So it seems my stint writing the Scattered Shots column over at WoW.com has been going pretty well.  I’ve finally figured out about how much time I need to budget for each post. (A lot more than I had originally thought, but that’s alright.)  So after this weekend I can get back to a normalized schedule here and there.  Hopefully, you all will appreciate that.

In the mean time. I thought I’d use the Lodge to share some email I got with you the past couple of weeks.  It seems that I have gotten under one or more reader’s skin.  See I got some bonafide hate mail on my last Scattered Shots posts.  Here check it out for yourself.  I’ve removed anything that identified the writer to keep it anonymous.  So you’ll have to just trust me that these hilarious emails are real.

Here’s the first one.  It was sent last week in response to my take on the new 3.2 PTR changes. (post)

I have to say I really miss BRK. While he could be as friendly with blizzard as anyone else at least I didn’t feel his opinions were as completely off base as Eddie’s.

Is Blizzard signing his paycheck? I mean, seriously, his review of the hunter changes is so lacking in actual content and feedback that he could be a community manager for them. He even misinterpretted one change to think it was a buff.

How this patch affects hunters is very small but in the end it’s a nerf. To start, the replenishment change is a nerf. You lose .05% mana regen per second. As far as I can tell he completely misread that, and maybe he should look at some hunter forums before posting an article because they’ve made that abundantly clear.

The traps change is a nerf and a buff. Yay, we can have three traps out, that took 5 seconds to lay down all three, but as we’re primarily a ranged class and snakes to get avoidance automagically, who cares. Boo, they only last 30 seconds and you can still only have one of each type out so now you’re double screwed if you knew how to double freezing trap or just liked having that safety net of being able to drop the second trap if the first one broke. Not to mention they then nerfed immolation and explosive trap so they no longer get entanglement.

Eddie’s response was to compare the nerf other classes were getting, specifically pointing out DK’s. Which, is wrong. DK’s had chains of ice reduced to 95% from 100% because the effect degrades immediately but was producing a better than average hold result on lower skilled players in PvP because it stopped movement and forced you to hit your button again which many players didn’t realize. That has nothing to do with why they removed entanglement from fire traps. They removed it because they don’t want you to lay an explosive trap behind an frost trap to double the distance on it or stick them on top of each other to double the proc rate. It’s a nerf, but it’s a nerf to fix a new issue they created by seperating the traps. Unfortunately the nerf out weighs the benefit and for a class that’s under-represented in the arena, you’d think they’d be looking to buff us.

Similarly his analysis on the 30 second cooldown was just plain lacking. One poster responded properly that it’s a huge grouping nerf becuase a BM/MM hunter has zero ability to retrap a resisted freezing trap quickly and the Survival hunter only has 6 seconds, a tight margin for the tank to pull in. That’s going to hurt hunter reputation in the long run, even good hunters that know how to trap.

Even his analysis of Kill Command is poor. Arguing that the ability is useful for leveling when it’s a late talent that will distract players from taking something they need and the secondary benefit is only currently useful for 14 levels is just bad logic. The talent will be largely ignored, and even if it is good for 14 levels it still confuses most hunters that they made this change because leveling ease is not something hunters are concerned with. It’s a bad PvP talent because it’s too deep in BM, and it’s a bad PvE Raid talent because it takes too many points away from better DPS talents.

3.2 is not a good patch for hunters. While we’re largely unaffected by the changes, the ones we will notice are nerfs.

What bothers me is this. Blizzards reps use this sight as another resource for figuring out what hunters are thinking. Analysis this bad tells them that they are on the right track with hunter changes because it doesn’t bring up any of the concerns hunters actually have. He failed to point out that the shaman change, completely unnanounced made it out ahead of the pet interface changes, the ammo changes, and just general QoL and Glitches that hunters are still suffering. That instead of putting a small buff on a largely ignored talent perhaps there was another small change that could have actually addresssed a hunter issue?

I don’t have beef with Blizzard, but if you’re going to prop up a guy as a hunter community leader by letting him write the hunter article, at least pick one that is aware of actual hunter issues. The last two Scattered-Shots that I’ve read were a complete waste of my time as they were inaccurate and failed to actually address any hunter issues.

Just my $.02

Now this one came in this week after I wrote up an article about specs. (post)

With the 100s if not thousands of emails you must get in a day i feel slightly bad writing with my complaint.

I have been reading wowinsider for over 3 years now. I have watched the community here grow and flourish. I have shared the highs and lows of going from vanilla to BC to wrath. I credit this site with alot of the information that allows me to be a viable officer, raider and source of info for my fellow guildies.

HOWEVER

the hunter column has got to stop. Not once since this new guy has taken over has there been anything worthwhile in these forums. He is wrong with his facts about 75% of the time, and his opinions are not those shared by the community at large.
While other classes get in depth discussions about gear and specs and proposed changes…we get “how to level a BM hunter” and “no seriously, you can play what spec you want and still be able to raid”. i call bullshit on this dude.

I feel we as a class are being sorely underrepresented and our wow.com forum guy is failing us. As a class that has had to fight my way thru “lol huntard” to get where i am today, the whole scattered shots column is an insult.

