Eulogy at the Funeral of Kinndy Sparkshine [Eulogy]

As delivered by Archmage Jaina Proudmoore

Apprentice Kinndy Sparkshine… how so full of potential you held. To see your life – and living – cut short by a most heinous, brutal, and cowardly of ways to wage war… it shocks me, and no doubt all others of reason, down to the very essence of the being. Even though you have passed on, dearest Kinndy, your legacy yet lingers, one that may well herald peace in this world mired in conflict.

You had always showed a passion for your studies, Kinndy. Your youthful energy, unrestrained like the arcane itself, got you through your gruelling readings and lab sessions. It had fed the asking of endless questions on the most mundane. <Caesura for laughs> And, perhaps, it had galvanised your optimism for the future, one of quiet devotion to magic, innocent of the horrors of battle…

Azeroth Mass Transit Network Map [Map], updated for Mists of Pandaria

Note: The omission of node Theramore Isle and route The Lady Mehley is tentative until further information is made available.

The following series of maps serves as a reference for mass transit services provided to citizens of the Alliance and Horde.

 

The style used in the map departs from traditional methods of accurately charting landmasses and routes; instead, it aims for simplicity. It has been inspired by the highly stylised representations of real-life transportation networks, characterised by straight lines, highly simplified geographic features and regularly spaced nodes.

Notices: Azeroth Transit Authorities

• Following the exit of the Alliance and Horde from the Convention, the remaining Sovereign States have resolved to terminate it. The Azeroth Transit Authorities will thus cease to exist.
• All regulation of travel now falls on the individual transit authorities. Please consult your own for enquiries, as well as any laws that may apply to you.

Notices: Transitalliance

• In response to the razing of Theramore Isle by the Horde, the Grand Alliance has exited any and all Treaties, Conventions and Protocols to which the Horde is party, including the United Azeroth Transit Authorities Convention. All enquiries on travel within the Alliance's territories must now be directed to Transitalliance.
• Theramore Isle: Following the razing of Theramore Isle by the Horde, The Lady Mehley service to there has ceased.

Notices: Horde Transit

• To further safeguard the sovereignty of the Horde, it has exited any and all Treaties, Conventions and Protocols to which the Alliance is party, including the United Azeroth Transit Authorities Convention. All enquiries on travel within the Horde's territories must now be directed to Horde Transit.

Definition of mass transit

Non-instantaneous methods of transportation carrying several concurrent commuters and provided without charge.

Note that:

• Walking and mounting do not fall under this definition because they have not been 'provided' to the person in question.
• Orbs of Translocation do fall under this definition because of the cast time involved in using one.

Bibliography

• Boat - Wowpedia - Your guide to the World of Warcraft, wiki article, Wowpedia, viewed 25 November 2010, <http://www.wowpedia.org/Boat>.
• Zeppelin - Wowpedia - Your guide to the World of Warcraft, wiki article, Wowpedia, viewed 25 November 2010, <http://www.wowpedia.org/Zeppelin>.

Appendix A: Coincidence of Alliance and Horde mass transit network maps

 

EDIT 31Aug12: Updated from <http://criticallyanalyse.blogspot.com/2010/11/azeroth-mass-transit-network-map-map.html>.

Sheet of Coal [Wallpaper]

Fancy a skeletal formula pattern on your computer desktop? This one, resembling a portion of coal, can be tiled to give a 'random enough' effect. All valencies have been adhered to, although I have not checked if all of the heteroatoms and functional groups can actually fit. Click through to access the full image.

As a 'Where's Wally?' game, see if you can find the following groups:

• Methyl (CH₃), valency 1
• Oxygen (O), valency 2
• The such as a ketone
• Nitrogen (N), valency 3
• The such as part of an aromatic system
• Sulphur (S), valency 2
• Alcohol (OH), valency 1
• Primary amine (NH₂), valency 1
• Secondary amine (NH), valency 2

Computer Games as Literature

Despite the bad press that video (computer) games get, they still are a multimedia text type. Utilising all five components of media (text, still images, audio, animation and video), they combine them along with interactivity in a way rarely seen with other forms of literature. This combination gives it great potential for immersive and effective storytelling.

