#32 Thank you Galileo

Today’s blog post in honoring the great Italian physicists and astronomer, Galileo Galilei. He was the first one to suggest that it is the Earth that rotates around the Sun, not the other way around.

via Wikipedia

His discovery was considered blasphemous since it was against everything that the church, the most powerful actor in society at the time, believed about the movements of celestial bodies. The church held the belief that the Sun and the other planets rotated around the Earth, it must be since God put so much time and effort into making this magnificent blue planet just right to be inhabited by his favorite beings. So why wouldn’t He make everything else obit around it

Even though the Church placed pressure on Galileo to retract his statement, Galileo kept to his research. Sadly this lead to the church making his life incredibly unbearable, leading him to spend the rest of his life under house arrest.

He is also responsible for having an extra day on leap year. Galileo’s studies said that the Earth rotates around the Sun every 365 1/4th days, so adding an additional day every fourth year would keep all of our calender more accurate. (Another problem that people at that time experienced, there was none of the calenders kept to the staied accurate over the years)
That leap day on February 29th is the true reason for me praising Galileo today, his hard work and research we all get one more day in February. That means that I have 24 more hours to get all of my midterms out of the way before Blizzard holds it’s eagerly anticipated March press release for the information about Mist of Pandaria.

Oh, and you guys thought I would not tie it back into WoW

I don’t think I could properly make it through the week if I had to work on my papers (one of which involved Galileo’s work, how could you guess), study for my tests, and constantly keep my eye on the Internet for the any breaking news about Mists. Luckily, I will be completely done with my midterms tomorrow, giving me a full day to work on Friday’s blog post. That is if we actually get any news this week….

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#31 Death of Deathwing and the mageless cycle.

Last Friday night was an important night for me and the guild I’m in, not only was it the first time that our ten man raid group killed Deathwing in Dragon Soul, it was also breaking a cycle that had occurred ever since since I joined my current guild, at the very beginning of Cataclysm.

Ever since I started raiding with my guild there seemed to have a pattern emerged. I would participate on current raiding content, fighting through all the other bosses, then we would end up hitting a small wall at the last boss. Then we would spend a couple of weeks perfecting our attempts on that last boss. Perfectly normal right?

Well there would always be a raiding weekend where I could not log in, may it be for working reasons, school or class commentments. Something stopped me from joining the raid group to fight besides them at the last boss. Lo and behold the weekend I could not make the raid times was the same night that the raid group would overcome that progression wall and down the hardest boss without me there to offer my fireballs and skills.

This did not just happen one time, no. This occurred for every single. new raiding content. It happened when we where fighting Cho’gall at the beginning of cataclysm

D'oh, well there's always next patch....

It happened again when we traveled to the firelands in patch 4.2

The tears I shed when I heard the news could extinguish every last burning ember in the Ragnaros's Lair

It also looked like it was going to happen again in Dragon Soul when I had to leave town for Boston, because of  the Model United Nations event two weeks ago (For new readers you can read all about it in Be MOP post #27)

I was so worried about me missing my chance to partake in my guild’s history that every morning of the MUN event I would go to my WoW remote app on my phone just to see if the team did kill Deathwing, continuing  the cycle for the final raiding patch of Cataclysm.

To my luck the Blood’s Shadow (leave it to the Orcs to make the best nicknames for villains) did not fall that weekend, allowing me to see the full fight of the last boss for the first time with all my friends.

I finally get to be in the group photo for the Guild's website!

Hopefully this cycle is completely destroyed, and won’t happen again for when we enter the next raiding content in Mist of Pandaria. If it hasn’t you will be able to hear all about it on this website.

With a shiny new staff looted from Deathwing, me and my chicken is ready for anything.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#30 The Baby’s Coming

March is just around the corner and that means that Blizzard will be holding their press release very, very soon™ and that means that the WoW community will be flooded by news, story ideas, and of course people analysing every bit of information.

As I think about all the fun that I will have in the new continent, the new Pandarian race, and the new instances and battlegrounds I have to remind myself of the news that Blizzard has sold one million annual passes. That means that I am going to be playing with more than a million other players with Beta keys, all trying to be first to experience everything new and I will be competing with many, many other bloggers who will also be covering the expansion.

