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Rig of the Week
TUAW reader omdot has posted a sweet shot of his Mac mini raid - artfully arranged, we might add - to our Flickr pool. He uses it as a backup of his main Linux system, and it updates itself hourly. Pretty cool."mini RAID no. 2" posted by omdot.If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. Each Sunday (or Monday) we'll comb through the most recent entries and declare a "Rig of the Week!"
WoW Moviewatch: Serpentshrine Caverns Raid Montage
The other day I half-jokingly complained that Nihilum should cut together a highlight reel of their boss fights in the Black Temple. To my surprise, I discovered that the guild Indomitable of the Zul'jin server has done just that for their Serpentshrine Cavern Raid Cinematical. And they did it with no UI interface to clutter the screen. Plus, they didn't show the entire fight each time, but just the highlights. Ah, machinima nirvana.Don't let the slow open put you off, this is one of the best videos I've ever seen for showcasing a raid. From the epic, driving music to the many different camera angles used for each fight. Well thought out and executed.Plus, there are some real gems in this video, especially for those of us who will never see this content otherwise. Keep an eye out for the AE'ing horde of murlocs, the swordsman boss with the whirlwind move, the giant that, um, expels bubbles and the animation of the bridge rising out of the water that leads to the climactic Lady Vashj encounter. And if you want to see some shiny raid gear, watch the closing credits with solo shots of everyone from the raid.For you budding machinimists out there: note how this video is cut to the music. When there is a big hit in the music, the video cuts to another dynamic moment. When there is a big swell in the music, the video shows a dramatic moment. Music isn't just an element you throw in after the fact, it drives the entire piece dictating pacing and tone.Previously on Moviewatch...
Breakfast Topic: Spec for yourself, or for the guild?
This question actually came from Guild Chat in <It came from the Blog>. A few evenings ago, there was some question about the best spec to level a Druid with, and while many people returned Feral, just for ease of soloing, it actually brought up another point. You see, our little Insider guild on Zangarmarsh is very much focused on being completely laid back. This means we have no intent of running endgame raids, or anything of that nature. Obviously, this means you can level as hybrid or off-spec as you like -- points in all three, or points in none if you're out to try something completely off the wall! But this got me to thinking about a guild I had been in. Once upon a time my main was a Mage, who I took to endgame on a combination Arcane/Fire spec that I had an absolute blast playing. Once I got to endgame, I specced her Frost as all Mages at endgame were then expected to spec for raiding. After raiding for a while, I got incredibly bored with her. I wound up switching full-time to my Rogue when the chance came. Now that Burning Crusade is out (and my Rogue is comfortably at 70 with my Druid catching up) I've finally taken my Mage off the mothballs. After speccing her back to Arcane/Fire, I'm having a lot of fun tearing around and burninating the countryside with her again. For those of you who have ever switched a spec for a guild/group/battleground, how did you feel about it later on down the road? Did you miss being able to tinker with your build? Did you resent having to do it? Did you get bored with it? And for those of you who say that you would never spec for a guild's progression, would anything ever induce you to reconsider? Have you ever switched back, progression be damned -- or even left a guild over being required to keep a certain spec?
WoW Moviewatch: Nihilum vs. Essence of Souls
I don't care how you feel about Nihilum as a guild, this looks like a great fight. Props to the art folks at Blizz for the animations; this is definitely the coolest-looking boss I've seen in a while. One warning, though: the video is rather long. If you want to download the full 365-MB WMV version, head over to WarcraftMovies.[via World of Raids]Previously on Moviewatch
Archimonde down, Nihilum beats TBC
And here I thought Nihilum was going to take a break. But no! They have just defeated Archimonde, the final boss of Mount Hyjal, which means that they have cleared every PvE encounter currently available in WoW. Um...good job, guys! (This was, of course, another world first.) What's next?MMO-Champion has Archimonde's loot table. Here's what Nihilum got.
Illidan slain by Nihilum
This should mark an end to this string of world-first posts, and hopefully the poor raiders of Nihilum can get some sleep now. Illidan has now been defeated: the Black Temple is cleared. But how did the fight go? Do you actually kill Illidan, or is it more like the Majordomo Executus fight from MC? At the moment, I don't know, because they haven't uploaded any pictures or information to their site -- no loot, no fight shots, no kill shot. But I'm sure these details will surface soon, and when they do, I'll update this post. For now, I offer one more "congrats" to Nihilum, the current champions of WoW raiding.Update: loot, via World of Raids; apparently there were also 2 Tier 6 chest tokens. Also, if you look at the killshot above (click for a bigger version), Illy certainly looks dead...
