Its good to see that Martin is interested in Travian. All told it was a cool game, but sadly it seems I’ll probably have to bow out. I had a good weekend. Meaning I wasn’t attacked once. But this morning Nataly, a nearby player and stand up jacktard started coming on strong again and torched my Granary, Main Building and City Walls. Background, she does this daily. As long as the raid against me brings back no resources, I lose my Main Building, Barracks, City Walls, and Merchant. I’m not sure why the Granary felt her wrath today, it might have been a typo sort of thing, or she could have her catapults set to random to try and ferret out my man crannies. This will be even funnier later. I’ll get to that. However as I type this I’ve got another attack incoming. There really isn’t anything to do about it, her alliance is dedicated to (and I quote) “bring Chaos and Death to this server and WåR is what we will wage” so there isn’t much to be said to them.

I like Dragonforce as much as the next guy, but that’s a bit obscene.

So I figure I court the Good Ending. There was a post on the Escapist recently where a guy “went out in style” from World of Warcraft by logging on each of his characters, getting them to a heroic death, then deleting them. I figure the Travian equivalent is doable. There’s no point in fighting militarily (She has four villages with a combined pop over over 1400), therefore I should invite complete annihilation rather than slow death of a thousand cuts. I sent her a message recently, I’ll reproduce it here (The subject was “Love is All You Need”)

Dearest Nataly,

I was beginning to think you had forgotten about me. I lay awake at night over the weekend, tossing and turning. My mind aflame with questions. Had you found another? Was the passion between us cold? And then this morning like a beacon from above came your answer: your love for me burned as brightly as my now destroyed Main Building! I was elated!

Which is why this hurts so much. I am sad to say that our love can never be. We are too different, you and I. Perhaps if you could wax your upper lip, and I could break my arranged marriage to the heiress of the local cog and dial conglomerate, but no, that way lies madness. Besides, if I was to take you away from your love of peanut butter and your neighbor’s dog, it would surely kill you as quickly as my jilted bride’s family.

I ask only that you think of me as you lie sweating beneath that panting schnauzer or while you relentlessly satisfy each member of your thousand-man army (and their horses) like Catherine the Great on mescaline in Secretariat’s stable. And know, that secretly in my heart, my passion for you will always smolder as hotly as the ruin of my Granary and City Walls.

With Love always,
Ninjasuperspy

XXXOOOXXX

That was diplomatic enough I think. I only accused her of bestiality three times. And I couldn’t remember if you capitalized mescaline. If she doesn’t cry havoc and unleash the dogs of war after that (or try to get me banned) then I’ll have to resort to my secret weapon: Limericks about her tits. Women love those.

Though I secretly think “she’s” covertly a guy engaging in that time honored tradition of pretending to be a girl on the internet in order to get fewer people to attack her until she’s in the catbird seat. Not that women can’t be duplicitous curs. Ever since Jenny McCarthy made farting in the MTV Beach House the Funniest Thing Ever back in ‘94 the state of women has been in sharp decline.

Hilariously, I managed to get an actual response to my uproariously conceived little diatribe. It went a little something like this:

Nataly gets all the love she needs, and even more, from me - her husband and from our child. So don’t worry about that. And its me who will destroy you. I thought you could serve as a farm once daily and let you develop further, as we treat all around us. But since you are totally useless, you will just be erased. You should know by now that crannies DO attract catapults. So, just stick to WoW and don’t even try to play games like that, it requires more than just button pressing.

PS: I even can’t be bothered to read your screed. Cry more

Which is great really. I mean that’s just comedy gold. I’ve got all the righteous indignation there I could ever want. And the “you will just be erased” bit is great. I mean I can’t figure out what is best about that response: the Internet Toughguy attitude or the inference that I was a resource node (and should be proud of my status as not “useless”). I also liked the part where he/she/they said that I would (generously) be allowed to “develop further.” This being the code for “I level your main building daily.” Though the bit about WoW being “just button pressing” is precious in and of itself. Yeah, I named my village Duskwood and I do play WoW. What’s Travian though? Not button pressing? I mean is the point that Travian is somehow inherently superior to World of Warcraft because the buttons are pressed slowly? Or is this guy playing Travian on some kind of computer covered in switches or knobs? I don’t think we will ever know. In closing, I shot this one his way:

My love, my light,
Why must imaginary Romans feel the brunt of your unquenchable passion? Its fires have melted the ice of my steely resolve, and like you I will let passion be my guide! The life with my gear heiress is now a fleeting dream, and I live only for you, my dear.

