October 2013 - Page 3 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

WoW Remix

October 23, 2013 by Belghast

Gamer Nature

One of the things I have learned while playing Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn… is that any player from 11 or 14 classic… really hates it when a player compares the game to World of Warcraft. I’ve seen so many of these “classic” players fill with so much rage the first time someone mentions WoW. Yesterday I encountered a small bit of it outside of the game in a G+ thread where myself and another tank were giving an up and coming Gladiator some advice on how best to deal with multi-mob threat.

Best advise I have to you is: don’t expect this game to have "WoW equivalents." This isn’t WoW. It’s not a WoW clone. It’s not trying to be WoW. You’ll enjoy the game a lot more if you take it as it is, rather than forcing it to fit some molded preconception you have for it. You’re trying to fit a circle peg into a square hole.

WoW Remix

So I found the above comment rather puzzling. Especially coming from where this game did… the new version while not a “WoW Clone” is at the very least a WoW Remix. Almost every ability I have has some simulacrum in World of Warcraft. For example I think of my Warrior as a mix between a Druid tank and a Deathknight tank. While it is in fact a unique beast… I still refer to the process of tabbing through mobs and applying Butchers Block as “Tab Sunder”. Everything ultimately gets referred to more often than not by the wow name for it. I don’t teleport back to my home location… I hearth.

Since most of the active MMO gamer pool has a relatively short memory… this is the way it has always been. Before WoW claimed the crown as the most popular MMO… each new release got referred to by the terms we used in Everquest. Damaging yourself to get back mana… was referred to as “Twitching” or “Cading” in reference to the Necromancer or Shaman spells. Any form of a speed boost was often referred to as “SoW”, I can remember hearing people call the various speed powers “SoW” in City of Heroes. To some extent listening to the FFXI diehards talk in FFXIV ARR has been a trip down memory lane… because those players carried with them terms from EQ into XI like DD for direct damage.

Top Dog Sets Rules

Awhile back there was a thread somewhere asking what games you would suggest to new players… and quite honestly despite my sordid relationship with the game, I have to say I would always suggest that someone play at least SOME World of Warcraft. In my own guild we have a few players who have never played the game, and as a result they miss the references that are made in guild chat and mumble all of the time. Thing is… this is not just a thing my guild does, this is a thing EVERY guild does in EVERY new game. World of Warcraft had its own vocabulary that was grown out of the lingo that we used in Everquest. Essentially as that game eclipsed the other games, its ability names started to take the place of the previous ones that were used.

Today going into any MMO for the first year at least… every single thing in game is going to be referred to by its WoW equivalent. So the fact that as a seasoned MMO player… I can find immediate and direct WoW equivalents makes me think that the above statement is a little naïve. FFXIV very much has wow equivalents, just like every game since the rise of wow has… and every game after will as well. It is the fact that a game becomes the market leader that determines who dictates the vocabulary, because essentially there is nothing new under the sun. Everything we do in FFXIV also has a direct EQ vocabulary equivalent, as everything we see today is a remix of the things that came before it. The comparisons will someday shift again, but only when a game has eclipsed the current leader.

Final Funk

October 22, 2013 by Belghast

Pull Resisted

Last night I resisted the desire to re-up my World of Warcraft account… in part because I really did not feel like playing much of anything. When I first logged in I popped into Hearthstone to see what the daily quest happened to be. It was win two matches with a paladin or priest deck, neither of which I have even finished unlocking the basic cards for. I made a valiant attempt at victory on a paladin, only to find out that practice victories did not count. Essentially there is no way in hell right now that I could beat an actual player with either of those decks… even though priest seems to be pretty damned hax based on my regular loss record against them.

After that I popped into Rift for a few but could not seem to find the oomph to play that either. Though since the shiny vault was backed up again, I figured I would at least take the time to pilfer through that and help relieve some of the stress. I have been in these unknown funks before, but I am not sure what to do to kick myself out of this one. Ultimately I ended up retiring to bed and playing Pokémon Y until my wife joined me some time later.

