One For All...

Back in January, Elsha and I fulfilled a small dream of ours of owning a pet. We have both been smitten for a long time in getting a Cavalier King Charles Spaniels. Cavaliers are a Toy Dog breed as they are quite small (average weight about 6kg), and are well-known for being lapdogs. In case you miss the reference, they love to sit on your lap and keep it nice and warm on cold days.

Cavaliers are very affectionate dogs seeking human or animal companionship at all times, although they do love to sleep - they have been known to sleep for as much as 18 hours during the day, wanting only a stroke or pet in between, a frolic in the garden and to stop to eat and drink before going back to bed.

They are very good around children and not at all a danger to others; indeed, sometimes it has been known that a parent or adult step in to stop a child for being too rough. As they are very affectionate animals, they will never make a good guard dog as they love to wag their tail at strangers, especially if the stranger makes a fuss.

Also, they can never be allowed off the leash as, although they are a small dog, they do derive from the Spaniel, and therefore have a strong hunting instrict that gets them chasing after butterflies, birds or other small animals; as such they tend to easily run across the road without due regard for their surroundings.

Why am I telling you all these things?



Because this is our Cavalier!

Though we had wanted a puppy, we decided to adopt a slightly older dog. And after meeting him, we realised that we had to give D'Artganan a home.

Yes, that is his name. D'Artagnan - from The Three Muskateers (although the three in the title of the book are Porthos, Athos and Aramis; D'Artagnan joins them by the end of the book).

We were wanting to name the dog differently, but decided that the name was quite fitting, considering that The Muskateers were of a contemporary time period for the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. So D'Artagnan keeps his name, though we and others, children especially, have truncated his name to simply Tanyen for short.

He is an adorable, very affectionate dog but incredibly timid. We introduced him to our nieces and nephews and other young children and though they were initially scared of him, he was behind our legs the whole time. As we slowly introduced them to each other, Tanyen slowly allowed them to pet him and to make a fuss over him.

He's been with us now for over 6 weeks and, as time goes on, he's very quickly become part of the family.

The Great Experiment

In case you haven't been following things in the World of Warcraft Blogosphere, Tamarind of Righteous Orbs made a proposal last week that sounds very interesting: All bloggers unite on one Server, and play in the same guild.

The reaction has been not unsurprisingly tremendous. The original idea of setting up the guild on the European servers has now even spawned a sister chapter house in the US set up by Miss Medicina, and I am a member.

The name of the guild is [Single Abstract Noun] and is available as Horde on Argent Dawn-EU or Alliance on Argent Dawn-US, and its a great guild so far. Plenty of chats in peak US time, plenty of insight and discussion in late Singaporean time.

Unfortunately, Crucifer was taken. I had briefly thought of playing as Icara or Keltash, but I decided to go with *wait for it* a male toon with the name of Istarian *yes, I know shocking!*.

Then it was the choice of class. So far I have played:

Hunter - Al'Akir
Druid - Eonar
Warrior - Eonar
Paladin - Caelestrasz
Mage - Caelestrasz
Warlock - Caelestrasz
Shaman - Caelestrasz
Death Knight - Caelestrasz

There are two classes missing there.

I once played the Rogue back in the US beta and I hated it. I remember getting as far as Westfall and then being ganked over and over by mobs. I dropped the class and went Druid. It was much less painful.

Priest, I'm reserving for Cataclysm. I hope I can play a Goblin Priest. From a character concept its an interesting one. The reject Goblin, kicked out of the Guild because he wanted to *help* people.

So, I have a Hunter by the name of Istarian. I decided Hunter because they're incredibly fast to level up and given that I have huge timesinks in my real life, not including raiding on a different server on set days, a hunter was the logical choice. So far, I have got him to level 18 and I'm having real fun. One thing I have noticed is as an Alliance Hunter, I've not yet run into anything that has the potential to kill me. Ah well, I'm sure that will change.

The only problem - the only issue - I have noticed is that people are racing to get up to the end game as fast as possible. Guys, its not a race. Explore the game, do stuff you wouldn't normally do. Revel in the moment, chat with people, offer help wherever possible.

