Gaming Malaise

I'm back at work now, and most of my friends have either left WoW completely or are cutting down online time to take care of real life projects. Things are definitely in a slump and ATM I am in solo mode. I have no interest in forming an arena team with a bunch of people I don't really know for the same reasons that I never do PvE dungeons with a PUG.

When it comes right down to it. I don't trust people very much. Well, not most of them anyway. ;)

Mortale said in a recent discussion on the rogue forums that social skill is now a part of pvp skill, and you know... I laughed. But, when you think about it the statement is very insightful and correct. Having good connections and knowing the right people will take you farther in the current system than individual skill ever will.

One of my problems is that I've always treasured independence. I have no problem helping other people complete a task or some goal, BUT... I absolutely HATE asking for help and recieving help makes me feel uncomfortable. The only people I feel comfortable asking for help are my good friends. I would never ask someone I don't know well for help. Never.

So, what do I do when most of my friends are gone? Hrm, I've been struggling with that one for a bit myself. I messed around with Tabula Rasa for a few weeks, and I don't regret it. It was a fun game, particularly the instances. Very fast paced PvE combat with a FPS type of feel to it. However, I don't think it will serve as a good platform for PvP so it's lifespan was short with me. I'm still looking for my Warhammer invite. We know one person so far who has been invited. Hopefully more of us will be invited sooner rather than later.

So, what have I ended up deciding to do to pass time? I'm playing Chromed in the 60-69 bracket as a mutilate build and having fun. The 60-69 bracket reminds me of oldschool PvP that isn't corrupted by ridiculous resilience values and gear imbalance. I've never played this game with a gear advantage, ever. I've always been behind the curve and I've shown that the curve can be beaten (at least in the past). But, I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting people with better gear than me. Just, so damn tired of it. It takes me a hell of a lot more effort to kill someone than it takes them to kill me. And even then, the fights are just often long and boring. So long in many cases that a rogue is forced to use every single tool at their disposal just to win... one... fight. And that sucks.

So, I'm just going to stay in the 60-69 BG until my Warhammer invite arrives and gear myself as best I can with my limited resources (me). From time to time I'll release some clips just to remind people of what it was that once made playing a rogue fun.

Here is the first of such clips. It's just a small collection of a few uneditted straight forward clips. The song is "Insect" by Die Warzau.


homage.wmv

The file is only around 80 MB, I'd suggest the full download over the stream.

Rogue IS Hard.

You might have noticed that I have a bit of a split personality when it comes to rogues. One half of me hates them, and the other half is sympathetic towards them and still thinks they are the most fun class to play. The latter of those personalities is responsible for this post.

If you are a rogue, I'm sure you've had this kind of thing happen to you numerous times and it kind of captures the true essence of playing a rogue. I'm low health from just killing someone when a warrior charges me from behind, then...


retard.wmv

... some retard breaks my blind halfway through it's cycle while I'm bandagin and feeds the warrior a shit-ton of rage. But, hey... you don't need to display teamwork or intelligence when you can put out that kind of damage. Amirite?

Rogue is hard.

The PvP trinket. Don't leave home when it's on cooldown.







hard.wmv

Just kidding. They require the most skill of any class!

My gear sucks. I suck. This is my second day on PvPing with a class that I haven't even PLAYED for more than than hour in over 3 months. Close your eyes and just imagine what a great rogue with great gear could do. And now contemplate why rogues are the whiniest and most self-absorbed class in WoW.

Now, to compare and contrast let's see how Iwl does against this slightly better geared warlock.






spotter1.wmv

OUCH... my trinket and WoTF was down and Spotter had berserker, but it wouldn't have mattered. What kicked my ass here was the total control I was under due to well-coordinated use of spell lock, howl, deathcoil, and snare to keep me from closing to fear.

Rematch, except this time its me with berserker buff. RAWR!


spotter2.wmv

Damn. :(

I choked at the end, I should have dropped shadowform and renewed and PoMd. It would have been enough to win. Good players force mistakes. I've always said this and it really pisses me off to see people applaud someone in topgear flawlessly killing people they outgear. Well, no shit. I mean, bad players put no pressure on your whatsoever. Who wouldn't look l33t beating the crap out of people they outgear?

