Just a short note to say I’m taking a bit of a break from the game and computery stuff in general, to give my wrists a chance to heal up, and because I probably should have a break now while it’s quiet.

I also need to focus on work and some RL stuff for a bit, so I’m a bit too distracted for quality blogging.

Back soon!

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The talent calculator is here.

Balance
* Starsurge is now a baseline spell.
* Owlkin Frenzy is now a Tier 4 talent. Down from Tier 5.
* Lunar Guidance is now a Tier 3 talent. Down from Tier 4.
* Planetary Alignment is gone.
* Balance of Power is now a Tier 2 talent. Down from Tier 3.
* Lunar Justice is gone.
* Moonkin Form is now a Tier 3 talent.
* Typhoon is now a Tier 3 talent.
* Earth and Moon – Your Wrath and Starfire spells have a 100% chance to apply the Earth and Moon effect, which increases spell damage taken by 2/5% for 12 sec. Also increases your spell damage by 2/4%.
* Nature’s Majesty – Increases the critical strike chance of your Wrath, Starfire, Starfall, Nourish and Healing Touch spells by 2/4%.

Feral

* Primal Fury has an additional effect – your critical strikes from Cat Form abilities that add combo points have a 50/100% chance to add an additional combo point.
* Ferocity is gone.
* Heart of the Wild is back as a Tier 1 talent.

Restoration

* Wild Growth is now a Tier 5 talent. Down from Tier 6.
* Swiftmend is now a primary skill.
* Empowered Touch is now a Tier 4 talent. Down from Tier 5.
* Natural Perfection is now a Tier 6 talent. Up from Tier 5.
* Fury of Stormrage is now a Tier 5 talent. Up from Tier 4.
* Master Shapeshifter – Grants an effect which lasts while the Druid is within the respective shapeshift form. Bear Form – Increases physical damage by 2%. Cat Form – Increases critical strike chance by 2%. Moonkin Form – Increases spell damage by 2%. Tree of Life/Caster Form – Increases healing by 2%. /



My notes:

Moonkin is back in the balance tree, so I thought that would make Starsurge the level 10 talent (they were deciding between Moonkin and Starsurge, earlier), but it’s listed here as baseline. I think this might be a misunderstanding of the word baseline (when I read baseline, I think that it’s available for all druids – but I think here it means baseline for Balance, at 10).

Nice to see the first tiers fixed up a bit, but I’m not happy having to dump 3 points into Natural Shapeshifter, an ability that I will use so rarely – that’s pretty crappy. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it stays like that. It’s required to get down to Master Shapeshifter, so we have to take it for a healing boost, but I don’t like investing 3 talents into something that is near worthless (even more than before).

Welcome back Gift of the Earthmother, glad you made the cut. Still mourning Imp Barkskin, come back to us!

Nom Nom Nom no longer has a “NNF” tag – is the name going to stick?

Hmm, no more Naturalist, did it get the bump? Will HT’s cast time be changed at all?

So far, fairly underwhelming, there still really aren’t many “choices” to make, unless you take a couple of points out of healing talents to put into Fury of Stormrage etc. I’m hoping that the trees are still really, really preliminary. I won’t be worrying too much until we see more information.



Armor specialisation bonuses

The new armor specialisation bonuses:

* Cloth Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Cloth.
* Leather Specialization – Increases Agi by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Wild Leather Specialization – Increases Stam in Bear Form by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Wild Leather Specialization – Increases Agi in Cat Form by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Mail Specialization – Increases Agi by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Tribal Mail Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Plate Specialization – Increases Str by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Defender’s Plate Specialization – Increases Stam by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Blessed Plate Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Plate.
* Astral Leather Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Leather.
* Elemental Mail Specialization – Increases Int by 5% while wearing only Mail.
* Furious Plate Specialization – Increases Str by 5% while wearing only Plate.

I assume the bolded line above is for us. So, wear only leather armor (cloak excluded, of course) and you’ll get a free 5% intellect. Put on some cloth boots that might normally be BIS, and you’ll lose that freebie 5% intellect. This is to encourage people to gravitate towards their class-appropriate armor, but not lock you out of upgrades entirely.

