What ever happened to accountability?
Posted by Jay | Filed under Game Industry
EU orders gaming industry to better protect youth.
FTC Entertainment ratings guide.
What’s interesting to me is that with minimal searching, I was able to educate myself on the ratings and they’re meaning. Is it the responsibility of the video game industry to educate the populace at large of the ratings system?
Looking up video game ratings in goggle links me to this site, the ESRB website. This information is easy to come by and very easy to digest. According to my rough estimations, there are roughly 100 extremely violent video games released each year. This includes horror games, which are generally overlooked, just like B rated horror movies. Now given that last year 1415 games were released, we can assume less then 10% of video games are violent and released each year.
What’s more interesting, is that on many occasions the violent video games sell and rate very high. Ironically, I think this points more to the video game audience and less the video game industry. If there is a market, industry will create a product. The video game industry is full of business after all. And in order to stay afloat, business needs to sell product.
Beyond interesting statistics that can be gathered from google use, what’s of further importance is that the EU board is eluding less to violent video games and more to online video games. How intriguing. Even more specifically, parents can govern who their child speaks with when they go together to the park. What if this park is virtual? How will parents be able to govern their children’s exposure to the vast and very adult world of Internet use. This very thought, leads to a very controversial path.
I understand the concern parents have over controlling the play environment of their children. I know I didn’t watch any sexual content in movies until I was beyond 8th grade. This was accomplished by tight parental control of the media I was allowed to view. Technology has increased. It is becoming more and more difficult for parents to be involved in their children’s moment to moment life. However, I question whether the responsibility of a child’s upbringing rests of the authors of its entertainment, or with the authority units in its life. I do know however that when I signed my NDA to work for my game company, there was no clause that stated I was responsible for the reaction to the content I created.
Especially for 2008, the topic of ratings and responsibility are in the lime light. The overall interesting question for us as gamers, is the following: Are we accountable for the enjoyment of others in an MMO game space? Are we responsible for having an adult conversation in a public chat channel if there are minors present?
Interesting indeed.
When hard work pays of… journeys of a Disc Priest
Posted by Jay | Filed under Arena, PvP, World of Warcraft
Really started to mesh with my teams this week.
2v2 ended 7-3 for a 1612 rating.
3v3 ended 16-4 for a 1750ish rating.
I have lots of work ahead of me. I’ve managed to capture 22 of the matches. My reactions to DP SLSL and RMP to follow in the coming days!
Disc Priest - Sample Builds
Posted by Jay | Filed under PvP, World of Warcraft
Scito te ipsum
Latin for “Know thyself.”
When choosing to spec your priest discipline, one should ask yourself what you want to accomplish? Another important question is what am I good at? And more importantly “What do I enjoy doing?” Discipline isn’t as marred with specific roles like pally prot vs pally holy, but it can at times be as trying. You’ll get compared to Holy Priests alot. Just remember that Disc Priest is about survivability. If that means surviving social stigma as well, so be it!
41 20 0 Solid Pve Spec
- Silent Resolve provides needed threat reduction.
- Improved Divine Spirit for that extra dmg and healing to ALL beneficiaries of the buff.
- Mental Agility, Mental Strength and Meditation. These are all staples of the disc build.
- Standard Healing talents.
- Power Infusion: Great for that added spell haste.
- Pain Suppression: To keep folks alive you KNOW are going to be healed by someone else.
if I wanted to raid as a disc spec, I would follow this route. There’s much needed threat reduction and all the useful spells in disc. Improved PW:S, Improved PW:F and Improved Spirit for your buffing pleasure. The problem with this spec is that you may as well go the standard hybrid build if you want to raid heal. Disc is all about surviving encounters, it isn’t about highly efficient heal output.
23 38 0 Closer to Standard Holy Raid Spec
I don’t have terribly much to offer in regards to this spec. Its a really strong raiding spec. If this is your cup of tea, GREAT! I really love seeing priests in raids. I can’t speak to it as I’ve never rolled holy. Ever. I did experiment with a crit smite build for fun, but that’s about it. Enjoy your raiding! Note: spirit is really important for raid priests. Intelligence got a buff in 2.4 due to:
Spirit-Based Mana Regeneration: This system has been adjusted so that as your intellect rises, you will regenerate more mana per point of spirit.
So gear well!
42 19 0 My Current Spec
- Absolution: Key talent. As a disc pvp, you dispel. You dispel and you dispel. Dispel is a potent heal. Preventing damage is key in the arena. Its why CC classes are uber strong and why shamans have a hard time in 2v2 and 3v3.
- Improved Mana Burn: Controlling a targets mana pool is an effective CC. When a target is avoiding you to conserve their pool they aren’t able to do whatever they want. Terrain control is a key in martial victory. MB is one way to do that.
- Focused Power. Mass Dispel gets rid of ice block and pally self bubble. It also dispels multiple times within its radius.
