The Blizzard Player Code Of Conduct For Dummies. Part 3: Gameplay

I’m a little disturbed this morning.  Over the past two days the two previous articles in this series have gotten virtually zero direct hits.  I suppose it doesn’t mean that they aren’t being read, it just means that people aren’t linking to them directly.  Traffic overall has been pretty average.  I suppose I should resort to the oldest blogging trick in the book and put a break in my articles so you have to click them to see the rest of them.  Makes statistics a whole lot easier.  LOL.

The last section in the Code of Conduct (which is actually just a sub-section of a larger document called the Terms of Use) is the section on gameplay activity.  What you can and cannot do in-game.

You may be somewhat disappointed to know what this is the shortest section of the Code of Conduct due mostly to the fact that Blizzard invokes the “and whatever else” clause leaving it essentially open-ended for them to enforce whatever they like.  (Which is the #1 reason why you should never be rude to a GM.)

Interestingly though (and I’m hestitant to publish this) they start off with a list of things that are permissable.  The opening paragraph of the Code of Conduct says (and I quote, with personal emphasis added):

Blizzard considers most conduct to be part of the Game, and not harassment, so player-killing enemies of your race and/or alliance, including gravestone and/or corpse camping is considered part of the game.

Colour me edumahcated!  I did not know that was in the Code of Conduct!   They go on to say that you should take reasonable measures to protect yourself in areas where you could get killed and not call a GM when a 500 lb Tauren decides to sit on your head.  They add however, that “some things” go beyond this and are considered “unfair”.  They are:

1. Exploiting bugs.  If there’s something wrong with the program and you use knowledge of that bug to gain a competitive advantage over another player you’re in trouble.
2. Conduct prohibited in the EULA (End User License Agreement… another fine Blizzard document.)
3. “Anything else” that Blizzard considers to be in violation of the “essence” of the game.

What what’s in that EULA?  So glad you’re asked.  (That’d be the other document you skip every time there is  a patch.)  We’ll be looking at it soon!

The Blizzard Player Code Of Conduct For Dummies. Part 2: Chat

Yesterday we talked about what you can and cannot do in relation to the naming of your characters.  The next article in this series about the Player Code of Conduct will talk about chat.

It is important to note that with respect to the Code, there is no differentialization between text chat and in-game voice chat.  (Obviously Blizzard can’t do anything about what goes on in your Ventrilo or Teamspeak server.)   The same rules apply to both, even though some of the rules only have limited application to voice.

1. You can’t swear. Yep, that’s what it says.  It doesn’t matter that there’s a filter.  The filter is there to protect children from people who ignore the rules, but it’s up to you the player to make sure it doesn’t come out of your mouth to start with.  Furthermore Blizzard is the judge of what’s profanity and what is not.  It doesn’t matter what your opinion is.  Misspelling swear words to get around the filter is also forbidden and will get you in the same trouble you’d get in if you’d spoken the actual word.
2. You cannot carry out any action in a chat venue that will be disruptive.  What’s disruptive?  Things like scrolling the chat screen so fast that you can’t read it.  So all those little ASCII pictures of guns and buses and such are illegal.
3. The gold farmer clause.  You’re not allowed to sell things in chat that are outside the Warcraft universe.  But this applies to Runescape accounts and other things as well.
4. Sending repeated unsolicited messages to a single user.  Yep, so if somebody tells you to leave them alone, you’d best do it.  The rule also refers to excessive repeating in public chat channels.
5. You can’t communicate personal information about somebody else.  Period.  If you know somebody’s home address, phone number, or other information and you post it in-game (or on the forums) you’re going to get in trouble unless it’s your information and you’re communicating it privately to a single user.
6. Harass, threaten, stalk, embarrass or cause distress, unwanted attention or discomfort to any user of the Game.  That one was so simple I just decided to cut/paste it.
7. You can’t participate in any kind of a scheme that screws anybody out of gold, weapons, gear, or other in-game items.
8. You can’t communicate with players cross-faction.  So those cute little codes that people use to say “LOL” in Hordespeak?  They’re illegal.
9. You can’t impersonate a real life person that you are not.  Blizzard makes mention of GM’s, but it includes anybody else as well.

