Sunday Brunch: Positivity

With each Sunday comes the opportunity to have brunch and discuss the things that I have been dealing with in my personal life (for those of you who care). The last few weeks I have been doing a lot of thinking about how this year has been going so far, and I got to say that it has pretty much sucked non-stop. So I decided this past week that if I cannot change all of the circumstances which are affecting me, then I shall change the way that I view things!

So starting this past Monday I have worked extremely hard to remain positive in whatever situation I find myself in. The funny part is that I feel like the oddball in the crowd now. As I sat at work on Thursday I couldn't help but listen to how negative everyone was being. So I spoke up and informed them of the decision that I had made to be positive and as such I could not permit them to be negative any longer. They all started laughing because they know that I am usually the first person to jump on board the "bitch express".

I teased them a little and told them about my decision to attempt to remain positive and proceeded to tell them that I am not the kind of person who looks at the glass of water as being half empty or half full, but rather I just want to know who the hell has been drinking my water. Well, now instead of getting mad that someone drank my water, I am instead just going to refill my glass since water does not cost me anything but a little time. They laughed and continued joking about other things but more important than all of that was the fact that the attitude of the area changed and was much more pleasant to be around.

Since I started to focus on the positive, I do feel as though things have been going much more smoothly. This is not to say that magically all of my problems have disappeared, but rather it is to say that I choose not to focus on all the negative stuff that is swirling around me. By ignoring all of that, I can instead focus my energies into the things that I can cause change in. That is what then makes me feel like things are going much, much better.

Forum Fridays: Two Roads

Hello everyone and welcome back for another Forum Friday! Now this weeks edition sadly does not have the actual forum link or image due to Blizzard having locked and apparently removed the topic; however, that does not stop us from discussing it here! The topic that I felt deserved a legitimate look is, "Should Blizzard officially create lore to introduce a gay couple into the WoW universe?"

Now this topic had a run on the forums this week under several threads. Sadly, many of these threads devolved into a name calling match that did not actually cultivate a serious conversation regarding the topic. There was one thread though that caught my attention and I followed closely until it too finally devolved and became locked. In this thread it seemed that there were two very strong opinions that pushed their way to the forefront of the discussion:

• No, Blizzard should not introduce such a couple as the game is a fantasy game about completing quests, running dungeons and raid content, and other such activities. As it is not based in the real world, it should not look to cater to every group of individuals lest we have to have something for everyone.
• Yes, Blizzard should introduce such a couple as this game is a fantasy game that while focused on the usual RPG elements, should incorporate elements that provide people with someone that they can relate to in the game.

The conversation that began between the two sides actually introduced a lot of great ideas and concepts that I am not even going to begin to add here as I quite frankly would not be able to say them in the proper way that they were introduced in the thread itself; however, I did spend quite some time thinking about the issue and forming my opinion about it.

At the end of the day, whenever someone makes a request for something to be added to the game I ask myself does it hurt the game? The answer to this request is no. Adding an openly gay couple does not hurt the game; however, it should be done in a way that does not shine a beacon upon the couple as the "token" couple. In other words, I do not want to see something like this introduced into the game simply for the sake of introducing it. Instead, I favor the thought process of one of the forum posters who submitted the idea of using a quest. The quest giver could be a female (or male) who explains that their spouse has been lost in a mine and they are worried about her (or him). They ask you to please go and find them and return them back safely. This would provide a regular quest that is not out of the ordinary and allows for the introduction of a couple that would meet the request of the community. Then what Blizzard chooses to do from there is simply up to them. My own personal opinion would be that they should then continue to introduce the couple throughout the course of the game into a larger quest chain where one of the two becomes a major character of importance. In other words, weave a story that provides substance and not just throws something out to quiet the masses.

Now I realize this is a much more serious topic then what you may have come to expect from here, but as I said last week we are looking to change things up a little bit and part of that change is tackling any and all topics that we consider to be relevant. I cannot think of a more relevant topic than one of this nature. If you have an opinion (and can state it politely), then make sure and leave a comment as I am interested to hear what you all think on this subject.

Well I think that does it for this weeks Forum Fridays! Make sure and check back next week to see what topic I pull from the forums as you just never know how serious we may get around here. I hope you guys have a great day and I will see you later!

How?

