By admin | Published:
June 15, 2009
Oh the times they are a changin.
-Bob Dylan
I’ve just realized that my last summer was my last real summer. I feel at times that I squander my time. That I could have been more productive rather than lax and idle. However the immediate counter is what else would I have really done with my time? Thats right folks its time for wow ethics.
There comes a time in every gamers ‘life’ if you will where you really have to take a step back and evaluate your priorities. You sit back and thing “Is what I’m doing with my time really worthwhile or time well spent? Does it actually benefit me?” The long and short of it is a swift no.
However all work and no play makes johnny a dull boy (or something like that). There is no fathomable way to judge how much time you would actually spend being productive if the subject actually interested you. I mean just imagine the amount of time you spent on a daily basis playing or being lax. There was a study I remember reading that quoted something like out of an 8 hour work day people only usually work about 5 hours. What do you do with the rest of your time.
You play, you learn, you relax. I suppose this is all based on feeling a little remorseful about my time spent in previous summers. Feeling that I can no longer realistically alot myself the same amount of time to enjoy being idle. Instead I get to enjoy the workforce.
By admin | Published:
June 7, 2009
Recently I stepped down as an officer. It’s really the first time I can say I held a position as an Officer or part of management and I can really say its a two sided coin. On the one side I really enjoyed it but on the flip side It really is a good deal of dedication and work.
Continuing with the positive side, being an officer really allowed me to enjoy the game on a whole different level. I felt needed and that I had a responsibility to the game and a group of people that I’ve never felt before. I feel that it really helped me bond to people more so than I normally would as well.
On the darker side though I can really say that being in a leadership position is not for everyone. Even if at one time its appropriate it may not continue to be so. In my own personal experience I can honestly say that I no longer wanted to be an officer. It became too much work. The analogy I came up with for being an officer was that it felt like I was working at McDonalds. Not that the guild was McDonalds but that being an officer felt like working there. Every day you do a job no one wants to and then on top of it you are guaranteed to have someone looking down their nose at you on an almost daily basis. In the end it became too frustrating and caused too much unnecessary drama to continue.
Overall I’m glad that I was an officer. It was so much fun and really expanded for me what the game could be. In a larger sense it helped me learn how to deal with people better and really gather some social and management skills. I now gladly but still wistfully step away from the position.
By admin | Published:
May 4, 2009
For a time I did not update my website at all. Partially this was due to really disliking the overall layout I was left with using the last theme I modified. I also think the change was in part reflective of my own personal tastes. Since making the switch though I am really enjoying my new theme. I will continue to modify and tweak it!
My hat is off to Ian stweart, creator of the Acamas Theme which I am currently using. I have modified it a bit thus far but I really enjoy the clean and simple elegance that the heavy use of serif fonts promotes along with a clean grid based style. It feels very letterpress-like to me. I also feel that the serif heavy theme lends a bit of weight to the overall feel of the website. Reminds me a bit, in the historical sense, how architects in San Francisco mainly built the american gothic style, and how architects where mainly chosen who attended le ecole des beaux arts; a school which emphasized teaching traditional styles. However, thats a post for another day!
You can find more themes of varying styles all based around the open source base of the theme called thematic at Ian’s website here:
By admin | Published:
May 4, 2009
H4xor.org was a service born out of the need for a drag and drop image utility for macs. All the widget did was directly upload whatever content placed into the widget (with a reasonable file size) and hosted the content on the web. It even set your clip bord current copy/paste option to a shortened url like tiny url if you wanted. However we are now left with this sad messege on the websites main page.
Hi, all. Due to h4xr’s exponential growth, my (free and generous) host is unable to support it, and I can’t afford a paid host with the amount of data h4xr uses. However, if by some miracle I can afford to bring h4xr back, then I will let you know…somehow 
. You can always support me bydonating with a credit card or PayPal. Peace.
– Patrick
All I can say is that I’m extremely sad to loose this service and would love it if it were to come back in whatever form. I’ve seen some of the other options such as the imageshack uploader widget but honestly everything else seems to pale in comparison to h4xor.org. This is also one of the reasons why many of the images on this blog are now broken links. If anyone knows of another similar service please let me know! Hope this has explained a bit why there are now so many lost images. In the future I’ll do my best to use another service.
