Anyways, I’m learning as I go. Here are some interesting tidbits that I’ve learned from experience:

• Restoration shamans are very powerful in 2s arena matches. I’m paired with a DK and so far we’ve gone 53-52, which isn’t bad considering I’m wearing a crafted PvP set.
• Crafted PvP sets are great. I have more resilience than a warlock friend who has mostly savage/hateful gear, due to proper set bonus stacking and my Medallion of the Alliance.
• Wintergrasp is probably the most efficient grind in the book. Marks can be used to purchase some amazing gear, and you get a hefty sum of honor per go, especially the first few times each day (it seems to take me at least two runs to get some of the dailies completed.)
• Elemental shamans can burst like no other. I like bursting down mages in ten seconds (funny since I play a level 80 mage as well).
• As a healer in battlegrounds, its never worth it to heal someone else instead of yourself if doing so would cause you to die, even if the other person would probably live because of it.
• My most hated enemy as a mage, *spit* warlocks, are a bit easier to kill. Not so much that my anger has abated, however. I’m quickly learning to always stand near a tremor totem, even when I don’t see any locks nearby. Those dudes are sneaky, and they can keep me CCed for way too long.
• Throwing flag-bearers off the edge with Thunderstorm in Eye of the Storm is hilarious. Even better than throwing stunlock-rogues off the edge of LM in Arathi Basin.

I feel bad, though. I feel like I should be in Ulduar getting amazing epic gear. On the other hand, I just saw a post about why waiting for Ulduar is good on the Greedy Goblin’s blog. He reached the gold cap, so I’m going to take his word for it.

Really though, I am almost astonished at how little logic there is in people’s statements. Not just on the internet but all the time. This is my attempt to help clear up some of the cobwebs of bullshit that seems to encapsulate every morsel of fact and relevance (if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor).

First, there are a number of extremely common points or concepts that are used in arguments and that are totally logically incorrect and basically invalidate any argument they’re used in. You can use these for good, and try to avoid them in your own arguments, or you can turn to the dark side and use them to win arguments by manipulating others. Up to you.

Straw Man: I see this one used all the time on the internet. It’s strategy is simple: Build a “straw man” version of the opposite side of the argument, then tear it down. This way, you don’t even have to confront the other side’s real argument, since you just created a fake one to destroy.

Example: “People pirate music because they don’t want the music but don’t want to pay for it. They screw the artists, and they don’t care about the industry, only their own needs.”

False Dichotomy: If you give your opponent two choices from which to pick, that’s almost always a false dichotomy. Rarely are things really black and white, even when they’re displayed as such by almost everyone.

Example: Pro choice and pro life. There are SO many different stances on the issue. For example, someone might think abortion is okay when it threatens the life of the mother or when the mother is out of wedlock, but otherwise it should be illegal. Is that “pro choice” or “pro life”? It’s neither.

Texas Sharpshooter: This fallacy is named after an old story: A man visit the farm of a friend of his, who lives in Texas. The man, as he’s being shown around the farm, sees a bulls-eye on the side of his friend’s barn, with five shots right in the middle. Amazed, the man asks his friend if he can show the man his shooting. The farmer smiles, draws his rifle, and shoots five shots right in a row at the side of the barn. Then, he walks back to his house, gets some paint, and paints a big bulls-eye around the shots.

This fallacy revolves around first deciding what you want to demonstrate, then hand-picking data that supports your point.

Example: People who claim global warming doesn’t exist. They ignore massive bodies of evidence in favor of a few studies which support their point.

Appeal to…: Many arguments revolve around appealing to  a basic part of human nature in order to avoid appealing to their logic. Common appeals include:

• Appeal to Fear: No gun control could cause rampant murder and chaos.
• Appeal to Ignorance: Iraq doesn’t even have any oil!
• Appeal to Culture: Our parents had black slaves, so how can it be wrong?
• Appeal to Authority: When the Fuhrer says “Jump,” you jump!
• Appeal to Poverty/Wealth: How could he know how the stock market works? He doesn’t even make $20,000 a year.

Ad Hominem: Attacking the character of your opponent, rather than his actual argument. Especially common fallacy, and one that’s also particularly effective, especially when addressed to an audience hostile to your opponent.

