Welcome to the current WoW Seasonal Event; Noblegarden.  With the advent of the achievement system, the realms flock to the starting areas of the old world for the latest in insane crowds and collections quests.  Noblegarden is all about collecting eggs.

After Raid Sunday night; I took off for Draenei starting area to get me an easter bunny, and who knows, maybe ‘the Noble’ title.  Imagine my suprise when I found a gazillion polymorphed bunnies guarding spawn sites.  I wandered around, checked out the action, and eventually picked a spawn site to camp.  Right next to one of the worst crowd of ninja’s I’ve ever experienced.  Ky——- and your Ky—- collection; all of you untalented; are you a gold farmer in disguise?  Does your guild leader know?

It took about an hour due to the Ky—- Ninja crowd stealing my egg most of the time it spawned, but I finally got my 20 for the daily quest and beat a welcome retreat.

About 2 hours later I logged into a lowbie who happened to be up in Bloodmyst.  I finished up her cooking stuff and decided to head over to Azure Watch to get some XP & Rep for her.  The Ky— ninja crowd was still there, in the same spot.  I roamed the area in coyote form and got my 20 a bit quicker and left the Ky Gang to their shenanigans.

Then I read up on how to get my bunny rabbit; I would need to get a really lucky rare drop, or I would need to collect 100 Easter eggs in my Easter basket.  Waaaa – memories of the Ky Gang tried to dampen my enthusiasm.

Lo, willpower and stubbornness prevails.  I determined to go back early in the day; while hopefully most school agers are at school whence they belong.  And I changed a few things in my WoW setup.

How to Ninja the Ninja’s

Click to Move, the gimpy hands answer to leveling the playing field.

From the computer icon in your micro bar, pick Interface; then pick Mouse; look on the right hand side and Check ‘Click to Move’.

Behold:

Aren’t I a cute little Polymorphed Bunny?  Now, when you see something you want to loot, such as a Brightly Colored Egg, mouse over it; right click and your toon will zoom right on over and start looting.  There are a few times when things don’t work quite right; maybe an obstacle you can’t get around; but generally very helpful for getting someplace quickly and accurately.  In fact, hubby’s Druid had continual troubles acquiring his target as he rode the discs in Malygos.  Taught him about ‘Click to Move’; voila!  Instant Satisfaction.

I also changed a few video settings.  I play on a laptop, and while it’s only a year old; and pretty decent; I don’t like locking up during 25 man raids; so I generally run with my video settings low to improve performance.  Now however, I wanted to see those Brightly Colored Eggs as quickly as possible, so I turned things up to the settings you see in this screen capture.

I’ve added Spring Bunny to my collection; and she is so very cute when she meets up with Mr. Handsome Spring Bunny, and they <3 [love] each other.

I just might continue on and try for ‘the Noble‘ title!

Woot!

I was a lucky gal Friday night; hubby wanted to try to get into a heroic but just before dinner I got a whisper: ‘want to join us in 10 man ulduar’?  This is the guild hardcore group who is in Ulduar learning the place, seems somebody wasn’t on; so I jumped on it.   I was doing decently for myself; actually pretty good overall as we cleared the trash on the way to Ignis.  On 25 man, this trash was just brutal on us.  When we got up the the boss, the warlock I replaced logged into vent.  I whispered the raid leader and said if you want me to bow out thats OK with me; he said maybe, lets see.  These rotten add’s of Ignis must be busted by a 5K shot within a short period of time once they become brittle.

On our first attempt, we failed; couldn’t get the adds down.  I told the raid leader I would help with adds if he wanted me to.  Low and behold, we took out the first add and the raid leader said, ‘holy crap was that your 10K crit’?  Uh, I don’t know, it could have been.  I have recount set to not display during a battle and I don’t have my damage set to flash all over my screen.  I try to minimize all that screen activity so I can concentrate on what I need to.  At the training dummies, I turn on damage, so I know that I can crit very high with my Chimera shot; which is what I used on the Molten.

It became soly my job to crack the brittle adds.  Eeek!

These adds are Iron Constructs which Ignis spans to life every 30 seconds or so.  In 10 man we had one OT, in 25 it is recommended to have 2 OT’s.  Our OT was a bear, and he would drag the activated Iron Construct over to the scorched ground where it would start getting hot.   As it approaced 20 stacks of heat (when it becomes molten), our OT would call out over vent ‘approaching molten and heading for L/R pool’.  This gave me advance notice so that I could start making my way towards the water pool while keeping up my shot rotation, and making sure I would have an available Chimera shot.

