New dad gaming...a pseudo how-to for Blizzard fans with a newborn kiddo

So,
Have a kid and your world will be rocked...certainly for the better.

If you're like me, you'll be very focused on that child, helping out the wifey, and you'll probably still have to go to the old J-O-B.

C130J...if it ain't rainin', it ain't trainin'

This post is for you, if you still want to get your gaming fix in, especially if you are an avid Blizzard fan.

1. Hearthstone is now on your iPhone.

I played the entire Blackrock Mountain campaign on my iPhone.

2. 5-minute gaming strategies for WoW on your laptop.

I get to add captions to any pictures of my kid.

3. Mobile Warcraft options using Splashtop.

This is a screenshot from my iPad, which plays at about 15 fps with a 1 second lag.

Those are a few of the good options available...I'll expand on each of them, some now, and some in future posts.

First of all, if you have ever played a CCG, you will likely enjoy Hearthstone.  It is a particularly well-done game, and the iPhone port is phenomenal.  It runs better on my iPhone 6 Plus than it does on my iPad 2.  It was an absolute thrill to start that game, btw...the campaign unlock portion I found to be very fun.  Even now, my go-to form of playing Hearthstone is playing against the innkeeper with fun decks I create.  I'm not a particularly competitive person.  So, if you like CCGs and you enjoy Warcraft, you simply must try this free-to-play masterpiece out.  Admittedly, after I got into the game I spent some iTunes cash to get some new decks, but you can have a ton of fun without spending a dime.

"5-minute gaming" is kind of a play on words from a good book "One Minute Manager," which I read because I like leadership and efficiency books.  There is a way to play WoW five minutes at a time, although this is an idea that I have yet to truly flesh out into a real method.  I can tell you that some aspects of WoW are entirely exclusive to those people who have huge chunks of time they can spend gaming without major interruptions.  I am no longer one of those people, and I have not been since I stopped serious raiding during TBC.  While I miss raiding, I still enjoy the game.  Therefore, I have to find ways to play that don't take a ton of time.

What can "5 minute gaming" NOT do for you?  You won't be able to raid, run 5-mans, complete lengthy quest chains at one time, or even

How do you play WoW five minutes at a time?  I think the answer begins with some basics.  Have small objectives that cater to a larger goal you've set.  For example, if your goal is to have a level 100 of a certain class, you can level that alt five minutes at a time.

Want to get more out of your five minutes?  Get a leveling addon, such as Zygor, WowPro, Dugi, etc.

Other helpful 5-minute leveling tips: choose "exit game" when you have to leave quickly, instead of hearthing.  (You can zone back in and pick up where you left off, instead of having to travel back...the slight rested experience accrued is NOT worth the travel time.)  Pay attention to opportunity costs while gaming!  Addons can really help you be more efficient.  Here are some addons I love: Master Plan, Topfit, RealUI (stay tuned for a full blog post on this gem), and EasyMail.  Also, have a bank alt that is in a major city!  Simply send your sellable items there and don't bother trying to move your current levelers or garrison players to those cities...not worth your time.  Some other things that "5 minute gaming" can really apply to: reputation grinding for bodyguards or factions in WoD, garrison chores, and social conversations.

Finally, there is a particularly unique way to transport World of Warcraft over to the world of mobile gaming.  No, they have not created a playable WoW port on your iPhone or iPad, although that would be FANTASTIC.  However, a streaming app called "Splashtop" is very capable of controlling your WoW characters with a surprising level of fidelity.  Splashtop has a feature you can pay for that allows you to create your own overlay controls, and this can make WoW into a console-ish game where you control your movement with one thumb and your camera angle with your other thumb.  I also added buttons that would function as keys, such as 1-4, Q, E, R, Enter, Escape, etc.  With these basic controls I can get around, even collect the ore and herbs in my garrison.  I intend to improve and validate my design by doing some leveling using only my iPad.  Oh, by the way, those essential splashtop controls are only available for their iPad app, not their iPhone app.  But anyways, it is pretty cool to be able to sign on my iPad and play WoW at all.  The lag between your control input and the character response is dependent on the connection.  If you are playing on the same Wifi network, it's about a half-second delay.  The video on the same Wifi, by the way, is stunning...it's about 15 fps on my iPad!  Over the internet (another service in Splashtop you must pay for), it's certainly lower fps.