Example: http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/debates/

Appeal to Probability: This appeal deserves its own piece, since it’s so important. People have trouble understanding probabilities. There’s always a feeling that if something can happen, it will happen (see Murphy’s Laws). This appeal takes advantage of that fear.

Example: If computers controlled our cars, there would be an estimated 10,000 car crashes a year. What if one of them was you?

False Analogy: Saying A = B when, really, A =/= B. This one I find difficult to describe for some reason, but maybe that’s just because its so simple. Don’t underestimate this one, though: always examine analogies and ask, “Are these two things really the same?”

Example: What are we doing in Iraq? It’s like Vietnam all over again.

Just because someone uses one of these fallacies in their argument doesn’t mean what they’re saying is wrong. Their point might or might not be sound, but their argument is not.  Using the above example, the Iraq war might be a bad thing, as is insinuated, but it is definitely not like Vietnam. The argument is just wrong, although the conclusion is correct (just by chance).

For a comprehensive list of fallacies, most of which I have never heard of, visit wikipedia’s list.

Azjol-Nerub

Watch Him Die: Defeat Krik’thir the Gatewatcher while all three Watchers are still alive.

Hadronox Denied: Defeat Hadronox before he webs the top doors and prevents more creatures from spawning.

Gotta Go!: Defeat Anub’arak in four minutes or less.

Ahn’kahet: The Old Kingdom

Respect Your Elders: Defeat Elder Nadox without killing any Ahn’kahar Guardians

The Party’s Over: Defeat Prince Taldaram with less than 5 people.

Volunteer Work: Defeat Jedoga Shadowseeker without killing any Twilight Volunteers.

Volazj’s Quick Demise: Defeat Herald Volazj in two minutes or less.

Azjol-Nerub Strategy

Krik’thir the Gatewatcher (Watch Him Die): There are two major ways of accomplishing this achievment. First is the simple brute-force method, in which the tank runs in and tanks everything while the DPS burns the boss down as fast as possible. Some groups can accomplish this, but if it’s impossible, a good alternative is available. Allow Krik’thir to send the groups out one at a time, then kill every member in the group except the Watcher. If you think your tank can handle it, allow the watchers to just sit on him the whole time. If he can’t handle this (which involves tanking all three watchers plus two adds when the last group attacks), instead have someone capable kite the watchers to the entrance. Warlocks are good for this, since they can set a teleportation circle at the boss, grab aggro when needed, run to the instance’s entrance (the Watchers move quite slowly), teleport back, and repeat. This is best done after the second group has come, when the tank has two Watchers on him. With those two out of the picture, it becomes a relatively simple tank-and-spank, revolving around the tank holding aggro on one watcher and Ktik’thir while the DPS burns the boss down.

Hadronox (Hadronox Denied): This fight, while not explicitly difficult, does require timing and coordination among the team. There are two methods available. First, the group can reset the encounter after the Crushers are dead by sending in a remote-controlled object such as a Crashin’ Thrashin’ Racer or by doing the same with a rogue, hunter, etc (pulling aggro on Hadronox and the mobs, then dying, causes a reset). Then, as soon as the encounter resets, the group needs to run down into the room below where you usually fight Hadronox and engage him as soon as he spawns. At this point, it’s as simple as killing him. However, for every add that’s attacking him and dies, he gains 10% of his maximum HP, so no AoE should be used.

Anub’arak (Gotta Go!): This achievement used to be incredibly difficult, requiring a kill in two minutes or less. Since the timer has been increased to four minutes, the achievement is still challenging, particularly to PuGs. An experienced group with good DPS shouldn’t have a problem, however. Simple DPS on the boss is all that’s needed.

Ahn’Kahet: The Old Kingdom

Elder Nadox (Respect Your Elders): The important thing to realize here is that the guardian’s invulnerability aura has a range. Get the boss out of range of the aura and DPS him down. The interesting thing, though, is that the boss can’t be pulled too far out of the room without Enraging, increasing his damage by 500% and causing an instant wipe. One separation tactic is to pull the boss into the corner of where he spawns, and have someone kite or offtank the Guardian as far away from the boss as necessary. Note that kiting the Guardian can be very difficult, since it has the ability to increase its movespeed by 200%.