Once the Iron Construct becomes Molten, the OT drags it into the water where it is stunned and becomes brittle.  As brittle, you have a +50% increased chance to crit, and need to shatter it within 15 seconds with greater than 5K  damage in a single attack.  Oh, and when they shatter they do an immense amount of damage in a 10 yard range; so it has to be ranged DPS who take them out.

Bosskillers recommends a mage or warlock for the shattering duty; for ranged we had 2 hunters, the SV raid leader and me as MM, Marksman.

To hit over 5K damage on one attack, I was going to need to crit, and not miss.  Raid buffed I’m around 40% crit; but I’m not hit capped.  So long as I’m grouped with a Draenei I’m okay, otherwise I would be downing some HIT food to assure I didn’t miss.

I’m counting on a crit from a Chimera shot; but I want some insurance to help me out.  First I dotted up the Brittle Construct with Hunter’s Mark to take advantage of Marked for Death; which increases my damage done by 5% and my critical strike damage bonus by 10%.  Then I dotted it with Serpent Sting; which I’ve enhanced with Improved Stings and with Glyph of Serpent Sting.  If only I had an on use trinket, I would pop it now.

Chimera Shot does 125% weapon damage and with Serpent Sting it additionally instantly deals 40% of the damage that would have been done over the duration of  your Serpent Sting.  Chimera Shot has a 10 second cooldown; and is an instant shot; adding the Glyph of Chimera Shot reduces the cooldown to 9 seconds.  I think I might add some +Crit food to my bag of goodies for future times with the brittle Iron Constructs.

So went the second attempt, where after the first brittle, I busted them all; until I got yanked into the slag pot just as one when brittle.  This was bad, not only did we have a lose Construct, I died from my self heals all being on cooldown.  Third attempt, our healers were awesome sauce, I busted all the brittle constructs and Ignis went down.

Go Team!

Chablis

PS – But just to bust my bubble and totally humble me; the next night we went on farm to Naxx 25 and I did horrid; it was a rotten time that I’ll write about later; including some instructions if you are experiencing the white wow screen of not responding death; I think I may have fixed mine; hubby wants me to apply the same technique to his ‘puter.

Getting Started – In more ways than one; pun intended.

What we see, and how we see it is probably the most important aspect of playing an online video game.   You don’t say?!?

So lets get started by talking about vision; in later posts we might talk about some of the other human senses.

The light and how we see it

Ambient Room Light – If only I could go back in time and brow beat my younger self who would sit around for hours in a dark room with a sole bright video terminal for illumination.

Providing an amount of ambient light equal to the light produced by the computer monitor should be your goal.  The best ambient light is light that is directed towards the ceilings or walls and “bounces” to fill the room space.

Monitor Glare / Reflection

Avoid light that “glares” or reflects from your monitor.  You can test glare by displaying a black screen and looking for mirror type reflections.  Glare = Very Bad Thing

If you have glare, and frankly in your typical home environment it is pretty hard to completely avoid, then use an anti glare polarizing filter.  You can also have your eye glasses coated with a protective anti reflective surface.

I’m going to assume that anyone raiding these days is playing on an LCD Monitor; if you are still using a CRT; shame-shame – way too much eye strain.  Flicker, flicker

Chances are pretty high that you are playing in a room with a window.  Now, I love a sun filled house; but sunshine near your monitor triggers Intruder Alert, Intruder Alert alarms.  At least they should.  If you have a choice, place your monitor so that any windows are to the sides.  A window facing your monitor will just cause more reflection, and window behind your monitor will cause the the background brightness level to far exceed the monitor brightness.

In our game room, a long rectangular room; we have a single west facing window.  We started with vertical perforated blinds.

Close up view of perforated blinds

With 100 tiny holes per square inch, these are great for providing soft filtered light without glare while allowing an outside view.  For hubby , sitting across the room and to one side; this was a good solution.

Enter stage left, a large screen LCD TV and my gaming laptop, both screens  facing the window.  Even with reduced glare, the light was still too bright reflecting off the LCD of the TV and computer.