Since this is my first time covering a game’s testing cycle, I am slightly over whelmed by the thought of covering everything that will be talked about over the months.

So this had made me think of what should I do to be different the other people out there. I’m currently thinking of possibly opening up a YouTube account to record some of my experiences through the Beta.

So this had made me think of what should I do to be different the other people out there. I’m currently thinking of possibly opening up a YouTube account to record some of my experiences through the Beta.

But I want to know what my readers want to see me cover in Mist of Pandaria
-Any special focus for PvP or on PvE?
-Are one interested in the quests or lore development ?
-Should I keep this blog focused on in-game news only or should I also keep tabs on In Real Life
events too?
-Should I even bother with professions and the changes to the Auction House?

So I’m asking you, yes you, to post a comment below and give your opinion. I will try my best to accommodate all  the requests of  everyone.

Oh, I almost forgot that this is Be MOP's 10 week birthday. Yay!

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#29 YAKETY YAK, don’t talk back

This title was inspired by one of my childhood favorite songs, a cover by the Olsen Twins. (LINK HERE)

Last night, via Twitter, Bashiok announced that the Pandrian’s racial mount will be a yak type creature

The source found here: https://twitter.com/#!/Bashiok/status/172084913913344000

I’m happy that there’s at least one more new mount to collect in the expansion. I am also glad that the polygon count of yak is way higher than any other mounts we have so far.

Picture from WoWinsider's post here: http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/02/21/yak-mounts-lumbering-your-way-in-mists-of-pandaria/

I always get a kick when I remember that any new pets or mounts in the Blizzard Store and any added in Cataclysms has more polygons than a male night elf. (which I should remind a certain shadow priest in my raid, when he gets too full of himself)

I hope that since Blizzard is planning to have Pandarians to both the Horde and Alliance side, that Blizzard’s game developers will add variety to the mounts. I was not happy with the Goblins, and later the worgan mounts, both new race had only two mounts, one normal mount and one epic mount.

The problem is that there was no variety to them, the epic mounts had no other different colored armor. When I want to ride a certain mount I, like many others, want my mount to be slightly different than the other people riding the same model in the city.

I just want to be a unique little snowflake...just like everyone else

This variety complaint will become especially important if there’s only one or two mount designs that both factions share. It might be very confusing in battlegrounds if you see an enemy panda riding a yak that looks almost exactly like the mount of the friendly panda right next to you.

Although Blizzard have decided that the yaks are racial mounts, they have not said if they are going to be changing the mounts for which faction you choose after level ten and hopefully this will be addressed when the beta testing begins.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

# 28 Dragons and talents and milestones…Oh MY!

Last week offered two of WoW news, between the new Blizzard store mount and the release of the updated class talent trees. Of course these stories had to happened after I set up the Wednesday and Friday posts. That’s what I get for trying to prepare blog post during some of the busiest week that I could not connect to the Internet.

Because I cannot write an in dept analysis of both the new mount and the talent trees, in fear of seeming out of dated when I talk about the other later in the week. Since this blog is suppose to cover the next WoW expansion. So today I’m going to talk about the talent trees and abandon any hopes on having a full post about the mount.

I will say this about the Heart of the Aspects before we continue: Blizzard answered the call for what the geeky guys to get their geeky girlfriends for valentines day

This was my first clue that there was a new buyable mount

So with the updated talent trees Blizzard has said that not only it it still a work in progress, but also that if you do not see a talent you were looking forward to there is a good chance that it will be reworked into the class as spells or as glyphs. (Which was good, because the Polymorph talent level seems like a waste of a talent level if the expansion does not requires a heavy use of that spell)

I would like to restate that I have only really played a mage in all my time in WoW, so that is the only class I feel that I can confidently talk about.

Before

New and Improved

The last level of the talent trees also has a completely new spell, rather than mages getting a choice of three spells which we have already received and got to play with since before catalysms, mages now get a choice of new ways to regain mana and add a bonus of Spell Power. Whether it be a no cool down Evocation (which grant Spell Power once you the channel) , a rune to place on the floor to increase mana and Spell power when you stand on it, or a damage absorbing shield that grants you mana back, giving you a choice of talents that is based on what play style you play, and what boss fight encounters are you up agaist. If you are fighting a boss that does constant raid wide damage, you pick Incanter’s Shield, but if there is a fight where you are running back and forth during the battle (like Ragnaros) then picking the Rune of Power would be in your best interest.

