Can’t Quit It

Finally Finished

DONEWITHEVENTS

For most of this week I have been coming up with events in time when I thought I would be finally finished with the Legion Event.  Last night by all purposes should have been the end for me.  I managed to get the final item I was missing on my Demon Hunter, and you can now see the pretty spreadsheet is now at least largely complete.  Early on I decided that trying to get an offset weapon for everyone was going to be absolute futility.  Instead I started focusing on the weapon that I thought I would actually level my character with, so for my Paladin that meant a Retribution Two-Hander and so on.  Lodin my hunter I managed to get both a spear and a bow just because on my very first invasion I got the spear and had the foresight to immediately swap loot specs.  On all of these characters, I am not squabbling over who has Warforged and who doesn’t because I realize about an hour into the new content everything I am wearing will have been replaced.  All I was really looking for out of these events was a way to ease the leveling transition from “just dinged 100” to “ready for legion”.

Most of my characters before this event were sitting in a pretty raw 630ish state because I leveled them up and then never really played them.  My goal is to change that with Legion since on every single character there is a spec that I really find enjoyable.  The weird part about this for me is how I am suddenly no longer mentally blocked against casters.  I had a lot of fun recently leveling my Priest and Mage through the Legion Event, and I had an absolutely blast leveling my Warlock legitimately.  For years I have had this thing against “Finger Wigglers” and anyone around me for more than a few minutes in a game is likely to hear about it.  I am not sure what changed, but I have a feeling it is related to Final Fantasy XIV.  Over there I actually and legitimately enjoyed leveling as an Arcanist, and have been enjoying doing the Palace of the Dead as a Scholar.  Similarly I really enjoyed the little bit of time I spent leveling Black Mage, all of which maybe whittled down my resistance to not wearing plate armor and wielding a huge weapon?  The only bad part about all of this is that I have next to no good cosmetic gear for cloth wearers, so at some point I will be wrecking old content as a Warlock in the hopes of fixing this transmog gap.

The Keep Pulling Me Back In

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So last night for a brief period of time I thought I was good and done with the Legion Event…  then I got home and noticed that they were active in all six zones at a time.  So I decided to dip my toes into the pool and see how the waters were…  and next thing I know it I am running around zones with only a ground mount chasing the wave of folks clearing the content.  Doing the events on a low enough level character that cannot fly is frustrating… but shockingly effective.  At the beginning of the night, this was my level 24 Orc Warlock named Belghula…  and at the end of the night I was sitting at level 54.  Remember a few days back when I posted about Lore’s comments?  It doesn’t matter if their intent was to allow players to catch up their alts or not, the end result and the subsequent tweaks have made that exactly what the Legion Event shines at.  I realize I could be doing something else… and I even should be doing something else…  but I am having a really hard time stopping the machine.  This elevator ride has such good music and interesting prospects that I keep getting right back on it.  I am honestly not sure if I have enough time to get this one all the way to 100 before the end of this event, especially given that I really need to be doing other things…  but if nothing else I have leap past the old world content that I find the most frustrating right now.

Cataclysm was not good for the old world, and right now the leveling experience feels extremely disjointed.  The clear flow of zone to zone feels broken, given that a few minutes into each zone you’ve leveled to the point where you really should be moving to the next one.  There are two sides of me that are in constant competition when I am leveling.  The side that wants to finish quests… and the side that realizes the most efficient way to level is to jump zones the moment the Adventure Guide highlights and shows you have a new quest to start a brand new area.  I realize I am leveling with full Heirlooms… and that is a side effect of that, but in truth I am largely doing that so that I don’t have to worry about gear until I reach the end of the tunnel.  Nothing would make me happier than them releasing heirloom items for the rest of the slots, because that helms me circumvent one of my instincts while leveling characters.  I love getting gear… but more than anything it is that I want to be as well geared as I can be at any point in the process.  So I keep looking for upgrades so that I don’t feel “weak” while leveling, and the presence of heirlooms means I am at least geared “well enough” at every step in the process.  At least on some level though, it would be nice if the experience boost was something you could toggle off if you wanted to “stay awhile and listen” as it were… and experience the content as it was originally designed.

MooCowadin

Bel Folks Stuff 5 – Evening with Qelric

We are going to put on our timey wimey stuff hats and pretend that this show is being released during the month of February, as it was originally intended.  When I record a Bel Folks Stuff I tend to give the victim as much time as possible.  So I approached Qelric back in January to talk about this show… and she every so graciously accepted.  The problem is that life happened in the time between, with her getting an absolutely horrible case of chicken pox towards the beginning of the month, and me dealing this this insane bronchitis mess towards the end.  The result is we recorded the “February” episode in March…  and that I supposed is just fine so long as it came out in any form.

