Addons played for you, there was a time when addons could do a lot more for you. It might be an exaggeration of course, but not by much. You get the oddball from time to time that declares that any addons or ones like DBM/Bigwigs/DXE are cheating or lame or whatever but these folks would be shocked at the sort of addons that existed back during Classic (and in some cases TBC).

Raiding wasn’t just raiding. Today all you have to have when you walk into a raid dungeon is a flask and food (potentially elixirs for tanks). Bonus points if you have scrolls, or drums to fill in for no priest or no druid/pally. However back during Classic raiding entailed having to farm for multiple hours outside of raid times to gather buffs, mats, etc… Some of you might remember those crystal BOP buff things from Un’goro crater, I don’t know if they still exist after Cataclysm but for serious progression you’d have to farm that stuff up! And let’s not forget potions, flasks, etc… During much of Classic potions could be chugged, so for most of the overtuned (gear check) encounters you’d be chugging pots, whether as a tank or a healer, or a dps.

PvE Balance — there were some specs that simply didn’t work! These folks with those thick rose-colored glasses on often forget this too or don’t want to admit to it, but some specs were downright unplayable or pointless/worthless to bring to raids. Aside from the fact that Shamans and Paladins were faction specific (Horde and Alliance respectively) some classes were just not even worth bringing to raids — Warlocks for instance, in almost every way they were inferior to Mages. Granted you might stack Warlocks for a fight like Garr to banish adds, but is that really what you’d call viable? Right now during Cataclysm you hear complaints from the community when a spec is 10% below the top dps class! Frankly if you consider Classic that’s amazing that you could walk into Firelands as a Frost Mage and do fine DPS. Ask a Retribution Paladin how that worked out back in Classic (that is if you’re feeling cruel and want to see someone cry).

PvP Balance — This is, of course, a joke. Such balance didn’t exist at all and this is where I start to feel really cynical about the “Classic was better!” crowd. Truthfully all but a few specs were even usable in PvP. Rogues, Mages, Warlocks; and specific specs of those. Warlocks were mostly imbalanced because of fear, Mages were capable of putting out significant burst at times and/or CC’ing you for obscene amounts of time (on the plus side you do look really cute as a sheep), and Rogues… well… “You can’t do that while stunned.” Now, to be fair, these folks who declare Classic the best version of WoW ever and specific cite PvP as the reason might have played these classes or specs that did really well (read: were grossly imbalanced) so they may actually have a point here about the game being better. Personally I prefer the person I’m fighting to not just end up dead because I hit a couple buttons in a row!

PvP in general — I will admit that I miss AV a bit. I vaguely recall that battleground in all it’s glory, but in general most of my memories of Classic are dim, because frankly the game wasn’t that impressive back then (at least enough that I would remember anything). Anyway PvP in Classic is almost the definition of grind. Aside from the imbalances I mentioned earlier, the best gear generally came from Raiding, and those in raid gear mopped the floor with everyone in PvP. Grand Marshall was an insane thing to actually acquire as far as I’m aware that required months of pvp, literally almost nonstop battlegrounds. I seem to recall people getting together to play a character around-the-clock to accomplish this — similar to how folks team up for the Diablo II ladders and take turns leveling a character to 99. Regardless many folks may not like PvP today, but there aren’t many who would claim that the game is less balanced today then it was in Classic (unless they’re just being silly).

Going back to raiding breifly, something that stands out the most for me was C’Thun. Before Blizzard tweaked that encounter, it was not possible to down for months. I’m not talking about people being bad, I mean that C’Thun was literally impossible to defeat with the gear, skills, and damage possible for level 60 characters at the time. Yes, that was certainly the pinnacle of raiding don’t you agree? Wiping on a boss for months at a time before realizing that it was quite literally impossible to kill sounds like awesome fun to me. Frankly most of the fights are also simplistic in nature, nothing like some of the bosses from TBC, Wrath, or Cata. One could argue that the bosses in heroic 5-man dungeons today are far more difficult than AQ, MC, ZG or BWL bosses were back for 20/40 people (be honest, how many times do you cringe to see Blackrock Caverns to load and you hit Corla? What about Jin’do in Zul’Gurub? Stoncore period).

Where to now? Well I’ll save my discussion on TBC for another time. I wasn’t really intending to ramble on so long about Classic but I’ve seen so many folks complain about Cataclysm sucking as of late that it must have been aggravating me more than I realized. The last thing I’d like to mention is something I touched on briefly earlier about if the people who claimed Classic was better actually played Classic — HA! Frankly I think it’s hilarious. I’m pretty sure that if everyone who claimed to have played and raided/pvped in Classic actually did so the percentage of those who got to see endgame dungeons in Classic would be closer to 80% rather then 3-5%. And that’s the major thing in all this: it made no sense for Blizzard to waste so much time designing endgame dungeons or raids that a fraction of those playing would even see (not to mention the far lower number of those who finished them!).

