By no means am I an expert audiophile, nor a sound engineer.  I am a gamer and entertainment enthusiast who likes the most realism he can get in sound.   This review is written as such.   If you’re looking for a professional reviewer, look elsewhere.  I will be as objective as possible.

Ever since it was announced last August, I’ve been anticipating the availability of the Creative Labs WoW headset.  Today, I finally received mine.      I ordered mine through Amazon.com on Thursday for a retail of $159.99, and after overnight shipping, it came to $181.95.  Your shipping cost may vary and tax of course, depending on where you live. Continue Reading »

Well today as anticipated, 3.3.2 has dropped!    Season 8 of Arena has started, Frostwing Halls have opened in Icecrown Citadel, a few buffs and nerfs have been added, and a few bug fixes.  The patch was about 170Mb.  Not too bad.  Took about 8 minutes total to download and install on my connection.

Season 8 of Arena:  As most of you who PvP know, once a new season opens, the last season’s gear becomes available for sale without requiring Arena Rating.  This is good for those of us who like to PvP in battlegrounds, but don’t do arena much.   There’s controversy though about it.  Some say it’s “welfare epics”.  You know what, screw that.  I still work hard for those honor points to buy the gear.  I’m not a raider,  I am casual.  I rarely do dungeons.  I don’t have time to raid every night like some do.  I enjoy the battlegrounds, and so the gear I can get is a good reward for all the time I do put into BG.

Icecrown Citadel:  Recently I did do a random dungeon and landed in Forge of Souls, and had a lot of fun.  I’m really going to try this year to do more dungeons and maybe even some raids.  Now that the final wing of ICC is open maybe I will start doing more randoms and see what happens.  I need to gear up though.

Buffs and nerfs: Lots there, I’ll let you read the notes about that.

The official patch notes are as follows:

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- World of Warcraft Client Patch 3.3.2
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The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

The latest patch notes can always be found at

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

Dungeons & Raids

-  Halls of Stone
Brann Bronzebeard has been getting into shape and now feels comfortable walking faster when escorted.

-  The Forge of Souls
The Devourer of Souls will now cast Mirrored Souls less often.
The Spell Reflect ability has been altered on several creatures. It now has a cast time, only has 2 charges, and has a 75% chance of reflecting spells.

-  The Nexus
Anomalus will now use the Create Rift ability only once, down from 3 times.

-  The Old Kingdom
Elder Nadox now only gets one Ahn’Kahar Guardian during the encounter.
Jadoga Shadowseeker now only ascends once during the encounter.
Several enemies between the Befouled Terrace and The Desecrated Altar have been removed or had their pathing altered.

-  Pit of Saron
Players can now zone back into the instance if they are dead while encounters with Krick and Ick or Forgemaster Garfrost are in progress.

-  Utgarde Pinnacle
Skadi the Ruthless can now be removed from his drake with 3 harpoon strikes, down from 5.
Svala Sorrowgrave now casts Ritual of the Sword 1 time during the encounter, down from 3.

-  Vault of Archavon
Toravon, the latest boss to join the Vault’s giants and masters of the elements, is now accepting challengers in 10- and 25-player formats.
-  The Violet Hold
The time between a boss being defeated and a new portal opening has been decreased.

PvP

-  Arenas
Season 8 has officially begun featuring all-new rewards!

Druids

-  Talents
-  Balance
Earth and Moon: This talent now increases the druid’s spell damage by 2/4/6%, up from 1/2/3%.

Shamans

-  Talents
-  Elemental Combat
Shamanism: This talent now provides 4/8/12/16/20% extra spell damage to Lightning Bolt/Chain Lightning, up from 3/6/9/12/15%, and 5/10/15/20/25% to Lava Burst, up from 4/8/12/16/20%.

Warlocks

-  Talents
-  Affliction
Shadow Embrace: This effect can now stack up to 3 times, up from 2. However, the periodic healing reduction effect has been reduced from 3/6/9/12/15% to 2/4/6/8/10% per application.
-  Demonology
Demonic Pact: The damage bonus granted the warlock by this talent has been increased from 1/2/3/4/5% to 2/4/6/8/10%. The buff granted to a raid or party by this talent remains unchanged.
-  Destruction
Conflagrate: The damage-over-time effect of Conflagrate has been increased to 40% of the spell’s total damage, up from 20%.
Empowered Imp: The pet bonus damage provided by this talent has been increased to 10/20/30%, up from 5/10/15%.
Improved Shadow Bolt: Damage done by Shadow Bolt increased by 2/4/6/8/10%, up from 1/2/3/4/5%.

