Some people who play World of Warcraft really closely identify with one of the two factions, the Horde and the Alliance. They care about the ongoing lore of the divide, they argue back and forth about which side is in the wrong and who is doing what, or when which side committed a particular wrong or another. Now, we here at wow.com are no different in that regard, as you saw when you followed those links. We’re passionate about the game, and that includes the lore.

However, I’ve always been less a factional player (I have and love Horde and Alliance toons pretty equally, and I think both sides of the Horde/Alliance enmity have good and bad points) and more of a class partisan. I pretty much love shamans and warriors and don’t really like playing other classes. I’ll defend my chosen classes, gush about them, rant about what I think needs fixing, and play those classes to the exclusion of others even when I know that objectively those other classes might well be just as much fun. I just can’t bring myself to support other classes, play them, or even in my heart embrace them as fully as shamans and warriors. I’m not pretending my behavior is anything more than the strange mental quirk of a particular player, but it got me wondering: what other strange divisions are out there in active play? My lovely wife, for example, won’t tame a pet unless it has a unique skin or is harder than normal to get. She just loves the challenge.

Do you find youself making a choice, whether it be Horde vs. Alliance, a specific class, a race, a profession, or a style of play that draws a solid line of demarcation for you in game? Roleplayers vs. non-Roleplayers? Will you only raid 10 man? Are you a partisan for PvP and barely even bother with instances? What do you cleave to in WoW, and what do you reject?

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers’ Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

One of the big annoyances of raiding is finding the right schedule. This time of year is particularly bad for many guilds, as last week’s Officers’ Quarters column proved. Students of all ages have finals. Working adults are traveling more often or spending more time away from the PC. When you have a small crew, the loss of even one person for a few weeks can mean all your raids are put on hold. This week, one officer wants to know how to figure out a raiding schedule despite some uncooperative individuals.

You said it yourself, HAH: “Raiding is a team effort.” Rather than having individuals pose self-serving solutions, you need to figure out the schedule with input from everyone.

Allow me to suggest a statistical solution. Ask everyone who wants to raid to post on your Web site. Have them rank each day of the week from 1-10 in terms of their availability. 10 would be a day they can always make barring a personal emergency. 9 would be a day they can almost always make, and so on. 1 would be a day they could never make no matter what.

Set a deadline for this post so you don’t waste a whole week gathering the data. You want to get your raiding back on track ASAP. Set your request to be the message of the day. Talk to people about it when you see them online. Make sure they know how important it is. It’s in their best interest, after all. If they aren’t accounted for, the result will be far less favorable to their personal schedule.

Once everyone has posted, it’s a matter of some simple math. First, eliminate all the days that were rated with a 1, 2, 3, or 4 by anyone. You’ll consider those last, and only if necessary. Hopefully there won’t be more than a couple of days that people rated so low. If various people rated all 7 days of the week that low, then you’ll have to eliminate only the days that were rated 1 or 2.

Next, take the total rating for each day and divide it by the number of respondents. For example, say the ratings from 10 raiders for Monday were 10, 10, 10, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 5, 5. The total is 82. Divided by 10 people, that’s a rating of 8.2.

Say you threw out Friday and Sunday, and the remaining days were

• Monday, 8.2
• Tuesday, 9.5
• Wednesday, 6.1
• Thursday, 5.8
• Saturday, 9.1

Tuesday and Saturday are now your raid days, with Monday as the alternative day if a reschedule is necessary. Statistically speaking, they are the best days for everyone in the group. You eliminated days that were impossible (or nearly so) for any individual to make. In theory everyone should be able to go on that day during most weeks if they “want to.”

If they don’t want to, that’s another story. What else can you do at that point but recruit someone to replace them? Just because you’re all good friends doesn’t give any one person the right to veto a raid night based on nothing but laziness or selfishness — in fact, I’d say they have even less right to do so.

