My Ranking List over the Raid Bosses of Wrath

"52 bosses, holy crap! That's like... a lot! An entire deck of cards! Did I really learn all those encounters? And that guy was such a pain... Oh, and I remember how we struggled on this..."

I suppose it's a bit early to become nostalgic about Wrath, but Cassandri succeeded to get me into the mood the other day. In a post of epic proportions she ranked every single raid boss in Northrend from a difficulty perspective - from the easiest to the hardest for a group to kill.

First out on Cassandri's list is Noth, and last is - not surprisingly - Lich King himself. Since she takes gear requirements into account, the list is quite straight forward, mostly following the tiers. But there are a couple of exceptions, so for instance you'll find Flame Leviathan sneaking in among the Naxx bosses at spot 11 and Mimron ranked as number 38, harder than any ToC boss.

Cassandri ends her post with a question: would you rank the bosses differently? And you can take this post as my answer, even though it's made from a slightly different perspective.

In my version I haven't included gear requirements, but rather tried to look back and remember how I perceived the fight when it was new and we were geared for it, but not yet overgeared.

The list shows the learning curve for Larísa. How hard was it to get the dance steps rights, how much of frustration did it cause me? Of course it's a very personal thing. I'm pretty terrible for situational awareness and fights on the move, and this shows on the list.

What was hard to me might have been easy for you and the reversed, and it probably varies depending on your class you're playing. For instance if Patchwerk was a joke to a ranged dps:er, I can imagine that it required much more of a healer, not to speak of what Loatheb did.

This said: here we go. I present to you Larísa's complete list over the bosses of Wrath, presented in the order from easiest to hardest to learn. I've also added a short comment on each boss as a support for my memory in case I'll want to look back at this one day.

1-14 "Not much effort required"

1. Patchwerk, Naxxramas
I'm not a healer, so Patchwerk was basically one of the IF dummies moved into the instance. It required a little thinking about CD:s and mana management if you wanted to compete on the damage charts. That's all.

2. Flame Leviathan, Ulduar
After all this time I'm still not entirely comfortable with all the vehicles. I definitely can't drive a demolisher flawlessly and I'm totally uncapable of aiming correctly, tossing the passanger without risking to kill him. Vehicle fights always freak me out. But on the other hand you don't have to know what you're doing. The guy goes down no matter what, as long as you aren't doing achievements. No learning required.

3. Gunship Battle, Icecrown Citadel
No. This wasn't challenging. Not at all. We did this encounter first raiding blind, without addons or strat knowledge. That didn't help. It went down too easy anyway. It was absolutely a fun mechanic to begin with and I enjoyed the novelty as much as anyone else, but the enthusiasm we felt faded ever so quickly when we endured painful 15 min long fights due to lag.

4. Instructor Razuvious, Naxxramas
I remember that our priests struggled a bit before they got the hang of the mind controlling. For a non-mind controller this encounter was pointless. The only challenge was to keep the hands off your spell keys until sufficient aggro was established.

5. Loatheb, Naxxramas
The spores hanged around long enough for even a slow mover like me to grab them. The hardest thing about this boss was endurance: the ability not to fall asleep. We just stood there and did the same thing like forever. Utterly, utterly boring. Gear was a factor of course. I remember it was a bit of a dps race to begin with and not entirely trivial.

6. Archavon the Stone Watcher, Vault of Archavon
I always enjoyed when he throw that stone spell at my mirror images. Apart from that - move away from clouds a couple of times, boss dead. A boss made for pugging.

7. Noth the Plaguebringer, Naxxramas
Noth included some target switching and decursing, but above all keeping track of your aggro. Pretty easy yes but not the easiest boss in the entire Wrath, in my opinion.

8. Emalon the Storm Watcher, Vault of Archavon
OK, once in a while you switch to a skull. Zzzzz. No learning curve required.

9. Festergut, Icecrown Citadel
Slightly more exciting than Loatheb since you have to make sure you get inoculated, not just to increase your dps but not to die. Read through the strat once and be done with it.

10 Grand Widow Faerlina, Naxxramas
I'm lucky enough to have raid leaders who tell me what to do. With proper marking, a nuke order and a raid assist to follow, this is a no-brainer for a foot soldier like me.

11. Anub’Rekhan, Naxxramas
This was actually slightly complicated when we first did it, remember? Kiting, taking out the tiny spiders, switching between adds and boss. Still not that hard.

12. Gothik the Harvester, Naxxramas
The hardest task for this fight was for the RL to make a wise call splitting the dps. But the personal challenge and learning curve was more or less zero.

13. Koralon the Flame Watcher, Vault of Archavon
Fun times with Incanters Absorbation, keeping up fire ward and getting some crazy dps at times. Hard? Not very much

14. Toravon the Ice Watcher, Vault of Archavon
Honestly I've only done it a couple of times. But it didn't take much of research or learning at all. Switch to the orbs when they're up. Nuke the boss rest of the time. Meh. Yet another trivial VoA boss

15-28: Still pretty easy, but need to look out once in a while

15. Ignis the Furnace Master, Ulduar
Not much of a fun fight, the same thing over and over again with a slight increase if you're on add duty. Most fun was if you got into the pocket and could see it from another perspective.

16. Maexxna, Naxxramas
There is something about this boss that I never liked. The transparent floor somehow disoriented me. If you were on cocoon duty, it meant quite a bit of target switching. And all those annoying silences, always coming when you last wanted it.

