Into the night

There are usually five or six emails in my inbox at work that I am actively ignoring at any one time. The worst of the present bunch dates back to April. It isn't even a particularly horrible email. It's from an old colleague who'd like to meet up for a drink. I like this old colleague, the prospect of drinks with her is not unpleasant, but I cannot bring myself to reply.
I'm not one to keep to-do lists, but if I were, you can bet it would follow this same pattern, with my blog somewhere up there in the bunch of top (or bottom) tasks ripe for ignoring.

There's clearly something wrong with me.

Psychologists call it procrastination, defined as a "counterproductive" deferment of actions to a later time. It's supposed to be "a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision", which is ironic considering the effects of procrastinating can include "stress, a sense of guilt and crisis, severe loss of personal productivity" and "social disapproval".

Ironically, by turning to Wikipedia for a diagnosis of my condition, I managed to put off writing this blog for a whole other day.

What happened is I got sucked into World of Warcraft, the cyber equivalent of a crack den, and have spent the last three years of my life spiralling into sleep-deprived oblivion. I have managed to keep my head above water at work, and have done enough to keep my relationship together, but that's about it. My friends, my career, even my self-esteem, have suffered.

My work is so pressured right now that I'm not even getting home in time to raid. And I clearly haven't been finding the time to stay on top of this blog. So it keeps getting pushed to the bottom of my virtual list, where it lurks and seethes and gangs up with emails from long-suffering ex-colleagues to make me feel guilty and ashamed.

It's cathartic just to even put that down in writing. My neglected blog has been bullying me.

I'd love to say right now, having reached my epiphany, that I will no longer procrastinate. I will complete all tasks that come to me in a timely and professional manner. But it's not going to happen. I am both incredibly busy and incredibly lazy. Something has got to give.

So for now, it's got to be this blog.

I think it's safe to say that if I am not blogging about the most monumental patch to ever hit this game a week before it's due to land, I'm never going to. And that's a huge shame because this is exactly the kind of thing I set out to write about, and the kind of thing I love doing, time willing.

I had a good run, I think. This blog, and all of you who read and contributed to it, made me a better player. And I think I got a lot more out of my subscription by investing time here, in the WoW community, with you. Thank you very much for sticking with me this long.

I'll not be quitting WoW any time soon, and I'm not going to rule out another blog at some point in the future, but until I can sort out my priorities and learn to balance my time a little better, it's time to let the shadow fall on Misery. Happy face melting :)

300 miserable posts

988 days ago I had a genius idea to start a blog. I had just finished levelling a shadow priest through Outland and had no idea what to do next; it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I called the blog Misery after a key talent in the shadow tree, but also because I’m a glass half-empty kind of guy. If you’ve had reason to pop by on occasion you probably know that.

300 posts later, and I’m still… well, you could hardly call it going strong, more limping along.

That amounts to an average of one post every three or four days, which is not exactly prolific — though I do still remember the dizzy feeling of posting twice in one day. Good times.

I average about 300 hits a day, which even in the rather specialised realm of gaming fanblogs I recognise as a modest splash in the pond. And I can’t even promise that all of those visitors find what they need; I am inherently lazy and don’t do nearly as much housekeeping as I should.

But every now and then, I catch a glimpse of the big time, thanks to the generosity of those rock-star bloggers at wow.com. The most hits I’ve ever received in one day was 2770 on 13 January 2010 for a post about shadow priest glyphs which Alex Ziebart very kindly promoted.

My most read post of all time is also about glyphs, which is a bit of a common theme on Misery. This time it’s the one about glyphs for levelling (hideously out of date). I’m sure anyone who ever hits that page bounces right back to Google in disgust. I promise to update it for Cataclysm, ok?

My top referrer is clearly Google, but I owe a good chunk of my visits to referrals from other blogs — top of the list are Blessing of Kings, wow.com, the (sadly retired) Egotistical Priest, and Penance Priest. Thank you very much guys, and thank you to all the bloggers who link to me that I have shamefully omitted here. Drop me a line if I don’t return the favour, I need a kick to update my blog roll as it is.

The most comments I’ve ever received on one post is a modest 19 for my musings about going holy. I clearly need to do more if I want the buzzing discussions of the big hitters like Matticus and BBB. Share your ideas in the comments please :)

Wrath of the Lick King has been a mixed bag for Merlot. He has seen shadow priests go from a hopelessly broken marginal support class to a dps contender, but he has had to sit out much of the end game while an upstart Tauren shaman monopolised my time. For casual players like me, this has been an incredible expansion, but it has come at a cost. I think most hybrid classes will recognise the pressure to offspec for healing or tanking, and many will understand the pitfalls of succumbing to that pressure for convenience. Once you accept that it’s easier to heal or tank than fight for a dps spot, you are lost.

