They're magically delicious!
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 16th 2008 at 5:00PM
Very early in patch 2.4's progressive development on the PTR, the ability to send raid icons over chat was implemented. The syntax is pretty simple, you place the name of the icon in those funny looking brackets, like so: {circle}, {star}, etc.Personally, I'm not too terribly excited, it's not something you'll be typing on the fly, probably. I can't really see a Mage or Warlock(or anybody) taking the extra time to type that out properly when something goes wrong(ie death), as simple as it seems to do so. However, this could be a good tool for raid leaders, not so much the raiders. A raid leader could include these in a tanking/crowd control assignment macro. "/ra Matthew, tank {skull}. Christian, sheep {square}." That sort of thing.
Regardless of how often this will actually be used, it's a nice little feature, and I'm sure post-2.4 mods and addons will make good use of them, even if the players themselves don't.
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jamie Mar 16th 2008 5:19PM
Why don't they just change the icons? Why do we just have random shapes? Can't we have a little Sheep for, say, a Sheep target or some Shackles for, I dunno, a Shackle? It'd make things far, far clearer.
Alex Ziebart Mar 16th 2008 5:22PM
Because raids can require multiple sheep, or no sheep at all. Specific icons means limited use. A plethora of neutral icons means you can use them for whatever you want.
Jamie Mar 16th 2008 5:26PM
Have numerous Sheep with a little number 1, 2, 3 then?
I'm not saying don't have non-specific icons at all, but the option to use task specific ones would be nice. Especially in 5-mans, then you don't need to do any icon designation, would make Group Leaders job much easier.
Fartrooster Mar 17th 2008 5:33AM
@Jamie...
"Have numerous Sheep with a little number 1, 2, 3 then?"
Then the mage would fall asleep.
TomWolf Mar 16th 2008 5:37PM
I see something that might turn out to be VERY good coming from this. If we are lucky one of the major addon programmers make a great addon for assigning raid targets and include group chat commands. When you assing the skull you automaticly send
/p {skull} Kill [target] first.
That _could_ mean that we get some kind of unified usage of the raid icons. And if the programmer is really good you can change the text sent so you can use it even if you don't want to change how you use the icons today =)
But then again, might be a stupid idea.
Heilig Mar 16th 2008 5:41PM
"Yo, Warlock, seduce {condom} please."
"Seduce {Condom}"
"Seduce {Nipple}"
"Does anybody know WTF that thing's real name is?"
Retro Mar 16th 2008 5:55PM
If you'd paid any attention to the ancient and eternal sage-like advice of Grover (he WAS voiced by Frank Oz after all), the divine wisdom of Big Bird, or even the frothing rants of Oscar, you would realize that {circle} is quite frankly obvious to everyone.
L2preschool
kymali Mar 16th 2008 6:07PM
It's clearly a jaffa! Or is it a Sun
Actually going to miss the various names for the circle that people come up with
Heilig Mar 16th 2008 6:10PM
"Attention shoppers! Will the owner of the lost sense of humor please come to the service desk to claim it? Thank you"
Every group I have ever been in across multiple servers has referred to that thing as either a condom or a nipple. Just like the thing Blizzard terms a "cross" is called an X by the rest of the world.
L2Laugh
Matt Mar 16th 2008 5:47PM
Ooo... Anyone know if we could bung these into macro lines too? I've not tried the PTR so I wouldn't know.
/target {diamond}
/cast Banish
Would be quite handy at times when one is tasked to CC multiple targets at once (e.g. Fear + Banish)...
doyesac Mar 16th 2008 6:21PM
Yesyesyes, please!
This is my biggest biggest birthday wish -- that raid icons make an appearance in the macro scripting language. But for me it would be Trap/Pet-off-tank instead of fear/banish...
If only Blizz developers read the Wowinsider comments...
Silverslide Mar 16th 2008 6:46PM
oh;
/script SetRaidTargetIcon("target", 8);
Happy birthday then...
jrodman Mar 17th 2008 2:46AM
Silverslide, that's kinda cute, but not what was requested. Your script macro marks the current target with a skull.
What doyesac requested was a macro to target the already skull-marked mob.
I doubt this will ever be possible because it would make some things brainless.
Quisling Mar 16th 2008 5:56PM
It's a shield. Look closer.
emodeathmachine Mar 16th 2008 6:22PM
No, it's a condom. Trust us.
Aurix Mar 16th 2008 7:38PM
A condom is a shield.
Dur.
Sometimes those little arrows get through anyway, then you're running around with baby skulls 'n stuff.
Dave Mar 16th 2008 8:23PM
I love that this blog is written by people who don't seem to actually play the game very often. While I suppose it gives that "don't be scared, we're just like you" vibe to the lowest common denominator of player I suppose, I'd like to think that most of the players that are diehard enough to read a blog about nothing but WoW, would be at least slightly more invested in the game than this.
This is an infinitely useful and solid upgrade to the chat system. If you can't instantly see the very visible utility with it, I'm not sure anyone can help you. Everyone has their own stupid pet names for the symbols. Some call them by their colors, which is confusing for people who say "x" or "cross". Some say condom, some say circle, some say shield. All are potentially confusing remarks either in chat or on vent.
If you're REALLY saying that you don't find it very easy to type the curly brackets (it's shift [, it's not like you're using some arcane script and magic key combination, if you can type any capital letters at all I think this is a fairly rudimentary thing to do) then I'm absolutely stunned.
Confusion is often the major point of failure in this game. I don't see how this isn't anything short of a really awesome but subtle way of eliminating one of the MAJOR barriers to success, which is understanding your targets and your encounter.
I'll absolutely have macros set up with this sort of thing as soon as possible. It's an elegant and awesome change and I'm really excited to see it and I don't know how I didn't notice it before.
Alex Ziebart Mar 16th 2008 8:48PM
I'm not saying it's hard to type the { and } all of the time. I am saying it's difficult to type them in the heat of combat after a CCer(or something like that) just died. Time is important in combat. Anything longer than "square loose" is wasted time.
Greenman Mar 17th 2008 1:06PM
I'd love to see the charms included in the expansion of "%t". That saves you lots of typing and remembering all the stupid little names. Just target the next target and type "/ra everyone on %t next"
Hoss Mar 17th 2008 4:24PM
Oh I can't wait for the /2 spam:
{star}{star}{star}On Sale Now, [Bow of Searing Arrows] only 2000G!!1!, Get It NOW!{star}{star}{star}