I was going through my feed reader and through assorted WoW blogs and recently found two really good entries that struck me as rather poignant given the situation with patch 4.0.1 and its nest of bugs.

The first, by Larisa of the Pink Pigtail Inn details a rather humorous slice of WoW interaction among a bunch of folks who are waiting for a sacrificial lamb to interact with the Headless Horseman’s pumpkin head to begin an event.

For those who don’t know about it, there’s a good chance that even putting your mouse on the tooltip for the Headless Horseman will forcibly disconnect you from the game, which makes the whole entry seem like an extended game of chicken, or an new scene from Waiting for Godot.

Next up, we have Chris from Game by Night, with an article that really made me wonder if the corporate atmosphere at Blizzard has changed so drastically, to the detriment of the game-playing public.

In it, he cites, the latest WoW patch as an example of Blizzard not following their old mantra of releasing something when it’s ready, and instead acting like other companies who have to hotfix or repatch their games in order to fix any brokenness that has occurred.

Needless to say, whether or not the situation outlined in Chris’ post is true, it can’t be denied that something is changing in Blizzard, and it may not be a good thing.

While this post will not be primarily in capslock, imagine a voice that gets steadily louder and more strained with each line.

All I want to do is pick herbs.

I even have +15 Herbalism because I’m a Tauren.

You took that away from me with some professions glitch that kills my ability to pick herbs.

Stupid me deletes my profession from its low standing to try and build it up again.

10 hours later, I’ve leveled it up to 326.

The next day, however, you turn my life upside down by glitching my professions again!

This time, it’s not just that I can’t pick herbs… you’re now also giving me grand master Herbalism status instead of master status, as if that makes any sense when I CAN’T PICK ANY EFFING HERBS!

Next thing you know, you’ll be removing my ability to inscribe for a second time, when I worked so hard to make it reach it’s current 200++ skillpoint state.

WHY CAN’T I QUIT YOU!?

Too much potential fun, it seems, can be a bad thing.

I have Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft eating up a summarily unhealthy portion of my waking hours when I’m not looking for a job. I have also finished downloading my own Steam copy of Fallout: New Vegas, which begs some kind of playthrough. Then, there’s this overwhelming urge for me to pick up a Kindle version of Christie Golden’s prelude book to the Cataclysm in World of Warcraft for use on my PC.

Now, time is a factor is and so is money. I’ve spent my budget for the month on New Vegas and on a sub to WoW, so I can probably think about getting book next month instead of RIGHT NOW.

That said, I’m finding that my time is invested into so many things that aren’t work/job hunting-related that I figure I should place some emphasis on work-life balance. For the readers and commenters out there in the blogosphere, I ask you: How do you balance your play and your work? Should I be feeling more stress over being unable to find a job that suits my needs and skillset or should I allow myself to chill and let the opportunities come as they will with some active prodding from myself?

As earlier mentioned, World of Warcraft’s future patch, 4.1, will be bringing some old foes into new territories. What wasn’t touched upon was how dungeons would be revamped in Cataclysm in order to make the experience far less frustrating for players, in addition to bringing a sense of new-ness to the game.

That said, while I feel weird citing WoW Insider multiple times in the same day, here’s an update on that.

First off, the dungeons and raids of 4.1 WoW will have their maps redone in order to match Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm quality maps. This will also include some changes, which entail being given a backstory as to why you’re fighting, a 3D portrait of the boss, as well as a list of the loot drops for those bosses and a list of what that boss’ abilities are.

In other words… less time alt-tabbing out of WoW and more time in the game.

Those of you wondering what else the dungeons have in store for adventurers are also in luck, as it seems graveyards will be placed closer to dungeons, overhauls will assuredly be done to Uldaman, Sunken Temple, Wailing Caverns, Maraudon and Blackrock Depths (THANK GOODNESS FOR A BRD REVAMP), and some dungeons will be given wings to make them less a tiresome slog and more of a happy loot-filled jaunt through moderate danger.

For more information, check out WoW Insider’s post here and here for additional details and updates.

Some short and sweet Blizzcon news for the folks out here who are awake, like myself.

According to WoW Insider, patch 4.1 will come with some rather fun raids for the folks who like their raids elementally charged. Specifically, folks will be able to raid the elemental plane of fire (known as the Firelands) and take on Ragnaros in his own lair. There’s also going to be another dungeon known as the Abyssal Maw, which is for the elemental plane of water.