17. The Four Horsemen, Naxxramas
I can imagine that this fight was harder for people who were involved in tanking duties, coordinating with others in their side switching. For me it was a very simple fight as long as I moved along when I was told to, kept an eye on the debuff counter and stayed out of void zones.

18. Gluth, Naxxramas
I was always terrified that someone would insist on me speccing frost and becoming the kiter. Thankfully enough noone did, otherwise it would end up far higher on the list. The biggest focus in this fight was while entering the room. I didn't want to be THAT guy who fell down from the pipes.

19. Thaddius, Naxxramas
The plus-minus-dance is easier than the one in Mechanar. Addons ftw, just do what you're told and you'll be fine. The biggest issue with this fight was the Jump from the platform. You feel like a complete idiot if you miss it. I'm talking from experience. After this had happened a couple of times I remembered - or was reminded - about a handy little spell called "slow fall" and this wasn't an issue anymore.

20. Razorscale, Ulduar
This is the kind of fight that can confuse me with a ton of adds running around in a mess. However they made the Very Dangerous Adds bigger than the others, so it was fairly easy to pick the right target. Dodging fires from above can be a challenge to me, not too bad in this case. And once he was grounded it was tank and spank.

21. Onyxia
If you didn't do her in vanilla you might want to read the strats once. Then execute. It isn't complicated, it isn't particularly fun if you're not in it for nostalgia or are a fire mage who love pretty yellow numbers. And it didn't stay on our raiding menu for very long.

22. Grobbulous, Naxxramas
One of those bosses where everyone in the raid HAS to get it right or you'll just blow it for everyone. I was a bit nervous whenever I got infected; I worried about not putting it at the right distance, screwing up things for particularly our melee.

23 XT-00, Ulduar
I always found this fight was easier on hardmode than on normal, since I didn't have to flip the camera and look for the small healing bots to aoe. Tank and spank with occasional excursions to the sides. No environmental damage to react to. Easy to learn.

24. Kologarn, Ulduar
I admit it: I struggled a bit with the eyebeams. My addons kept alarming me when I in fact wasn't target and this made me spend more time running around like a chicken than actually being useful. I had to learn to trust my eyes more than addons.

25. Twin Val’kyr, Trial of the Crusader
It is a very easy fight unless you start to think too much. Suddenly you find yourself trying to get a white shield to protect you from dark vortex, or... hey, how was it? It's not about learning curve though. It's about your brain not messing up.

26, Auriaya, Ulduar
The most complicated about the fight is the pull and the initial dealing with the adds, which always seemed a bit chaotic to me. I think it's a worse fight for tanks and raid leaders who want to place the black zones at convenient places, not to mess up with the fears.

27. Lord Jaraxxus, Trial of the Crusader
Never has spellstealing been more appropriate and fun! Arcane mages rocked at this fight and I enjoyed it a lot. There were quite a few things to think of, but nothing more than that you could handle it with the help of an addon and a few good macros.

28. Faction Champions Trial of the Crusader
For a non-PvP:er this felt kind of strange and awkward. Why are they doing this to us? sort of. But if I don't remember it wrong, they nerfed it. Somehow it became doable even for me. I have no idea if I ever improved to be honest and I don't know where to place it in difficulty order so it will end up in the middle.

29-42: It's getting more difficult

29. Anub’arak Trial of the Crusader
Being chased always freaked me out, as well as the tiny adds you were supposed to get rid of quickly, being a ranged, and still not tanking them, because that hurt. Apart from that phase it was just simple tank and spank, probably more interesting for the healers.

30. The Assembly of Iron, Ulduar
I love it when you get some special assignment and can feel Important for a little while. Lot's of fun for mages here, spellstealing shields among others.

31. Valithria Dreamwalker, Icecrown Citadel
From a dps perspective this is like phase 1 of Kel’Thuzad, with the difference that you need to counterspell some adds, be quicker on others and stay out of a bit of crap. Not that interesting for a ranged dps:er, but I hope the healers are having a blast, whatever they're doing in that other realm.

32. Sartharion, Obsidian Sanctum
It took me quite a while to get the hang of the fire walls. It finally dawned upon me how they worked when I saw a highly pedagogic strategy where they included pictures of teddy bears in different positions. The jumping back and forward into the portals for the add dragons weren't entirely trivial either to begin with. It became a lot worse with +3 of course.

33. Lord Morrowgar, Icecrown Citadel
We killed this guy in a blind raid, working out tactics of our own. Dealing with spikes and staying out of fire wasn't enough to make me really frustrated.

34. Thorim, Ulduar
As long as we had to sheep one of the adds in the gauntlet this fight was a bit challenging with a lot of targetshifting, counterspelling, movements and an enrage timer not to let the arena be overwhelmed. Once our gear was better and had learned to look at the mean guy's firecasting hands, it was rather easy.

35. Northrend Beasts, Trial of the Crusader
With the constant threat of being demoted to pillock rank if I got hit by that hairy beast, this encounter always gave me a bit of pain in the stomach. The poison-fire-thing was also kinf of tricky.

36. Heigan, Naxxramas
I'm not the best of dancers. And with my former computer and the lag I endured on it, it was far from easy. I was insanely happy when I finally "got it" and after that I did the safety dance many many times. But it was tough learning and I was frustrated.

37. Deathbringer Saurfang Icecrown Citadel
I hate when I have to pick a certain target quickly as it spawns in the middle of a group. I somehow always manage to pick the wrong one. Since we have a strat where we're working in couples on the bloodbeasts I get away with it, using an assist-macro. Yeah, I know I'm a cheater.

