Friday 23 March 2012

What a difference 3 days make: 72 little hours!

Hi all,

So as you know I haven't been too well recently. Turns out what I thought was just a cold bloomed into full flu which I then passed onto my wife, but thankfully not yet to the kid.

But today is my first day back at work, and so id like to try and write something to keep everyone up to date with things

So today I would like to try and cover a couple of things:

1: thoughts on the WoW: MoP beta info currently released.

2: a few things I've noticed recently about the apparent narcissistic tendencies of your blogger.

3: thoughts and implications on the Dreamer errata and Bury changes.

1). MoP!

For those of you who don't know, this is relating to World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria.

So yesterday the beta went live, and as I expected (but hoped would not be the case) I didn't get into the initial wave of invites, so I did the next best thing:

I read MMO Champion

What I saw was very interesting, very little about the new continent itself, but NPC models of the creatures found there, and I must say, I am impressed!

Take the cloud dragon, this creature puts out puffs of air from its nostrils, each puff looking like it belongs in a far east painting!


Then I saw the female Pandaran, available in 2 flavours: Black and White or Red and White. The latter is complete with a raccoon style tail.

Now this looks fine, just one little problem, the red and white - with tail option, this is to make it look like a Red Panda, however despite sharing the same name, a Red Panda is actually a closer relative to the raccoon family than the panda. It's like Koalas, some may call them Koala Bears, but that doesn't mean they have anything genetically in common with a grizzly!

Next up is the new glyphs. These look fun! Warriors who go on fire when they enrage! (I have a warrior, and this visual cue would be very helpful) Druids who can be ridden, Warlocks who can give their dread steeds trails of fire, this is all great stuff!

Then I read the rogue's and saw a few stat adjustment glyphs. As my main is a pve rogue, this was very disappointing.

2). I'm actually going to skip this bit for now and come back here later. Instead let's jump to:

3). Dreamer and Bury errata!
Dreamer Errata
Bury Errata

So let me summarise the two for you!

Pre rules change, in Malifaux, Day Dreams and The Dreamer could pull through Chompy because of The Dreamer's unbury spell. Now this has been changed so it no longer works with Chompy, instead you can only unbury Chompy with the (0) cost placement. This causes you to sacrifice mobility and also makes it a lot harder/near impossible to pull off the Chompy Slingshot which the master was famous for.

Reading the Internet this had the community by the throat, people thanking god because now the master will be beatable and others claiming that Chompy is too weak now 'post nerf'.

As someone who's only recently gotten into The Dreamer, I like this change. The first time I ever played him, I played him the exact way that this rule change will force players to use, and believe it or not he was still fun and he still packed one hell of a punch!

Next up is the bury rules.

Essentially it says that anything with a buff on it, loses that buff when it gets buried. - there's a lot more to it than that, but this is one of the most important aspects.

Again, I'm lucky. So far I have played 4 games (hardly any I know) with The Dreamer, and I have yet to bury anything other than The Dreamer or Chompy, now this is actually an example of poor tactics from me, but it means that I don't need to learn anything new other than "what I never used before, I can't use now".

Personally I can't see that being a problem.

And now for 2!

2). The Narcissistic Tendencies of the average blogger.

Ok, now I know that I count as a blogger, this is a blog and so to one extent this does apply to me too, and at the same time, please take what I say with a pinch of salt, these are just my thoughts and observations, and after starting far too many unintentional desktop revolutions I know how moving/motivational the written word can be.

So here it is...

WTF is up with some Internet writers and their delusions of grandeur?

I mean seriously? It seems the minute people have viewers (read: followers/hits/diggs etc) they turn into the biggest ass wholes on the planet?

There's this one guy who's articles are on a gaming website I regularly read (I'll say this now, no names or sites will be listed here, consider this a nameless rant at the state of the Internet - yes I am aware of the irony/hypocrisy i am posting here).

Anyway, there's one website about video gaming that I read every day, and it has this one guy who posts at least one article a day. I don't know if he gets paid for it and I seriously hope he doesn't.

These articles are his random thoughts about other news that other websites and companies have published, essentially he's a blogger.

That's fine, I have no problem with that by itself.

No the problem is the content.

This man writes about his thoughts and feelings like they are fact.

A fact is that when a non-colour blind person looks at a clear sky at mid day in the UK they will see a blue sky. That us fact at the time I write this.

If said person thinks the blue sky in question is too blue, the existence of this thought, that would also be a fact that the thought existed while the person thought it.

However to say "the sky is too blue" is not stating fact. It's opinion, and opinion is not fact, neither is it news.

And so it angers me so much to see someone almost daily spout personal opinion as if it was fact: This game sucks because of X, This is amazing because of X.

No! Enough!

Another example, I was reading today a blog about WoW and someone 'outing' someone else who at some point snubbed them over something.

Essentially saying "you diss agree with me and the 5k followers I have over your 200 proves I'm right and your wrong".

Seriously?!? Please, if I ever become well known for my writing and I start acting like this, please please please, wrap a bag around my head and hold it tight until I stop wriggling.

Where do these people get off?

What event in their life made them think that people SHOULD listen to what they say?

I know this is where my own hypocrisy comes in, or would apparently do so, but I promise you, anyone reading this, I don't think you should.

Quite the opposite, I think my writing is quite poor, often uneducated and opinionated and about subject matters that even fellow gamers have no interest in but for reasons I can't explain ive got some regular readers and to these people I am very grateful.

You see, you people, the ones who've sat through my waffle before and doing so now, you give me the strength to keep writing, but would I do it even of no one read?

Of course I would! Why? Not because I think my message must be heard or anything like that, but because it's generally a good way of passing time during my morning/evening commute.

These people, these bloggers arn't like that.

I would hope that when I write an article I encourage people to post their own thoughts. This is for a few reasons:

1). To promote discussion about something I personally am interested in

2). Because I know I'm not always right, any someone reading this might be right and can put me so.

But these people don't want discussion, they want to be told how right they are, and anyone who disagrees with them is either stupid, immature or plain wrong.

And so I'd like to finish this very long post with a quick sentiment.

Thank you

Thank you for reading my own Narcissistic BS, for leaving your comments, for never hesitating in calling me out when I'm either unfair or wrong, and also for having your own blogs which I read whenever there's an update and is not like the arse holes I've described here.

*edit* as an added thank you for getting this far, I give you the big reveal, that's right, Dr Loxley is pulling back the curtain and showing everyone what the wizard really looks like:


- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

1 comment:

  1. Ahhh! Dr Loxley is like that freaky mutant in the arnie film set on mars (Total Recall) who has a weird baby creature thing growing out his side. Everyone flee!

    ... ahem.

    ReplyDelete