Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard

 

What an absolute mammoth deal. Here is a list of the major game IPs Microsoft now owns (in alphabetical order)

• Age of Empires
• Call of Duty
• Candy Crush
• Devil May Cry
• Diablo
• Dishonored
• Doom
• Fable
• Fallout
• Forza
• Gears of War
• Halo
• Hearthstone
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• Minecraft
• Morrowind
• Oblivion
• Overwatch
• South Park the Stick of Truth
• Skyrim
• StarCraft
• Wasteland
• World of Warcraft
• Warcraft

Let me know if I missed out any notables

Link : https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/18/22889258/microsoft-activision-blizzard-xbox-acquisition-call-of-duty-overwatch 

Lvl 25 Indian Guild in World of Warcraft

This is good news !

Most of my readers would know that I play World of Warcraft. Well, I used to - till a few months back when work became overwhelming to really put in enough time in the game.

When I had started playing Wow in 2006, I was always looking for people from India. I found people from far away places like Brazil but no Indians. Then I started a google group and got a few people in it.

At the end of 2010 I started a guild with the people there after a particularly bad day in office. I named it 'Vinash'. We got the guild to a good start with Indian people joining in. Unfortunately we had a couple of real bad eggs who wanted to run the guild and I was not really Guild Leader material. Sad to say that guild disintegrated.

Enter Sumantho who rolled a new Guild. Since I was on the google group and the facebook group I got excited about it and joined it. The guild got more and more people. It was originally rolled on the horde side on Skullcrusher, called Astra, and I rolled a Paladin figuring that I would make a Tank, and levelled him to 85. Turned out, I made a lousy tank :D

Sometime in between, people decided to move to servers in Oceania as the ones in US , due to the distance of the continents , were not giving good latency numbers. Another factor was that on SK we were just not enough people and getting random people to PUG with us was not happening. So different servers were being checked out for people availability and AH prices. Also, the main people were kinda wanting to go Alliance ( me too ). We had some late night calls over this and ultimately a decision was taken to move to Frostmourne and do a faction change. The guild was named Yuva. I moved my Shaman over to the server and being a healer was gearing it up till work and life caught up. After a month of hardly playing I had to sadly stop playing.

But I continued trolling the facebook group.

Then yesterday it got posted that the guild had levelled up to 25 (the max level as of now in WoW). Felt good. Kudos to the team - Brats, Purva, Bobby, and all the others. GG.

How to raise the DPS for a Hunter

I was actually looking all over the place for this simple question that I had on the Hunter in World of Warcraft - and I got no straight answer. Finally through a lot of hit and trial and reading a lot of mumbo jumbo, I got some results. From a dps ( Damage Per Second) of 1300 I was able to go upto 1700 ! Woot ! So, this is a short writeup for those people who are in the same boat as me. 

Since I am at present staying at my in-laws house, I am playing on a rather low end machine - I get around 30fps at minimum settings ( /sigh ) . It also has a wierd keyboard ( HCL Office 8500 ) and for some reason I am not able to get screenshots to help in this guide. Anyways here goes. 

Once you hit level 80 - the max level in WoW, the options open up to you for Heroic Dungeons and Raids . These enable you to vanquish tougher bosses and get some nice loot , apart from the Badges of Heroism. However, as a DPS unit ( Hunter, Warlock, Mage , cat/moonkin druid, rogue, Enh/Ele shaman, Fury Warrior etc), your role in the group is to burn down the Boss fast. That means that you need to do massive amounts of damage. Therein lies the problem. Up till now, you have been working hard at levelling your character , and things like increasing dps was not something that you have worked on really. So, suddenly you are doing a Dungeon run, and while others show a 2000+ dps, you are stuck at around 1000dps. How embarrasing. And you have no idea what to do. 

I am in the same boat. And I hope my experiments help you to. Keep in mind, I am a n00b raider - and it will show :)

The first thing was that after multiple wipes at EoE , and having dps lower than even the Tank, I started to look at how to do up my DPS. Off I went to IronForge ( if you are Horde, go to Orig or any city) and started to work on the target dummies to check how much is my dps. As the mana bar depleted , the values shown in Recount was approx 1300 ( which reads - just below 1300). Not bad, but not good either. 

The first thing I did after this was to change my spec from a BeastMaster hunter to a Survival Hunter. I used the spec which BigRedKitty uses. 

2nd round at the dummies. Woah ! Crossed the 1500 barrier - just about . 

