Macro it!

Mornara killed Ultraxion for the first time tonight on Normal mode. It was a pretty fun fight, though there is really no room for error in there. Well, there is room for one error, as long as it can be fixed by a speedy battle res. But in general it was a fun fight. I liked it a hell of a lot more than Zon'ozz, who I now refer to as the ping pong boss from hell. But that's a post for another time.

It was not Darkfall's first time killing Ultraxion, but only about half of us had killed him before. So there was some learning to be done. Fortunately I had some good advice from DraNgNon, who had killed him before on normal mode.

I'm embarrassed to admit that several of the wipes were my own fault, either from not staying in for Hour of Twilight, or not getting out for Fading Light. However I was having a very hard time making sure that I clicked the button at the right time. I mouse with my right hand, and also hit my Vent talk button with the right hand as well. And doing both of those at the same time to call out the bad stuff was not working for me.

So I remembered the cardinal rule of tanking. The cardinal rule of playing WoW. The rule that underlies all the other stuff you need to do: Keybind! Keybind your abilities, but especially keybind your cooldowns. And if Heroic Will isn't a (fight specific) cooldown, I just don't know what is.

/click ExtraActionButton1

So, keybind that sucker: make a macro and put it on a action bar. Once I did that we got him on the next try.

Granpa Deathwing

hi everyone, sorry for the long hiatus.

Today, the New York Times has an article discussing the upcoming release on Star Wars: The Old Republic and its impact on Wow. The writer has been playing both games quite a bit lately and has some rather insightful commentary. He doesn't think the games will really fight for players, although I disagree, since not everyone who plays MMORPG has unlimited time and funds.

Anyhow it mentions the time and effort BioWare has put in making the voice acting and visuals slick for SW:TOR, which makes the text-base questgiver interactions in Wow seem clunky. The article also points out that Wow has lost 2 million players - 2 million!!! - since Cataclysm came out.

Partway through the article, it has this fabulous picture of Deathwing.



whoa! hey whoa! that's not what Deathwing looks like when I see him, every damn time I log into the game. what I see is Granpa with ill fitting dentures, not mighty scary dragon as above.



wait, wait. those two images are the same exact scene. I bet that Wow wouldn't lose nearly so many players, if the first picture really was what we saw in the game.

and before anyone thinks, well that's just not possible with the graphics maybe they haven't looked at SW:TOR after all. or even Rift.