Since these updates, I’m actually feeling really good about Blizzard’s choice in remaking the talent trees, they have more direct choice of play style than they did before.

P.S I would like to take this time to announce that last night Be MOP just reached it’s 1000th view!

Ding!

I would like to thank everyone who helped reached this important milestone, thank you for coming to my blog, you guys have encouraged me to continue with this project.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

# 27 Where I compare Model United Nations to World of Warcraft

This weekend I prepare to go on my annual trip down to Boston for the Harvard National Model United Nations event as a member of my college’s Model United Nations club.

It took months for our Model UN group to file the paper work, to get assigned a nation (this year we were lucky enough to snag the islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis),  to do the research about our nation, learn about our nation’s culture, our stances on the predetermined issues that we will be talking about in Boston, and what nations we should ally ourselves based on our history’s political activities. All this work, leading up to this one weekend event.

During this week, as I was gathering my things I needed to make a good impression to the other college students that have flown from all over the world for this event, it dawned on me that the way student delegates prepares and acts at Harvard’s Model U.N is just like how gamers prepare themselves to play a great game of World of Warcraft. I know it might sound crazy, but I truly believe there is a connection that could be drawn.

Both type of  people have to find out who they are suppose to role play as, whether it be a Spaniard, a Chinese, a Dwarf or a Blood elf, then they learn about their ethnic background and history. Then the delegates and players must learn how to act with other people and choosing who to ally with.

Whether we are in a World Trade Organization session or in a Warsong Gulch Battleground, we are supposed to know what  the people we are playing as would  think about certain ideology and which certain groups we are supposed to befriend.

Once we find out who we are and who supports us, we start to prepare ourselves.The students and the World of Warcraft players search through their wardrobe  to find their best suits to wear and their best outfits to make themselves appear better than normal, in order to fight for their cause.

I quote this at every Model United Nation trip, and for every 10 man raid.

This weekend I will be equipping my Navy Blue Wool Blazer, (which increased my New England Intellect racial), while adding my NH  Boys State pin (+10 Politics Knowledge) as well as my President Award for Educational Excellence pin (+15 to Education).

+5 to proper attire, +20 to dance

Once we are all prepared, and ready, the battle begins. Each student delegate enters the room of their assigned committee, in which they will be fighting for themselves and for their nation over the course of a tiring three day weekend. The students will have to think fast about what their political stances are, who to support and who are the enemies to their cause. The difference between a battle in a committee, and a battle on the fields of Azeroth, is that this weekend I fight with the arcane text of parliamentary procedure, not with magic spells or axes.

As the weekend goes on and people fight one another, there will be talks of alliances , tales of deceit and woe created over the course of the cutthroat talks. You can bet that at the end of a day, when the delegate’s stomachs are empty and they have spent a whole day in a room with the same people, that sparks flies and the talks will get heated.

This is an actuate artist’s interpretation of how the delegate of Russia acted last year at the end of a really long talk.

But most importantly, at the end of this parliamentary battle or at the end of a match in Arathi Basin, everybody will hang up their suits of armor and our differences to go socialize with each other, not as the nations we represent, or the characters we choose to be, but as people who find the fun in these experiences. We will begin talking about our personal experiences with this organization, while trading and making new stories about our past experiences.

No matter how heated it gets in the debates we come to the realization that it was all good fun when we say goodbye to each other at the end of the weekend.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#26 What promise will Blizzard fail to provide for this Expansion?

Since 2007, I have played World of Warcraft through the pre-expansion build up of both the Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. Through the countless articles I read covering the previews of the game,  I have noticed a curious trend of Blizzard always had one feature in their expansion that they fail to complete before the expected due date.