Here is the Splashtop setup: WoW must be installed on a computer, either PC or Mac, and the Splashtop Streamer app must be running.  (This works best with only one active monitor.)  You log into Splashtop Personal on your iPad and choose "native resolution" for the computer.  When you connect to that computer, you should put it in trackpad mode for best use, then activate the gaming controls if you bought that feature (which you should if you intend to play WoW).  You are essentially using a VPN to access that computer, and you can do anything...one of the things it does well is WoW.  That screenshot above shows you how it can look.  Configure your Splashtop buttons to include the important keys you would find yourself pushing.  The left-most circle is the movement button, which allows for WASD-type movement.  The red button on the right is my solution to camera angle problems.  I configured it to "right click then drag," and then I turned the Splashtop sensitivity all the way down.

If you jailbreak your iPad, from what I hear, you can actually get a bluetooth mouse to work with your iPad...THAT would be the best of all worlds, but I have not even tried this yet.

OK...so these are some different methods I use to still get my gaming fix in while living a very dynamic life which requires my attention minute-to-minute.  Let me know if you have any other ideas!

Still here in Afghanistan...transmogs and leveling

That about sums up how we feel about deployments!

OK, I'm really enjoying the transmog thing.

Running Flex raids with this set is just cool to watch.

Also, I have two new toons joining the fight at 90.  My first tank ever, and a hunter.  I am enjoying the druid tanking style, and even tanked my first level 90 raid successfully with no wipes!

The hunter seems to be a little lackluster in dps, but he's only 480-ish itemlevel.  The queues are considerably longer for dps than for tanks, of course.  My druid will pass my hunter with help from Timeless Isle and quick raid queues.  However, leveling a druid as guardian was a total pain in the rear.

On the road again, but managing to stay connected

I am on the road again, and although I am sad to be away from my wife, I'm trying to make the most of my travels.  I explored some new areas, worked in a military capacity, and had a few hours to play WoW and Hearthstone.

On the Hearthstone front, I can tell that it will continue to be a fun game to play, especially when the connection will not support higher level LFR groups in WoW.  There is only so much WoW daily quest grinding you can tolerate, after all.  Hearthstone is a great deal of fun, although it requires uninterrupted time to play each game.  It is also a game that will require you to lose a lot before you have a decent deck, from what I can tell.  I have probably opened 5 or 6 bonus packs of cards so far, using gold that I obtained from daily quests and victories.  I am becoming quite familiar with the feeling of losing to other players, and even the NPC practice opponents destroy me quite often.  Even with a deck that includes blue and purple cards, it seems to be a very luck-dependent game.  An addicting and fun luck-dependent game which will probably consume some of my actual income for new card packs.

On the WoW front, I reached ilvl 488 by completing the Golden Lotus revered grind and running quite a few LFR groups.  I finished Throne of Thunder today, concluding the list of available LFR instances, although I observed 75% of the Lei Shen fight as a corpse.  I still have no idea what killed me.  But I have put epic pieces in ever slot except trinkets...those simply elude me, and I anticipate more rep grinds to obtain those.  I do not expect to have a good enough connection to continue running LFR groups, so my priest will likely remain my best geared character for quite a while.  

I am bringing directional wifi antennae, and multiple wireless cards and connection points in hopes of developing a reasonable and reliable connection with which I can skype my wife and play an online game when I have time.  Remembering my last two deployments, I am bridling my optimism so that I am not sorely disappointed when the internet sucks.

So, I'm preparing to shift to alt leveling and rep/heroic gearing.  I have a goal to level some classes that I have not ever played so far, such as lock, pally, shammy, and monk.  And, I am completely unfamiliar with my DK, druid, and hunter, which are all sitting patiently at 85.  Smoogestab, my rogue, is now at 86.  Icy veins seems to be the new go-to place for leveling and gear questions, and I have adopted their combat rogue leveling strategy, paired with a good leveling addon.

As far as UI stuff goes, I have experimented with quite a few addons recently.  So far, I have settled on Dominos, Recount, Dugi, Atlas Loot, and a leveling addon.  I am still looking for a good unit frame and cooldown addon for both my priest and all of my alts.  I am tolerating Healbot and TellMeWhen, and I dislike the xPerl unit frames I currently have installed.

So, today I begin the process of really learning how to play my favorite MMO again.  That is, I am beginning to study the game with the intent of playing at an above average level.  My end goal is to be a competent, competitive player when I do log on, even though that will be less frequently than the 19 year old college student with infinite time to play games.

I might never raid properly, on a schedule and at the higher levels, but I do intend to gear up and have fun with PVE instance play.