This is a great experiment but it is not proof against the same fate that every other guild had that started sociably and eventually went hardcore.

Nostalgic Gaming

Back before World of Warcraft, before Asheron's Call 2, there was a game I was obsessed about. In fact, obsessed is probably too weak a description of just how fanatically interested I was.

I was first introduced to it by a friend of mine - Greevesie, we'll call him - who was also fanatically interested in it. The game was called Phantasy Star Online and it was available on the Dreamcast console [Ed. this was circa 2001]. He had been eulogizing its many merits, how insanely fun it was and, most amazingly for a console, you could play it online.

Remember this was on the Dreamcast Console back in 2001 - in the UK, it was before most people had Broadband access, meaning it was a dial up MMO.

Phantasy Star Online was basically about a ship of full of people that was sent out into space to colonize a new planet. An earlier ship had been despatched to get the planet mostly ready for living on, on board which were scientists, doctors and engineers. As the second ship arrives in orbit, they witness a massive explosion on the planet and then nothing. No communication is available down to the planet. Its your job to go down there, find out what happened to the people, and on a side quest, find out what happened to the Mayor's daughter.

I played this game on the Dreamcast, on the Gamecube... and now I'm playing a version of it, called Phantasy Star Zero, on my Nintendo DS.

Amazingly the gameplay is almost the same as I remembered it on the other consoles - what a brilliant nod to a game than to have it on a hand-held console.

I've already been playing enough of it to get to Level 10 as a Human Ranger and looking forward to exploring other sections of the game whilst on the train, waiting for Elsha, at the shops - in fact, because its a hand-held - everywhere!

The only downside is that whilst the Nintendo DS console does allow for limited online play, it does so using WEP security.

And since our home router has WPA2, should I really drop security settings on our router so that I can go online with my DS?

Hmmm...

Blogpo

Something that confused me for a long time about Australians is their ability shorten long words down by using -o.

So for example:

"Hey Damian, don't forget to write up that documentation this afternoon so we can send it to Fremantle."

becomes

"Hey Damo, don't forget to write up that doco this arvo so we can send it to Freo."

Of course, the chances of so many abbreviated words in the same sentence is pretty unlikely, but still it freaked me out when I first heard a co-worker asking me if I had read the "doco".

Me: Sorry, what's a doco?

Co-worker: You know, doco. Guides. Manuals, Doco...

Me: Oh, you mean documentation?

Co-worker: Well if you want to get all lardy dah about it...

At first I thought it might just be me, but oh no, its something that other non-Australians have picked up on as well and was equally confusing to them too.

Is there some rule that applies to how and when you can use the -o abbreviation, I wonder?

Return to Writing

So. Months have passed and no blogging. What have I been doing all this time?

Well, for a start, I've been enjoying my free time. I have had heaps of ideas for blogs - for example, why is it still snowing in England! - but absolutely no time alloted to spend on actually writing about it.

I know, I know, make time for the important things. But, last year I had plenty of other things that needed to be done and took up all my time.

Aside from that, I did continue to read posts in the blogosphere. There have been plenty of things going on that caught my attention and kept me interested.

But for now, consider me returned to house and hearth, and posts will continue once more to flow.

Food For Thought

So, what's been going on over the past month?

Well... Firstly I took a week off work, specifically because the house needed some painting and renovating, and Elsha and I were long overdue for a break. The house was sold with just bare walls with cream colour or what we later discovered was a very close approximation to Antique White USA (we discovered this at random). In order to bring some life to the house, we decided on painting a lounge room wall, a kitchen wall and the master bedroom wall in Davinci Red with Suede effect. The Suede effect just makes it easier for first time painters like ourselves to stick the paint on without worrying about brushstrokes.

Next, it afforded us some time to spend with some very special new neighbours. Several years ago I lamented about the resignation of Scythe, who was moving to a different company. Well, very recently, Scythe decided to uproot from England and move to Australia. And he now lives about 10 minutes away from us. How amazing is that. I just can't quite put into words how I feel about having such a close connection to my life in London just around the corner.