38. Sapphiron, Naxxramas
One of the more challenging fights in Naxxramas to me personally. Stay out of general frost damage, be quick on the decursing, get behind tombs and still manage to keep up a decent dps. It demanded you to be awake so to say.

39. Kel’Thuzad, Naxxramas
Quite tough and required me to be on my toes, including instant-sheeping of mc:d people, which can be a bit of a hassle when you're not in ranged. Void zones, get away from the group with the mana detonations... And adds making it more intense toward the end. A worthy endboss, apart from phase 1, which was ridiculously boring. I could have killed for a fast-forward button.

40. Blood Queen Lana’thel, Icecrown Citadel
This fight was challenging the first couple of times before we got that addon that did half of the job for us. It wiped out half of the difficulty of the fight, if not more.

41. Mimiron Ulduar
Oh, I love Mimron. No other fight has had as much of "this is a dance"-feeling since Aran in Kharazan. Clear, solid phases, easy-to grasp movements and target switching and a brief, well needed breaks between every phase so you can reposition, evocate and put on a damage if needed while you're still entertained by gnome. There's some crap to get out of - like the beam - but for some reason it never bothered me that much. It's probably far worse for a healer.

42. Lady Deathwhisper Icecrown Citadel
Lots of stuff to deal with for a mage! Not only target switching, you're also spellstealing for a change, decursing, emergency-sheeping, counterspelling frost bolts and like everyone else: staying out of crap. It took me a while to get hang of it.

43-58: My biggest challenges in Wrath

43. Rotface, Icecrown Citadel
This fight was about getting better at using the camera, keeping track of the kiter so I knew where to run when I was infected. A lot of movement involved, a lot of green crap to stay out of, but somehow it was way easier to me than Hodir ever was.

44. Malygos, The Eye of Eternity
My learning curve hasn't ended. I've never got the hang of phase 3, I can't say I'd master it even today. It's not something I'm proud of, it's just the way it is. I don't match very well with vehicles. It was a beautifully crafted encounter, but it didn't work out as intended since noone wanted to run it in the end.

45. Freya, Ulduar
This fight was like Mimron very predictable with the alternating phases, but way, way more chaotic with the positioning under the little mushrooms, the get-away with debuff and the look-out-for-tree things. And on top of that having some of the adds to die at the same time.
It took me quite some time before I had it all clear for me.

46. General Vezax, Ulduar
Objects that fly quickly towards me that I have to flee from. I hate it. If it wasn't for the DXE addon they'd still be crashing in my head. Sadly enough.

47. Blood Prince Council, Icecrown Citadel
An utterly confusing fight which I still don't really get, no matter how much I look at the given strats. I used to be a bit scared of the kinetic bomb duty, nowadays I don't mind it. At least I know I'm doing something useful. There are simply too many spheres and bubbles for me to grasp.

48. Hodir, Ulduar
Hodir, oh, Hodir. I don't know if truly can say I master him yet. Too many circles to keep track of, and fires and npcs and beams and godknowswhat. Worse to learn than a great deal of the bosses in ICC, I might even put him higher than Sindragosa if I wasn't so embarrassed about it.

49. Professor Putricide, Icecrown Citadel
I would dare say that Putricide is exactly as difficult as Sindragosa, but then I've always been terrible at seeing things tossed at me from above. It was the same with Void Reaver and Genereal Vezaxx. Only reluctantly do I flip my camera up and if I'm then required to move I'm kind of lost. There's a lot of stuff going on at the screen and you also have to keep track of Putri's health to get the phase transitions right. Complicated.

50. Sindragosa, Icecrown Citadel
This is the opposite of tank and spank, requiring speed and precision in every detail - debuff handling, placing the iceblocks correctly and nuking them down at the perfect pace. Being a mage helps a bit; if it wasn't for blink I'd surely die from her chains. It took me quite a while to learn this though.

51. Yogg-Saron Ulduar
Three glorious phases! Tentacles! Decursing! Liberating mates from their chains! Turning away from gaze! Escape the beams! Always on the move and on the top of that keeping track of your sanity! It was a mega-long fight which was exhausting but fun, fun, fun. And as a sugarcoating: no corpse run, but a convenient teleport, which was very welcome since the fight as such took so long time. It took me quite a while though to go from the chaotic stadium to understand what I was doing. I feel sorry for everyone who never got around to do it because their guild wanted into the looting node of ToC.

52. The Lich King, Icecrown Citadel
I've only killed him once so far and I certainly don't expect the next kill to be a piece of cake. We have the gear, no doubt. But LK requires me to be on my toes like no boss has before.

The End

And that's the end of the list. We still have the Ruby Sanctum dragon to mix into this; it will be interesting to see where on the scale it lands. I would suspect they'll keep it on the simple side so the PUGs have something to deal with over the summer. Guilds who complain might get achievements to play around with to make it more interesting.

"But...but...you haven't taken the hardmodes into the mix". Right. No I haven't, since I've done far from all of them myself and wouldn't know what I was talking about. Sorry. But please go ahead, make your own lists and fill in whatever is missing!

Thanks to Cassandri for the lovely idea! I don't know how much my version of the list adds to the original post, but I certainly had a ton of fun writing it, and that's what this is all about.

Apropos of Heroes

Whatever happened to the heroes? No more heroes anymore, no more heroes anymore…

Sorry. I’m just singing to myself. The song from 1977 by The Stranglers started to play in my head this week and I can’t turn it off. Never heard of it? Jump over to YouTube and check it out!

