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So I’m off sick, and of course it has to be patch day

Anyway, here are the basic patch notes (Spent all morning trying to find the in-depth ones to no avail).

Patch Notes for v.0.6.4:

• Added new vehicles: premium heavy Lowe and KV-5, KV-13 and Pz38NA, tier 8 SPGs: Object 261, GW-E serie, T-92.
• Readjusted visibility parameters of all vehicles while standing still and on the move.
• Introduced detailed damage mechanics for tracks. Reworked durability of tracks and repair time for all vehicles.
• Increased match-making value for tier 9 medium tanks.
• Reworked vehicle movement system – sticking at vertical surfaces and map borders is nearly eliminated. Reduced chance of getting stuck in terrain objects.
• Changed damage mechanics for tracks. You can damage tracks if you hit the leading or the rearmost wheel of the tank. It will be much more difficult to detrack it by hitting middle part of the tank.
• Added the possibility of dismounting non-demountable equipment (Rammer, Coated Optics and other) for 10 gold.
• Added the automated ban system for teamkillers.
• Added new maps: Mountain Pass and Prairies.
• Corrected a lot of mistakes connected with objects’ disposition, passing ability, getting stuck on most of the maps.
• Fixed a lot of rendering errors, increased the efficiency of advanced dynamic shadows.

My thoughts? Ok, new maps are always good. I like the variety, and some of the current ones need a bit of balancing/reworking. New tanks? Meh, don’t really care. I’m too busy working through the lower classes. As for TK’ing bans, I think it should be based upon a vote. I’ve seen a few instances where a teammate on a narcissistic binge will damage as many teammates as he can without killing them, effectively weakening the entire squad. Such a teammate deserves to be put out of his misery, and banning the person that does is not the solution. I do like the reworked movement and track damage a lot though. I’ve been stuck on map edges and inside sniping buildings way too many times for it to be “novel” any more. And fixing the track damage to be more specific to where it’s hit adds a further layer of realism to the game.

Anyway, last night I played a few rounds, which was quite entertaining and taught me a few things. Firstly, we had a bug on a few maps where certain terrain was indestructible. Imagine a thin guard gate being impassable: we immediately noticed it and used this to our advantage, creating a choke point around our base and defending hard. Easy victory. The next map however had one of the two bridges bugging out, causing neither team to be able to pass over or even see each other across the bridge. This caused a mad dash to the only other bridge, and with quite a few TD’s and heavies, this turned out to be quite the battle.

Next up, with about 8k experience left to my T1 Heavy, I’ve almost given up on the foul M3 Lee. As a diversion I’ve bought some Russian tanks and am progressing much faster to the KV. It’s become so bad that I play extremely cautious with the M3, trying to set myself up way before choke points so I don’t get destroyed too early. This means I don’t see much action, and play longer with less experience on these maps. Then when I switch to another tank, I forget that I’m not in the lumbering beast and sometimes totally forget that I have free turret movement, which brings down my light game. All in all not a nice experience.

On a lighter note, we had a map last night where everyone rushed left. Our team rushed our left, their team rushed theirs. Only 3 tanks were destroyed in the entire battle and we ended up winning by getting our guys in their base faster. Many “gg”‘s and giggles were had by all . I didn’t even see an enemy blip on the radar all match.

Now… only another 3 hours till patch time is over…

I’ve been scarce, I know. I’ve just been horribly busy pushing for progression in my guild and trying to get as much betatesting done in Lego Universe (Which I’ll tell you all about once the NDA gets lifted, I swear). And to be honest I don’t have much to post about. The guild’s quite secure, everyone’s peachy and there’s another guild that wants to do joint-25mans in the near future. I also had a great time tanking with a guy I’ve spoken to 100 times ingame but never had the chance to play with.

So the topic today is just something that’s been on my mind for quite a while. Now as some of you may know, my main’s name is Pindleskin – blatantly stolen from Diablo 2. The truth is I couldn’t resist when I made him. I mean cmon, an undead warrior. The character creation screen looks just like him too.

Seems Blizz noticed this though, and struck back with great fury. Here’s how:

The third character I created, shortly after Pindle hit 60 and ages before TBC was even imagined, was a female tauren druid named Keyrah. Soon after the release of The Burning Crusade I was questing through Zangarmarsh when a druid in distress called me over. What would her name be?

Kayra

Ok so the names are just slightly similar, and once is a coincidence right? If only… With the release of The Burning Crusade, blood-elves came to be. I rolled a male priest, thinking the racial at that time would help. I named him Bloodbane. I got him to 70 way before Wrath was announced, and managed to get him quite far in the raiding scene.

Then Wrath hit. I made a Deathknight purely to see what all the fuss is about. In fact, he’s still only level 72, and will probably stay there for all eternity. What I did find during my quest through the DK starting area was a very interesting NPC by the name of Orbaz Bloodbane. This time he wasn’t the same race (human compared to belf) but the name matched 100%.

Since then I’ve used names that are so obscure that if they were to copy it, I’d know for sure. But 2 for 1 seems fair anyway. So umm… you can stop now Blizzard, I get the point. I won’t use any of your names again.

Images courtesy of wowwiki.com and probably copyrighted by Blizzard Entertainment

I haven’t posted my thoughts on RealID because frankly I couldn’t care less. I use the forums once every 6 months at most for a status update on my guild’s recruitment needs and that’s about it. My guildies all know who I am, what I look like and where I live. It’s no secret.

Yet I totally understand where a lot of people are coming from. If I were an active member of the Blizzard forum community, I’d be outraged too. If, for instance, they decided to put that type of information on the IT forum I inhabit, I’d kindly withdraw myself and go someplace else. Except for most WoWers, there is no place else.

Instead of continuing to say what everyone else has said, here’s a quick roundup of the best posts on RealID I’ve found:

• Greyshades posted an open letter to Blizzard, in which she gets distracted by dragons.
• Valis shows us how easy it is to track down and stalk someone with just a name and general location.
• Saresa gives us a nice roundup on the forum fisticuffs.
• Gnomeageddon shows how to best stick it to the man.
• Nagrarok gets FRESH with this great rap.
• BigBearButt literally has pages of the stuff, all of which makes good sense.

If you don’t read them all, just do yourself a favour and peek at Nagrarok and Greyshades’ work. And if you know of a great post to join these, please let me know.

-=Edit=-

And just as I thought Angelya was gonna stay out of it, she drops this fairytale bombshell.