Considering that, I will treat computer games as fictional literature and engage in a summary kind of literary analysis. To help with this, I will pretend to try to convince a public library to include some examples as part of their collections. Please note that, because of strict licensing requirements, this is often not actually practical, despite a strong supporting case!

Standard form
As part of maintaining its collection, this library solicits suggestions from the public for works that should be added to or removed from it. It does so through a form a member of the public fills out. Thus, my 'literary analysis' will take the form (mind the pun) of a filled form. As the form may have been designed with more traditional text types in mind, some questions will take some interpreting:

Raid Checklists [Checklist]

Like an airplane, a raid is made up of several parts that need to work together for the whole thing itself to work. Those parts need to be set correctly in order for that to happen.

Because of the daunting number of controls to set, airline pilots need to use checklists to ensure that every switch, dial and button are in the correct states for whatever the plane will be doing, whether taking off, cruising or landing. Similarly, several aspects of a raid need to be in specific states for the raid experience to be as smooth as possible. The following checklists mimic the pre-flight checklists used in airline aviation, listing the states of the various aspects of a typical raid.

There are checklists for:

• Preparing for the raid (pre-raid checklist)
• Preparing for a boss attempt (pre-boss checklist)
• Handling a raid wipe (wipe checklist)
• Concluding a raid (post-raid checklist)

Azeroth Mass Transit Network Map [Map]

With the portals in Dalaran and Shattrath removed as part of patch 4.0.3a, there will be much greater use of Azeroth's slower transportation network. The following map serves as a reference for mass transit services provided to citizens of the Alliance and Horde.

The style used in the map departs from traditional methods of accurately charting landmasses and routes; instead, it aims for simplicity. It has been inspired by the highly stylised representations of real-life transportation networks, characterised by straight lines, highly simplified geographic features and regularly spaced nodes.

Notices

• Auberdine: The recent Shattering has decimated Auberdine. All nautical activities have been moved to Rut'theran Village in Teldrassil. Darkshore can be reached by private taxi to Lor'danel.

STATE OF CATACLYSM [News Article]

Fire engulfs Orgrimmar, rebuilding costly due to scarce supplies
Political tensions mount after Thrall appoints Garrosh as acting Warchief prior to vision quest

[Pguinto-Frostmourne-US], 16th day of 11(1) ES 33, hard embargo - immediate release

N.B. Spoilers for Golden, C (2010) (World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm) and strategy guide for the Elemental Invasion after the jump

ORGRIMMAR - A devastating fire tore through Orgrimmar today after the recent dry spell throughout Durotar had escalated the [fire hazard] to alarming [levels]. People throughout the Horde territories worry about political, economic and ecological difficulties stemming from it.

Orgrimmar had suffered an invasion of fire elementals, which caused an inferno that reached calamitous proportions and burned down most of the predominantly wooden architecture. Shaman are still baffled as to the reason for the elements’ disgruntlement.

The fire may be related to the recently foiled [arson] attempts by the Doomsday Cult. They had attempted to use special devices and rituals to mass summon fire elementals to the city.

As part of the fire fighting effort, which literally required monsoonal amounts of water, able shaman arrived at the scene to commune with the fire elementals responsible for the blaze. Thrall, shaman and Warchief of the Horde, personally assisted in the effort.

Repairing the unprecedented damage sustained is challenging given the strain the city's coffers are under from drought and restricted trade with the Alliance.

Prior to the fire, citizens of all major cities had complained of minor ground tremors. It is widely believed that action by the earth elementals, or some other related phenomena, would cause a more major earthquake.

Ulduar Constellations [Windows 7 theme]

Ulduar may well be one of the most awe-inspiring and (quite literally) captivating places in Azeroth. This theme brings a few of its highlights (in particular, its many constellation-like sculptures) to your Windows 7 desktop.

As I do not have file hosting available to me for hosting the .themepack file, I will give instructions apply it manually. This theme offers the following appearance customisations:

• Desktop background
• Window colour
• Sounds
• Screensaver

Insanity: The Yogg-Saron Soundtrack

I am surprised as to the number of songs written and sung about the mental state, and how diverse in musical style that collection is. This inspired me to compile a selection of those songs into an alternative soundtrack for the Yogg-Saron encounter in Ulduar.