For folks who’re really into dungeon delving though, the big news for this particular update is simply this: Blizzard will attempt to introduce a new five-man dungeon in every patch. Since major patches usually have new content to them to begin with, it should stand to reason that either:

a) every incremental patch will potentially get a new five-man dungeon from hereon out.

b) patches will be fewer and farther between, with more hotfixes during the interim.

In any event, I suppose we should wait for follow-ups as they happen. Cheers.

EDIT: And WoW Insider has more info on the new Firelands Raid and the Abyssal Maw dungeon, as well as a picture layout of Firelands.

World of Warcraft’s 4.0.1 patch brought with it a couple of annoyances that have irked me severely. The worst of these annoyances isn’t actually lag or latency, but the inability of my Tauren death knight to pick herbs and generally do profession-related activities.

You see, whether or not I like optimization, I have this uncanny habit of trying to optimize the fun OUT of my games. By that, I mean I want to play games in a certain fashion, such as having addons or modifications added to the game to make it an experience that will either make it more fun or more of the sort of game that would make it hypothetically awesome.

Now, I say hypothetically awesome as a result of the fact that despite frequent attempts to restart my interest in Fallout 3 by adding user mods, I have never finished the game because the hypothetical awesomeness is actually increased game difficulty or a general interest in the metagame rather than the actual playing.

Going back to WoW, I actually want to play the game… except I want to do it my way. My way means skilling up my professions before going into Outland so I can capitalize on going to Outland and grabbing herbs instead of running around Outland when I’m level 80. My way means auction house mods and a UI change. My way basically means doing the hard stuff first so life can get easier later on… if I still have the patience.

By having a bug that does not allow me to enjoy the game my way (hell, ask a crafter-type player who can’t level tradeskills… they’re generally pissed), I’m forced to find other ways to have fun which, for some reason, means running into Silithus and blasting ANYTHING in my way with Icy Touch till it dies.  That said, while nothing is stopping me from going into Outland, I find that optimizing (or waiting for the opportunity to optimize) my game play can itself be a bug in MY system that needs removal.

First things first, however. Blizzard, please find out what’s causing the tradeskills to go poof and fix it. PLEASE.

Thank you.

As I’ve mentioned previously, there’s something delightfully addictive about the metagame. Whether it be reading about strategies or talking about games with people, I find a certain sense of fulfillment and camaraderie in that. The thing about World of Warcraft though (compared to other games on the market) is that there are so many meta-games going around that you can stumble upon one without even planning on it.

Take my Tauren Death Knight Steelwater (Stillwater was taken at the time) of the Nagrand Oceanic server as an example. As it stands, he’s pretty much a force to be reckoned with at level 58, but he’s rather broke in the money department (14 gold) seeing as the Scourge don’t really have a need for monetary funding.

I’ve given Steelwater Herbalism (+15 Tauren Herbalism Skill FTW) and Inscription and am basically stumped as to how to make money due to the fact that out of everyone in my family, I’m the one with the least business sense. The metagame I’m talking about this time is learning how to make money, and I found out that there a variety of blogs dedicated to sole goal of reaching the fabled gold cap in WoW, among other things. Add to that the general pain in the butt it is to slog through old territory hunting for herbs, and you have a generally horrid time of it. (NOTE: the readings and speculation were rather interesting though.)

Still, thanks to metagaming, I’ve rediscovered some old gathering and map-marking mods that I’d completely forgotten in the 19 months since I’ve played, and plan to use them to full effect once the servers come back on later.

What I’d like to do now is skill up inscription and herbalism to make glyphs and sell, sell, sell! To do that, however, I’d like to test some ideas and I need money to pull that off.

So here’s what I’m proposing: if you’re on the Oceanic Nagrand server, send me some mail with some advice on what things are popular these days on the herbalism and glyphing market, and what times are best for selling goods, and let’s put it to the test. If you want, donate some pocket change if you feel like it, though you don’t have to.

I want to see if taking the advice of people will help me to make good business in the future. SO… I’m going to blog about a 10-day attempt to turn 14 gold into something a hell of a lot bigger once I get my herbalism and inscription up to snuff or if someone donates a summarily large amount of money as an investment. If it pans out, and money starts coming in based on your server knowledge and recommendations, I will sing your praises on the blog.  If you donated gold, and enough money is coming out of my coffers to reimburse you, I’ll gladly mail you back the money you sent, possibly with extra depending on what happens.

