So in the time since my last post, all hell has broken out over RealID, the NDA on Cataclysm information has been lifted and my modem has suffered a slow and painful death. To address the RealID issue first, I have to confess I couldn’t personally give a rats’ ass about the whole issue. So I would be forced to use my real name to post on the official forums in future? Big deal. The official forums are a vipers nest of scumbags, hypocrisy and retards and I stay away from the whole toxic mess because I still have a few shreds of self respect. Sure, I could sympathise with the people who were up in arms over the issue, women in particular for reasons that should be blindingly obvious (and if they’re not, you’re not smart or mature enough to be reading this blog anyway) but personally? Don’t care, don’t give a shit. Sorry.
The whole idea that making people use their real names to post comments was somehow going to turn everyone into reasonable human beings had me rolling in the aisles too. I can understand where Blizzard were coming from, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory relies on anonymity after all, and if you take away the anonymity you take away the dickheads, right? Er, wrong. The only way to stop people behaving like assholes to other people is to remove the people from the equation. Because people are basically assholes to people they don’t know. It doesn’t matter if you’re posting as Krull-Magtheridon or Richard from Eastney, the other readers of the thread still don’t know you. And there are socially challenged wankers out there who are assholes even to people they do know. Hands up anyone who had someone in their guild who was a complete pain in the ass until they eventually jumped or were pushed? Yeah, we’ve all been there. Assholes will be assholes. Because they’re assholes. Not because they get to post on the forums as Pwnj00-Genjuros.
But what amazed me the most was Blizzards’ swift about turn on the whole issue. Damn, but they turned around fast on that one, didn’t they? I mean suspiciously fast. Now contrary to what the forum troglodytes would have you believe, Blizzard are not stupid. You don’t get to 11.5 million subscribers by misjudging your customer base, not in this world. So I was left wondering what on earth they thought they were doing by pulling a stunt like this that was so obviously going to misfire on them. And then I was reminded of a little story I heard about the Borderlands cover art.
There it is in all its glory. Pretty evocative, right? A little close to knuckle for the ESRB perhaps? I mean, the guy does look like he’s blowing his own brains out after all. Well the story goes that this is the “It will blow your mind” art Gearbox wanted for the game and didn’t want to risk being told to change it, so the art they first sent in had the guy actually holding a gun in his hand and actually blowing his brains out. Naturally it came right back from the ESRB with a “What the hell are you thinking of? Change this immediately” note attached, at which point the image above was submitted instead and accepted for publication.
True story? No idea. But that’s not the point. The point is that Blizzard announced and backpedalled on the RealID issue far too quickly for my liking, and in a manner similar to the Borderlands cover art story I’m left wondering if it’s possible they were pulling the same kind of stunt? I just can’t figure out where the gain is, the alternative is that Blizzard have actually lost the plot and I’d prefer not to believe that!
Off topic slightly, but Borderlands is actually a pretty great little time waster by the way, I can recommend it.
Moving on, the Non Disclosure Agreement on Cataclysm has been lifted and we can finally get our greasy paws on all sorts of juicy information if we should so choose. I’m not even going to begin to try to cover it all, since most of it’s going to change before the beta ends anyway so it’s pointless crying over talent changes we don’t like at this point. However, you can at least get an impression of the general philosophy Blizzard have with regards to design and draw some conclusions from that. First of which seems to be that healers are going to be doing a lot more dps when there’s no-one needing actual healing. The healing talent trees are chock full of “your dps spell x is free to cast when you score crits with healing spell y” stuff. I must admit to being a bit baffled at first when I heard that Blizzard wanted healers to be doing dps. From a personal standpoint, I didn’t roll four level 80 healers so I could hurt stuff with them, so I was fairly nonplussed by the whole concept, but I appreciate that not everyone has 10 level 80s they can pick and choose from and to a lot of people the idea of being able to cast the odd holy fire when no-one needs a heal is probably useful. What had me scratching my head was Blizzards’ other design intent, the one about healers having mana issues in Cataclysm. So… you want healers to have to worry about mana management and you expect them to be pew pewing when no-one’s in immediate danger of dying? Are you morons? No, it turns out, they’re not. I am. You can see from the talent trees even at this early stage that they’re working on ways to achieve both, and content is most likely going to be balanced around the dps coming from the healing classes as well as the pure damage dealers, so it looks like something we’re going to have to start getting used to.
Speaking of morons, I met more of them since my last post! Yes, it’s Dickhead of the Week time! Feast your eyes over these fucktards:
At first glance, the chat log seems relatively innocent, but you simply lack context. Mercules, the guy at the bottom was only asking for a summon to VoA. What the screenie doesn’t show was that he’d spent the previous 11 minutes sitting on his fat lazy arse in Dalaran 50 yards away from the Wintergrasp portal while the raid gathered up and everyone else had made their own to the Vault. People who joined the raid from Stormwind three minutes before the Readycheck made it there before him, but no, he’s special. He’s entitled to keep the entire raid waiting while he sits on his useless backside spamming raid chat with “summon plz”. And then demand buffs that he missed because he wasn’t there while we were clearing trash. And then aggros the boss on the pull and spends the rest of the fight on his back, dead. And then leaves the raid the instant he’s got his two Frost badges after contributing precisely zip other than keeping us all waiting while he took his sweet time accepting the summon. A twat of the highest degree.
And because you can always rely on the ranged dps to be showboating on the damage meters instead of doing their fucking jobs, here’s another screenie showing yet another waste of good oxygen doing exactly zero damage to the Frozen Orbs on Toravon the Ice Watcher just so he can wave his wowcock in everyones’ faces when the gullible or stupid ask for the damage meter:
I have no idea what he thinks he’s doing. It’s not big, clever or impressive to 100% fail at the only reason ranged dps exist in Toravon raids. What he’s effectively doing here is proclaiming to the world that he has no clue how to play his class, is a liability to any raid he’s in and he probably has a very small penis. But hey, it’s his subscription, if he wants to proclaim “I’m a dickhead!” to the world, it would be churlish of me to fail to pass on the news. Call it a community service, no thanks required.
See you next time!
Pew pew lazers! 