Queasiness in Northrend

I have a problem that is affecting my game play in Northrend.
The problem is what many speak of as the moral “ambiguity” in WotLK especially as it pertains to quests that require torture or mistreating prisoners to complete. Ambiguity is in quotes on purpose because I don’t see any ambiguity — these actions are wrong. Here’s what bothers me.

This country is wrestling with its current history as having committed acts specifically forbidden in the Geneva Convention to which we are a signatory. We are viewed by many as harboring war criminals. We sacrificed principle for expedience. And this is precisely the same idea in the first torture quest I ultimately abandoned.  See below…

The Art of Persuasion
Librarian Normantis on Amber Ledge wants you to use the Neural Needler on the Imprisoned Beryl Sorcerer until he reveals the location of Lady Evanor.

Quest Text:
“You see, the Kirin Tor code of conduct frowns upon our taking certain ‘extreme’ measures – even in desperate times such as these.
You, however, as an outsider, are not bound by such restrictions and could take any steps necessary in the retrieval of information.
Do what you must. We need to know where Lady Evanor is being held at once!
I’ll just busy myself organizing these shelves here. Oh, and here, perhaps you’ll find this old thing useful….”

These quests are disturbing and I, for one, have abandoned them.  This affects my game play because now, not only must I figure out the quest but I also need to evaluate whether I have to do something I consider morally impermissible in real-life to complete the quest.   So, I will continue to play in Northrend although I am more leery of the quests and spend more time on wowhead researching an entire questline before starting it.

In the interests of full disclosure, I am a history major who spent upwards of two years studying World War II from a number of perspectives.  One of the most influential books I read during that time was “Ordinary Men” by Christopher Browning.  I am also a former Marine and have experienced the kind of peer pressure / group think that can be found in a military organization.

I don’t expect people to abandon these quests or do the same thing I am doing but I do wish to at least raise the awareness that torture is a nasty topic.   I guess what I really want is a path through quest lines that allow me to keep true to myself.  Let those that choose to torture get more XP or complete it faster but let there also be an option for an interrogation technique that may take longer or may fail but does not require me to torture.  Sort of like trying to skill up when the recipe is green.

Sorry for such a bleak topic but it’s been sitting in my craw for over a month now and I just needed to share.

Stating the obvious

Hey all,

Just a quick reminder for those of you killing the scourge and making Azeroth safe for Alliance and Horde alike: Do not forget to equip your Argent Dawn Commission, especially if you are not yet exalted.  The mobs around the crystals drop Invaders scourge stones and the summoned bosses after interrupting the engineers drop Corruptor’s scourge stones.  Turn them in for Argent Dawn tokens that will increase your rep.

-eust

I has a sad…

Dear Everyone,

I just read in WoW news that Ezra Phoenix has passed away.  You may recall him as the boy who, through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, was a Blizz developer for a day.  Ahab Wheathoof is voiced by him and the quest “Kyle’s Gone Missing” is about his dog.

Farewell Ezra!  Thank you for greeting me by the bridge and thank you, Kyle, for your happy dance.

/cast Silence [duration = 1 minute]

Ambassador Eustacius?

Recently Blizz has announced there will be an achievement based title of Ambassador for anyone who is exalted with all five of their faction cities.  Eustacius Hunter decided a few days to help a baby alt resto shaman with engineering by supplying ore and leather.  Further, it is a chance to level both cooking and fishing which are pathetically low.  And riding a ram is so blase that maybe a hephalump would shake things up a bit.  So off to the Space Kangaroo starting area for questing to hit exalted.  A few adventures are chronicled below.

Seems that mounts can run on water… with a little help from Stillpine Elders.

In the Show Gnome Mercy (The final part of catching the traitor for Admiral Odysseus) quest I came to fully appreciate the role of the explosive trap.  What is really fun about it is that you can lay the trap BEFORE you accuse him and just let the fireworks happen.

Finally, in the most peculiar way imaginable, I hit 350 defense after being hit for 7 HP by a level 10 Root Thrasher while riding.  Go figure.

Later all!  Thanks for visiting!

