rifftrax Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Wandering Skyrim

October 28, 2016 by Belghast

Last night was a bit of a strange night for me. Originally I had plans to get together with some of my friends and work on Karazhan attunements… of which I have not even started running the dungeons. However I had apparently forgotten that last night was the RiffTrax live show. By “live” I mean streamed to theaters around the country as the original show is going on in Nashville. This time around we got to see two shorts and the really bizarre feature film “Carnival of Souls”(which is apparently up on youtube in its entirety). The film is apparently by the same guy that did another RiffTrax classic… the “Shake Hands with Danger” PSA from Caterpillar. This literally is probably one of the more bizarre movies I have watched because really from the entire moment it started… it felt like this strange meandering film about nothing. The RiffTrax send-up however was great, the movie itself just ended with what was supposed to be a shocking reveal… but largely felt like maybe the director was the only one not in on the secret? In any case by the time I got out of there, and drove home I was a little out of it. I existed in that state of too tired to do anything serious, but not tired enough to actually head on to bed.

Instead I decided to install the Skyrim Special Edition and check it out. I have to give Bethesda a lot of credit for giving it out for free to anyone who already owned the original game and all of the expansions. The install was roughly 9 gig so I am guessing that the improvements were more or on the processing side of the equation rather than just pushing a lot of upgraded textures. Whatever the case the game looks gorgeous, if I had been thinking I would have installed the base game on this newer machine and done some side by side comparisons. It is enough of an upgrade to make me happy, and I am always willing to have a new excuse to roam around Skyrim being a murder hobo. Once again however I am torn between sword and shield and bow… ending up mixing between the two quite a bit based on the fight. As is always the case I had trouble staying to the actual missing and instead have already cleared out the first barrow while retrieving the golden claw. In theory I think I probably should have gone to Whiterun, but whatever the case I am wandering down my own path once again. The game doesn’t really feel that changed, more like you installed a graphical upgrade mod. Whatever the case it looks pretty, and runs well so that pretty much ticks off the boxes I needed. At some point I might check out the mods available, but for the time being I am largely running vanilla.

Slow News Day

August 19, 2016 by Belghast

For lack of a better term, yesterday was a slow news day… at least in terms of me and gaming. A handful of times a year I go out with some co-workers to RiffTrax and last night was the live show for Mothra. I say live show… because in Nashville the Rifftrax crew genuinely is doing this live… and simulcast to the various theaters around the country. We’ve talked about how great it would be to sit there in the theater and experience it in person… but that would be like a nine hour drive. Also the RiffTrax show is always on “a school night” which would make work the next day super awkward and staying over in Nashville even more bizarre. The interesting aside from last night is that I apparently had either not seen Mothra… or did not remember it at all. In truth when I think Mothra… I think Mothra vs Godzilla. Growing up there was a local UHF channel that used to have “themed” weeks during the summer. There would be one week where they played all of the Spiderman movies, or another week where they played nothing but Bruce Lee. One of the weeks was always every single Godzilla movie, and I remember watching those as a kid and enjoying them greatly. Mothra on the other hand… was just way more bizarre than I ever realized. Also as the RiffTrax folks kept pointing out… for a movie about Mothra she didn’t spend much time on screen. The “Riffs” were of course plentiful and one of the more awesome things about going to several of these live shows… is that they keep making call backs to previous ones. Both Merlin and the Ice Cream Bunny made appearances at least in joke form.

As far as gaming goes I did manage to get about an hour in before I finally collapsed, and during that time I mostly just worked on trying to get drops from the invasions. Right now it seems like everyone is for the most part either finished gearing… or one slot away from it. I’ve made a lot of progress in knocking stuff off in my spreadsheet, and at least feel like I am in a better place than I was earlier. It does get frustrating when you need a single item… but keep getting nothing but bracers for example. What I seem to be missing follows…

Exeter – Paladin – Gloves
Lodin – Hunter – Shoulders
Tallow – Shaman – Legs
Gloam – Rogue – Gloves
Belglaive – Demon Hunter – Grinding out Purchased Items
Belghast – Warrior – It’s Complicated

