World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Welcome to the latest World of Warcraft newsletter from Ten Ton Hammer. The Overpull, where we gather most of the things we should and a few we probably shouldn't.

In this section we'll look at the hits and misses taking place in the game. 

Pretty easy pickings this week - biggest wipe of the week is a toss up between the full day of patching, the instability of the servers or the drop off of any number of other issues (anyone seen my lost talent points?).

Even though we knew it was coming, Dual Spec is pretty awesome. Yes there are issues and yes it would be nice to have the gear changing mod included, but it sure is easy to dual spec now.

Jury is out on Argent Tournament. My very unscientific poll has yielded a grand total of "meh." I need more data, what do you think of the new quests and what is your overall reaction to the tournament?

Ah the good old days. Some we miss, but most we just appreciate (for the fact that they're gone!).

This week we hearken back to the early days of WoW when patching was feared and reviled. While it still is a scary day in the life of a WoW player, it is nowhere near as bad as it used to be. Days of downtime, queues to get back in after the server drops, crazy fall-through-the world bugs. It was all there. Even though Blizzard gets a passing grade this time (see below), the cumulative grade over the four and half years has to be closer to a "D" than an "A."
   

Deploying a software patch is like breaking a window. Everyone hopes that the new version will be better than the old version and it's typically very messy. If all goes well, it is still a mess. Whatever happens, there is going to be a lot of broken pieces (aka bugs). The nice broken pieces are easy to find and get picked up very quickly. The harder to find little slivers of broken pieces can hide for days, weeks or months. Let's face it, you can't walk barefoot in the area for quite a while. To close the loop on this horrifically long analogy, we are still wearing shoes when playing the latest Patch 3.1 for our beloved World of Warcraft.

The first few days were nip and tuck as the servers we as stable as me dancing on tables at the bars after Blizzcon. The majority of the server issues seem to be behind us, and now we're dealing with all of the nagging little slivers of glass that threaten to lodge into our bare feet.

What is the verdict of patch 3.1? It is probably too soon to really tell, but so far I'd give it a grade of "B." The Argent Tournament appears to be a good way to spend some time, and the rewards are nice too. Ulduar has been unexplored for me thus far as our raid nights got blown out of the water by server flubs last week. Have you ventured into Ulduar? What do you think? Is it easier or harder than you anticipated? I'll have a report next week on my findings.

Last but not least, the infamous Dual Spec has become reality. I have plunked down 2,000 gold to DS two of my characters, and have yet to use it outside of the cities (typically I'm standing at the Auction House). We have had plenty of people doing the DS switcheroo during raids, but interestingly much more often in the 10mans than 25man runs. That makes sense, but I never thought about the prevalence depending on the size of the raids.

Late Breaking news....Patch 3.1.1 is being deployed today. It looks like the glass cleanup is right on schedule. There are some good housekeeping bug fixes and we all get our talent points reset as well. You are using the "Preview Talent Changes" so you can undo your talent mistakes before you set them in stone right? Make sure you set up the talent confirmation option in the Interface and then Display area. That little option has saved me a ton of gold already. (thanks for the reminder Miralyn!).

And we'll leave off this week with a deep thought from Jack Handey Jenkins:
"If any man says he hates war more than I do, he better have a knife, that's all I have to say."
So last week we determined Jack played Horde, and it must have been on a PvP server.

Have the shattered bits and pieces of Patch 3.1stuck deeply into that sensitive part of your foot, or have you been wearing shoes? Is Ulduar awesome? Did the Argent Tournament live up to your expectations?   Stop by and let us know?

Until next week, have fun and thanks for reading,
Medeor