You may look at some of this and go “WOW!  I didn’t know that was in the Code of Conduct”, but remember what I said the other say.  90% of all the “enforcement” in the game is complaint driven.  If nobody catches you, or nobody cares… there is a very good chance you could escape completely unscathed.  That doesn’t mean you should do it.  It just explains why a lot of people never get nailed.

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about what the Code of Conduct has to say about your in-game actions.  Bring your heart pills.  You may need ‘em.

The Blizzard Player Code Of Conduct For Dummies. Part 1: Names

It’s become incredibly clear to me in the last few months on Bloodhoof that nobody knows exactly what the Code of Conduct says.  Lots of players say that they know, but a lot of times when you check the actual Code of Conduct, they’re wrong.  So I’m going to write one mother of a long blog post and go through it piece by piece.  I’m going to take all the legalese and big words, and chop it up into small manageable pieces.

Before we get to the actual meat of the Code of Conduct though, we have to realize one very important thing.  Blizzard doesn’t have the time or inclination to patrol the streets of Ironforge or Orgrimmar and have people listen to the chat channels and hand out suspensions.  Maybe it’s happened a handful of times since the game launched, but just like real life Blizzard’s “law enforcement” is complaint-driven. Blizzard knows that a handful of people exist who will always look out for the greater good, and they depend on those people.  You can probably commit a minor Code infraction and carry it on for a very long time if nobody complains.  The flip side of the coin is that the complaint system is anonymous and you will never know who blew the whistle on you if it ever happens.

Section A – Names

The first section of the Code deals with what you’re allowed (and not allowed) to call your guild or character.  Please remember this is not the actual Code, it is my easy-to-understand paraphrase of the rules as they appear.

1. You can’t impersonate a GM or another Blizzard employee.
2. No names of a sexual, offensive, vulgar, obscene, or racial nature or otherwise offensive in any way.   Yes, it says any way.  If you make a cool name that you don’t think anybody will understand, and somebody figures it out and complains… you’re in trouble.
3. You can’t use a name that somebody else has legal rights to.
4. No names of famous people.
5. You can’t use a name that is trademarked or service marked — whether it’s registered or not.
6. No deities or religious figures.  You can’t name your toon Jesus, Buddha or Virginmary.
7. You can’t steal a name from Blizzard’s content.  HEY LOOKIE HERE!  Do you have any idea how many people could get slapped for this one?
8. No names related to drugs, sex, or criminal activity.  That one’s pretty self-explanatory.
9. Names that comprise a complete or partial sentence.  They give examples of “Inyourface” and “Welovebeef”.
10. No gibberish!  No rolling your face over the keyboard to make a name.
11. They once again make a specific rule about pop culture icons.  No Batman.  No Britneyspears.
12. No “leet” or “dudespeak”.  Like “Roflcopter”, “xxnewbxx” or “Pwnyou”.
13. Any kind of name with any kind of a title in it.

Was that as painful for you as it was for me?  I have at least four toons that are illegal by the letter of the law.

I was going to do the whole code today, but that’s gonna be a long post.  Tune in tomorrow for our look at chat rules.  I promise you, it will change your life!

