wildstar Archives - Page 6 of 14 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Juggling Games

April 21, 2015 by Belghast

Naeling It

The Monday night raid group has had quite the sequence of strange weeks since patch 2.55 went into the game. Either we were lacking the right people, or enough people at all to do turn 9. As a result after what seems like a month we did our first night of second coil attempts. We were all exceptionally rusty going in, but the spirits were extremely high. At times I would say our spirits were too high, because holy shit were we slap happy. I was one of the worse so it is not like I can really complain much. The positive take away is that we managed to get further than we had ever gotten before last night, and were starting to work on the fire/lightning phase of the fight. On our best attempt we got Nael to 30% which feels like progress. Essentially once we learn the phase four dance, we just have to keep that up until the boss is dead.

The only regret I have right now is choosing to get my 1300 poetics weapon on my warrior. I was torn, he is absolutely my main and I intend not tanking as often as I can. The problem is on Nael the fight we are struggling with I am having to dragoon it up. That dps boost would really help, but what is done is done… just kinda kicking myself for not picking a dragoon weapon first. That said since 126 is more than geared enough for anything we are doing… I am considering focusing on getting a 1300 weapon for the dragoon now before I pick up any more poetics gear for the warrior. He still needs a chest piece and a belt, which I was going to start building towards the chest next. However since that is still going to take a significant amount of time… I might work on getting that weapon instead. I really wish that today’s 2.56 patch would have uncapped poetics… because man do I need a lot of them.

Cap and Storm

Last night after the raiding shenanigans Thalen mentioned that at one point he had created a House Stalwart super group in Marvel Heroes as a way of stopping the random guild invites. So I popped over into game and got invites. From this point we grouped up for a bit until he needed to head to bed. I have to say that I thought Captain America’s charge in and shield whirl thing was good AOE… until I ran around a bit with Storm. While I got to tank bosses, pretty much all of the trash in the entire zone died horribly to a cloud of whirling winds. That said I am really enjoying the fact that I can tank almost any world boss without much issue by keeping my my defensive buffs. I noticed last night that there was a difficulty slider so at some point I want to play with that. There are times this feels a lot like diablo on “normal” and I am wondering if there is a “hard” setting that I really should be playing.

Quite honestly I have not been even vaguely close to death other than last night when I was tanking Gorgon. There I simply used the occasional med pack and made it through that fight without much issue. The only reason why it was dicey at all was because I was essentially soloing him, which is probably something I should not be able to do at this point. As of last night I am sitting at level 15 and still really enjoying the game. I think this is going to be my go to for mindless fun, and I swear there are so many times the zone layout reminds me of City of Heroes. I guess that might be because when I played that game I kept my camera zoomed out as far as it would go, which made it feel a bit like an over the top game. The competition for spawns is a bit annoying near the entrance of a zone… but if you wander off by yourself you pretty much get the place to yourself. When I hit the island of Madripoor it felt like the pack thinned out significantly, so I am guessing most people don’t make it out of the level 10 range before moving on.

Juggling Games

The problem with juggling multiple games is that one of them always ends up falling through the cracks. Right now I wish I had the time to devote to working on my character in Wildstar and trying to hit 65 in Rift. Instead I am logging in a few times a day in Rift to run minions… and just not logging in at all in Wildstar. Honestly my playtime is really spastic right now, because I have a bunch of things that I am trying to do each day. In Final Fantasy XIV I am playing the mini cactpot each day and trying to stockpile as much MGP as I can. Then while in game I run at least one daily expert so that I can cap my poetics each week. I am also logging into World of Warcraft in the morning and at night to run my Garrison missions in the hopes of getting those ever illusive raid gear crates. I am not 100% sure how they work, other than the fact that they show up every two weeks, so I keep clearing out other missions in hopes of making room for them when they show up.

Something new added to the rotation is logging into Marvel Heroes to get my log in reward. Similarly I am logging into Final Fantasy Record Keeper for the same reason, and to get my daily item chest. Record Keeper is one of those games I mostly play while my wife is shopping or I am out eating, waiting on food to arrive at the table. It is a moment of boredom game more than anything else, but that said I am really enjoying it. It is scratching an itch that I had not quite found from a mobile game. Realistically I should be trying to log into Wildstar each day so that I can do a boom box, but I have been failing miserably at that one. The funny thing is that I am spending a lot of time in a lot of different games but not really playing any of them. Finally after doing my routine I figure out which game I am actually going to play and run off playing that one. Most of the time that is Final Fantasy XIV but over the last few nights I have been playing a significant amount of Marvel Heroes. Basically… right now I am all over the place.