Peep drops from Kael'thas
Most of you have probably seen the news that Peep, the super-rare epic flying phoenix mount pictured above, was first given to Ezra. Last night, Method, of A-Sylvanas (Eu), got the world-first drop of The Ashes of Al'ar, the item that summons Peep. This was on their guild's first kill of Kael'thas, the final boss of The Eye. I don't think there are enough kills of Kael'thas that we have any idea what the drop rate of the Ashes is, but if it's anything like the Deathcharger's Reins (from Baron Rivendare) or the Fiery Warhorse's Reins (from Attumen), expect it to be significantly less than one percent. By the way, how do we abbreviate "Kael'thas"? I would go with KT, except Kel'Thuzad has that one already. Perhaps just "Kael"? It's a bit of a surprsie to me that he would drop this; for some reason it doesn't seem quite "serious" enough for him. I had previously hypothesized that Peep might drop from the boss Al'ar, the Phoenix God, but that does not seem to be the case. Anyway, grats, Method![via MMO-Champion]
Targa intros Raptor-60 laptop with three hard drives
Those looking to ditch their desktop without giving up a scrap of hard drive space now have another over-stuffed laptop to consider, with Targa introducing a newly upgraded version of its already high-end Raptor-60 laptop. Near the top of the laptop's selling points is its three SATA hard drives, which can be configured in your choice of JBOD, or RAID 0, 1 or 5 configurations, giving you a total of 750GB of hard drive space. The laptop's no slouch when it comes to the rest of its specs either, packing a 17-inch widescreen display, Intel's 965 chipset, your choice of Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme processors, up to 2GB of RAM, dual Nvidia GeForce Go 7950 graphics cards, and an optional Blu-ray drive, among other features. Of course, all that doesn't exactly come cheap, with the various upgrades easily pushing the laptop towards the $5,000 mark, although you can cut that in half by opting for the lowest-end options across the board.
Chinese government raids company, attempts to seize funds
The folks at Insert Credit recently received a disturbing e-mail from an employee of Chinese electronics/game peripheral manufacturing company, Firstsing. According to the letter, the Chinese government raided the headquarters, seized the computers, and have held most of the employees for questioning. Some have been kept in excess of 100 hours. The authorities are trying to get someone to admit wrongdoing so the government can "legally" take the company's funds, apparently because Firstsing is doing well in a poorer neighborhood and the government wants a piece of the action. It isn't known if Firstsing is guilty of any sort of chicanery, but the way employees are being treated is distressing. They've been told that their families may be held in captivity for up to a month, and the author of the e-mail fears for their safety.
The spammers new (old) methods
While poking around the World of Warcraft LJ, I couldn't help but notice that the spammers are back at it again, and apparently using some of the old tactics that they used to use. Well, tactics that they used to use before they figured out how to script spamming hundreds of people in a split second from a level one character. For those of you who either don't remember them, or who aren't familiar, I thought it might be best to relay the information. There are a couple of main tactics that they seem to have started employing since the new patch is squelching their ability to get to us. The first one involves random group or raid invites where the spammers invite a massive amount of people and just repeat the same text over and over in party or raid chat. While many people will not fall for this, these blind invites may prove problematic for those people who are using the LFG tool. The best suggestion I saw was to /who anyone who sends you an invitation to make sure that you aren't getting invites from level one characters.