So if a cloth item drops and it’s a big upgrade, you can still use it, but you’ll need to weigh up the loss of mana/regen/crit etc. Edit: forgot that in Cataclysm, Intellect also grants Spellpower, so unless it’s a *very* big upgrade, 5% int will probably win out, meaning you’ll usually be hurting yourself taking cloth.

Personally I don’t know why they don’t just give us each one type of armor, lock us out of the other types, and fix the available loot so that we don’t covet another class’ gear all the time. I’d *like* to only wear leather, and I don’t think we need incentive programs or punishments for deviating – get rid of the problem at its root and restrict us to one type each. Then there won’t be any crying over pallies taking cloth, or everything being hunter armor, or whether it’s fair for balance druids to compete for BIS cloth pieces. Restrict us to one class, but make sure there are fair amounts of drops (with desirable stats) for everyone.

My two cents!

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Imagine smacking your funny bone – you know that feeling? Now imagine that the feeling never goes away. Ever. HAPPY FUN TIMES.

Waiting on x-rays to make sure it’s not an issue with my neck, but my doctor is pretty sure it’s carpal/cubital – I have some tingling in my thumb/index/middle, but mostly it’s my pinkie. It’s possible I have carpal AND cubital (with more emphasis on the cubital).

For the last few weeks I’ve been complaining of having cold hands even when my body is perfectly warm. I didn’t think much of it, though, because I always get cold when other people are hot. I thought it was just winter or something.

Then in the last week or so, my fingers have started to tingle. Again, I just thought it was the cold weather making them tingly. No big deal.

They yesterday, they tingled all day, with a numb feeling too. It was driving me crazy. I couldn’t sit at my desk, or drive, or rest my arm on anything for more than a few seconds before the feeling came back again. So I made an appointment in the afternoon to see the doctor. I suspected carpal tunnel, but thought maybe it could be a circulation issue, and possibly related to my migraines.

He was really great – very friendly, laughed with me (instead of the condescending courtesy laugh that most doctors give). Actually felt my hands with his fingers, for changes in temperature etc. He did a bunch of strange tests, including flicking the nerve on my wrist, which did nothing for a while until he got it bang on, and I jumped about a foot and yelped. Bingo!

I am exacerbating the problem with long periods of computer work, but also the way I sleep with my hands curled up – I’m not sure why, but it’s stupid, and I hate that I do it – but I can’t stop it while I’m fast asleep. So I bought a wrist brace to wear while I’m sleeping and working (or gaming). Forcing it to stay straight while I sleep should help with some of the irritation.

The problem though is that while it’s great to type in, very comfy.. the brace part actually pushes against the back of the mouse, so it makes the mouse do things I don’t want to do. In a raid setting this would mean a lot of trouble using mouseover macros, because the cursor will go off in directions that I don’t mean it to.

I’m hoping that it will get better, that I’ll get used to it and it’s just that I’m not comfortable with it yet.. but at the moment I am feeling pretty down. WoW is my way of “getting away” from things that stress me or upset me.. but what happens when I’m upset about not being able to play?

I needed a break from raiding anyway, I guess. But it does make me worry that I won’t be able to be a raider again. Last night I couldn’t raid with it, so I played an alt for a while, but I had to keep dropping my hand down to dangle at my side, to alleviate the buzzing. Basically, anything that has my arm bent at the elbow makes my fingers tingle – so, sitting with my arms on an arm rest, driving, using a mouse.. lots and lots of things. It’s crazy annoying.

On the bright side, he started me on migraine blockers, so at least I (hopefully) won’t have to worry about being out of action for days at a time with migraines. A buzzy finger is driving me up the wall, but I would take it over migraines any day. Not really keen on surgical options, but I guess I’ll have to wait and see if the brace (and some adjustments at work) improves it enough for me to cope.

Blah.

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Q. Will druids finally get shapeshifting on a separate global cooldown like hunter aspects & warrior stances?
A. We have no plans to remove shapeshifting from the global cooldown. Shapeshifting can be used to escape Root and Polymorph mechanics, and so cannot have no global cooldown.

Q: Any plan to make “Crit Immunity” passive from choosing a tank tree instead of spending talents on it?
A. No, and you can blame the druids. We want a tanking specialization in Bear Form to feel different from a DPS specialization in Cat Form, otherwise it doesn’t feel fair to other classes when the Feral druid can do everything with the same talent specialization. We try to put crit immunity in talents you would normally take.