Six Years of Aggronaut

April 19, 2015 by Belghast

AggroChat #53 – Get Hyped

This week we are without Tamrielo and Rae for various reasons, but joining us once again are the ever amazing Grace and Thalen. For awhile I thought we would be missing Kodra, but he shows amazing determination and podcasted anyways. This is the week that he moved across country from Atlanta area to Seattle, and thanks to the magic of living in the same apartment complex as Tam, was able to “borrow a cup of internet” and a chair and pretty much everything else needed to make the podcast function. This weeks episode is called “Get Hyped” because we spend a lot of time getting hyped about various things we are excited about.

During the course of the episode we talk about so many board games in the wake of International Tabletop Day. This discussion managed to make a very sleeply Kodra awake enough to continue podcasting. We also talk about how amazing the new Netflix Original Daredevil series is. We talk about the Star Wars The Force Awakens trailer that was released, and cannot get through a single podcast without talking about the new tidbits of information floating about regarding the Heavensward expansion that is looming ever closer. I talk about the new Wildstar promotion asking players to buy up “dead stock” and get rewarded heavily for it. Some see it as an act of desperation but personally I see it as an act of sheer genius. I also go on at length about how great the new Wardrobe system is in Rift. It was a super fun podcast to record, and as such we ran fairly late.

Six Years of Aggronaut

This week a fairly important anniversary slipped by without me realizing it. The funny thing is that I even went so far as to make a Google reminder on my phone… but then Friday ended up being an exceptionally busy day and I just plain “forgot”. Friday April 17th was the sixth anniversary of my blog. On April 17th of 2009 I made my first post on this blog, and it was a rather simple “Hello World”, but still it was the beginning of something that would ultimately be my obsession for a large chunk of these six years. Now a much more important anniversary is coming up at the end of the month, when I mark two years of daily posting. Tales of the Aggronaut was not by any means my first blog, but it was the one that I stuck with. It began its life as a World of Warcraft blog, and ultimately turned into a Rift blog… and then when I realized I could not sustain it as a single game blog became what you know and hopefully love today. Throughout all of it however it has more than anything been a blog about me, and surprisingly does an excellent job of tracking what I happen to be thinking and feeling at a given time through my reaction to things happening in the games I love.

According to Google Analytics I have had almost 100,000 readers during the time I have been writing this blog. This is the more important stat for me, because it means I have reached almost 100,000 people in one way or another. Granted these statistics don’t reflect the folks who choose to read my blog over RSS, but more than anything I wanted to come clean about my numbers for various reasons. We are heading towards the Newbie Blogger Initiative and I always get the impression that people seem to think I have this wildly popular blog. I have had some insane bumps like the one from WoW Insider that skews all of my statistics. On that day I had over 6000 readers in a single day, but that was during a different time in MMO gaming. On a good day once you combine both RSS and traditional analytics I maybe have 500 readers. So while I will never be the media celebrity that some of my friends seem to think I am… I am thankful for each and every person who feels connected enough to me to read me on a regular basis. Sure I write this blog as a form of self therapy at times… but in truth it is my amazing readers that keep me going on mornings that I simply do not feel like writing anything. Thank you all for your attention, and I hope I can still live up to whatever expectations you might have of me for the next six years.

Piddling in Wildstar

I admit I have allowed myself to get pulled in by the latest Wildstar promotion. It all started as a way of doing some research for a story I was writing for MMOGames. However in the rush to find copies of Wildstar to see how many were actually out there in the wild… I ended up picking a few up myself. Now above you can see me proudly sporting the Marauder outfit and riding my Glitterkitty hoverboard. While I loved playing Chua I never really felt all that at home with the Dominion. I remember watching the original trailer to Wildstar and felt an immediate kinship to the Exiles. However most of my friends at launch wanted to play Dominion so I went along with it. That said by the time I left after my initial months I was too annoyed with the game to make a faction swap feasible. There was just something I didn’t really like about Wildstar and I never really could put my finger on it.

