Segregation is Bad

The other day I learned that Stratholme has been completely split in half. There is now a permanently shut gate between live and dead sides.

Bad move, Blizzard.

What benefit does this provide? Were there too many people wandering into the wrong side? Oh god, the horror. Players might complete an instance in a non-optimal manner!

This causes an actual problem even: the random postbox keys for the Postmaster boss can still include the mailbox in dead side. This means that on some runs they will potentially be unable to summon him, since to do so would require manually running in the other side (requeueing will reset the instance), a daunting and time-consuming task given that players could be coming from anywhere. Three keys drop, three are needed, and there are only six boxes. That means a one in six chance that a group cannot summon the boss.

A change that gives no benefit but gives an unreasonably high chance of blocking players from content. An excellent job. Well done. One might say, Mission Accomplished.

The anti-fun team has struck again.

Don't tell, show. Don't show, drag over by the ear and MAKE THEM

My mage was in Stratholme live side. Er. Newly dead side. Scarlet? I never liked that name for some reason. Well anyway, on the side with the Scarlets, demon boss, and no Baron Rivendare.

As luck would have it, the courier and his keys were looted by that warrior. You know the one. The DPS who constantly pulls by accident. Dies a lot. Cannot follow basic directions like "don't release."

I'd managed to get postman's pants earlier, so I had some interest in summoning him again. That 50 armor two piece bonus is just simply awesome. I mean, 50 armor! I know, jaw-dropping.

I'd taken note of the keys he had and managed to steer the group toward The Unforgiven, clearing space around one of the boxes. Somehow I got him to click it despite his protests that he had no keys. One down. We pushed on to the next box, driven by my claims of a boss, which were true, since Hearthsinger Piccolo was over there. I had a leftover key, so I did that box.

Then we somehow got sidetracked by the non-mailbox parts of the instance and I was afraid that all hope was lost. Thankfully the healer DCed and the tank and warrior got themselves killed. We went back to get them, since he was vulnerable to rats and gargoyle spawns. Hope returns! I seized the moment to ask what other keys he had. None. Two. One? What's a key?

Don't tell, show. Don't show, drag over by the ear and MAKE THEM. I decided to try "proof by brute force", a technique most notable for proving something about map coloring, but in my case, to prove that he had at a minimum one key left. So click this mail box. And there we go, a trio of undead with ridiculously high spell resist. The ring dropped, the priest healer won the roll, I felt a bit sad. Then I noticed that she had a really old ring from early Gnomerganan, so then I didn't feel so bad. She told me to wait, informed me that she couldn't use the ring yet due to level, and traded it to me. I thanked her and felt happy again (woo pixels!).

She had to go shortly after. She left too soon for my advice that if her baby had woken that a bit of whiskey could fix that. Either for the baby or her. Cure-all, even if it tastes awful. Seriously, who got the idea of drinking what is essentially rubbing alcohol poured through charcoal? I guess the same people who thought to drink old milk (cheese), spoiled grapes (wine), and grain which has been rotting in standing water (beer).

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, though you can shove its head under until it gets the idea.

We should go to Ravenholm

I started playing Half Life 2 again recently. I don't know why. During it I've noticed a theme: I really like burning places with zombies. In WoW it's Stratholme. In HL2 it's Ravenholme.

If you're not familiar with HL2, here's the general concept of the zombies: these parasites called head crabs, which are about the size of a very fat cat, latch onto a person's head. They then control them. The person is still alive, and from the sound of it, quite aware of their situation and the pain involved. For the most part they are slow and don't hurt much, but they make the most awful sounds. The worst is the one carrying the poison ones. It sounds so sad, yet relieved when it dies.

Ravenholme is a town that got bombarded with shells filled with headcrabs, resulting in a lot of fire and zombies. And Father Grigori.

I've decided that WoW needs someone like this holy man. He is clearly insane, but clearly a strange sort of genius, and perfectly devout. He remains in the town to save his flock. This means killing zombies. I find him to be an inspiration, the kind of man I'd hope to be when the zombie/alien invasion comes. Oh yes, the Earth of Half Life has been invaded by aliens, alien bugs, and zombies. The hero is a physicist who more than once is sent to stabilize a reactor core (nuclear would be trivial compared to this technology) and whose appearance causes joy among all nearby. He's followed by a hot chick who is good at killing zombies with her bare hands or gun. In other words, it's a nerd's dream.

I created my paladin before I knew about HL2, but somehow I ended up on a similar path. I like to kill zombies, I'm an engineer, and my character is her own hot chick. She is a blood elf after all. But perhaps she could be a bit more like Father Grigori rather than Gordon Freeman. A 'moderate Scarlet', meaning just as fanatical and crazy, but not as prone to murdering innocents. Unless they wander into one of my traps.u

Welcome home, to Hell

There's something about taking my paladin to Stratholme that just feels right. I suppose it is perfectly designed for us: huge groups of undead and plenty of corners to LoS casters. There's a high from pulling 6 groups at once and killing them all.

The force reactive disks help. Yea, that was plural. I carry three of them plus a sporeggar shield and my normal tanking shield. A single pull can wipe out half a disk. But hey, they cost almost nothing to repair (I forgot exactly, but it's less than 2g at zero durability). Bag space is an issue. I can easily [make 30 slots no longer empty by picking up drops off mobs. Learn to read in context].

Engineering: Better crusading through advanced technology.