Right now I am mostly focused on that last one. Belghast was my best geared character going into this event, so some of the items are simply not upgrades… unless I happen to warforge them. Even then some of the slots are not worth it unless I get the 720 warforged versions. The main thing for him however is gloves and a set of weapons because at least in my Fury set I only have a pair of 690 axes. I am not sure at what point I call it “good” however, because really I feel like my 11 level 100 characters are all in a reasonable place for leveling in the Legion expansion, which ultimately was my entire point in doing any of the events. At some point soon I am going to shift my focus over to the Monk and see how close I can get to pushing him over the level 100 line before the expansion actually hits. I am not sure why but it just feels like it would be awesome to say I went into this expansion will a full stable of level 100 characters… at least on Argent Dawn my primary server.

Disappointment Comes From Love

May 7, 2015 by Belghast

The Room

This is the point where I admit that I had never actually made it all the way through “The Room” before last night. I’ve sat down several times to watch it, but it was just too bad and too awkward for me to struggle through it. I feel like this is the sort of movie that is just more fun with a large group of people. So when I saw that Rifftrax would be doing it, I thought it would be a blast. I’m getting to be a regular at this whole Rifftrax live thing, and by live I mean sitting in a theater as the show is live simulcast from where they are actually at in Nashville. So far I have seen Godzilla, Anaconda, and a strange 1950s Santa Claus movie from Mexico. This season they have dubbed the “Crappening” with The Room, Sharknado 2, Miami Connection and Santa Claus and the Ice Cream Bunny.

As far as The Room itself… they commented last night that it was a movie made by a man who had never actually seen a movie… or another human being. This film is just so out there, and the funny thing about it is that I still don’t think Tommy Wiseau realizes quite how bad this movie is. I mean at this point it has brought a relative state of infamy to all of the actors, but that isn’t exactly the same thing as fame. So as insane as the movie is, you can imagine that it gets cranked up a notch when the Rifftrax folks are lampooning it. The only problem with going to this movie with co-workers… and being named Mark… is that from now on I am going to be hearing a lot of “Oh Hai Mark” as I walk around the office. To which I will of course have to respond… “Oh Hai Doggy”. It was a great evening though and I look forward to the next one.

Subscription Drop

Yesterday the Quarter 1 earnings call happened at Blizzard/Activision and it should shock exactly no one that the World of Warcraft subscription numbers are once again down. With the launch of Warlords of Draenor the subscription numbers spiked at around 10 million players and has now dropped once more to the 7 million range. Each expansion gives the subscribers a spike and then things taper off from there, so this was going to happen no matter what. I will admit that I did not expect the bleed to happen quite so quickly. That said given my own feelings about the current state of the game, and the general rumblings within the community I guess it should not really surprise me. I agree with something that Alternative Chat said yesterday on twitter, that what we are seeing is a lot of people who came back and played the game for the month that came with their boxed copy, decided that they did not really like what they saw and left again all without actually subscribing.

If nothing else this seemed to be the trend within my own guild. Folks would come back and were extremely active until they got their first character to level 100, and then tapered off their playtime ultimately leaving again shortly after that point. My own time with this expansion is not all that different, and were it not for the fact that I am still raiding I would have left a long time ago. I leveled three characters to 100, and got the rest of my army of alts to “garrison” level. I spent the first month logging every single character in religiously and doing their garrison chores, and now I cannot be bothered to do them on more than just my main. The first character ran a lot of heroics, and now subsequent 100s jump straight to the LFR queue for gearing. During the launch we had 30 to 40 people on each and every night and it was insanely active. Now when I log in nightly to run my garrison stuff there are at most three other people on during non-raid times. While my guild is not exactly a bellwether for the game, it does at least show that something is fundamentally wrong.

