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Where Are They Now? 2012 personalities, including the blind player and his 'guide dog'
At last, our look back at five years of WoW personality interviews rolls around to the duo everyone's been asking about: Hexu and Davidian, the British soldier blinded in Iraq and his redoubtable "guide dog" guildmate who steered him through full participation in current raid content. Their story exploded across the internet after we interviewed Davidian here on WoW Insider, and Blizzard recognized the dynamic duo with in-game helms with flavor text alluding to their inspiring bond of friendship. Hexu and Davidian are both still playing World of Warcraft -- but the duo is together no more. As of the new year, the ever-energetic Hexu has been raiding on a new rogue, Dirtypawz, in Unqualified on Stormrage (EU). "I know!" he replies to my unspoken exclamation of surprise and sadness. "It was just that people were only raid logging, and it got boring -- but it was all amicable and cool. I still speak to people in Die Safe. I just wanted to do more than raid three nights a week." Hexu/Dirtypawz says a "very nice bloke" named Vatic is serving as his current raiding "guide dog" helper. "The people in the guild are all nice people," he adds, "and there [are] always things going on." We'll visit with Hexu/Dirtypawz next month about how he's settling in and dig into his tips for the many sight-disabled players who've written to us during the past year trying to reach him for advice. Meanwhile, Davidian reports that the year since we interviewed him has been packed with recognition and encouragement. "The publicity was just unreal," he says. "Even to this day, I get people coming to our server just to say how much the story inspired them and restored their faith in the gaming community. The biggest thing of all, though, was the fact that it made its way to Blizzard, and myself and Ben got signed copies of the collectors edition of Cataclysm signed by at least 50 members of the Blizzard team, and [we] received in-game pets also. Then to top it off, having in-game items with our names on them was just outstanding -- I mean, to be immortal in a game that we love to play is just, well words couldn't possibly describe it." All good people connecting to play a game that's close to our hearts ... Keep reading for more updates about people who love World of Warcraft, from our interviews during 2012.
Well-known druid blogger Lissanna lowers the boom(kin) on autism research
It's only been a couple of weeks since we reported on the crowdsourcing effort to fund the autism research of well-known Restokin blogger and Blizzard MVP poster Lissanna, aka Dr. Elisabeth Whyte of the Laboratory of Developmental Neuroscience at Penn State. So far, supporters have boosted Dr. Whyte to just over a quarter of her funding goal for the project, which focuses on how children and adolescents with autism understand language and process information from faces (such as recognizing people or understanding emotional expressions). Her goal: designing a video game to help kids with autism improve these skills. How does an MMO-playing grad student transform from anonymous gamer to well-known WoW blogger, Blizzard forum MVP, and Ph.D.-level researcher bringing gamification to the treatment of autism? If you follow the example of this lady: with ease. WoW Insider: One-fourth of your funding already under your belt -- congratulations! Our readers already know that WoW can be beneficial to kids with autism, so it's exciting to hear about a gamification project designed to help kids with autism. Lissanna: Many kids and adults with autism seem to enjoy playing video games. We have some evidence that using fun activities can motivate learning. Our goal is to develop and test the efficacy of an educational game that impacts face processing abilities and social skills. With much of the research focused on important early intervention work, there is a huge gap in the services that individuals with autism can receive when they are older. We think that a sophisticated game can fill the need for social skills services targeting older individuals to help with tasks like preparing them for jobs or developing friendships with their peers.
Shifting Perspectives: Gearing a new restoration druid at 80
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we are proud to welcome a new generation of trees whatever we're going to be in Cataclysm. Before I do anything else, I want to draw some attention to a guide on restoration healing recently published by Tree Bark Jacket that is an incredibly impressive work. It's comprehensive and fun to read, and for anyone who's getting started with the spec, I highly recommend heading both there and to Lissanna's guide to restoration healing in patch 3.3. We're continuing our updated and expanded series on how to gear a new druid at 80, and this week we're going to tackle restoration druids. Frankly, a lot of the desirability for the listed pieces depends on your spec and current level of +haste (if you're wondering why that is, you'll find an explanation in our Restoration 101 post). If you are planning to raid on your resto druid, this is a bare-bones guide to what you need to look for: If you have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are below 735 haste, prioritize haste. Look for +haste pieces and gem Reckless Ametrines. If you have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are at or above 735 haste, you can either prioritize/gem spellpower or (much better) move points into more throughput talents in the restoration tree. If you don't have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are below 856 haste, prioritize haste. If you don't have 3/3 Celestial Focus and are at or above 856 haste, prioritize/gem spellpower. As you get new pieces, it may be necessary to gem or regem to stay around the haste cap.
The Daily Quest: Flash heals
Here at WoW.com we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow! The dungeon finder has been doing bad things to me lately. Bad, bad things. Really bad. I've been... well, I've been healing. A lot. When the dungeon queue for a healer is approximately thirty seconds long as opposed to the thirty minute long DPS queue? I'd rather help the problem, not add to it. To celebrate (read: lament) my newly found love of what we in the business call 'the heals' we'll be taking a look at healers 'round the blogosphere. Whether or not healers should need to worry about their mana has been a hot topic in the community recently. Check out Restokin's take on the issue. Life in Group 5, a resto shaman blog, teaches you how to analyze combat logs for healers. The Physician's Log, who is very quickly becoming a regular here in The Daily Quest, talks about being a new healer and the potential stresses that come with it. Lodur discusses the death of healer niches... and I think he's saying something else, too. Seems fishy to me.
The Daily Quest: Keepin' the Clouds Away
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Restokin answers a popular set of healing questions floating around the intertubes. WoW Relief has a good point about the new microtransaction pets and Blizzard's history with Make-a-Wish. Altadin: 25 divided by 10. Stormstrike sits down with an interview of the developer behind Gear Score. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Automatic Points
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. If you choose that category to talk about the race change or patch 3.3, you are automatically awarded the points. Restokin on the the latest druid change and the new LFG/LFR system. Gray Matter takes a look at a new simulation tool gaining some attention, SimCraft. Diabolical Minds takes a look at the hybrid tax. Eviscerated has a nice list to level your enchanting from 1 to 450. Finally, Azeroth United is interviewing Kristin Lindsay of Child's Play on November 2rd during a UStream broadcast. They're also raising money for Child's Play, and you can support them over on their site. A good cause for a good charity. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: The new Restokin druid blog
We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.The name Lissanna is well-known to many Druids. She has been posting quality feedback and guides on the Official Forums Druid class section for years. Now she has started her own blog, Restokin, to post her guides, analysis and opinions on the many different Druid specs. Here's a sampling of what she already has up: Druid Leveling Guide (alt link) Feral leveling Balance leveling Low level Battleground advice Q&A and links to additional resources Additional advice & What to Wear Bear tips: AE pulling with Hurricane How to heal in 3.1: Restoration PvE healing (alt link) Tank healing – Nourish supported by HOTs Tank healing – Lifebloom strategies AOE raid healing – Wild growth and other HOTs Recommended talent spec(s) Glyphs for tank & raid healing Nourish testing on the Patch 3.1 PTR She also has many articles about the recent PTR changes and links to the community response on the Official Forums. Stop by and leave a comment.EDIT: As you can imagine, her site is getting a lot of traffic at the moment, so if you can't get through, try again in a little while. Alternative links to the Druid Leveling Guide and Resto Healing Guide are added above. Submit a guide, post, podcast or resource for inclusion in TDQ, by using our tip line and we'll consider it for a future TDQ post.