Warriors

-  Talents
-  Protection
Shield Slam: The damage scaling from block value for this ability now diminishes faster and diminishes starting at a lower block value. The difference should be negligible for players in high-end tanking armor. In addition, the threat caused by Shield Slam has been increased by 30%.
Warbringer: This talent no longer allows Charge and Intercept to break roots or snares. Intervene remains unaffected.

User Interface

-  The party leader is now referred to as Guide in chat when a group is formed via the Dungeon Finder.
-  Fixed a bug where players with Raid Assist capabilities were unable to perform a Ready Check.
-  Fixed a bug where the first couple of tutorials were not displaying upon logging into the game.

Items

- New strength-based melee DPS rings are now available from representatives of the Ashen Verdict.
- Tier-9 Sets: The Aspirant vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds have worked out a deal with merchants in Dalaran so that all item level 232 set pieces will now be available on armor vendors in the city. Set pieces which require trophies will still be available for purchase only from vendors at the Argent Tournament grounds.
- Tier-10 Balance Druid 4-Piece Bonus: Fixed a bug to allow for this bonus to properly trigger.
- Tier-10 Elemental Shaman 4-Piece Set Bonus: Redesigned. Successful Lava Burst casts now increase the duration of Flame Shock on the target by 6 seconds.
- Tier-10 Tank Sets: The gloves and chest pieces for warrior, death knight, and paladin tanks have had their stats adjusted slightly to provide additional armor value.
- Tier-10 Warlock 4-Piece Bonus: This bonus should now correctly be applied to the warlock’s pet.

Technical Support

- The cvar ‘processAffinityMask’ controls which CPU cores are available for the World of Warcraft client to use. Previously the game client was limited to 2 cores as a default which players could override in the configuration file. In the past this provided a performance boost on some CPUs and operating systems. We have identified several systems that are experiencing severe performance issues with this restriction and have removed it. Players who would like to restore the old behavior can do so by updating the Config.WTF file by adding: SET processAffinityMask “3″.

Today I logged into WoW for a few minutes, and when I logged out, I noticed the background downloader had started, and it says it is indeed for 3.2.   Generally I’ve noticed that the background downloader starts up about 1 – 2 weeks before a major patch.  Could it be soon?  Let’s hope.  The patch so far looks to be about 273mb.  I’m guessing that’s new graphics and model information.  Actual code won’t appear until the real patch goes live.

I added a new page to the blog.  It’s an old piece written in 1982 by a man named Ed Post.  I read it before many years ago but ran across it today and wanted to share.  It’s way too big for a blog post and I thought it deserved it’s own page.  The permalink is http://www.spiritfiresrealm.com/real-programmers/

Well, I’ve gone and done it.  There’s no denying it.  It’s sitting there staring me right in the face.  I just can’t hide it any more.  I’ve been looking at them and wondering what it would be like to have one, to use one.

I bought a Mac.

Specifically, a MacBook Pro 15″.  I’m getting used to the thing, but so far I really like it.  Right now as I type this, I’m installing WoW so I can play it when I go to Blizzcon.  This thing is pretty nice.  Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66ghz, 4gb ram,  320gb drive, nVidia 9400 with 256mb ram.

Now this does not mean I’m giving up on Windows.  I’m keeping all of my options open.

As I mentioned in my last entry, I upgraded my PC to Vista 64bit.  Spefically, I’m using Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition.  So far, the PC just runs so much faster.  I’ve installed just about everything I had before, and everything loads so much quicker.  The only crash I had I am pretty sure was related to the wrong memory.  Speaking of which, I got the correct memory installed, and the PC took another jump in performance.

I’m pretty happy with that.  What I find incredible is that the hard drive is rated 5.9 on 64 bit vista.  Anyway, now the PC is factory overclocked like it was supposed to be.  My games all run a lot better, performance is great.  Life is good.  I am looking forward to seeing Windows 7 when it becomes final.

I’ve also decided to try an experiment.  I’ve put Ubuntu 9.04 linux on my laptop, and on my second PC.  It installed very easy on the laptop, had very little issue getting the dell built in wireless to work, and the built in bluetooth worked as well.  The nVidia drivers for the mobile video card installed without any trouble.  On the other dell pc though, that wasn’t as smooth.  I had a lot of trouble with the sound, found out the front headphone and mic jacks will not work at all, so I had to plug my headset into the back of the PC.  Had some issues getting Jockey to install the proprietary nVidia drivers, so I ended up using EnvyNG instead.    I will try to install WoW on both the laptop and pc using Wine and see how it runs.  If I like Ubuntu, I may keep it on both machines.  My big machine though will always run Windows.

In the spirit of embracing “alternative computer lifestyles”, I may even buy a Mac someday.  There, I said it.  I’m Mac-curious.  Since I got a taste of Apple with my iPhone, I’ve been looking at Macs and wondering what it would be like go to the other side and try one.