It's the people who you know that can kick your ass that get you second-guessing yourself because you know one mistake or slipup means a loss. That's pressure. Ganking people who are no threat to you, no matter how elegantly you do it, is pointless to me.

Oh yes, back to the original point: Rogue > Shadowpriest

This Just In...

I still suck.


suck.wmv

I'm in the process of building a new UI. I decided to knock the dust off of Oozo and play him for the first time in over three months just to see how the UI was working for a rogue. Things went pretty well, except for the 3.5K mortal strike from a warrior with berserker buff. I killed a couple of mid-teir warriors with Ming's brand new Ultimate Rushdown Garrotte Strategy (MURGS). I mean, it seems like the same exact thing I was doing towards the beginning of the year but I guess it's different somehow. It's kind of funny, a lot of warriors just react very badly to that opener. They still aren't used to seeing it I guess. Well, maybe now that Ming has finally revealed MURGS other rogues will start picking it up. Ming beat Dahis up pretty badly with it supposedly. Echelons has just released a movie featuring duels using MURGS with a combat twist. Man, I wish I could have thought of this months ago when I was still playing a rogue.

The Best Shadowpriest Movie Ever!

Seksi 2

I gave this movie 4.8/5 as I thought it was very entertaining. The opening sequence was well done. The music is pretty safe and nonabrasive. The editting and effects are nice and not overdone. Much of this movie has the gladiator-rated Seksi doing 1v2s and 1v3s. Some of the opponents are poorly geared relative to Seksi, but there are some rival-rated opponents in there to spice things up. Once again, overall... this is a solid movie well worth watching.

But, you know me. I don't post about anything unless I'm bitching about something... and sure enough, here it comes. The people (and people, in general) at WCM are morons who can't see what is even clearly placed square in front of them to see. Here are some quotes from the reviews and my reply to those quotes:

"This is definet the best priest movie ever." - hellmaker

It's definitely the best priest movie made where the belt of nigh invulnerability is used over 12 times in the same movie.

"I feel that you truly understand the defensive powerhouse nature of the Shadow Priest class" - Gankt

Yes, the shadowpriest class becomes a defensive POWERHOUSE when utilizing the class ability "belt of nigh invulnerability." Wait.. is that a priest ability? Ah, well... Seksi truly understands the belt of nigh invulnerability, that's for sure.

"the spriest class has become crazy powerful in TBC" - brassmonkey1622

Crazy powerful when using the belt of nigh invulnerability, the battle standard, and healing/mana pots all in the same fight against outgeared opponents. Hell yah, shadowpriests totally rock in that situation. Clearly this calls for a shadowpriest nerf!

And here it comes...

"priests should be nerfed HARD for being able to take so much focus fire without dieing. i cant survive 1/2 of that as a destrolock. imba video and tell us your survival secrets" - nobite

Well moron, if you had bothered to look at the combat log you would see that one of the secrets is using the belt of nigh invulnerability in over 80% of the scenes in your movie.


I swear to God, if I even used that thing in ONE fight I'd get flamed for it. Gee, I wonder if a 4K damage shield would make it easier to pull off 1v2s and 1v3s. Hrm... Potions? Maybe I should start using those too. I guess I always got my overpowered 3 second nets that break immediately on damage.

Secrets of the Death Knight Revealed!

I believe that this trailer for the upcoming expansion holds clues on how to unlock the new Death Knight class. First, you must be a paladin who does not heal or rez their companions and runs at the slightest hint of true danger. Second, you must be so bad at playing a paladin that a handful of midlevel undead can kill you.





God...





... there's going to be a whole lot of Death Knights.

What's Wrong with WCM.

The foremost thing wrong with WCM are the insane number of retarded downraters that inhabit the place. If they don't like your music... 1 out of 5. If they don't like some single aspect of your movie... 1 out of 5. If they have a personal beef against you from past experiences... 1 out of 5. There are four criteria for you to rate on: content, creativity, editting, and audio/visual quality. Downraters show again and again that they have no respect for this rating system. They are either too spiteful or too stupid to use it honestly.

I report these cretins every chance I get. I do it to protect my own movies, but I ALSO report them when they downrate others' movies unfairly. The funny thing is, I keep on seeing some of the same names over and over when I do this. Why in the hell are people who have repeatedly demonstrated that they lack the capability of being a fair critic allowed to rate? Let them watch the movies, sure... but REVOKE their right to rate movies. Their input is offensive, useless, and dishonest.