Together we can build a life of wild insouciant pleasure, each night more exquisite than the last! You can even bring the dog, I am sure there will be times when I am too sober to see to your insatiable needs.

Yours forever and always,
Ninjasuperspy
XXXOOOXXX

PS. Remember always, light of my thighs, Travian is Serious Business.

So yeah. Travian is over for me. I might have rerolled as a Gaul or something, their efficient defense is compelling. But really, what would stop a local Teuton from stomping me into the ground? Nothing, that’s what. I’m really interested in how this plays out for Martin, just to see if there is a way for this overall experience to be positive. Though it could be classified as a worthwhile simulation of history: the little guy existed only as the bitch for the big guy. Bar none. In the grim reality of the fictitious past, there is only war. That sort of thing.

Meanwhile, back to button pushing! Wheee!

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I’d like to talk about World of Warcraft again. Yeah, it does seem like I do that a lot, but honestly I live with Kristi now so I talk to her about everything else (TV, Movies, Job stuff, etc) and rarely about World of Warcraft. I’ve got to start a lengthly digression about Block Value versus Block Rating for tanking before I can talk about upgrades to Holy Shield, or about the hunter Deadzone before I can talk about updates in patch 2.3 and her eyes glaze over pretty quick so I don’t usually even start. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We have separate hobbies and I think that’s important to a couple. Anything else and it gets too repetitive.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about professions. First, the number that you are allowed is way WAY to small. In WoW there are two types of professions, Primary and Secondary. You are allowed as many secondary ones as you want (so you take all three) and only two primary. The most common combination is one resource gathering primary and one equipment fabricating primary, so that your dude is self-sufficient. For instance if you take Mining and Engineering (as most of my guys do) you get most of the stuff you need to level yourself up (Gems, Stones and Ore). You do still need cloth, but most mobs drop cloth. Also there are random other things you need: potions, leather and the like, but those spawn in the AH. Also they are few and far between. Mining and Engineering synergize pretty well. There are two exceptions to this Gathering/Fabrication synergy thing, and they are Tailoring (which gets all its parts from cloth drops from mobs, so no gathering needed) and enchanting (which gets its parts from Disenchanting magical equipment, a skill you get along with Enchanting, so it is its own gathering profession). Usually these two are taken together.

This isn’t to say that people don’t take two gathering professions together to just sell things over the AH and make bank (I usually have an alt per server do this, it is good for the money, but boring as hell) or take two fabrication professions and buy everything on the AH (Expensive, but hey, you get Engineering and Blacksmithing).

Then comes the expansion. You get a new profession (Jewelcrafting) that uses mined materials, and introduces lots of low level stuff. This is generally OK because the expansion introduced a lot of other low level stuff to go along with the new profession, new starting zones, new starting races, etc. What I’m driving at is starting a new profession from scratch didn’t feel like such a job, it leveled with your new character. Now then there will be a second expansion in ‘08 sometime. This one will also feature a new profession but no new low level content. This is a pisser because Jewelcrafting was expansion specific in the previous version. You had to have the expansion to get to the new zones and learn the profession from the trainers in Silvermoon, Exodar, or Outlands. In Wrath of the Lich King, however there will only be Northrend for new content behind the Expansion wall. And as you can’t get to Northrend without being level 68, you’d have to drop a profession at 68-70 to make room for the new one.

Which brings me to my Modest Proposal. Separate Primary Professions into Gathering and Fabrication, then allow us two Fabrication and one Gathering per character. The only issue would be splitting Enchanting into Enchanting and Disenchanting. I’m sure there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Because at the end of the day, you would have Enchanting, Disenchanting, and Inscription (the new profession that uses Enchanting mats), exactly the same as if you had Enchanting and Inscription in the old Two Primary system. This would give us Engineers the ability to have Engineering, Smithing or Jewelcrafting, and Mining though. And that would be sweet. Think of all the trinkets.

