Ahoy there, me hearties! Avast behind!

My time in Azeroth has temporarily come to an end. I let my subscription lapse some months ago and am now paying with WoW tokens instead. Now I've stopped that, too. I still have some tokens in my bags, but what with a summer holiday approaching (now that it's autumn!) and the rugby world cup on the horizon (and Ireland has the incredible ranking of world number 3 right now), I don't think I'm going to have any time for raiding. Plus, I need a break.

I may come back to Azeroth refreshed in October, or I might wait a little longer. Perhaps even to the next expansion, who knows.

In the meantime, I've been playing with wargaming.net's latest World of Warships beta release. I downloaded it ages ago, but I had trouble getting it running. The screen would flicker in such a way that I could see what was previously on the screen, For instance, in the middle of battle, I could still see the pre-battle screen flickering in and out. And moving my gun target left a trail of target cursors in its wake. Don't even think about what happened when I rotated my point of view. Suffice to say it was unplayable.

I updated it recently to see if the problem had been fixed, and lo and behold ... it hadn't. But after much searching I found a work-around, and got the try out WoWs (as we cognoscenti call it).

Have you noticed how much more agile the tanks in World of Tanks are, compared with actual tanks? WoWs has the same problem, on speed. My low-level ships feel like windsurfing boards.

There are several different classes of ship, and the most problematic for me are destroyers, which at low-level fire torpedo broadsides from deck-mounted launchers. The problem is that the torpedoes travel really slowly, and once you have four or five destroyers on each side, well, there are a lot of fish in the water. And it's not unknown for your team to find themselves turning into the path of your slow-moving torpedoes. Uh, oh!

I am a team-killer. Inadvertently. I've also inadvertently been been killed by my own team's fish. I haven't yet had the ignominy of steaming into my own torpedoes: thank goodness my top speed is slightly lower than the top speed of my torpedoes. Otherwise it would have happened.

I guess it's just a matter of better map awareness, and better awareness of how slowly these torpedoes travel. Although the torpedo range is 8km, there really seems to be no point in using them until you're on top of the enemy. Definitely cease firing them while you are behind your own team. Avast behind!*


*This whole article written to allow me to legitimately use that final exclamation.


Blaugust, day 31.