So I have done more raiding this expansion than ever before, but I wasn’t melting faces. And now it’s too late to catch up. The advent of achievements and gear score have pretty much seen to that — but that’s another post.

With Cataclysm already in beta, I’ll be able to get my teeth into priestly class developments again, which is something I love. And I will soon have to make a decision about my Cataclysm strategy. Do I take the easy route and stay healing, or do I go back to shadow and bench the facehealer?

Either way, you don’t get rid of me that easily. I’ll still keep banging on about how priests need moar luv and how glyphs are broken and how I am totally going to redesign this blog like tomorrow. Yea, mañana baby.

Blizzard backs down on forums

Nethaera has posted to say that the forum developments planned by Blizzard will no longer include the use of real names.

Second good job by Blizz in two days, I'm impressed.

I'm really pleased to see that they are willing to respond so quickly and so generously on an issue that is clearly of huge important to their many customers. As Neth said: "We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters," which doesn't explain why shadow priest glyphs are so shit but then I doubt Neth's ever read my blog :P

Crisis over, now back to the game.

I wouldn't put my name to this but...

Nethaera has just unveiled an upcoming change to the forums, and it's a belter. In the not-too-distant future, you will be forced to post under your real, full name.

This change, along with some other stuff I don't really care about (read the thread if you're interested), is designed: "to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit." In other words, it's a troll hunt:

"The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players -- however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before."

I can see how Blizzard has been backed into this decision. Unfortunately, it's a terrible one, and real-world experience tells me it is destined to failure.

Ask yourself two questions: how will this affect the behaviour of those it is targeted at, and how will it affect the rest of us?

Firstly, can this really improve the quality of discussion on the forums? Does the kind of person who posts unwanted comments care that their real name is against them? I'm sure some do — but not nearly all of them. These are already people who show an unwillingness to consider the consequences of their actions, or else lack the social skills to appreciate the impact of their words. And this is the internet, a medium which by its very nature imparts a (sometimes false) sense of anonymity — whatever they say on the forums, you can bet it's tame compared to their Facebook wall. I once moderated an internal staff forum for a FTSE 100 company. Even with their full names visible, and in front of their colleagues and managers, people were willing to write things that they would be shocked to hear spoken in person. Forums do that to some people. So even with the best will in the world, I fear this is not going to solve the problem.

It will, however, do irreparable damage to the forums by discouraging genuine users from participating in the discussion, because fear of being branded a troll is nowhere near the most important consequence of this move. The people you most want on your forums — the thoughtful, intelligent, considerate ones — are going to be discouraged because of privacy concerns. I, for one, have taken great care to avoid all possible connection between my real name and my gaming activities because I fear it will harm my chances with some career opportunities. Recruiters can, and do, Google candidates, and some would invariably disapprove of online gaming as a pastime. But more significantly, exposure on forums would give identity thieves an extremely powerful vector of attack, not just for WoW accounts, but in the broader world too. How many of you have passwords with WoW-related terms? For some, privacy concerns go much further, whether it is out of a general wish to remain anonymous, or a need to keep your name a secret from others.

I appreciate that these concerns probably don't bother all players — younger players, particularly, who don‘t need to think about jobs or data protection — so they may go on happily chatting away without fear. But it will turn many more into lurkers at best, or drive them onto other forums altogether at worst.

The only effective way to clean up a forum is to moderate it thoroughly and consistently against well-defined guidelines and to enforce a strong set of punitive measures for offenders. The Elitist Jerks forums remain such a valuable and highly-respected resource in strong part to their moderation policy. Some find it a little... heavy-handed... but it works for them. Sites are free to carve their own identity.

The trouble with this approach for Blizzard is the resource needed to moderate the vast quantity of forums they host. The cost would be unjustifiable. And, as I found out to my expense in my FTSE 100 company, official moderators run the constant risk of accusations of censorship and propaganda. What starts out as a neutral space can rapidly devolve into a war zone. That's not a position I would ever wish on Blizzard.

Instead, they could have turned to the community for moderation support, but if they considered this, they may have discounted it for all the complications that it would have entailed. How do you recruit them? How do you manage them, and ensure the effectiveness and consistency of their work? It works for fansites, sure, but a corporation would have to take a more professional approach, with all the legal and ethical ramifications that implies.

So at the end of the day, I completely understand why Blizzard felt they needed to take action, and why they eventually plumped for this plan. But I don't have much hope for its success, and I for one will be deleting my historic posts and giving the forums a wide birth when the changes go live. (The change will only apply to new forums created near the Cataclysm launch.)