OK, now when we all have some background music going, it’s time to welcome you to yet another episode of the Friday Night Talk Show at The Pink Pigtail Inn. Have a seat and a pint and let’s end the week with some relaxed ranting about what’s been up lately.

The lack of heroes
The topic for the discussions by the barside tonight is "Heroes", or rather the lack of them in WoW, something that was brought up first by Copra and then in a follow-up post by Tobold.

Among other things Copra pointed out that there aren't that many world famous WoW players around. For instance very few would know or care about who was the first one to kill LK.

And he's right of course. We who stalk WoW news sites and blogs may occasionally mention the guilds Ensida and Paragon and a minority of us can name one or two of their players. But the harsh truth is that their fame is limited, and I’m not talking about limited in the sense that non-WoW players never heard of them. They’re completely unknown to 99 percent of the WoW subscribers. Someone might recognize a guy called Jenkins, but that's about how many player celebrities as there are. I think we can agree on that the fame of a player rarely - if ever - will spread any further than to your own home server.

When you’re playing WoW it’s easy to find yourself as one in the crowd – a small and rather insignificant cog in a huge machine, and according to Copra this will give you a sense of hollowness. It's a game where everyone is greeted as a hero and yet no one really is one.

Tobold commented on it, agreeing in the case of the hollow feeling, but also saying that you can't really expect to reach hero status by playing a video game. If you want to become a hero you should rather join the fire brigade.

I think the discussion is slightly confusing since we haven’t really nailed down what we're actually talking about and how we define different words. Is this about heroes, heroism, e-fame or about the risk/reward system in the game? What constitutes a hero and what exactly is it that gives you a heroic experience? When does the sense of “heroism” kick in for a player? I’m afraid I can’t sort it all out myself either, but I’ll ponder a bit upon a few of those aspects.

The hidden heroes
As a starter I'll highlight the fact that being a hero is far from equivalent with being famous. There’s nothing heroic at all over the vast majority of people in the world that are considered "famous". They're in the position they are for many different reasons and quite often it involves a bit of luck. Equally there are also countless numbers of heroes who no one will ever notice or hear about.

Small and big deeds are done every day – in real life as in WoW. Dedicated leaders will make guilds that were on the verge of extinction rise and flourish again. Game friendships will evolve into something far beyond what you would have expected when someone is going through real life hardships as unemployment, divorces, illness or even death.

There are ever so many untold stories of heroism out there and I bet there even are heroes hiding in stealth here at this inn, too humble to even consider themselves heroes.

We’re living in a world where it in one way is much easier to get the word out about heroic deeds than it used to be. You don’t have to pass any gate keeper who has the power over the established, traditional media channels. Anyone can call for attention thanks to free tools such as Twitter, blogs, YouTube and Facebook.

On the other hand I’m not certain it’s easier to become a World Famous Hero than in the past. Everyone is so occupied shouting and exposing themselves that they haven’t got much time and space to listen to others. And even if they bothered they wouldn't hear much anyway due to all the noise.

No more heroes anymore. The lack of heroes n the WoW universe reflects the time we’re living in. Is it for good or for bad? Mostly for good I think. As good as heroes can be as inspiring examples I prefer a world where everyone has the potential to become a Hero in their own life, rather than watching and worshiping a few Chosen ones from the sideline.

A hero in the game
Let’s move along to the in-game perspective on heroism. Does the game manage to convince us that our characters are the heroes of Azeroth?

No doubt there’s at least an underlying intention that WoW should evoke heroic feelings within the player, just check how Blizzard describes it in the game introduction at their website:

“Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind and undertake grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure.”

So, what do we say about this? How often do we sense that our quests are grand, our exploits heroic and our adventures fantastic?

Speaking for myself I felt like a hero this more ore less constantly as I first started to play WoW three years ago. I was a young, small but dedicated gnome mage, ready to explore and conquer the world. However the spell appears to have diminishing returns. Sure, I fly high, in moments of relief, joy, wonder and excitement once in a while, but I have the feeling that it takes more to get me there and that it lasts me slightly shorter. Which of course is a bit sad. I suppose that eventually when the moments just won’t appear at all, it’s time to move over and do something else.

What the NPCs tell us

If we have forgotten that we are heroes in the game, there are still quite a few NPCs around that are willing to remind us.

There was a time when I kind of believed the NPC when she told me I had made the world a huge service liberating it from ten frenzied pigs. Nowadays it takes quite a bit more to convince me. The NPCs may praise my name and call on me enthusiastically as I randomly pass them at Krasus Landing in Dalaran, but this doesn’t make my heart swell with heroic pride.

It reminds me a bit of the celebrations of Saint Lucy’s Day in Sweden, where well-meaning preschool teachers decide that “everyone who wants to” could be Saint Lucy, making you end up with 25 Saint Lucy’s in the procession and not a single accompanying maid. It takes away quite a bit of the enjoyment and beauty of the performance and I don’t know if even the kids are happier about it. When everyone is greeted as a hero no one really is, I would give Bullcopra right in this.

This said, there are also a few scripted events that are supposed to make you feel like a hero, which are if not heroic, at least enjoyable. The best one I’ve seen so far was definitely the scene that follows when you turn in the last part in the chain that opens up the Ogrila quests in Blades Edge, Into the Soulgrinder. I remember ogres all over the place, kneeling and dancing with joy, hailing me as their queen. Oh gosh, I wish I could redo that quest again just to see it happen!