I hope you guys are having an awesome day! I am still trying to get over a cold that has given me some issues for the last week, but I believe that the onslaught of fluids and medicine is finally beginning to win this war! Enough about that though because I wanted to take a little bit of time today and talk about a new thing I am planning to do on Wednesdays!

Have you guys ever had a question about something regarding your character and wished that you could find a simple answer? It seems like now days every player and their brother has a manifesto on how to play your class perfectly. The only problem is that often times these "guides" are in conflict with one another. Then what do you do? Well, I would assume that you pick the one that you like and begin the lengthy drawn out procedure of following the three hundred and seventy four step plan to being the best?

God bless you if you actually do that. I for one instantly lose all interest in reading something when it comes across as being the "ten commandments" of unlimited power for class X. I have always held a strong belief that there are countless ways to play a class effectively and much of that will have to do with where and who you plan to play with. That is one reason why I have always shied away from writing guides about how best to play your character, yet a part of me also feels like that is wrong since I do have a lot of experience as a player. So how do you strike a balance to not be too preachy with providing solid information?

Well, that is something I am going to try to answer every Wednesday in a new series that I plan on starting. My goal is to share my views on how I play my character(s). In other words I want to provide some solid information for those who may need it, but I do not want anyone thinking that my way is the only way. It is simply the way that I have found to work best for me. So starting next week I will begin to discuss how I have chosen to play my Paladin in Workshop Wednesdays.

Sunday Brunch: No Brunch Due To Staff Being Sick

I hope you all are doing better than me. I started feeling sick on Thursday evening and by Friday morning I looked like a semi-truck ran me over. The good news is that I am feeling a little bit better. I spent all day Friday, when not actually working, sleeping and that helped me a whole lot. I made a feeble attempt at going in to work on Saturday, but quickly retreated home to bed after a couple hours. As of right now, I have started getting some food into my system and I am beginning to feel more human. The room still spins when I move, but at least I can walk straight now!

That is enough about me though. I really wanted to take a few moments today to talk with you guys a little bit about the future of Holy Shock. This place seems to run for a few days and then the lights go out and nothing is heard from this part of the internet for weeks and even months on end. Well, I am not happy with this and so I am genuinely looking at ways to change this. One of those ideas I started this past Friday with the relaunch of Forum Fridays. It is my deepest desire to begin to spend much more time back here at the blog focusing on sharing my thoughts with all of you. What I do not want to do is make empty promises and so rather than say I am going to have "x" number of posts out each week, I am simply going to say that I have not forgotten about you guys and I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that the dust doesn't get too thick around here. Now go on and get out of here before you get sick too!

Forum Fridays: The Return!

Alright, I have a writer's itch that is needing to be scratched and I now have some ideas on how to scratch said itch! Starting today, we are going to be launching a new ongoing weekly series that I shall dub, Forum Fridays! What? You remember that I had a short lived series titled this? Well, you are a dedicated reader to remember that! However, I am going in a completely different direction with this series. Instead of searching for absurdly stupid forums posts, I am instead going to take a topic that I find interesting and write about it here on the blog and we are starting right now!

So our friend, Acillyn, asks if there has been any updates about how Blizzard plans to make sure that PVP tanks will remain the superior flag carriers in instanced PVP. Now I think this is a very valid questions since all players are going to have a very strong base amount of resilience. I do think though that our friend here is worrying too much about this at the moment as in instanced PVP (arenas and battlegrounds), all gear is going to be capped at item level 496.

This means that if a tank in top tier raiding gear with an item level of 522 (hypothetical number) enters into an instanced PVP zone, their gear is automatically going to be reduced to 496. This means that pound for pound, stats like agility, intellect, stamina, and the other core stats, are all going to be weighted evenly. The issue then moves on to secondary stats.

So for tanks, that means will stats like dodge and parry provide a better experience then PVP resilience and PVP power? Well, let us not forget that Blizzard has stated that not all PVP resilience is going to be removed from items. This also means that a PVP geared tank is going to have a higher resilience number. However, that is simply an avoidance number, which our PVE geared tanks are going to have plenty of in terms of parry and dodge. So then what?