It's a sad day for the community; maybe the trolls win after all.

/cast Misdirect

A post that somehow manages to induce coffee-spluttering guffaws while revealing absolutely nothing about its subject? It can only mean BRK is back!





Why are you still reading? You were supposed to follow the link. BRK haz new content. CLICK ON THE LINK.





>>Your misdirect was resisted.>>

Damn. I haz nothing.

Some more on spirit

WoW blogs are more promiscuous than viagra spam. My feed reader is already stuffed more solidly than a turkey at Christmas and each day I have to elbow extra into it. But I do my best to keep on top of all things priestly, if only in the hope that I can nick a good idea.

A Priest Blog is the latest to grab my attention, thanks to this nifty post that does the maths on the incoming spirit buffs (I'd love to know how a priest blog ended up with the "nerfdruids" subdomain!)

You perhaps won't be surprised to know it's not a huge buff. As Lyn concludes: "Spirit is still bad but now not quite as bad by a small amount!"

To be honest, that's good enough for me. Spirit should have a function in dps, but it doesn't have to be of critical importance.

What I'm itching to know is why the developers have taken this action, and why now. What was going through their minds when they decided to boost the utility of spirit to shadow priests? The motive is crucial, because this might be a loose end, spirit-wise, or it could be the simplest and first in a series of balancing acts. The big question: will haste ever benefit dots, and if so, will we see it in this expansion?

A shadow nuke?

From the class Q&A at Blizzcon:

Shadow Priests will most likely get a nuke without cooldown in Cataclysm.

Is mind flay dead?

There's a LOT of other stuff emerging from Blizzcon, check out mmo champion and wow.com for updates.

The whole 30 yards

Luciano pointed out a recent forum discussion about the glyph of mind flay (thank you!) Somebody suggested the glyphed snare was now reducing movement by 50 per cent (instead of the intended 10 per cent), and ghostcrawler responded to clarify.

I'm almost positive that the way it works is the glyph leaves a 10% snare on mind flay today on live (the glyph didn't change in 3.2). The reason is because we thought it might cause a lot of bugs related to whether a target was officially snared or not. A 10% snare isn't particularly useful but it is noticable.

What we're talking about is changing the glyph to not affect the default snare at all. The glyph would just boost range.

It's simply confirmation of what was hinted at in the class Q&A.

So Blizzard is now happy for us to glyph to extend the range of a spell which they previously thought would be overpowered at 30 yards. Yet they apparently think it would still be overpowered with a baseline increase because they continue to refuse to even entertain that option. I don't get it. I mean, it's not like we're loosing dps by glyphing for the range - because WE HAVE NO OTHER DECENT GLYPHS.

Will someone please remind me why mind flay has a 20-yard range because I've been temporarily rendered braindead by the shaman shock boost to 25 yards.

Edit: changed confirmed in the patch notes for 3.2.2, released today: "glyph of mind flay: this glyph no longer reduces the magnitude of the movement reduction on the mind flay victim." Which, in English, means the glyph no longer reduces the snare. Blizz, if you're reading, I'm available for translation services, very reasonable hourly rates...

Priest Q&A: the end of the affair

Health warning: grab a cup of tea and some biscuits, this may take a while.

It has been a long, strange journey, but yesterday Blizzard brought its epic player Q&A series to an end with the priest class.

There's no easy way to take hundreds of questions from hundreds of players and distil them into a comprehensive, digestible response. But to Blizzard's credit, they have at least made this process transparent. We all see the same questions, helping us to form an impression of the most popular concerns — while at the same time, unavoidably, creating a sense of expectation. In short, we thought we knew what was coming.

Things look very different today. I'm not at all convinced that the questions posed by the developers are all representative of the community's submissions, nor am I satisfied that the community's top concerns are all addressed here. In fact, in some instances, it even appears that the question has been crafted to fit the statement Blizzard wanted to make.

The cynic in me can't help but observe a general degradation in the quality of responses as this process has gone on. Am I being unfair to think that perhaps this has proved too time-consuming, or too boring, to allow the same level of effort on each Q&A? Is it a coincidence that the priest Q&A is last?

You may accuse me of expecting too much. It's true that I have placed a lot of faith in the outcome of this process. But I don't think my expectations were too high. By it's very nature, this Q&A event is a significant and exceptional occurrence in Blizzard's community relations. It's not unrealistic to expect the responses to be comprehensive. And while I must admit that in my wildest dreams I imaged a long list of promises, in reality all I ever expected was an acknowledgement of concerns and a stake in the ground from Blizzard on how they saw them. Yes, we know you are worried about this, but don't be — or, I'm sorry, that's not something we intend to address right now. Disappointment is better than apoplexy.