IWL3 - Shadowpriest PvP

Let's take a look at the scores my movie has recieved so far: 4.8, 4.8, 4.2, 4.5, 3.0, 5.0, 4.2, 2.0, 2.5, 4.5, 4.2, 4.8, 5.0, 3.8, 4.2, 2.5, 5.0, 1.8, 5.0, 4.5 Avg. 4.01 WCM Avg. 4.01

The standard deviation for these numbers is approximately 1. So, scores between a 3.01 and a 5.0 lie within 1 standard deviation of the average (or mean). Scores on the outside of that range are questionable. Scores on the outside of 2 standard deviations (in my case scores below a 2.01) are extremely questionable.

If we remove the scores outside of 2 standard deviations we get this adjusted average: 4.25
If we remove the scores outside of 1 standard deviation we get this adjusted average: 4.57

Now, let's take a look at a movie that was put into WCM's "featured box" immediately upon it's release and has been there for about a day so far.

Cheesewiz vol. 1

IMO, this movie is not very good. It's a movie of a well-geared warrior mowing people down in a matter of seconds. And it had to be a matter of seconds, because the movie is not even using the registered version of FRAPs. That means, no clips over 30 seconds. I sped up the clips in my movie, but this movie is on crack. I think it is at 2X speed and has a ton of editting that does not enhance, but rather obscures (kind of like Oozo Lives!).

Here are the scores this movie has received so far: 2.0, 1.2, 3.8, 2.0, 3.0, 2.0, 3.5, 3.0, 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 3.5, 1.5, 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, 4.2, 2.8, 3.0, 3.0, 2.0, 1.0, 5.0, 2.0, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2, 3.5, 3.8, 1.5, 3.0, 1.8, 1.5, 1.0, 2.2, 2.5, 2.5, 4.0, 4.2, 2.2, 3.8, 4.8, 1.2, 1.2, 1.0, 2.8, 2.0, 1.2, 2.8, 1.5, 3.5, 2.2, 4.0, 2.8, 2.0, 4.0, 3.8, 1.0, 1.8, 2.0, 3.2, 2.2 Avg: 2.34 WCM Avg: 2.32

The descrepency is either due to a small mistake in number entry or WCM might be using weighted ratings. I'll use the average more beneficial to the movie poster. The standard deviation in this case is 1.1. So scores between 1.24 and 3.44 fall within one standard deviation of the mean, while scores between 0.14 and 4.54 fall within two standard deviations. So, here a HIGH score is actually a questionable score.

If we remove the scores outside of 2 standard deviations we get this adjusted average: 2.26
If we remove the scores outside of 1 standard deviation we get this adjusted average: 2.27

Interesting. I guess this means there are more downraters than upraters, in general. Surprise!

Okay, so why am I comparing these two movies? Well, I released my movie 3 days ago and it has silently slid down their "latest releases" column (the one no one hardly ever looks at) and now is no longer listed on the front page at all. Now, this Cheesewiz movie above was put into the featured block the very moment it was released (2 days after mine) and has remained there since for a full day. My movie only has 4,400 download at the moment and that is not really going any higher unless it somehow makes it back on the front page. The downraters have done their job and my score is just low enough to keep me off of the "high rating" list for PvP.

Now, the Cheesewiz movie has 33,700 downloads. Is that because it's a good movie? No, its because it's been in the "featured block" for so long. You see, when you put a WCM promo in your movie it "increases your chances" that your movie will be placed in the "featured block" with your graphic. I can fully understand some exceptional movies blocking me out. Fine, but over the past 2 days some of these slots have been taken up by this Cheesewiz movie and a rotation of movies some of which are OVER A MONTH OLD.

Do I feel slighted? You are damn right I do. And it's not just me, my position is not unique. They are screwing over several movie authors with this kind of behavior.

Is this the first time they have screwed me? Not really. ICOBN4, even though it had over 16K views and a rating of 4.8 out of 5 never made it into the featured block. Do, I see a pattern? Yes. Do you see it?

I won't even get into that whole "I am a Shaman", "I am a Mage", etc. crap. It should have never been approved and that guy now has special benefits because of that shit. But hey, when you are the only game in town you can do whatever the hell you want to do. Amirite?