Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

The Battle for Azeroth’s Soul

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Growing up did you ever have a friend that you got along with swimmingly and had some amazing times and then something changed.  You aren’t exactly sure what changed but there was a shift where they moved from being this loveable goofball that you cherished time with, to being something that just could not ever seem to get their shit together.  You would try and go hang out with them again, but you always felt worse about everything after spending a significant amount of time in their aura.  You would try and offer advice or attempt to help them get their shit together, but it always ended up backfiring somewhere along the way.  Eventually, you found yourself distancing from them just to keep your own hopes and dreams from coming crashing down around you as they pulled you into their void.

I’ve had that friend, actually more than one of them over the years.  I’ve also had a very similar relationship with Blizzard and more specifically World of Warcraft.  When you are in this situation you want the world for this person that you love, but also know that it is actively harmful to have them in your life.  The thing is I have learned to cut myself off from those influences in the real world, or at least significantly distance myself from them to where they are no longer impacting me.  I’ve never really managed to do the same with World of Warcraft because even though I know it is bad for me…  I still care.

So as a result it hurts a bit when news comes out that they are flailing and are not so great condition right now.  In part, I am talking about the supposed leak that was circulating or the long-winded rant thread by Grummz the other day adding to it.  Side note…  that is not a leak friend.  That is not something that came from official company emails or documents that were then circulated without the permission of Blizzard.  That is someone having a rant and while I don’t know the circumstances of that rant, it was purposeful and very much not something that leaked out.  I am not sure if it is real and someone thought they were venting in a safe place…  and someone copypasta’d it onto Imgur or if it is corporate cosplay.  Whatever the case it is still a bad look at a bad time when World of Warcraft is seemingly already reeling.

I’ve been following this drastic turn from the zeitgeist on their opinion and general sentiment about World of Warcraft.  The thing is it isn’t like we have not been collectively “mad” at the game before.  This always seems to be a cyclical happening and there is always something in every single expansion cycle that pisses someone off enough to start sharpening that axe.  However this time it feels a little different.  For years on the podcast, we have raised the question of what happens to Warcraft when they release two poorly received expansions in a row.  Blizzard had been on this cycle of a good expansion and a bad expansion and the goods are always high enough points to pull up the public sentiment creating a mindset of “just wait for the next expansion and everything will be alright again”.

Battle for Azeroth was not well received and for me personally, it was the doubling and tripling down on the big dumb Red versus Blue narrative of factional conflict.  I enjoyed the storyline Horde side quite a bit but never could seem to get into the Alliance narrative in spite of on paper it seeming to have a bunch of elements I would care about.  Shadowlands had moments of brilliance like the Maldraxxus but zones I had to force my way through like Bastion…  which unfortunately was the very first zone of the expansion.  Normally I manage to level my main and an alt before bouncing from World of Warcraft but I only actually made it to the new level cap on a single character before tossing the game aside.

I am not a proponent of Classic World of Warcraft because it creates this revisionist narrative of the past.  Coming back and playing that game made me realize that so many of the elements that I deeply cared about and remembered fondly…  specifically involved the people that I remembered them fondly with.  There is no going back to a better time in World of Warcraft because you will never actually capture that lightning in a bottle that was gaming at that exact time in history.  However, I do look fondly upon the first trilogy of World of Warcraft like a magical time and I have been trying to understand why it felt so much better back then at least compared to the more modern incarnation that really started with Cataclysm.

The thing is if you follow the arc from World of Warcraft to The Burning Crusade and into Wrath of the Lich King not only did you have a strong narrative path that connected directly to Warcraft 3, but also a game that was built on constant and iterative improvements to the existing formula.  Sure there were some wild changes here and there, but for the most part, each expansion added to the things that were available to the player base and offered not only quality of life improvements but also changes that enrich the existing systems rather than radically changed them.  An example of this is Gem Sockets, which is a system that layered on top of the existing gearing systems and enriched them adding another layer of customization to something that already seemed to be working.

