Feb 1, 2010

Tanking Woes

Incoming World of Warcraft rant. If you have never played WoW reading this post will be like reading Egyptian hieroglyphs

So I've been levelling up a Blood Elf Paladin (tank spec) lately. I've always been an alliance player but things have been slow on alliance side that with my best friends not playing much and I being on a guild that well... it's a long story but I'm not really excited for being there.

Anyways since Blizzard included the nifty Dungeon Finder Tool I decided I should give it a try and use this new character as an experiment: levelling a toon using exclusively the dungeon finder. No quests, no mob killing outside the instance, no exploration. Although I've accepted and completed some dungeon quests that other players have shared, and turned them in, I'm trying to limit myself to not get anything explored.

For the most part it has been helluva fun, and pretty good xp too. Also I'm relearning all the classic dungeons that I haven't run in quite some years. As a tank, i get instant queues, because there are practically no tanks in my battlegroup.

But with all this fun comes some other things that aren't quite as fun or nice. Being a tank means that you are the leader, and you have the hardest work of the group. Healers in classic dungeons aren't as stressed out as tanks because there's not much damage going around. With that said, my dungeon experience would be much more fun if other players:

  • Did not pull for me. Some of them see the tank's a paladin, and think: "Consecrate, yay, lets pull all the mobs in the instance to him, because you know, he can't!". Consecrate is a powerful aoe tank tool but it's not snap aggro, so most of the time when they pull mobs to me they just pass through the consecrate right to another dps, or worse, the healer, and then blame the tank because "he can't get aggro".
  • Did not tank for me. So most dps warriors I've been grouped with tend to charge the mobs ahead of me, not caring about pats roaming around, or healer OOM, or me tanking OTHER things. To top it off they are bottom of the damage recount all the fucking time! god i hate dps warriors so much right now, it hurts.
  • Did not tell me how to tank. At this point, I have a warrior tank, a DK tank, and a paladin tank. The DK tank I have used for most of WoTLK and I used the warrior during BC. I think I know how to do this, and most of my runs are pretty quick, with chain pulls and taking the right path through the somewhat confusing old classic dungeons. Still some players feel the need to tell me to "go fast" or "do this and that" before we even start the run. And guess what comes after that? yup, they pull for me.
  • Attacked the mobs the right way. I mean, ok you are new to the melee dps and don't know you should get behind the mobs. I can kinda let that pass for warriors and enh shamans, but rogues? you are a rogue and are right besides me, trying to stab the mob in the face, and getting him to parry like crazy and go all out on me? geez. I have encountered only 1 warrior dps that got behind the mob to deal dps in the hundreds of runs I must have done by now, and I even congratulated him for it.
  • Did not /afk + /follow. It's a pain in the ass when you find that you have been running the dungeon for 5 or 10 minutes with a dps who is afk and following someone and just riding off the xp. To say the truth by now I've ignored most of the assholes that do this, and blizzard was smart enough to make the people on your ignored list be also ignored from your random dungeon groups, but still you find another one every once in a while.
  • Did not constantly ask for Recount reports. Because doing 500 dps in a level 50 dungeon is serious business.
What puzzles me is how all of this disappears for the most part when you do Heroic level 80 dungeons. which makes me think that players do this things not because they're new to the game or trying to learn, but because they're just being assholes.

In the end the good things overcome the bad when it comes to the dungeon finder, but I just wished I didn't get one of these players every 2 runs.

comments (0)

Jan 28, 2010

Ah... Fox News.

I have a lot of friends and know a lot of people outside of my country, mostly from online communities like OCRemix, and most of them coincide that Fox News sucks. Now I don't watch TV and only read local online newspapers and seldom check CNN and BBC for international news, but I happened to stumble on this particular article and.. wow. Mind = Blown.


The ignorance and incompetence, not to mention the lack of fact checking and familiarity with context of the topic is mind-blowing. Seriously? a merge of the dominican republic and haiti? how would that solve anything? Let's think about this for a second:

First, although the island was indeed, one whole country for some part of the 19th century, it was always divided by different cultures and origins. The part of the island that is now Haiti was conquered by the French, and overpopulated by African slaves, while the other part was conquered by the Spanish, whom had a bigger representation of their government, culture and people than what the French had in their side of the island. Also there were the original habitants of the island before the colonization, the "aborigenes" and also like in the French side but at a much smaller scale, there were African slaves in the Spanish side.

Over the years the difference in culture, form of government, religion, and language only grew stronger until it ended with what we have now, two completely different countries that happen to share the same island. Stating that they should be merged is like stating that Spain and Portugal should be merged, or that the USA and Mexico should be merged.

But even putting aside these facts, what good would this fusion do? we're already a poor country, not nearly as poor as haiti but still we're not even in the top 15 most developed of latin america, so attaching the poorest country to our economy would drive it to bankruptcy. Not to mention the problems of adapting the Haitian people to our laws, culture, etc. It's a logistics nightmare that a 3rd world country definitively can't achieve.

0ur country is sending truckloads of help, raising money, our government is hosting all the international meetings and doing everything they can to get help from other countries and international organizations for Haiti, our hospitals are already overloaded with people from Haiti that needed treatment after the disaster, what else can people want? we even were helping probably more than anyone else before this tragedy happened, because before this disaster Haiti wasn't in the headlines of CNN or Fox and all they had for support were their closest neighbors.