By admin | Published:
May 2, 2009
By admin | Published:
March 17, 2009
Just finished the commotion website and am very happy with it! Everything is laying out perfectly and now I just need ot figure out how to add IRC chat.
However as happy as I am with the website I am VERY unhappy with apple. Apple has a particular problem with this one issue. If you need to restart for any reason using a CD in a drive good luck if anything happens to go wrong. After some exhaustive work trying to fix some different problems related to this and on different occasions I’ve decided to put in writing what I’ve learned. If you can start up a second apple you can boot your first as a oversized firewire drive by pressing and holding down “T” immediately after starting your mac. This will allow you to eject whatever is in your current drive.
Now say you close this drive while your doing some form of windows installation via Boot Camp. Good luck trying to get the damned drive open again! My own little adventure started with this tonight. I tried restarting the computer again as a external drive by holding down T but couldn’t get the drive open, could only access the drive when ejecting the CD originally ejecting the disc. I went on a hunt and found the following key combination. Press and hold “option+apple+p+r”. This will do a few things simultaneously; It will Reset your PRAM which controls which drive your computer is attempting to access when starting up as well as some other basic settings. This will allow your computer to boot from the default drive.
By admin | Published:
February 24, 2009
Looking at the changes listed blizzard has really gone out of their way to move desirable talents much further into trees. They have made it very clear that they are not open to hybrid specs and want DK’s to push further into trees. Even though though that have really adjusted the spells we use even. Below I will include the full list of changes released thus far.
Blood
Skills
- Pestilence is now 1 rank. It now spreads existing Blood Plague and Frost Fever infections from your target to all other enemies within 10 yards. (Previously dealt damage)
- Strangulate no longer deals damage.
- Blood Boil damage increased, but its range has been reduced.
- Death Pact’s heal can no longer crit.
- Blood Strike now instantly strikes the enemy, causing 40% weapon damage plus 305.6, increased by 12.5% per disease on the target at rank 6. (Previously caused 50% weapon damage plus 191, and an additional 95.5 bonus damage per disease)
- Heart Strike now
- instantly strikes the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus 368, increased by 10% per disease on the target at rank 6. (Previously caused 60% weapon damage plus 220.8, and an additional 110.4 bonus damage per disease)
Talents
- Blood Gorged (Tier 10) no longer grants expertise. Instead your attacks ignore up to 2/4/6/8/10% of the targets armor.
- Heart Strike (Tier 9) now strikes the target and his nearest ally, causing 50% weapon damage plus 125, increased by 10% per disease on the target.
- Might of Morgraine (Tier 9) now increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Death Strike, Heart Strike, and Obliterate abilities by 10/20/30%. (Previously was 15/30/45%)
- Sudden Doom (Tier 8 ) is now a 3 point talent and now has a 5/10/15% chance to launch a free Death Coil at your target. (Previously gave a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to make the next death coil cost no runic power and guaranteed it to crit)
- Blood Aura (Tier 7) renamed Improved Blood Presence and now while in Frost Presence or Unholy Presence, you retain 4% healing from Blood Presence, and healing done to you is increased by 10% in Blood Presence.
- Bloody Strikes (Tier 5) now increases the damage of Blood Strike and Heart Strike by 15/30/45%, and increases the damage of Blood Boil by 20/40/60%.
- Scent of Blood (Tier 2) now can proc off dodging, parrying or taking direct damage.
- *New Talent* Improved Death Strike, Tier 8, 2 talent points – Increases the damage of your Death Strike by 15/30%.
Frost
Skills
- Icy Touch now causes Frost Fever to last 15 secs.
Talents
- Hungering Cold and Howling Blast have switched places in the talent tree.
- Howling Blast (Tier 11) now deals 50% additional damage to targets infected with Frost Fever. (Previously dealt double damage)
- Unbreakable Armor (Tier 8 ) now Reinforces your armor with a thick coat of ice, reducing physical damage from all attacks by 0.05 and increasing your strength by 25% for 20 sec. The amount of damage reduced increases as your armor increases. (Previously just increased armor by 25%, strength by 10%, and parry by 5%)
- Blood of the North (Tier 8 ) now affects Frost Strike as well as Blood Strike.