Rumours Of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Courtesy Of The North Kentucky Taxidermists Association

Yeah, I’ve been absent again.  No less active in World of Warcraft, but less active in blogging.  Yes, I’m aware that’s a crime punishable by death.  I’m sorry.  My inspiration comes in spurts, and I’ve explained that before.  Another spurt will come, I just need inspiration.  (Shaddup, Brolden…)

So what’s new?  Hmm.  In no particular order…

1. I took my Death Knight through Karazhan for the first time last night.  It was the first time I’ve ever taken a plate-wearer into a raid.  (Interesting side note:  Did you know there are three Microlich’s in the armory?  Interestingly, we’re all gnomes.  Go figure.)  The bad news was we had so many 80’s in the group that I only got two bars experience for the whole raid.  The good news was that there was only one other DK in the raid, and I have her wrapped around my little finger so I got lots of gear.  (Don’t worry.  She got her share.)
2. I’m really, really, really struggling with Inscription.  I’m almost wishing I hadn’t picked it up.  Probably the greatest problem I’m having is that Gweedo — my scribe — isn’t a herbalist himself.  That was the whole point though.  I wanted a scribe/chanter, and I figured I’d use a whole bunch of gatherers to keep him stocked in mats.  It’s not working.  The Inscription profession needs to be re-worked.  You heard it here first.
3. Why can’t we have “backfill” content patches?  The Sims franchise made millions of dollars off of them.  New gear for old areas.  Spice things up a little bit for the people who decide to try their hand at rolling a druid for the 239th time.
4. I had some ideas when I was driving to work last week about what I’d like to see in the next expansion.  They’re still fairly fluid and not ready for print yet, but you could see them coming soon.  The only problem is that I’m lore-retarded and am thinking only in terms of mechanics.
5. Blizzard… for all the bitching I subject you to… THANK YOU for making the rep changes in the last patch.  That really, really rocked.

See you guys soon.

The Stupidest Thing You’ve Ever Seen On The Auction House

"Stupid."

I gotta haul because I’m running late.

Aside from the absurd, what’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever seen in the auction house?  I mean besides grey items for 99999g.  I mean reasonably absurd.  Like “this poor deluded soul thinks he’s actually going to sell this” absurd.

I logged into the game a few moments ago to tend to auctions and the like and posted a whole load of items that my death knight had acquired.  Among them was a Jade.  You know — the level pre-BC gem.  We’ve all seen them.  Some moron on Bloodhoof is playing the “let’s inflate the market game” with Jade gems.  We’ve all seen this game played.  Hell, some of us — myself included — have even played the game from time to time.  You inflate the item enough to be affordable and buy-out anybody who seriously undercuts you.  In a sense, you own the market.

See but the problem is… you have to keep it affordable or else you’re going to drive people out of the market.

I can’t help but snicker as I say this, but… every Jade on Bloodhoof this morning was priced in the 25g range.

There are just some people who should not be allowed to play World of Warcraft.

When WoW Dies: Starting Over

No, I’m not speaking apocalyptically of the end of the game, when Blizzard shuts off the servers for good.  I don’t see any indications of that happening anytime in the near future.  I’m talking about when your copy of the game ceases to function.  One of the truly great things about the Windows and Mac versions of World of Warcraft is that the game is completely self-contained.  There are no “hidden” files or registry entries.  You can just copy the folder and be done.  This is a good thing because it makes backups really easy and makes moving it from computer to computer really easy.  It’s a bad thing because up until the other day, I’d been using the same installation for more than a couple of years.  Eventually something is going to get corrupted or break, and sure enough it did.  I did a Command-Option-Q to quickly get out of the game a couple of days ago and went to get a drink.  When I came back, the game still hadn’t exited.  I executed a “Force Quit” and restarted it, but it wouldn’t restart no matter what I did.  I deleted all the folders that they tell you to delete when you have problems.  It still wouldn’t restart, so I decided to do a complete re-install from scratch.

Tales From The Dark Side: Death Grip Gone Baaaaaaad.

I admit that my earlier Death Knight comments may have been unfounded.  Since I switched from Frost to Blood spec, I’m really beginning to enjoy my Death Knight a lot more.  I think though that Death Grip has got to be one of my favourite Death Knight abilities no matter what spec you are.  It’s just so frickin’ handy.  Especially for caster fugitives and runners.  I never thought I’d ever see a Death Grip go bad per se, but today I did.  Luckily I wasn’t the person who cast it.

