Real ID Forums

I think most of us know by now that Blizzard intends to launch their new Real ID system on the official Warcraft forums. This involves that you will post with your REAL First and Last name. You can read the basics of what this means here:

"Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature - www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged."

 Basically what I said, this is what will happen. Why it happens is explained in the next section.

"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. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well."

 They want to remove the anonymity that we have to reduce the amount of trolling and flaming. Since a lot of you who reads this probably know, most users actually do put on their "jerk" act just because they are covered by this anonymity. Thus I agree that this is a most needed change. I wouldn't mind posting on the forums by my real first and last name. There are probably a couple hundreds who share my name. Heck, even facebook got my name, who cares? Yes, you won't be able to piss off a random guy and get away with it in the same way as you used to, though that is exactly the goal Blizzard is trying to achieve!

As a conclusion. I think this system is a step in the right direction. People who want to discuss things on an official forum should have the gut to do so by their real name. The internet is getting big folks' time to let of our usernames and start using the real thing.

Please comment.

It's been a long time

Lately, I haven't been writing a single post here on the blog. Why? Because I haven't fel like doing it and thus I haven't. Though, now, I feel the need of expressing myself once again, and when is a better time than now? With the Cataclysm beta knocking at our doors and the NDA has been lifted I can now start expressing my opinions about the oncoming World of Warcraft expansion.

So, what's new? If you don't know a single thing about the expansion yet, I suggest you should visit both the official Cataclysm website: http://catalcysm.wow-europe.com (or worldofwarcraft.com if you're american) and also visit the frontpage on http://mmo-champion.com.

Today I woke up when my girlfriend arrived at my place and wondered why I still slept, which is a legit question really since I had already slept through twelve hours. After my waking was sorted she told me she wanted to watch a trailer for a swedish movie (which looks awesome by the way) and after that I told her I just wanted to check the MMO-C news. SMACK, BANG in the middle of my face: "Cataclysm Closed Beta - NDA Lift". Expressing how I feel when I'm given this amount of delicious information is hard, but it's something along the lines of an angels choir decending and singing to me the most awesome song in the world. (No I'm not religious). Well, I started devouring all the information that was thrown at me and I felt the sudden urge to start blogging again, so I did!

Regarding the changes, the one that I'm the most interested in is all the new world maps. These are a good way of giving you an overview of zone changes and what it could mean to the game itself. Such things as lore, quest progression etc.
As I inspected the "Burning Steppes" map I noticed a path stretching east of the one going to Redridge, which appeared to be a path stretching all the way from Burning Steppes, through Redridge and into the alliance part of the remade Swamps of Sorrows. Interestingly enough this has been done to several other zones, easying travelling and making more exciting paths through the game. Though mostly low level players since most level 80+ will probably just mount their epic flying mount and fly above all these magnificent changes. I, myself, will probably fly low to check out all of these new exciting pathways and shortcuts through the "old" world.

Another change I would like to discuss is also a part of the change world maps. You can notice in some of the starter zones (I looked at Mulgore) you can see that Deathwing has made an impression. I really enjoy watching how blizzard are integrating the updated storyline into the game already at earlier levels. If you're concerned about this in any way, don't be. This is blizzard taking a step in the right direction. It brings new people more into the storyline and makes the low level experience more involving.

That's about it for now, I might put up another post tomorrow regarding the other changes. Also the beta hasn't arrived in europe yet, so I'm still hoping for a key!

Have a nice day!

Arena Progress - 13/5

A lot of new posts during the first two days of my blog. I hope you like blogs where the author actually writes a lot of stuff.

As you might expect, this post is about my progress in arena with my friend Anders. Two nights ago, we had our first 30 games and I think we both enojoyed it! I must say though, we were clueless like hell. You might think that after farming 600k honor at least you learned something, but this was taking all those things you read to a test.

To start with, we had 12 games and then took a break. After I had called my girlfriend and tried to use my myself as a lightbulb (don't put your finger into a lightbulb connector, it hurts, you are not a lightbulb) we played another 18 games before bedtime. We scored 15-15 this night, and I must say that is good enough for me the first night of playing. So happily we went to bed.
Also, if you're wondering, I've never played a Warlock before and Anders have never played a druid before. We're not pro by any means.

Our next few games will be when Anders comes home from his summerplace (hopefully on Saturday). I hope we'll score some more wins and be on our way to get the last two Wrathful off-sets.


