Microsoft to buy WOW/Blizzard/Activision!

In a shocking move, Microsoft will purchase WOW's parent company for about $70B U.S.D, according to many sources the head of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, is unclear if he is staying at the head of the company after the final approval of the sale is complete. 

According to Reuters, this is the biggest gaming deal in the industry's history. This would lead to approximately 17% of all gamers using one of the new conglomerates at Microsoft brands. 

What are your thoughts on what impact this will have on World of Warcraft and other beloved Blizzard games? Will this be the end of WOW or could the addition of Microsoft revamp the love for the game that seems to be slowly losing it's base?

The Year that Was, 2011.

Paladins -
Kind of a lack luster year for Pally's in general. We didn't get the big nerf, nor did we get a buff. All in all we got more nerfs than buffs but really we hold strong where we started the year, as a very viable tank who isn't a "face roll" (all tanking is kinda) and we aren't so strong that everyone wants only Pally's.

Blizz did take our walking heal away from the prot and ret tree's making WoG a 20 second cooldown. With this they also changed the way Holy Shield works, making it a slight cooldown and adding to the challenge for us to block cap. Ultimately Blizz didn't nerf any tanks Mastery which was good for all tanks. I think Mastery is pretty nice for all tanks currently.

The buff to threat was surely a head scratching moment! Why on earth would you buff threat making it a non factor in game? Oh, I know why, the game killer strikes again. LFG/LFR had long que's for tanks, people who join LFG forget what manners are and they berate the tank because they have attacked the mob prior to tanks saying hello. I wish there was a way Blizz could buff the player base's common sense instead of dumbing the game down.

What I would love for the new year is a quest line everyone must do prior to entering LFG/LFR - your class/spec must run an attunement chain before you can que for either. Not sure how they would do this but something along the lines of the elite bear quest in Grizzly Hills. That would much more of a help in knowing what your roll in a 5 man or raid is than ilvl.

Game / Patches -
We have seen far to much glitz and glamor in game, to much reused stuff and nerfing of content way before its time. Cata hasn't been a great expansion for many, you can see that in the lose of subscriptions and negative feedback.

FL, ZA and ZG came out with a puff... I can't speak to the quality of the raid for FL, I've yet to walk into it and I never will...EVER! It put a halt to my days of raiding, well that and my computer.

ZA and ZG made a return to the floods of tear from everywhere, those that were geared enough knocked it out easy and told those who weren't geared they were bad for not having fun spending hours trying to finish it. I really liked ZA being back. I loved the original and for a brief while it felt like we were back in TBC.
The Troll heroics got old FAST and Blizz is putting out a poor business model, over promising and under delivering. Its supposed to be the other way around right?

Deathwing released and with it, they brought out three new 5 mans, a new raid and epic gems and patterns....oh, and one thing I forgot, a little thing called LFR. Looking For Raid, a puggable version...oh hell, you all know what it is, problem is no one knew what to expect. I don't think anyone thought you could walk in, push few macros and watch the raiders complain about everything and watch bosses fall. Its what we wanted, and its what we got. I didn't mention the loot, yes the loot.

The loot mechanic that was so poorly set up, it took a few of the top guilds down because they were allowed to roll on it. That is almost understandable, things happen. If the game allows you to do it, why not, right? Well the really nasty issue came when the ilvl greed bore its ugly head, you had classes rolling on weapons, just because it had a higher ilvl and they "could".

Blizz spilled the beans -
Now they are on MoP up duty, did you see what I did there?
At Blizzcon we all got to see the future of the game. A revised talent system, Monks and Pandarian as playable toons and the Far East theme.

My feelings on this? It is one thing I'm optimistic about with the game. So far, Cata  has missed the mark, or wait, let me rephrase that, Blizz keeps moving the mark on what the game should be. I do want to see the new zones, how the Monk works with the support and how many versions of "Sadpanda" run around zones or PVP.

2011 as a whole was a turning point, not only me but how I view the game. Now really, its a time sink that allows me to spend some time remembering the history I have with the game. I go quest, do dailies and view what I've missed in the past always wanting to raid.