I honestly don’t know what to say about this other than there’s no real bad publicity, it’s all just publicity. So I’d love to have your feedback on what you think.

Tags: Uncategorized // 8 Comments »

Actually, I’m not going to talk about the chewy goodness of a Tootsie-Pop.  I’d like to, because there is no better topping on a light and fluffy breakfast pastry than melted Tootsie Rolls.  But I digress.

I’m actually going to be talking about how many hops it takes from your computer to your realm.  Why?  Because at any one of those junctures you could be hit with some latency, which is totally outside of your control; but knowing is half the battle.  The tool used for that is Trace Route.

Trace Route is a network utility.  It is not a downloaded tool or WoW add-on.  It is something you already have on your computer.  It’s just a matter of knowing how to use it, and what you can do with that information.

Find your realm:

To use trace route, you need to know the IP address of your realm.  The world wide web does not know where Azgalor, Ysera, or Wildhammer is.  It does know where that IP address is, though, and how to get data to and from that location.  To find your realm’s IP address, click on any of the 3 sources linked below.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1230553941&sid=1

http://www.wowwiki.com/US_realm_list_by_datacenter

http://www.sourcepeek.com/wiki/World_of_Warcraft_Realm_List

Write down you IP address.  Since I rolled on Azgalor, I’m going to use it’s IP address in my example: 206.16.235.8:3724.  The last four digits, after the colon, is the port number.  You can ignore that for the traceroute.

Using Traceroute:

Traceroute is actually a DOS command.  DOS is not dead, regardless of what people think.  Long live DOS!

In Windows, select Start > Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt or select Start > Run and then type CMD.

At the prompt, type in tracert and the IP address then press <Enter>.

By default, tracert will only make a maximum of 30 hops.  But there is something else you should know.  Blizzard purposely prevents utilities like trace route from recognizing a successful completion.  So, once you are at the server, or just one hop away, you will get time-outs and can <ctrl>+C to cancel the trace route process.  Below is my trace route results, and I pinged my realm (Azgalor) as well.

Interpreting Traceroute:

You can see on hop #11 that I have arrived in Dallas, where my realm is located, based on abbreviations in the domain.  The further 3 hops timed out, so I can assume that I’m close to the server and canceled the process.  I also pinged the realm just to see what would happen.  I’m not surprised it timed out due to Blizz’s performance & security measures.

The first column is the hop number.  Trace route makes three attempts per hop, which are the 2nd through 4th columns.  The 5th column is the domain, or location, of the hop.  In my example, the first hop timed out.  I don’t know why.  I’m guessing because it is either my switch or modem, which does not have a call & answer ability.  The second hop was fast, which is should be because it is the first hop out of your local network.  From there, you start getting into shared pipelines with all your neighbors as well as everyone else on the internet.  I made it to my realm after 11 hops, and the highest latency is 323 ms.  (It does 3 attempts per hop to get an average.  That’s why I’m ignoring the 436ms time when the other 2 were 79 & 78.  There was a little spike in traffic or other network hic-up there which does not represent a usual latency.)

To compare that with PerformanceFu.

PerformanceFu registers a latency of 314 ms.  Pretty darn accurate considering the latency is constantly changing.

(Note: Thankfully, this is not my usual latency.  I average 180 - 200ms latency.  My results are high at the time of this writing because I have an online backup program running, sucking up most of my bandwidth.)

What to do with the Information:

If you typically have high latency or frequent disconnects, this is the first tool you should use before calling your ISP.  Then, pick up the phone and call them.  Give them this information and tell them where Trace Route is showing high latencies.  It may be off their network, so they may not be able to do anything.  In this case, anything past hop #7 is outside of my ISP’s ability to adjust and I just have to live with it.

I’ll give you a personal example of how I resolved frequent disconnects and high latency.  First, I compliment my ISP for their fabulous up-time and availability of clear-English speaking tech support.  But, the representative always assumes that the person on the other end is a complete computer noob and tells you to “restart your computer.  Call back if the problem persists.”  Because I had Trace Route data to back up my claims, they actuall stayed on the line to help me.  That’s important because if the didn’t, they wouldn’t have found one of my problems.

I was originally maintaining a steady 280 ms latency when having the disconnect problems.  It so happens that I’ve had 3 ISPs because the first one sold out, then the 2nd one broke up its accounts by region, so now I’m on the 3rd.  In order to keep my service active during the transition, they created a “bridge” connection.  It’s a stop-gap measure that is quick fix to route traffic, but it is slow.  Without making them look at my account, they would not have checked that I was still on a bridge connection - something I should have been transfered off of within a few weeks/months of the switch.  The resolution was to reconfigure my modem (from their end) so I connected straight into their network.  My latencly dropped from 280ms to the 180ms I live with today.  That didn’t resolve the disconnects, so I knew it was something on my end and that’s when I troubleshot it to my home-network switch.  Now I’m fast and stable, thanks to trace route.

