Downtime Needed Badly

Ok first off I know I’ve been a little lax with writing the past few weeks. It hasn’t been due to lack of new stuff, but more to lack of time. I think in the past 6 weeks, I’ve only been able to make it to 1 or 2 raids. Free time is getting harder and harder to find. To top it off we are going through the yearly shift shuffle at work. Wife’s eBay business is going strong and eating up the majority of what little free time I have.
Life can be rough at times, trust me I know. I’ve been pushing myself and paying the price. I’m getting about 5 – 5.5 hours of sleep a night. My migraines are coming back badly. I’ve been cranky and short tempered, feeling like I’m going to snap at any time, on anyone. I’ve been feeling horrible. I’m trying to do my best to hit the sweet spot, and I’m failing at it miserably. I’m used to failing sometimes, just not this bad, or this hard.
I don’t remember ever, EVER feeling as burnt out, fried, toasted or cooked as I do now. I need to get back to taking a day off from everything. I need to get back to basics. I know that no one ever really gets ahead in this world. I, I just need a break for a day or so. I just need a day to fall back, regroup, gather my wits, and catch up on a little bit of sleep. I’m hoping that I’ll get a chance to get caught up on sleep, and get a little bit of downtime.
So until next time, which will be soon hopefully, don’t for get to reload so you don’t run out of ammo.

Taking a Look at the New Talent Trees

Ok so the NDA has been lifted. All the new goodness is being spilled left and right. As we all know hunters are starting out with pets, which is great news! Our stables are being expanded to a total of 25 pets, 5 active 20 inactive.
I had been looking at the new talent trees on MMO-Champion. I had even started playing around with them. I had started playing around with the talents, and had come up with an interesting build. But all went down the tubes when Blizz decided they were revamping the whole talent trees. They’ve pruned the trees back to something similar to the Vanilla days of yore. Each tree is only going to go down 31 points instead of 51 points. However don’t go thinking you’ll be getting both Beast Mastery and Chimera Shot at the same time, think again. We will only be getting 41 points also.
That’s right instead of getting a point every level, we’ll be getting them every other level. On levels where we don’t get a point, we will get a talent instead.
The other big change, is once you hit level 10, you’ll be forced to pick a talent tree. Choose carefully grasshopper, because once you choose a talent tree you will not be able to put points in to a different tree until you put 31 points in that first tree.
Well while I’ve been writing this, Blizz has released the new talent trees. All I have to say is dang, it’s good to be a beast master. Yep BM is back in a big way. Slim, trim, stream lined, and back to being a lightening fast killing machine. MM is looking bloated with a lot of PvPish talents. Survival seems… pretty much the same as it was before.
So I’ve been playing around with the new 31 point trees, and here’s a potential build for BM raiding in Cata. Not too shabby so far if I do say so myself. So if I get lucky I’ll get a beta invite soon (but I’m not holding my breath, I just found out that WoW was the one game I hadn’t opted in for the beta).
So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.

The Real ID Debate Is Finally Dead

Ok, now I know I haven’t posted much recently, life came along and bit me on the butt. So as I’m sure we’ve all heard the big brouhaha about names and Real ID and forums. It’s been clogging up my Blue Tracker, wow.com and everywhere else.

So we can all breath a sigh of relief your name is NOT gonna be attached automatically to your posts. Mike Morhaime let the world know in the following post:

Mike Morhaime

Hello everyone,

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

Ok, it looks like the people have spoken, and Blizzard has heard what they had to say. Your name showing on forum posts is going to be optional. Now I didn’t say anything before this, because I don’t think I’ve ever made a post on the forums, and I’m pretty sure I never planned too.

So until next time don’t forget to reload, so you don’t run out of ammo.