Title is NYI

It's been a busy week for me kiddies... First off... I did another guest post of sorts (actually, a flow chart!) at I Like Bubbles, my lllustrious (and oft amusing) GM's wow blog.

And on top of that, WoW Insider linked to it! Go me! Now.. maybe I just need to put something on my own blog for WI to link to and get some traffic flowing through here.... although my own blog posts are usually peppered with obscenities and nonsensicals... /ponder..

Oh.. Sorry... I also did a guest post for MMO Reporter about why people should play Cataclysm... sorta... Anyway, onto the real blog post.

4.0.1 is coming... Credible sources point to this patch coming next week (more specifically, October 12th in the US). With this pre-Cataclysm patch is going to come a dramatic change for... well... everyone. Changes in our talents, our abilities, our health pools, our gear, our gemming, our enchanting, our stats, our spells, the way we tank, the way we heal, the way we dps... EVERYTHING IS FUCKING CHANGING. I'm pretty excited about a lot of these changes, some people are less than excited, some people are genuinely concerned (and some of them have genuine reasons to be from what I understand at this point), while some people hail Cataclysm as the death of WoW, the sky is falling, and the angel of death will be knocking on Blizzard/Activision's doorstep anyday now asking for their firstborn sons.

Don't get me wrong folks. Everything is NOT perfect with 4.0.1, it won't be perfect next week when the patch drops, it won't be perfect on December 7th (the official Cataclysm launch date), and it won't be perfect for sometime after that. But y'know what? That's okay with me really. I remember November 13th 2008, the day Wrath of the Lich King went live... and it was buggy as hell. Quests and mobs were glitching left and right. Death knights and ret paladins were absolutely having their way with people 5 and 6 levels above them simply by drooling on the keyboard. DK tanks were invincible. Prot pallies suddenly had absurd amounts of unsurpasable aggro, and all they had to do was consecrate and masterbate. And for fuck's sake, does anyone remember "Additional Instances Cannot be Launched"? I sure do.

There are legitimate concerns that people have on the beta every single day. Some of them don't get the recognition they should. I'm not in the beta, so I can only imagine how frustrating it is to bring a real complaint to the powers that be, and having it go largely ignored or brushed off with a "no that's because of X." I get it, really I do. But there's a couple things I would suggest when filing complaints on the forums.

First - Wording is everything. If you proclaim doom, gloom, end of days because Thunder Clap isn't hitting as hard as you want it to, you'll look like an idiot and be ignored... or if you're spectacular enough, Ghostcrawler will make a post making fun of you. Conversely, If you say that thunder clap is hitting for X damage with X gear on the PTR, whereas on live realms it's hitting for Y (bigger number) damage in the same gear, take screenshots, show the buffs you have in each situation, and why exactly this is a problem, Blizzard is more likely to take you seriously.

Secondly - Not everything is going to work out how you want just because you want it to be so. Resto druids? I'm sorry, but Tree of Life is going on a cooldown. Love it or hate it, that's the way it is, and Blizzard is pretty concrete on that. Continuing to bitch and moan that losing your tree form is tantamount to setting your little sister on fire will get you trolled in the most hardcore of ways, and you deserve it. No amount of glib speech and persuasiveness is going to get Blizzard to change their minds about this right now, so it's kinda pointless to argue anymore... which brings me to my next point.

Third - Some things just aren't worth fighting for. Buffs are being spread around. Sorry but it's true. Shamans aren't the only ones with bloodlust anymore. It might be silly that they're giving it to friggin core hounds (i mean seriously.. a core hound with bloodlust? what the hell) but Blizzard is trying to make things easier on raid groups that don't have shamans constantly available to them.

Keep in mind that the examples I used above are just that.. EXAMPLES. They may or may not be entirely accurate depictions of the types of things i've seen on beta forums, so don't get your nose bent out of shape and say that you should be trolled for wanting your tree form back... that's not what I said, pay attention will you?