With Cataclysm we started what I will refer to as the “Wild Moodswing” era of World of Warcraft.  This is marshaled by what seemed to be a desire to erase the past and create something completely new.  They were not going to actually create a Warcraft 2.0, but with each expansion, it felt like they were making radical enough changes that they might as well have called it that.  Cataclysm started this off by quite literally nuking the world and replacing almost every single old-world zone with a slightly different version.  It was ambitious as hell, and while it didn’t work for me I think the concept was cool.  For me, it was oversteering while you are already hydroplaning and I think the game ended up in the ditch as a result.

The problem with radical change is it ends up creating a vastly unpredictable user experience.  We all have a love for World of Warcraft and all of this nostalgia…  but end up having them try and apply those feelings to a game that no longer feels like we want it to feel.  The end result is you wind up with great vacillations between moments of unexpected brilliance like Legion and extreme low points like Warlords of Draenor.  So the thing with WoD is that on paper it seemed like everything going into that expansion was going to be awesome.  I actually greatly enjoyed the leveling process, but the huge gaps between content after the initial burst left a bad taste in so many mouths.  I will always remember it fondly because it gave me the one-player fantasy I have always wanted…  DPS Warrior with Sword and Shield.

After years of gnashing my teeth about what makes an MMORPG great, and I think I have ended up with a basic template.  Here are the bullet points I have boiled it down to:

  • Small iterative changes over time that feel like they improve not only the quality of life for the player but enrich the existing systems and build upon them.
  • A predictable release cadence that allows your player base to know when then the next content drop is going to happen so that they can play their schedule around it.  Additionally, the content quality needs to be consistent and meet most of the player’s expectations.
  • Support multiple styles of play so that your raider, pvper, crafter, and your extreme cosplay aficionado all have a home and feel like they have equal footing in your game.  The content drop should give each of the groups of players something they feel is theirs and can be excited about.
  • Make additive content not subtractive content.  The world should feel like it is getting bigger and there should be systems that make the older content evergreen and still relevant in spite of times changing.  The alternative makes you feel like the world shrinks each time content drops as this new thing is the only part of the world that now matters.
  • Catchup mechanics that allow new players to easily slide into content if they have walked away for a while.  Games need to support the ability to fade in and out of a game as your life changes and not feel like the player has sacrificed too much in the process.

The thing is there are a number of games more or less following these bullet points.  You have games like Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XIV that have slowly been building momentum for years.  There is also Guild Wars 2 that is doing its own thing but should probably be mentioned even though the thing that it is doing is not really in my wheelhouse.  The problem is there are two games that I love that are absolutely NOT doing these things…  namely Destiny 2 and World of Warcraft.  I struggle in both cases because the world seems to shrink each time a content drop happens as the players are funneled towards this new thing that just got added in, with no real reason to keep doing the older things that were still enjoyable.  That is something that Final Fantasy XIV has excelled at is bribing players to keep doing the back catalog of content because it is good for the health of the game to make sure everything stays active.

I think another important note we should talk about is console support for games.  World of Warcraft does not have console support, nor does it appear like they are heading in that direction.  Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online both jumped early on the console bandwagon, and while at least in the case of FFXIV system design being initially limited because of the PlayStation 3 I think that flexibility has paid off in other ways.  Folks might have been PC gamers in their High School or College years but found as an adult that sequestering to a dedicated room of the house to play games no longer fits their way of life.  Having the flexibility of still playing the MMORPGs that you loved in your younger years, on the console that is more practical in your older years is a big boost in the total pool of players that you can draw on.