I was on my way to Zangarmarsh.  Amusingly — in hindsight — I never actually got there.  I needed to go through Hellfire Peninsula to pick up the first flight point in Zangarmarsh.  I was about to land in Hellfire when I heard chatter in General about a flagged Horde Death Knight who was “being a knob”.  “Perfect light entertainment for Sunday afternoon”, I thought as I asked where he was and plotted a course in the direction of the Pools of Agonnar.

As I was crossing the fence-line just before the Pools I saw a rogue and a boomkin racing in.  I smirked to myself.  “The more the merrier”, I thought as we spread out and started looking for this Tauren.

I ran my Deathcharger right down the center of the pools and within seconds I saw him on the western side of the pools, standing there scratching his Tauren bits.  When he saw me, he white-knuckled his hearthstone but it was too late.  I death gripped him before he had a chance to click his heels hooves together and say there was no place like home.  By the time we were square dancing in the middle of the pools, the rest of the squad had converged and well… it wasn’t pretty.  Not for the Tauren anyway.  It wasn’t long until he was laying facedown in a pool of green… umm… fel-sewage or whatever that crap is.

We hung around his body for a couple of seconds for the traditional postmortem chin wag.  You know.  The usual.  /point.  /laugh.  etc etc etc.

A couple of our squad took off and this is where the story gets… bizarre.

I think he saw the unholy DK take off and figured if I had my back turned he could make a run for it.  I’m not sure whether his thought was to run to the Horde town or what, but the point is he got up and made a run for the road.

I figured he still had two more HK’s left in him so — naturally — I gave chase.  He hug the left wall heading for the road and just as he rounded the corner to make himself parallel with the road he stopped.  I have no idea why.  Maybe he looked behind him and didn’t see me or maybe he just didn’t think I was motivated enough to chase him that far.  He targetted an ooze that he’d agro’ed first.  (I had him targeted and had target-of-target turned on.)  Then I’m not sure whether “the cat” walked on his keyboard or what happened but… you guessed it… he targeted me and hit death grip.

You’re running… from a guy who kicked your ass less than five minutes ago… and you’re actually getting away and you death grip the guy chasing you.

It was one of those “I wish I had video running” moments.

I think today was the Horde short bus field trip to the Pools of Agonnar.

The Jenkins Title: The Tactic That Worked For Us

As you can see from my lovely little screenshot, my Death Knight got his “Jenkins” title tonight.  I know I’m not the first.  There have been people parading around Ironforge with the title for quite some time.  But we did the whole thing (from “no UBRS key” to “Jenkins”) in one evening and three trips to the rookery.  We learned from our mistakes, and I will pass what we learned onto you if you’re thinking of trying for the “Jenkins” title.

First of all, take ten people.  Even if you’re level 80’s, you’re gonna need a lot of DPS.  You have to kill fifty whelps in fifteen seconds.  A couple of hunters spamming Volley ain’t gonna cut it.  In fact to do things the way I will suggest, I think it’s best to have two of everything.

Your raid group will consist of ten people.  I suggest the following composition to ensure you can get the achievement easily.  Two tanks, two healers, three to four AoE DPS, and you can fill the other two slots with whoever you can find who wants to go who wants the title.  AoE DPS is the key to this encounter however, and the more you can take, the better you will do.  If you could score six of them with the two healers and two tanks, you’d be golden.

I’ll assume you have the UBRS key.  You will need it to get the Jenkins title.

Enter Blackrock Spire and start clearing.  Once you cross the portal into the instance you’ll want to clear a path to the left towards the left stairway.  Assuming nobody in your party is low enough to be agro bait to the groups on the other side of the room, you can skip those, climb the stairs, turn left, and have the person with the UBRS key open the door.

You have to clear everything from this point on.  All the side rooms and stuff have got to be dead or else the final door will not open.  When you get to the door with the guys channeling the fire elemental, click the altar on the left side of the room to release the warlocks and kill them.  Then click it again to release the fire elemental and kill it.  At this point the door should open and the raid leader should make sure that everybody stops and chills while instructions are being handed out.  If you have trigger happy people at this point it can wipe the encounter and you have to reset and do it all over again.

