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All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Skinner
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the thirtieth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class (or profession!) well, without embarrassing yourself. I should say at the outset of this article that I am a vegetarian, and I generally think of animals as cute and fuzzy friends of the human race. I have no moral objection against hunting animals and using their bodies for food or clothing, however. Logically, it makes sense that people have needed this to survive, but emotionally speaking, I find skinning and eating animals rather distasteful. Things would have been different for me if I had been raised on a farm or in a hunting community instead of a city thoroughly saturated with the culture of Disney movies about cute animals singing songs and having adventures, but... anyways, you are what you are. Hunting enthusiasts should feel free to write their own articles on the topic if they have different points of view.So, anyway, as my vegetarian brain started churning around this idea of how skinning can be roleplayed in World of Warcraft, I couldn't help but admit to myself that I don't have so much real life experience of the topic. In fact, my first google search of "Skinning" turned up none other than WoWwiki's page on skinning in WoW, and I realized most people living in cities probably haven't got the first clue of what skinning animals is really like.So I searched again for "skinning animals," and this time I found various articles about how to skin an animal for people who are interested in surviving in the wilderness, or just into hunting in general. One site even had simple hand-drawn animations of the proper way to kill and skin a rabbit, and I was struck by how very different this was from my experience of skinning in WoW. In the animation, we see the head and feet get cut off, a slice go down the middle of the animal's body, and the skin slowly peeling away to reveal all the flesh underneath... while in WoW we just right-click on a dead animal, loot its hide, and poof -- it disappears before our eyes.
Giving Engineering a little self-buff
You may think, as I did upon first seeing this Engineering thread in the forums, that Engineers have nothing to complain about. They get some of the coolest and most-wanted items in the game exclusive to their profession. In fact, as a LW/Skinner, I'm thinking about dropping Skinning when I hit 440 LW just to pick up Engineering, and pour a whole ton of gold into it just so I can get the Roflcopter and all of the other great stuff they get.But after Wryxian gets everyone to settle down and give out just one suggestion for how to help Engineers, they all make a pretty good point: Engineering doesn't have that one self-buff that all the other professions seem to have lately. My Leatherworker can put a nice enchant on my bracers, Blacksmiths can add sockets to some of their items, and Tailors have spellthread that can be weaved into certain pieces of gear. Ashram, the original poster in the thread, actually has some good ideas along those lines -- "Electrified Armor" (reflect damage to chest) or "Laser Targeting System" (a +crit or +expertise head enchant). Other Engis just ask for their current "enchants" to stack with other enchants already on their gear.The flip side here, of course, is that Engi can't be overpowered One person asks for Engineering to have a "significant advantage" in some bit of gameplay, and that's not the way Blizzard is handling professions -- different classes may play better or worse in different situations, but since every class can choose any profession, they've got to work across the entire spectrum (yes, even Rogues with Tailoring). But it does seem like Engineering is missing that extra self-buff that other professions picked up in Wrath.
Addon Spotlight: Skinner
For today's Addon Spotlight, we'll be spending some quality time with an addon that serves one function; to make your UI look very, very pretty. I only recently began using Skinner, as I hadn't ever bothered to change the default skins of my UI. Skinner will apply different backgrounds to the different windows of your UI, from your character sheet to the Auction House interface. It will also handle skinning many of your addons, tying your UI into a neat, attractive package. You have the option to skin just about any part of your UI, as well as creating background panels on the top or bottom of your screen. When I don't auto-hide Fubar, I like to have it sitting on a gradient-background courtesy of Skinner.There is also an option to create a viewport, which changes the size of the rendered world, allowing you to put UI elements outside of it. There are a number of options and ways to configure this one, so check back after the break.%Gallery-24105%
Is Blizzard exploiting WoW players?
Is Blizzard doing something unethical by producing and selling World of Warcraft? Rather than just the ol' "MMO games are too addictive" angle, an article in Australia's The Age (seriously, it's always the Aussies) has a new twist: game companies like Blizzard are actually "exploiting" their own players by implementing a reward system that keeps people playing.In a sense, um... yeah. Game companies have gotten the art of rewarding down to a science-- every great videogame out there lately is really terrific at balancing the challenge of playing with a suitable reward, whether that be an amazing headshot (along with sound and graphics, usually), epic loot, or just a shiny bit of treasure. That's why we play these things.So are you being exploited for your money when you hear about Zul'Aman and decide to keep paying monthly to stick around and pay it? No more than when the grocery stores exploit you for profit when you buy food, or when Starbucks exploits you for a tall when you want it. You decide when and where to spend your time and money, and if you'd rather not be "exploited" by Blizzard, you have the right to quit.Obviously, I don't think what Blizzard's doing is unethical. They're doing their best to make an involving and addictive game. And the reason they're doing that is because that's exactly what we want. Fortunately, as Terra Nova points out, The Age has included a hot nelf pic, so their piece isn't a complete waste of time.[ via Terra Nova ]
ModMyiPhone releases web-based skinner
Goodness, these hacks are getting so slick and easy to use that we're really not sure it's appropriate to call them hacks anymore. ModMyiPhone has outed a rather impressive web-based home screen skinner, allowing even the most timid of iPhone users access to the wide world of iPhone modding. Besides the extensive selection of stock icons, users can upload their own, position them in the order they wish, and add a custom background while they're add it. The app spits out an .ipb file -- install it on the handset using InstallIPB (see the site for details) and you're good to go. Make your skin for free while you can, though; the site's suggesting that it may need to move the service to a subscription model depending on how popular it becomes.