But here we are. Merlot is nothing if not a pragmatist! We have some straws to clutch at, and some deep brooding to undertake. Let's look at what they did say, before grouching briefly about what they didn't say, and finally considering where we go from here.

I'm not going to reprint the Q&A in full here, but if you haven't seen it yet and want to, here's the full horror courtesy of mmo champion.

Highlights
There aren't many of them, but I'll start with the most revealing and relevant question and spend a little time on that. I've skipped some pvp questions, don't hate me.

Q. Since a lot of damage a shadow priest does builds with damage-over-time spells, are you concerned about them being well rounded enough to do adequate damage in shorter pve encounters, 5-player dungeons, or in the arena?
I don't think anybody gives a shit about shadow's 5-player damage, or even 'shorter' pve encounters. I'm sure there are pvp concerns, but in pve the big issue is target-switching and burn phases. Given Blizzard's recent concerted efforts to tone down burst damage in pvp, I don't think anybody expected a lot of promises, but the big hope was for some cooldowns or executes. These hopes weren't even acknowledged. What we did get was some recognition from Ghostcrawler that our talents are primarily focused around long-term damage via dots:

"Many [talents] say basically "while your dots are ticking". This means in the situations where the dots can't tick (say those very short pve fights, or sometimes in pvp) you are doubly punished since now those talents aren't pulling their weight. The shadow tree could benefit from more talents that affect all damage and not just the dots."

This is confusing two issues — while it's true that a lot of out talents boost the power of dots, and are therefore wasted when we don't apply those dots, it's not true that "many" shadow talents "say basically 'while your dots are ticking'". One or two at most. Our only significant glyph also says this, but that's a different (unanswered) issue. But the point is taken — any class that is designed about dots is going to be gimped if they don't apply them. That's a given, isn't it?

The unsatisfactory but straw-like implication of GC's words is that we may find shadow word: death, mind blast and mind flay getting a few small buffs here and there to compensate. I'll reserve judgement on the final execution, but already I see problems with this approach. How do you buff spells which are a part of a class's single-target damage repertoire without inadvertently increasing their overall damage? And even when you do, how is this a good solution when the class happily acknowledges that dots comprise the core of its damage potential?

I'm afraid GC completely fluffed this answer, which is a shame given that it was his opening gambit. Already, shadow priests the world over are shuddering.

Q. Are developers happy with the functionality of dispersion and is it considered to be an adequately valuable final talent in the shadow tree?
Short answer: yes. This isn't an issue for raiding shadow priests, we've come to terms with it and moved on.

Q. Would you consider removing the cast time for mind blast to make it a more desirable direct-damage spell given that it already has a cooldown?
I'm very annoyed that this question even made it into the final cut. Apart from the fact that I didn't notice hundreds of priests jumping up and down for it (and don't consider it an issue myself), this is simply a proffered solution to the first question — in other words, this is very sloppy work Blizzard. You answered this over all the other questions we had? You wrote two long paragraphs on why you won't remove a spell's cooldown instead of telling us why we won't scale properly with haste?

Q. As many players report that vampiric embrace and vampiric touch lack viability in pvp settings and vampiric enbrace tends to generate too much threat in pve settings, are there any plans you can share to improve the functionality of these spells?
OMG. Every time I read this question I think I'm having an aneurism. Where are all the priests who think their HARDEST HITTING DOT lacks viability? Or the MORONS who can't handle ve's threat? SHOW ME.

Quite rightly GC told these fictitious priests to fuck off. What a waste of a question.

Q. How about increasing the range of mind flay?
No, you've got a glyph, piss off.

Q. Shadow word: death was once a spell that priests used frequently in pve, but has basically dropped off their bar. Are there any plans to improve this?
Well apparently, they think we have enough spells to use so don't want to "necessarily" go back to us using it on cooldown. GC goes on to talk about how they might consider toning down the backlash, which is categorically not something any shadow priest gives a flying fuck about. We don't use it more because it's an insignificant increase on our dps, not because it causes damage. This question, like so many others in this thread, should have been better phrased.

Q. Have you considered providing a talent to increase the duration of shadowfiend as a mana regeneration mechanic for longer boss fights?
You mean instead of a talent to lower the cooldown of shadowfiend? Like veiled shadows? Who came up with these questions?

Black hole
This Q&A is arguably more revealing by what Blizzard didn't address. As mentioned already, when talking about shadow's burst potential, they conveniently side-stepped cooldowns and executes altogether, something which many players called for in the threads.

