Sometimes certain people leave me speechless:
Blaileen in wow chat
I’ve actually spent the following 40 minutes trying to come up with something to say to that person which would convey my mindset properly.

The nicest I could think of was “Hey Blaileen, just a quick question about mages, how many spell schools do they have?”

But that wouldn’t have fit the bill.

“You nitwit, you know that Frostbolt hasn’t stopped working when you put your first talent point into fire, right?”

Too long. Not exactly enough subtlety in the insult.

“Make some room for frost and arcane spells on your action bar and solo them, you dolt!”

Still too obvious.

“WTS Arcane + Frost Spells to kill Fire Elementals. Rarely used.”

Sounds about right. Pity I thought about that one after logging for the night.

And they say mage’s primary stat is intelligence… Oh yeah, just dinged 51 on mine. I don’t have issues with fire elementals.

I’m frost spec :D

On Similar Matters


Just a quick heads-up here. I’ve now read on four separate sites that some people are ordering more than one Blizzard Authenticator for themselves, eg. if they play on a desktop computer and a laptop.

It doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid. You can use one single Authenticator for several accounts, but not the other way around. Multiboxing? One authenticator for all your boxes is enough. WoW, Scarcraft2 on battle.net and the future diablo 3 accounts can all be protected with the same Authenticator. But you can’t have two authenticators protect the same account twice.

From the Authenticator FAQ:

Can I apply my Blizzard Authenticator to more than one account?

Yes! You’re welcome to associate a single Blizzard Authenticator to as many accounts as you like. Please remember that you must have that Authenticator with you to log in to any of these accounts afterwards.

Can I keep one Blizzard Authenticator at home and another at work, and have both associated to the same account?

No. Each account can have only one Blizzard Authenticator linked to it at a time, so you would need to carry the Authenticator with you to log in from different computers.

Hope that clarifies it.

On Similar Matters


At the time of this writing, the Blizzard Authenticator is marked as sold out. It isn’t entirely clear whether I missed the opportunity to buy it this morning (and they’ve gone like hot cakes) or they haven’t actually yet been offered for purchasing.

If it’s indeed the former, Blizzard needs to take preorders ASAP. If they’re already sold out, it is quite clear everyone is feeling, like me, that it has instantly become a mandatory tool to increase your account security.

EDIT: Looks like I’m not alone with this disappointment. Siha at Banana Shoulders echoes the sentiment.

On Similar Matters


So after a significant slowdown to my posting activities, this is my 300th post on Altitis. Incidentally, the blog is also 1 year (and 10 days) old now.

Before moving on towards 400, let’s take the opportunity to review some facts both interesting and trivial about this place:

  • Collectively, my Damage Meter benchmarking series are what interested most readers, attracting slightly over 10′000 pageviews over time. While I can’t make any promises, I intend to get back to these “soon” to check where we stand now that the landscape has stabilized and the new combat log feature is almost ironed out.
  • My Parrot review remains the most popular post not part of a series, followed quite closely by my CowTip review.

Interestingly enough, as the wow blogosphere always makes a point of mentioning this kind of things, none of the above have ever been mentioned by wowinsider, and for that matter, haven’t been linked to from other blogs. The readers all come in through search engines, 98% from Google.

A quick review of phpbb3 combined with a mention of wowdb comes next in popularity, although I suspect most visitors to that page leave disappointed. From the search terms used, visitors were mainly interested in phpbb3 wow themes, not my short review & ramblings. Well, for wow-themed phpbb3 styles, here’s a short list:

There’s likely to be more out there if you want to google around but the above sampling should give you a good starting point.

My two most popular rants are tied to the Ghostwolf nerf, and I have mainly Mania to thank for that, as most viewers to these pages come from her blog.

One of my oldest theory posts still attracts a decent amount of viewers every day, the second one in the Defense Theory series which explains how PvE defense works, in particular for tanks.

Now for some other interesting or odd stats:

  • Last week, Altitis ranked second in Google for clicked queries on wrath talent trees (in fact I’m still second as I write this). There’s definitely a hunger for information on the matter out there. Unfortunately for visitors looking for this kind of information, what they get here is my post on how I believe it is too early to engage in in-depth discussions about wrath talents.
  • Some people are apparently still interested in my clumsy attempts to write my own armory crawler in php.
  • To the three people looking for Stop the Warrior: although we both are frequently commenting on each other’s posts and sometimes shouting out (or at) each other, his blog is over there. And while we’re at it, his GM, who holds a (probably deserved) bad opinion of me, has her own blog as well, and if you’re interested in insights into how guild management works in a serious raiding environment, you should have her on your blogroll. No excuses, go subscribe now.
  • What gives honor in AV? Killing other people of course, but also burning towers, holding onto towers until the end of the match, killing the opposing Captain (that’s either Galvander or Balinda depending on your faction), protecting your own captain until the end of the game, killing the enemy general.
  • Armchair from treehugger: dunno what you were looking for, but it sounds hurtful.
  • Casserole FFXI: sounds tasty
  • Cheese Conspiracy Theory: Yes, the good old mystery about the Darnassian Bleu still hasn’t been solved.

While there’s a lot of additional sassy keywords in here, this is probably enough of self-congratulation for a single post. As always, allow me to thank everyone of you for reading and commenting on Altitis, it’s your silent or outspoken presence which gives this blog a reason to be.

On Similar Matters


WWI: Totems to Effect Entire Raid

Just a few quick notes, while other class news look good as well, shammies get a few much needed enhancements coming their way:
- As per the post title, totems will now be raid-wide instead of just party
- Some totems will get merged (Grace of Air + Strength of Earth)
- Totems are confirmed to become physical [...]

So it’s Diablo 3 and it Looks Fiendishly Good

As you will have seen by now, the next game announced behind that cunning ice splash riddle building up to the blizzard worldwide invitational in Paris is indeed Diablo 3.

Blizzard Splash Page Speculation

Most of the people’s money appears to be on Diablo 3 at the moment. At the risk of eating crow tomorrow, my take is much more prosaic:
WotLK Beta starts tomorrow.
EDIT: Crow eating time. According to MMO-Champion, it’s Diablo 3.

On Similar Matters

Jumping the Wrath Gun? (7)
Jumping the Wrath Gun: A Point in Case (2)
WWI: Totems to [...]

Why the Optional Blizzard Authenticator will Become Quite Mandatory

Blizzard announced a new tool in the arsenal of measures to combat account theft, their authenticator. In short, you buy the authenticator for a small sum of money, tie it to one or more Blizzard game accounts, and from then on, whenever you want to log in, you will be prompted to type in not just your username and password, but also a short authentication code.

Blizzard Buffing Seasonal Events

Until last Fall, I’ve always looked at WoW’s seasonal events as a bit of a waste of time, mainly because they only offered mostly cosmetic rewards.

Bartle doesn’t get MMOs says Tobold, who doesn’t get Bartle

In one of these interesting meta-spats in the blogosphere, Tobold took exception to Richard Bartle’s statement in an interview to Massively that “I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft.”
Tobold proceeded to write a withering post about Bartle’s bitterness and irrelevance in modern MMOs which, Tobold believes, the old curmudgeon doesn’t grasp anymore.

Tobold on Story-Telling in MMORPGs

At the risk of being accused again of being a closet roleplayer (full disclosure: there’s no closet. I was a pen & paper roleplayer in my teens, I have fond memories both as a player and GM of these times, and that probably also explains why I spend most of my computer gaming in RPGs), here’s a heads-up on Tobold’s post about story-telling in MMORPGs, which I highly recommend.

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