Remember all that bitching I did? Scratch that.

Guess what I'm doing?

While I sustain that Blizzard gets way too into talent tree changes, I can't say that I'm as ambivalent as I was in my last post because I am so fucking excited to get new demons.

I was kind of hoping that this Grimoire of Supremacy was actually evolving our current minions and making our long-time friends more powerful. However, from looking at the talent, it seems that these demons are completely new and unrelated to our existing minions since there is no counterpart for the felhunter. Nevertheless, I am super excited to see what kinds of abilities they have, and the first thing I do when Mists of Pandaria goes live is pulling out my new voidlord and establishing a trustful and loving relationship.

My Picks for Talent Highlights:

Bear Hug - Instant, 1 min CD, Melee attack that stuns the target and deal 10% of the Druid's health in damage every 1 sec for 3 sec. Effect cancelled if the Druid moves away, attacks, or takes any other action. Using this ability activates Bear form.
AWWWWWWwWWwWWwWwwwwwww....

Divine Star - Instant, 30 sec CD, Fire a divine star in front of you, travelling 20 yds doing damage to all enemies and healing all friendly targets in its path. After reaching its destination, it will return to you also dealing damage and healing all targets in its path.
Like a shoooooting star! Effective or not, it's going to look badass.

Sacrificial Pact - Instant, 5 min CD, Your demon sacrifices itself to prevent all damage you would take for 10 sec.
I get a pally bubble! Yea, my minion has to die for it, but I assure you, he does it willingly. All of my minions and I are committed through a pact of blood, and their sacrifice is for the benefit of our dark contract. It's also reminiscent of the old voidwalker Sacrifice spell, of which I was such a fan that I got the icon tattooed on the back of my neck as a symbol of our deep connection that persists through death.

If you haven't guessed that I'm crazy by now, you're probably just as nuts as I am.

-Avia.

Mists of Pandaria confirmed. I is sad... panda.

BlizzCon is happening right now, and Mists of Pandaria is officially going to be the next expansion. There has been talk of Pandaren for months since the discovery of Blizz's trademark for the "Mists..." name, but I'm actually surprised and disappointed that what I had thought was a red herring is actually the premise of our next expansion and undoubtedly 1-2 years of my life. Pandas? T_T Half the community is seizing with joy, and the other half has the same face as I do.

Already some of the changes they are revealing are irking me, like their renewed obsession with talent trees and how they had made it too streamlined for Cataclysm. Now they want to reintroduce player choice and hybridization even though they're really just wasting their time. All the theorycrafters at Elitist Jerks and mmo-champion are going to break out their slide rules and in a matter of days, post the specs that players are supposed to use if they raid, just like they do every time there is a talent tree change. It doesn't even intrigue me anymore, but of course they haven't released any lock trees yet...

So far, the monk's food buff racial seems a little OP (double all stats from well-fed), but what actually disturbs me is the fact that they wear leather and are tank/healer/DPS. This means that while druids will now have to compete for gear and priests already share loot with mages and locks, shamans and especially paladins have no competition. If you play a priest, you know how God-awful (har dee har har) it is to gear up when you're rolling/bidding against the ranged DPS, and Firelands made it even worse by taking spirit off of almost everything. Now druids are joining them in their pitiful situation. I always felt bad for priests, but now I cry for my(alt)self.

I'll post more news (hopefully in a less whaaambulance tone) when they announce lock changes. So far, they've only mentioned that they're revamping the soul shard system. Again. Good.

-Avia.

The Plight of the ERPer

I'd fit in perfectly!

Despite how trendy it is nowadays to roll a level 1 on Moon Guard and laugh at the batshit crazy RPers in Goldshire, my friend was so bored the other night that he convinced me to go on an excursion with him. Now, I can attest that all the horror stories that people tell about this server's ERP epicenter are true.

First off, it was 4am and it was as crowded as my server's Stormwind is on a Tuesday night. It was obviously prime time for WoWers looking to "camp an instance portal," if you know what I mean. Also, the anonymity was prompting some of these guys (and you know they're guys) to say some of the most off-color/offensive/nowhere near subtle sexual utterances that I never imagined I would encounter, much less be exposed to in a public space. It makes me wonder what percentage of the Goldshire crowd is seriously looking to cyber and how much of it is just trolls from other servers doing as the Romans do.

Yes, there are definitely people looking to find someone of supposedly the opposite sex with which they can type one-handed. I even found some guy wanting to Skype-sex a daddy/daughter scenario, which IMO was a pretty smart way of guaranteeing the gender of the person with which he's touching himself. I said no thanks, by the way.

And then there are people like my friend, who was getting way into the spirit of the festivities and walking up to any and all naked players, propositioning them by walking into them repeatedly from behind. How is an honest sexual deviant supposed to find a good time with assholes like that floating around his hangout?

Poor Moon Guard. I feel your pain.

-Avia.

RNG never fails to displease.

A couple weeks ago (yea, I've been a bit truant lately), I played my first ever game of D&D, and it was even geekier than I had imagined it! As a creative writer, I always wondered why I never got into tabletop RPGs. I'm not even sure if people still RP in WoW though I sure as hell try to as much as I can on a PvP server. You'd be surprised how many people in Stormwind are willing to join in on a costume party and (jokingly?) erotic scenarios, but it's usually by the time someone says something disturbingly inappropriate about women/children/orifices that the crowd disperses in a trail of nervous laughter and I fear for the future of our species.

Anyway, during my aforementioned adventures in Hypergeek Land, I found that the things people like the most about tabletop RPGs, i.e. the face-to-face interaction and regular convening of friends in real life, are pretty big turnoffs for someone who has trouble conversing with people outside of a typed environment, i.e. me. I can't even remember the last time I was in a group setting, but I'm certain alcohol was involved. However, my guildies and I got over even the hurdle of having to meet up in person to D&D: we play over vent. Apparently, I'm a druid who shoots things with a bow and can tame animals. Obviously, the graphical interface isn't as sophisticated as WoW, but that's what my imagination is for, right?

Guess which one I am!

After engaging in a few battles, I noticed an important flaw in our setup. All the dice rolls are automated by d20pro's AI, and as anyone who plays WoW knows, all /rolls by a player will suck balls EXCEPT when they're not yours. After the fifth miss on a mob, one of which actually whiffed so badly that I hit my teammate for full damage, I was starting to think that playing a game based on lucky rolls wasn't such an encouraging prospect. Some people might say that it's not luck; it's probability. But after five years of playing WoW, I know that the probability of whiffing a roll and losing your item to a "teammate" is so close to 100% that it defies the laws of statistics.

I'm expecting Morgan Freeman to show up any day now to do a special on the numerical wormhole that was ICC. Stupid Rotface trinket.

-Avia of throttled inequalities.