Some will of course try to argue for other days. Point to the numbers and say there’s nothing you can do about it. You have to raid on the days that are the best for the most.

By using a statistical method, you’re removing the subjectivity from scheduling. No one’s needs are more (or less) favored than anyone else. It’s not an ideal solution. (The ideal solution would be to get everyone to agree to a schedule and show up without having to go to this length.) But it’s a solution that works when people are being uncooperative.

Some people’s schedules will change once school is over or some other life event occurs. You can always go back and reevaluate the ratings for each day if someone has to change a day to a 1-4 rating. However, keep the original numbers and ask people to provide a reason for a change when they make a drastic one. Otherwise, you may not have stability.

It’s important to choose days and then stick to them. When family and friends know in advance that the guild raids on certain days, they can do their part to leave those days free of other commitments when possible.

I know some people will scoff at the idea of a wife or husband planning their life around their spouse’s guild’s raiding schedule. But it’s no different than asking them to plan around a weekly poker night or softball game. It won’t always be possible for them to leave those days free. Family obviously has to come first. But families can try to accommodate someone’s needs when it’s something they enjoy doing. (If a parent is raiding five nights a week instead of spending time with the family, that’s a whole other story.)

So that’s my suggestion, Has a Headache. I’m curious how other guilds figure out their raiding schedules. Tell us about it below!

/salute

As with other MMORPGs, companies have emerged offering to sell virtual gold and associated services. After Blizzard started offering free trial game-play accounts, players noticed an increase in spam from bots advertising these services.^[88] One study shows that this problem is particularly prevalent on the European realms, with gold being over 14 times more expensive to buy on US realms than their European counterparts.^[89]

In patch 2.1, Blizzard responded to this by adding additional anti-spam mechanics including whisper throttling and the report spam function. Additionally, trial accounts are prevented from speaking in the public chat channels (although they may speak to players within range or whisper to other players that have first whispered them), participating in-game trades, using the Auction House and the mail feature and several other limitations.

In May 2007 Blizzard filed a complaint against In Game Dollar LLC (trading as peons4hire) in US federal court. In February 2008, the parties filed a consent decree in which In Game Dollar agreed to refrain from using any World of Warcraft chat or communication to advertise any business or sell any services relating to World of Warcraft.^[90]

As characters progress in World of Warcraft and take on some of the toughest challenges, many of the rewards received are bound to that character and cannot be traded, generating a market for the trading of accounts with well-equipped characters. The highest noted World of Warcraft account trade was for £5000 (€7000, $9,900 USD) in early September 2007.^[91]

The practice of buying or selling gold in World of Warcraft is seen as highly controversial.^[92] On February 21, 2008, Blizzard released a statement concerning the consequences of buying gold. Blizzard reported that an “alarmingly high” proportion of all gold bought originates from “hacked” accounts. The article also stated that customers who had paid for character leveling services had found their accounts compromised months later, with all items stripped and sold for virtual gold. The article noted that leveling service companies often used “disruptive hacks … which can cause realm performance and stability issues”.^[93]

Game “addiction”

World of Warcraft has also been the subject of video game addiction concerns.

In August 2005, the government of the People’s Republic of China introduced an online gaming restriction limiting playing time to 3 hours, after which the player would be expelled from whichever game they were playing. Of the more than 20 million people who play online games in China, roughly 1.5 million play World of Warcraft.^[94] In 2006, it changed the rule so only citizens under the age of 18 would face the limitations.^[95]

Community

In addition to playing the game itself and conversing on discussion forums provided by Blizzard, World of Warcraft players often participate in the virtual community in creative ways, including fan artwork^[96] and comic strip style storytelling.^[97]

Blizzard garnered criticism for its decision in January 2006 to ban guilds from advertising sexual orientation preferences. The incident occurred after several players were cited for “harassment” after advocating a group for gay-straight alliance.^[98][99] Blizzard later reversed the decision to issue warnings to players promoting LGBT-friendly guilds.

