No More Accents and Other news.

Shame on you accents -

4.3 is up on the PTR and here is one thing that makes some scratch their head, kinda along the lines of removing portals, to put them back up later...

Not sure what to think about this, really. But Blizz in the patch notes stated the following below. I understand that people get frustrated about having to type or look how to make the special code for this, is that really that big a deal when the names that currently have them won't have to change?

North American realms (excluding Brazilian, Latin American, and Oceanic realms) no longer permit letters with accents in character or guild names. Existing character and guild names with special characters will be unaffected by this change. (source)

I xfered to a server where Chasey was taken by a level 11 toon that hadn't been on in months and wasn't on for all the time I was on the server. After multiple attempts to get a GM to open the name, finally I got one to do it for me. The reason: the character didn't meet the criteria to unlock the name. I asked why and it was because the toon was to high a level. All in all it worked out, I got the name. I did however have to pay for this service.

Here is where I have issues with this, if you have a toon and need to xfer, the name is your toons identity, at least it was for me. I understand rolling a new toon, find another name but really....Chasey was always Chasey even if she did have a å in her name.

There are two other issues that I'll hit on briefly and you can make your own mind on this issue but reading this on MMO-Champion, you'd think this was the BEST THING EVER.

• To many people sit on names, not logging in and Blizz wants us to roll alts, you hear lots of complaints that too many names are taken.
• Having one special accent in a name is no harm at all, yet this is a patch note, is this a game changer?

Maybe they plan on opening up surnames?

Bout me...
Not sure where I'm at in game. I'm done with raiding and my computer is still out. I still keep up with the news. I did some looking to see what I wanted my gear to look like when we can change it. BTW anyone else think that "transmogirification" is a weird name?

Here is one idea I came up with:
Found this while doing a search, it has spirit on it but really its just for looks. I have no idea what weapon to go with, but I will go with the Isle's shield. Always loved that thing.

My other options and I have it sitting in the bank is Tier 6. How can you beat Tier 6 as a paladin?

I'll throw a picture up later. Sadly this is the only thing I got to look forward to so far, I'm not a very vanity orientated player but making my toon look good is going to be pretty awesome.

Incoming Nerf and Fixes.

Below is today's big nerf to 4.2 and at the bottom is my response to my comments from my last quote. For some odd reason I can't comment on my own blog...LOL

From MMO-Champion
September 20Firelands

• Hell Hound Rend Flesh damage has been reduced by 25%.
• The damage multiplier granted by energy to Unstable Magma has been reduced by 50%.
• Alysrazor
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Alysrazor now drops 1 additional feather in 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers in 25-player mode in all cycles.
  • The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
  • Alysrazor’s Fiery Tornados now move slower.
• Baleroc
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Baleroc now swings 25% slower while Decimation Blade is active.
  • The duration of Tormented has been reduced on normal difficulty.
• Beth'tilac
  • Beth'tilac's health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Lord Rhyolith
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
  • The health and damage of additional enemies in this encounter have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Majordomo Fandral Staghelm
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage has been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Druid of the Flame have had their health reduced by 15%, and Sunfire damage reduced by 25% on both difficulties.
  • The health and melee damage of Spirit of the Flame have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty, and reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
• Ragnaros
  • Ragnaros' health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty.
  • Ragnaros' damage has been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Magma Trap damage has been reduced on all difficulties.
  • The health and damage of additional enemies in this encounter have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty and 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Wrath of Ragnaros now knocks targets up, but not back, on normal difficulty.
• Shannox
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
  • Riplimb's health has been reduced by 15%.
  • Rageface's health has been reduced by 15%.
  • Magma Flare damage and Hurl Spear damage have been reduced by 15% on both difficulties.

So here it goes:
Nat and Caly thanks for reading. I agree with you both.
@LM I appreciate you responding and reading the blog, I don't think you read this post fully. If you did, maybe you missed some of my points.
When T12 (FL) hit, VP was not available from the T11 instances. They placed a hot fix later to receive VP. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2795074028?page=4#69
That wasn't really an opinion, it was fact that has been updated and exact quote was:

Removing VP from T11 raids when FL hit.

alluding to the fact that it is NOW there. Sorry if that was perceived wrong in my type.
The next issue you addressed is ilvl, I was NOT saying was the highest ilvl in game. I made a mistake, 378 is from normals and 391 is from heroics. I made a horrible mistake and I'm sorry. Point of that whole paragraph is the guilds that have killed Rags on normal is very low.

Lastly is the nerf to FL being in steps, at the time of the post all the info I had was it would be done:

"by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) was released."

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3494581#blog

There was no announcement of steps. It said the coming weeks.

I can see where this would be a huge area of concern for people as I got info wrong, I will make adjustments and fix this in the future. In general I do check my facts even on Op-ed type posts.

I hope I made your day better and cleared up some confusion, cuz that is what I'm here for.

State of Warcraft

It has been a long time since I posted anything of substance. The last few days I've been laid up due to my bad knee being, well...bad again. I've been reading alot about the game, the feeling of the players and doing my blogging rounds.
Here is what I've seen and yes this is my opinion but it is based on what others, at least those who frequent the net have said.
-No one is happy - the game is losing players, guilds and some servers are even on the decline. Reused content and lack of things to do is hurting the game. On top of it releasing a major patch during the summer makes it hard for a lot of the non hard core gamer.
-Raid lockouts- going to a single lockout has hurt the player base far worse than anyone expected. This limits the time and activity of many of WOW's players. You can only raid on your toon one lockout per week. You can't even pug, you only have 1 lockout.
-Raiding is difficult - Blizz did what they set out to do by making the raid much harder than they were in Wrath. You hear the calls to bring back Wrath raiding again. Sadly I think Blizz missed the boat thou in how unforgiving they made T11 and T12 raids. Yes they were doable, but honestly, T11 was MUCH harder than T10 ICC. Its never a good thing to have the end of one Xpac be easier, almost too easy and then make the next tier of a new Xpac so challenging.
14,000 guilds have cleared FL's normal modes, this is equal to 1.4% of WOW's population. Way too low. Average Ilvl is 370, that's pretty high seeing as the item level is 371. This means that everyone who has beat Rags is wearing head to toe gear from FL to kill him.

I understand how the upcoming nerf to FL is upsetting all the hard work they have put in with raids and wipes. Taking 20% health and reducing damage as much is a hard pill to swallow. I don't think Blizz doing the 20% right away, doing it in steps would have made this to take.

Other mistakes Blizz has made with Cataclysm :
- Again reusing content, while for the first few weeks it was cool. It got old again fast.
- Making 5 mans soooo long as Cata was released.
- Tuning 10 mans in T11 so tightly. Yes this argument has been beat to death but 1 bad player and on death was almost a certain wipe.
- Taking the community out of the MMO. Just que up and do dailies.
- No central city. Throwing us into the home cities was just horrible.
- Removing VP from T11 raids when FL hit. Even a reduced rate would have been nice.
- 31 point talent tree - everyone is cookie cutter. You can't even be bad by picking the wrong talents, you don't have any to pick wrong.

With all this it seems to me, Blizz has thrown the panic switch and is now allowing us gear up prior to Deathwing hitting the net.