- Chillblains (Tier 7) now reduces movement speed by 15/30/45%. (Previously 10/20/30%)
- Endless Winter moved from Tier 6 to Tier 4.
- Chill of the Grave moved from Tier 5 to Tier 4.
- Runic Power Mastery moved to Tier 1 and is now a 2 point talent. Increases your maximum Runic Power by 15/30. (Previously 3 point talent that increased runic power by 10/20/30)
- Black Ice (Tier 2) increases your frost damage by 4/8/12/16/20%. (Previously 6/12/18/24/30%)
- Glacier Rot moved from Tier 1 to Tier 5 and is now a 3 point talent. Now diseased enemies take 7/13/20% more damage from your Icy Touch, Howling Blast and Frost Strike. (Previously 5/10%)
Unholy
Skills
- Plague Strike now deals 50% weapon damage plus 189 and infects the target with Blood Plague, a disease dealing Shadow damage over time. (No longer removes a HoT)
- Raise Dead cooldown reduced from 5 minutes to 3 minutes. The ghoul now only lasts for 1 minute.
Talents
- Unholy Blight moved from Tier 11 to Tier 5.
- Scourge Strike (Tier 9) now deals 55% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 185.63, increased 9% per each of your diseases on the target. (Previously dealt 60% of weapon damage as Shadow damage plus 81, and an additional 40.5 bonus damage per disease.)
- Night of the Dead (Tier 8 ) now reduces the cooldown on Raise Dead by 45/90 sec and Army of the Deat by 5/10 min. (Previously reduced cooldown when you hit the target)
- Desecration (Tier 7) now causes all Plague Strikes to cause the desecrated ground effect. Targets in the area are slowed by 10/20/30/40/50% by the grasping arms of the dead while you cause 1/2/3/4/5% additional damage while standing on the unholy ground. Lasts 12 sec.
- Anti-Magic Zone (Tier 7) no longer requires a rune to activate.
- Unholy Aura (Tier 7) renamed Improved Unholy Presence and changed to: While in Blood Presence or Frost Presence, you retain 8/15% increased movement speed from Unholy Presence, and your runes finish their cooldowns 5/10% faster in Unholy Presence.
- Magic Supression (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent and You take 2/4/6% less damage from all magic. In addition, your Anti-Magic Shell absorbs an additional 8/16/25% of spell damage. (Previously a 5 point talent)
- Master of Ghouls moved from Tier 6 to Tier 4. It now also reduces the cooldown of your Raise Dead spell by 60 sec.
- Summon Gargoyle moved from Tier 5 to Tier 11.
- Blood-Caked Blade (Tier 4) now has a 3 sec internal cooldown.
- Shadow of Death removed from the game.
- Outbreak (Tier 3) no longer affects Blood Boil. It now affects Plague Strike and Scourge Strike.
- Necrosis (Tier 3) now only affects main hand auto attacks. (Previously affected all auto-attacks)
- Virulence moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1.
- Morbidity moved from Tier 1 to Tier 2.
- *New Talent* Ghoul Frenzy, Tier 6, 1 point talent – Grants your pet 25% haste for 15 sec and heals it for 30% of its health over the duration. 1 Unholy Rune. 45 Yard range. Channeled. 30 sec cooldown.
src: http://mmo-champion.com
Now keep in mind that is just the list of changes. When you get in to the nitty gritty of it Blizzard actually hit the nerf button pretty hard on a few abilities while improving others. Lets take a look at Howling blast shall we? Below is a graph courtesy of Torn on the Elitistjerks.com Forums. Click the image for a larger view.
Thats a pretty massive damage reduction to howling blast. I’ll continue posting as the day wears on!
By admin | Published:
February 11, 2009
Looking for 1 Tank DK and 1 DPS DK. Click the commotion image on the right if you are interested in a guild driven to clear content that values high player skill! Guild was created on 1/4/09 and all available content was cleared on the 27th of the same month. We have also killed 3DS post 3.0.8 with the twilight torment buffs and fire damage buffs to fire damage.
Action Shot: 