Coming back I am actually enjoying myself quite a bit, but I have not hit the Whitevale wall yet that I did previously. Also I feel like as much as I enjoyed having two robot buddies following me around at all times… the Engineer was really just not my type of character. This time around I am focusing on a tanky warrior, and having a significant bit more fun doing it. I can’t say I will play for a super long time but I have hooked up with Chestnut and Chaide and am hanging my hat with the Black Dagger Society. There is rarely a time when I am just playing one game, so I feel like this might be enjoyable to revisit every now and then. For me I generally have a base of operations in one game… and that game is Final Fantasy XIV and then I venture out into other titles as well. Since World of Warcraft is no longer holding my attention I have been spending more time in Wildstar and Rift for those “off nights”.

Farewell Wildstar

August 3, 2014 by Belghast

Day Two Rundown

We had an amazing turnout in day two, and while a couple of folks didn’t end up making a post we picked up several more in the process. Additionally there were two blogs that I missed in the day one rundown. I have to say I am still floored by the quality of content that folks are churning out. I guess once you get the ball rolling in something it just develops a mind of its own. I really need to figure out a better way of tracking the individual posts, as I have been up since 7 am and the last hour has spent simply pulling together this list of links. However it is totally worth it because there look to be some pretty amazing posts there. I plan on reading them immediately after posting my own morning post.

So there you go 41 day two posts, and two that I missed from day one. We are having one hell of an initiative so far, and I highly suggest you check out all of the posts. I have my super happy face on right now because It is going so smoothly thus far.

Farewell Wildstar

I finally did something yesterday that I knew was coming for awhile now. I logged into the Wildstar account website and cancelled my subscription. While I still have through October to play the game, I doubt I actually will. At this point I have not played for two and a half weeks, and simply have no real drive to do so. I did not actually make it to the level cap but stalled out at 26. Why am I quitting you might ask? Honestly I don’t really know. Everything about Wildstar is something that I should like, but once the amusement of playing a Chua wore off I was left once again with the game I played in beta… that just didn’t quite do it for me. I never really got into the game during the beta process and the highest I managed to get a character was to 10, but considering how much I had misjudged FFXIV in beta… I thought I owed it to myself to give the game a chance.

It does have a lot of nice things going for it, and the community and development teams do an awesome job of listening to the fans. Wildstar however is kinda like a monster truck rally, when what I really want is a book club. The game is awesome in an over the top 80s action movie kind of way, but after a point it just wears on you. The wow-raider me would have loved this game, but I have changed considerably since I was raiding five nights a week. I ultimately want something a little slower pace and a little bit more cerebral and less twitchy. Who knows at some point I might fire it back up, but I kinda doubt it. It was a fun experiment and I think overall it will do really well, but I think I wanted to like the game far more than I actually liked it.

I think what really started the downfall for me is as I watched our guild start to disintegrate around the time the free month ran out. The aspect of the game I really liked was its group content, and that was really damned fun. The problem is without active players, it became impossible to do the dungeons, and I was not quite ready to brave the dungeon finder. Additionally we chose the wrong faction as a guild. Not that I don’t love Dominion, but everyone I know from twitter and the blogosphere is playing on Evindra Exile side… which means we had no shot in hell of even getting their alts considering the 6 character per server limit. Sure I could have started over and rolled Exile… and I did make a few alts… but quite frankly I just didn’t enjoy the game enough to start from scratch. I wish all of you folks still playing the game luck, because it really is an interesting experience.

Not Final After All

Last night we got things back to normal and recorded Episode 16 of the AggroChat podcast. Once again we had our entire cast of myself, Ashgar, Rae and Kodra. On a whim we decided to pull in Tam as well since he was available. I have to say it was one of the more chill shows we have recorded in awhile and everything seemed to flow pretty naturally. I did absolutely no editing this time other than removing a few silences. It sounds a little different however because I am recording from a different machine in a different location. This weekend I had my main computer melt down and I have yet to get it back up and running. As a result I recorded from my laptop, but we struggled through and I think the end product works just fine.