Now something more about my pet profession, Engineering. I can hardly level a character without it. Hell, I tried to level an Engineering Warlock the other day. Can you imagine? No need for guns, bullets, bombs, scopes, or dummies. I only got any use our of the goggles. But still I kept on it for almost 25 levels. I can’t use guns, bullets or scopes, I have no need for target dummies with my Voidwalker, but still there it goes, giving me fancy headgear. I’m a sucker for engineering. Possibly because I’m a sucker for steampunk and despite its Tolkien-esque trappings, WoW is a steampunk world.

There are a few problems with Engineering though. It has holes in its itimization at the beginning and middle, and its gear is rarely sellable. The guns are nice but can be overcome with almost any instance drop. The bullets are the same. The goggles are great before you start getting class-appropriate headgear (Leather and Mail wearers earlier than Cloth wearers) as they are all Cloth until level 350 where you start getting appropriate DPS/Spell/Tanking goggles. The rest of the gear with the exception of Discombobulator Rays and Scopes require Engineering to use, so no selling to non-engineers.

The solutions to those problems are simple, but for some reason have not been implemented. First, we need Leather, Mail and Plate goggles for the Three Roles (Tanking, Spelldamage/Healing, DPS) throughout the game. I want to wear goggles all the time as my badge of “I’m an Engineer.” Then we need new classes of items added to make engineering more profitable.

WoWInsider had a post recently about engineering suggestions and it really got me to thinking. My thoughts were as follows:

• Multitool -> This idea is great. Something that could absorb my Spanner, Screwdriver, Hammer and maybe my Mining Pick would be golden.
• More Mounts -> This is Coals to Newcastle. I think that engineering has enough things than need fixing and if we start being able to make land mounts the QQ would stink to high heaven.
• Updated schematics -> I’d love a trade reason to up rep in Outlands. Updated versions of the old stuff like the resist trinkets or the Force Reactive Disk would be icing on the cake. Blizz moved the AQ enchants out of a dungeon nobody goes to so why not move the schematics out of Molten Core?
• Scrapping -> This would interact poorly with my 2-fab 1-gather suggestion, but the ability to get Modulators and the horribly expensive Hardened Adamantite Tube from Fel Reavers could make those huge robots the new Devilsaur. I’ll have to send e-mail to the Machall guy to do a “Dang! I’m huge!” strip with a Fel Reaver.
• Belt Buckles -> These would be permanent enchants on Belt slot items created by engineers. There’s a need for this (no other profession can enchant the belt slot) but might again direct the nerfbat to Engineering for the same reason. Add to that the idea that Belt Buckles are more a Blacksmith thing and you’ve got a lot of conflict going on. Heck, blacksmiths already make Iron Buckles that are used to craft Fuck all.
• Portable Stove/Forge -> For crafting/cooking in the wild. I could see this being useful. I’ve already fished and cooked with my new hunter for his cat. Also turning ore into eng stuff would free up inventory space by moving stuff to my toolbox. A good idea, but make sure it has no engineering requirement to use. I’d like blacksmiths or jewelcrafters to use the forge and anybody to use the stove. I’m not greedy.
• Utility Belt -> Code for an item that adds trinket slots. This cannot be. We already have the Rocket Launcher/Poultyizer that in addition to its superfluous use effect also adds 41 stamina. This would make Engineering THE tank profession if only to stack the RL/P and two Darkmoon cards for Insane Stamina.
• Trinket Ring -> A ring that would allow the wearer to equip a trinket in a ring slot. Same as the above utility belt, but a bit more balanced. If this was Unique then I could see it working. You would still have the Tank Stam-stacking issue, but it would get in the way of rings that offer as much stam as the Rocket Launcher and more other stats besides. So there’s more of a trade off and less of a something for nothing vibe.
• Better Combat Pets -> Khorium Dragonling to replace my Arcanite one, a mini-Fel Reaver to replace my Compact Harvest Reaper, a stationary Fel Cannon in the same vein as the Cannonball Runner or the Disgaea Scout’s Dark Cannon. There is a massive call for these. Update the Target Dummy too. Emergency Inflatable Tank FTW.
• Chew Toy -> This would be a charged item to either add happiness to a pet without having to feed it all the time, or a seduce for beasts to get them to stop chasing you. I’m not sure which. Probably the latter, because if you had something that distracted beasts, taming would be all too easy. This might be more of a Leatherworker thing though, remember the Leather Balls from previous patches.
• Fembot -> I’m imagining this as the Top Tier target dummy. A stationary semi-Succubus that would continuously seduce a random target. This would be pretty sweet.
• Silencers -> These would be permanent enchants to a bow or gun that would lower threat caused by ranged attacks. My new hunter is too low level to really experience the threat ceiling (he hasn’t killed Dar’khan yet) but I can see this being useful. Possibly the best idea from the entire thread.