If anybody has returned to Warcraft after a long leave of absence, they would immediately be struck by the sheer amount of options that exist the moment they log in.  Here are some of the questions that I had right away:
Where am I?
How do I get back to Org?
How do I get to the panda island?
How should I set up my UI?
What addons are good now?
What is the best healer in the game now?
How should I level, and which character should I level first?
Should I run through the extensive quest line?
Should I run instances before I hit 90 (level cap)?
How should I spec my priest?
What spec should I use for questing?
As I approach 90, what do I do now?
What factions are out there and what do they offer?
Where do I find the daily quests, and which ones should I do?
Where do I start getting better gear?
What stats do I want on my gear?
How do I make gold now?
What professions should I work on first?
Is farmville useful or a pure waste of time?

So, that is what my first few hours of gameplay were like, although I managed to grind through a few mini quest lines on my shadow priest/disc priest.  I started doing some google searches and found some decent forum answers:
I just hit level 90! Now what? : wow
Level 90... Now what? - Forums - World of Warcraft

Here are some good things I've learned so far:

• Disc priests are still quite viable in MoP, which is the acronym for the newest expansion.  They are good in instances because they can DPS while they heal.  Other priest specific resources indicate that spirit is important for mana, and intellect is now only tied to spell power.  Good to know.
• At level 90, buy the flying ability for the panda area at the Shrine of 7 Stars.  It's called "Wisdom of the 4 Winds"
• Some of the factions in MoP include: Klaxxi, Golden Lotus, Shado-Pan, August Celestials, Angler, Tiller, Cloud Serpent, Shadow Pan Assault, and Kirin Tor Offensive.
• Valor points are used to buy pretty good gear.  You can only get 1000 Valor points each week.  If nothing else, make sure to get those 1000 Valor points every week.  You get them from heroics and dailies.
• Dailies yield reputation and Lesser charms of fortune.  Those are turned in at the Shrine for Mogu runes of fate.  Those allow you to roll an extra time in LFR and raids, helping you get better gear.
• Klaxxi have an item level (iLvl) 522 Epic neck at honored for 1250 Valor points.  This should take about 1 day of dailies after I have done the Dread Wastes quests.  Mobs yield amber shards.  Turn those in for "Lesser runes."
• Each faction has a badge at revered that gives 100% increase to rep gains for all characters on the account.
• Tiller dailies are all about planting and farming things.  They provide extra mats and stuff for my character or professions.
• Three primary options exist for PVE groups.  Random scenarios, 5 man heroics, and LFR (Looking for Raid).  LFR requires an average ilvl of 460 for the first set of bosses.
• Random scenarios queue quickly and have less people in the party; they are supposedly much faster.  Scenarios offer 450 and 463 blues, and sometimes 476 epics.  They give 40 Valor points for the first one done each day.

Right now I'm 89, about 2/3 the way to 90, on my priest.  Apparently, the real game starts at 90.

More WoW, deployment style...lessons learned

More fun with limited networks, tunneling, and “alt productivity” while in the desert.

• The network setup in our “free internet” areas has forced me to find an alternative to HighPingBuster and other PuTTy tunnels.I am having very good luck with Your-Freedom and OpenVPN.I even purchased a Basic plan and it is worth $6.
• Hercpilot is now level 85, with completely maxed herbalism and mining, and a 310 speed mount.He pretty much paid for himself, and herb farming is showing some serious potential.
• High latency herbalism/mining is a new kind of farming.You need to make some changes, and there are some helpful addons I’m using as well.
• A cry for help: Does anybody know of a viable satellite internet solution for future deployments for either an individual or a very small group of troops?I am having a really hard time finding anything remotely inexpensive and portable.

Before I start, here is a new rule I have for my characters: Don’t logout in Org. If your connection sucks when you try to get back in, you might find yourself making a new alt. The world latency in Org is considerably higher than most other zones, probably because of the bandwidth requirements.

Over here in Iraq, two of the the three routers that are set up for internet use for the troops automatically block PuTTy tunneling. This is the exact connection that HPB uses, and most of the time I am unable to connect to WoW through 2/3 of the available networks. The remaining router is usually the slower of the three, too. Skype, web browsing on common sites like google and facebook, and iTunes all work pretty well on those networks, so I knew that it was just a matter of finding a way around the preset blocks. I am quite pleased with Your-Freedom!

Small caviat: if you’re trying to log into Paypal through a tunnel, it will automatically limit your account and you will be unable to use it. My wonderful wife helped me set up the Your-Freedom account over skype, using the screen sharing function. She did great, and Y-F works wonderfully.

Setting up OpenVPN is easy, and requires a simple manual setting of the DNS on the TAP-Win32 adapter that it automatically installs. Configuring Y-F to use OpenVPN is equally simple, and that setup will allow me to browse the internet, log on to WoW, skype, download music, and even TORRENT uninhibited!

