Intellect shmintellect.

I rolled a Dwarf Warlock on the weekend. I know the quests are easy for the most part, but as long as I remember to read the quest text, follow the storylines and revel in the fantastic ambience of the game I always have fun playing.

The disappointing thing about playing a lowbie warlock is how ridiculously underpowered it is. I should say at this point that I'm playing on a foreign server, without heirlooms or any external cash supply, but I did the same thing with a Hunter last week on a different brand new server and could still faceroll just about everything.

In a way it's nice for the sake of a challenge, especially going into the mines in Eastern Dun Morogh where the mob density was enough to provide several very hairy accidental pulls. It's been a long time since I felt this acutely squishy, and being forced to play well to succeed is exactly what I want from a game.

On the other hand, going into an RFC run and pushing out my rotation as hard as I could and still producing less damage than the Pally tank on most pulls-- That's just frustrating.

I had really hoped that the stat changes would make low-level casters more powerful now that they can actually obtain real DPS stats, and it's really disappointing to see the lowbie-OP staples of paladin and hunter continue to dominate without even trying.

I remember very early in the Cata alpha low-level caster mobs were ridiculously overpowered due to the int change causing them to "double dip" on spell power stats. Why couldn't we have that? Just for like a week before they hotfix it? Just would really like to see the low-level balance pendulum swing the other way for once.

You mean you have to use your hands?

This morning I saw a man playing Super Mario Bros using the very latest in cutting edge consumer video game control technology, Microsoft Kinect. Do have a look.

I will now direct your attention to the fantastic irony that this state-of-the-art system performs significantly worse than a 25-year-old plastic rectangle you have to hold in your hand. [Like a baby's toy.]

I know this stuff isn't designed for me, but it still makes me sad that the developers who used to make fun games are now diverting resources to take advantage of this retarded fad.

I think this is what growing up feels like.

The important thing is that I'm right.

It didn't really occur to me until just the other day how big a deal today's patch is to people who haven't been soaking up this content in the beta. Maybe my AH rival will take a 4-hour break from camping the AH and I can sell a few gems for once. Really hard to compete with someone willing to spend that much time posting auctions.

Blizzard is apparently still suffering from their groupthink corporate delusion of thinking they can get a patch out on time. At this point I shrug and roll my eyes. Expectation management is important for keeping one's sanity in this game we play. At least predicting the worst offers the consolation of being right when you lose.

I'm wondering how much pull the new class/race combinations will have. I guess not as much as the fact that they're playing through completely new content. I thought it was interesting to note that of the new combinations, the horde gains three tanks, while the alliance gains none, and whether this will affect queue length [by which I of course mean DPS queue length] for low-level dungeons.

This is how we do it down under.

If I was to purchase Cataclysm as a digital download, I would download the game in advance, then play the minute Cata goes live, 7pm my time.

If I was to purchase Cataclysm from my local game store, I would queue up to buy the game the minute Cata goes live, 7pm my time. Then leave the store and drive home. Then install the game from the disc. Then download and apply the inevitable gigabyte of last-minute updates which have been added since the disc was pressed. And then play.

Cataclysm digital download = USD40 = ~$41

Cataclysm hard copy Australian RRP = $59.95

I welcome the digital age. Fuck Australia and fuck game stores -- from now on I live on the Internet.

SUPER PREDICTION I AM SURE WILL HAPPEN

In a future patch, Titan’s Grip and Single Minded Fury will be merged into one talent.

[I'm writing this now so people will know I called it back in November Twenty-ten and how awesome that therefore makes me. ]

Gevlon's magical skill.

I remember earlier this year Gevlon going on about a “magical skill” he had discovered that was easily learned, and was the key aspect that would guarantee success in most aspects of life [and WoW], which he eventually defined as asocial behavior with peers. I have to assume the buildup to this revelation was deliberate, as he wanted to be sure people understood the extent to what he was claiming before naming it as something with so many negative connotations.

I think he has missed the core ideal slightly. Not caring what people think will typically mean that you only do things that benefit you. But it’s not the fact that you’re eschewing social influence, it’s the fact that you’re taking responsibility for yourself first that causes successful behaviour. Acting asocially is just a mindset that makes self-interest easier to justify if acting this way is not automatic for you. The “magical skill” is personal responsibility.

Gevlon’s “Goblin philosophy” asserts that a self-centred attitude is not only good for an individual, but also good for society, and I find it hard to contradict him. “Self-centred” to me equates to personal responsibility, though it also has the unfortunate negative connotation to mean that one doesn’t care about other people. I really don’t understand why society would necessarily look down on a person who focuses on themselves before others, or assume that this focus necessarily precludes caring about other people.

Pleasing other people makes me feel happy and preserves my social status. If it didn’t have this positive response I wouldn’t care about doing it. Thus my motivation for pleasing others is entirely selfish. Every sociopath knows the value of getting along with and being nice to people.

I’m going to make a bold claim and say that every single “selfless” person doing things for other people has this same motivation. Even “making the world a better place” carries a self-interest. For one, you live in that world and want it to be better for you; being seen as altruistic also carries a social value; and again the thought that you are positively affecting the world will make you feel better about yourself.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. That’s just my point. Calling self-interest a negative trait is ridiculous. It’s not about creating more for yourself than other people, it’s about efficiency -- nobody else in the world can understand your needs as easily as you do, therefore any situation in which another person is responsible for understanding and meeting them -- for "helping you" -- is going to be an inefficient way of doing so.

The only time acting out of self-interest creates an unfair advantage is when the people you interact with refuse to do the same. And to be honest I find it hard to sympathise with a person who will not take that kind of responsibility for themselves.

So I suppose this is where we return to the idea of acting asocially. The social instinct to help someone who is worse-off than you is huge, for me at least. But I wont let myself go out of my way to assist someone inefficiently to do something they could much more easily do themselves. All things considered, the world would be worse off for me doing so.

Dear Diary

I try to avoid posting personal things in here. I'd prefer this blog to be more about exploring ideas that I find interesting than "you'll never guess what I did last night..!"

But, you'll never guess what I did last night!

Not one, but two Lich King kills. Yes, I know, it's trivial content now, but what made this impressive was both were from pugs I joined in Trade chat.

I've had horror-story PuGs before, oh I have. These days I go in with "does your raid know the fight?" and when they answer "yes" they provide me my excuse for leaving if they don't.

The first one was a total luck-out on my part. Guy posts in trade: "LF DPS for Lich King." I'm on my Warrior at the time so I ride up to him in Dalaran and on declining his initial invitation tell him I'm happy to bring my Moonkin. I figure I wouldn't mind a chance at my fourth Kingslayer title, and if they're crap, well, he already lied to me about them knowing the fight. =) Turns out they're all alts who know the fight backwards and we execute a very comfortable one-shot -- with more than half of us, my feathery self included, getting the achievement for the kill.

I tried to downplay this easy victory from the Significant Other, who had wandered in half-way through the fight, and that I knew has been desperate for a Lich King kill.

We soon found ourselves volunteering in tandem [myself somewhat more reluctantly] for the next trade pug to advertise, which after some initially terrible first impressions and an extremely slow and rocky start managed to pull themselves together by the fourth attempt. For me it really highlighted how massive the space for error on that fight is now. We had some textbook-horrid defile placements, a warlock who didn't understand how to use his portal, melee s-keying out of defile, and I think my OT must have missed more than half of the Soul Reaper tank swaps... But in the end, nine achievements, including the Significant Other's long sought-after title.

Two very satisfying kills, brought to you by Trade. ^^

The End.