The issues behind many of these questions are either misunderstood or overlooked. Take mind flay as a case in point. We asked about its range because we don't want to have to give up a valuable glyph slot just to achieve parity of spell range with other casters. So to dismiss the concern because there's a glyph to fix it is missing the point entirely.
Glyphs too were a major concern to many contributors but the topic was skipped.

Pain and suffering bug? Ignored. Out-of-mana regen? Ignored. And the biggest concern of all shadow priests in those two long lists of questions — haste scaling — ignored. Some of my issues could, just, be passed off as marginal; there is no excuse for skipping this.

Shady Pines here we come
I fear this Q&A will leave many shadow priests felling rather insecure and uncertain about their future raiding careers. It didn't address many significant issues, and those it did touch on were not answered to any great satisfaction.

I'll probably continue to melt faces, not only because I've got a blog to maintain, but because my guild still finds the misery debuff and replenishment of some use. But that won't last forever. More and more of the casters are hit capped, and with replenishment so readily available, it may well prove easier to switch a hunter to survival than carry me into the Coliseum.

This is the point where you tell me I'm over-reacting. surely, it's not as bad as I think it is?

Merlot gets serious

There's a mage on my server called bumboy and a paladin called gayelf. If either of these names make you snigger this post probably isn't for you.

I'm far from impressed and vaguely offended, but to be honest, I'm not sure why.

First, let's rule out any squeamishness on my part. These words do not offend me. I am not so sensitive that I blanche from a little moderate slang. I recognise that the meaning of a word is not an absolute, that the intentions of the users and the social context of their usage are essential to correct interpretation. What I mean is, my best friends can call me a moron and I will laugh it off, but if my boss says the same thing I may react very differently.

So I need to understand why these players chose these particular names.

Does anyone here think these are gay men reclaiming their sexuality through a video game? Spider pride? No, me neither.

And a quick flick through google effectively rules out any translation errors. We can safely assume bumboy does not, incredulously, mean something innocuous in Turkish.

The most likely explanation is the one I jumped to instinctively when I first saw the names. I am meant to be offended. While I can't hope to fully understand what passed for thought in these players at the character creation screen, it's safe to assume it was not benevolent goodwill to all humanity.

There is something very immature and threatening about someone who chooses a term of hostility as their most visible identifier. It may just be a childish in-joke, not an intentional act of hatred, but it carries the same consequences. The best you can say about these players is they lack empathy.

I may well have over-reacted, it depends on your triggers. What one person may think passes for humour, another will deeply resent. How do you feel about spastic, rapist, spic? In reality, it's not so easy to know where to draw the line.

So while I can't necessarily explain my reaction, I stand by it. Life is full enough of unpleasantness, without it spilling over into a fantasy life that many of us use as an escape from that shit to start with.

My questions for the developers

Are there any plans or intention to give shadow priests tools to contribute more effectively during burn phases in raids? Short of trinkets and a shadowfiend, we have no cooldowns to blow, no execute mechanic and naturally receive far less benefit from bloodlust/heroism than other casters. And when switching single targets, we are slow to ramp up the damage.

Are you content with the current balance between shadow's effective aoe and single-target dps? Do you see any need to moderate one or boost the other?

Please can you explain the intended sw:p refresh mechanic of pain and suffering? And please clarify whether it is supposed to work with the wide range of buffs — including shadow weaving — that it currently ignores.

Do you think it's time to review mind flay's base range? Elemental shaman are the only other class with a stunted range on one key nuke (flame shock) and this is nullified by talents. This implies you design raid encounters around a 30-yard range for ranged dps. Does this mean that you also assume shadowpriests have the glyph of mind flay equipped?

Are you satisfied with the glyph options for raiding shadow priests? As my last question implied, it feels like shadowpriests are bullied into taking the mind flay glyph. The only reason more people aren't complaining is because there are so few viable raid dps alternatives. I hate to use the 'everybody else has it, why can't we' argument, but we have the fewest glyph options of all dps specs/classes.

Do you think gear itemisation is fair for shadow? Are you happy with the benefit we receive from haste, given its ubiquity on gear? And is it right that as the class with the closest affinity to spirit, we now receive the least benefit? Will we scale fairly with raid content throughout the rest of Wrath?

Do you think the conceptual design of shadow fits as well with priests as it should? I'll be honest, shadowpriests don't feel like priests to me, they feel like something removed from the rich design and lore of the priest class. We are locked out of all hymns and prayers — not just the healing ones, which makes sense, but the mana regeneration one, which doesn't. And there are no shadow equivalents — no dark prayer, no hymn of shadows. Are we supposed to be athiest? Or can we have the concept of faith more closely woven into our design please?