My last post was a question "am I opening a goodbye" I can't answer that right now, I can say it probably won't be because SWToR blew me away, which it hasn't. I can tell you what is moving me out faster than anything...the people. The community is gone, the friends I once had have moved, cancelled, or don't raid. I have 3 people on my friends list. This game is ugly, its a virtual bar fight any time you sit in a city. The boredom of people brings out the ugly, and the simple fact that people will talk shit to you, then ignore is way beyond fun any longer. There is ZERO accountability about your actions or disrespect in this game. Blizz took that away from us with the LFR/LFG. It used to be if someone was a bone head,  your realm knew that and would run with him. Now, you can play with anyone and will probably never see that person again, so hey...why not just act like a total tool?

My next post will be another LFR hall of fame addition.

Everyone have an amazing new year and enjoy your time in game!

Thoughts on LFR and a pug experience.

My gear!

Above is a shot of my Tier 6 retro gear!

Last post I mentioned I hadn't got into the LFR system yet. A few hours later I jumped on, que'd up and gave it a go. This was literally 8 days after the LFR system opened up. I came in mid fight as a DPS and was in tank gear so I took off RF and put up my 9k dps (hey I tried, bad gear and lil vengeance doesn't equal good DPS in prot spec and gear). Down went the boss and I was thinking, I heard it was easy but wow. That was the final boss for the 1st part.

I que'd back up. Now sadly I'm on a lap top and it doesn't handle the 25's well as I learned in my first LFR.. So I went as DPS. We smoked the first group of bosses. The ease is amazing. My thoughts are that 5 mans are harder.

On to the DS, which I figured would be harder. Nope, in fact we wiped on the back of Deathwing and 7 people left saying this was a fail group and they don't group with bads. How did we wipe, no one listened to the 9 stacks the NPC must get or the tentacles spawn.

Of the 9 bosses I did in LFR (one twice) we wiped twice. Once because it seemed all the healers lagged on Hagarar. Deathwing was total FACEROLL and I did win the sword Gurthalak from ole deathy himself. I know I'm a tank but I was DPSing and that is my other spec. Every class that can use that can spec prot so I took a shot and won it. yay for me.

Pugging HoF-

I was chatting with a friend on RealID. He told me to come over and we could que up for the new 5mans on a DPS toon. I was excited because I don't like to que on my DPS, takes too long and I never get a good group. I was pretty happy that he was going to run me thru.

I went on my hunter Zumhug, I neglect him big time and his gear suffers for it. I waltzed into the new 5 mans in my broken MM spec and started doing 9k DPS on trash. The tank who was on vent told me it was a tad low but wait til a boss. Some how, some way ZIXIO a frost DK who was pulling a whopping 16k told me how bad I was and my DPS was to low to be in "this stuff".

Now in my defense (and excuses) I was low; my gear was bad, I think it was ilvl 351 and I'm playing on a laptop where I don't have use of my key binds and my bar add-on which leaves me on stock UI which is a bit clunky.

Our 1st boss was Jania, I went all out and since I was in vent with the tank I head a heads up on when it was going to start. I put everything I had into it. I pop'd cooldowns and tryed not to let a global pass, to my dismay, I hit a horrid 12k. Oh my I didn't hear the end of it. Then they started on my gear. My poor hunter got a beaten. I do have the rogue/druid agi trinket (Unheeded Warning) which isn't bad, it has nice Agi on it and well, I'm not raiding with this toon.

Since Zixio was a frost DK he did a pretty decent amout of damage and the the Rogue just smashed the charts. I was feeling shame and I heard over and over how bad I was at this game, I was a kid and it was my kind of player who was ruining the game for good people like him.

My response was, you are a DK and you think your DPS is good. It takes skill to play a frost DK and do good damage, am I correct in that?

Anyway, the last boss in our 5 man dropped the Agi and the healer (shammy) rolled and won it. Before leaving he ad sure to tell me my 17k on that boss was pathetic and left.

I won a few peices, bougth a trinket and paid for the crafted xbow. I hate being bad. On my next go round in those 5 mans, I hit about 20k on bosses and felt better.

My lord are people in LFG nasty. What a community wrecker.

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.