Had a few conversations in vent with Wulfa and Grandorr and others, over the last couple weeks, and wanted to mention it here.. to help them find the books if they so desire.

There are some science fiction I truly think is epic quality, that has sadly faded from view. They can be quite hard to find, although used bookstores and online retailers have opened up the possibility of successful searches more and more.

The first series I would recommend to those that love Science Fiction is the Sten Chronicles by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch. (Holy cow, they’ve been re-released! Amazon carries them! Woohoo! I know what I’m getting for Christmas… a second set of the books as backups!) Probably my favorite schience fiction series of all time, it blends serious military experience, wild imaginings, fun recognizable story settings, humor and awesomeness together in one perfect jewel. Plus, it has recipes for barbeque and beef jerky. How can you go wrong? By far and away I would recommend this series to anyone that loves military sci-fi, or science fiction in general. In fact, I think it is fair to say that this is, in my opinion, the greatest, most entertaining science fiction military high adventure series of all time. Yeah, I went there.

Next, a stand-alone book, Armor by John Steakley. (Link from Amazon) In essence, it takes the alien bug versus armor suited infantry concept of Starship Troopers to the next level, with a cynicism and idealism mixed together that I found amazing. It is not only a very powerful book in terms of action, but also in it’s emotional pull of how much someone can possibly take of the horrors of war. The balance of the first half to the second half, although jarring, ends the story with such a satisfying conclusion that you literally scream for a sequel. It really is that good of a book. And it’s still in print!

Next, the Timewars series by Simon Hawke. (Sadly, this is NOT available new, and that’s a crime). This was a series of 12 books in the mid 80’s that still reads very, very well. The entire theme concerns time travel being made real, and then the battle that explodes as Temporal Soldiers try to maintain the stability of the flow of time as terrorists try to make serious changes by interfering with already established events. 

The series has incredibly solid history, mixed with historical fiction taken as real events. If you are shaky on your grasp of history and are unfamiliar with historical romances such as the Three Musketeers, Ivanhoe, The Prisoner of Zenda, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and the Mysterious Island, and other such novels, it can be very hard to keep straight in your own head what was real and what was playful fun by the writer…. but if you DO enjoy your history and your fiction… oh boy. Is it incredible!

One last one, which is techically not just Sci-Fi but Fantasy as well.

Do yourself a favor, and read Grunts! by Mary Gentle. (Link from Amazon)

I won’t ruin it. Just read it. You’ll laugh so hard you’ll pee yourself.

I consider all of these to be on my ‘must reads’ list… and also would be on a list of books I would HAVE to have with me on a desert isle.

You already know about my obsession with Terry Pratchett, so my work here is done!

I feel like I’m totally in the blahs in the game right now.

I have lots of piddly little stuff I can do, but nothing that sounds exciting. Nothing thrilling.

Nothing to get that ‘oh my God the brakes are out’ feel of adrenaline flowing.

I think it’s a consequence of playing in brief periods of time.

If you have lots of time to play in one sitting, there is a feel that you can get involved in an instance run, or helping folks do a chain of quests, or something else big.

If I log in late, and only have a little while to play, then I know that I can’t do much that involves a lot of time… so like last night, I dropped out of the conversation and ran back and forth from the Great Anvil to the Engineering Trainer to the Auction House for an hour or so.

I swear it’s how I remember the game when I first started playing. If all you can do is sneak in an hour of play time here or there, do you start to feel overwhelmed by the depth of the game, since there is so much you know you can’t get to do in the time you have to play?

I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to count on the few times we do Karazhan, or dart into Zul’Aman, to help me feel like I’m being active.

When I know that I’ll be playing a lot later in the week, I tend to play less the rest of the week to kind of balance it.

Take that day of Kara away, and suddenly I feel like I’m not playing much at all, and I feel out of the loop.

I log in and sit there, looking at the character select screen, wondering, “What the heck was I going to do, anyway?”