Next time I’ll chat about TBC, my “serious” interest, and my awesome 70 Feral Druid!

I let my time run out recently, aside from the pre-cata events nothing was really that exciting anymore. I do miss playing with guildies and friends, but sometimes you just need a break from the game! Lest you forget it’s just a game, you know?

I’ll be starting work soon on a possible new Blizzard fansite. Still in the planning stages but I’ve got a bunch of ideas. I think Blizzforums deserves one final chance at becoming its own official (or unofficial) Blizzard fansite.

I’m becoming bored with WoW… It’s interesting really because this is the first time I’ve raided in all the time I’ve played (off and on over the years) and I’m actually having fun… however it’s becoming more and more annoying. My warlock is coming along in ICC, thanks to some drama the guild has had things sort of split up, but he’s at least almost 11/12 (Sindy is giving us some trouble mostly due to positioning issues and the like). My “main” character, my Druid, however is sitting neglected. I really enjoy tanking as a bear and I want to try to get into ICC more with him, but no one really needs a tank as we have some really good ones already, and most are Paladins — and they’re haxxing ways became obvious the other night when we downed Blood Queen when all but the tanks wiped and they took down the last 120k~ of her HP.

My main also has Loremaster, and he’ll finish up “What a Long Strange Trip it’s Been” come Halloween. Really there’s not much left to do except consolidate, sell off mats, hoard gold, and wait for cataclysm to drop. I’ll probably start running Zul’Gurub again, as it appears they’re removing it as a raid in Cataclysm — gotta get those mounts and turtle tomes!

Well that it for now, I’m off to update the site with a portfolio page, it seems that I forgot to “re-implement” one after I moved the site over to this new design.

Open the macro pane and click “New”

When you login to your Druid open the macro pane, to get to the macro pane all you have to do is hit the “ESC” key and click the “Macros” button or you can type /macro into the chat box and hit enter (I use the latter method as it’s faster). When you see the macro pane, click on the “<character> Specific Macros” tab (after all, you’re other toons are not likely to need to use your Bear’s macros!).

Oh yeah, and once you get to your bear’s specific macro page, click on New. You’ll see the following:

We’re going to be creating a macro for Mangle first, so you should name this macro “Mangle”. Leave the icon as the question mark. Hit Okay.

Create your first macro!

Right now you have an empty macro named Mangle, lets fill it in! Copy the following and paste it into your “Mangle” macro.

#showtooltip Mangle (Bear)()
/cast Mangle (Bear)()
/cast [nomodifier]
!Maul() /startattack

It should look like this after you’ve copied the text into your macro:

Now all you have to do is create three more macros for the other Bear attacks:

Name: Lac

#showtooltip
/cast Lacerate(Rank 3)
/cast [nomodifier] !Maul()
/startattack

Name: Swipe

#showtooltip Swipe (Bear)
/cast Swipe (Bear)()
/cast [nomodifier] !Maul()
/startattack

Name: FFF

#showtooltip Faerie Fire (Feral)
/cast Faerie Fire (Feral)
/cast [nomodifier] !Maul()
/startattack

Notes: These macros are setup so that when you use a modifier key (ALT for instance) your attacks will NOT use Maul. This is very useful in situations with low rage. Keep that in mind whenever you find that you’re burning rage too fast, just hold alt!

On the flip side I’ve seen Iron Man 2 twice, once at a midnight showing and again a few days later. Still awesome the second time around. I really enjoyed it, much better than most of the other crud coming out of hollywood. The new JJ flick and The Last Airbender are both looking really cool. Inception is also slightly intriguing, but the trailer seemed to basically give it away.

Besides movies I’ve just finished reading the Destiny Star Trek book series, and I got to say I really enjoyed them. However I have to wonder how many times the extended book ‘verse can “devastate” the Federation until there’s no one left. I really like Bacco, and the other secondary characters that were given their own minor histories and stuff. I love that the Borg have finally been taken care of, though part of me liked the Shatner take on it. My favorite series is — was — New Frontier by Peter David, but the most recent book in that series was extremely out there. I mean WTF out there. I really liked the time-skip at first, but now I’m not so sure, especially now that he’s killed off a major character and he’s got others spread out in various areas. It was one thing with two captains and two ships, but now it’s two ships, an admiral, a new empire, and the traitor with the ghost ship. To be honest it almost feel’s like he phoned in the last book, I don’t even know if I’ll pickup the next one now.

On a related note, I’m actually looking for a new Sci-Fi series to pickup and read. But I’m really particular about my sci-fi, especially in book form. I might go back and read that Shatner series “Quest for Tomorrow”; though that just annoys me because the last book was never written. Maybe I’ll just go back and read his Star Trek books, they’re not that bad actually. Or maybe I’ll just go off and pickup the books that Legend of the Seeker is based off of.