Since actually mixing a full track would require me to pay royalties (and my disk jockey (DJ) skills are rudimentary), I will simply describe it. I will first present the entire list, then attach some commentary after it for those interested in the reasons for my choices.

The playlist

• Phase 1: Flo Rida, Ke$ha 2009, 'Right Round', R.O.O.T.S., Atlantic Recording Corporation, track 5.
• Start of Phase 2: Lady Gaga 2008, 'LoveGame', The Fame, Interscope Records, track 2.

WoW Mathematics: Fatally Attracted to You

Back in the Burning Crusade era, Mother Shahraz was notorious for the encounter's high Shadow Resistance requirement and her femininity. She would also, at random times, cast Fatal Attraction on three random non-tank players.

Despite having Shadow Resistance at the cap, the damage is still great, and the unlucky trio need to separate promptly if they are to survive. It may be useful to know, given a certain set of vectors and using calculus, how fast they are moving away from each other...

WoW Mathematics: My Large Brown Sack

To help find items easily, players often organise them in their bags in a certain way. It might be interesting to know just how many ways those items can be arranged, and what happens of those arrangements are restricted in some way.

Permutations are very useful in this process. It is a special case of the fundamental counting technique where an object, once picked, cannot be picked again, and so the available pool of objects decreases by one each time. Consider a certain 10-slot bag, the Large Brown Sack...

Archavon's Parade

Which better way to Wintergrasp's Titan Relic than a beeline? The Scourge successfully employed this strategy in invading the Sunwell, after all (though their sheer numbers may have had something to do with it). This 160-man raid may now be trying to squeeze through an instance portal to Archavon...


It would be interesting to note Blizzard's use of perspective in this shot (where parallel lines seem to meet at a certain vanishing point). The above annotated image is provided for convenience.

The Spectrum of Classes

This spectrum diagram illustrates the position of WoW's nine playable classes in the class balance. It is two-dimensional: rigour is read along the horizontal axis, while tactic is read along the vertical axis.

Rigour: Any given class uses a certain balance of physical abilities (using a weapon and/or shield) and magical abilities (casting spells) in combat. The classes to the right place an emphasis on the magical, with the priest and mage being magically pure. Classes closer to the centre are hybrids, who appreciate a combination of the magical and physical. The druid enjoys most a balance of the two rigours. The mana line divides the spectrum into those who use mana and those who use other power sources. To the left are the classes who place emphasis on the physical, with the warrior and rogue being physically pure and to the left of the mana line. Hybrid classes near the centre can tweak their respective balances through talent specialisation, though pure classes at the extremes are resolute about their respective masteries.

Tactic: Any given class uses a certain balance of tenacity and ferocity when engaging in combat. Tenacious classes will mitigate the damage taken in an attempt to outlast the opponent. The tenacious warrior will reduce the damage taken initially through heavy armour, while the tenacious priest will heal the damage that is taken. Ferocious classes maximise damage dealt to end combat as soon as possible. The rogue and mage place emphasis on this. Tactic can be tweaked by all classes through talent specialisation. The classes at the junctions (warlock and hunter) enjoy the versatility that class pets bring, so as to exercise a level of control over this balance.

It would be important to note that I cannot find a place for the new death knight class in this spectrum. This may be due to the youth in their class development; Blizzard simply has not yet found a niche that they can fill. It may suggest any of the following:

1. There are no more niches that a death knight (and future hero classes) can fill, and they are doomed to be patchworks of any of the nine original classes. In fact, death knights possess some of the qualities of paladins and warlocks.
2. The domain of the death knight and other hero classes lies outside of this spectrum.

Sir, there's a ghoul in my spreadsheet.

Gristlegut tries so hard to feed all his ghouls, but some of them end up being neglected. This poor soul soulless being, in its quest for BRAINS, ends up stumbling upon the tasty cells of a living being spreadsheet. The uni student working on this for their matrices assignment will be very frustrated indeed.