So I have said a lot of words today and unburdened myself with a lot of concepts I have been thinking about.  I want to close things out, but I feel like I need to draw back a specific point that I feel is extremely important to underline.  I do not want World of Warcraft to fail.  I do love and want Final Fantasy XIV to be successful, but I do not want it to be entirely due to the failure of what was a long-time friend of mine.  World of Warcraft is that friend that cannot get their shit together, but even though you have been distancing yourself…  you still really want to see them succeed.  I would love for us to tell in a decade’s time the riveting tale of the revival of World of Warcraft and how it is the second greatest comeback tale of all time…  because let’s be honest no one is going to outdo the FFXIV 1.0 to FFXIV 2.0 story.  As much as I want this success for an old friend, I am just resigned to the fact that we are going to get more of the same with an added focus on mobile game mechanics and alternate streams of monetization.  I want World of Warcraft to be a better game than it is today, but I have lost my faith that it can be.

Wagonload Of Sprouts

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Good Morning Friends! My blog has been a bit of a dumpster fire this morning and as I am writing this I have no faith that what I am saying is actually going to publish. Last night I had my very first “rough dungeon run” since coming back to Final Fantasy XIV. It was not a situation where I had trouble with individual players being toxic or anything of the sort, but just that I was randomized into a tougher than average dungeon with a wagon full of sprouts. In truth we had a number of mistakes along the way, but nothing that couldn’t be adjusted around. That was until we reached the final boss: Annia quo Soranus and Julia quo Soranus. This fight in particular just has a large number of unforgiving mechanics, some of which that player has probably never actually encountered up until that point unless they were doing “raid” content.

There are two particularly that were causing issues. The first was Commence Air Strike where Eight Ceruleum tanks drop from the sky, and the player needs to deftly move into a zone after an explosion to avoid more explosions. The other was an attack sequence called “The Order” where one sister performs a “Crosshatch” where thin shimmering gold lines are drawn on the ground, and the player needs to not be standing near one. When the attack executes the sister will charge back and forth along that golden path dealing damage to anyone that is along one of those trajectories. This is a hard concept to explain but after three attempts I managed to walk the group through it and we finished. All the while I was trying my best to keep the sprouts from getting their hope tarnished, because I was certain we could do it eventually.

I managed to get my Paladin to 79 and am roughly 1/3rd of a level from dinging 80. This evening I will be able to finish it off quickly and start hopefully running some “big kid” instances. There was a method to my madness and I have been focusing on Clan Nutzy Hunts in part because you can now purchase a full set of 460 item level gear with “sacks of nuts”. After I finish off the hunts for today I should be able to finish purchasing my set, which means in theory I should be able to walk straight into level 80 dungeons when I ding. The act of finishing hunts for the day may actually be the catalyst that dings me. After that I will probably actually start working on catching up the Main Story Quest or MSQ.

In other exciting news… I built an airship. Well actually I helped the Ixal build an airship and as a result I finished leveling up my faction with the first of the crafting beast tribes. I’ve also managed to push Carpenter up to almost level 50, which means I should be using it to pull the other crafting professions up to 50 through the daily Ixal quests as well. My goal is to gear out the one profession and then use it for turnins that I can farm out to the other professions. It is going to take forever but slowly bit by bit I will work up my trades to where they are all 50… then start the process all over again in getting them to 60 through the Moogle dailies.

Maxing out another Beast Tribe means that I also got a brand new mount. This has been my key source of expenditures for awhile is purchasing the new mount each time one unlocks. I am not sure WHY I am collecting mounts other than it is a thing to do. At some point I want to start back up pony farms so I can complete my set and unlock the double special pony that comes from owning them all. After that I guess I want to start collecting birds or doggos or whatever the next special mount in sequence is. For the short term however I am very much looking forward to starting bigger dungeons again and collecting bookrocks that I can turn in for cooler gear.

Now let’s see if this effort that I just went through actually works and hit publish!