I don’t know how much of it is summertime, how much is a sense that with the expansion coming out soon, everything we know and do now is worthless or about to become totally obsolete, and how much is just crankiness.

I do know that I am NOT looking forward to all aspects of the expansion.

You study, work hard, learn everything you can about your class… and the encounters are designed to force you to do it to have a chance.

And then, once most people are well on top of things… it’s expansion time!

Yahoo! Time for every piece of gear you know about to be obsolete, every profession to now have different values and mysterious unknowns, new consumables to study, new talents to try and figure out to balance, new skills and spells to have to learn, new factions and quest chains to worry about not choosing the right reward for, and above all else, new prejudices to deal with as to whether your class will be desired in groups after the great expansion shakeup.

Are people going to want my Shadow Priest after the expansion if they nerf the utility of mana regen like it’s looking? Are Druids going to be welcome in parties at all anymore after Paladins and Warriors get Death Knights added to the mix?

After a while… I’m just starting to not really care. I was having fun the way things were… I didn’t really need to have 10 new levels come along to change everything I knew about the game.

Am I the only one that thinks that having ten more levels, and all the new gear and specs and talents and gear and profession levels and gear and reputation factions and gear will make things just that much more complicated? I might be cranky, but complicated isn’t sounding like a lot of fun right now.

I do want adventure. The new quests, zones and storylines will be very awesome, I can’t wait to get started and have fun.

But I’m serious when I say I am NOT looking forward to having to analyze all the damn gear, available from every damn instance drop, crafted profession, BoE auction house world drop, Badge reward, quest reward or faction reputation level that we can get at level 80 to figure out what the best tanking or DPS gear for Druids will be, all over again, in light of new talents and abilities.

Plus of course the best enchants, the best Inscriptions, the best gems, the best consumables, the best Idols, the best choices for gathering professions for our chosen role… oh lord, just trying to determine if the Herbalism HoT would be better for tanking than the flat Stamina buff from Mining? Or should you go for the Crit bonus from skinning if you want to DPS as well as tank? But wait, what about an extra Inscription slot? Or BoP Enchants, or BoP weapons or leatherworking armors? Or Engineered goggles?

No. No, I don’t look forward to doing it all over again. I’m tired of analyzing a game, I just want to have fun, and not have to think about the inevitable ‘you noob, didn’t you know to pick x reward or faction’ that will come three days after the expansion is out.

I wonder if Hello Kitty Island Adventure is starting soon. I might switch games. It sounds more my speed.

I’d been thinking, I have a Druid tank, I have a Shadow Priest ranged DPS… if I get a new Shaman alt to 70, then I’d have a dedicated healer as well.

It’s funny how the mind works. I have this Hunter, you see… but since in my old guild we had tons of Hunters, I never got the chance to enter Kara with her, and figured I never really would. It was why I started a Priest in the first place, back in the day. Someone besides my Druid I could actually play on raids.

So mental blind spot, and I was hanging out a week or so ago, and Wulfa asked me when I was going to bring my Hunter to Kara with her.

Well…..

Well, why not? I mean, she’s a Hunter. Why can’t she go into Kara?

Maybe because I’m used to thinking of her as a gathering mule? Poor Windstar…

And anyway, why would I need two ranged DPS? I have my Shadow… Priest….

Oh yeah, right.

So it suddenly occurs to me, hey, you know… maybe I could, like… and let’s not rush into things, but… maybe I could go heals on, like… my Priest?

The very thought sends a shiver of fear through my body.

“But John!”, I says to myself, “You don’t know shit about healing as a Priest! You don’t have any gear! You’re worthless! Stick to what you know… mana mana!”

Well…. but see, the thing of it is… we could use another actual HEALER Priest.

We’ve been doing these weekly Kara shindigs for a while, and every time, we make Nasirah heal on her boomkin, because she has awesome healing gear PLUS awesome healing skills.

And Elystia loves her mage, but since she has a healing Priest and awesome healing skills, we end up asking her to heal more often than not.

