Mainly for the Murloc

Got a few more games in with my 3v3 team last night but they haven't appeared on the ladder yet. So as of last week the team was at #262 of 559:

Not exactly a proud showing I know but frankly rather beyond out expectations. We only signed up to get the 50 games in for the Murloc. Each of us has a mildly competitive streak so we didn't want to just roll over. Surely there are a few pet-only teams we could dispatch. And it felt good to do so.

Unfortunately the rankings go up fast when winning so we quickly faced some of the more serious players. Once we neared a 1000 last night it got rough. Even in the struggle we still did okay. There was one team of a Warrior, Monk, and Hunter that beat us twice:

Yet the third time we faced them we won:

That felt pretty good. The recognition of potential as we learn to work as a team. Even though none of us even do Battlegrounds. So tonight I'm going to ask my teammates if they'd join me in a 3v3 back on Live. Nothing to serious, but just get in the ten games a week. Add a little spice to each lock out for now. Next season... maybe the title?

Secretly I'm sure all three of us wouldn't mind the Vanquisher title but … yeah. Little late now with zero preparation—which shows. We have yet to break 1000 and we have 40 games in. See what it's like after the 10 tonight. *snicker*

Muffle the Elemental

Trolling the forums I came across someone crying about the water elemental idle "glug glug" sound. A blue responded with steps on creating an empty override file:

Here's a way I just tested and it seems to work fine. I found it on an addon site but it doesn't require you to download anything. I have to warn you though to use it at your own risk of course. Here's what you do:

1. Open your World of Warcraft folder
2. Open the Data folder
3. Create a new folder inside called Sound
4. Open the Sound folder now
5. Create a new folder inside called Creature
6. Open the Creature folder
7. Create a new folder called Waterelemental
8. Open the Waterelemental folder
9. Create a new file called WaterElementalLoop.ogg and save it. It needs to be empty, 0 bytes
10. Play the game and test

Thought it was interesting that an official agent would pass on something from "an addon site" but I suppose this is pretty innocuous. If there's a way of mapping out contents of MPQ files this would work for a lot of things.

Unwanted Dubstep

For the past few days Warcraft has been giving me cycling latency spikes. As a tank this makes timed actions and active mitigation very difficult. Wiped my progression raid a few times and have been voluntarily (though annoyedly) sitting since.

Figured it was something on my provider's end that would clear up eventually but it persists. Decided to hit the forums and immediately saw others having the same issue, so I added my two cents:

At first it really pissed me off as suddenly the game would catch up to what I thought was happening five seconds earlier. Now I treat it as a mini-game to see if I can anticipate bullshit. *sigh* Need to figure this out soon.

MapTools Still Not Smiling

The group I play with recently upgraded to MapTools 1.3.b89. Naturally the GM didn't mention this beforehand so when I tried to connect I got a version error. I quickly downloaded the binaries and replaced the entire folder. Everything seemed fine until I used some of my macros. Everytime a variable was used it would repeat all text found inside a DIV before that variable. Using a TWF Rogue means a ton of variables so each attack spammed a wall of text.

It was like the client was being launched in a diag mode or something. Remembered there was a fix for this yet couldn't remember what it was. Couldn't find the right words in Google so ended up browsing the RPTools forums manually. Thankfully I found the answer in the Macros section: disable the Insert Smilies option in the MapTool Preferences (Interactions tab, Chat box). *sigh* Would be nice it they'd fix that. I miss the emoticons. If I knew Java I'd fix it myself.

While I'm making note of that fix I might as well include the custom launch command I use too:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin\javaw" -Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true -Xmx1024M -Xss3m -jar maptool-1.3.b89.jar run

Sim til Emergence

Read a pretty good blog on simulation coding. I remember writing my own Life decades ago. Need to do that again as a mod or something.

Beautiful Rocks

Couple of days ago I noticed an upload on the Nexus entitled "Superior Rock Textures - Hiqh Quality HD 2K and 1K replacers." Seems like every play session there's some point where I notice how blocky and poorly textured the rocks are in numerous places. Was amazed at how good this plugin is! I only have a 1gb GTS 450 so I usually defer to 1k textures. And in my case both worked equally well.

Yet I immediately noticed they react poorly with however Skyrim renders water—creating an excessive shine thats especially visible at night but even during the day. They're such a terrific improvement I was loathe to leave any negative comments. So I took the time to phrase my findings constructively. Checking back a few minutes ago I was pleasantly surprised to find my name mentioned and a fix in place…

Going to go check it out now!

Your Penis Offends Me Greatly

The anonymity of the Internet makes it the last, great bastion of ignorance, bigotry, and petulance. Sure there are good things out there but the bad's got the same sanctuary. For instance there's a mod less than 24-hours old called Schlongs of Skyrim…

Naturally my comment isn't feedback germain to the mod itself, but rather my annoyance with other comments. There is an utter dearth of mods that give any attention to male actors or resources compared to the female explosion. So I feel motivated to use strong words in defense of whatever it released.

Hackle-raising aside it's appears to be quite an achievement as it adds new Havok'able parts without require new animation. Should be very compatible. And fun! *snicker*