Final Funk

I think in part my present funk is due to the fact that once again I have topped out another game and lack the drive to do much of anything further in it. I am still very much enjoying the dungeons when we can pull those together, and I want to do more 8 man content especially now that we have a fresh 50 to run through it. However I don’t have a single thing I really care to do in game the rest of the time. So as a result I am simply not logging in. I did the All Saints’ Wake and it was extremely disappointing and finished within like 10 minutes time or running errands throughout the various cities.

One of my game designers always brings up the “moment to moment” play, and I guess for me this is what is lacking in Final Fantasy. After pushing my Warrior to 50 and then grinding up a Bard to 50 as well doing literally nothing but FATES… I find myself lacking the desire to do the FATE grind ever again. Normally tradeskills is a thing that fills in the gaps, providing me some downtime between grinds. However you can tell a tradeskill system is bad if I would far rather play the EQ2 mini-game crafting system than do anything within the FFXIV system.

Another huge thing that tarnishes my enjoyment of FFXIV is that like it or not… I am a bit of a loot whore. At the very least much of my homicidal rage against monsters… is because I know they have a chance, albeit slim of dropping something amazing. I like playing the loot pinata, and when a game has that sort of a loot system I can happily grind again at mobs never quite knowing what the next one will drop. FFXIV on the other hand has absolutely no meaningful loot. Mobs drop crafting items, and since I don’t really care about crafting… there is absolutely zero excitement there.

So as I stand currently I am not playing the game much at all. My friends have access to me via instant message, twitter, text message… so I figure if they need me to tank for them I am more accessible than most folks. In the meantime I keep trying to figure out something that excites me to do in the time between dungeon runs. My other friends seem to default to League of Legends, but quite frankly I don’t enjoy the game enough to ever queue with strangers. So as a result I end up trying to resist the desire to re-up wow and playing quite a lot of Pokémon.

Failing Resolve

October 21, 2013October 21, 2013 by Belghast

Perfect Drug

This morning I am having a bit of a slow start getting going… so as a result I spent the last 30 minutes or so crawling through my news reader looking for something to inspire me. At which point I landed on this post from Liore talking about her feeling the need to apologize for playing World of Warcraft and the overall negative reaction she has gotten from other gamers. I think in part… the negative attitude is due to the fact that there is really no such thing as a former WoW player. I don’t really intend hyperbole with, but much like an alcoholic you are never really fully over World of Warcraft.

I was so damned pumped the day I got into the Hearthstone beta, and while I am presently having a blast playing it despite how many times I get beat… it has awoken some things that I was not quite ready for. I cannot count how many times after a game of Hearthstone this weekend that I considered reactivating my account and “playing some wow”. I am still resisting, and my little interaction a week or so ago with a trial account is keeping me in part from doing it. World of Warcraft this is wonderful marzipan world that is awesome so long as you are willing not to think about it too much.

Can’t Not Think

The problem is… each time I go back to the game I just end up frustrated about the decisions they didn’t make. World of Warcraft is like that friend you know with so much potential, but they keep making horrible life choices. So when I go back I get frustrated by the Transmog system, and the piss poor community support, and the fact that every single social channel that used to be my lifeblood in the game is dead… since most of the folks I care about have long since moved on. For me World of Warcraft is this magical thing that will never again be, because we have all fundamentally changed from the days when it was our nightly obsession.

We reject WoW so harshly because we know it is basically an empty promise. All it takes is a little bit of nostalgia and reminiscing about the “good ole days” and we are ready to re-up for another ride. Hearthstone has been horrible for me in this aspect, because seeing the cards and the artwork… makes me want to go play Belghast and actually get him to level 90. However my allergy to pugging, or more so TANKING for pugs will end up in tears as I would be going back with no real support structure. House Stalwart still exists, but it is a shell of what it once was, and going back and seeing that is hard on me as well.