It’s what I wanted to avoid, asking people to play classes because we need them, rather than because it’s what they want to play.

Our guild, much like every other guild I know of, may have plenty of folks, but we are short of healers that play on the same time zone as everyone else.

I considered it a major victory that Ely got to play her mage in Zul’Aman last night. We ended up short a scheduled healer for the run… and I sat for 20 minutes trying to find another healer, rather than ask her to bring her priest for the umpteenth time. After a while, it just HAS to get old never getting to play the class you started to have FUN.

Fortunately, one of my best friends in game was able to come along, and since I’ve been all wrapped up in Sidhe Devils for months and he’s been raiding, it was sweet to be able to play together again.

Back on track though, the guild could really use another healer that is on the same time zone as the majority of players. And since we have two very, very strong Druids that can heal, one a dedicated Tree (Hi Doodle!) and the other a Tree that prefers feathers to leaves (Hi Nas!), well… a Shaman, Paladin or Priest healer would be very nice.

We do have several players in the guild with healers, but they play at uncertain hours… so it has worked best if we plan around Doodle, Nasirah and Shadewynn (Ely’s Priest) as being the main heals, and try to get someone else the opportunity to run, if they are able to be on at the time. 

We could really use a dedicated, full time main healer to help Doodle, so Nas and Ely can have much more of a chance to play their favorite class/specs.

Cassie has been playing her Paladin, she’s up to level 54 I believe. I know the last time I peeked, she was at 53 and 75%, so she might be 54 by now. And she has stated her interest in going heals at 70. So we have that coming, which will be awesome, but doesn’t help right this second.

So I could respec my Priest to full on healing, and when Cassie hits 70 maybe I could go back to Shadow… and the guild has no Paladin healers at all at 70, so it’d be very cool.

So… respeccing to heals. What the hell do I do? For that matter, what does Cassie do?

I leveled and played 100% Shadow… she is playing 100% Retribution.

We both want to switch to heals (in her case, eventually).

There are two issues here to look at…

• The best gear to get to have sitting waiting for 70
• How the hell to play your class as a healer

So we are both looking for resources to help with these two goals.

I obviously looked at my Priest, first.

I checked out some of the blogs I read, looking for advice.

There are a ton of great Priest blogs, many of them on my sidebar over there ===>

But I have been spoiled on my Shadow spec by Shadowpriest.com.

Shadowpriest.com has a section in their forums where all Shadow Priest raiding gear for PvE is listed, by gear slot, in descending order of awesomeness… and shows the rank, and where it comes from.

I love it. It is, to my mind, the ideal long term shopping list. As long as the math from which the ranking system is understood (for Shadow Priests, for example, how desirable a piece of gear is depends on whether you need Spell Hit or not, and whether you have enough +Damage to make Haste fully effective) then a ranking system detailing where each piece is obtained lets me set a short-term goal and a long-term goal for each slot.

Cassie does the exact same thing with her Rogue on the Shadowpanther website.

I love being able to look at a list, study where the items are ranked, figure out what weighting the items were given, set a goal for a piece of gear that is the absolute best I can get as soon as I ding 70, and then set another goal for that slot of the best I can get from what content I’m going to be playing.

I would imagine the same method is what most players do on their alts, whether you intend to run SSC or Black temple or heroic 5 mans. You can look at what you can get to start, and then look at what the best you can end up will be.

For me, the best healing Priest gear list I have found like this is on A Dwarf Priest, and so you can rest assured I am studying it with glee. Of course, I have read such arcane terms as ‘CoH specced priest’ and ‘IDS’ specced priest, and such… so I have to figure out a good spec for healing in Kara, before I know what gear I need, but hey… thems the breaks, right?

The ‘How to heals as a priest’ part will be my next research topic. Of course, I have not as yet visited the new home of all things healing, the Plus Heal forums, but you can bet that’s where I’m headed.