No post would be complete without a World of Warcraft update. Well, Scythe is playing too but destined to the lower levels. And learning quickly that the game has changed from its first incarnation into something smaller, at least at the lower levels. I'm currently running dungeons over and over for him in order to garner large amounts of experience points in a short amount of time.

Health-wise, I find myself struggling to overcome the usual winter cold. At the moment, the media screams daily about the on-going swine flu and with people constantly coughing and failing to cover their open mouths with their hands, I wonder if this outbreak is because of the breakdown of general healthcare that people take on a day to day basis.

One fact continues to surprise me. When I was growing up, people would often wash their hands before eating. Now it seems that eating with a knife and fork and not washing hands is perfectly fine for the majority. Even worse, how many people do not wash their hands before preparing food?

Goings on in the homeland

I've spent most of the afternoon reading up about how MPs in the UK have essentially fleeced the taxpayers - that is, the public they've sworn to represent - of their money and lined their own pockets with our money.

This is at the same time as introducing more and more 'stealth' taxes, presumably to aid in their above aims of fleecing as much as they can.

I'm just gobsmacked at the sheer arrogance of these people. What is it that happens when criminals steal money and then get caught?

Oh yes, they're made to pay it all back.

Speeding

What is it with experienced drivers complaining about P Platers speeding? Although its occasionally true (we have no experience of speed), I find its almost the exact reverse.

Yesterday I sat in my car driving down the 70kmh dual carriage road whilst cars overtook me driving way past the posted speed limit. This is clearly against the posted rules of the road and had there been a policeman with a radar gun there, those speeding drivers would have been behind me all the way. Either that, or on the side of the road getting a ticket.

On Sunday I was at a party where people were talking about P platers as if they were all speeding madmen/women. Of course, they didn't mean me, because I drive fairly cautiously (I have to, the roads are all full of speeding experienced drivers).

Its odd, you know. As the old adage goes, people speed faster than you, or drive way too slowly than you. But of course, to them its the other way around - you drive too fast or drive too slowly.
Me? I drive at the posted limit. I'm not in a hurry, I like to get to where I'm going with as less stress as possible and, to be honest, who cares if I'm 10 minutes late.

This isn't London, after all.

The ever winding road

The journey [pun intended] that I started 6 months ago has finally come to an end; at least, the formal journey has, but the road of unofficial learning continues ever on.

Six months ago, I decided to finally suck it up and learn to drive. As I had previously blogged, I had no need to drive in London as the transport infrastructure is such that its easy to get around on public transport.

In late September I called up an instructor and asked for a lesson, explaining that I was an older and nervous and that I had never driven anything before - such was my reticence on driving that I hadn't done anything for nine months after I had passed my Theory Test.

The lesson was simply amazing; driving at 15kmh, I drove around the small roads and even moved around parked cars. By lesson three, I was going at 90kmh along major roads.

My instructor felt I wasn't entirely ready for my practical test and kept putting back my test time after time after time, even though everyone else I'd driven with had said I was fine. I was cautious, I looked before turning, etc. If anything, I only had a problem with judging distances (I've had this issue for as long as I remember) when making turns. But nothing that would impede my test.

After a long preamble, my instructor agreed to 2 pre-tests so that I could see what the final test would be like. The first pre-test ended with me driving straight (lane changing) through a dual-lane roundabout essentially causing a huge traffic violation that would have had me automatically failing. But as I did it, I knew what I'd done - and that it would never happen again; and thats when I fell to pieces and had to pull over to one side to recover.

The second pre-test was a bit better but the instructor took me out of the way of the test and I failed to slow down enough when coming to speed bumps - another automatic fail. What annoyed me the most there was that that road was not on the test, so I would never have failed anything. Sticking to my guns, I stubbornly asked for the test to commence.

On the 21st of January, I finally took the test. It lasted 30 minutes but it felt like only 10 minutes had passed. I made a few errors but overall I was happy with my performance, and when I was told I had passed, I was over the moon.

After that, it was a laborious 6 weeks to get my 25 Hours Supervised driving logged (a practice to stop teenagers from jumping in their new car and wrapping it around a tree or around a family) and finally on the 20th of March, I took my Hazard Perception Test.