I know, I know: TL;DR. But seriously, anybody reading this, let me know if I’m off base or if you’d do anything else with engineering. I’m in the mood for a WoW conversation, and I don’t want to wait for lunch on Saturday with 210 and Martin to talk shop.

Oh, and I’ve got a hell of a post lined up for tomorrow. I’m going out of Travian, and I’m doing it with a bang.

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I’m on vacation this week.

I was wrong about what I said before. Elemental Seaforium Charges require Consortium rep. Which would be the only reason I’d grind rep for them, but hey its all good right? It is a freaking Autogyro, and that’s awesome enough for anybody. And the charges don’t bind or anything so you can get them from the AH/your guild or whatever so no worries.

In closing, the PS3 is pulling out all the stops to seduce me to it. In Gran Tursimo 5, players will be allowed to not only download Top Gear episodes, but also actually drive around on the Top Gear test track. And that is Hot to Death. Damn Sony. The worst part is I’ll have to memorize their three-thousand odd SKU’s in order to learn which ones will allow me to play my library of PS2 and PS1 games without resorting to cluttering my already overfull entertainment center. Ah well, say la vee. Yes, I know I didn’t spell that right, I just learned that Kristi reads this blog from time to time and mispronouncing French is a joke of mine. Its like calling Martin French. A pointless and largely irritating joke that nobody really finds funny.

My love affair with Travian is almost over. It turns out I’m located near a person who likes to shit in other people’s cornflakes: for instance when they were unable to raid me for materials, they just decided to annihilate my buildings. Luckily they belong to an alliance dedicated to shitting in people’s cornflakes so diplomacy in the face of completely unprovoked aggression is an option. For those in the audience that need a map, that was sarcasm. Here’s hoping that joining a decent alliance can bring good fortune. I’m guessing not though. I might re-roll and concentrate on building an army when I am small. Who knows. Or I could quit and say “Fuck you” to a game that is essentially all the boring parts of EvE online without the pretty space-based screen saver that plays between boring parts.

Sullivan has made level 40, and that is a pretty big accomplishment for me. I’m running as an unguilded free agent on Z-marsh, and that’s a bit of a WoW oddity. So I’m a bit proud of myself. However, getting instance groups from 6-12am EST on a PST server is nigh impossible. This makes all my gear BoE or a quest reward, harder than you think if you aren’t a Goldfarmer (or Goldbuyer) with some major AH purchasing power. I may transfer him to another server at some point if I feel it necessary. It is all I can do to fight my Altoholism at this point. I’m really in love with the idea of playing a Heavy Warrior (Tauren or Dwarf), just going balls out with the Prot thing. Though Prot is a useless levelling spec I hear, and Arms is the way to go. Well, the endgame is all prot, so Stoneform or 5% more HP is really the way to go.

Urgh. Still pissed about Travian. No idea how to head off crushing attacks with around 1000 troops when all I can do is build one dude every 30 minutes. Oh, right, the asshole that is toasting my buildings ruined my barracks, so I can’t actually make troops. That isn’t a gigantic pain in the ass.

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ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!
ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!
ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!
ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!
ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!
ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!
ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!
ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!
ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!ENGINEER FLYING MOUNT!

ALL OTHER PROFESSIONS MAY LINE UP TO SUCK IT!!!

• Flying Machine <- The "Regular" one: Engineering mats and wood from an Enchanter Supplier (Any of them)
• Turbo-Charged Flying Machine <- "Turbo" Epic one: Engineering mats and a Hula Doll from Griftah over by Shatt.

Incredible that literally none of it requires instances or rep. Not a single piece. Heck, you can by Adamantite frames, Khorium Power cores, Fel Iron Bolts and Felsteel Stabilizers from VENDORS! Also the toolbox and charges aren’t Bound at all, so you could craft and mail or buy them at the AH, if you were lazy and didn’t want to fight goldfarmers for Fel Iron nodes.

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