Posted On Monday, April 7th, 2008 By Jay
10-8
Although this isn’t a great rating, we learned lots, rather, we have the opportunity to learn lots. We started a brand new team. We beat teams we should have beat and we lost to teams that should have beaten us. Its been a great overall experience. Some thoughts:
Know when to turn on the offense.
This is a tough one because any time you are not healing you risk someone dying. We have a unique setup in that roughly 60% of the time, there is one sheeped target. This allows me to occasionally add a smite/mind blast/shadow word:death to a target. Each is about 1k damage and has their benefits.
“But I’m a priest, I should be healing!”
Yes you should! Always, keeping your mates alive is priority #1! Arena is all about knowing your class, 100% in and out. Its about knowing when you can afford double the mana for a binding heal and when you can’t. There’s always a time when as a priest you need to try on a new hat. Mana burn is just as important in the arena as flash heal. Chew on that.
Know when to quit!
This is an odd one. In my 2v2 we were shooting Continue Reading
Posted On Friday, April 4th, 2008 By Jay
I noticed something crazy lately. You see, I read a fair bit of mmo blogs during the day. Crappy build and data systems do this. When I have to sit through 5 minutes to see a minute(lol) change in game because of a lack of real time data updates I tend to read blogs. That whole rant is for another day. And to save face, my companies build protocols are actually quite good, so is the engine.
When reading all these blogs, there are those blogs that don’t have 6 billion links on their blog roll and those that do. Those that do not have 6 billion links on their blog roll also do not have any advertisements. I’m fairly curious about this. I know that blogs, myspace-esque community sites are all about links and friends and contact. Does the blog roll system work that way? I’ve seen an add-on that will notify the admin of blogs that point to it, but is that really important? I really want some good comments on this, since I’m blog ignorant.
Comment away!
Posted On Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 By Jay
There is a fantastic article here about that covers genre king and innovation. The article’s focus is Nintendo and observations on their strategy.
I’m not going to comment on the article except to state that you should read it. What I will comment on is a question that a co-worker asked of me when flying back from Chicago.
“Given your choice, would you want to make a genre king or highly innovative product.”
This question by itself is relatively huge. Do I want to make a critically acclaimed game? Before this year, outside of a few key developers, the two have been mutually exclusive. 2007 was an excellent year for video game developers, despite all the widely divergent press. The answer isn’t a simple one: *prepares podium*
There are so many frontiers in the gaming industry right now that have yet to be publicly explored. The casual gaming market, party gaming(look out board games!), lifestyle games(Did you know there’s a game out there that teaches girls out to wear make up?) and other areas I haven’t even thought of. Back on topic, its very difficult to ignore the draw to innovating game design in these spaces. Continue Reading
Posted On Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 By Jay
After a stint where my guild leader decided to move ZA raid night over my Kara raid night, I’ve decided that I will focus my time and efforts on arena. With patch 2.4 coming out, kara is open to anyone, as long as one person has a key to open the gates. This means that I can run kara frequently with my pvp buddies. Since most of us already have better than kara gear, even though their gear is pvp focused, its a great opportunity to share what the 10 man raid experience is with those that would otherwise not pursue it. That is an exciting prospect. It also clears up Wednesday night, which is a great night to focus on arena.
Season 4 is just around the corner and my 3v3 team is rocking. We regularly run 6-4 or 7-3 and with a little work, we’ll hit the 9-1 or 10-0 mark. Our team is a disc priest, BM hunter and afflict lock. I’ll be posting reactions each evening about the team and the general improvement. Stay tuned, there’ll even be pics of when mage pets get banished!
Posted On Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 By Jay
Video Capture Technology: Check!
World of Warcraft Lvl 70 characters + PVP gear: Check! x 3
Winning ratio in 3v3: Epic Fail!
We had the will, and we lost our way. It seems the night sky has been clouded and we didn’t notice. Its amazing what two weeks off of arena will do to your record. All in all, not a total loss. As always, the desire is to learn and have fun. My shipmates and I managed to steer clear of the rocks and reefs, only to barely make it back to port.
I got a really awesome compliment from one of my team mates. One of the matches we won, it came down to two hunters facing off. When I finally dropped (at the same time as their healer), I had topped off my hunter and there’s was at about 50. When we won, he stated “We only won that because of heals.” We priests have alot of pressure on the raiding, pvp and arena floor. Its nice to be noticed. What’s great is that all the priests out there will have similar stories; of that stranger in your pick up, running Shadowlabs or Shattered Halls. The neutral whisper comes usually Continue Reading
