Weekend (11 Nov) - Fist Fixes Things - She Hopes

Weekend (11 Nov) - Fist Fixes Things - She Hopes

This is mix and match of a few things.

MM2 Raiding Rules: Fist is a long way from becoming raid-ready. It doesn't hurt to review the requirements set by the guild, though, so that those requirements can be worked toward. The general rules of thumb for raiding haven't changed. This is more about expectations for gear, experience, etc in Mists of Pandaria.

MM2's Current Raid is Mogu'shan Vaults
Minimum gear ilevel - 455, for all specs (Fist is at i397)
Minimum DPS on raid target dummy - 43.5k DPS sustained
DPS only - Complete a Scenario without a tank or healer
Tanks - personal evaluation by the raid leader, no numbers given
Healers - personal evaluation by the raid leader, no numbers given

Before any of that raiding stuff, though, testing is needed to try to fix the screen lockups that are still occurring. In Pandaria, on Saturday, Fist didn't last five minutes before the screen froze. I opened a ticket with Blizzard. The GM, Ekield, sent me to an article about generic computer crash errors. Sigh.

And of course, their method of "fixing" a problem is as heavy handed as they come - delete game folders (cache, wtf, interface), update sound and video drivers, use selective startup to disable ALL programs except for Windows and WoW, and if those things don't work, delete and reinstall the game. In other words, the problem couldn't be Blizzard's fault - it's obviously something else. Anything else. Needless to say, Ekield got a pretty poor report card. Not that it will do any good. And of course again, the ticket is now considered "resolved" and they've washed their hands of the issue, despite the fact that the actual problem hasn't been resolved. I bet they don't even have a category called "fixed". 

I did check the video card drivers. The drivers are up to date. I then removed all addons except for Dominos, which manages buttons and bars. Fist played for about thirty minutes without a crash. I added Xperl, which aids targeting. It doesn't help that Fist is doing a quest string that is bugged. The advice on that issue is to abandon the quest, reload the UI, and take the quest again. Progress is very slow, having to reload several times for each step of the quest chain. Still no screen lock, though. 

Fist went back at it Sunday night. The lockups were back. After the second one, I removed Xperl. Fist then played for more than an hour and did not get any lockups. I'm pretty sure now that Xperl is the culprit. I'll start loading more addons slowly. Xperl is nice to have, but I can live without it.

The bugged series of quests all begin with "Scouting Report: " with additional titling for the specific quest. Each quest involves an npc who reports to Fist. There is a set piece for each quest, and Fist is then put literally into the shoes of the reporting npc. Fist plays the part of that npc and completes the scenario through some kind of action. It is an interesting process. I'd give 'em points for creativity, but it's badly designed. As mentioned, they tend to be buggy, requiring multiple attempts before successfully completing them. The view tends to be static, and in one of them I had to physically move around my user interface to expose things required - the scenario used a static set that I could not affect. Nice try, but they need to try harder to make these feel more like I'm actually there instead of a bystander, and give the npc/player more flexibility to interact with the environment.

I might have gotten more out of the lore of Pandaria while questing if Fist had entered Pandaria with lesser gear, so that quest rewards would be more meaningful, and the encounters would feel more dangerous. As it is, it's still fun seeing the new areas and puzzling out the quests, but I don't really feel engaged in the storyline.

Fist graduated to her third town in the Jaded Forest. This one is Dawn's Blossom, even bigger than the other two.

She DINGed! to level 86 with little fanfare and is now 8% of the way to level 87.

However, some fanfare would seem to be warranted. It is hard to imagine, but Fist has now eclipsed even Wild as the senior member of the Wild family. When Fist was born, that goal did not even seem possible.

Wild is happy for her and promises a ceremony. But more likely that toasting and honoring won't come until she reaches level 90.