My initial tests indicate that there is slightly higher latency, but only slightly in game. Also, I did some research and found that “world” and “home” latency are different. From now on, the only one I care about is “world” latency, which is the factor for most of the send-receive functions in the game. The “home” latency only affects functions like chat, which probably explains why I can have a full conversation with a buddy on b.net while my character can’t even autoattack due to lag.

My official alt, Hercpilot, is now 85 with two maxed gathering professions and the fastest flying mount you can get. He is a DK, and leveling was fun in and of itself. I got to appreciate much of the 80-85 storyline, which I initially rushed through during late-night hours when cataclysm first launched and I wanted to get Smoogee to 85. I took time to read some of the dialogue and, probably because of lag, I followed the storyline in each zone. A good in-game friend, Kyle Rudd, hooked my toon up with a FULL set of redsteel gear AND a 2-H wpn that lasted me well through 84. The toon is still wearing most of that gear. Due to mob difficulty and latency, I switched between blood and unholy specs for most of the leveling process. I also want to point out that gathering is a good way to augment experience gains while leveling, especially with a DK. I got a flying mount promptly at 60, and it was a very quick grind to increase my gathering professions to a compatible level with outlands, northrend, and cata. It really makes gathering more viable for everyone, because you can FLY in the low-level zones now!! No more jumping around a mountain for an hour trying to get to a tough-to-reach iron node!

Gathering on a low-bandwidth, high-latency connection: It is not as easy as my U-verse connection at home, but sometimes it’s all I can do when the connection isn’t good. Here are things I’ve learned about gathering in these poor conditions.

If mobs are loaded in the area directly under you, herbs and ore will be showing on your minimap if they are present. That simple fact is how I can gauge when to stop and hover or when to blast through an area. One good strategy is to scan ahead of your character...if the mobs, critters, and NPCs ahead of you are loaded already, then you are receiving a good “feed” on nodes and you just need to continue until one pops up on your screen. If you don’t see any red, green, or yellow nameplates, you’re probably missing nodes. With an 1800ms world latency and decent bandwidth, your game will load NPCs and nodes slightly slower than you can fly. This is key: if you have the bandwidth, farming is easier. If you have the latency but low bandwidth, you need to let the game “cache”. Often, I’ll find that when I stop for one node, others will “appear” while I’m hitting that one.

Addons will help you. I highly recommend that you get rid of Gatherer and start using GatherMate2. GM2 has a Data file that will show all the nodes, and I think that is the best gathering addon out there for cata. I LOVE SimpleMiniMap v4, because it allows me to scale my minimap to 200% and it is compatible with ElvUI. This is a big part of my gathering strategy: I can see nodes clearly when they appear, and I navigate almost entirely off my minimap so it is easy to follow a pre-determined route. The simple code to make it the way I set it up is this: /smm scale 2. /smm skins skin 2. That is 200% and square.

I have not experimented with view distance and gathering nodes, but I will tomorrow after my flight tonight...(sigh, and after server downtime)

Lessons for you farmers: people still bot, apparently.  My experience so far is that the bots are relatively unconfrontational and will not approach you if you are already near a node.  Also, I have had no problem finding whiptail nodes whatsoever on Smolderthorn, even with what seem to be two other active farmers in Uldum.  It was respawning so quickly yesterday that I gathered 12 stacks in about an hour. That is a ton of herbs. Twilight Jasmine seems to be quite rare, though, and in the time I could farm a stack of that, I would already have 4 or 5 stacks of whiptail.

Congrats Sad Panda...and cataclysm discussion continues.

As I have not kept up this blog until today, I have a lot of input. But before I get back into game mechanics, I want to give a huge shout out to my guild of many years, Sad Panda. I was online the other day when they accomplished First Level 25 Guild on Smolderthorn.

I’m honored they let me stay in as a legacy member, despite my raiding and instance inabilities. These guys have stayed competitive for years in WoW. Originally a guild called Entropy, which cleared up to BWL, we merged with another guild and became Epic. Some of the old faces are still around, such as Daedal, Bugs, and maybe even Fuse. After Epic, many left and formed a rival guild called Gloryhogs before BC released. Epic shifted to what was then an alt guild called “Sad Panda,” and Fuse led that guild for years. I know others have had some great input there, including my friends Jason and Josh, as well as Kkyle and Jessica, and now a new cadre of apparently very capable guild and raid leaders and raiders. The core competencies are still evident to me, and there are a lot of high level, hilarious, experienced players in SP…congrats on a great achievement!

On to the discussion on latency and its adverse effect on both disc and holy priest specs.