We talk about a bunch of things like Shovel Knight, Rogue Legacy, League of Legends, falling out of love with Wildstar… but more importantly our return to Final Fantasy XIV. I guess for us it was not final after all. I personally want to set down some more permanent roots in this game, and despite the cost prohibitive nature of guild housing… we are starting to price and talk about the location we want to buy in. They made a ton of tweaks and in all cases it seems to have improved our enjoyment. If you are thinking about giving it a spin check out the free 14 day trial. We are on the Cactuar server in the Aether data center. If you get in add Belghast Sternblade to your friends list and give me a shout.

Writing Prompts

I slacked off yesterday or more so I got caught up in the excitement for just how amazing day one was… and forgot to post any writing prompts. Thankfully I had six already so it is not like you guys were at a loss for potential inspiration. That said I do intent to keep throwing out the occasional batch of writing prompts and adding them to a list I have collected on the nook.

What is your earliest gaming memory? We all have to come to gaming from somewhere, what brought you into the fold?
What is your favorite class? Do you play a new type each game that comes out or is there always one type of class that you tend to favor?
Do you follow a games lore? There is often tons of lore both in game and out of game, do you follow it and even track down the tidbits that are not obvious.. or are you mostly oblivious to it?

#Blaugust #FFIXV #Wildstar

Wildstar Woes

July 26, 2014 by Belghast

Crack Dealer

So my reputation as a gaming crack dealer is intact, as I spent part of yesterday teaching another gamer to play Magic: The Gathering. I guess it is fitting that we taught him at a Math Conference, considering it was invented by a mathematician. In my defense this time, the attendee asked for someone to tutor him in the ways of planeswalking, and considering I was not actually attending sessions but instead just waiting around to be needed, I volunteered. We met yesterday morning at 9:30 in the third floor commons area and I brought my patented “box o’ decks”. @Jay2thaVee was a complete rookie to the concepts of magic and had not purchased any decks. Thankfully I had left a few of the various $14 starters I have picked up in their original states, as those are pretty much the easiest way to learn.

Unfortunately I take “devotion to black” seriously, and every single deck in my box save for one had black somehow mixed into it. He played a white/black nyx prebuilt, and I was playing a black/blue theros prebuilt. Basically for the first game I played with my hand on the table, so he could see what exactly I was doing and when I was doing it. Additionally every so often when he seemed to lack a play I would nudge him a little bit to explain how the cards in his hand might be useful. By the time we got around to the second match he was up and running and ready to kick ass… and in fact he did just that. The second match was excellent in that it showed just how quickly fate can change with the play of the right cards. We both had cards in play that helped us soak back up some health in each upkeep so for a long time we were in a bit of a stalemate as I could only do as little more damage than he could heal up each round.

Thanks to an artifact that gave all of my creatures lifelink I was able to soak up quite a bit of health during this long drawn out stalemate. At this point I was starting to get a creature advantage on him as well as a health advantage. Then with a single play he rocked my world. Granted I had to explain how good the card he held in his hand was, and why he should play it… but when he plunked down Banishing Light. Now I must have been extremely tired or something, but I completely misread the card yesterday when we were playing. It says banish “target” and for some reason I read that as “all” non-land permanents. So I played it as though it was a complete board wipe, which made the game more interesting. He began to make progress on chipping down my extremely high health pool which was like 32 or something similar at that point.

Then I get the big guns onto the board with my Abhorrent Overlord. So I once again start whittling down his health at the same time as he chips away mine. I do 6 health, he regens 2, and so on until we get to a point where he has 11 health and a serious creature advantage on me, and I have my single big guy as he eats everything else I can get on the board and 9 health. He manages to do 10 damage to me in one turn and it is pretty much over. However of all the ways to learn magic this is one of the better matches I have played. It shows just how tentative a lead can be at any point in the game. When we misplayed the banish card, it looked like the game was over… but had i not had several rounds of getting crap to play I could have maybe pushed back to get the victory. In any case I think he is hooked and going to buy a couple of decks for he and his son to play together. Sounds like awesome times.