Earlier today Blizzard posted a preview of Ulduar, the tier 8 raid coming up in patch 3.1 (which they promise will be on the PTRs “very soon”). Most of it looks really cool – 14 bosses, massive rooms, hard modes. However, there is one topic that Blizzard enthused about that really worries me: vehicle combat.

We’ve already seen some vehicle-based boss fights in Eregos (the final boss of the Oculus) and on the third phase of the Malygos fight. But Ulduar is, apparently, going to take it one step farther: there will be a vehicle-combat gauntlet leading up to the first boss, Flame Leviathan, and that boss itself will also be a vehicle fight, with players picking among three vehicles (Chopper, Demolisher, and Siege Engine) to command.

I know some people will disagree, but I also know I’m not alone here: I hate vehicle combat and would like to see it used as little as possible in the future. I play my character to play my character, not to use the clunky and boring abilities of a dragon, or a motorcycle, or whatever they shoe-horn me into next. I hate the Eregos fight so much that Oculus is the one heroic I flat-out refuse to do. Phase 3 of Malygos is better, but still definitely the least fun phase of the fight, in my opinion.

The good news, I guess, is that Daelo promises that after the Flame Leviathan fight there is “very little use of vehicles by players.” I guess that’s something. Blizzard, I know you guys are really excited about this cool new vehicle technology, and it was fun for quests, but for raids, I really think it’s the wrong way to go. Please let us continue to play our characters; I didn’t sign up to drive seige vehicles, and I don’t appreciate being forced to do so in order to do Ulduar.

It also means I’m back to my old “you have how many max level warriors?” days. It’s a shame I’m currently working on my DK and shaman horde side or I could level another warrior. Yes, I’m aware that with Dual Specs coming having more than one warrior per faction per server is kind of ridiculous. Luckily, this means I can have two warriors per server! Look, I don’t love this class because I’m sane.

So, we now have hit and expertise to discuss for Arms and Fury warriors. How much do you need? The short answer is enough to ensure you don’t miss your special attacks and push dodges off of the attack table. The short answer is also remarkably less than helpful in terms of telling you how much you want on your gear.

Hit Rating

The slightly more comprehensive answer to how much hit rating you want as a DPS warrior is 263 at level 80. This will equate to 8% chance to hit with special attacks, and assumes you have no talents that increase your chance to hit. Full Precision, for instance, provides 3% to hit, but it also costs at least 3 points to max and you have to have at least 20 points in fury to get it, so you’re not likely to have it maxed if you have the 51 point talent in either arms or protection, meaning that for this discussion we can assume arms warriors won’t have it. (Note: the current data seems to be that we need 8% hit against raid bosses. Previously it was thought to be 9%. I am using the 8% value here.)

Hit differs for Arms and Fury in that Fury simple cannot afford to try and gear for total miss removal on white attacks. The miss chance for a dual wielding warrior on white attacks is roughly 27% (assuming a level 80 warrior with maxed weapon skill against a skull level, functionally level 83 mob). So for a fury warrior, it’s sufficient to aim for complete miss removal on special attacks, because in order to totally remove the dual wield miss penalty you would need over 800 hit rating. It’s possibly achieveable but the sheer amount of hit you would need to shoot for would completely gut your attack power, critical strike rating, and other beneficial stats. You would be hitting with every auto attack but doing effectively no damage.

As fury, I don’t take precision because at this point my gear has all the hit I need. It’s worth keeping in mind that until you hit the point where your gear has this kind of hit rating, precision is a heck of a talent. With it, you will only need roughly 165 hit rating to be sure of not missing with a special attack. For an arms warrior, there’s no precision bonus but arms also doesn’t have the 27% chance to miss with regular, or white, attacks. (So named because the damage they do is reported in white numbers rather than the yellow numbers of special attacks.) What this means is that while an arms warrior will not have precision to help with specials and must aim for the 263 hit rating that equates to 8% hit against a level 83 mob, it also means that at 263 hit rating you will effectively never miss a special or a regular attack against a level 83 mob unless there is a debuff that lowers your chance to hit.