The Hazard Perception Test is a computer exam with flash-based videos to determine if the learner driver understands what hazards actually are - from sand on the roads to a motorcycle concealed behind a turning truck, to knowing when to safely over take. The questions were fairly ambiguous too as on occasion not slowing down was the safest thing to do. Another 30 minutes of testing and I had passed. I finally realised that the Hazard Perception Test was not really evaluating my understanding of the rules of the road, but whether or not I had falsified the 25 logged hours of supervised driving...

I now drive a White Hyundai Accent car, air conditioning inclusive. Its not the fastest car in the world nor the prettiest. Nor the most kitted out.

But for all those failings, its MY car.

Silly Costumes

As Elsha pointed out today, she hates it when people dress up in a silly costume and then wander the streets looking for victims to de-purse of money.

Now, I will quite regularly donate to charities or funds that I think are quite deserving, like the Rememberance Day Poppy Appeal or Imperial Cancer Research or any of the similarly serious but deserving trusts.

What I will not do is be embarrassed into parting with cash as someone in a costume titters on in front of me. I just don't understand what they're trying to say. Is it ok to wear a silly costume and meander the streets asking for cash?

Not for me, at least.

Today in Perth it was Radio Lollipop Day, a day when the Perth Transit Authority is supposed to put on the radio in their buses and entertain everyone whilst their silly costume prats accost you for cash for kids in hospitals. Whilst the notion of giving charity to children in hospital is undoubtedly a rewarding one, today was an unmitigated disaster.

No radios on in buses but even worse, no buses. At the stop I normally take, I was left having to wait 12 minutes. Not a long time perhaps but try waiting 12 minutes during rush hour on Ealing Broadway in Greater London and you will soon imagine the type of crowd that developed here.
And of course these were people who were not dressed in silly costumes but just trying to get to work. No radios on in buses as people shoved and pushed their way onto a coveted place on the bus.

I'm not sure what changed this year but it was a far cry from the entertaining morning that we had last year, and if you base your fund raising around entertaining people, well then one must wonder if the people in silly costumes have any other tricks up their sleeves for next year.

Back and posting

I've just realised that I haven't written a post since January.

Hmm.

I've definitely started lots of posts but somehow their connectivity to topical issues always seem dated by the time I've finished.

Like the aborted post about how it was snowing in England and I how I was jealous. I had a post written up but by the time I had put my thoughts into order and bypassed co-workers watching over my shoulder, the snow had melted and England was back to working order.

Still. Here's a post. Saying I'm back.

I'm back.

Hurrah!

The Driving Test

The Driving Test is perhaps one of the most important events in your life, alongside Marriage, mainly because it opens up opportunities for greater travel (at least in Australia).

In London, I was never really that interested in learning to drive because the transportation network was amazingly efficient. Not only did you have buses, ferries, 'tubes', trains and aeroplanes, you also had mini-cabs and taxi cabs. Add all these to walking and you have the ability to pretty much go anywhere.

In Perth, West Australia, you really do need to drive around, unfortunately, as the distance between landmarks and locations is so much greater. They do have a great metro transportation network but in terms of reaching the outskirts of the city where all the people live, a car just makes it easy by several magnitudes.

So, last year I decided to learn to drive. First off was the Theoretical Test, a set of 40 questions aimed at general rules of the road. Who has right of way when turning left onto a road, for example. Most of the questions are fairly self evident but some of them do get confusing.

Passing that earns you a Learner's Permit and you get to then spend your time driving around in a car with an L plate hanging off the back whilst either a professional instructor or a supervisor teach you how to drive. My first lesson was at 6pm and probably not the best time as the light was beginning to fade. Still, driving a half-tonne of metal on the backstreets around the house was amazingly fun but equally nerve-wracking. My hands were shaking when I finally got home.
Lesson after lesson constantly pushed the driving envelope until I was driving at 100kmh up the Freeway and learning about merging traffic.

Eventually though, given enough time and practice, you get to sit The Test. Here in Perth, you need to complete 3 exercises - Stopping For Shopping, Finding An Address and Retrieving Your Wallet - with the Examiner checking your surreptitiously checking your general driving skills.