Wildstar Woes

Last night I got a rather frank question from a friend of mine regarding Wildstar. Some time ago another friend had handed him one of the free trial codes that we got for preordering. He just now got around to trying it a month and a half after launch. While he enjoyed the game, it wasn’t like the most enjoyable thing he had ever played. His question was how many of the Stalwart crew were still playing, and if he should pick it up. He followed us into Elder Scrolls Online, and while he loves that game, he finds it extremely solemn to be playing by himself all the time. The big thing is that he didn’t want to jump into Wildstar and it to be the same experience for him. His question was, should he buy the game. Now I could have put the hard sell on him and lead him down a path that would have ultimately lead to disappointment… but I was honest with him.

For the most part in the circle of friends that he is part of… Wildstar has come and gone. There are a few of us who log in periodically but this game had probably the briefest of “glory days” of any title we have played to date. I only made it to 26 before slowing down and to the best of my knowledge none of us actually made it to the level cap. I enjoyed aspects of the game, namely the dungeons… but for whatever reason as much as I should love this game… the drive to play it was just missing. I am still piddling around, this time on the Exiles side on Evindra but running into the same lack of drive to log in. Everything about this game should be something that I really enjoy, and you could not ask for a better community team or company supporting it. But when I ask myself what I want to play in a given night, this game never seems to come up on its own. To be honest most of the time I was leveling my Chua Engineer it was the boom boxes that kept me logging in every night more than anything else.

So while I think there is a great game here, I had to be honest with him that he probably should give it a pass if he is only interested in playing with the Stalwart/Masks crew. I think one of the things that really hurt this title was the fact that we simply rolled on the wrong faction for the wrong server. Dominion side on Evindra is dead… like when I got to Whitevale I sat around for two hours waiting for someone else to wander by so I could take out one of the world mini-bosses and not so much as another adventurer came by at any point during that time. To be truthful it feels like wandering around Illium you might see a dozen other players at any given point, whereas on the Exiles side you are constantly bumping into people. The problem is with only 6 slots per server, it really negates the concept of playing both factions. Within a few days all of the people who were primarily Exile, had deleted their Dominion alts to free up space for more Exiles.

So once again we are stuck at the problem of having all of my time devoted into what has essentially become a non-starter character. So when confronted with the idea of re-rolling… I just can’t be bothered to put much effort towards it. Ultimately if my immediate circle of friends is not playing… then what exactly am I rushing around to get leveled to be able to do? I am sure I could roll with any number of the guilds on the exiles side, but I just am not sure if I have the social oomph left in me to start from scratch without being able to rely on the folks I hang out nightly with on voice chat. I feel like Wildstar might have run its course through the internet as well. I am seeing a lot of folks who claimed diehard loyalty to the game “taking a break”, which we all know is the beginning salvo in the “quitting the game” conversation. I am not ready to cancel my subscription yet, but I am just struggling to find reason to log in.

Dragooning It Up

Lately I have been back playing quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV. I feel like I parted with that game on really good terms and it has always been extremely charming. When not working on hunts I have been working on leveling the dragoon. If we can convince a repeat of the other night to happen, when we all logged in to run a dungeon, that place me playing a DPS character. Ashgar unfortunately only has two tanks to 50, and I have a Warrior and a Bard. That said I have never really felt deeply connected with the bard. It does amazing damage and is super useful, and mostly was easy to level through Fates. The class I would far rather play dps wise is the Dragoon, so lately I have been taking advantage of the Duty Roulette option and running some random dungeons. I have to say the groups I am getting randomly are actually extremely friendly and communicative. I feel like maybe this game has crossed the threshold of shedding all of the folks who were caustic and toxic… and now really has devoted fans left.

I guess the real challenge will be what this game feels like trying to tank it with random groups. At some point I will work up the nerve and tank a random as my Gladiator seeing as I would really love to get to Paladin conversion levels. There is still a lot to like in this game, and it is the only Asian inspired title that has managed to create a male character I actually enjoy playing. There are proper beards here, and you have options other than “pretty boy” as far as facial features go. We will see how long it take for me to get this game out of my system this time, but so far I am really enjoying myself. I feel like at some point I need to dig up a list of what all new content is available, as there have been three rather large patches since I last played the game regularly. FFXIV is pretty horrible about advertising what is new from the game interface itself, so I think there are probably some other ways to level that I am just missing.

#MagicTheGathering #FFXIV #Wildstar