The other day I passed by the ogre camp and even if it was scripted and something they’ll tell anyone with a decent reputation, I couldn’t help being a bit charmed by their call-outs:

“It's amazing how much you have helped us out. We'd dare say that if it weren't for you we'd already have been overrun by the demons or fried to a crisp by the Black Dragonflight!”

“We still stand here only because of Larísa's help.”

"It's Larísa, mighty mage and sister to ogres everywhere!"

Probably it helped a bit that I was the only player around; somehow it’s more convincing when you don’t see another 25 players at the same spot getting the same reception.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind if they expanded it a bit. Maybe they could let themselves be inspired by the wonderful Swedish commercial where you're picture is put into an heroic context? (The link goes to a version with Larísa included, sent to me in a comment after the LK kill, thanks for that!)

Moments of heroism
The heroism discussion has also branched out to include the issue of challenges and risk taking.

Copra complained that there isn’t really any risk involved in WoW as opposed to in EVE, which can be one reason for his lack of a heroic experience.

“In a game with instant resurrection and no fear of losing anything this feeling is watered down to a point that it causes no feelings at all.”, as he put it in a comment at Tobold's post.

This isn’t the first time someone brings this up. Some bloggers have suggested that WoW should have a more severe punishment for death, thus making the game more exciting. But I beg to differ on this.

The game provides all the tools you need as it is. You can very well make an encounter so hard that you will wipe unless every cast, every interrupt, every move and every CD is done with perfection. And once you succeed despite the odds against you, you’ll certainly feel the heroism flooding in your veins.

It’s easy to get there if you want to. Turn off the ICC buff, raid in blue gear instead of overgeared, make the achievements, run with a smaller group. It’s your choice. All it takes is self discipline and dedication. If you’ve been wiping for three nights straight, I can assure you that the death penalty with repair bills and endless times spent on corpse runs (or help me God listening to Arthas 1 min monologue) are harsh enough to motivate you not to want to wipe anymore.

I can’t help wondering if those who suffer from lack of heroism just are victims of the habit to follow the path of least resistance. Maybe you'd feel more heroic if you challenged yourself with something harder?

Final words
To summarize this monster post (I'm so sorry, but sometimes I just can't shut up once I've got started):

There may not be that many heroes around in the world or in WoW these days. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy moments of heroism – as the ogres are kneeling in front of you, as you’re giving a helping hand to someone in need or as you’re finally taking down that son-of-bitch-boss.

Now you’ve definitely heard enough of my voice for this week. So I'll turn up the volume again and lose myself in nostalgia, wondering whatever happened to the heroes of the 70s. But that's an entirely different story.

Cheers!

No, I Won't Write any Review on That Book

The average WoW blogger can't expect any substantial rewards for all the efforts we put into our hobby. Sure, if you're a Big Name Blogger you might monetize your work just a little, like Tobold does with his donation button. But it won't make anyone rich; at most you can cover your subscription fee. If you're lucky.

We're not spoiled with any other fringes either. I believe there are a handful of exceptions, but most of us won't receive an invitation to an exclusive Beta testing, or get a copy of an upcoming game in advance so we can write about it. I suppose the blogosphere isn't considered to have that much of impact , so we're not worth including in standard PR plans.

Until now I've only had an offer like that once, an offer I turned down, since I thought I couldn't make a serious job as a reviewer due to my lack of general gaming knowledge. And in the end it turned out that those who accepted the offer never got their copies in the end.

A recent book
The last couple of weeks we've seen an explosion on the blogs, where everybody and his uncle has been more or less openly marketing a recently published book on the topic of guild management. Those who came up with this promotion campaign can't be anything but pleased with the outcome. I think bloggers who are starved for attention and benefits and who might nourish "I want to make a living on my writing one day" dreams is the perfect target audience.

The author has a connection to the blogosphere, and I suppose that's how the idea came up for the publisher to send out letters to what must have been a huge amount of WoW and MMO bloggers, offering them free review copies, judging from the amount of posts about it.

I got one too. It was a very nice letter, which didn't just feel like spam, starting with a personal greeting: "Hi Larísa"... I must admit that I initially felt a little bit flattered. Wow, they want ME to write a review on this. Are they considering The Pink Pigtail Inn and my views that important? I almost did a /flex. Yeah, I know, they just used simple, human psychology, and I dare say it worked pretty well!

So I almost ordered a copy. As opposed to in the case of the free game review copy, I thought that I might be qualified enough to be able to make a good judgment. I've written tons of book reviews in the past, and even though I haven't lead a guild myself, I've got experience of leadership in real life and of being a member of a guild. I thought I could be able to say something about that book. And I like the topic, most definitely. The psychology of WoW, the challenges of team building and leadership, is one of the aspects of the game that interests me most.

Why I didn't order it
I never came around to accept the offer though. One reason was that it felt a bit weird to all of a sudden start to write book reviews at my blog. It's not something I regularly do, so why now, why highlight this book out of everything that is published?

I think it was the journalist in me who wanted to have a word in this. If I'm to write book reviews, I want to do it on a more regular basis, keeping up with and mirroring not just this one book, but everything that is connected to WoW or MMOs. And I want to pick the books I write about out of my own choice and will, monitoring the market and not just jumping at whatever book that randomly is sent to me.

And then there was this more pragmatic reason. I already spend quite a bit of time not only playing WoW, but thinking about it, writing about it, reading blogs and listening to podcasts. I could vividly picture the reactions from my family if they caught me reading WoW related books when I'm not playing the game. It would be the final nail in the coffin, proving once for all that I had lost it, and actually I would partly be ready to give them right.