Stopping for shopping is based around the notion that whilst driving you pass a shopping centre that you meant to have turned into. The exercise calls for you to turn the car around, drive back to the centre and find a spot to reverse park in; the other two exercises call for similar manoeuvers. Passing The Test requires that the manoeuvres are completed above a certain level and, unfortunately for you, that level is fairly high - at least 75%. Unlike normal tests, getting above the minimum mark does not guarantee a pass as the Examiner is likely to find that even though you have demonstrated that you can drive, your safety record is such that as a whole you are not safe to pass.

So I am pleased to say that the Wednesday before last, not only did I take the test (with much pressure from friends, family and co-workers) but that I passed with good marks. Of course, there were mistakes but these were of issues that I can but learn from and become a better driver. All I have to do now is log 25 hours of supervised driving and sit a Hazard Perception Test - a computer-based exam that tests my ability to recognise potential issues on the road and to adequately react to it.

I'm a bit surprised though by this final test. Why have this at the end? And why allow me to drive this half-tonne metal object around in broad daylight if my reactions are not adequate.

Still, I am glad to be past The Test and on my way to driving in West Australia.

A New Day, A New Year

Where to begin? 2008 is over and now we're prancing into 2009, a new year with new opportunities.

2008 was a great year for me. As I've previously blogged, Elsha and I got married, bought a house, and I began the long, slow path to getting a Driving License, something that will continue into 2009. New opportunities will include getting my Australian Citizenship sorted out so that I can come and go as I please.

I didn't post at Christmas primarily because I was having too much fun, so here's the present list:

- Nintendo DS Lite

This is a great present. I really like the idea of the DS Lite, that you use a stylus to interact with the game in some way. For years I had liked the idea of having a PDA but good games just aren't made for PDA's (or at least not the ones I've been looking at).

With the DS Lite came some games...

Transformers: Autobots should have been a great game. You get to run around shooting at things, scanning vehicles to add them to your repository of known forms, and then transforming into them and driving around. Except that age old problem of the boss. At the end of each section, there is a humongous fight where you have to smash your controller to death to get to kill the boss. In this case, I'm playing Bumblebee and I'm fighting Barricade (the police car in the movie), who just happens to have heatseeking missiles, whereas I get to have a pea shooter.

Star Trek Tactical Assault is a cool game. It mirrors Star Fleet Command for the PC, itself modelled on the Star Fleet Battles boardgame. You get to take command of a starship, and then you get to fight alien ships like the Romulans or the Klingons. Its great fun, especially when you realise that if you switch to Red Alert (to get your weapons charged up) the attitude of the enemy ships become aggresive. Stay at Yellow Alert and you run the risk of getting attacked versus calming the enemy down.

Sight Training is just that. Its a series of activities designed to increase your use of vision. Some of it is luck I find but its a good way of calming yourself down after frantically pressing buttons as Bumblebee.

The other two games I received were of the Final Fantasy variety, one a rpg and the other an rpg strategy game. I haven't really had the chance to get involved with those but give me time.

Dvd's next. I received a fair few and one set, arguably the best present of the evening, was especially well received:

I can't say much more about Blackadder Seasons 1-4 than what you probably already know. Its brilliant!

Next up was Season 4 Part 1 of Battlestar Galactica, the continuing re-imagined series I had watched with diligence so far. In the previous season, we had just discovered the 4 of the final cylon models, one is left to be revealed!

Another DVD I received was a Harry Palmer movie - Funeral In Berlin. I've been in love with the Harry Palmer movies ever since I was introduced to them by my eldest brother. He's so typically English and in sharp contrast to the Americanised James Bond. He even has to sign a form to get his "new" car. I love it!

In any collection, Transformers the Live Action Movie would be a gem even if it is overshadowed by my other DVDs. Its still a great romp though.

Other than the DVDs and the DS Lite, I also received some Dragon Car Covers for the seats of our new car and a car vacuum cleaner, which will come in handy seeing that some people never ever clean their cars.

I also received a World of Warcraft Calendar from a co-worker and it was a great present to get, and totally unexpected.

I'm sure I've forgotten something but hey, thats what the next blog post will probably be about.