Prince Taldaram (The Party’s Over): This achievment is a cinch. Kick the lowest DPS from your group and get to it. If you wanted to make sure nobody was left out, you could probably 4-man the instance to the Prince, then down him.

Jedoga Shadowseeker (Volunteer Work): If you have a decent healer and tank, this should be a piece of cake. As soon as Jedoga calls up the volunteer, just sit around and stuff. Once she drops back down with the +200% damage buff, the tank and healer need to be on their toes with mitigation cooldowns and high-HPS rotations. The DPS, of course, do what DPS do best and bring down the boss before anything untoward happens to the tank (such as death).

Herald Volazj (Volazj’s Quick Demise): This fight is all about the Insanity phases. An important thing to note is that these phases can be avoided with Divine Protection, Vanish, etc. (anything maknig you invulnerable or taking you out of combat). With only a few members of the group fighting clones, the phase is a lot easier. Not all groups can do this, however for those that can it’s quite helpful. Barring that, a simple strategy is to engage the boss and DPS as hard as possible. The trick is to get him down from about 40% (when he starts the first Insanity cast) to about 20% by the end of it. Then he will immediately begin casting the second Insanity, making him targettable even during the Insanity phase. More burn should bring him down before the cast goes off.

Achievements:

Halls of Stone
Good Grief – Kill the Maiden of Grief in under 1 minute.
Brann Spankin’ New – Defeat the Tribunal of Ages encounter without Brann taking damage.
Abuse the Ooze – Defeat Sjonnir the Ironshaper after killing 5 Iron Sludges during the encounter.

Gundrak
Less-rabi – Defeat Moorabi while preventing him from transforming into a mammoth at any point.
Share the Love – Defeat Gal’darah and have 5 unique party members get impaled throughout the fight.
What the Eck? – Defeat Gal’darah in Gundrak on Heroic Difficulty while under the effects of Eck Residue.

Useful/Necessary Addons and Macros

The Less-rabi achievement is nearly impossible without a target cast bar. I recommend Quartz.
The Abuse the Ooze achievment is best accomplished with targetting macros, as outlined in its strategy.

Halls of Stone Strategy

The Maiden of Grief (Good Grief): This fight is a straightforward DPS race. In order to be successfully completed, and assuming the tank does 1,000 DPS, the three DPS members of the party need to each deal around 2,500 DPS. Note that her stun ability, Shock of Sorrow, can be broken by damage. Therefore, it is recommended that all members of the party step into her black hole (aka Storm of Grief) right before the shock hits. The storm will break the stun effect, allowing the party to step out of the storm before much damage is dealt and allowing DPS to continue.

The Tribunal of Ages (Brann Spankin’ New): This achievment is not much more difficult than the event itself, particularly with a paladin tank. The recommended strategy is for the tank to maintain a Consecrate (or other AoE effect) by the stairs leading into the tribunal chamber. The Consecrate effect should cover the entire width of the stairs, making sure that no mobs will get into the room without the tank aggroing them. DPS should stand back and spread apart and use judicious AoE effects to down the mobs, being careful of aggro. For this fight, it’s crucial to be in control at all times. As soon as chaos breaks out, you can kiss the achievment goodbye. As such, if a DPS pulls aggro, it’s their job to run to the tank’s AoE effect. The tank should not move from the stairs at any point during the encounter.

Sjonnir the Ironshaper (Abuse the Ooze): This fight is very difficult. The boss needs to be DPSed down to about 35% hp, and then all DPS on the boss, as well as AoE DPS, needs to stop. The boss will be spawning green goops called Malformed Oozes, which need to be ignored. After a short time, the oozes will morph into Iron Sludges at a 2:1 ratio. Since Iron Sludges do a party-wide poison effect, as soon as an Iron Sludge is created, it needs to be burned down immediately. If any more than three are alive at once, a wipe is likely. As soon as five Iron Sludges are killed (people need to keep track, of course), heavy DPS on the boss will bring him down. Since this boss requires rapid DPS on certain targets but almost none on other targets, I recommend using two targetting macros, one for the tank and one for the DPS classes. Once DPS stops on the boss, the tank should spam his macro to acquire sludge targets as soon as they form. The DPS classes should spam their macro to target the tank’s target.