A win-win situation
I might sound a little bit negative, but that's not my intention. I have no reason to believe it's a bad book; the writer seems qualified enough. And I don't think it's a bad idea to send it to the blogosphere, on the contrary.

It's a win-win situation. The bloggers get a free book copy, which is exciting and nice if you've never gotten anything like that before. The publisher gets tons of free marketing. (Grats on that!). And the blog readers... oh well I suppose they're happy too. With so many reviews to look at they certainly know what to expect if they decide to buy the book. I just hope they bear in mind that the blog writers might be a little bit biased since - as pointed out - they're not used to making reviews and might be under the influence of feeling flattered.

I admit though that it makes me a little bit giggly to see all those reviews promptly pop up so quickly and dutifully, as if it the bloggers were turning in their homework, with apologies if they're a little bit later to the party than the other reviewers.

As the veteran I am I want to send my fellow bloggers a piece of advice: just because you've got a free copy it doesn't mean that you're obliged to write a review. In the end you are the one in charge of your blog and if you don't think it deserves a post you can just put the book in a drawer and forget about it. They won't sue you.

Someone Just Knocked on the Door

I picture it as when a police squad finally arrives at a parent-free party going on in a house in the middle-class suburbs. A window is broken, there’s litter all over the place, and someone has puked in the garden. Finally one of the neighbours made the phone call to make it stop.

“Party’s over kids! Get out of here, time to go home!”

The party is over at MMO Champion and they have removed all content about the Cataclysm Alpha for the time being, and it will remain this way until the NDA is lifted.

Boubouille doesn’t say right out what has happened, but from what I can read out of it, they have probably done more than just ask him nicely to take it away. There are most likely lawyers involved.

“I don't have any reason or project to be an internet superhero because none of the underwear I have look nice over my pants”.

What took them so long?
I’m just a bit curious what took them so long to act. It’s as if the Blizzard lawyers have walked down by foot the entire way from their headquarters in Stormwind to MMO Champion's operation in Booty Bay. Don’t these guys have flying mounts?

Maybe it just took them a while to make up their minds on how to do. The buzz was nice to listen to, but there was a backside to it too. Maybe they finally listened to the complaints from the official fansites, put at disadvantage by sticking to the NDA, and realized that they had to do something if they wanted to keep them as allies? Maybe they wanted some space to keep working on the expansion in peace and quiet.

I believe a major reason for them to put a stop to it is that they needed to make a statement and show that Blizzard are serious enough about their own polices to take action when they’re violated.

If it would become too apparent that the NDA didn’t mean anything in reality, what would that suggest about all the other stuff at the three-page-agreement that we click through without reading thoroughly every time there’s an update? They have to take some sort of action every now and then against violation of their policies – be it gold selling, hacking or leaking of NDA material. Their credibility was at stake.

Another reason might be that they wanted to get some more attention to what’s happening in Wrath. There hasn’t been that much talk going on about Ruby Sanctum. With less of Alpha distractions right in front of our noses, they might be more successful in getting attention to their own, planned agenda.

Moving to the Evil East
Of course the action against MMO champion doesn’t mean that all the Alpha material is gone now. Once something is out on the webs it’s there and there’s no way to put back the genie into the bottle again. However the curious guys will have to look a bit further away to find it, in the “Evil East” as Tim Howgego called it on his by now classic map over the Warcraft communities.

And if you travel to those areas you’ll do it at your own risk, as Spinks points out in her comment today. Do you want to download viruses and other crap to your computer? Go ahead. If not you’d better stay here in the safer areas of the community, where the sun is shining, keeping the shades away and where you’ll still get teasers about Cataclysm, although in the pace that Blizzard decides.

The Cataclysm Alpha party is over. Now, let’s try to get some energy and enthusiasm back into Wrath. Let’s start longing for and speculating about Ruby Sanctum!

How much gold do I need for Cataclysm?

OK, this is yet another blog post with a title ending in a question mark (I'm so sorry Krizzlybear!) but I have a valid excuse for this: I don't know and I would really appreciate a bit of advice on this from someone who is a better fortune-teller than I am.

How much do you think we can expect the training costs to raise? How much should I set apart to be sure that I'm covered for the first expensive enchants and gems that I will need to be raid ready for the first instance?

I suppose it will go up, but I'm not sure myself about how steep the increasing curve was between vanilla wow, Outlands and Northrend and where we can expect it to end up if we pull the line further in the same direction in Cataclysm.

So if there's any goblin who is generous enough to give out advice for free, I'd love to hear your opinion.

Not playing the gold game
The gold game has never been a favorite of mine; it's something I just do if I have to, to cover my expenses. A pure support function and not a part of the theme park and enjoyment. I know there are others who love it and there's nothing about that. To each one his own. But personally I don't play WoW to hang around in AH or by a mail box.

Thankfully enough, making gold isn't hard these days. Mostly by selling off the saronites I get from frost emblems, I've managed to pile up about 30 000 gold. Of course the prices on sarnonite are falling for every week that passes, and as we start hardmodes the flood of frost emblems will decrease.

The question is if the little fortune I've made until this day will be enough to let me focus on leveling and exploring during the first months of Cataclysm primarily on my main and possibly also on a tempting alt of one of the new races - as opposed to spending time at AH doing business. I certainly hope so, but I'm not entirely sure, hence my question. Should I try to invest it wisely and try to bring it up a bit further to be on the safe side?