For holy, your rotation now involves heal, greater heal, binding heal, prayer of mending, circle of healing, chakra states, and prayer of healing for the most part. I rarely found myself using my old staple, flash heal. High latency hurts casters big time…especially healers, and especially priests. Refer to my previous notes on queuing spells, because you’re going to need to do that on a bad connection. First, you will notice very quickly in cata that mana is an issue when you have crappy gear. Also, latency means your throughput is even less. So, I recommend using your big spells and staying away from heal simply because it loses its value if you can’t cast it quickly. Your tank will be dead if you are on a 2000ms connection spamming heal, most likely. One good dynamic, though, is that you will find yourself in the 5 second rule for mana regen more often, by nature of not being able to cast as much. I found that I was less likely to run out of mana than wipe the party, so I had to lean towards larger, more expensive heals and just pay the price of drinking after nearly every pull if necessary. Also, I leaned very heavily on the AoE version of chakra, because of its “fire and forget” nature, along with the unconventional renews. I also glyphed for prayer of healing and used prayer of mending on cooldown EVERY time, because those spells would continue to be productive when my connection choked for a few seconds at a time, which happened frequently. Ultimately, it looked to my party like this: PoH procs HoT from glyph, renews on people that have taken any dmg, PoM on tank, chakra AoE around tank, and “why is that priest just standing there waiting now” followed by a binding heal or flash heal.

For disc, PW:S is a required pre-cast, as well as PoM on cooldown. I use PI and Inner Focus on cooldown…IF is even macrod in every gheal cast. If it’s available, I’m using it. I use PW:Barrier and Pain Suppression on cooldown too. Then I’ll Q up a penance first, gheal second. I have an A/A spec, so if the connection is decent or the damage distribution is steady and not too much, I LOVE smiting for automatic healing distribution around the party. However, keep in mind that you won’t be able to do that on trash if you have high latency and the mobs are dying relatively quickly. Your throughput will go to zero. I typically use it for big mobs and bosses where damage is manageable.

One important lesson learned this deployment: do not sit in an instance and wipe a party because of bad lag. You’ll end up just getting vote kicked anyways, and you will have wasted time queuing. Know what your playability limit is…mine is about 2500ms. Anything higher than that, or if I’m experiencing frequent bandwidth lag (game seems to pause and then catch up real fast a few seconds later), I will heal through a pull then leave the party when they are safe. That’s right, I don’t even try to finish. It’s more productive to do some of the options I’m about to discuss. Unfortunately, that means I’m not able to do a lot of instances right now.

So what DO I do?

I find other ways to support and develop my character or cater to my end goals in the game. I always play every game with a goal in mind. For instance, in Black Ops, my goal was to hit level 50 so that I could unlock all the weapons. In WoW, there are so many different things you can shoot for. For me, it is to create the ultimate healer that is asked for when any tough healing situation arises. To be competitive at the highest levels of PvE as a priest healer. What caters to my goal? Anything that adds value to my main. Gold, mats, crafted items, professions, instance experience, UI improvements, and networking.

So, here are options I have been exploring and enjoying in cataclysm when I’m not able to heal instances as I would prefer.

• I started a DK at lvl 55 and leveled the toon with herbalism and mining. (I have played my priest almost exclusively since WoW released...I originally shunned the idea of serious alts, but I was missing out) Taurens get fast herbalism gathering, and pale rider in the frost tree means I can fly faster on my 150% speed flying mount.
  
• Gathering is considerably easier and faster now that you can fly, and those mats are lucrative. The lower level mats have earned me about 2000g so far, which is really a small amount in cataclysm. However, Kyle Rudd has informed me that flask sales on the AH are guaranteed to bring in thousands with good frequency.
  
• I plan to have my alt gathering herbs and Smoogee already has almost maxed out alchemy. I estimate I'll be bringing in about 10k per week once I have that system running.
  
• The leveling process is fun and new, and along the way I am auctioning nearly everything I can. I anticipate that my DK will have earned about 20k+ gold by the time it is 85. And THAT could be an ilvl 359 BoE healing Staff of Dark Mending, or Vial of the Sands, or something I really want. Also, I plan to purchase some heirloom items for my DK if the timing works out with justice points…may or may not happen. Gold opens up a ton of options for anybody’s main.
• I am leveling my alchemy and enchanting, and neither of those will be cheap. I’m already at a high level, and I have my rings enchanted and the alchemy trinket. Oh, by the way, pots help a ton for priests.
• Networking is the last thing I’ve started getting back into. Rebuilding my friend list with current players who I can go to for parties, help, professions, or even information. Remember when WoW first started? I still have connections from the version 1.0 days, and it makes a lot of sense to intentionally redevelop that habit pattern. That way, when I can play at higher performance levels, I’ll have relevant connections on my server. (The new “add a note” feature is awesome, as well as the RealID system)