That's all about our progress so far. Affliction/Resto moving upwards in the ladder, aiming for the top.

Armory Links:


Logia (me): http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmane&cn=Logia
Akai (Anders): http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Frostmane&cn=Akai

GS + Achieve

Most of you people are probably familiar with this type of question. Before I start, this is not a whine about the GS addon itself since I recognize it's not the addon which is the problem, it's the people using it. I'll tell you a story about a person on my realm. This happened 10 minutes ago so it's all fresh in my mind.

I've just finished my Daily BG for the arena points when I get a whisper from a some-what friend of mine. He asks me if I want to go VoA 10 and since I haven't this week I say "Yeah sure". He tells me to whisper his IRL friend and I do. I ask him for an invite and said that his friend wanted me in. The reply I get is, suprise, suprise, GS + Achieve or no invite. I thoroughly explained in the whisper before that his friend refered me to him so I was quite shocked anyway. Now, I have the achieve and the gear to do VoA 10. I wont do the best DPS of all since I'm in PvP gear, but any green-geared scrub can do it. So I tell him my GS and that it is mostly PvP gear and then I tell him "I'll just DPS the Ice Orbs and DPS the boss". Now this is the fun part. Next whisper is "Achieve or I don't want you noob". I thought Achieve was to check that people know tactics, right? Since when did Achievements turn into this gold medal that says "I can do boss lol,k?". I kindly tell him that I don't have the achieve but I do know the tactics and explained them once again. Now, this time he gives an even worse answer and says something along the lines of "Stupid, I don't want you in my group, k?".

After all that I tell my friend what his friend said and that I was not intrested anymore.

The moral of this story is that some people have just learned this GS + Achieve thingy that's going on without knowing why they ask for it. I seriously believe that this person never understood the concept of why you are supposed to have the achieve. Well, if you readers got any thoughts about the subject, please comment. Also, if there is a subject you would like me to discuss simply say so in the comments!

/Samuel, Author of the Nerf this! blog.

A glorious beginning

Hello all readers. This is me, signing in for the very first time on my verily brand new blog!

Edit: Below is my history of WoW. It's quite a Wall of text so just skip to the next part if you're not interested.

My name is Samuel and I'm 16 years old. I've been playing World of Warcraft since my 13th birthday which makes this my 3rd year of gaming. I got hooked pretty fast. The factor which made me start playing was my experience with Blizzards games in general, namely the Diablo franchise and the Warcraft franchise.
The idea of a MMORPG was not a new for me. I've been playing different free-to-play MMO's before. Games like Runescape (yeah, really), MU Online and also some ROSE Online. The game I were playing during my discovery of WoW was Guild Wars. I must say when my classmates first told me about WoW I were very, very sceptical. I was happy with my Guild Wars adventures, which was on my cousin's account by the way, so I didn't really feel like trying a new one at that time. Time passed and an old friend, which I just had reunioned with, told me he had been working on this WoW Private Server while he had been away in the States. I thought, "Hey, I can atleast try", so I did. Man were I hooked. The game I had rejected for so long suddenly turned into my game of choice and not much later I bought my own retail account.

Like most of the people who just finds a new game I, myself, tried all of the classes and I acutally never got a character above 37 before the end of Vanilla. I jerked around on a few characters and my highest leveled one was a rogue. Not much to tell about this time of my WoW journey so lets keep on with...

...The Burning Crusade. I re-rolled once again now when you were able to play the race which got the most questionable sexuality in the game. I rolled a Blood Elf Paladin. For those of you who remember, leveling a Paladin was a pain around 2.1. Though, eventually, I got to level 70. I remember the day I dinged. I was flying back from Netherstorm to Shattrath and I found myself asking my step-brother, "What do you do once you get to 70?". The answer I got was simply "You do whatever you want. Do instances, raids or do PvP. The gamebegins at 70 you know". I still tell people who just started WoW the same thing. "The game begins at level 70". Eventually I geared up my paladin. Though I left him before I got to try the raiding game since I re-rolled (again) with my friend on another server. 