Roulettes A Plenty

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Good Morning Friends! This morning I have promised a Blaugust preview to some folks that are anxiously awaiting information, but first, you have to wade through a Final Fantasy post. Last night I hit level 77 on my Paladin job and I have been focused on leveling it before really spending much time catching up on the MSQ. I could have easily ground this job to 80 by now, but I am trying my best not to actually mindlessly grind. Instead, I am zipping around the world doing a bunch of different activities, all of which slowly contribute to my leveling process. My working theory is if I can approach the game in a non-frenetic manner and focus more on community interaction, that it might just build the recipe for staying power in the game. The times I have been the happiest in Final Fantasy XIV are the times when I was not focused on a specific goal, but just sort of hanging out and letting the game pull me in this direction or that.

Whatever mental block I had about doing the roulette seems to have passed and pretty much every day I do at least three of them. The first that I get out of the way is the PVP Frontlines Roulette and while I have begun to grasp how each of the maps works… it is in truth just a rapid dose of experience that I am concerned about. From there I tend to do a leveling roulette, which often produces the least predictable results because there is such a wide range of leveling dungeons available. Lastly, I queue for the 50+ dungeon and one of the things that I am marveling at is just how many dungeons there are in this game that is still relevant. I am also shocked at just how fast I remember the specific boss mechanics of a given dungeon. I just start pulling and before long I am back in the flow of doing the dungeon and even remembering where most of the chests are. I do however think they might have removed a few chests at some point because I pulled back to a location that I am almost certain a chest used to be in Amdapor Keep.

The other thing that I have been doing a lot of is Hunt logs for Sacks of Nuts. I noticed the other day that there was some gear on the Hunt vendor that was ultimately a significant upgrade to my previous level 80 warrior tanking gear. So I am slowly acquiring pieces of that set through doing the daily hunts, which do not inconsequentially add up to a sizeable amount of free gil. The other focus that I am doing each day is my Beast Tribe dailies. I have wrapped up all of the ARR tribes other than the Ixal and have moved forward to finishing up the Vanu and starting the Vath. I am still doing at least three quests a day for Ixal, but I find the crafting dailies to be the most taxing and try my best to spend the rest of my allowances elsewhere. I will end up with a level 50 carpenter as a result of the Ixal quests, but that entire process of crafting is more than a bit draining. I realize there are easier ways to level but I honestly prefer to brute force craft than to drag it out forever.

Another thing that has happened is the release of the Endwalker Benchmark. You can download the Benchmark and it serves as a way to do a few different things. Firstly you can test out your gaming rig to determine how well it is going to run Endwalker when it releases. Secondly you can play with the character creator and save appearances that you can then load later in the full game, which allows you to really devote all the time you need to making sure you craft the perfect Bunny Boi. I crafted a Bun, and while I was surprised that I could have facial hair, it is still not really my jam. It is going to take an awful lot to pry me away from that Lala Life. I cranked all of the settings up to the maximum and ran the test at 4k and it came out as “Very High” with an average FPS of 98 which seems perfectly cromulent for Endwalking.

Over on the Blaugust discord there has been discussion about wanting details surrounding this years Blaugust. I am not quite ready to announce everything, but I thought I would at least give folks a preview of the calendar. This year is a reversion back to the more traditional pre-pandemic Blaugust as well as shortening the whole thing to largely take place within the month of August. Thursday July 15th I will be making the official “Announcement” post with all of the details contained within, but this calendar image should at least give you some idea of the plan. If you have ever participated in a Blaugust it is going to feel fairly familiar with no wild deviations this time around.

Favorite Fridays – Usagi Kabuto

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Good Morning Friends! This morning I decided to make good on an idea that has been kicking around in my head. Mixtape Mondays have given me an anchor to the week, a focal point to sort of plan the entire week around. I had this idea of a second fixed point, but I am not entirely certain it will be as regular as the Monday offering has become. Favorite Fridays is a time for me to break out something that I love in a game, pop culture, or pretty much anything else I am passionate about and do a deep dive on it. It might be a favorite weapon or a location in a game that I absolutely cherish or maybe even a specific section of quest dialog that I greatly enjoy. Whatever the case it is time for me to explore that item in depth in post form.