Busy Bee

With the new job it has been a very busy several weeks. I wish I now had the time to write up more posts but sadly I have had a very steep learning curve getting to grips with Lotus Notes administration and SMS Client - remote installations.

Today, Wrath of the Lich King launches in Australia and so I expect I will be busy all weekend being glamoured by the new shiny sights in Northrend, but I will be writing up a proper post.

Ten years on

It was exactly ten years ago today that I arrived in Australia for the first time. I had had a long internet relationship with Elsha and we had moved onto 'phone calls and had even met up in London for 6 weeks so by no means was I coming to Australia blindly.

Unfortunately, it is also the date that Elsha's mother passed away, so its not something that can be celebrated. We've since moved our anniversary to the 15th of February, the date we first met in London, simply to avoid celebrating a date that has such horrible connotations.

Ten years ago, I spent months at Elsha's home watching Tv, reading books, playing computer games and looking desperately for jobs that might come my way. I did land two jobs, one with Home Building Society and the other with Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital - both of those have left me with co-workers who became friends.

Ten years on, and I'm now living in Australia permanently. I've met those guys but equally I've made new friends and have fit in to the social network - enough now so that I get the regular invite to the pub for a few drinks and to chit chat about work and home life. And of course, since they invite their friends and co-workers, its a great way to network.

One way in which this has paid off for me is that I'm leaving my current job and moving to a mining company; a friend mentioned my name in passing and I got a call for a job interview. The friend will be working with me so he of course gets a referral fee and since he's currently working there, I have backup in terms of dealing with sticky jobs (and it makes meeting up for drinks easier!).

So this is how ten long years have changed me from the guy who lived in London to the guy who now owns a house, is learning to drive and is in the process of getting a top notch job.

Bravo! - (even if I do say so myself)

DPS: Their role

Cap'n John said in a previous comment that the DPS should listen to instructions and know how to perform their role, so I thought I would make a post about it.

DPS encompasses pretty much every class in World of Warcraft; that is, even warriors and priests have the ability to perform some amount of DPS. Due to this, it is very rare that a request for a DPS member will take long to fulfill for an instance.

So why are DPS so bad in instances?

Well, for a start, the game allows for solo play, suggesting that group play for DPS is actually a bad idea. In a previous MMO, I was a healer, and I was regularly picked up for group quests because it was more efficient to kill things with other people than it was by myself, or them by themselves. Monsters were very powerful as compared to a healer or a tank, and DPS classes did not have enough health or armour to keep themselves alive long enough to kill the monster - they NEEDED a tank or a healer, and we needed someone to kill for us.

In World of Warcraft, you don't NEED a tank or a healer to kill normal monsters. And you can avoid group quests all the way up to the end cap, level 70. At which point, suddenly you DO need a tank and a healer.

DPS classes have low to medium health, low to medium armour and high Damage Per Second.

This means they are able to solo more efficiently than a tank or a healer so long as they do not encounter more than 1 monster at a time. Two or three, and they won't survive the fight (meanwhile tanks and healers may survive but the fight will go on for a very long time, as their DPS is low in comparison, potentially causing more monsters to join in). In fact, solo grinding is actually more profitable than killing things in a team, in terms of speed and experience points.

Thus, DPS players do not have any experience with the role that a Tank or a Healer should bring to the group. Equally, Tanks and Healers know that something is very wrong when DPS players either take aggro away from the tank or force healers to switch to them rather than healing the tank. Many a time, DPS players will say things like "L2Play Tank! Keep Aggro!" with a swear word thrown in when the monsters turn away from the tank and bash up the DPS player. My response to this is and has always been:

Any DPS Class should be able to steal aggro from the Tank. The skill is in not doing it.

Interim Measures

If you're wondering why there's no forthcoming posts, its because I'm currently in the position of moving house. And not only that, but buying a house too.

Although at the moment I'm waiting for the banks to make their mind up and do their job properly so the settlement can be lodged, so I can actually own a house and not just rent one from the seller.

Thus I have no home internet. I do have internet at work and, even though I regularly abuse it, making blog posts is difficult at best when I'm supposed to be working.

I still read though and I'm making some notes for some blog posts once I do get internet at home.