Q. Is Moonfire designed to be a damage-over-time spell with an instant cast nuke, or the other way around?
A. Both. We want the instant nuke to be more meaningful in Cataclysm, especially on the move.

Q. Can we expect more fun talents and maybe even shiny new abilities in further iterations of the new talent trees?
A. Yes, the current beta trees are still very much works in progress. As paladins in particular will see shortly, that ongoing work certainly can include fun talents and shiny new abilities.
Note: I put this in because I’m fairly certain it applies to us as well. Hopefully we’ll get shinies.

Q: What is the conversion rate for intellect to spell power for Cataclysm? Will it differ with each class?
A. Each point of intellect grants one point of spell power, excepting the first 10 points. This is vaguely similar to attack power, where each point of strength or agility gives two attack power, excepting the first 10 points. We realize this slightly reduces the spell power per budget on items, so we also increased the amount of spell power granted by caster weapons, and that increase entirely makes up for the deficit. Those weapons will continue to have spell power as well as intellect, and the amount of spell power will be significantly larger than in 3.3.5.

Q. Last time I checked the Feral druid tree, there were only 5 points in the first tier which means NO choices. Is that getting fixed?
A. Still working on early Feral.

Q: Cat and Bear builds are only off by about 3 talent points. Why not just consolidate fully at that point?
A. This is definitely one of our concerns. We don’t want a player to be able to have an optimal DPS specialization in Cat Form and be able to tank. We will definitely engineer the Feral tree such that being a viable tank, or even off-tank, will have some cost in terms of lost DPS while in Cat Form. The druid talent trees currently in beta are very rough and need more polish.

Q. What’s the deal with Typhoon? Is it going back into talents or will it be a standard druid spell?
A. Typhoon is now back in the tree. Sorry about that. : )

Q: Any word on that cosmetic Tree of Life Form glyph? Some players are sad to lose Tree of Life Form completely.
A. The only new glyph we are ready to announce right now is the Glyph of Divine Shield, which reduces the cast time of your Hearthstone whenever Divine Shield is active. ; )
Sigh, making light of something that concerns a lot of people, and that we’ve waited months to hear news about… poor form. Why not just say “not at this time”?

Q: Moonkin: What are your plans for Eclipse, and why does it infect so many of our talents? What are your plans to make Moonkin fun?
A. The model we are trying now lets Solar and Lunar Eclipse procs last for about 45 seconds, and each spell of the appropriate type that you cast moves the bar back closer to the middle again. The buff is canceled by reaching the middle. This should let Moonkin “hold” the buff for short periods of time when they need to move or get out of the fire.

Q. Why was the Feral druid’s mana reduction cost removed from King of the Jungle? And what happened to two combo points on critical strikes?
A. These are data errors that will be corrected. Neither is intended to be cut.

Q. Skull Bash has a 1-minute cooldown. Is it supposed to be that way, or can we expect it to be lowered to the likes of Shield Bash?
A. The base cooldown is 60 seconds to keep the ability from being used by Balance and Restoration druids to layer too much crowd control. A Feral tree talent reduces the cooldown to 10 seconds, putting it in line with Kick and other similar interrupt abilities.

Q. Druids were always a “jack of all trades, but master of none” and usually mocked when specializing. Will new talents change this?
A. In my own raids, I find druids of all 3 specializations that excel at their chosen specialization. So, I don’t understand your question.

Q. Druids now get Swiftmend at level 10 for being Restoration, but it is a talent in the tree. What is the plan there?
A. This was a data error and has been corrected.



These are just for fun.

Q: Are there any plans to add Ghostcrawler in-game as a critter or elite crab?
A. Ghostcrawler would be very emo were he to gaze down from his Throne of Lies and behold the mass crustacean slaughter that would result in having more manifestations of his persona in the game.

Q: What size shoes does Ghostcrawler wear?
A. I generally go barefoot on the yacht. Around on the office, I am often carried on gnome palanquin, so shoes are not required.

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Have I missed you? Please let me know.

