Casually Playing in Pandaria

So far this expansion, my play has been extremely casual in World of Warcraft. I’m in my second year of university, and, in between assignments, a social life and a part-time job at weekends, I don’t get a great deal of time to play.

When Mists launched, I cruised at a leisurely pace to level 90. I didn’t rush at all, and spent time reading every quest to soak up all the lore and get a sense of the story of Pandaria. I completed each dungeon at the points in which they felt appropriate (with regard to quests and story). I never once felt bored, or that I needed to rush to get to max level. I simply enjoyed the experience.

Once I reached 90, I initially felt overwhelmed with the amount of content available. There were heroic dungeons and scenarios to run, a farm to tend to, and an almost insurmountable number of daily quests. I didn’t know quite where to begin. Luckily, I had friends who could guide me on what I should do first, as well as sites like WoW Insider to help me along.[1]

That initial, overwhelming feeling subsided after a couple of days. Eventually it all became familiar. I knew exactly where to go to do work for the different factions of Pandaria, I knew how many Valor Points you need to acquire to purchase the next upgrade for your character, and I knew which factions offered which rewards.

Again, like the levelling experience, I never once felt rushed upon hitting 90, or that I needed to be somewhere faster than my method of play was getting me. With no guild pressuring me to get the best gear as fast as possible, I was free to enjoy the content at my own pace. It liberating, to say the least.

The dailies in Mists of Pandaria are fantastic. Every day I read MMO Champion and see blue post after blue post responding to a seemingly endless barrage of people whining about daily quests. I just don’t understand it. I think they’re a great activity to do while waiting for a Raid Finder or heroic dungeon queue to pop, and allow you to continue that solo, questing experience that is normally only enjoyed once every couple of years as you level up to a new expansion’s level cap. They’re varied enough that they don’t feel too repetitive, and the rewards you receive as you increase your reputation are genuinely rewarding.

In my opinion, Raid Finder was probably the most exciting thing introduced in Cataclysm, if only because it allowed casual players like myself the ability to see and enjoy (if only to a very minor degree) the raiding experience that established guilds had been experiencing for years. Whilst Dragon Soul was disappointing to me, I felt the introduction of Raid Finder was a sign of great things to come. And I wasn’t wrong.

Raid Finder in MoP is, like all other aspects of MoP’s end-game, refined and polished. There is a definite sense of progression; each slice of Raid Finder has an item level requirement, meaning you must complete heroic dungeons and acquire Valor gear to get the item level necessary to move up the ladder to the first part of raid finder, then run raid finder until you get the item level required for the next part of raid finder. The new way loot is distributed in Raid Finder is a little frustrating, but I understand why they did it.

Let’s not forget about the other chunks of end-game content! There’s farming, which is something I didn’t think I would enjoy or want to do, but which ended up hooking me straight away. There’s Wrathion’s Legendary questline, which makes you feel like a badass, and provides you with more incentive to go and do daily quests and Raid Finder. There’s Archaeology, which has been greatly streamlined (to the point where it only touches on the borders of ’chore territory). There’s Pet Battles, which I’ve only scratched the surface of, but that I would gladly invest lots more time in if I actually had it to invest.

The speed at which they are producing new content, and the transparency they are showing with the community, coupled with the polish and refinement they have displayed in every aspect of the game I’ve played this expansion is highly impressive. Thanks to Raid Finder, I am genuinely excited for Patch 5.2 and beyond.[2] I can’t see myself ever dropping my subscription (or even taking a break from the game) this time around. As a casual player, I can honestly say that Mists of Pandaria is by far the best expansion Blizzard have ever produced.

I was instructed that the best factions to start with if I wanted to unlock gear upgrades for my character would be the Golden Lotus and The Klaxxi. I did these two, along with The Tillers first. I gained Exalted with The Tillers fairly quickly, with the Golden Lotus just before Christmas, and with The Klaxxi just last night. I’m now working on The Order of the Cloud Serpent and Dominance Offensive. ↩
When I think back to the announcement of Patch 4.2, I remember feeling no excitement whatsoever. I’d just quit raiding because it was taking up too much of my time. I never played during Patch 4.2, only coming back a few months into Patch 4.3. ↩

MoneyWiz: Simple but Effective Financing

Since April this year, I've made a concerted effort to manage my money better. I set up a spreadsheet to track my income and expenses, and put in estimates of how much I would spend each month to give me a rough budget. It's been working okay, but from the outset I've found it clunky and (even with Numbers across OS X and iOS) difficult to manage on my iPhone and iPad.

It didn't occur to me that there were so many viable application suites available for personal finance. I tried out a few options before landing on MoneyWiz. First I tried out iBank, but found it far too complex and overbearing for my needs. It's a well-made and powerful application, to be sure, but it wasn't what I was looking for. Next I tried You Need a Budget (YNAB), but didn't like the interface or the setup procedure.