Qelric is quite literally one of the only youtubers I watch with any regularity because she brings to her craft a style that you don’t generally see on youtube any more.  She presents extremely content dense videos in a news like format, making them far easier for me to digest without the rambling exposition.  If you are not familiar with your videos, I highly suggest you check them out.  On top of this however Q is just a downright interesting person, and we have interacted for what feels like years.  I had a delightful afternoon/evening sitting down to record this episode.  Before we knew it a couple of hours had passed and we had a mammoth hour and a half long show.  The awesome thing is… even after the mic stopped recording we wound up talking for another thirty or forty minutes.  I love it when the conversation is natural and flowing.  Hopefully you will all enjoy this as much as I did recording it.

[download the podcast]

Moocowadin

Wow-64 2015-03-02 06-25-36-19 Yesterday was a surprisingly busy day, with dealing with the publishing of two different podcasts and a normal blog post.  As a result especially while waiting for Qelric to get online, I wanted to play something but did not want to get too terribly engaging.  With the introduction of the Heirloom system and the 6.1 patch, it has greatly increased my desire to alt.  My number one frustration while trying to level a character is trying to make sure I have level equivalent gear.  I realize that gear is never as important as I seem to make it, but I like to have at least as good of a weapon as possible while  pushing through the levels.  Now previously I had some heirlooms, but I had to choose which character would get to use them.  Even with the ability to send them cross realm, it became a mess trying to track who had what and I was constantly afraid I would end up losing heirlooms in the mail…  because I have done this before.  The new system however is pretty much ideal for me, since I can generate copies of heirlooms on any and all characters.

When The Scryers server merged with Argent Dawn I set about creating eleven place holder horde characters, since I did not know how the actual merger would work.  It makes me extremely happy that I can have 11 Alliance characters on Argent Dawn and 11 Horde characters on The Scryers…  and use them to play with my AD Horde friends.  I have always been one of those players that tried to span the faction divide whenever I could and through various community efforts I developed just as many bonds on the red side as the blue.  I always feel like a louse however for never really spending much time leveling a character on the “other” side.  As a result I started working on Belgrace my Moocowadin yesterday while waiting for Qelric and while recording the podcast.  As of this morning I am now level 18 and starting the Ratchet area.  It is insane just how fast the levels come when you are completely kitted out in heirlooms.  The only slot that I do not have is the ring, and I am simply not a good enough fisherman to get that.

A Confidence Boost

Wow-64 2015-03-01 11-55-03-53 Over the last few weeks since the launch of the Final Fantasy XIV 2.5 patch I have greatly tapered off the amount of time I am spending in World of Warcraft.  It has become a Tuesday/Thursday experience for me largely which means simply showing up in time to raid.  Now granted I am logging in periodically throughout the week to run garrison missions but in the grand scheme of things that takes ten minutes or so at a time, and I am really not online that long.  I’ve felt kinda horrible because one of my long time friends has been slowing improving her ilevel gear wise on her priest.  Every so often she would give me an update and yesterday she told me she had hit ilvl 626.  I knew the answer before I asked it, but I asked her if she had managed to do any LFR yet?  As I suspected she said no, that she was wary of raiding… and didn’t think she was ready for it.  I hopped on Lodin my hunter, that could still use gear from Highmaul LFR and offered to queue with her for moral support.

Finni had raided before during the early days of World of Warcraft, and as such the bulk of her experience dated from the 40 man era.  So when she thinks “raid” she equates it to super serious business.  Fortunately and unfortunately at times…  Looking for Raid is anything but serious business.  Within what felt like fifteen minutes of queuing we were through the first section, and she got a much needed confidence boost… and thankfully a little bit of gear.  I remember the first time I queued for Looking for Raid upon coming back during Pandaria.  I was scared as hell because the concept of a raid for me too was “serious business” time.  Thankfully we have this wonderful system that allows players without the time to dedicate to at least be able to get in and see the fights in one form or another.  She ended up walking with a few upgrades, and I did as well…  and can now queue Blackrock Foundry on my hunter.  I think we both benefited from yesterday equally, because it seems like she won’t be quite so frightened of the LFR queue.

#WoW #Paladin #BelFolkStuff