Gundrak Strategy

Moorabi (Less-Rabi): This achievement requires excellent coordination, since the casting time of the spell decreases as the boss’s health lowers. It is best done with a shaman specced into Reverberation. The shaman should interrupt the first transformation, and then allow another class with an interrupt to use it on the boss’s next transformation. After that, when the boss is below 50%, the shaman should interrupt a cast and then spam his earth shock hotkey. The boss will recast the spell at exactly 5 seconds after the previous cast was interrupted, allowing the shaman to instantly interrupt even extremely short spellcasts, since he will interrupt it almost instantly after it was cast.

Eck (What the Eck?): Before Eck is killed, all trash in the instance should be cleared to make this achievment easier. Once engaged, this boss must be allowed to apply Eck Residue (via his poison-spit ability) to every member of the party. Starting now, also, no members of the party can die or they will not get the achievment. Also, Divine Shield, Ice Block, or other debuff-removers will dispel the Eck Residue. Once the boss is defeated, move immediately to Gal’darah.

Gal’darah (Share the Love): This is an interesting and difficult achievment. The entire group needs to begin the fight spread out at max range, since the boss uses a Whirlwind effect. When Gal’darah transforms into a rhino, the group needs to collapse on him, since impale can deal upwards of 40,000 damage to its target if they are more than 8 yards away. However, since he also uses an AoE thunderstomp (with knockback) as a rhino, the players need to move in steadily as Gal’darah transforms, then run to close the distance after the thunderstomp. He will then impale random targets, although he will never impale the person with the highest threat. With this in mind, once all four DPS have been impaled, a designated offtank needs to pull aggro so the tank can be impaled. This could be a DPS with high damage mitigation such as a ret paladin or shaman, or a pet such as a voidwalker that can taunt off the tank until the tank is impaled.

And that’s how I found out that I hadn’t even done the tutorial missions. Apparently, there was another agent who I missed. I slammed through a lot of the missions pretty quickly. This was my standard routine:

1. Warp to encounter location.
2. Launch drones.
3. Target a pirate and stay out of range as drones blow him up.
4. Repeat for all other pirates.
5. ???
6. Pro–no. No profit. The tutorial missions don’t give any isk.

So I did this like 7 or 8 times. Fun! (No, really. Turns out blowing up ships is just as fun as killing things.)

Apparently, it would take 106 days of uninterrupted training for my in-game pilot to get his balls together enough to pilot a PvP-fitted Cruiser class ship. I mean, I can see that being pretty reasonable. I’m sure I spent at least that long (real-life time) leveling to 80 in WoW.

However. That’s assuming perfect attendance on my part, instantly swapping skill training as EVEmon demands. I’m nowhere near so perfect. I’d bump the estimated time up to about 300 days, due to these imperfections in my life (such as sleep).

Worse, the Cruisers aren’t even great ships. I mean, they aren’t bad, but the one I picked wasn’t even Tech II. I realize that a lot of the skills are mostly for components that can be used in any ship. I also realize that a lot (read: the first third) of the skill training is specifically to lessen the training time on future skills by increasing my relevant attributes. These factors, which only need investing in once, inflates the amount of time invested for a very average return.

I don’t mind, though. I would be glad to take my time, and waltz through the game, and all that, logging on to up my skills…except I’m paying $15 a month to do it! Let me just say that it’s a hard pill to swallow to pay that kind of money for a game which I would probably log on only once a day for a half hour or so (a high estimated average) for over SIX MONTHS while my character trains. That’s $90 invested in the game before I can really get into it.

I might still do it, its just the money that’s got me. I’m definetly gonna finish my free trial.

Anyways. Journal Entry #2 coming tomorrow.

     Once I had created my character, doing so with no knowledge of in-game mechanics at all (I focused my guy on Drone skills, because I thought they sounded cool), I was started out with a workable ship, including a laser cannon and a mining beam. After finishing the tutorial, which was pretty simple overall, I went out on my first non-tutorial assignment (like a quest).