Basically, I want to see if I can make moneymaking fun for myself, and to do that, I need the inspiration and expertise of those who’ve trod the path of gold before me.

That said, to paraphrase Popeye’s friend Wimpy, I will gladly pay you Tuesday (or some other far-flung day) for a Nagrand Server Gold Loan today.

I resubscribed to World of Warcraft after getting my account back from someone who took it, and am currently using a Blizzard Authenticator to safeguard my account. Needless to say, that was an… interesting experience to say the least.

Anyway, I was basically deciding on what classes I should play in World of Warcraft, and I find myself torn now. I’m conflicted by my ideas of what fun is, and this all stems from the word optimization.

I went out hunting for Death Knight information as I hadn’t played a Death Knight to 80 before, and I found myself wondering why Tauren were the worst race for the Horde to play as a DK. Apparently, their racial skills provide no DPS boost (I want to play a dual-wield Frost Death knight for DPS), and their stunning attack is apparently not particularly useful.

Of course, I read this on Elitist Jerks on a very helpful guide, but I found myself wondering what I wanted from WoW. Do I want to optimize and essentially have fun on an uber-powerful warrior, or am I all about the journey?

I think right now, while I do want to experience the storyline of raids and whatnot, I find myself wanting to enjoy the journey more.

The promise of optimization ruins that to a certain extent, because it’s as if someone is telling I need to do X to have fun.

That might be because I’m slightly neurotic. I mean, I’m playing a frost mage right now because I want to save a Hunter or DK (which are what I really want to play) for Cataclysm, and I think my neuroticism is defeating the purpose of why I paid to play WoW for a month to begin with.

Something tells me I’ve written about this previously from a different viewpoint, but if you’ll allow me a little bit of gamer senility, I shall once again talk about a topic I absolutely hold dear.

I realized something about myself the past few weeks that I’ve been spending on the internet and playing games. I realized that if there’s one thing I enjoy more than playing games, it’s actually the meta-game that comes from not playing the game and instead talking with the community of gamers who enjoy the same things I do.

Because of the community, I’ve been exposed to a ton more games than I ever thought possible, which include everything from Minecraft to Darkfall. All of it made for good times and interesting stories.

There is a negative side-effect to this though. I noticed a growing tendency in myself to fall prey to the whole “Inception” mechanic of having a thought implanted into my head (albeit from sources I can name that are external). While looking forward to my impending copy of Final Fantasy XIV to arrive, for example, I heard about World of Warcraft Patch 4.0.1.

Now, instead of having my attention pointed toward FFXIV, my sights are set on trying out WoW in time for Cataclysm, so much that I’m jumping through the account retrieval system with Blizzard (if they ever read my email) to attempt to get my old account up and running again so I won’t have to purchase another set of keys to play the game.

The funny thing is I realize that I’m being consumed by something akin to greed, yet I’m enjoying the feeling of talking to people about my anxiety of getting my account back, or of asking for help with Fallout 3 mods, or even of just giving in to the urge to listen to a spirited back and forth of opinion from bloggers with differing opinions.

My question now, however, is if this is mentally healthy, or if I need to throttle this back a bit in order to be deemed mentally fit to do human-type stuff.

One of the TV shows I watch has a quotable quote on this particular subject of wanting or liking something. Basically it goes something like, “It’s alright to want something. What’s important is what you do with that desire.”  I think that has a lot of importance for this particular scenario, and if you folks would like to share your thoughts on the metagame of following games and of what would turn gaming into an unhealthy pastime, I’d love to know.

A bit late to the party again due to some connectivity problems at home, but I suppose the big news for the past day or so would be the release of patch 4.0.1, which I lovingly dub “The Game-Changer,” to the WoW-playing public.

Now, I won’t detail all the changes here, as there appears to be a ton of them, but basically, this is the first step in Blizzard’s upcoming Catcalysm expansion, which will revamp a good deal of the world as we know it.

After reading all the patch notes, I find myself strangely drawn towards trying the game again, which I assume is the actual intent of rolling out the changes in a three-part patch continuum. Those of you who are downloading the patch now will want to check this link, which outlines all the necessary threads that detail the changes brought about by patch 4.0.1. Cheers!