Nihilum - Taking down even more bosses
There are a couple of hazards of being a blogger on this side of the pond. The first being that, when you consider one of the largest raiding guilds currently tearing through raid content is in the EU, there's quite a bit of time lag between when they take bosses down and when I sit down to run news postings. The second thing is that in the case of a guild like Nihilum, they've trained on the PTRs for quite some time and are thereby completely ready to tear through these fights and rack up the official Live Server World First kills in nothing flat. This said, as if to answer my progression post yesterday, Nihilum returned to Black Temple on the heels of their last string of accomplishments and took down three more bosses. First they turned their collective might toward Teron Gorefiend who dropped some quite tasty goodies. From there, they chewed up Gurtogg Bloodboil and spit him out. (again, not without snagging some sweet loot first!) From there, Nihilum headed for (and successfully tore down) the Shade of Akama for lots more nifty purple goodness, and another live server World First. While they did not finish the Essence of Souls event (pictured) they are hoping to return and knock that out in short order.Now some of the reactions I got in mail the last time I posted a progression post for Nihilum raised an interesting question to me. If a guild goes on the PTR and learns the strategies there does that somehow lessen their world first accomplishment on live servers? It seemed like several people felt that the accomplishments were diminished due to having been done prior on the PTRs. Personally, I've got mad respect for those who blaze the trails -- whether on the PTRs or on Live servers, although I am nostalgic for when it was a bit more of a surprise as to who would do so. (One of the few downsides of the job, I suppose. heh)[via Nihilum]
Nihilum - Four world kills in one day
Nihilum, never ones to rest on their laurels, tore through Tempest Keep and claimed the head of Kael'thas Sunstrider in a bold sweep that landed them the world first kill on live servers. From there, they finished the Mt. Hyjal attunement quest, and then proceeded to peek their heads in and see what was up in Hyjal. Just to send a warning shot to the other bosses that it was just a matter of time, they decided to tear Rage Winterchill a new one and leave his corpse behind as a warning. Due to a bug in that fight, Tigole had to get involved and reimburse them as only one of the items for Black Temple attunement dropped -- as opposed to the 25 expected.With those items in hand, they headed towards the Black Temple, finished up the attunement chain, and then took down both High Warlord Naj'entus and Supremus in a one-two punch based on their hard work learning the strategies on the PTRs. In one evening, they secured four World First kills on live servers, thereby proving their dedication to the destruction of endgame content.[via Nihilum]
Gruul's Lair tweaks
Gruul's Lair is the first 25-man raid many BC raiders may experience. My guild hasn't gotten a crack at it yet, since we can't seem to get 25 raiders together at a time, but I'm still hopeful. The raid is relatively short, consisting of two bosses (Gruul the Dragonkiller and High King Maulgar) plus relatively small amounts of trash. It doesn't require any attunement, drops (among other things) the T4 legs and shoulders, and is required for Serpentshrine Cavern attunement.Both bosses in the raid have had adjustments in the past couple of days. Gruul was using his Hurtful Strike ability on both the second and the third players on his aggro list; this was a bug introduced in 2.1 and has been hotfixed such that only the second player on the aggro list gets struck, as intended. Maulgar was slightly nerfed in 2.1 as an intended change; he now attacks faster, but for less damage at a time. His overall DPS should stay the same. This change ought to result in less spiky deaths, and will be "mostly noticed by under geared raids."
How to get attuned to the Black Temple [updated]
On the PTR, it was really easy to get attuned to the big new tier 6 raid, the Black Temple. All you had to do was be at least Honored with the Violet Eye and talk to Johnny McWeaksauce, and you'd get the amulet that served as a key. So it actually never occurred to me to wonder what the attunement process would be like in the live patch. In case you were wondering, however, wonder no more. MMO-Champion has all the details (plus screenshots), courtesy of Arthyn from Vanquish (A-Staghelm). In short, you have to kill Fathom-Lord Karathress (a boss in Serpentshrine Cavern) and Al'ar (a boss in the Eye). The detailed version is after the cut, for reasons of length and spoileriness.Update: apparently, Karathress and Al'ar are just the first parts of the attunement chain. After Al'ar, you have to kill Rage Winterchill, the first Hyjal boss, and even that may not be the end -- we'll just have to see. World of Raids has screenshots of the new quests.
NewerTech's Guardian MAXimus: 1TB, RAID, ports aplenty
Not that there's some dearth of external RAID devices on the market or anything, but few and far between are those that have FireWire 800 and 400 ports, as well as USB 2.0. NewerTech's Guardian MAXimus -- which appears to be a rebadged Mercury Elite-AL Pro -- comes in with up to 1TB, two FireWire 800 ports, and one 400 and USB 2.0 port. Prices start at $320 for the 250GB version, or you can snag a BYOD $180 enclosure, if that's what suits you.