It’s highly likely I subscribe to you, but I need to manually add you to that sidebar list, and I’m very forgetful. I found a few long-standing blogs that weren’t on that list, despite the fact that I’ve subscribed for ages. *hangs head*

Please leave a comment, or send me a quick note, and I’ll add you to the list. The more resto druid blogs, the merrier!

Thanks!

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A summary of the changes to talent trees in Cataclysm:

1. Each tree/spec has been reduced to 31 point length. There are more than 31 points in each tree, but the last talent is the “31 point talent”, the one that requires you to spend 30 talents in the tree.
2. Players will now get a total of 41 talent points to spend.
3. When you hit level 10, you will be asked to choose a spec. This will unlock a unique spell/ability and some passive bonuses, and will also lock you out of the other two trees, until level 70. After level 70 you can put points into the other trees.

Blizzard have mentioned that this is a “first pass” for all of the trees, and some clases, including druids, are not as far along in development – so expect changes. The work-in-progress talent tree is here if you want to play around. In the meantime though, here’s a quick idea of how things like for now:


What cool stuff do we get at level 10?

Balance: Starsurge + pushback reduction on balance spells
Feral: Mangle + ? + Vengeance (damage taken in bear converts to AP)
Resto: Swiftmend + pushback reduction on healing spells + Meditation


What’s our 31 point talent?

Balance: Starfall
Feral: Berserk
Resto: Tree of Life (duh!)


What’s changed, or new?

There’s nothing *new* in the tree (since the official preview) – the new talents are the same that they had already announced. So no new toys.

However, they’ve removed the “+X% spellpower” type filler talents, meaning that our trees are now all “meat” and no cheap fillers.

Nature’s Focus (pushback protection) is stitched in. Subtlety is gone. Good riddance, you point-leeches.

I believe we will be getting a talent point every second level or something like that – so at first glance, it seems like we’re getting all our talents super early – but I think they’ll be stretched out. Even so, great talents like Imp Rejuv, Living Seed, Nature’s Bounty – they’ve all been moved further up, which is nice. Strangely, Empowered Touch is quite far down – I would have thought we’d be given that earlier, for dungeon-ing.

The really nice toys are at the bottom – Efflorescence, Swiftmend, Emp Touch, Emp Rejuv, Wild Growth, and of course, Tree of Life.

In the balance tree, I’m sad to realise that Solar Beam is now out of reach for standard X-0-31 builds. Bum. I kinda liked that idea. Looks like Genesis and Moonglow are it.. still not sure what’s happening with Nature’s Grace. With only 10 points to spend, we can’t get any further down into the balance goodies.



Notable omissions/scratched talents

- Imp Tranquility
- Imp Barkskin
- Subtlety
- Naturalist (will the cast time of HT be reduced?)
- Omen of Clarity (to be trained)
- Improved Tree of Life (will the cooldown be reduced?)
- Master Shapeshifter (why bother with Natural Shapeshifter at all?)
- Gift of the Earthmother (boo, I was looking forward to the T8-style heal)
- Nature’s Splendor (from the balance tree) – will our HoTs be short now?



AMG IT’S BROKEN

Don’t stress, the trees aren’t broken, they’re just REALLY preliminary. Look at the resto tree – Master Shapeshifter is gone (since it was a flat buff to output), leaving only Natural Shapeshifter – but what do we trees care about saving a few hundred mana every 5 minutes? That means we have to waste 3 points to get to the next tier.

Bears, too, are forced to waste points in cat talents just to progress.

The balance and resto trees are both showing their Level 10 freebies as talents, so I’m not sure what the story is there. Update: Blizz have said they’re considering giving balance druids Moonkin at 10; Swiftmend is probably just a mistake, since the trees are so early in development.

I think what we have here is all of the talents that Blizzard wanted to keep, but thrown together in a hurry to release. I wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed it out ASAP in order to distract people away from the Real ID drama. So what we have is a super preliminary glance at what the trees MIGHT look like – but until they reshuffle, it’s hard to know what our specs will turn out to be. The scrapped talents might come back, the talents may be shuffled around, etc. We really know very little, so far.

My concern at the moment isn’t really the talents, but what is happening with TOL. So far, it’s a pretty mediocre ability – 45s on a 5min cooldown, to get a 15% buff, throw instant Regrowths (okay), double Lifeblooms (but we can only have them on a single person at a time, so that’s pretty crappy), 2 more WG targets, and we’re not sure about the rest. I’m not really sold at this point, because it’s basically a 15% healing buff with some weak bonuses sewn in. I want to know, at the very least, if they are going to let us shift in and out (to get to safety) without losing the rest of the buff.