Failing Resolve

All of this said… I fully expect over the next few weeks this nostalgia trip that is Hearthstone will eventually end up in me reactivating my World of Warcraft account. I figure I will only last a week or so if I do, and even knowing this going into it… I full expect to do it anyways. I spent most of the weekend trying to play various things without really having much success. I played a little rift, patched up gw2, played a lot of pokemon and hearthstone… and even considered patching up SWTOR. All the while trying to avoid the fact that the rush of nostalgia is demanding me playing some WoW. But all of this is why we push back so hard when we see a friend slip back into playing the game. We know deep down inside that we are likely next to follow.

Former Stature

October 20, 2013 by Belghast

Oatmeal Weather

As is the tradition, after the second weekend of the Tulsa State fair the weather has predictably cooled. As a result this weekend I broke out a long sleeved Henley and a Hoodie. Since my wife had Thursday and Friday off for Fall Break, I decided to ask off for Friday so we could spent some time together. Luckily I have a truly amazing boss and was completely fine with me taking off with no real prior notice. Of course I made sure I had no appointments and since half of the office was already off for fall break it was not a huge deal.

Bowling Trophy

On Friday we roamed around town a bit, trying to enjoy the fact that most of the world was working. On Admiral here in Tulsa there is this insanely huge flea market. We used to go there regularly in college but these days the place has developed a mind of its own. As a result it is nigh impossible to get place to park, so we have avoided it like the plague for the last few years. Once upon a time there was a factory closeout and shipping casualty store called Cheapo Depot that was interesting to shop at. Recently a new one opened up in the same location called Oops, and my wife had been wanting to go. Taking advantage of the empty parking lot we went by there.

The store itself was not that interesting, part dented can grocery store with a handful of factory overrun items. Basically nothing contained within is something that folks actually wanted out in the world. They had cases and cases of Tostitos Raspberry Salsa… and I could not even begin to fathom what that must taste like. Absolute none of the ideas I came up with… managed to sound good at all. When we were exiting the parking lot I spied the above prize. Since no one was around we had no clue what it was… but basically it was a D4 made of bowling balls. One of them had fallen off and was to the side… but at this point I really want to know the story behind it.

Route of Boredom

For some time I have had a fascination with Route 66, I guess it is a side effect of growing up in Tulsa and seeing absolutely everything under the sun branded with that moniker. We have attempted to travel the route once in the past, but got bored around Bristow. Yesterday I decided we should try and go the entire route from Tulsa to Oklahoma City… or at the very least Edmond. Ultimately we were looking for interesting things to take photos of… but after a bit we just started looking for anything interesting at all. The above shot came from a little thrift store near entrance to highway 66 on the outskirts of Tulsa. I have no clue what prompted someone to buy a republican and democrat mug for every year…. or even more so what lead them to end up in a thrift store as a complete set.

The rest of the route was a string of small towns with small speed limits that caused what is normally an hour and a half trip to Tulsa take roughly three hours. There really was not much in the way of attractions any longer, other than the normal tourist fare. I expected to see some sort of a remnant of the grand tradition. The oddest thing is in many places the original route 66 is sitting there, moldering beside the current road. They have removed the bridges in most cases but there are just vast tracts of crumbling asphalt that are no longer connected to anything at all. You would think they would have employed them as side roads, because asphalt in any state is pretty much better than a dirt road.

Former Stature

While wandering around yesterday we released we were within 30 minutes of Guthrie Oklahoma. Since we were forced to take Oklahoma History our freshman year in High School, I have always wondered around Guthrie the original state capital. Turns out the story is a bit more interesting than I could have imagined. I didn’t remember it being covered in class, but apparently the changing of the state capital was not a mutual affair. Apparently in the dark of night the state seal was stolen from the legislative house in Guthrie and carried to what would be the new capital of Oklahoma City.

Wandering around Guthrie, you see an almost abbreviated greatness. Once upon a time before statehood the town was in fact grand, and since that grandeur is marketable they have made a point of keeping up appearances. The buildings were really the draw for me. I love seeing the remnants of a bygone era. The current town of Guthrie is a very small thing, with not much more than a Wal-Mart. However being on the outskirts of the OKC metro, they live in a constant state of tourist destination. It was probably the most interesting stop of the weekend. While the adventure was not as grand as we would have liked, we did all that we really expected to do. Get out of the house and spend some time together unplugged.