Are you happy with the state of out-of-combat mana regeneration since the recent nerfs? I went back to level a second priest and have found that spirit tap, even with stacked spirit, is almost worthless for grinding. It has pushed us back from being the dynamo of levelling classes to mages without the nukes.

Would you be willing to spend some time on the European forums every now and then? My perception is that any regular developer-community dialogue happens on the US forums — and, rightly or wrongly, that seems to happen a lot more for some classes than others. I'm very, very grateful for this opportunity to put my questions to your team, but there are a lot of them. Some of these things, like the pain and suffering issue, could have been addressed very easily to prevent months of hand-wringing and frustration. Small, regular outreach could, I think, help maintain a contented priest community, both sides of the pond :)

Don't forget to add your questions to the threads:

• Europe
• US

Priest Q&A live now!

I turn my back for one second and five pages of questions appear on the EU priest forum.

Nothing much posted to date surprises me, I think anyone who has raided as shadow knows the powers and limitations of the class. There is a very clear consensus on the key issues — PVP survivability, burst, scaling, bugs. I'll be adding my own voice on these topics to help ensure they get ample coverage from the devs.

If you play a priest, or even have an interest in their future, I urge you to go have your say. US cousins can post here.

Caving to pressure

I completely missed this story on Friday, courtesy of wow insider wow.com. Blizzard has announced plans to run question and answer sessions on all classes and have put out a call for questions.

I like to think my own little campaign for answers played some small part in bringing this opportunity about :)

I've yet to work out if this is a US-only deal or something they'll be repeating on the EU forums.

Edit: ok, so we're having EU questions too, they just haven't opened the thread yet. I'll let you know when it comes along.

In the meantime, if you have time and are willing, go pester them about shadow's shortcomings. You know the ones:

• Pain and suffering 'bug'
• Lack of cooldowns and executes
• Anachronistic range on mind flay
• Dearth of dps glyphs

What questions would you ask?

A prayer for the flaying

I'm a sensitive soul and generally avoid the forums for fear of getting a right roasting. But in the name of progress, and on behalf of you, my loyal readers, I have thrown caution to the wind and launched an appeal for dialogue on the state of shadow.

I personally feel like our spec has been filed as a done job. I don't know if that's because we don't make as much noise as the other classes or because Blizzard genuinely feels like we're finished. Either way, I want to do my bit, small as that is, to try and raise our profile - and hopefully prompt one of those lovely blue posts I keep reading on mmo-champion :)

All the real developer-player dialogue seems to happen on the US forums, but I have to work with the tools I've got. So here is my post — and reproduced below in case the forums are blocked as you read this.

If you have access to the European forums, please can you pop along and bump the post? You don't even have to agree with me, just give the thread a little boost.

And if you are one of our US cousins and feel willing to either plug the post or reproduce it on your forums, please be my guest.

Wish me luck. I hope people are kind :)

A dialogue on the state of shadow?

Shadow's development as a raid dps spec seems to have plateaued. My impression is that developers are happy with where it's at. It's been a long time since I have seen any real dialogue between Blizzard and the player base over this and I think we'd all appreciate the opportunity to discuss general views about how the spec is performing and where it's headed.

I don't want this post to be a massive qq about the "issues" as I see them. Instead, these are a few possible topics of conversation with developers should the opportunity arise.

• Most players are aware of the strange way that pain and suffering works to refresh shadow word: pain - ignoring shadow weaving and many other buffs and debuffs. I'm not sure if this has ever officially been recognised as a bug or confirmed 'working as intended'. It instinctively feels like a bug, yet several patches have gone by without addressing it. Is there any chance this might change in the near future?

• I and many other shadow priests feel the lack of any effective way to ramp up our dps in situations that demand it. We feel (to me at least) like the oil tankers of WoW, unable to respond quickly to changing circumstances. I think we suffer from the lack of any cooldowns (beyond trinkets) or 'execute' mechanics (feel free to count the glyph of shadow word: death if you like, but is it enough?).

• The argument about mind flay's range is as old as the spell itself, and I won't rehash it here. Suffice to say it comes down to the power of its snare in pvp. We have a perfectly workable 'fix' should we choose it in the way of the glyph. My personally feeling is we are cheated out proper choice for a glyph slot with a ghetto fix to a more fundamental issue. What if mind flay's base range was increased - either inherently, or by an additional talent - at the expense of some or all of the snare? How would that affect people's perception of the spell, and would our remaining selection of glyphs feel well balanced for a dps spec?

