Let's talk alpha notes.

It's an exciting time right now because of Warlords of Draenor alpha notes. There is plenty of speculation, badgering of devs' Twitters, and crying about precious removed spells. That doesn't mean I'm not crying, because I definitely am. However, in RP Your Life! fashion, let's take a step back and look at the trends that these changes are indicating for the development of WoD.

- It now takes a lunch break to read mage talents.

- Healers are panicking about Cata-style healing when it was AWESOME.

In the Convert to Raid and FinalBossTV interviews, Celestalon assured healers that healing in WoD would not become the fight against OOMing that it was in Cata, but that period of time when healers had to think about which spell to use, not only to match the situation but to also preserve their mana, was the most engaging. The WoD movement away from critical burst healing back to triage seems like the perfect opportunity to bring that cerebral kind of healing back, but it's not looking like they're willing to push healers that far.

- The devs can't decide what to tell us their ultimate goal is.

If the new Mythic raiding is balanced around having at least one of each class, then why remove utility like healthstones and Innervate? If they want to remove unique utility so a raid doesn't require a specific class, then why leave in things like Gateway? If they leave things in like Gateway because they want to balance around having at least one of each class, then why remove utility like healthstones and Innervate? If...

- The devs might not even be talking to Mythic raiders.

Even after their big claim that the move to 20-man raiding would be the epitome of balanced raid tuning, it doesn't even look like many of the changes that they're making are geared towards Mythic at all. The homogenization of classes and making sure that certain class abilities aren't required are definitely safeguards for 10-man Normal and Heroic raids. Plus, when a shadow priest asks whether or not s/he needs to carry separate sets of gear for multi-target and single-target fights, the answer that I gleaned from Celestalon's appeasing "No, but..." was actually "Yes, but not for casuals," which he could have just said outright. I was hoping that FinalBossTV's interview would be more enlightening for end-game raiders, but there were very few instances in which the crew pushed the devs to a point where they were forced to defend their choices and explain their reasoning in a deeper manner. Why indeed is a certain DPS class retaining a raid-wide CD while others are having theirs taken away?

Watch your raid spot, everyone. The mages are after it.

-Avia.

Edit: Added a link to the FinalBossTV interview.

Server Merge Scheduled. Party Hats On.

On Thursday, my crappy little realm is getting its first server merger, and I cannot wait until our piddling pool of players finally expands. Yes, in two days time, there will be a whole mass of new people from which to choose for competent raiders, alt content, and pugs of every kind. The auction house will fill with items that we usually never see, and the economy will boom as more and more buyers flood the market to spend their gold on our crap. Never again will we be left begging for a tank, any tank, LF 1 tank we don't even care what your ilvl is or if you click all of your action buttons just please help us. And if we ask for a port or transmute in trade, someone will actually answer besides trolls! Oh it will be a glorious day, this Thursday!

Is it all positives? Of course not. Already I'm cleaning up my ignore list in preparation, because I'm sure I will be putting a lot more new names on it. Soon, my carefully tuned trade chat void of all the worst offenders will be hosting plenty of new individuals vying for the role of biggest talking anus, and it will take time to sort out who is just excited about the merge and who will spew mind-dulling garbage out of his/her hands every time s/he types. It's a big job, but with these changes come new responsibilities, and if it's not determining which characters are capable enough to bring to alt runs or forging alliances with other guilds, it's figuring out who are the token asshats and auction house undercutters of our newly-connected realm. We're a community after all.

And I'm on neighborhood watch.

-Avia.

End of expansion blues (or how I quit progression raiding to take a break and still not have a life)

It's the end of an era, friends. After over a year of wipes, kills, and watching people come and go due to RL or ragequits, I officially left my raid team to go casual until Mists of Pandaria.

How I feel right now.

I know. I know. Only baddies are casuals. But in all honesty, this decision was in the best interest of my mental health. For most of the past year, I have always been able to stay unphased by the raid leader with narcissistic personality disorder, an overwhelming majority of the team being so incompetent that they can't be helped, and boss kills that tend to feel more like happy accidents than the products of strategy and hard work. However, as of late, I've found that all of these negative factors have been slowly chipping away at my sanity, and for ten hours a week, I turn into someone so angry that the thought of strangling kittens arises way more frequently than should be considered normal. Yes, we admit that the sassy female raider on vent that calls out people who die stupidly only to make excuses is always a turn-on in that psychosexual way of people who like fiery make-up sex. But when did I become that jerk who calls people out? I'd guess right about the eighth time that hunter died because of her "cat."

Anyway, due to harassment and drama, I went back to my Wrath guild to hang out with my perennial buddies while waiting for pandas. In a totally unrelated mutiny, a large chunk of the old raid team took the opportunity to jump on the /gquit bandwagon and subsequently formed their own guild. Sadly, this means that after I finally freed myself of the necrotic limb that was my old guild, I have all my former raid members badgering me to start progression raiding again in their fabulous new guild with a terrible new name.

Just let me gear my alts in peace!

-Avia.