World of Warcraft: How Blizzard Needs to Improve Siege of Orgrimmar LFR Immediately

Posted on March 5, 2014 by keithyw

This one is written especially for the Blizzard developers and needs to happen ASAP, especially before Diablo 3 comes out. So currently, Siege of Orgrimmar LFR still has MAJOR issues. It’s far too long at this current stage and too frustrating. What is most striking though is that only part 1 seems to have a reasonable queue compared to the rest of the instances. Parts 2-4 have an average wait time for 1 hour. That is ridiculous for anyone to endure and a complete waste of time. Also, this demonstrates a failure by Blizzard to address issues with Parts 2-4 despite numerous nerfs. As a result, I am going to propose the following to make it doable:

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World of Warcraft: Trick for Ordos on PVE Servers and Raid Finder

Posted on February 18, 2014 by keithyw

So I play on a PVE server and in using the Raid Finder tool for Ordos I have a little trick I want to share. Occasionally, you’ll have people who will port you to a PVP server. Some will have unbalanced populations which may cause chaos for your Ordos raid. If you’re on a quiet server like mine, what  you can do is go up into the Ordos Sanctuary and wait near the entrance. At that point, list yourself. Continue reading →

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World of Warcraft: Back in the Game (Again)

Posted on February 17, 2014 by keithyw

After a hiatus and dealing with the drama of my dead gaming rig, I finally have managed to settle things enough to where I can start playing again. The last two weeks have been some intense gaming sessions where I’ve been hitting the LFRs pretty hard along with focusing on my toons in getting their legendary cloaks. At the moment, my hunter is the latest toon to receive his legendary cloak and I should be completed with the Secrets on my Shaman this coming week.

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What Makes A Good Streaming Game

Posted on February 17, 2014 by keithyw

If you’re thinking about getting into the livestreaming business as a gamer, you might ask yourself, “What is a good game to stream?” Most people probably will go with a game that is popular just to get into the rankings. However, what makes a game popular? Or more importantly, what makes a game attractive to stream?

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World of Warcraft: Free or Paid 90s? Why the Hate?

Posted on January 28, 2014 by keithyw

So Blizzard is doing something pretty controversial with the whole boosted level 90 for Warlords of Draenor. Currently, it might even be out prior to Warlords of Draenor as it’s being tested in the PTR as of patch 5.4.7 and is part of the in-game store. What’s more interesting is the loads of typical complaints from people calling it p2w. Right now, I find it intensely amusing to see this backlash in the rise of the paid model but I want to examine this situation a little more.

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World of Warcraft: Should Heroic Raids Even Exist (as We Know Them)?

Posted on January 28, 2014 by keithyw

I enjoy the controversial discussions on whether or not LFR should exist. But the real question is whether Heroic Raids (or what will become known as Mythic Raids) really exist? Some numbers came out recently about the latest decline in World of Warcraft and I hope to analyze the cause behind what is another drop and the relationship between these drops, the priorities of where Blizzard sees the development of raiding content and high end raiding.

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Twitch TV, Social Media and Stickiness

Posted on January 25, 2014 by keithyw

Currently, I am working on a social media type of project and one of the things we constantly are discussing is the “stickiness” aspects of the way the application should work. For those who do not understand the concept of “stickiness,” it’s simply the idea of how users of an application consistently return and use it. Typical examples of “stickiness” in an application are comments, reviews, likes and other interactive elements. When I look over towards Twitch TV, I feel that certain people do understand this concept but most people struggle with growing their channels because they lack proper examples to engage and re-engage their audience.

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Symfony 2: Why You Should Move Your Logic into a Service

Posted on January 20, 2014 by keithyw

In typical MVC applications, people end up storing business logic into either the controller or the model layer. The problem in this approach is that in either case, you introduce code bloat and dependencies that should not really exist. Controllers, which are essentially the observer pattern, act as a traffic light, taking requests and directing them to another point. Models themselves should focus on the data within their domain. But what happens when you get complex interactions between these forces? What should you do? This is where the MOVE paradigm comes into play.

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Blizzard: Why U Piss Me Off?

Posted on January 15, 2014 by keithyw

So I’m a huge Blizzard fan…or rather I was. I think over the past year or so I’ve slowly started to have a declining interest in World of Warcraft and Blizzard in general. The company direction just has been leaving this rotten taste in my mouth. Tonight was a pretty big hint though.

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Baldur’s Gate 2 Enhanced Edition: Best Evil Party Combination?

Posted on January 1, 2014 by keithyw

Right now, I’m deciding on giving a purely evil party a try. There’s a LOT of ramifications by choosing this path since the vast majority of this game is based around being a relatively good party. What I want to discuss here is the implications of choosing an evil party and how that can affect the class combinations.

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