• In Wrath, we lost a lot of the uniqueness of the spec in exchange for increased dps and scalaing. I think it was the right thing to do, but it has left shadow priests feeling somewhat 'generic' and lacking from a roleplaying/lore/flavour perspective (however you want to describe it). My perception, rightly or wrongly, is that all the effort to make the priest class feel 'priesty' goes into healing. Shadowform is wonderful, and I recognise a huge part of the class, but something like a 'dark prayer' or 'shadow hymn' would go a long way to adding more depth to the experience of playing a shadow priest.

These are the things I am most interested in as a raiding shadow priest. More experienced priests, or pvp priests, may have other top concerns. Whatever your perspective, I just think we would all benefit from the chance to discuss them.

Yours in hopeful anticipation!

Cait's Ultimate Blogroll

My Google reader is getting out of control. Every day I discover a new game-related blog to add to the list, but I'm just not organised enough to put them in nice neat folders and keep up with the housekeeping.

I'd guess that Caitlin, over at One Among Many, had a similar problem, because she's collecting as many WoW blogs as she can in her Ultimate Blogroll, a very worthwhile project that deserves a plug, not least in thanks for all the traffic she's sending my way.

She's got the blog links categorised by subject, and even notes blogs that have fallen out of date. My Google reader's great, but if I want something specific and don't know who's blogging about it, this is where I go first.

Go, browse, and if you see a gap, please let Cait know.

Merlot stands up, waves, sits down again

In the immortal words of Halle Berry, this moment is so much bigger than me...

Thanks to that super generous soul feardotwin, I've been tagged with this award meme thing — which, after a little googling, I realised wasn't a new and terrifying computer virus at all but a postulated unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, transmitted from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. So that clears that up.

Seriously, how does one get from an evolutionary theory by Richard Dawkins to all your base are belong to us?

Hack through the postulated phenomena and you discover some much deserved applause for my long and industrious attempts to convince the WoW community I know what I'm talking about. Thank you fear, it's a badge I shall wear with pride.

There's a catch. I've got to do a bunch of stuff.* I never was much of a joiner. You know that guy that sits with a face like a smacked arse and rolls his eyes whenever a Mexican wave comes round? That's me (that time at the Cher concert was a one-off). And I'm apparently the last blog in the known universe to be tagged (much like with football at school). But I'm gonna list seven of my favourite reads anyway, on the principle that if Tom Hanks could win a second shameless Oscar, these guys certainly can. Go go, take a bow!

• Blessing of Kings
• Critical QQ
• Egotistical Priest
• Gray Matter
• I'd Rather Be WoWing
• Melted Faces
• Pugnacious Priest
• Suicidal Zebra

I'm also supposed to list ten honest things about myself. Ten! Seriously, I'm not even that honest with myself. I shall admit only to a Cher fetish, a champagne chin and an absolute mania for the books of GW Dahlquist. Truly, they are amazing.

*Rules

• When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.
• Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.
• List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

This space for sale to highest bidder

Poor Tobold. He writes a wonderful blog about all things MMORPG. It deservedly has a rather large readership and subscription base. He caught the eye of Warhammer's Mythic PR team, who offered him a complementary subscription and took a bit of flack from readers because of it.

Tobold's integrity and even-handed journalism are two of the reasons his blog is so great. I don't believe Tobold's reporting of the game will change one bit.

Mine, however, could.

That's right, I'm completely open to gifts, bribes, flattery and donations of all descriptions.

I have no scruples about lying for my generous benefactors — and that could mean you!

In return for your large sums of unmarked bills, pro-gaming PCs, high def plasma screens, lifetime subscriptions and all-inclusive paid trips to tropical conventions, I will write nice things about you. I won't make the mistake of declaring our relationship first, of course. I am the paradigm of discretion. And as long as you keep me sweet, I won't say anything bad about your product or my experience of it.

Just so we're clear, I am not 100% sold on this whole Misery shadow priest WoW thing — although a beta key could go a long way to changing my mind.

Do you work for Mythic? Alienware? A tobacco company? An arms dealer? You'll find me a versatile, broad-minded ally in your PR battle.

So don't delay, drop me that line now, and you could be the proud, silent owner of an influential blog!

From racials to faiths

Blogs are like dinner parties, forums are like biker bars. (Bear with me, there's a point to this eventually.)

A blog is like a meal with your mates, warm and cosy and satisfying and unhurried. You talk about sex, politics and religion in the same breath, you eat enough to kill a small horse, and you always leave feeling more positive about the world. But the most exciting thing you'll do is play twister and it's considered rather rude to get drunk and throw up in your host's bathroom.