Clevo 901C gaming laptop packs some serious firepower
We shouldn't all act surprised that Clevo of all companies is cranking out yet another desktop replacement that would likely burn through even the thickest jeans (and potent batteries) in no time flat, but the firm's 901C ups the ante over the previous rendition with a few notable hardware bumps. Coming just months after the already wicked 900C, this sucka includes your choice of Intel's Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Duo Extreme X6800 processors, a 17.1-inch WXGA / WSXGA+ display, up to 2GB of DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA's 512MB GeForce Go 7950GTX or the 8700M GT, room for a trio of SATA II drives hooked up in RAID, a full size keyboard with numeric pad, 12-cell battery, digital audio out, built-in microphone, four integrated speakers, and a seven-in-one card reader. Furthermore, you'll find ports for FireWire, USB 2.0, S-Video / VGA / DVI, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, 802.11n WiFi, an integrated webcam, 56k modem, and a TV tuner to boot. Apparently, there's no word just yet surrounding price or availability, but we wouldn't count on this powerful 11.9-pounder to run you cheap.[Thanks, Bazald]
Armed cops burst into home to neutralize... Lara Croft mannequin?
Considering just how chaotic a police scanner can become when the crime lords decide to hit the streets, we can't fault the boys in blue for showing up at the wrong address or completely missing a shoplifter with a projector in his shorts, but this one's just absurd. Apparently, a Manchester man had his home invaded by squads of armed police after a pistol-wielding Lara Croft mannequin served as cause for concern. The officials mistook the ominous silhouette for an actual gunman, and took it upon themselves to rush in and attempt to save the day. Interestingly, the homeowner was actually arrested for "suspected firearms offense," but he's currently speaking to lawyers about "a possible claim for wrongful arrest." Man, publicly humiliating yourself and begging for a lawsuit -- now that's a full day's work.[Thanks, Dan G.]
What is the ideal raid size?
Over at Elitist Jerks Quigon of Maraudor started a thread about raiding. In it he philosophizes about raiding as we knew it, and how things have changed since the expansion. Raids in the original WoW varied in size, but the main push was toward the 40-man grouping. We did it in MC, in Naxxramas, even with the world dragons. But with the large number of members the encounters were for the most part simplistic, since it takes a great deal of skill to coordinate a large number of people to do just about anything. As Quigon puts it, the feeling of an epic fight has diminished somehow, despite the new encounters being more challenging. There isn't the same amount of excitement as a boss drops, that tangible electricity over the Vent channel. Is this because the encounters still need some tune ups, or is it because of the smaller group? Do you get the same swelling of pride as you form up as a group of 25 heroes to wage war as you would if there were 40 of your brethren around you? On the other hand, what about the 72-man raids in Everquest? Since we have so many variations in spec, build and class these days, wouldn't more people in a raid be better than fewer? He raises a lot of stimulating questions, questions I'd love to hear your perspective on. What is the perfect raid size? Is it 10, 40, or 100? [via Elitist Jerks]
Officers' Quarters: Surviving Karazhan
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. Last week was an exciting week for me with the premier of my new column. I've had a week's worth of questions piling up, so let's look at one of them today. I was wondering what you guys do to address straight-up performance problems. We've been successfully raiding Karazhan for about a month now, but when we swap in other warriors/healers we always seem to have performance problems. We've had sit downs and group meetings. We've discussed things in open guild chat and privately with the ones we're having problems with. Just seems like nothing will effectively get through to them. I've never played WoW with a group of people that just don't seem to care about how well they do. They don't seem too interested in progressing their gear or play experience outside of Karazhan. They're not really breaking any guild rules, they're online during raid times, they try to participate, but I hate to decide on raid spots between a player who has rock solid attendance/performance versus a player with solid attendance but poor performance. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thank you in advance, Ty from Hellscream Thanks for writing, Ty. Kara is a zone that has created a lot of problems for guilds who are used to bringing 20 or 40 players on raid nights. Suddenly officers have been confronted with the reality of exactly what each player can contribute in a small but challenging raid. As we make judgments for who gets to go, who's on which team, and so on, friction is inevitable. Guilds have been undone by Karazhan -- don't let it happen to you!
OWC crams 2TB into Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual RAID HDD
Nearly two years ago we all stood in awe of OWC's 1TB Mercury Elite Pro Aluminum Dual RAID, and just a few days after the company announced its multifaceted Quad Interface variety, now its upping the ante again. The 2TB edition of the external HDD presumably packs a pair of Hitachi's 7K1000 drives into an enclosure no bigger than any other twin-stuffed unit, and provides data transfer rates of over 80Mbps. The RAID 0 array is reportedly "designed to meet the performance demands of video and audio production," and while it's not exactly implied, to put a solid dent in your wallet as well. The drive connects up via USB 2.0 or FireWire 400 / 800, and can be snapped up now if you're willing to hand over $1,099.99.[Via MacMinute]