Rethinking the Compilation Album

The way that compilation albums made the transition into the digital age has always bugged me. Back when CDs were the prevalent way of getting music, a compilation album made sense; you could have a mixture of different tracks from different artists on one disc. Since most music systems only had one CD slot, compilations were a great way to vary up your listening without having to constantly swap out discs.

Compilation albums in the digital age, though, are nothing more than glorified playlists. Yes, they make it cheaper to grab a large amount of tracks at once, and yes, they can often be curated arrangements of tracks around a certain genre. This doesn't change the fact that the whole idea of a compilation in the digital form needs some serious rethinking.

How I Social Network (At the Moment)

Recently, I've been analysing how I use the different social networks available to us, trying to refine the content I see on them, and therefore making them a useful tool and something I actually want to visit and use. Here's how I'm using Facebook, Twitter and App.net.

I use Facebook as a service for seeing what my friends have been up to. I interact with people I know, I used to know, or that I've met at some point in my life over there. I like photos and statuses, share funny links, post the odd status about some inane thing and generally unwind a little. I've set my profile up with a bunch of different privacy settings so that only the right friends see the right information.

iTunes and Streaming Radio

There have been some rumours flying recently about Apple negotiating deals to implement a streaming radio service similar to Spotify Radio or Pandora. These services allow you to select an artist or genre from which a playlist is built; songs are then played at random from this list. I think this would be a great addition to iTunes, and if done properly, would push the sale of music on iTunes through the roof. Here's how I think Apple could introduce a radio service to iTunes.

Currently, Genius in iTunes isn't bad, but it's not great either. If you have a larger music library, you'll probably get fairly decent results, but the smaller your library, the less useful and reliable Genius becomes.

Personal Connection to Music

I've been using iTunes for around ten years now. Interface-wise, it's largely the same. Additional features have been bolted on as the years have gone by, and things have been shifted around, but it's essentially the same product. It's just more bloated than it was a decade ago.

Last week, Apple announced that some time in October, they would introduce a brand new, revamped version of iTunes that integrates much more closely with iCloud and has a more streamlined interface. From the screenshots and short demo given in the keynote, I think it looks great, and it secures my decision to stick with iTunes as my method of consuming and acquiring media.

Thoughts on iPhone 5

On Friday, like many other eager Apple fans, I got my iPhone 5. I opted for Black & Slate, 32 GB model, although upon a good amount of usage over the past few days I genuinely think I would have been okay with the 16 GB model this time around.

As I'm sure you've heard from countless other sources, the iPhone 5 is unbelievably thin and light. I'll reiterate that: the iPhone 5 is unbelievably thin and light. I don't think anything can prepare you for just how thin and light it is; you really do have to see for yourself.

Not only is it considerably thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4/4S, the refined 4/4S design is gorgeous. Again, whilst the images you'll see online, whether it be from Apple's official product page or actual photos of the device in-hand look great, nothing can quite prepare you for the level of quality that emanates from the device.

My Elevation Dock (Finally) Arrived!

My Elevation Dock finally arrived today. To date, it's the only Kickstarter project I have backed (the Pebble Watch almost had me, but I managed to stay strong), and although it took way longer than anticipated to arrive, it seems it was worth it.

The packaging for the dock is a homage to Apple's own boxes. It's white, with a clean logo on the front, and a heartfelt message on the back from Casey Hopkins, the guy who made it all happen. It reads, "This exists because of you. Thanks again." Inside the box is the dock itself, a compartment containing a longer USB cable (the shorter one is attached by default), and a compartment containing a hex wrench (which is used to remove the plate from the bottom of the dock to swap out the cables).

Two Years with Three UK

Just over two years ago, I signed a new mobile phone contract with Three UK for my iPhone 4. It had taken a fair amount of persuasion from a close friend and a lot of convincing on my part, but after much deliberation I did it.

You see, a long time ago (at least six or seven years), Three had gotten quite a bad name in my social circle. A couple of my friends were on Three and claimed they had terrible signal, that customer service was abysmal and that they wish they had never signed up with them. Now I would have pegged my friends' claims to be hyperbolic or unfair, but at the time my Dad was also a Three customer, and I saw first hand that my friends were talking some truth. Three were a pretty awful network, so much so that my Dad ended up buying out his contract so he could move to another provider.

Clean Installation Issues

I wanted to let you guys know about my experience clean installing Mountain Lion last night, and some changes I think I'm going to make to my clean install procedure in the future. It didn't go as smoothly as I anticipated it would, and there are certainly some things I can do in the future to make the process more efficient.

I got home from the cinema after seeing The Dark Knight Rises, super excited and ready to download and install the latest 'Big Cat'. I rushed upstairs, loaded the Mac App Store, purchased Mountain Lion, then started the download. It gave me an estimated download time of *twenty hours*. My jaw dropped just a little bit. Surely it wouldn't take that long, even with Apple's servers taking some launch day impact.