Forums, like biker bars, go quiet when strangers walk in. There's broken glass on the floor, and some hairy bloke at the bar who kills anyone who looks at his chick. But everyone is completely smashed and the jukebox is awesome. It's not exactly enriching, but it's a blast.

There's a time and place for both, but these days I'm more of a dinner party kind of guy. My days of getting blind drunk and picking fights are, for the most part, a thing of the past. Which is simply a way of explaining why I hardly ever visit the class forums and nearly missed this great suggestion on priest racials.

Priest racials are those spells you get at levels 10 and 20 following simple quests. The spells differ depending on your race, hence the term racial.

They've always been rather controversial. The spells are considered by many of variable functionality and the fact that they are not available to all priests leads to the inevitable arguments about which are better. The Dwarven priest racial fear ward caused such a loud and persistent outcry that it was eventually baselined for all priests, while the human spell feedback suffers from the opposite problem — nobody wants it.

I never use my racials, I think they are both distinctly underwhelming. And to be honest, I'm not sure I would bother using any of the spells, regardless of my race, although I think some have the odd situational use.

The problem is that racial spells — priestly or otherwise — must necessarily be weak to avoid bestowing a particular advantage on a specific race. They are primarily there for flavour.

Jesinta suggests replacing priest racials with a system of faiths. It's a beautifully eloquent solution that manages to fix the balance issues while enhancing the unique role-playing facet of priests.

Under this suggestion, priests would be able to align themselves with one of several faiths (Jesinta suggests Elune/Mu'sha, Holy Light, and Forgotten Shadow). You pick up spells according to the faiths which could perhaps enhance your chosen role or help to identify you with your chosen faith. The point is, they would be available to all priests, rather like an enhancement to the talent system. This way, you would have much more freedom to make the spells unique and useful.

I love it. When can I have it?

Anothering interesting thing about this post is how it breaks my forum/blog rules. No louts stumbling around bottling people in this thread, no sir. It feels more like a wine bar than a biker bar, lots of people standing around chatting and tapping their feet to the music.

So what about you? Are you a dinner party person or a biker bar bruiser?

Fame won’t change me vows blogger priest

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WORLD’S END TAVERN, SHATTRATH The latest WoW blogger to be outed by WoW Insider has declared: “I’m still the same old face-melter”.

Speaking from one of Shattrath’s more salubrious watering holes, the self-styled ‘Misery’ — or Merlot to his friends — recalled how he came to join the ranks of struggling WoW bloggers.

“I was just another honest, hard working shadow priest looking for a gig at 70. I knew I was ready to take on Illidan but the guild masters around these parts had other ideas. They wanted ‘experience’; they wanted ‘better gear’. I mean, wtf, everything I wear looks the same man.”

So he started a blog as a way to let off steam and set himself apart from the ranks of other adventurers drawn to Outland by the promise of gold and glory. This sometimes witty, sometimes tragic, always heartfelt account of his true-to-life experiences is what first captured the attention of blogging titans WoW Insider.

Close friends tell of the two distinct sides to his personality; the ruthless ambition that drove him to the dark side, and the frivolous, playfulness that leads him now to drop shadowform and let us see him in all his colourful glory, if only for a moment.

“It isn’t always like this,” he said, gesturing to the bar wenches hanging off each arm. “I can be serious too, you know? I have ideas. And I’m not done with Illidan yet, either.

“But at heart, I’m still the same, honest, grafting mana battery my loyal fans have come to know and love. I won’t let this one link change me. I’ll still move in flame wreath, I’ll still dot up the sheep, and I’ll still do my best to top the death meters.”

What next for this plucky purple priesty now that fame has come knocking?

“Uh, I dunno man. I’ve been a little short on the spondoolicks, you know? I need to get back to Quel’Danas and grind some gold for one of those sweet epic flyers. And I hear there are a couple of grons in Blade’s Edge Mountain that need putting in their place. I might head there when I’ve finished here.”

He ostentatiously orders another round for the entire taven, putting it on his tab. The bar manager looks confused but starts pouring.

Suddenly, he jumps to his feet, summons the shadows, and bursts into dance. As he swings his arms and gyrates his hips, the wenches giggle and clap and dance along. One or two gruff warrior types roll their eyes and look away, disgusted.

He winks at me. “You should check out my blog man, it’s imba.”

I leave the tavern wondering just how much danger those ogres are really in.

I'd rather be beta testing...

Merlot didn't get a beta key, but I know a shadow priest who did...

MD, over at I'd Rather Be Wowing!, was lucky enough to get a key and has already started blogging about their experiences. If you don't mind the spoilers, and fancy a little vicarious adventure, I heartily (and jealously) recommend it :)

Gratz MD, have fun!