So yeah pretty dumb and ignorant article. I bet some nations would be happy if this were to happen as they can leave all the responsibility to us, but helping Haiti or any other overly poor nation isn't the duty of just their closest neighbors, its the duty of the entire world.

comments (0)

Jan 27, 2010

Manos: The Hands of Fate

So.. I watched the MST3K episode featuring Manos: The Hands of Fate.


And... well, yeah, Manos, the hands of fate... yeeeeah.

Manos! the hands of fate... what else can be said. It's the worst movie ever made without a doubt. Its just... you'll never expect... I mean, you can never be prepared to how bad it really is. And then when it's over you realize that, yes it was THAT bad.

Manos, the hands of fate. It has changed my life. I think it should be one of the best MST3K episodes ever because it was so damn hilarious, and I think I can't possibly go through the entire movie without the riffs delivered by the MST3K cast.

So, if you have 2 hours of your life to spare, and be warned that these are 2 hours that you'll forever want back, you should give manos a try. It's on google video, so go watch it!

The master will probably not approve though...

comments (0)

Jan 19, 2010

Earthquake in Haiti

So, as most of the world knows by now, Haiti has experienced one of the worst disasters of the century, a 7.3 earthquake. As I live in the Dominican Republic, we felt it very hard too, but luckily we only experienced some minor damage to some structures and well, it was kind of a big scare.


The situation in Haiti, however, couldn't be worse. The Capital of the country, Port-au Prince, was completely destroyed and people are in need for help there. As a Dominican we have witnessed the poverty and calamities that the Haitian people had to go through, and now after the earthquake, well it's unimaginable how these people will get through.

If you are reading this and want to lend a hand, I suggest the american red cross, the situation is of a catastrophe and it's only getting worse, so even a little help goes a long way.

comments (1)

Dec 16, 2009

OverClocked Remix turns 10

So, most of the people I know are familiar with OverClocked Remix, a website famous for hosting some of the best re-interpretations of videogame music out there. Its hard to believe that the website has been running for 10 years now, and that I've been part of it for a good 9 years and a few months.


I remember finding this little jewel back in 1999, it was this crude website which had this eye-burning orange background and where the only way to navigate through the songs was this huge combo list with the name of the songs, and you could only download the songs at certain times of the day because the songs were offline for a good part of the day everyday.

But all this really didn't matter, it also didn't matter that I had to download every song at a whopping 2 kbps, I knew I had to download every and each one. McVafee, AE, Joe Redifer, Disco Dan, Evil Horde, Virt, and the very owner of the website, djPretzel, were some of the remixers around in the day, that made some of the songs that I still listen to even today.

I've seen the website going from its humble beginnings to the big community that it is today, and I'm always happy when the website manages to go one step forward. Now this community is recognized by the very own artists they make remixes for, and has gone as far as making a soundtrack for a commercial game, which is also a remix of an older videogame, Super Street Fighter II HD Remix.

In the end I have a lot to thank OCR for. It gave me a motivation for learning music composition and software synthesis, which turned into one of my favorite pastimes, it gave me great music, and it also gave me some good friends. So although I'm not as active in the community as I was 3 or 4 years ago, I have to say thank you OCR, and thanks to David Lloyd and his staff.

comments (0)

Dec 2, 2009

Awesome Trek

So, I got a bunch of movies to watch this week. Among them was the last Star Trek, which I wanted to watch when it was released but never got around to do it. After the disappointment that was the new Star Wars trilogy, I really wasn't expecting much when I popped this sucker in. Oh but I was pleasantly surprised.

This is just a good movie, period. The acting, casting, direction, everything was spot on, and really, for a reboot of an old, mostly campy space opera series, you can't really ask for more. It avoids the usual traps that remakes of old movies fall in, and also doesn't overdo it on special CG animation, the whole movie just felt really solid to me.

I never watched the original Star Trek as a child, I grew up with "The Next Generation", I was more of a Star Wars kid, watching the (still great) original trilogy over and over on my father's VCR. However I have watched the original Star Trek and I could identify all the little nods and references. This isn't really a straight ripoff, no one is trying to make a carbon copy of their 1960 counterparts, they bring the essence of the original characters, and make them their own, and unlike the horrible new star wars trilogy, the actors feel natural and most of them feel like real people, unlike George Lucas' script-reciting robots. When Spock's mom dies, you care. When Anakin's mom dies, you wonder why you are wasting your precious time watching it.

Anyhoo, two thumbs up for this one. unlike what Hollywood has been trying to make us believe by churning out soulless space opera crap-fests every once in a while, space sci-fi movies can still be done well, and it makes me happy. I think the trekkers should be proud.

comments (0)

Nov 30, 2009

Coming back...

Well it's been quite a long time since I posted anything here.


I doubt anyone reads it anyways but here goes:

I have a new job now, I'm quite enjoying it, I am working with friends, its a nice place, and I am doing what I like to do.

Besides that, I've been playing a little game named Torchlight. At first glance, it looks like a diablo clone, and it is, but can you really call it a clone if its made by the people behind diablo 1 and 2?

Anyways, unlike the many other diablo clones out there, this one gets the gameplay just right. The loot, the monsters, the spells, the satisfying feel of upgrading your character, the solid gameplay, it's all just very well done. The game is small, compared to modern games that take a whole dvd, this one could fit nicely in a cd, but what it lacks on jaw-dropping cinematics or tons of spoken dialog, it boasts personality and solid, engaging gameplay. For people who loved diablo 2 and have been waiting for a game that just plays like it but looks and feels updated, this is as good as it gets, that is, until diablo 3 arrives. The game is just tight.



comments (0)

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)