Usagi Kabuto

There is one item in Final Fantasy XIV that has become more synonymous with my brand than pretty much anything else. It is a cosmetic hat known as the Usagi Kabuto, or “Bunny Hat” as I tend to refer to it. This single item has spent more time on my head in glamour form than pretty much any other item in the game. The truth is I largely stumbled upon it when I was first exploring the options of what I could use for glamour purposes. There isn’t anything special about it as items go, it is a Kabuto or a type of helmet often worn by Japanese warriors… most specifically associated with Samurai. That is the first thing in its favor because I have always had an attraction to that classic Samurai appearance.

The item first made its appearance as part of the Heavensturn event in 2011 and then was reprised briefly in 2014 as well… aka the first Heavensturn event for A Realm Reborn. Heavensturn for those unfamiliar is the in-game holiday in Final Fantasy XIV associated with the Lunar New Year and as a result, has a heavy association with whatever animal of the Chinese Zodiac represents a given year. For example, we are currently in the “Year of the Ox” and as a result, the Kabutos associated with that event featured an Oxhead. 2011 was the “Year of the Rabbit” which I believe would have been the very first Heavensturn in the original version of Final Fantasy XIV. When the event first game to A Realm Reborn Rabbit, Dragon and Sheep were all available for purchase.

I cannot say for certain what it is about the appearance that really drew me to it. It was however a happy coincidence that pretty much all of the Warrior-specific sets happened to be black and red, which meant the specific version of the Usagi Kabuto that I liked the most matched them perfectly. Over the years I have been a Bunny Warrior, a Bunny Bard, a Bunny Samurai, and most recently a Bunny Paladin. I even have the Gold Saucer-themed bunny ears so that I can craft “Bunny” outfits for things where this helm doesn’t exactly match. I realize that Zepla’s whole thing is calling her community “Buns” but I have been a Bunny Warrior since those early days of A Realm Reborn when we were first exploring this game.

There is just something about being a Lalafell and having a hyper-serious expression most of the time… and wearing a giant bunny hat that makes me happy. So many of my memories of this game… involved a cut scene where I was wearing this exact helmet. I used it so often that prior to the existence of glamour plates I carried around a stack of crystals and the hat on my person at all times so I could glamour over any other appearances.

In fact, I believe that it was “Bunny Bel” that was my very first commission that I had my good friend Ammo work on. It has pretty much graced the masthead of this website since the day it was created. If I was going to single out any specific version of Belghas to represent me as a whole… it would probably be that version. It is the incarnation of me that brings me the most joy, and now that I have come back to Final Fantasy XIV and embraced the bunny once again… my happiness quotient has increased significantly. So when I was trying to think about the single item that I wanted to kick this series off with, it was quickly evident what it had to be.

The only negative of the Usagi Kabuto is that since it has been largely inaccessible in the game since 2014 for some seven years there is now a pretty hefty price tag associated with it. In theory, if the pattern holds, it should make a reappearance during the Heavensturn event for 2023. I am not sure when they started this, but after a certain point, anything that was seasonal was no longer able to be listed on the Market board. It means those first few holiday events have items that fetch a hefty premium. I know both Thalen and Tamrielo made their in-game fortunes by selling housing items that were obtained from those first few events.

Square Enix now uses expired seasonal content as a way of propping up their cash shop, which honestly I feel is fair given that they churn out brand new seasonal events every single year with zero repeats that I am aware of. If you absolutely must follow in my footsteps and join the order of the bunny warrior, you can drop $3 to get your very own bind-on character version of the helmet. It features a slightly different item name, which I assume is to differentiate between the store-bought and market purchasable versions. If I ever got serious about playing on another server I would probably pick one of these up on the market so that I could still be the Bunny Warrior of Light there as well.