Addon Discussion: Grid

This is the second in a three-part series about healing addons. At this point there is no plan to cover Healbot or any other addons, however I can be persuaded with cookies, good beer and/or great meat (cooked well of course). The follow-up should arrive early next week in a close up discussion about what the two have to offer. The first post can be found here.

As promised, here is my (very late) post on Grid. To start off and set the tone for the post, I didn’t really like Grid too much. It seems solid but for me Vuhdo worked much quicker and much easier. In any case, I’m not here to bash! Take the jump (I even made a [crappy] video for you all!) to hear my thoughts on Grid!

Efficient Farming

Farming. Lot’s of people hate it, many people do it, and few actually like it. And yet it has been the center of debate in WoW since the vanilla release date. There has always been a stigma placed on it, or at least a wary eye, with the concern that the farmer, or bot controlling the character, may be breaking the terms of service rules and in general being a nuisance to the WoW community. Soon after release comes the economic scene – pioneering adventurers that want to find the way to become most efficient at gathering and retaining gold. These pioneers have established the foundation on which we as a gold-making community function on. Back in their day, the tools they had for farming were their mouse, their keyboard and music or movies as a distraction. There were no flying mounts, and only a few zones in which they could get the high demand materials that defined the market in their day. Competing against other entrepeneurs, the going was tough. Today, we have it easy. We have countless addons that aid in making node spotting much easier, and even some addons that allow you to track both minerals and herbs, a breakthrough in leveling farming technology that allows the low-level player to cash out while leveling.

Sometimes, we get so bogged down with all the options that farming becomes just as difficult as it was in vanilla. So what are the best practices when it comes to supplying? Take the jump to find the answers!

Your Thoughts: Wheaton’s Law

No one wants to be that guy. If you do, you’re doing it wrong and deserve everything that comes your way. The sad part of the WoW experience, or really any experience in life, is that there will always be someone who is being that guy. So what’s the best way to deal with them?

Posting Schedule

I’m hoping to get into a good groove for updates on this blog. Right now it’s looking like MWF is the best schedule for updating, however once school starts again I have no idea how frequently I’ll be able to update. Here’s to hoping for the best. In the meantime, for the summer at least, expect at least 3 posts a week!

[Cata] Water Mounts and Underwater Zones

I’ve never been a big one for spoilers, however I stumbled across this one by accident and thought it was so ridiculously cool that I had to share it. Any of you that are already in the beta are probably aware that there is an all-underwater zone which just completely tickles my fancy. There are a variety of reasons for this love, however most are not applicable to WoW, so I will only share those that are.

Shamantastic: Cataclysm Talents

I finally found some time to follow through with one of my promises, which is to take a look at the Shaman Cata talents. I know that other blogs have done their own investigation and perhaps they have come to the same conclusion I have for Elemental and Restoration, however I want to share my thoughts on the specs I created and why or why not they may work in the expansion. I also did a tentative Enhancement spec though I’ve never played enhance so I’m batting into pitch black here. To help with the Enhancement discussion will be one of my guildmates, Longwalker!

Addon Discussion: Vuhdo

Well hi there! So I mentioned earlier that I would do a feature on Vuhdo and Grid. The way I’ve decided to do this has changed from my original vision. Ideally, I wanted to create two tutorial videos, one for Vuhdo and one for Grid and have one post that showed both of those videos and compared the addons. Since I don’t have any legitimate software for screen capture (I’m saving up for Fraps! I need $40: feel free to hit the donate button in the top left and help me out!) I figured that making those tutorials would be in vain, and when I investigated Vuhdo intensively with an eye for tutorial creation, I realized that the addon does most of the explaining itself. Next article will be on Grid and then following that will be a sum up of the comparison and final conclusions. Depending on my overflow of ideas (or lack thereof) this full set may or may not occur during this week. It would be pretty neat if it did though, so here’s hoping! Jump!

Blogging Carnival!

Helloooo! Markco is holding a blogging carnival over at Just My Two Copper about auctioneering and money making tutorials, guides etc. Since I do love me some money making and have learned a lot of what I know from his blog and the forums and IRC that they run (you should really check it out if you get the chance) that I figured I’d give back to the community. I’ve been pretty busy with homework, work and testing out recording software for the tutorial that I want to make for my addition to the carnival. We’ll hopefully be returning to regular programming tomorrow, but Wednesday is the absolute latest. I’m hoping to dig up some interesting ideas to talk about tomorrow, so check back just in case! Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend and all the free time to play WoW! (I sure am!)

Updates Have Occurred!

Update: Looks like the feed is fixed for new posts only. It has not grandfathered in the old posts. This shouldn’t be a problem. Problem solved!

Currently I’m trying to fix my feed so that it displays new posts in full text rather than summary. I’ve modified the necessary settings but it’s still not displaying correctly in my feed, so be a little patient with me. I’ve updated the theme of the blog so that it’s not so dreary and unexciting. It may still be rather dull, but we all start somewhere.

I’ve just recently gotten a new twitter account just for this blog: @pheshamanal and a new email address pheshamanal@gmail.com. I’ll be updating the About page shortly with this information. I’ve added a few widgets you might find interesting, especially a delicious feed for all of my wow tagged bookmarks. These are rather random and are just things that I like and want to save for later, but feel free to look at any of them. I’ve gotten a blog roll up and a few pieces of organization here and there.

The last thing I wanted to mention and be forward about is the addition of a paypal donate button. Currently I’m trying to figure out the best way to represent what I’m taking donations for and how to signify that I’m not running any specific donation drive at a certain time. I added it because I’m a starving college student and as much as I wish that I could afford to update and upgrade all of my blog stuff and perhaps a website, I can’t. This includes the purchase of software for making video tutorials, like the Vuhdo and Grid tutorials that I promised. I need $40 to purchase the software and so that is what I’m currently accepting donations for. The email address displayed after you click the donate button is my default email address that I used to register for paypal. Rest assured, none of this money is going to me for anything but what the drive is for, or towards the website. I want to make clear that any donations are not for me. They are for the site. Here’s my game plan:

1. Gather up enough donations to purchase Fraps (however long this may take)

2. Once Fraps is purchased, begin gathering donations for 1 year of hosting and domain name reservation costs

3. Once that money is gathered, purchase the .com and migrate the blog over to it. Ideally this site would have the blog itself, forums and more features that are yet to be implemented/shared.

During all of this, I’ll be working mostly on content for the blog. First and foremost is getting into a semi-regular schedule of posting. I’d like to have 2 or 3 full articles go up a week, however when school starts I may only be able to commit to 2 full articles for sure. My definition of a full article is like this post or this post. Smaller posts will be going up as well around the bigger ones. I’d like to develop at least one more column, if not two, that make regular appearances. Ideally, as time goes along, I’d also like to broaden the scope of the blog into healing and then other classes as well. Shaman will always be the main content offered here, but I’d like to be able to share my opinions and expertise on other classes and situations in WoW.

So Donate please, if you’d like to see video tutorials for addons and other fun things!

To those who have subscribed in any way or bookmarked the blog, thank you so very much, I hope you enjoy the content that I produce in the future. And to the feed readers: I’m working on it I promise!

Minor Overhaul

Over the next few days while delivering a few promised articles, I will be attempting to flesh out the About page more and add a couple more pages. I’d like to eventually move to a website that includes some extra features, but that’s a little ways off and I will need to set aside enough money to do so. In the mean time, you’re stuck here with me! Bwahaha!