I guess the only thing about the talents that worry me (at this early stage) is the fact that it looks like you can max out your tree easily, and there’s really no room for individuality or thoughtful decisions. I think the 31 point trees look to be moving us towards being even more “cookie cutter”, which is odd, because Blizzard made statements that they wanted our choices to be more meaningful. I wonder if anything will change in that respect.

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We will be taking orders for seven days, ending next Monday night. We will collect all the orders, send them to the BRK Tshirt Manufacturer, receive the order, then mail the shirts to you lucky b@stards.

Shipping is by Priority Mail via the USPS, international orders are accepted too. We are using USPS’s pricing structure exclusively for shipping and not tacking on our own “shipping fee”, okie-day?

Tell your druid friends what’s going on here! If we get a good order, we might do other class-shirts as well. Gotta keep our BRK EA employed, don’t we?



For sizes & prices, visit bigredkitty.net.

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Back in TOC, my 10 man guild ran “organised PUGs” of 25man TOC, including heroic modes – which, at the time, put us briefly at 3rd on the server progression ladder, or something similar. So I’m always interested to see “casual” or weekend raiders getting through content.

Yep, my guild just downed LK. We raid about 6 hours a week. I don’t really play much outside of that.

Just wanted to give a thanks to Blizz for allowing people like me, that have the desire and skill to raid, but not necessarily a whole life to dedicate to this game to be able to progress and see all the content.

I’ve never been about striving to be the very very best at this game, but through the badge system and many of the new tools the game has to offer I’ve been able to stay relevant (and viable) enough to let the way I play, not my gear, qualify me as a raider.

Please continue with the direction you are taking the game (minus the forced RealID of course).

Looking forward to hard modes.

/cheer

It made me smile. I figured the guy would be pounced on by a few jerks, with false “grats”es and whatnot. Zarhym was in there censoring, so that may have been the case.

But it just made me think about the ICC buffs, and how much I like this system.

Back in Sunwell, we were racing against the 3.0 clock. We didn’t get Illidan first, but we did get Kalecgos and Brutallus, by quite a good margin. Unfortunately Felmyst, while an awesome encounter, called for bulk shamans and priests, something we just didn’t really have. We recruited new ones, but they were undergeared or not terribly good. People got tired of wiping to slow reactions, and the snowball of attrition and burnout got bigger and bigger, until eventually the guild dissolved.

We reformed later, and with the 3.0 nerf to boss health (and our new abilities), we easily cleared Sunwell.

But it was no achievement. Not really. Not when you knew how hard guilds struggled against Mu’ru, or how finely tuned KJ was. We had the smug satisfaction if beating Brutallus the hard way (that fight really felt earned), but everything else was a bit of a freebie.

I really wish, back then, that it had been a gradual process, like we’re seeing in ICC, rather than WHAM – 30% nerf/buff.

My guild has dissolved twice – once at Felmyst, and once at Yogg Saron. While we always had a strong and skilled core, it seems hard to escape the problem of having a chunk of raiders that aren’t willing to wipe for more than a few nights. I remember working on bosses for months – but these days, it seems as though a night or two is the limit before people start posting absences and dragging their feet. That’s highly contagious, and always on my mind as we approach obstacles.

Coming up to the harder heroics in ICC, I begged my officers to consider taking things easy and not pushing. We’d love to be first on the ladder, of course, but not ever again if it meant running the guild into the ground along the way.

So we “took a break” from progression (much to the delight of our resident harassers), and slipped back to second place. For a few weeks, while attendance was low and lag was high, we cut our raid nights back, and simply farmed the easier heroics, and swapped to normal mode to do Putricide, Sindragosa, and the Lich King (being able to toggle difficulty is also a great feature, rather than separate lockouts). We recharged our batteries, waiting for Ruby Sanctum, and hopefully an upward trend on attendance.

Basically – we were willing to take people pointing and laughing at our stalled progression, if it meant protecting the guild from burning out as a group. We don’t mind waiting for the 30% buff to get things down, if that’s what it takes, without pushing people over the edge.

