standing in the end. Then the shaman has to leave. I hit the LFG
tool and there's a resto druid available. Well, 2 healers is probably not ideal, I thought, but we need a body and this is only normal mode. I grab the druid and we start clearing to the Priestess.
On the first 6 pull we almost wipe, but pull it out at the end, with just the druid and the holydin dead. On the second 6 pull we utterly fail at cc and wipe totally. At this point the druid says "I've had enough," and leaves. I look at the clock and decide that we might as well call it at this point.
Now put yourself in the druid's shoes. You get pulled into a PuG with an insane tankadin, an undergeared main healer, a hunter who can't trap, and a PvP-specced rogue. How long would you give us?
I am willing to give most people the benefit of the doubt. I think last night I was too forgiving... I knew, as soon as I saw who was in the rest of the group, that we were doomed. Yet I stuck with it, for probably too long. Then this poor druid comes along and finds himself in the middle of a horrible PuG and eats 2 deaths in the space of about 10 minutes. Yeah, I would quit too if it wasn't my guild-mates.
I'd like to blame Blizzard for this one, but the sad truth is that last night it was my turn to play the role of the "PuG from hell".
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