…This Evening I ran a very short chapter of my NWOD game  (due to a missing player), people’s minds weren’t really on the game so its just as well it was a short one. Afterwards we gen’d up their supernatural char sheets (they will need these soon) and got down to some serious board gaming. Now I like Shadows Over Camelot – I love the fact that its a bunch of Arthurian emo knights (they injure themselves to prevent bad things from happening and to get extra goes) – no offense intended; that go around and try to complete quests in order to save Camelot. I love the fact that I can make ‘Monty Pthon and the Holy Grail’ quotes whilst playing it but mostly I enjoy making my fellow players spray tea across the room at the humour the game invokes. For me tonight was a good night, we laughed, joked, we drank what felt like a sea of tea and Kai and I got to spend time with new (not a bad thing) but imho good friends.

Go looking for a dwarven tank by the name of Grungir if you want to say Hello. Kai and Keith will tell you who they are if they wish you to know. Anyway, laters,

Now, I have decided to keep up with it and make any and all posts on it. Hopefully, since I can also write blog posts on my pda for publishing later. So we’ll see.

Currentlly, EVE has just gone down, not just on me but about 20,000 other….individuals, simultaneously. Its scheduled you see. EVE is fun, its effectively an online version of the old Elite games, which was a true classic at Frontier: Elite 2 imo. Like this game the point is multi-tiered, you can be a trader, a bounty hunter, a pirate, a miner or even a producer. The economy is player driven with lots of opportunities. Both players and NPC’s create and offer missions, making the enviroment dynamic and fun. On top of all this the unique skill training system the game offers means it will take you an estimated 3 years to train every current skill to lvl 5 (the highest it can get) and that’s only assuming they don’t add more, which is highly unlikely. The ships come in all shapes and sizes, from the humble shuttle to the mightiest Titan. Hell, players can even build, buy or operate their own space station with enough time, skills and money. It really is that flexible. Every ship is customisable with thousands of varied choices for weapon systems and equiptment to slap on your ship. The environment remains even when players who control those parts log off, making it excessively dynamic. For example, you can park in your corp owned space station, come back an hour later and find the station, you and your corporation floating in the wreckage (though this is excedingly rare). Just because your not logged in, does not mean the part of the universe you occupy cease to exist. To say I’m impressed is an understatement. Oh and for those of you who played this when it was first released, it is now exquisitely polished and worth a second look.

On top of all this, every person with a full account can give away 14 day free trials. The client is only 518mb as I recall, and is well worth trying out, if u have a trial invite. If you want one, drop me a comment with an email addy and I’ll send you one.

Well that will do for now, EVE has resurfaced….

I have a Tauren Shaman – not played with very often atm (called Reinach) and a Tauren Druid – who I play a lot with (called Alicha). See you there.

The rant at blizzard

Its now also linked on guild website at: Uk Elite

All I have to say is that the light has damned us. I’m beginning to understand why Arthus picked up frostmourne, abandoned the light, dropped his ten levels of gimped paladin and rerolled deathknight.

Like many others I was waiting with baited breath to see what changes the devs had in mind. I listened with anxiety to what was said at Blizzcon, I tried not to make snap judgements (using the mostly useless and frankly mana draining seal/judge system), all I have to say is, I’m disappointed.

I went into the test server and played about with the new paladin design. I tried the specs; I tried the procs and judges. I hated 70% of what I saw. The stuff that I liked just seemed thrown in haphazardly. Eye for an eye was definetly my most favourite add-in but look what it cost us…
I had no problem with Blizzard wanting to tone down our defensive capabilities such as shields this is fair as long as we got something back in return. We got something back alright, we got screwed.

I ask myself if a class such as shamans/mages/rogues or druids got slapped with 60 sec no totem drop/stealth/shapeshift for using an integral part of their design, how would they act?
Probably like Paladins is the answer. Especially if they were given something in return such as I don’t know, a 70% drop in damage rate to one of the most utilised abilities they have but an increased chance of it to hit?
Yeah that sounds good

I liked the fact tour resist auras now stacked; this makes them a bit more usefully and more likely to be used. Hell the auras I’d never even bothered with before look nice now, such as sanctity.
But, and here is my main concern, we are still screwed if we get counter spelled or even earthshocked.
Why?
Because everything is holy. Almost all of our abilities, most notably heals and seals go band and we’re about as much use as a peasant or a critter in plate. I can’t think of any other class in the game that loses so much without the backup of other, nonmagical abilities or abilities in a different sphere. I won’t even get into the purge/dispel stuff, in regards to the blessings/seals/judgments.

Ok – suggestions.
Give us some for of non magical ability. Sure, we’re holy warriors but people seem to forget that our magic comes from our belief in the light, not its belief in us. We didn’t spend years studying, locked up in a wizards tower in order to wield magic spells – we trained as warriors then deviated down a path to battle those that opposed the light, finding our faith helped us to in difficult times. Redesign the retribution tree to take this into account. Read the description of the paladin. We are holy WARRIORS. I’m not asking for a warrior DPS, I’m not asking for warrior stances, I’m asking for some basic warrior abilities such as charge and heroic strike. Something EVERY warrior learns before level 10. Make these abilities better in the retribution tree, so we can specialise if we so choose.

Holy tree – ok this is where our faith comes in. Make better heals part of this tree. You want a paladin that can heal exceptionally well and fight like a drunken panda? Good luck. You concentrate on your faith more than your fighting and then, yeah, you can heal, fight undead/demons and by the light why not have a special aura giving better holy abilities, possibly even bring back the healing aura from beta, you know the one that healed when you were OUT of combat. This tree would be something you learned from those priests, you know those fellas in the robes with the holy bub…I mean halos of protection that are supposed to be praying and have faith in the light that everything will be all right.

Protection. Ok, now we need to clear this up – are we protecting ourselves or everyone else?
Paladin gives the impression of everyone else. Give us our shields in there, make them easy to attain, but in useful things such as stun, taunts and crowd control, make it hard work. We’re defenders’ sure, just make sure that the light is watching over those you bless as they are in your charge and it’s your job to protect them. Your devotion to the protection tree has given you those abilities.

I know these sound radical, but really, are they?
They trade off some defence and heal for some controlled dps and abilities that can’t be shut down quite so easily. They drop DPS to give you protection or holy inspired abilities that only come with devotion to faith, and it’s not really that big a leap and fits with our descriptions.