More Human Stuff

After I dislocated my shoulder, I didn't slow down on wow. But then my boss left for a new job and my workload kicked up a bit. That stole some wow time. And then last week I was in Las Vegas for a small conference. (BTW, incredibly cheap airfares and 5* hotels can be found.) I was on a panel discussion about scalable web infrastructures. I also gave a talk on how and why businesses can and should open source innovative software they develop. I was out most nights for dinner and fun. And my hotel network connection liked to appear as 50ms, but somehow lag horribly.

I could declare I'm back and posts will flow like rivers. But my boss's boss already tagged me with a trip into NYC on Tuesday. We shall see.

Armory Fun

Kheldul's Human

1) My shoulder is almost working. Call it 60% back to normal.

2) I'm a bit swamped at work and haven't had a chance to play. And my boss quit, which just adds to the meeting load.

I'm hoping for both items to improve by next week.

Oculus Prizes Make it Fun

Blizzard sees the pattern and will be giving rewards for sticking with it if it's the randomly chosen dungeon. I have gotten Oculus as random a few times. Some dungeons I have never gotten. Perhaps it's the random element. Perhaps it's some line of logic in their assignment system that says "Oculus is hard so slot high iLevel people for it." I suppose I could put on my Santa suit with a nice low gearscore and queue up. Unfortunately, I suspect the experiment would land me in a group with people with green gear. And the just the random daily takes a DPSer in my battlegroup at least 10mins to get slotted. That's 10mins of not doing any PvP or playing the AH market on my AH toon.

On Monday I got Oculus. I had lead. Three people dropped immediately. The next three came in and two dropped. Then those filled and we were g2g. It was probably a decent thing that they dropped if they dislike it or can't handle it. We cleared it in 15-20mins.

The biggest issues with the instance I see are:

a) You have to know where to go. They could add arrows like in CoT... they'd need to have up and down there too though.

b) If you're not doing an achievement, you need to have someone on a green drake who knows how to heal a ruby drake.

That's about it. IMHO, it's completely a three-man-able instance. I wouldn't mind a chance on another drake. So maybe if two people do drop next time and we can tank, heal, and dps with three then maybe we'll just run it that way.

EDITED TO ADD:

OMG. They made it even easier-easier. Craziness.

The Oculus had some additional changes made. The Planar Anomlies during the Eregos encounter will have a shorter duration and do reduced damage, some of the drakes above Varos’s platform have been removed, and the drakes controlled by players will move a little faster.

EDITED TO ADD MORE:

1) OMG. Wow.com has a Guide to the Oculus. It has direction maps too.
2) I got Oculus on my shaman healer on the random. I got a little sack with three nice red gems. Nice in that they sell well. ;-)

Welcome Back Kheldul

I had a great Christmas vacation in the back woods of northern Vermont. Picture perfect hikes. My brother-in-law's friend had a two-horse-drawn open sleigh that we galloped around. Even pulled a kid sled behind us. (Fast!) The day after Christmas I tried a couple runs on a "Jack-Jumper" ski. It's a backwoods creation of an old ski, a vertical piece of wood and a horizontal piece on top of that which forms an improvised seat. A dislocated shoulder and incredible new levels of pain later, I know that I'll stick with two skis. I'm still waiting to see if my ligaments and rotator cup will need surgery.

It was still a great vacation and good time away. Since coming back I've played a little wow with my arm in a sling.