In Wrath, Blizzard had the infamous Dance Studio service that would let you choose a different dance style for your character, that never made it to the live servers. And  that the fans are still eagerly waiting for. Blizzard also completely killed the idea for aerial vertical  PvP scenarios. This failed service would not be as bad, looking from hindsight of the problems wrath had with vertical mechanics, if they did not advertise this feature on the finished product on the box art

See it's right there, go grab your Lich King box and look at the flap.

In Cataclysm the game designers promised another cool new way for character customization, called Path of the Titans, allowing you to choose a religion of sorts, picking a specific titan following, and completing weekly challenges that would allow you to advance through the ranks and get more glyphs as rewards.

A photograph of Path of the Titan. From Wowwiki

If you play World of Warcraft now, you will notice that this was another service that got the ax. Although some of the path of the titan’s aspects was rolled into the archeology skill and the new layer tier of glyph, I am still counting this as a failure to deliver.

So when Blizzard plans to release more information about Mist of Pandaria next month, you will know that as I  review all the new potential content, I will be also be thinking on if any of these promises will be see the light of the final release date.  I am thinking that I should start a  Be MOP betting pool, after march, about what features Blizzard said will be dead in the water. But that’s for a future post.

 

((P.S I do know that some of the reasons Blizzard would kill an idea  is because they could not get the game mechanics to work properly, or they could not balance it with all the other parts of the game, but it is still an interesting pattern))

 

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#25 Why I am the perfect Diablo3 Player.

With Blizzard’s next almost, but not quite ready yet, game: Diablo to come out soon, (come on Blizzard you know we will love it no matter how much additional polish you add to it) I would like to take this time to discuss why I am the perfect person to play Diablo 3.

When ever a company makes a new game to an existing game’s universe one of their objectives is, of course, to bring back the previous players with the promise of new lands to explore and continuation of the story. But another major goal that every game developer must constantly keep in mind is to bring new players into the franchise. That’s where I come in. I have never played any Diablo games before, and I know that I know nothing about this game.

My Greek college professor would throw a fit if he ever learn that I used  a Socrates’s quote in this blog.

As a new customer companies pay extra attention to me, to catch me up on the game play and more importantly the lore. So that when I start playing the game I quickly understand the big actors of the Diablo, any major events and the general history of the past two games. Because one of the worst things that could happen to a player is if they are playing a game and they do not know why they are going to this town or entering this dungeon.

Also since I have not played the beta nor I have seen any game play videos, or read anything from guides or any posts on Blizzard’sDiablo site. I will be going into the game completely blind. just like when I played Starcraft II. Someone like me is exactly what Blizzard will be paying attention to, since I’m the person who bought the game and I am the one expanding their market and their profits at the end of the day. Blizzard can easily get all the players of Diablo 2 back no problem, but they need extra effort to make somebody who had no interest in the sseries pick it up and enter a game where half of the story is already told.

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#24 *ANOTHER* blog post about Star Wars and Warcraft, that is NOT talking about their MMOs.

Today marks the day that George Lucas re-released Star Wars Episode I back into theaters…IN 3D!

In some religions this man is viewed as The Creator and The Destroyer.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about Star Wars and Warcraft, so thats enought time to write on that topic again but with the focus on rehashed content!

Rehashing content has always been a quick and easy way to make money and play experiences. In recent years George Lucas has become infamous with constantly rehashing his old Star Wars Movies, and Warcraft, with Cataclysm has brought on some criticism about bringing back dead bosses.

George Lucas has brought back the Star Wars movies for the VHS, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, Movie Theater 3D, and -soon to be- Blu-ray 3D. (That doesn’t even take into consideration the Special Editions and the other releases to edit the movies further)

While in WoW, Blizzard has brought back Trolls, the Siblings of Deathwing (Nefarian and Onyxia) and Ragnaros. All in one expansion.

FOOLISH MORTALS YOU THOUGHT THAT MOLTEN CORE WAS THE LAST YOU HEARD FROM ME?

Bringing out old content is not always a bad thing, no Star Wars fans were angry at George Lucas when he released the first three Star Wars movies from VHS (a form of media that could degenerate the quality of the picture after multiple uses) to the constantly crisp DVDs. Same with Blizzard when they buffed the classic Onyxia raid fight to level 80 in Wrath.