Disappointment Comes From Love

.@eljeppy it is impossible to be disappointed if you don't love something 🙂

— ▪Bel▪Writes▪Things▪ (@belghast) May 6, 2015

Yesterday I made a comment on twitter and this morning it still seems very true. This time around the folks that are complaining about Warlords are not necessarily the people who simply want to watch Blizzard burn down around them. This group are players that still love the franchise but are disappointed at what it has become. Ultimately you cannot be truly disappointed in something, unless you really do love it. I mean if you hate something, then it is impossible to be disappointed because it simply doesn’t matter that much to you. The problem is I am not exactly sure how this ship can be righted. Blizzard seems to be committed to the path it is on, because the 6.2 patch is largely just “more of the same”. The problem being that I see nothing in that patch that is going to keep people glued to the game for another quarter. The naval missions seem interesting, but at this point folks are just sick of the lost potential that is the Garrison.

Wow-64 2015-05-05 22-04-20-51 What we need now is an expansion announcement to bolster hope in the faithful, the problem there is I am seriously doubtful that we will see an announcement until Blizzcon. November is two quarters away, and I am just wondering if whatever does get announced is going to be too little and too late to keep from another subscription drop. Lots of people are talking about an expansion tying into the movie, but that movie is still a full year away. The 16 month lag in content between Pandaria and Warlords is still very fresh in everyone’s minds and quite frankly Blizzard does not have the luxury of waiting that long. They need a new world for us to start daydreaming about now, rather than waiting for a movie that may or may not be successful. The positive is that Blizzard is still doing remarkably well in spite of World of Warcraft. Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Starcraft II, and Diablo 3 all seem to be doing awesome. So maybe they just don’t care as much about their MMO as they once did? If nothing else these months leading up to Blizzcon 2015 are going to likely forever shape the face of Warcraft.

Lalafell Rescue Squad

October 31, 2014 by Belghast

Rubber Snake Attack

Instead of coming home and gaming like normal last night, I actually went out and did something sociable with actual living and breathing people! I know it is a shock to the system to fathom the ramifications of that statement. Several months ago a group from work attended the live RiffTrax showing of the Matthew Broderick Godzilla and it was an absolute blast. I have been a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 since college, and RiffTrax is essentially the same folks doing the same sort of thing… without the robots and a guy trapped on a space station construct. During that they previewed the next movie and at that point we decided that we had to attend again so we could see Anaconda… a movie that I did not remember being as cheesy as it actually was. Thankfully we learned a lot from the first time, and arrived at the theater considerably earlier. Last time none of us actually got to sit together, but instead ended up having to pair up to get us all seated. Last night we at dinner at a restaurant in the same parking lot as the theater so we were able to walk over and got there well before they even opened up seating.

Anaconda… was seriously worse of a movie than I remember, and even at the time I thought the snake looked nothing like an actual snake. The cast was disturbingly “star studded” for as bad of a train wreck as it ended up being. You had Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Ice Cube and I believe this was the movie debut of Jennifer Lopez. At the very least it was before I was actually aware of who she was, as I don’t think she had released her first album yet. There were just so many cheesy things about the movie… like the fact that every single time that we see J-Lo on screen it is apparently super cold in the Amazon because they make a point of lingering on some massive nippledge going on. Aside from the snake being horrible… it looked like they recycled a ton of footage. The Rifftrax guys pointed out a moment near the end of the movie where the waterfall is going backwards… as they quite literally just reversed a shot from earlier in the movie. Similarly they seem to keep passing the exact same snake idol a half dozen times.

I did not however attend to watch the movie, but instead listen to the RiffTrax crew tear it apart. The Godzilla show was great but this one took it to all new levels. In fact I would have to say this is probably going to go down as one of their better performances. There was just so much to make fun of in this movie, and the fact that it had both J-Lo and IceCube in it… basically gave them free reign to mix in lots jokes about their careers as a whole. This is starting to become a regular thing that we do as a group. They previewed the next show coming up December 4th which is a strange rendition of Santa Claus from the 50s. The trailer bits they showed looked absolutely insane… Santa Claus in space… fighting and army of dancing devils. Hopefully we can once again muster the troops and go as a group. Not sure we get much “team building” done, but it is a really fun time nonetheless.

Lalafell Rescue Squad

This RiffTrax overall seemed a bit shorter than the last one, and as a result I ended up getting back home at a decent hour. I decided to pop into Final Fantasty XIV for a bit and see what all was happening. After milling around a bit in the housing district a few of us pulled together a run for the new Sunken Temple of Qarn Hard mode. This was one of those dungeons that we avoided like the plague because of its frustrating “one shot death” mechanics, so I think as a whole we were at the least concerned when we saw it would end up as a hard mode. Thankfully the mechanics are not that cheap this time around. Not to spoil this for anyone, but there are no bees this time around. What is there instead is a continuation of the original story. When we cleared the dungeon the first time, it apparently made the place safe enough for groups of adventurers to begin exploring it. However a group of tomb robbers triggered yet another trap, and you are going there at the bidding of a brother who wishes you to go rescue his sister. Adorable Lalafell needing rescuing… that sounds like as noble cause as any… my people need me.

I am not as geared as I could be, but I am no slouch overall. The bare minimum for the dungeon is ilevel 80 and I went in there last night with 103. Overall I think I was managing the damage pretty well, but it definitely put our healer through a workout. I think in part he was just used to healing Paladins with their significantly smaller health pools. With group buffs I was over 10,000 hit points, and a comparable Paladin would be around 6,000. So when the final boss hit me for 2,000 it really didn’t feel that significant, however with a paladin that would be 1/3rd of their available health pool. I think Tams complaint was that it felt like his heals weren’t doing much, but that is primarily because a percentage of my health bar is quite a bit more hit points than a percentage of someone else’s health bar. In any case we made it through the dungeon without any wipes and only I believe a single death. The content is hard enough to be challenging, but not so hard that it becomes punishing. I feel like Pharo Sirius is still a rougher dungeon than this one for example.

At the end of the day we finished the run, beat the big bad end boss and saved the adorable Lalafell Adventerer. I feel like it was a good way to end an already awesome night. One of my favorite things about the new dungeons is that they drop these tokens that can then be turned in for any ilevel 90 class piece of armor. So while they did in fact remove these from the Tombstone and Hunt vendors, you can still get the gear. The fact that they shifted it to a token system means the mobs have a more shallow loot table, and as a result each individual piece is more useful. I feel like I will enjoy picking up a level 90 set way more by running these three new dungeons than I ever would by simply grinding tombstones or hunts until I had the necessary currency. This is fine and dandy for experienced players, but I still feel like this patch and its changes made it significantly harder for a brand new player to gear up. Granted maybe they did that on purpose, so players would have to spend a bit more time running dungeons before leap-frogging into end game content.

Dimension Goodies a Plenty

With all the Final Fantasy XIV goodness, I am still playing some Rift Nightmare Tide… it has just taken a back seat. At the very least I am logging in a few times a day to make sure my minions are running the 8 hour long missions. These reward some crazy stuff, and so far as a result of all of my minion missions I have literally three 28 slot bags full of nothing but dimension stuff. At some point I need to sift through it all and see what I can actually use. You get a pretty broad mix of things from basic building blocks to intricate items like the Infernal Dawn Cannon. The 8 hour long dimension missions have a chance of rewarding these chests that each have half a dozen items in them… so it feels like buying those grab bags off the store. I really like the Rift dimensions system for player housing, so at some point I really should work on building a proper home.

Rift is more than likely going to be a weekend game for me as I do laundry and watch stuff off netflix or the DVR. The pace works well there and the fact that I can pop to the guild dimension when I afk, and return exactly to the point where I last left off is a really nice feature. The content in Nightmare Tide is significantly more enjoyable for me than Storm Legion was. At some point soon I want to try out one of the new dungeons. I dinged 61, so have made some forward momentum, but still have not really touched even half of Goboro Reef. While there may only be three new zones, each of the zones is absolutely massive in scale. I’ve not actually done any of the instant adventures, mostly because it seems like an excessive amount of area to try and cover rapidly. In any case I am still enjoying the game, but just playing it as a side venture with Final Fantasy XIV being my primary focus.

#RiffTrax #FFXIV #Rift