A Death Knight at this point is perfect.  Any spec will do.  You want to Death Grip the dragonkin out of that room without going close enough to the eggs to make them hatch.  There are two large ones at the doorway and another two inside.  The deepest one of the four will be difficult to reach, but caution cannot be overstressed.  If you start hatching, you’ve gotta shift gears instantly.  If you can’t get the fourth dragonkin, it’s not the end of the world as long as the healers are on their game.

As for the actual killing of the whelps, here’s a basic rundown of how we handled it.  We had two tanks (in our case, two death knights) hatch the whole room at once.  Note — if you’re unfamiliar with this room — that you don’t have to click the eggs to hatch them, just run over them.  I marked myself (playing a third DK) with a star so I was easy to see and told the two hatchers to run over as many eggs as they could and bring them back to the star.  Then when the whole herd was on me, somebody tossed a raid warning to begin AoE DPS.  Because of the time limit, it’s very important that AoE dps be coordinated.  It needs to start all at the same time, and all the whelps need to be on the marker.  It’s also important to tell people that if they do die, don’t release.  As long as you don’t release you’ll still get the achievement.  We didn’t have any shamans in our group but I imagine a shaman or two might be nice additions.  Heroism and a couple of fire elemental totems would really help.

That’s how we did it.  I wish you luck securing your Leeeeeeeeeeeeroy achievement.

Where I’ve Been And Other Pressing Issues

I appreciate the fact that some of you have missed me.  But when I don’t blog, I don’t blog.  Inspiration comes in spurts (for me anyway) and I’ve kinda been busy lately.  Messages like “We miss you” and “Where ya been?” are appreciated.  Messages telling me what I should do, or how I should blog succeed only in pissing me off.  If you think it’s so easy, try doing it yourself.  Everybody needs a break once in a while.  Rant over.

An Addon I’d Like To See

Maybe it exists, and if it does, I’m sure one of my loyal readers will point it out to me.  I hate duel spam.  But I’m not sure I want to get rid of it completely.  I just find the duel dialog box to be completely useless.  Even just a little more information would be useful.  Like the class and level of the person who is trying to duel you?  Picture it…

Joemoron, a Level 79 Death Knight wants to duel you.
Yes / No 

Wouldn’t that be freaking awesome?  Good.  Now somebody go out and write it.

Dr. Addon: Possessions Update!

Searching For "Fist"

It’s very rare that I will talk about something that I haven’t actually installed and played with yet.  But this is a new version of an addon I’ve used for a year or more, and if it does everything I think it does, then I need to spread the word as quickly as I can.  (If it blows, I can always delete the blog post later.  LOL.)

Possessions is one of my all-time favourite addons.  It’s one of the few that I really can’t imagine living without.  I blogged about it on the old Blogger blog as well as “that other place” that I used to work for.  Possessions really doesn’t get the fame it deserves.

Possessions keeps track of — you guessed it — your possessions.  Once it “sees” all your banks and inventories, you can search from anywhere from the command line.  (That’s one of the things I like about Possessions as opposed to other inventory mods.  For keyboard mavens like myself, it’s a breeze to find things without ever taking my hands off the keys.)  For example, typing “/poss silk” and hitting enter will search all toons and their inventories and banks for any item that has “silk” in the name.  It will even search guild banks but be forewarned that if you don’t visit the guild bank often, your information is going to get out-of-date fast because there is no way for the addon to know when other people deposit and withdraw items.

This most recent update adds new features that some of us have been waiting for for a very long time, including the ability to purge the Possessions database of characters you no longer have, or guilds you no longer belong to.  It was easy enough to do it before manually by editing the data file, but now it’s a simple command-line option.

Possessions is the perfect addon for the World of Warcraft packrat in your life.  Check it out today!