- Focused Will: You don’t want to get crit ever. When it happens, this talent further mitigates AFTER crit damage. The key word is after crit.
- Blessed Recovery: Earn back 25% of a crit hit afterwards. Pretty jazzy.
- Reflective Shield: I’m in the Disc camp that likes this spell. It returns a % of damage back at the attacker. Your shield at 70 with some decent healing gear is about 1.5 absorption. RS does 750 back at the attacker. That’s not bad.
- Mental Agility, Mental Strength and Meditation. These are all staples of the disc build.
- Standard Healing talents.
- Power Infusion: Great for bursting down a target. I rarely use it on myself.
- Pain Suppression: Great burst and focus fire mitigation. I’ve saved many a person with this talent. It is also the crown of the disc tree.
I really like this spec and settled on it. The key disc talents are there. The one below trades reflective shield for silent resolve and more spell warding. Silent resolve is useful for preventing dispels. Since its only 40% most dispels will get through though.
41 20 0 Another PVP build.
Enjoys(EN JO OY Z!
Offensive Priest Healing - Importance of Presence
Posted by Jay | Filed under Arena, PvP, World of Warcraft
Offensive healing. Arena pvp is a unique situation. You enter with a predefined set of teammates, so does the other team. The other team knows they will be fighting other players. Even more so then BGs, losing in an arena match is more detrimental then a BG. Combining all these factors creates a unique situation for a priest. These factors contribute to a larger overall sense of competition. Knowing this and keeping your cool will mean you live and win.
We have great presence!
That’s right folks, we’re a fairly squishy, and we make other casters nervous. We can heal through their damage, fear, dispel through spells and remove pally bubbles. We are scary(SCAR EE). As I’ve moved slowly up in the arena ratings, I notice a few behaviors. Casters stand by a pillar. Or teams actively work to separate their foes. Using this presence can really make the opposing team sweat. Use you presence to affect the other team. You can force the druid to stay out of LoS. You can force the paladin to heal while you drain his mana. You can chase around their casters and AE fear when appropriate. You can cast all sorts of nifty spells. Healing(HEEL IN G) is just one aspect!
WARNING: Finding the balance, and knowing when to, between using your presence and avoiding notice are aspects of arena you, the priest(PR-EAST), will need to learn. This comes in time! Don’t give up!
Priest PVP Spell Review - Part 1
Posted by Jay | Filed under PvP, World of Warcraft
I read many Priest blogs. What’s really interesting to note is the different weight I put on priest spells than a raiding priest. There’s a big difference in my thought process between arena, BG, 5 mans and raiding. I’ll break down each spell in the arena and bg category. For 5 man and raiding, I would suggest the plethora of priest blogs in my blog roll.
Flash Heal
Arena: This is your bread and butter heal. Ego puts it aptly. Only use Flash heal when that person needs a heal RIGHT NOW. In arena, your partner(s) need that heal RIGHT NOW. Good usage. 2000(1k MS) is a really strong heal. You’ll need to chain heal when the target is being focus fired and this spell hits the mark. Using Ribbon of Sacrifice in a macro will give the heal the same effect as a druids heal. This may work a couple times due to the psychological panic the target will feel should they be fighting a druid.
BG: Use as needed. The only time I don’t use flash heal is if a warrior or rogue(with MS poison) is present. You can immediately tell once you cast a heal.
Greater Heal
Arena: There isn’t much room for this in Arena. You’ll hit it sometimes. I will use greater heal if my partner(s) are being focus fired and I feel like deflating their morale. Since its a big heal, they’ll feel like they’re making progress then their target will be completely healed. I rarely do this as it doesn’t cover spiky damage well. Quick spiky damage happens all the time in arena, so use at your discretion.
BG: If you’re at rest after taking an objective, greater heal to your hearts content, otherwise use flash heal.
Prayer of Mending
Arena: I mentioned my absolute love for this spell in pvp. #1 its easier to tell who’s getting hit. It mitigates damage very well. You’ll not win an arena by using this spell but it accomplishes a couple key tactical consideration in your opponent.
- They may try to dispel it.
- If they have dotted you up, you’ll get very good heals out of this spell.
Those two above points are worth the mana. Forcing your opponents paladin/priest to dispel something is worth the interruption to their healing. I open with PoM just before the gates open and I’ll usually PoM once or twice during the fight.
BG: Its fairly not useful as a healing tool. What PoM does well is earn you honor. I wish I could say BGs are about something other then earning honor, like fun, but that would be lying. I’m very disappointed with what BGs have become for me now that I am a healer. Healing in PVP is the most fun for me. In fact, I perfer PVP healing to raid healing any day. Now they just need to make the rewards consistent with the raiding model. I started to explain that more and decided it deserves a post of its own.
*edit* I changed the title as I’m in the warcraft bloggers log and the former title isn’t representative of the content