Experiences > gold
Funny enough Bigjimm at one of the how-to-make-gold profiled blogs, Phase 3: profit, wrote a post touching on this question yesterday. And he advocated exactly the opposite. According to him right here and now is when you should spend your gold, since inflation will eat it up if you hold to it anyway. And you should spend it wisely: on experiences, a philosophy he shares with Mike Schramm (although it was slightly taken out of context since Mike actually has been talking about his willingness to pay real money for experiences as opposed to sparkling horse pixels.)

I'm the first one to agree on those ideals in real life. My children have grown up in a rather simple home compared to their neighbors and friends. Not a lot of status things around in this rented flat. On the other hand they've been on memories-for-life vacations to Africa and America, and probably will go for another one to India later this year. In my world experiences > items and gold. Always.

And that's how I look on it in game as well. The only purpose of collecting gold is to spend them on doing things that are fun. However - I don't have any need to buy myself a spot in an LK run, since I'm already in a guild that does those sorts of things. (Yeah, I'm lucky).

Maybe I have a better reason than Bigjimm to be careful about my gold though. After all, as a goblin blogger, he has the knowledge, the tools and the interest to catch up again and making another fortune if he finds himself running low. To me it would be a little bit more of a hassle, even though I certainly could do it; there's plenty of good how-to-make-gold advice floating around in the blogosphere

Stocking up on mats
Some players won't stock up on either gold or experiences. They'll speculate on different sorts of materials to keep in stock and sell expensively as people are eager to level their professions in Cataclysm. That's really not my piece of cake. I would be happier if I could be disciplined enough to have a sell-out form my bank before the expansion, leaving me with plenty of bag space, which always is handy as you're leveling.

But back to my question: how much gold should I strive for to have as Cataclysm hits to be comfortable? How much are you planning to put aside? Please share your view with me!

Why People Leak and Other Musings Over the Alpha Mess-up

This post is inspired by Tim Howgego's post of yesterday about the Alpha leakage and how Blizzard has handled it.

If you haven't read it I suggest that you take your time and do it. It's really long, as all of his articles are, but it's worth it. This is an in-depth analysis with a lot of good points and interesting angles about Blizzard's relationship to the fansite, their acting in NDA matters and the consequences of it, and it's by tar the best I've seen on this topic in the blogosphere until now.

Adam Holisky at WoW.com did another effort a couple of days ago to make something on these lines, but for all the good intentions, he missed the point a bit, suggesting that concerned Blizzard staff leaked inaccurate information because they were misinformed. Sorry but you lost me there. (There is some good stuff in this post too though, so by all means, read it as a complement to Tim's post).

Tim on the other hand seems to be well informed and likely to have some good inside sources at Blizzard, or at least a solid knowledge about their way of thinking. He apparently is a bit concerned that he in writing this post is speaking too freely for his own wellbeing. With his position on "the edge", not being an official fansite, but at the same time with a lot of visitors and a great deal of respect within the community, Tim is "stupid enough" to write about how things are, as he puts it. I guess it might cost him the +1 font size link from WoW's official site to El's Extreme Anglin' at the worst, but I'm glad he's taking the risk.

Friend and family, heh?
So with this lengthy introduction I'm finally getting to my own thoughts. And they are currently mostly preoccupied with those so called friends and family. I keep asking myself: who are those people? How do the Blizzard staff know them? Are they spouses, brothers, neighbors or someone they met in a bar?

Because: what kind of friend are you if

1. someone puts their trust into you, sharing their innermost secrets,
2. you assure them that you won't tell a soul about it and
3. within a couple of hours you nevertheless share the secret with someone who shouldn't know it, well aware of that it immediately will spread all over the Internet?
   

I certainly wouldn't expect it from the persons I call friends and family. And yet it happened. Blizzard really need to be a bit pickier in their acquaintances.

I suspect that it's yet another evidence of my coming to age that I react against it. After all we're living in an era when nothing, absolutely nothing is too private to expose, either it's your sex life, your lack of appreciation for your boss or pictures from your latest booze party escapades. The boundaries were dissolved years ago ago, apart from in the minds of fossils like me, and a non-disclosure agreement is a futility that no one expects anyone to take seriously. Apparently.

Reasons for leaking
Yet it bugs me a bit. And you may wonder: what's in it for them? Why do people leak this information that they agreed not to leak in the first place?

There are two possible explanations. The nice one is that they're suffering from innocence or even stupidity.

In my job as a media manager I tell people over and over again that in reality there isn't such a thing as "off record" and that you can count on that anything you tell a media person can become official. Any interview starts at the first moment you talk to a journalist and doesn't end until you're saying goodbye. Don't get lured into believing anything else.

But can those friends and family be THAT stupid, that they accidently share something they shouldn't share in a moment of "oops!"? I don't think so. I think it's rather about persons who have very small egos and lead rotten, insignificant lives want to feel - or pretend - that they're somewhat important. They probably don't get any money from leaking. But they get a kick, and that can be just as good as an incentive.

I've seen a few commenters suggesting that Blizzard themselves are behind the massive leakage, as a part of their marketing plan. Sure, in some situations you might want to give out a piece of news exclusively to a selected media in order to get as much attention as possible, or even pretend that you have accidently leaked out a secret, when you in fact did it on purpose.

But to be honest, I doubt this is the case here. It doesn't seem well timed enough and even if there's a lot of buzz going on now, I think they could have gotten a better impact if they had been able to retain control over what and when to release, portioning it out bit by bit to get maximal exposure to it.

