Token Female Gamer

(Its such an awesome title how could I not run with it?!!? Probably should have been Monthly WoW Woes, but that certainly doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.)

DPS (Damage Per Second). The never ending quest for the all time highest damage output EVER. What is the DPS ceiling and how can I get there???

Since both of my World of Warcraft characters are DPS-centric, this question comes up for me often. My love-hate relationship with recount doesn’t help, as I can’t seem to get by without it, but playing with it is almost as impossible. Would I do better without it? Keeping track is eminently distracting. Though having such a clear display of ones performance (compared to everyone else) is highly motivating.

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Aion is a newly released MMO where all the characters are angels, not that they call them that, but the world is populated with beings that can fly. From what I have read, flying is the thing to set this MMO apart, flying around the world, and even more importantly, flying combat.

Since at our house we like to try out many of the new MMOs that pop up, we couldn’t miss this one. And since I wanted to share, writing a diary of my daily Aion activities seemed the best option.

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…Finding them.

Once resigned to the fact that PUGs are necessary and need to be suffered, finding them becomes the challenge.

Sadly in World of Warcraft the Looking for Group function is horrible. It is incredibly limited and hardly anyone seems to use it.

On my server the big alternative is the trade channel. This channel is only available while inside a major city. Since it is literally the only channel that gets used with any frequency everyone joins it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Imagine every PUG experience rolled into one very overused channel. It’s awful and I avoid it as much as possible.

Overall finding PUGs is not that easy, especially if you are a damage (DPS) class, as they tend to be a dime a dozen. Either you sit in town reading through agonizing trade chat, or you join the severely limited in game Looking for Group feature.

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One of the suggestions that I got from my WoW raiding 101 write up was that I hadn’t mentioned anything about PUGs and how those should affect peoples class role choices.

PUG – Acronym for the phrase ‘pick up group’ – meaning to play as a team with random people.

Pick up groups are something most aspiring raiders will have to deal with, especially in World of Warcraft as it is today. Unless of course gifted with a very dedicated set of friends to play with, or part of a large guild that has enough daily active members to provide frequent group and raid buddies.

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Final thoughts

Here we are, at the end of this (much larger then I expected) endeavor. I hope that it has conveyed enough information to help ease the transition into raiding (at least a little bit!)

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External Additions

This is a huge topic. The meta-game for WoW is already incredibly complicated, but the meta-game for the WoW-software dwarfs it by leaps and bounds. From new interfaces to smaller addons; a vast array of options are available. Then of course we can’t forget Ventrilo and all the hardware that that spawns.

Oh you could play without all these fancy gadgets and gizmos but they really help in so many situations by increasing response time, easier access to all raid members, alerts, maps, shortcuts, and so many more wonderful ease inspiring additions that playing without almost seems archaic. Granted on a bit patch day you will be playing without them, until they are patched anyway.

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Strategy

This really comes in two parts, strategy on how to play your character and strategy on how to be successful in an encounter. Both of these can be theorized ad nauseum, but nothing can make up for experience. So brush up online and then jump in.

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The Character

The single most successful way to increase character effectiveness is to focus on enhancing the character itself. This means choosing a purpose and then getting the various character aspects – talents, skills, equipment, buffs – synched so they properly support said choice. Essentially you figure out what you want your character to be able to do and then you set them up with the best options available.

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Taking the step from being a casual player, who runs a few heroic dungeons every now and then, into a player that is raiding effectively and with purpose (my definition of hardcore) is a massive undertaking. It requires far more focused knowledge and experience then just playing casually. Suddenly many aspects of your character, aspects that were easily ignorable before, become incredibly pertinent.

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The second expansion for World of Warcraft, Wrath of the Lich King (WotFK), graced us with its presents a mere year and ten months after the last expansion. (Woot! Our wait was cut by four months!)

Feature wise, it was very similar to the previous expansion, a new continent to explore, new higher levels to reach, more quests, more dungeons, and more loot. They even added a brand new class to play.

And yet, WotLK has been the more successful expansion. Clearly a lot was learned from the previous two games, because they somehow managed to keep and fine tune features that worked well while weeding out most of the irritating bits.

But not all the features are recycled, loads of new ones joined the frey, seamlessly blending new and old. A few of the most notable additions being: achievements and vehicle-combat.

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