Well as of 4/5/13, Blizzard has released some additional notes on PVP for patch 5.3 and they are:

Battle Fatigue will now reduce the amount of healing and absorbs by 50%, up from 30% - I think this is huge because that means the PVP resilience numbers are going to become much more important and simple logic indicates that the PVP geared character will have a higher amount of resilience, so long as the gem and enchant for it. Which I would have to ask a flag carrier in PVP, why would you not be gem and enchant for PVP resilience?

Now does this take away all fear and concern for our PVP brethren who will be carrying the flags? I do not believe so, but I do think that it is showing that Blizzard is now beginning to review numbers coming in from the PTR and is going to begin ratcheting the dial on the percentages. So at this point in time I feel that we still have to take a wait and see approach  but I do believe in the long run that the players who spend the time and acquire the proper PVP gear, will be in a far better place then those who assume that their high item level PVE gear will carry them in serious instanced PVP situations. Any thoughts from out there in the nether that is the internet? If so then drop them in the comments section and I will see you guys later!

To follow up on the forum discussion, it can be found here!

5.3

Two long hours I have been making myself suffer in an attempt to write something that does not sound jaded and filled with hatred regarding the recent patch 5.3 notes. As such, I am simply going to do what my Grandma always has said, "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all."

Old School Is Still The Best School

Hello everyone! I hope you guys are having an awesome week so far! Today is the big 5.2 patch in WoW. I have some mixed feelings on some of the patch, but overall I see a lot of good coming out of the patch, but that is not the focus of today's topic because the Light knows there will be hundreds of articles, blog posts, and forum threads sharing some pretty "unique" opinions. Instead I want to take some time and look back at the old days of WoW!

Now you may be asking why I am feeling nostalgic today? Well, the simple answer is because last night I led a small group of my guild on what we have affectionately come to call, Retro Raids. The concept, for those not quite quick with it, is that we gather a group of folks and we go and knock out some old content. The runs have a two fold purpose. The first and foremost is to just have fun! You know that thing that happens sometimes when you play online games? No? Okay, moving on then! The second is to start to get our people used to the concept of logging online at a set time and working together as a team to lower the boom on an old school baddies.

I actually feel like the night was a success even though we only had five people online. We would have had six, but one of our guys didn't read the announcement where it said we would be starting the runs late. Our people had a lot of fun and got some good laughs at the expense of one fat cow who couldn't find his way out of a wet paper bag without help, much less taking the short cut to the Molten Core! At the end of the night, some folks had some nice new transmog gear. Some of our group managed to pick up some of the AQ40 mounts they didn't have, and we even had a few achievements earned, but the greatest thing of all was that we had MAS tagged players running content again.

Well, I do not want to take up too much of your time today as there is a lot of notes that you should be reading up on! Have a great day and I will see you all later!

Friday Quickie

Can I just say that you guys are the greatest? Why you may  be asking yourself? Well, it is because that  everyday for the last several months, you stop by the blog and check to see if I have updated anything around here. Now I do not know about anyone but me, and I have to say that I think you guys are the greatest to continually come back around here just to see if anything new has been updated. That really means a lot to me personally and I just wanted to express my appreciation for your continued support.

Alright! Now that we have that emotional heart felt warming stuff out of the way, let's talk shop. The blog has been pretty barren for quite some time, aside from the occasional Sunday Brunch we have every now and then. I aim to start changing this as soon as possible. So the question is how do I plan to go about this? The simple answer that requires no thought is to simply say that I plan to write more, but I know you guys probably want to know more than that, right?

Well, one way I plan to get a little more active is by expanding what we cover around here. Now I know in the past, I have talked about wanting to become more focused on gaming as a whole, rather than being entirely centered on one game. This has not changed! Let me repeat that... this has not changed! I very much plan to continue discussing WoW, as I spend quite a lot of time playing the game; however, the time I spend in WoW now is more casual than I have ever been and I do not feel that I could write in-depth posts for the more progressed player. What I can do though is share with you what I am doing. For instance, most of you would probably be surprised to know that Ruhtra has been parked for quite some time, as well as my Mage Azurelazuli. Instead of healing, I have taken on tanking with my Death Knight, Druid, and Warrior. That is a pretty big change for a guy who has done nothing but healed since back in Vanilla. I also plan to share a little bit about my insights into the different classes, since I am leveling multiple classes versus staying with just one or two. There are several other things on my mind that I am debating on, but the good news is that I do have several things in the works that revolve strictly around writing here at Holy Shock.