Blizzard's doubtful damage control
However, the damage is done and there really isn't much Blizzard could do to put back the rabbit into the hat. So now they're apparently in a phase of some sort of damage control. To be honest it looks a little bit silly and futile, or even harmful, as pointed out by Tim Howgego.

For some reason Blizzard hasn't yet taken action against MMO Champion, in spite of their official declaration that the NDA still is valid.

On May 4, Boubouille writes:

"The Alpha is protected by a Non-disclosure agreement, which basically means that anything I could post could get me sued. I'm not saying it will happen, Blizzard has been fairly forgiving with everything posted on the site in this past but I think you will understand that I cannot just post everything I find without checking a few things first."

He confirms that the picture of the dragon published elsewhere is real, but doesn't want to publish it himself. About 24 hours later the floodgates open and there are screens and leaked information all over the place. I don't know if we'll ever know exactly what happened there, but Tim Howgego suggests that Blizzard is letting it pass because the owner of MMO Champion can help to promote WoW as an e-sport. A conspiracy theory! Yummie! Actually it sounds quite credible to me.

Why it might be harmful
While letting MMO Champion get away with it, Blizzard has made sure to take action to prevent any premature publishing at the official fansites. They have received letters threatening them that they'll lose their status if they publish or even link to the leaked content.

So far they keep their mouths shut, but under protest, such as in this editorial from World of Raids. The editors also point out that the benefits of being an official fansite in reality are very small. You don't get any VIP pass, you don't get any alpha invites, in the past they've at the best had two or three beta keys. The perks are "minimal at best, if any". No wonder they're pissed!

And the effect of this might be quite harmful as Tim Howgego points out. While MMO Champion has an editor with a certain ethic standard and probably wouldn't promote gold selling, hacking, account trading and such, there are way more shady unofficial fansites who do those things and now get an opportunity to get more visitors, with leaked unofficial information as a lure.

If official fansites don't publish anything but the blue approved Cataclysm material, the audience will find their way to the sites that have that information, according to Tim Howgego, and he has a point. The mainstream players may end up as clueless tourists at darkside sites with low moral standards which they wouldn't have visited in the first place if it wasn't for the NDA politics of Blizzard. And that's bad.

Punish the good guys and let the bad guys get away with it. Does that really make sense?

And who's the bad guy in the first place? In my world the "friends and families" deserve some spanking. Not just the sites that might want to spread the news.

Not a spoiler free zone
Finally, maybe you'd like to know what you can expect from the Pink Pigtail Inn when it comes to Alpha information.

Well, I can't say that PPI is a declared Cataclysm spoiler free zone, such as Too Many Annas. I write about any stuff that is on my mind, and I might talk a little bit about suggested changes that are up for discussion, as when I rant about the changes to 10/25 man raiding or the perils of underwater zones. Mind you though - both of those topics were based on official information, not on leaks. But if you're very strict and don't want to hear a single word about Cataclysm before you have it installed on your computer, you'd better stay away from my inn to be safe.

On the other hand I too like the sense of discovery and mystery, unfolding a new expansion, and I don't want to destroy my own enjoyment of Cataclysm by looking into all details in advance. So I definitely won't opt in for a beta key. Apart from this I'm still preoccupied playing and writing about Wrath, and I basically don't write any informative posts on anything ever, so if you want solid spoilers and previews, this isn't the place for you.

Wrap-up
This was all I had to say for the time being, but I'm likely to come back to similar topics. Blizzard's way of dealing with PR challenges never ceases to catch my interest.

I May Look Small But I Have a Big Title

So it happened. It never ceases to amaze me - the pendulum movement in WoW. One raid is so bad that you wish it never took place. And the next one is so good that you want to linger in it and remember it forever.

Thursday night I switched my Merrymaker title for the Kingslayer one, referring to the 25 man version of ICC.

And considering the struggles we've had with this encounter for the last few weeks it felt so gooood. It's not easy to capture it in words, but if I tell you that I even got tears in my eyes as I suddenly was tossed into the win-cinematics, I think you can figure.

After 100+ wipes up there on the frozen platform, this kill felt very much well deserved. Suddenly we just pulled it together; the things that were so impossible last raid suddenly were if not easy, at least very much doable. And of course it helped quite a bit that we didn't have a couple of disconnects every pull. Actually it only took us 1,5 hours to get it done.

So now what? I've killed LK and in one way I've stretched out my hand and hit the wall in the back of the wardrobe, reaching the very end of this expansion. I'm really looking forward to start working on the hardmodes after next reset, but even if it will be fun and challenging, it won't be quite the same. This said I think we'll do just fine in there. With LK behind us we'll probably be a little bit more relaxed than we've been the last week. In a good sense.

However, before we can do that we'll have to find ways to keep ourselves occupied for two more raids until the reset next week. We celebrated our LK kill by going back to ToC to do some hardmodes we never came around to do before ICC was released, and we got another first kill for the guild, the champions. Admittedly we're well overgeared for it, but it was still a perfect way to end this magic night. "The best raiding night I've had in two years", as one of my guildies said to me afterwards.

As you can see if you read this post at the inn and not through a reader, I've done something unusual, throwing up a picture to accompany it. Old readers know that in-game photography never was my strongest side, and I apology for the crap quality. But as they say: screenshot or it didn't happen.

With those words I end this post, thanking all of you bar guests for your never-ending support and for all your encouraging comments as you have been following the struggles of Adrenaline.

This round is on the house, naturally!

Cheers!