In both cases both of the content (the Star Wars movie and the Onyxia fight) were not changed, it was the same experience, but just bumped up to a higher quality and level so that both the old and new fans could enjoy a part of history.

People start getting mad at bringing back old content when George Lucas and Blizzard rehash content and changes it in a way so they can sell it has something new, something filling.

There were people who were furious at George Lucas when sent the Phantom Menace into the theaters, the same movie, with  just adding 3D effects.Or when he released the Blu-ray and changes some of the famous scenes of the movies that everyone remembers. There were also people angry at Blizzard when they re-released Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman, the same area, the same motive to go there (to stop the troll empire from raising AGAIN) in patch 4.2 with a 5man Heroic spin on it. There was so much backlash from the fans from both franchises, people thought of it as an insult to the memory of people who enjoyed the original entertainment at the first time.

Oh how I came to loathe this loading screen....

So the question is, has George and Blizzard learned from their mistake? In both cases I believe that both has learned from their mistake via the outcries of their fans, to the point where George Lucas annouced a while ago that he has quit making more blockbuster movies saying, “Why would I make any more (Star Wars films) when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?” and Blizzard has *hopefully* learned that you can not just give a reused area as the main source of gear and PvE experience.

Hopefully Blizzard will remember that lesson when they remodel the Scholomance and Scarlet Monetary heroics for Mist of Pandaria

As for me, I will spend the first few hours of Feburary the 10th watching Star Wars Episode I on the big HD flatscreen TV in my dorm’s living room making fun of the people who paid 15$ to watch the same (in my opinion: BAD) movie in 3D.

Take us out of here Chewy!

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays

#23 I need a vacation from these holidays.

This week, right now, is the worst time to be a Holiday perfectionist. During this one week, there is the Lunar Festival, Love is in the Air, and (since it is the first week of the month) the Darkmoon Faire are all being celebrated right now.

Ah ha! Nobody expects a graph joke from someone on the internet!

Overlapping holidays are nothing new to WoW, the Lunar festival and Love is in the Air have always been scheduled to share the first week of Febuaray, which as always seemed to be the player’s limit for the number of event they are comfortable with.

So what’s the bad thing about it? It’s not just the Darkmoon Faire being added to the mix, it’s also because this year Blizzard has added new collectables to entice players who’ve already jumps through the hoops and completed the achievements from last year.

The Lunar festival offers a new Lunar Lanturn pet, at the cost of 50 Coin of Ancestry, while the Love is in the Aire has a new Swift Lovebird mount for the hefty price of 270 Love Tokens and there are also the Darkmoon Faire’s mounts and pets to buy for either 180 or 90 Darkmoon Prize Tickets.

So there players have to play a game of Where’s Waldo with atleast FIFTY of these silk-wearing moonlight encompassing elderly farts, then go to the Darkmoon Dailies -which involves being shot out of a cannon multiple times- and then port to Stromwind to complete the Love is in the Air dailies by spewing smelly cologne and killing a bunch of undeads in Uldum and then travel to Hyjal to farm Spiders to collect 40 Lovely Charms to craft into a Lovely Charm Bracelets to hand to each of the four Alliance leaders.

Then repeat Steps two and three daily for a week, until desired prizes are obtained.

Why do I put myself through this? Because I have now taken up the hobby to collecting 150 pets to get that cool starry dragon. For the Love is in the Air and Darkmoon Faire prizes because it adds another mount to my collection. Side-note: I will be sorely disappointed if M.o.P does not have an addition to the mount collection achievements.

Also, the Swift Forest Strider and Swift Lovebird are the closest thing that looks like a rideable chicken. (Thus another example of The Chicken Rule.)

Can't you just see the resemblance? I am currently trying to persuade my mom to adopt one of these born-featherless birds. Picture from http://www.inspirefusion.com/featherless-chicken/

Thank goodness the holidays only  comes around once a year. Im so busy during this time that I have so many dailies to be done at the Darkmoon Faire and Love is in the Air that I can do those and my regulare money making dailies #Firstworldofwarcaftproblems

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Be MOP focuses on the lead up to the next World of Warcraft expansion with my own reflections about the last dying moments of the Catalysm’s Twilight Hour as we look into the Mist of the new day. Updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays