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Week In Gaming 12/5/2015

December 6, 2015 by Belghast

Sunday Madness

Today my posts and the AggroChat podcast are coming out a little late, because reasons. My wife has this thing at church this morning, and stuff was not going very much as planned. So instead of wrapping up the podcast when I got up, I went into the mode of attempting to support my wife as she flailed around the house trying to get everything ready. I don’t really do the religion thing, but it is important to my wife so I’ve always attempted to support her in whatever way she needs. Normally speaking I would have been further along in the podcast creation process by the time I slept last night, but instead I decided to have a knock down drag out fight with Amazon. There is an item that starting last Tuesday, has been updating daily to tell me it would be there by 8pm the next day. This has drug on for several days… and the FedEx tracking that I finally received shows that there is no way it is going to be here until sometime at the end of next week. Needless to say I was more than a little perturbed, and ended up trying to get to the bottom of it.

Where I feel bad however is that I know I took out some of my frustrations on the agents that were working the case. I realize why companies hide their chat functionality, but overall it is a horrible practice, that only leads customers to be pissed as hell by the time they FINALLY get a hold of a person to talk to about their issues. I know I probably came off as a mad man, but seriously… I’ve been an Amazon customer since around 2000, and been a prime member for I think as long as the program has existed. I keep that active so that I can have items here in two days… and there have been a lot of times in the past where they actually have it here next day. Since the swap to using the US Postal Service however, I have had several delayed orders… and this one just seems to be another in that line of problems. The worst part about it is.. that after spending over an hour last night trying to get someone to tell me where the ball was dropped… no one seemed to have any answers. I did however get two months of prime added to my account apparently to appease me, so I guess that makes up for some of the frustration. I have no doubt that the item will arrive and be just fine… but man this situation has been annoying. It is nothing nearly as bad as Tam and Amazon quite literally losing his shipment.

The Week of Warcraft

For the most part this was in fact the Week of Warcraft as I am attempting to play both characters on Argent Dawn Alliance side… and the joined The Scryers server Horde side. This means there are two different communities that I am trying to be an active part of, and as a result pretty much everything else I am doing has fallen by the wayside. Part of my Sunday ritual is to go downstairs and watch a sequence of television shows until ultimately it is time for bed. However during this sequence I got pulled into the Horde side guild raid with my friends in the awesomely named Facepull. Between some gear upgrades from drops and some crafted gear by the amazing Brerhoof it took me to around the 670 range. Now after some LFR this week I am sitting at 679 so a stones throw away from 680. I have two parts left to do of LFR and my hope is at some point before this evening I can actually get them knocked out and will hopefully see some more upgrades. My lowest piece on the Paladin is his necklace which is still the level 640 boosted green gear. In theory if I get lucky I could get a baleful item to drop while I am doing dailies… which I also need to do at some point. I have everything enchanted and gemmed… at least with cheap enchants and gems so my performance as a whole should be better tonight… that is if they still want me to come and pewpewpew things.

Then Wednesday night I was invited to raid with some twitter folk that I have known for ages. There I brought my Alliance Warrior Belghast, and similarly have made some jumps in gearing as the week went out. I started the week at 680 and have bumped it a little bit up to 684. This is still a long ways off from the 705-710 range that I need to be in order to really function in Heroic for the Friendship Moose fun, but whatever I am enjoying the process. In both cases I was mostly a fly on the wall as the raid went about their business, but I could see myself enjoying both situations greatly. It is my hope that in both scenarios are am invited back for future weeks, and in spite of my crummy gear I still managed to end up I think 3rd in total damage done for the raid. My burst dps is still on the weak range, but I am throwing out a lot of total damage which still is nice. Gladiator is such a fun spec that I am really going to hate losing once the expansion ships. I guess there is hope at a later date that they might revive the spec, but I seriously imagine it was just too hard to balance when it essentially took all of the same gear that tanks did… which means that my overall survival is among the highest of the dps classes. In any case I am having fun… and that is what really matters right?

Reaching Diamond City

The original plan for this week was to record our final Fallout 4 show last night, and because of that I felt this overwhelming need to have completed the storyline. This means that a good chunk of this week I was pushing hard to get through the main story, and I have to say… it was some of the most miserable I have been playing Fallout ever. My play style is very much a “forget the story exists” method, where I wander aimlessly and go explore whatever happens to suit my fancy. This means there is a lot of ADD induced gaming as I see what that building over there in the distance is, or go explore that wrecked vehicle there because it looks interesting. The result is that I spend a lot of time playing, but not a lot of time getting anywhere specific. With the severe content density that is the Commonwealth, it means I had at 70 hours not gotten anywhere vaguely close to Diamond City. I knew where it was, but I was busy wandering around the Cambridge area and exploring lots of little nooks and crannies.

Instead this week I forced myself to follow the storyline, and while it is really awesome… and there are lots of interesting characters… the entire process feels forced. I mean it IS forced, because I am trying hard to play in a style that is not natural to me. I talked about this for quite a bit on the podcast last night, but essentially most of the time I don’t like it when games end. In Mass Effect 2, I enjoyed every moment of the side missions… but it felt like all of my fun was being sucked down a drain the moment I started that sequence of events that lead to the end of the game. I want these worlds and settings.. and characters that I have created to essentially live on forever… and the sooner I “beat” a game… the sooner that fun for me is over. I think in part this is why I like the MMO so much, because my characters never have to go away… they just keep going on and changing and adapting as new content is released. So as it looks like we are pushing off the Fallout 4 show a bit… I am going to try and find a happy medium where I alternate between following story… and also spending some time following my heart.

Tauren Flight Form

December 1, 2015 by Belghast

Rose-colored Lenses

Last night was the night when I finally realized that playing Horde was not some magical and happy place free from assholes. Over the last several days it has been pretty great, and I have casually bumped into people that I have slantwise known on the server. I was beginning to think that the Horde were simply more mature players than the Alliance folks that I had been so used to dealing with. That apparently is not the case… I simply had a really lucky streak. I have to say the Facepull guild has been amazing, and it is actually drawing me out of my own little world that I seem to get stuck in so many times. Last night Laughingly that everyone calls “Gigs” convinced me to join her and Martoxis in a Supreme Lord Kazzak raid. Now me and Kazzak have a long history, namely from the days when people would pull him to Stormwind and he would ultimately need to be despawned by a GM because it got too powerful. So I guess in a way I knew what I was getting myself in for, but Gigs promised this version was no big deal. She even went so far as to give us a Mammoth ride to the location, and everything seemed pretty awesome for a bit.

Then we started summoning people… and I was simply doing my part and clicking the portals to get people here faster. At some point during this rush a mage perfectly summoned a portal to Hillsbrad Foothills… aka where Dalaran USED to be. A handful of us mistakenly clicked it… including myself and Gigs… and we quickly fell to our deaths. At which point someone pulls the boss, locking us out of the loot. So while I was raging inside… I attempted calmly rez and get my way back to Tanaan Jungle. I honestly didn’t even think of that being a thing that someone would do… but I guess now I know to be cautious. It feels like however fate rewarded me for my frustrations, because on the next attempt I managed to get a drop both from the boss and from the token… which gave me not one but two different 705 trinkets: Chipped Soul Prism and Mark of Supreme Doom. Well worth a fall to my death… that honestly I should have survived with a bubble, but I was simply too shocked to react in time.

Last Call LFR

On the Alliance side of the house, there has been a long standing rule… that you do not under any circumstances do Looking For Raid content any night other than Tuesday and MAYBE Wednesday at the latest. The closer you get to Monday the worse the groups get, and you only ever set foot in an LFR dungeon on a Monday night if you have a significant death wish. Once again I thought maybe the rules of the universe simply didn’t function the same on the Horde side, because I did several LFR runs on Saturday and Sunday and had a pretty good time of it. The groups were calm and reasoned, and we simply wrecked stuff and got loot as a result. So even thought I had the shitty experience with the asshole mage in Kazzak, I decided to brave the unwashed masses and venture forth into Monday LFR. My first sign that something was wrong, should have been that the DPS queue was roughly an hour. I however had stuff I wanted to do out in Tanaan Jungle so I queued up and before I knew it… it was popping. At first things seemed to go more or less pretty well. We downed the first boss with ease… then when we got to the second boss… it took two attempts. Finally the third boss took three attempts… so things seemed to be going downhill. However with the miracle of determination we were able to get through it.

Then I queued for Archimonde… aka the Black Gate. Firstly I have to say how awesome I think it is that you are essentially fighting the demons that besieged Mount Hyjal. I’ve been running quite a bit of Mount Hyjal attempting to get that really awesome two handed sword for my paladin. The end game of World of Warcraft or any game… is really collecting outfits for transmogging. Needless to say… Archimonde did not go well. I was assured by my guildies that this fight was a little overtuned even for LFR, and that most groups struggle with it. However after our fourth wipe, we lost literally half of the raid and I found myself exiting as well. So in my first week of really being “back” I managed to raid Normal Hellfire Citadel through Gorefiend, all of Blackrock Foundry LFR, and all but Archimonde in the Hellfire Citadel LFR. The only thing that I wish I had managed to squeeze in there was Highmaul LFR, simply because I am in desperate need of Abrogator Stones. Playing catch up on the legendary ring quest is going to be a massive pain in the butt, because I remember just how many weeks it took me actively raiding Highmaul and Blackrock Foundry to get all the necessary bits to complete that thing.

A Reason for Facebook

Another interesting side note is that it seems Facepull hangs out pretty much exclusively on Facebook. This is the one social media network I have actively shunned over the years, namely because of some bad first experiences with it. I technically have a Facebook account because it is connected to this blog, and I namely use it to syndicate my posts to the Tales of the Aggronaut page. What is going to be interesting is this may give me a reason to actually use it on a regular basis, seeing as they seem to use it in place of the traditional guild forum. The other funny side note is that apparently yesterday they found my blog posts thanks to Nubzy linking it to said facebook group. So hey folks if you are reading this! Apparently Obi was a bit grumpy that I didn’t mention him in my blog post, so I am going out of my way to remedy that today. I’ve known Nubzy and Obi since I believe Vanilla, or at the very least since early Burning Crusade. They have followed me into many games and I have always considered them both to be part of my extended family. I am just happy to finally make good on my threat of playing something on their side of the fence. I still say however that World of Warcraft would be a better game if they just tore the fence down, letting battle.net friends play together regardless of what faction they happened to enjoy the most. That said I really am starting to enjoy being a bull.

Even When Bad, Its Good

January 5, 2014 by Belghast

Misplaced Weather

It is currently in the teens here in the Tulsa area, and the wind-chill is pushing it into the single digits and in some places negative numbers. Waking up this morning the entire world is covered in a blanket of white, albeit not a terribly thick blanket… but it is still coming down and shows no signs of stopping any time soon. Dear Canada, I believe you misplaced your weather. Can you please pick it up at the front office at your nearest convenience? A friend from twitter suggested that maybe Canada was not home and the weather was left with their nearest neighbor… which in that case seems to be the entire United States.

Here in Tulsa the weather is a nuisance more than anything else, primarily since my wife and I both head back tomorrow after a two week vacation. For us at least, knowing this was on the way we ran all of the errands we could think of yesterday so we could just hang out inside today in a blanket cocoon. I could go to the front door and take a picture of what is going on outside, but frankly I am just too damned lazy. I am wrapped up in two blankets and have a loudly purring cat on my chest… so yeah not moving. Hopefully the snow itself will not last terribly long, and so long as it sticks to just snow I figure we will be fine. It is always the ice storms that I am concerned about not the dustings of snow.

Had a Bad Day

Yesterday was a bit of a frustrating mess. Over the last several days I have been trying my best to make it through the Gates section of the Siege of Orgrimmar LFR on my Paladin. Since you cannot progress to the next step until you have beaten all of the bosses in the previous one, I found myself hung up there trying to get the last two bosses. Each and every group seemed to fall apart either during or directly before the Dark Shaman encounter. Over the course of the last few days since Tuesday I have been in no less than 8 Gates groups, and this yesterday morning it seemed for a moment like I would get through the raid finally.

We had made it up to Nazgrim but after one wipe the group completely disintegrated leaving me stranded with only needing the final boss. There are weeks that I cannot get the first bosses of a dungeon to save my life, however each and every one of the 8 attempts at Gates involved me starting over with the first encounter. I am not sure if I set them down hard, but after the extremely frustrating close call in LFR I got up from my cocoon and while pulling off my headset it completely snapped, leaving the right earcuff danging. The break was so close to the earcuff that I don’t think I could even attempt to bandage it along for a bit with duct tape.

It seems like I am extremely rough on headsets, as in the years of playing World of Warcraft I have gone through no less than eight that I can recall. No single headset has lasted more than two years before either falling apart on me or starting to malfunction somehow. Right now I am back to using a Logitech behind the head headset, but it itself has an issue with the left earcuff cutting out constantly and is only serving to infuriate me more. Granted these are all first world problems… and I should simply be thankful that I can replace the headset at my leisure rather than having to wait to do so. In fact as of writing this article I have already ordered a replacement. I am going back to an older plantronics design that previously I had gotten 2 years out of, which is pretty much the most I can hope for.

Even When Bad, Its Good

People are constantly down on LFR because it represents the absolute worst of humanity. The thing is… even at its worst I greatly appreciate its existence. I tend to be an altaholic, at present count I have 6 characters at 90 and a large number of characters within range of getting there. I have already begun raising my Discipline Priest Belglorian and within in the next few weeks it will likely join the ranks. I get frustrated in these games when I can no longer progress my characters, and because of the structure of traditional raiding, this generally meant that I got to progress whatever my main was…. but no one else. I have enough time to deal with carving out a block of time in my schedule for one stable raid group, but not multiple raid groups.

What LFR gives me is the ability to keep moving forward on all of my characters at my own leisure. I don’t expect a lot from the process, and I don’t expect the players in LFR to be marginally functional. I find it that I can compartmentalize LFR so that I only focus on my own role and ignore the fact that Rome is burning down around my shoulders. In doing so this means each and every one of my alts can at least achieve a certain level of gear. Granted I am not expecting them to be amazing, but I can keep moving slowly forward on all fronts… keeping me engaged in each character. Now even with this on demand raiding, I still personally don’t have time to run every character through. However I can get enough piecemeal progression to make me happy.

It is almost as though LFR was invented for someone like me, that likes to dabble in a lot of different things, but doesn’t so much care anymore about reaching the ultimate progression in any of them. So while I might complain about LFR, and get supremely frustrated at times… I am still very much thankful it exists. Despite all of the frustrations and set backs, it eventually goes just fine. Last night about 11 pm I finally managed to get a Gates group that was sitting on Nazgrim… the only boss I was missing. After a wipe we got the determination buff and came back and beat him on the second attempt. After all of the wait and all of the gold bags… I managed to pull the best possible drop I could hope for in the instances. My paladin is now the proud owner of Gar’tok, Strength of the Faithful and one step closer to being as well geared as I can get him.

Mecha Belgrave

December 27, 2013 by Belghast

Mecha Belgrave

One of my big goals over the last few days was to get both Tallow and Belgrave through all four parts of Siege of Orgrimmar LFR. Both of them could use gear out of there, and instead of piece-meal like before, I wanted to clear all of the bosses during this reset. The other day I talked about how much success I had with Tallow in that he got both a mainhand and offhand weapon and two pieces of tier 16. Yesterday I may have just blown that completely out of the water. Previously on Belgrave I had gotten a shoulder drop, but was not using them as I had slightly better shoulders from flex. Christmas day when I got home that evening, I popped into LFR and it inspired yesterdays topic on a social justice system.

However even though it had some frustration I managed to get Garrosh to drop two of the tokens that could be turned into any set piece. I used those to give myself the tier 16 chest and legs, and then yesterday Nazgrim graced me with dropping the gloves token. Just like that over the course of two days my Deathknight is wearing nearly a full set of tier 16. I already had a helmet with the same graphic so for all intents and purposes I have a complete visual set. I am really not sure what I think about the set, because honestly it feels a little out of place for being a Deathknight set. Where are all the skulls?

Instead of being straight out of a deathmetal video… I guess I am fresh from some manga? I need to find a similarly mecha inspired two hander to go with it. Thinking about maybe one of the ones from Ulduar… like Abaddon from Yogg Saron. I am sure if I try hard enough I can find something suiting the look and feel of it. Maybe it is just that it looks goofy on a worgen. I remember seeing this in most of Qelric’s videos, and on her character it does not look half bad at all. I feel that is the problem with most bestial races… the armor either looks really amazing or really awful.

Graduating the Cataclysm

After finishing my tour of Siege of Orgrimmar for the week, I hopped over on Gloam and started working on him again. I guess in a way for the good of the various raids I have been participating in… I felt like I needed to try and gear both Belgrave and Tallow. In both cases I did very much so, and I figured I could take a break from LFR to work on my little rogue. I managed to push him last night from 83 to 85 and finish off his Cataclysm era Alchemy. I figure at some point soon I will farm up mass amounts of Pandaria materials and push him up in level to 600, but for now I am working on the leveling portion. I would really like to find a pair of Fists of Fate to level him to 90 with, however there have been absolutely none of the auction house of late. These carried my enhancement shaman all the way to 90, and I was still using them when I got my first epic weapon drop.

Instead in the mean time I guess I will make a pair of Ghost-Forged blades, which are not nearly as nice but should give me a decent boost through the Pandaria content. The only problem is each takes 2 Spirits of Harmony, which are bind on pickup. This means I will be out farming something that gives Black Prince reputation trying to collect four of them on my Paladin. For whatever reason the characters that need them, cannot get them to drop… whereas the characters that have literally NO use for them like my Inscriptionist has 200. This gives me a good excuse to get him to honored with the Black Prince, which is a normally tedious task. I did however make a complete set of leather gear on my leatherworker so as soon as the blades are acquired I can begin my push to 90.

Onwards to Joplin

Needing to wrap up quickly this morning as we have a bunch of running around to do. We are going to be running up to Joplin for a bit to check things out there. I didn’t figure I would get time to do a blog post, but after showering and getting ready I decided to try and rush one through. I had no clue what time we would be getting home, and after a day of running around the last thing I want to be is creative. Hopefully you all had a great Christmas, and hopefully the loot gods have been smiling on you as well.