Many Thanks, One Picture

Thank you Shrinn, Doodle, Nas and Squirrelz. You made this possible…

R2B Update

Hi everyone,

I want to thank you all for the nice messages and comments regarding BlizzCon. I am especially grateful to the Sidhe Devil’s and our fab Co-GMs, BBB and Cassie. Thanks Sidhe’s, you make this game more than a game .

Anyway, Doodle is coming out to lovely Southern California for BlizzCon and we’re going to get together while he’s here. Also, we’re going to keep on with the story RoadToBlizzCon as originally conceived and hope you all enjoy it. Personally, the next few episodes are some of my favorites for both storyline and content creation.

-eust

Securing your authenticator

Ingredients:
Four (4) feet of quarter-inch braid-wrapped fiber core line.
One (1) half-inch split ring.
One (1) locking carabiner.
One (1) Blizzard Authenticator recovered from a tire swing.
One (1) anchor point.

Instructions:

1. Attach split ring to Authenticator and set aside.
2. Pass line through the anchor point.
3. Tie bowline on both ends of line.
4. Unlock carabiner and clip it through one of the bowlines.
5. Pull on opposite end of line until carabiner is right next to the anchor point.  Ensure there is enough play in the line for a carabiner to be able to wrap around the anchor point.
6. In the line near the carabiner tie a typical “slip knot.”
7. Clip and lock the carabiner to the loop in the slip knot.  The carabiner now is clipped to two points: the bowline and the slip knot.
8. At the other end of the line, attach the authenticator to the bowline.
9. Test your anchor point and knots by pulling like heck on the line.  If you A) get a hernia or B) the entire desk moves you have successfully anchored your authenticator.

Permanent Roadblock?

Hi all,

After a few false starts, BlizzCon tickets went on sale yesterday for, oh, about 12 minutes. There was a final 10 second window to purchase tickets at 8 PM PST and after that all 12,000 were gone. It was a terribad experience and I know Doodle is just sick.

I had 2 tickets in my cart, one for me and one for mom, during the afternoon blitz but apparently adding tickets to your cart didn’t deduct them from inventory so it was more a race to enter information and finalize payment than an orderly process of purchasing a hotly desired item. No one knew this going in.   I’ve never been part of an internet mosh pit like yesterday. My understanding and experience of ecommerce is that, generally, when an item goes into ones cart those items are deducted from inventory and reserved for the person who put them in their cart to finalize their shopping and allowing them to pay at a reasonable pace. If not paid for inside a window of time, the items in the cart CAN be pulled but it is generally on the order of minutes, not seconds.

The BlizzCon discussion forum is filled with rage and cancellation posts. Some idjits went too far and hopefully those threads / posts has been removed and perhaps even reported to the police or district attorney.

I think the most heart-breaking part of this is not missing out on BlizzCon but the impact this will have on the RoadToBlizzCon project. Do we continue knowing one of the authors doesn’t get to go? Are the characters independent of the authors and therefore they press on, blissfully ignorant? Do we change the entire tone of the story? Doodle and I are really doing some soul-searching to see about continuing. I’m inclined to forge ahead and see where the story takes us. I am optimistic about the future and think good things can still happen in this.

So, overall, it’s a bittersweet time. Doodle got a ticket and is coming out to California. Meeting him face-to-face is what I was most excited about in the first place. But the whole event could just bring up the current ache all over. I choose the minor ache and the excitement of meeting in person a RL friend for the first time.

All’s OK

Eustashius and Mrs. Eustashius and their minions are all ok after Blizz accidentally released into the wild the Beta version of Earth Tremor, rank 5.8.

EDIT: Apparently it was rank 5.4.  Color me consoled.

Christmas in July

Been a while since posting here, I know. R2B takes time so that’s what I’ve been up to lately. HOWEVER, Friday July 25th was a good night for me. BBB posted a while ago about an impending guild drama involving raids and cramming 11+ people into 10 slots. Up go a few sticky threads in the guild forums and we’re good to go. I expressed general interest in going on Kara runs but didn’t sign up for this first round; couldn’t make raid start time and there seemed to be a deep enough bench to handle any RL things that may have delayed or scrubbed the raid.