As the game currently stands, you can hit this target fairly easily for either arms or fury. My tauren warrior has the Cast Iron Shackles, Berserker’s Sabatons and Gauntelts of the Culling from the moment he hit 80, meaning that he has over 100 hit rating from those three items alone. Various enchants for weapons and gear make hit a stat you can reach the ’soft cap’ on fairly easily for fury and for which arms can achieve all it needs in level 80 blues.

Please, though, don’t stack hit to the exclusion of all else. If you have 263 hit rating as an 80 arms warrior that’s good, but if you achieved it by stacking hit to the point where you have less than 2k AP and 18% crit, you’ve done something wrong somewhere. Keep in mind also, the 8% (or 8.2% as some are reporting) number is against raid bosses, that is, functional level 83 mobs. The mobs in Heroics and regular level 80 5 man dungeons are at most level 82. This means you need less hit rating for them – your chance to miss a level 82 mob at level 80 with maxed weapon skill is 5.4%, meaning you need slightly above 177 hit rating without precision or 78 hit rating with it to be all good on hit for heroics.

Expertise

Expertise is of two fold use for tanking warriors, as we covered last time.

You, however, are not a tank. (Well, you might be for all I know, but this is a discussion for DPS warriors. We covered you guys last time.)

You should not be in front of the mob. If you are in front of the mob, you’re doing something horribly, horribly wrong. You should be behind or to the side of the mob, with behind being better because it’s safer in a game where the mob is often not quite where we think it is due to lag.

If you are behind the mob, it cannot parry you, it can only dodge you. (You may see some parries if the mob is the type to turn to cast some spell or another, but those are unavoidable and we will ignore them.) Therefore, for a DPS warrior, expertise is only of value for removing the chance the boss will dodge you. Up until that point, expertise is as valuable, if not more valuable, than hit or other DPS stats. Once you have removed the chance for the bosses you’re killing to dodge you, you do not need a single point more of expertise. This isn’t like being a fury warrior dealing with hit, where a few points of hit over the cap for specials will just reduce the chance your white attacks will miss by a small amount. (This doesn’t mean you should be stacking hit endlessly, either.) Also, unlike arms vs fury, neither DPS spec differs in how much expertise it needs, save for the presence of the Weapon Mastery talent in fury which reduces your chance to be dodged by 2%. (Weapon Mastery does not add expertise, which would also affect parries, it simply reduces your chance to be dodged outright. For purposes of DPS gearing the effect is the same, but the distinction is important to remember.)

Since the last time I wrote about expertise I’ve been swayed to the opinion that level 83 mobs have a 6.5% chance to dodge. Therefore, you need 26 expertise (which is 214 expertise rating) to remove dodges and once that is achieved, you’re done. If you have that much expertise, you can respec and stop taking weapon mastery entirely, as you will gain no benefit from its 2% dodge reduction. If you have Weapon Mastery, you only need 148.42 expertise rating or 18 expertise. For a rule of thumb, remember that each point of expertise reduces your chance to be dodged or parried by .25%, and that it takes 32.79 expertise rating for each 1% dodge or parry you’re trying to remove.

Finding DPS gear with expertise is not easy before raiding, but once you get into 10 man raiding the warrior DPS tier gear will have all of it you need. You’ll drop weapon mastery so fast it will make your head spin.

Okay, this wraps up Hit and Expertise for warriors. Next week, we’ll talk about PvP.

The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes

Holy Paladins are a bit of a hot topic right now. While moment-captured statistics will certainly indicate they have a measure of power in Season 5, this isn’t the first time that’s happened. Back in Season 1, Holy Paladins were the class-to-have. But as soon as Resilience and mobility became popular in Arena compositions, Holy Paladins became a thing of the past. Even the so-called “lolret” seemed to fare better in the Arena that the plate-wearing healers.