More information:

Something else that you should configure is how well you DNS resolves domain names to their ISP, and how secure it is.  I recently switched from my ISP’s DNS to OpenDNS.  It’s free, and so far has been very good to me.  Your results may vary, but it may be worth looking into if you have network problems.  (I have no affiliation with OpenDNS.  Use at your own risk.)

Selecting your Realm:

Most of us selected the realms we  play on because of friends.  But, if you are looking for a fresh start, or realm transfer, consider finding it with Trace Route.  Start with the links above and look for realms physically located in your part of the world.  Then, use Tracert on those IP addresses and find the one with the lowest latency.  If you are making a clean start, might as well make it a quick one!

Tags: Uncategorized // 3 Comments »

In my last post, I took a theoretical look at how an increased latency affects your DPS.  To no surprise, the higher the lag, the less DPS.  (Note, I’m using lag and latency interchangeably.)  I listed a couple utilities that I have used to tweak my Windows experience in order to improve overall internet activity.  In this post, I’m going to continue pursuing ways to optimize your system.

To recap: One of the first things you want to do is turn off all background processes.  Granted, some don’t affect WoW at all.  I run BOINC - a very CPU intense application - in the background and haven’t had any problems with WoW unless BOINC is trying to upload the datafile to the server.  Occasionally I even keep iTunes on.  And just about every raider I know runs Ventrillo simultaneously with WoW.  I recommended the utility Autoruns, from Microsoft’s Technet, to manage your startup processes and services.

The second thing to do is tweak your Network Interface Card (NIC) and TCP/IP settings.  Most of these tweaks require more than just the hardware properties dialog box, they also require registry tweaks.  I recommended a tool I have used in that past called TCP Optimizer to make that chore easier, and less likely to crash your system.

Where else does lag come from?  I guess the first question would be “How bad is my lag?”  To determine the zeroith law of lag, you need a utility that can measure it.  I use PerformanceFu on my FuBar panel.  It reads off not only my current latency (in ms), but also my frame rate and memory used by add-ons.  That information helps determine sources of lag.

The biggest lag culprit is WoW itself.  Well, maybe not out-of-the-box WoW, but definitely all the must-have add-ons we can’t live without.  By monitoring PerformanceFu, I can see add-ons that I’m not using taking up extra memory.  I have finally gotten in the habit of turning off add-ons I don’t need during game play.  1) Auctioneer is off unless I’m in the AH. 2) PvE add-ons are off when I plan on mostly PvP-ing.  3) PvP add-ons are off when I plan on mostly PvE-ing.

Display settings is the next culprit.   When patch 3.1 hit we all had to go into the display settings and turn down a few settings.  I will admit to having a pretty high horsepower system, except for my Mobo which only has a PCIe 1.0 slot.  I don’t have SLI.  I do have a PCIe 2.0 card in the slot, but without the motherboard to go with it, I’m not quite at full power.  Still, it’s a good system that can crank out FEA, so it can handle WoW.  I still had to turn down a few ambient settings 1 tick and shadows almost off; 1-tick up from off, actually.

Your display settings does two things for you: it increases your frame rate which in turn decreases your lag.  These two items are not mutually exclusive.

Computer hardware is another item to look into.  I won’t go into specifics like FSB speed or IRQ sharing.  But I will give you a personal experience.  I was originally running with the on-board sound.  It was a decent 7.1 surround setup, but I kept getting sporadic problems and even disconnects.  I switched to a sound card, disabling the on-board sound, and amazingly my frame rate improved.  Latency averaged about the same, but my game play experience was improved.  Did it solve the disconnects?  No, I had to buy a new switch for that.  I had no way to tell that my switch was bad, but it was cheap to buy a new one and swap it out to see if that was an issue.  Apparently it was, because after attaching the new switch I haven’t had a single disconnect.   Most likely problem, it overheated when playing WoW.  It ran fine all other times except when playing WoW.

What else is on your  home network?  Printers, labtops, Wiis, Xboxes, and any other network peripheral - probably connected through a switch prior to being connected to your modem - will consume bandwidth on your system.  Most home networks can handle it.  My home network is only a 10/100.  I haven’t gone Gbit because I have nothing that needs that speed.  Besides, my DSL only goes up to 1.5Mb/s.  I have more than enough room in my home pipeline to fill several DSL lines.  Even some of the fastest cable modems are maxed 20Mb/s and typically only provide much slower speeds, somewhere around 7Mb/s.  My home network has 5X the bandwidth of even the fasted cable connection.  The only thing to worry about with the extra peripherals are any that automatically phone home to update themselves.  Although communication in your home network isn’t slow, they minute they take up bandwidth going to the internet, WoW is going to lag.  That includes your DirectTV boxes.

Some of these things are complex for the non-techie.  But even if you aren’t a hobby system builder, you can still look around and use some common sense to improve your WoW gameplay experience.

• Find your internet capable hardware throughout your house and turn them off when not in use.
• Turn off add-ons you aren’t using.
• Adjust your display option settings.
• Check for any hardware conflicts in your system.  Upgrade where necessary.
• Add as much RAM as you can.
• Keep background apps to a minimum.

Tags: Class Mechanics, News and Info // 2 Comments »