We resulted in adding room blackening roman blinds; bada-bing bada-boom; excellent video visibility.

Monitor, Spmtonitor

TLDR version – buy the very best you can afford.

Wide Screen LCD 22" Monitor

Wide Screen – Check.  Most excellent for gaming.  In fact, if you have the space, go for a dual monitor system, the second monitor doesn’t need to be wide screen, and it will display things like vent, strats, dkp; etc.

Personally, I think 22″ is a good size, though I play on a 19″ widescreen.  You want the highest resolution, and lowest dot pitch that you can get.  A good refresh rate and contrast are also important. Look for key descriptors such as gaming, graphics, video editing to find a selection.

Not Too Hot

Speaking of contrast, once you’ve got your monitor home, installed, connected and your room light adjusted; it’s time to adjust your monitors brightness and contrast.

Adjust the display settings on your computer so the brightness of the screen is about the same as your room environment.

As a test, try looking at the white background of this web page. If it looks like a light source, it’s too bright. If it seems dull and gray, it may be too dark.

Also, adjust the screen settings to make sure the contrast between the screen background and the foreground  is high.

Now, this is interesting; reported from a study: expert action game players had better contrast sensitivity than players of non-action video games

Also check periodically for upgrades to your video card drivers.

Last but not least, as you are working on getting your light and visibility in your environment just right; don’t forget your eyes!  Get your eyes checked regularly and if you play for long extended periods of time talk to your doctor about special “computer” glasses.

Next up, I’ll spend some time digging into the new video effects settings in 3.1.  As we’ve ventured into Ulduar,  I’ve discovered the increased need for rapid response time need for speed to get away from the bad stuff.

Later!

Chablis

Last week was Ulduar (3.1) patch day.  The patch went on, and on, and on.

We finally decided to fire up the PS2 and play some console games.  Low and behold – it held Champions: Return to Arms.  We decided to play, and started a new game.

It has been almost 3 years now.  When I first came out of rehab, hubby would get off work and move me from the hospital bed into the wheel chair and wheel me into our game room.  We would play video games until I was tired, then he would take me back to my hospital bed.

Our nightly video game sessions were so important for my recovery.  Not only did it help my mental self image, but physically while I was having some fun I was working on rehab issues.  Playing video games helped me to work on motor control; hand-eye coordination; balance; and adapting to BPPV – Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo.

When physical therapy started, one of my very first goals was to learn to transfer myself to and from my wheelchair and game chair.

Good Times!

Chablis

So, I guess you could say I’ve decided to start a blog.  And as if there are not a plethora of WoW related blogs out there in the inter-space, I’m adding yet another.

With plinkings and plunkings; i.e. random bits of somethings from the view at my side of the bell curve.

Take your typical bell curve illustration:  It shows the percentage of any given grouping.  Grouping the age of WoW players and applying the result to a bell curve most likely would find the head/peak, or top “same as others” portion to be populated by players in their mid twenties, at least according to a Daedalus Project Research paper in 2005.   Although, based on my experience on my server in 2008/2009 I would have guessed early twenties.   Whatever.  Maybe GamerDNA has published recent research?

I’m down there in the “Definitely Less Than Others” area.  I’m female, a card carrying AARP member, and a handicap parking placard bearer.

Yet, I’ve been gaming since before the internet was in the public domain, before many of todays leet uber players were even a glimmer of thought in their then parents mind.

Sure, in my mid twenties I could top the charts of games; the hand-eye coordination and muscle/nerve response were at peak performance.

Now; well, I hunt down my bifocals; equip my wrist brace, put to hand the specially tuned and selected mouse; and fight the demons of World of Warcraft (WoW).  I no longer top the charts, but once I learned to apply my brain and do some research and experimentation; I’m regularly in the top Ten.

I think I’m an integral and wanted part of our raid team.

If you overlay this diagram showing the names of the sections of a bell; the sound bow, the section of the bell near the lip; where the clapper hits – corresponds to the “Definitely less than others” section of the bell curve.

Sound Bow

That has a nice ring to it.  And, my main is a hunter; my first WoW character.  Chosen without much thought because a ranged RPG player/archer has always been my favorite class, followed closely by ranged casters.

Hence Sound Bow the blog was created.

I’ll pop in periodically and give some tips and views; i.e. plinkings and plunkings thought about and materialized from my game chair.