Or when things calm down around here...

Tanking: Protection Paladins

Protection [Prot] Paladins tank through reactive damage.

That's a pretty interesting sentence, so let me explain what it means.

Prot Paladins cause aggro and threat by essentially taking damage. Yes, that's right. By taking damage.

Whilst other tanks have a rage bar that allows them to use abilities that cause monsters to single them out and beat on them, paladins have a mana bar that they use to cause holy damage to gain the attention of monsters and then shield spells that reflect damage when they are hit.

It's pretty fun to tank as a Protection Paladin because you can be surrounded by monsters and know you will kill them not because of anything you are doing but because you know that every time they hit you they will be damaged. Ergo, all you have to do is keep yourself healed and keep those shield spells up and the monsters will both be captivated by your damaging them AND by the threat of the damage that is being caused by them hitting you.

The problem comes when you are playing with a group of people that have no idea how a Protection Paladin functions (and let me tell you - this accounts for 4 in 5 WoW players).

I was doing a dungeon a few days ago with B-I-L who is geared for heroic instances (they're a
harder level of the same maps) so I knew the chances of my dying was fairly remote. But what irked me was when the DPS (yes them again) attacked straight away, casting spells, firing arrows, using pets - without giving me the chance to gain the acquaintance of the monsters.

Politely warning them that they need to give me a few seconds extra to pick up the slack got me a polite "sure". That particular group worked well, and apart from a few silly deaths, we managed to get through the whole thing fairly quickly.

But, of course, MY understanding of how Prot Paladins operate has only come about because I'm now playing one, which means that essentially until players try playing a tank, they will never learn what a tank is used for, or how to function around one.

And Me

I'm seeing this phrase used more and more.

When I was at school, my teachers made a point of highlighting that this was lazy English, and that the correct phrase was "and I", but it all really depends on the context of the sentence.

For example:

"My friend and I went to a party last night" is correct.
"My friend and me went to a party last night" is wrong.

On the other hand:

"John invited my wife and me to the party" is correct.
"John invited my wife and I to the party" is wrong.

The basic rule that applies to this form of grammatical correctness is this:

I am the subject of the sentence, but the object of the sentence is me.

Tanking: A Basic Explanation

There are generally 3 main archetypes of characters in World of Warcraft; the Tank, the Healer and the DPSer.

Tanks are invariably heavily armoured, high health characters with the ability to dodge, block or resilient in some form or another to incoming melee attacks. This allows them to stand at the front and be a shield for the group whilst everyone else can safely attack. Tanks are normally paired up with a healer so they can last for as long as the healer has mana.

Healers are usually low armoured, low health, high mana characters with the ability to heal others over time or in one-shots. They normally stand at the back and are paired up with a tank.

DPSers are those classes that are rated for their Damage Per Second (hence DPS). Most classes fit into this category in form or another. DPSing is insanely easy. You pick a target, you use an ability and you cause damage.

For most of WoW, there is a very singular course of gameplay. As a player is trying to kill the opponent as fast as possible, there is an onus to cause as much damage as possible so that the monster can be killed before it can do its damage. Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to Instances, Dungeons or Raids, and here's the reason:

Inflicting as much damage in as short a time as possible will cause the monster in the dungeon to come after you. Unless you are over-geared against the monster, you will die.

I cannot stress this highly enough.

DPSers are generally people wearing anything up to Mail armour and usually they've sacrificed the ability to shrug off damage to gain the ability to inflict as much damage as possible. They cannot tank, and if they try to, they will die. Usually, this starts a chain reaction in which everyone tries to speed up damage rather than let the tank take over, and inevitably one by one, they die too.

Equally, but rarely, healers sometimes commit themselves to healing everyone in the team rather than just the main tank. And this also causes the team to die because healing more than one person generally means they're going to attract the attention of the monster. Healing the Tank is both health-efficient and mana-efficient; the Tank can take damage, he can block, dodge, etc.

Other players are not designed to take damage so their health will drop quicker, and that will cost more mana in the long run.

I've said all this because in my runs to dungeons, players invariably try and do as much damage as possible and when the team dies because they've attracted too much attention, the Tank is generally blamed.