Fast forward to Friday the 25th. At about 7:30 local time (9:30 PM server time) which was just over 2 hours into the raid, I log on to see how things are going. As my toon zones into Shattrath, my chat window, as Phinn would say, esploded. The upshot seemed to be that they were short a DPS (maybe 2, I was a bit confuzzled) and so I was asked to join in so I did.

Recall that my last time in Kara was my first time in Kara. BBB explained everything as we went and it ran smoother than the finest Irish whiskey. (Well, I think so anyway). I remember Curator, Chess, Illhoof, Aran and Prince. So this alone — A Kara run — is sufficient to be called Christmas in July. BUT…. I got a thing or five while there:

Zierhut’s Lost Treads: These appeared in my bags after going AFK to put two of my kids to bed. I suspect they were bored and killed some things and decided that I could use them.

Mithril Chain of Heroism:

Garona’s Signet Ring

Terestian’s Stranglestaff: This was the best item of the night for me. I figured long ago that I would not obtain this any time soon and so didn’t think about what drops off this boss until after he was dead.

Ring of a Thousand Marks

ZOMG! I haz purplez now! And what made it really great was that I had nine friends with me to share the excitement. Here they are…

Hacked! (sort of)

Often times we protect ourselves from external threats better than internal threats. As such, I obtained a Blizzard Authenticator which has proven to be a great investment. That said, sometime between last night and this morning I was hacked. You see Eustashius and Mrs Eustashius have little ones and somehow one of the little ones climbed WAY up on Daddy NElf’s desk and absconded with said authenticator.

Other things that were absconded have turned up after a day or so but not necessarily in their original condition. Recently one of our three year olds decided that the remote needed a bubble bath. It took three days to dry enough to be used. I am concerned that the authenticator will be thought to need a shower and the screen will be buggered up. And the WORST of it all it that this was entirely preventable and is ALL MY FAULT!

/facepalm

EDIT: Authenticator was found in the tire swing about 2  hours later.

4.6% More Feral

Maybe this is theory crafting maybe it’s not but it IS a bit of number crunching relative to the new talent trees.

Although the talents themselves are not yet finalized, what does NOT seem to be tentative is the number of points required to hit the final talent in a given tree; in WotLK 51 points. Maybe no one else is bothered by this but I am. I’d like to be able to distribute the talent points PROPORTIONALLY, not linearly. In other words, By requiring me to place all 10 points between levels 71 and 80 in a single tree to maintain my spec I necessarily have to leave the other two trees completely stagnant.

Here are the numbers:
Burning Crusade
67.2% (41/61)

WotLK
71.8% (51/71)

So to stay feral in WotLK, I’ll put 4.6% more points into the feral tree (71.8 – 67.2 = 4.6) than I did for Burning Crusade.

My suggestion to Blizz? Re-work the talent trees (I know, a Herculean task) such that obtaining the final talent in any tree takes no more than 70% of the overall talent points. This will prevent builds from becoming more and more lopsided. Yet all this said, even though I am on the edge of my seat for the expansion, I despair of a talent rework coming to pass any time soon.

New Poll at R2B

Hey all,
As you probably know, Doodle and I are seeking BlizzCon and we’ve had a few polls up on the site. So this is a long way of saying there’s a new poll up, so hie thee to RoadToBlizzCon and cast thy vote!
Thanks,
-e

/thank

I was in the Sidhe Devils forums (fora?) today sending an email to BBB when I realized something. I hadn’t said “Thank you” to he and Cassie in a while so this is to remedy that oversight. I could have done it in the forums but I really did want it to be more public. So…

Thank you BBB and Mrs. BBB for being fantabulous GM’s. Thank you for putting your own lives first as an example for everyone else. Thank you for trying to unload the guild bank onto us. Thank you for being great people.

It came!

The Blizzard Authenticator arrived today.  Associating it to my account was a snap and it seems to work just fine.  I don’t think of myself as a target necessarily but then, who really does?  Anyway, to all you hackers, your services are not longer required.