     Queue endless wandering, looking for pirates. I warped to the waypoint given by the assignment but there was nothing in particular there. Eventually, I found a nearby warpgate(?) which took me to the pirates’ hideout. I attacked them viciously, firing my Citizen’s Laser Cannon and hoping for the best.

     I died. My ship destroyed, I was forced to pilot my escape pod back to the closest base, where I found a new “Rookie Ship” waiting for me. I piloted it out, back to the pirates, and decided to ignore them in the hunt for the cargo I was seeking. I found the cargo and flew over to it. The pirates attacked me.

     I died. At this point, once I re-acquired an actual ship, I decided to ignore the pirates. Instead, I just went back and found some asteroids and mined them. Took a while for me to fill my hold, but when I got back to the station, I found I could sell the stuff I mined for Isk, the EVE Online currency. I could directly sell my goods to other players who were on record as looking to buy the stuff at a certain price. With some money in my pocket, I turned around and went right back to do more mining.

    Eventually, I made enough Isk to buy the ship I had my eyes on, the Gallente Imicus. I had to travel a LONG ways to get to the cheapest one for sale (no linked market purchases…ugh.) However, it is so much cooler than my old one. If nothing else, it can hold a crapload more ore (320 cubic meters vs. 120 cubic meters). I equipped it with a cheap mining laser and went off to mine some more!

Impressions: This game got off to a slow start as I beat my head against the “Pirates” wall. Once I switched to mining, though, I can make steady money and am having a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to getting some drones to augment my combat abilities.

• Centralized information. I don’t want to have to look around my screen for relevant combat information, such as mana level, boss hp, and cooldown status. Also, this information should be close to my character model, which I often have to watch closely when in combat.
• Toggleable UI elements. I don’t always want Omen, Recount, my combat log, my quest tracker, and my minimap taking up screen space.

With these ideas in mind, I went to work on creating what I think is an ideal UI:

I know, I know…confusing. Let me explain. First, there’s my character portrait, located directly in the center of the UI. To the left of it is my character frame. The grey area to the right of my mana bar houses buff information, while the area above my health bar (outlined by the double-dashed line) gives at-a-glance information regarding my most important buffs (Missile Barrage, Arcane Blast, and Icy Veins). My cooldowns are right next to my health bar, allowing me to see their progress easily. Below my health bar is a set of four buttons that change contextually. While in a group, they have a CC focus macro, a MT assist macro, a mouseover decurse macro, and my one-click cooldown popper macro. While soloing, they show frost nova, Slow, my mount macro, and my food macro. While in a BG or arena, they show Counterspell and Spellsteal.

Right above my character portrait is the enemy’s health bar (with a tiny mana bar underneath). Enemy casts are shown by a line moving across the hp bar. Text (not shown) of the enemy’s mana level, hp level, name, and other information also populate this bar. My focused target is represented by small text directly below this bar, for example: “Focus: Dark Iron Dwarf”.

Below my character frame is a casting bar that indicates latency (the red box at the end) and a threat meter. The threat meter shows my threat superimposed on the threat required to pull aggro, giving me an at-a-glance reference. In between the two is a (not shown) “ball of string” GCD indicator.

My party frame and my raid frame are indicated by the small brown boxes. The party is separate from the raid both for easy reference in a raiding situation and so that party information is accessible in a non-raiding scenario.

Rather than floating combat text, I get my information from the combat log to the left of my character frame. It centralizes what can otherwise be a huge clutterer of my UI.

The space below the chat log is capable of toggling between displaying Omen, my quest tracker, and Recount. This was inspired by nUI, and was the springboard for other “toggleable” aspects of my UI. This frame, thee minimap, chat log, combat log, enemy unit frame (HP bar), and party/raid frames can be toggled individually using hotkeys. Each has three settings: Full alpha, 65% alpha, and disabled. 

Finally, on the top and bottom of my screen, I have Fubar and action bars. Fubar provides detailed information that doesn’t need to be accessed in combat, and the action bars are just there for portals, etc. (or in case I forget my keybindings.)

Illuminati, on the other hand? I thought of it because I like how it sounds, and I settled on it because I like the history behind it. (Yes, I also like wikipedia).

I pluralized it because otherwise it sounds lonely. For similar reasons, I avoided the word “The”. Too pretentious.

Welcome to my blog!