Next I headed over to Elitist Jerks. These guys do a lot of number crunching on almost each class and spec and try to figure out whats the best way to go forward. Also I did an audit on my character using  Be Imba , a website which checks your gear and tells you the most common things missing. In my case it is the jewels missing from a few sockets , and enchants. Looked up EJ for what gems I needed. Spent a small fortune at the Auction House and got all the sockets gemmed , including the socket created using an Eternal Belt Buckle ( which adds a socket to the belt item - I did not even knew this happened !) . Also a quick trip to Dalaran and I exchanged the badges I had got by running UK and Nexus for a Hand slot item ( I had 61 badges! ) . 

Back to IF. change in shot rotation. Started killing the target dummy. 

Woah ! Spiked to 1900 before averaging out at 1700 dps ! 

A 400 dps jump in a Day ! Wonderful. 

Decided to jump in and test it with a heroic. Today's daily was HoL and pugged it with other guys. Sure we had a couple of wipes, but in the end, got Loken with 2 achievements under the belt : 

• Heroic : Halls of Ligtening
• Shatter Resistant
• Timely Death

Ooh. That is a big confidence booster. However, I somehow did not get the 1700dps I got while testing :( 

Next on the agenda, farm some money to enchant all the items that are enchantable ! 

Random thoughts on 2008

Just a meangerie of thoughts on the year that was. 

Bikes / Touring

My rides have gone down :( . Ridden only 2 overnight kind of rides this year. One to Guaghar and another to Dandeli with BN. BN now has grown to more than 800 people, and was featured on Yahoo group blog as well as bagging a most interesting group title at the Yahoo Moderators meet in Mumbai. 

BN calendar for the year getting delayed :( . Since all activities are volunteer activities, it all depends on the amount of time people have. This year, we ran short of time.

Yamaha made a huge impact in the market with the launch of the R15 and the ZF16 bikes. Both have amazing build quality and look great too! 

No new bikes in the highly anticipated 250cc sector. :'( . Bajaj was going to bring the Kawasaki Ninja 250, but with the worsening Economic scenario, those plans may never see the light of the day. 

Gaming

On the gaming front , Crysis is probably the only FPS that i finished in less than a week. Amazing graphics ( well, my 8800GT helps ;) ), and a gripping storyline. Getting my cousin to leave the comp so i can play was the bottleneck ;)

My world of warcraft character reached level 80, taking only a month after the release of the WoTLK expansion. Levelling has become easy in WoW , and the new quest storylines are quite involved. For the indian players out there, you can either join Deathwing (FTH) or Frostmourne (FTA). At 80 usually one starts to raid - the most amazing experience of the game. But with work and home activities taking up most of my time, I doubt I will be raiding. Which may finally mean bye bye to WoW. I also created a google group  wow-india , to find out if there are more nut-cases like me, and I was not disappointed.

Mass Effect looks to be like KoTOR saga. I have just played a bit - and it is nice. Not overly gripping. 

The game which was the most different one i have ever played has to be Patapon on the psp. Just the concept is amazing. You need to take your army of 'eyes' and make them attack, defend etc based on drum beats. I don't know who was goofing off so much, but it sure was a good goof! 

Politics

Obama became the first black president of the USA. It took them a lot of years to elect a black and they still haven't got a woman as president. Looks like the glass ceiling is still there. I don't mind , as long as the leadership is effective (which it wasnt in the last few years). 

In indian pre-elections, people voted mostly for politicians who had been performing. Shela Dixit in Delhi for example - she got another term. People were complaing that people are still voting for the same party, but having seen the changes in Delhi in the last few years, I am with the verdict. Best roads in India, a good mass trasport system with the metro, to just name a few of the achievements under her rule. 

Terror

The most graphic attack on India - at the Taj and Oberoi in Mumbai. It shook everyone up because , instead of being the usual bomb them and pick up the pieces, it was a long drawn out fight. It also showed that the police is quite ineffective , and the politicians will try to point the fingers anywhere. VilasRao was removed after public anger. Now the new minister is keen to keep out of sight. 

War clouds gathered for a brief hours, but nothing has happened. Pak is good at political rhetoric.

Movies 

Some good movies this year  : Quantum of Solace, Rock On! , The Dark Knight

Some forgetable movies this year : transporter 3

Gadgets

Apple launched the iPhone in india. Costing 31k for the 8GB model, it is just outside the reach of most people. The device has amazing responsiveness - better than any other phone I have seen. 

Google launched the first Android based phone. Waiting for this to become available in India. 

Work

Not much to write about my work. Somehow another year goes by. 

Economic situation crashed drastically. From the sensex being at 21k in Jan , down to 9k now. Major ripples due to the economic meltdown in the US. Hiring freezes almost everywhere. Which means that if you float your resume now, there is a slim chance of getting jobs, and the jobs that are tere , the big bosses squeeze you for the compensation given to you. 