In addition to the written articles I have been working on, I also plan to continue our YouTube channel. Now for right now we pretty much have only one series going at the moment, The Nub Seeker. When I first started this series, it was primarily a way for me to track quests and earn the title of "the Seeker"; however, when Blizzard merged our achievements, I earned the title off of the combined quests I had completed between all of my characters across my accounts. I was slightly bummed and had considered just shelving the series and looking into something else, but then when I had been watching some pre-recorded footage, I realized that I was actually having fun with seeing the content of the reworked zones. After doing some serious thinking, I finally decided that I would continue on with the series. The concept as it stands currently, is to record the quests and then go back and provide the commentary on how to complete the quest. Then with the time that is left in each video, I plan to discuss things that have come to mind from doing the quest. This can include discussions about macros, play styles, quest design, lore, or anything else specifically related to the quest that is being covered in that episode. If you have not checked out the series, then make sure and click on this link or select the tab from above and take a look at the Nub Seeker series. Your support there would be awesome and would certainly inspire me to continue working to improve the series.

In addition to the Nub Seeker, I just added a section up top titled, "Shockcraft"! This is for a new series I am launching today that is simply me playing Minecraft on a server that is being sponsored by Holy Shock. At this point I have no real goals for that series other than to just have fun. Now the first episode has absolutely dismal sound quality due to all of the extra sounds that have been added in from the Tekkit Classic mod pack. So my apologies if you cannot hear anything of what I am saying in that episode, but I promise that things will get much, much better there as well. So if you like Minecraft, then give this series a try and let me know what you think.

I have been experimenting with social media lately as well. We recently launched a MAS Gaming Community Facebook page and I have to admit that there is a decent amount of work that goes into maintaining a page like that. I also set up a page for Holy Shock, but have yet to do anything with it. I plan on changing this, just not too sure exactly how I am going to go about it. So basically, stay tuned for more information about our adventures in social media!

Well, I think I have taken up plenty of your time today. I hope you guys continue to support us here at Holy Shock. You guys are awesome and you have my promise that we will always be thankful and appreciative towards each and every one of you. Well, I hope you guys have a great day and I will see you next time!

Sunday Brunch Is Happening

It has been quite some time since we had a brunch together. I hope everyone is doing well and that the new year has been good for you so far. My new year kind of got off to a rough start actually. On the way into work on New Year's Eve, I hit a patch of ice in the parking lot and fell down pretty hard landing on both knees. The good news is that nothing was broken. I managed to only have some extremely sore knees, with a little bruising, and a whole lot of trips to get them adjusted and what not. They are still sore, but at least they are healing properly and I am down to only going in for care to twice a week.

Now I am sure you guys do not keep coming around here to hear me blather on about my personal life, although that is really what our Sunday Brunch is all about. I actually have been wanting to get back into the swing of posting more regularly for quite some time, but due to other things (see above), my free time has been less free. The good news is that things seem to be returning to a more normalcy now that the holidays are over and the knees are starting to feel much better. Just have to make it through my son's birthday and there is nothing major coming along until late summer!

So with all this new found freedom, and I use that phrase very loosely, what do I intend to do? Well, I intend to spend a lot more time around here. I have a lot of ideas about things that I want to do and while I have spent a lot of time debating things, I now plan to just simply start doing. One of the biggest changes I am looking at is really moving the way that Holy Shock is written. In the past we have focused on being a Paladin, then on WoW in general, then expanding slightly to include some other games. Well, I plan to do all of those wonderful things as well, but I also intend to continue on with branching out to expand what is covered here at Holy Shock.

While I would love to share the broad scope of my vision of what I hope to cover around here, I am going to keep it under wraps. My main reason for doing so is I do not want to roll out all these grand plans of what you will see here and then do nothing. Instead I will just let stuff come along as time permits. My goal is more consistency, but not at the expense of quality... yet another term used loosely.

Well, you can now consider yourself served some Brunch! Catch you guys later!

Goodbye 2012 & Hello 2013

Welcome to 2013! I hope everyone is doing well. While I do not plan on posting a lengthy thing today, I just wanted to express my deepest wishes that 2013 will be an even bigger year than 2012 was. May you all have a prosperous and happy new year!