Unfortunately, I have NOT as of yet found a similar style of gear list, ranked and pretty like that, for Paladins. You can bet your butt I’m looking, though. There is a post on the Plus Heals forums where the Paladin is saying he has “1300 +healing, 9k mana, about 15% crit, and around 200 mp5″ prior to Kara… and is asking for recommendations for where he should be at for Heroics. Good lord, I’d love to see the list of his gear… and if that’s not good enough for Paladin healing in heroics, I have a poor understanding of Pally healing.

As sad as it is that I have hundreds of Badges of Justice worth of Shadow Priest gear, and now I’m switching to healing, I have to admit it feels very good to have a new serious goal in the game.

I’d been feeling very adrift, unsure of what to do next.

Having a long shopping list is awesome… even if I don’t know how the hell to even start trying to heal yet. 

Somehow, I think there is more to it than tossing Prayer of Mending, casting Renew, and then spamming Flash or a downranked Greater Heal until OOM. Maybe? You think?

It’s sad, I read so many Priest blogs daily, and yet I still don’t have a clue how to REALLY heal with a Priest. I should be shot.

On the subject of professions, MMO Champion has a few new updates from the Beta.

First, Blacksmiths are going to be able to add sockets onto some existing gear.

Second, Tailors are going to be able to do a self-enchant (okay, spellthread) on their cloaks.

From MMO Champion;

Blacksmithing
Socket Bracer
Permanently add a socket to your bracers. Requires a level 60 or higher item.

Socket Gloves
Permanently add a socket to your gloves. Requires a level 60 or higher item.

Tailoring
Lightweave Embroidery
Embroiders a subtle pattern of light into your cloak, giving you a chance to cause an additional 800 to 1000 Holy damage when you damage an enemy with a spell.
You can only embroider your own cloak and embroidering your cloak will cause it to become soulbound.

Darkglow Embroidery
Embroiders a magical pattern into your cloak, giving you a chance to restore 300 mana when you cast a spell.
You can only embroider your own cloak and embroidering your cloak will cause it to become soulbound.

Swordguard Embroidery
Embroiders a magical pattern into your cloak, causing your damaging melee attacks to sometimes ignore 1000 of your target’s armor.
You can only embroider your own cloak and embroidering your cloak will cause it to become soulbound.

Very interesting.

It seems to me that these Tailoring additions will be very interesting… and does this replace our three piece max level epics? As I said, interesting.

But the Blacksmithing? It doesn’t say so, but what if those are self-only as well?

Very interesting indeed.

About now, most folks have heard that Blizzard’s content developers are designing all new raids in Wrath of the Lich King to be tuned for two different settings; 10 man and 25 man.

The content, we are told, will be mostly the same, the difference in rewards will be that 25 man difficulty will have better loot drops.

I love Karazhan, and the very concept of Karazhan, so I am all in favor of this.

The trick will be in how it is tuned, since Zul’Aman shows that you can tune the difficulty of a 10 man raid so it requires some serious ’step up’ in order to get it cleared.

I know that, for me, 10 man Karazhan is a lot of fun, primarily because it can be completed in it’s entirety by a solid group of people geared exclusively from PvP, Crafted, BoE, Quest Rewards, Badges and Karazhan drops.

You do not HAVE to have a single person in the raid geared from 25 man content to run Karazhan successfully.

As long as each 10 man version can be completed without requiring gear from 25 man content, it’ll be BRILLIANT.

You can expect that you’ll need to do each one many times before being ready to move on, but hey… that’s the way it works, right?

Enough about that.

My point here, is that we are going to have the opportunity to see all the neat content in 10 man raids, without having to commit to a larger raiding guild, and a lot of people are excited that they won’t be excluded from seeing cool storyline content anymore.

But how many of you that are looking ahead, have taken the opportunity to grasp all that the game has to offer you NOW? 

Let’s be honest, there is a ton of content already existing in the game, content that most current players have not seen. There are a lot of folks that started playing WoW after Burning Crusade was released. And for these players, they have never seen the frenzy of pre-BC raiding or content.