This time we were on the Alliance side. I leveled a Human Female Rogue. If you want to know, this was in patch 2.3, so the first leveling "boost" was implemented. It took me 4 weeks to level this character to 70 and just a week after getting to 70 my friend got me into Karazhan. For the first time in my life I was in a raid instance. Man, was I excited! So we got in and I got to down the two first bosses of Karazhan. I remember how excited I was hugging that horseman using my non-existant rotation (really, I was that bad) and watching EPIX drop of a boss. This was the big turning point in my playing. Eventually I got back on my Paladin and I started doing some pugs every now and then. But I didn't ever join a good guild. Though, that changed as well when the "OH MY GOD WE NEED TO NERF EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF RAID CONTENT" patch got implemented. Ladies and gentlemen, Patch 3.0. Retribution was OP like nothing I've ever seen before. I joined a hardcore swedish guild called "Bullet Ride" and we downed Gruul, Mag, SSC, TK 2/4 and 3 bosses in MH the first two days of raiding. This was my first guild raiding experience I had and I remember how I thought raiding was supposed to be back then. I though you should have fun on vent and not focus at bosses at all. So I left the guild thinking it was too serious. And this brings us to...

...Wrath of the Lich King. I started playing this expansion with my Paladin. Made a guild with a few friends which couldn't even kill Sapphiron 10man. I got tired of WoW so I quit for a while, leaving my friends behind. But as we all know a WoW break doesn't last forever. I started to level a Priest on, once again, a new realm with some of my classmates. I got to 80 eventually and joined a raiding guild the day I dinged 80. This was in 3.1, so guilds had started to progress in Ulduar. So these guys wanted me to gear up really fast. I got geared up and started raiding so we got to Hodir 25 before summerbreak. When I got back from vacation the guild had fallen apart and I was once again alone, in the cold continent of Northrend.

In August 2009 I began attending to upper secondary school. Which means I had new class mates and my old mates also recieved new class mates. This is how I met Anders. Since 9 months back, the only constant in WoW for me has been playing with Anders. Anyway, we made a raiding guild together, downed some bosses in Ulduar 10 and then gave up. Later on we joined a swedish 25man guild, called Vrede. We raided with these guys for about 4 months. I thought this guild was awesome in all ways but one. We couldn't get through the first phase of Beasts 25 HC. When ICC arrived the guild had started to fall apart so I and Anders fled to another guild on the server. This guild was called Mercury and had downed 4/5 ToGC. When I think back, this is the guild which I have felt the most happy with. We downed 4/12 ICC 25 the first week and everything was good. Til' the officers got this awesome idea. Lets stop doing ToGC and only do ICC each week. Guess what happened! Guild fell apart.

Anders went on a hiatus and I looked for a hardcore guild. I found Carpe Noctem on Lightbringer EU and made an apply. I actually got in, so I transfered and started playing with them. We downed all the new bosses first every week and was realm number 1. Though, five days a week turned out to be a lot for a busy student and my ISP decided to start fucking me over. So my trial were declined. Disheartened I started a guild (another one?) with Anders. This time on Tarren Mill. Just to give you some time perspective. This new guild, which we called "Metaphor" was created in February this year. So the story is almost over. This went suprsingly well. As some of you probably know, Tarren Mill experienced one of the worst cases of lag in the history of WoW during this spring. So we got to raid 30 minutes each raid night.When the lag cleared off we got into ICC and steamrolled 11/12 in one week, getting some tries on the Lich King. Next week we got LK to 25% and was going to down him on the next raid.
I woke up 7AM that morning. I logged on our guild forums and found a thread. It was titled "Leaving". It was written by one of our officers and read along something like this: "Hello guys. We are tired of the bad progress in this guild so we moved to another guild with better progress. GL with Metaphor". Our best friends in the guild had betrayed us. It felt like a blow to the head. Me and Anders got tired of guilds disbanding here and there and decided to level new characters to do some Arena while waiting for Cataclysm. We chose a random realm (Frostmane) and decided to play Alliance and that's the character I play now.

Me and Anders got to 80 one or two weeks ago and we have now farmed all the gear needed to start arena. I am playing an Affliction Warlock and he is playing a Resto Druid. This is probably all we're going to do until Cataclysm.


That turned out quite long, but that is my history of WoW. Hope some of you actually will read that.

So, you might say. What is your purpose, your ambition, your plans, for this blog? Well, that is a interesting question really. What does one want to achieve with ones words? Without getting too much into detail I wanted a place where I can vent out my thoughts about the game in question. I will make updates of what I do in-game and I will talk about changes and news involving WoW. I will give you my personal view and I though that I might do something like a column where readers get to decide the topic.

If this seems like a blog you will read, please tell you friends and spread the word.

/ Samuel, author of the "Nerf this!" blog.