With all the uproar about Holy Paladins right now, it’s fair to take a second look at the class and tactics in the weekend Arena column. Meetsi of Auchindoun was kind enough to share his thought on the Arena with us, especially from the perspective of an Arena healer. You might also recognize him as partner to Infractus, from last week.

WoW Insider: What are the strongest points of operating as a Paladin in the Arena?

Meetsi: Paladins have a few advantages in Arena which make them desirable healers, as 49/0/22 they become virtually Stun-immune with Blessing of Freedom greatly increasing survivability against Double-DPS.

Also, Blessing of Sacrifice and BoP lend great survivability to your partners enabling you to save your own bubble. Sacred cleansing ( along with the regular cleanse ) is great for keeping team mates out of CC and reducing damage. It’s great for keeping wound off as well.

WoW Insider: What’s your opening strategy? What do you like to do as soon as the gate opens?

Meetsi: Our opening strategy generally consists of Infractus rushing in to catch someone out of stealth or get a quick upper hand on someone. Meanwhile, I buff Sacred Shield and judge his target 40 yards away.

WoW Insider: One of the claims about Arena balance is that it will get better as Resilience improves. Have you seen any of that happening? Or do you think that your survivability is reliant on your class choice?

Meetsi: Surviving is about using cooldowns correctly, and going offensive when your CC is up. It’s less based on class than it was before in my opinion.

WoW Insider: How do you work out target designation? (Does someone call it out, or is everyone on their own to figure it out?)

Meetsi: I Call strats from the gates, everyone starts on what I call. Then, we argue what’s best afterward. There are a few pre-determined things to do based on composition, of course.

WoW Insider: What do you think about the new hidden, personal rating? Does it seem to make the game better or worse to you? Do you consider the hidden rating an unfair penalty to experienced players?

Meetsi: There are advantages and disadvantages to this hidden rating for experienced players. One advantage is that levelling a new team is quick and easy … like 50 or so games.

But what if I want to play Retributio instead of Holy? First, my gear is nowhere near on par with my Holy gear. And I’m simply not practised. Why should I have to fight 2300 players?

WoW Insider: Did you play in previous seasons? What do you see the differences in the new season being?

Meetsi: I played a Druid in all the other seasons. The main difference I noticed is games are decided a lot quicker and more often by cooldowns.

WoW Insider: What’s the key for your composition’s strategy? Are there multiple tactics you can use?

Meetsi: We use multiple strats to keep the enemy unaware of what is happening next. If something doesn’t work, we try something else in quick succession. We try to limit their time to react. Like, HoJ-ing a DPS and swapping to them quick with a Blood Elf Silence, and then dropping a Hungering Cold on their healer.

WoW Insider: What are you trying to improve?

Meetsi: Personally, I’m trying to improve my timing with Blessing of sacrifice, now that it is like a shield wall for the target, CC break for me, and now on a Two Minute cooldown.

WoW Insider: A lot has been made of healers not having a strong role in Season 5. What do you think about that commentary?

Meetsi: I think its overexaggerated. A lot of healers are still trying to play the complete defensive role they were playing in S2 and S3 and that’s the reason they are unsuccessful. You won’t last like that. Kill or Be Killed.

WoW Insider: What are you hoping to see improved in 3.1? We’ve seen some changes, obviously, but there’s more to come.

Meetsi: In 3.1, I would like to see the survivability of Rogues go up, Survival Hunter damage go down, and a few tweaks for Warriors.

WoW Insider: What do you think is the significant difference between an “amateur” and a “pro” Arena fighter?

Meetsi: The biggest difference between a mediocre player and a good player is someone who can anticipate exactly the next move of the other arena team. Generally, I can tell you what they are going to do before they do it, meaning I can be ready to react. Instead of waiting for it to happen.