With Wrath of the Lich King months away from release, I keep hearing how players are bored. They want new things to see and do.

Well… does it have to drop shiny new purple upgrades for you to ‘bother’ doing it?

What about doing old school content?

Have you and all your friends cleared BRD? Did you ever escort Marshall Windsor (or the Horde equivalent) and find out why 9 out of 10 Pre-BC players hated BRD for the Ony attunement?

Have you, if you’re Alliance, marched slowly and proudly through Stormwind, escorting Marshall Windsor to face down a certain nefarious lady in Stormwind Keep, and seen what happens when the grand unveiling occurs?

Have you done the quests, cleared Lower Blackrock Spire, and gotten the Ring to unlock Upper Blackrock Spire?

Have you entered Upper Blackrock Spire and killed The Beast? Have you faced down General Drakkisath, completed the Ony attunement quest chain, and gotten your Drakefire Amulet?

Have you destroyed Onyxia in her lair and mounted her skull over your capital city gates?

How about going into Molten Core and seeing the majesty of Ragnaros? Or going into Blackwing Lair?

Have you ever gone into Zul’Gurub and seen the trolls, faced down some of those freaky bosses, and tried to get your mages the Turtle polymorph spell?

Have you ever seen the inside of Ahn’Qiraj? Or Naxxramas before they change it (although this requires a bit of attunement… but then again… if you get attuned now for Naxx, will it carry over for when it gets re-released? Hmmm?)

If you are clearing Karazhan, you and your friends can do all of this.

So, have you?

Have you ever assembled your guild and gone off hunting a World Dragon?

Wait, what about even older content, done in a different way?

Many people, while leveling, skip older instances with bad reputations, like Gnomeregan.

Did you know that MANY of the Pre-BC instances can be done as 10 man raids?

Check this link to WoWwiki, in the “Players Advised (Max)” column the number in paranthesis is the maximum number of players that can enter an instance. Check out how many say ‘10′.

Seriously. You cannot complete instance quests while in a 10 man raid, but you can enter and kill and loot.

Have you ever taken 10 people to zerg Deadmines or Gnomer?

It’s something to think about…. if you’re bored, have you really used up ALL the fun in the game? And if you have mastered it all, then have all your friends? There is a joy to be had in seeing old content through the eyes of a friend who has never been there before… adn you could be helping guide the way.

Right now, Sidhe Devils is having fun doing all the things necessary for Onyxia attunement.

We’re going to go in and get us a dragon!

A lot of us have now got UBRS keys, and we did an UBRS run Saturday morning.

It’s been over a year and a half since I’ve been in there, and it was a lot of fun.

And helping Cassie and Elystia complete the Marshall Windsor escort, and then watching over Cassie’s shoulder as she did the slow march through Stormwind was awesome.

Elystia and Cassie turned it in together, and as they followed Windsor through the streets of Stormwind, they drew a crowd of followers, JUST like in the old Pre-BC days.

And even better, when the… event… at the top of Stormwind Keep began, people up there queued for PVP joined in the fighting, just like old times. But now, people don’t get one shot by those big bad guys. And Cassie took a few down by herself and got to loot them.

Sometimes, it can be hard to remember that, before Burning Crusade, UBRS was the last instance most guilds could see, unless they were part of a 40 man raiding guild.  UBRS was the Karazhan of the old world, a 10 man instance to gear folks up to face Onyxia and Zul’Gurub.

When BC came out, we leveled frantically to 70 in order to finally see something NEW that we could do with friends.

Many people got VERY tired of UBRS in the old days, ran it 20 or 200 too many times to get people Ony attuned. 

But it’s been a long time, and you are no longer level 60.

Why not see what it’s like?

And hey… when you zerg Gnomeregan as a 10 man raid, make sure and say Hi to Mekgineer Thermaplugg for me!

Oh, and if you take a 10 man group of Mages into Gnomer, make sure you film it… I’d like to see the overlapping explosions.