As the expansion approaches, attrition is inevitable. People are tired, or on vacation, moving house, having internet problems.. but instead of giving ourselves ulcers, we’re adopting the “slow and steady” approach.

And honestly, without the gradual buffs, I doubt we would have got this far. The knowledge that in a few weeks things will be a bit easier – I think that goes a long way to help veterans stave off burnout, and new recruits bridge the gap between the gear they have now, and the DPS we need.

So.. thumbs up to this idea Blizzard – I think this new system is great. I think there are probably some improvements that can be made, such as allowing people to choose the level of the buff (if they don’t want the full 30%, for example), but overall, I think it is really good. Letting everyone see the content has not been as much of a “casual zergfest” as I suspect many people though it would. You still can’t breeze in and mow everything down in a PUG. And, of course, it lets people jump in on their alts, too, without hurting the group. In Cataclysm, I may need to revert to being a weekend raider, so the prospect of still being able to see all of the content, even if it takes much longer – that’s just fantastic.

Most importantly (to me) though, it means that serious guilds, who might otherwise have fallen frustratingly short of the mark (as in the past!) can use the buff to finish what they started, despite attrition and despite having to recruit green or undergeared players. Perhaps there’s no difference between nerfing a boss by 30%, or buffing the players by 30%, but doing it over time lets us feel that we’re earning it, rather than just flipping a switch and making it a cake walk.

All I want is to finish what we started – but if we can do it without feeling like we were handed a freebie overnight, that would be great, too.

Good luck everyone, I hope you get through the content that you want to, before Cataclysm.

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*giggle*

Internet Dragons!

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It’s a hollow victory though – because (like many others) I feel that something has changed, now. They hid the knowledge of the Real ID plan from us. When they introduced it in-game, I thought it was a nifty thing. I’d missed my cross-server buddies. I liked using it. But, shortly after that, they announced the forums plan – which, obviously, had been in planning for a long time – so why did they pretend that Real ID in your friends list was the full extent of the plan for now?

I feel deceived.

And because I feel deceived, I’m not sure I can ever really believe them again, nor stop worrying about when the next big announcement will be, and at what cost.

I want to leave this game when either A) real life drags me away (kicking and screaming), OR B) the game actually ends. But for the first time, I saw myself quitting. Real ID on your friends list, and even on the forums – I can handle that. But the question was – where next? In the armory? In trade chat? In mouseover tooltips?

I don’t subscribe to most of the arms-flailing, slippery slope cries – but after this, it’s hard to ignore that we could be heading towards a transformation, chipping away at our privacy (and immersion) bit by bit, until we’re all playing World of FacebookCraft.

And the sad, sad realisation for me was that if they did that, I simply couldn’t continue to support them. I can’t support a company that thinks it is ok to share everyone’s personal information. None of us signed up for that.

RealID can be a COOL feature, a feature that people will LOVE and embrace – but ONLY if you listen to us when we tell you the features that we need included – like the ability to hide from friends-of-friends, to use aliases if we want (after all, once we’ve found our RL buddies, they can add a note to say “this is Keeva”), and ways to appear offline. And NEVER force it on us, or make it opt-out only.

Treat us like you value us. Give us the features we need, and make it opt-IN.

I would hate to leave – I love the game, and I love this blog especially, and I’m not ready to give it up. But yesterday, I was genuinely concerned that the time to quit was somewhere around the corner. Blizzard’s statements don’t do anything to ease my concerns:

Q: Is there a possibility that a future game will require a person to use their real identity?

A: We haven’t announced any plans along these lines.

Sidestepping makes me a little nervous (not that ANY of us are surprised that it’s a “not at this time” response). I don’t think this is over.

I am not normally a cynical person – and excuse the melodrama – but this hit me pretty hard, and I felt pretty depressed over it. I saw my beloved game going downhill, and fast, because the bosses at Activision Blizzard don’t seem to be in touch with their customers. It seems that this time, 50,000+ voices made a difference, and they listened. But that doesn’t for one second convince me that they are actually in touch with us after all.

For now, I’ll keep playing, keep enjoying, keep looking forward to Cataclysm.

But I’m afraid I see this as a stay of execution, not a pardon.

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