What else ? Do you have a vivid recollection of any event which I don't ? 

LvL 80 in world of warcraft

My main character in world of warcraft reached lvl 80 today. This has so far been my fastest lvling. Probably it helped as I was already 70 and i was running with the wave ( though a bit behind due to office schedules) and also that the quests were very interesting.

Next on, to get to naxx raid.

check out the screenshots in my World of Warcraft blog.

10 million subscribers on WoW

One of my favourite games, although its a money and time sink also, and which I have not been able to play for the last 3 months as there is no broadband connectivity in my building ( yeah - its a fact, broadband in pune is one big deal), has touched the 10 million subscriber mark.

Not impressed cause its a game ? I know people think games are for kiddies. Well, heres something for you to think about ...

Gaming in USA is the 2nd largest entertainment industry, next only to Hollywood. Tourism comes a distinct 3rd.

Still not convinced are you ?

Lets try again. This time with WoW as the base.

WoW works on a monthly subscription. So, one pays around $15 per month to play the game - which is an online virtual world. So, in terms of the current headlines .. that amounts to :
10m x $15 = $150m per month.
x12months = $1,800 million per year ! phew !

lets do some cost reduction on this wrt expenses taken by the company for making the game available on various servers and also the bandwidth rents, as well as the dev costs. lets strike out $800 million from the list ( the company is around 300 people , so this seems reasonable). The end of year profit is a cool $1billion.

Wipro is a $1billion company ...

do the maths, how much money per head.

phew!

WoW on Linux

Woot ! I got World of Warcraft running on Linux ! Let me enjoy a nerdy moment of glee :-D

Links :

• Ubuntu World of Warcraft

WoW : Halloween

The game developers have incorporated many real life events into the game. Right now , it is Halloween, known as Hallow's end in the game. Some screenshots from it.


This is the headless horseman. His head periodically falls off, and you have to kill it first otherwise it gets back onto the horseman and you have to again go through the fight.

The loot ? I got this cool flying broom on which I can ride for 14 days . Very harry potterish if you ask me.


Trick or Treat with a difference. Every hour, you can talk to an innkeeper to get a trick or treat. Treat usually gives some goodies which help recovering your health ingame. Trick is the spiffy one, which changes how you look for a duration of 1min to 1hr. Here, i am a mini-diablo (another of Blizzard's game). Right next to me is my pet lion (hunters tame pets to fight with them !). Other changes I have been are serpent, a glowing wisp, ninja, skeleton, a bat.

WoW : Karazan and T4 gloves

I actually started a different blog for my ingame character of a Night Elf Hunter named Brahmos. However, I find it too tedious to take care of 2-3 blogs at the same time. So, from now on, I am just gonna start posting here about the game and the travels in it.

Ok, so finally I got another slot at Karazan. The problem is that the guild I am in is singapore based. They start the kara stuff around 6:30pm IST. That in itself is ok with me, except that on the first day of the raid, I have a call in the office :( . Suffice to say, I am almost never on a run. However, sometimes I get lucky. You see, on a 10 man instance run, there are specific places where you can join in, if you have not played before. The place wherein I got in was the Curator.

Bam Bam Bam, and down he went the first time round ! And lookie here ! what does he drop ? A tier 4 glove which is usable by only hunters, warlocks and mages ! And since Brahmos is the only hunter in the glove - its for us !


Ok. Assuming the average person here does not know WTH I am talking about, I will explain a bit, and also the screenshot above. Most links in this article will take you to sources which explain more about particular terms.

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a game played online with other players. The common aim is to kill the monsters, and at the end levels (i.e. at lvl 70), it means the monsters are so tough that it takes teams to take them down. This particular instance is a 10 man raid. The screenshot above will give you an idea about what happens.

The lowest bars and the ones on the right are quick click-links to my abilities as a hunter. Suppose I want to fire a poison arrow, i click on the image for it and voila - the target gets poisoned. The backpack you see is a kind of inventory i carry around. Whatever loot we get, as well other stuff we can buy from vendors gets into it. The mouseover shows the glove that I so gleefully described above :D

The left side shows the party interface. 10 people , 5 with portraits are in my group (each group is max 5 people). On the top right is 'damage done'. I am 4th in that, but that is not so very good. However, I console myself that the other people are those who go on each raid. So, their equipment is much better than mine. I guess if I was on most of these raids, I would easily be in top 2. Equipment matters a lot in end game instances in WoW.

So, here I leave you scratching your head on what the hell did Vibhu post here ! :-D

(If you are interested , check out the introduction to WoW )