November 2014 - Page 6 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Holiday Countdown

November 10, 2014 by Belghast

Gone Viral

Yesterday did not go as planned in any sense of the word. Well to be honest the morning went pretty smoothly and I had a rather relaxing go at piddling around in Final Fantasy XIV while doing laundry. However that all changed mid afternoon as we started battling a virus infection on my wife’s laptop. The night before she had some weirdness going on with several DllHost.exe in memory consuming lots of system resources. She rebooted and it seemed to go away at least temporarily. However yesterday morning the virus scanner picked something up and deleted it… which seemed to only cause things to escalate from there. She started getting errors in Powershell which to the best of my knowledge we never actually installed on her system.

It seems as though a new strain of something called Trojan.Poweliks had gone out into the wild on the 8th and she had the bad luck to hit the wrong site and the wrong time and contract it. For a bit we thought maybe it had been stopped, as the virus scanner found several items and correctly identified them as Poweliks. Strange thing is that this only seemed to piss off the system, as constantly more things were popping up with the same infection. Finally around 10pm we decided to just wipe the system taking the “nuke it from orbit” approach. So that is precisely what I did after watching Walking Dead. At least this solves one problem… as that laptop had a 32bit version of Windows 7 on it… which prevented us from giving her some more ram. Problem solved.

Dragoon Legs

Since the 2.4 patch release I have been on an insatiable quest to finish out the level 100 Dragoon set from Syrcus Tower. Sure I could get better items from the soldiery vendor, but at this point it is a matter of principle. I have gathered up every item but one, the legs that drop from Amon the next to last boss. At this point I can run Syrcus Tower in my sleep, as I have quite literally been in there three to five times a night. I have seen the legs drop exactly three times… each of those times I had the misfortune of being in the same dungeon with another dragoon. Each time I lost, one of them by a single point on the roll. Essentially these legs have become the bane of my existence… but I am not giving up, not by a long shot. I know that the moment I switch classes and start running Syrcus as my bard… the legs will drop on the very first time and go uncontested to another Dragoon.

One of the interesting options you have as part of the Duty Roulette is that you can check the “join party in progress” check box… meaning in theory you could get dumped into a partially cleared instance. I actually managed to luck out twice with this… the second time they were on Zande the final boss in the raid. Now when you join it dumps you at the beginning of the instance and you have to take a teleporter that brings you relatively close to the boss that the group is working on. Apparently they pulled before I could get there so the above picture is me dancing the Manderville as the final meteor plummets towards the party. The funny thing is that I still got to roll on all of the items that dropped even though I got locked out of the encounter. While I didn’t win anything… this was the easiest 15 poetics and 20 soldiery I have ever earned.

Holiday Countdown

xmascountdown

It feels like this has been the year of gaming blogosphere events. The first was the always awesome Newbie Blogger Initiative, then I had my own super successful Blaugust, and Izlain just wrapped up Bragtoberfest, and now the ever amazing MMO Gypsy is wanting to create a virtual advent calendar. It seems there is tradition in her area of the world of the “Advent Window” where each member of a town or village decorates their home to represent a day of the advent season, the days leading up to Christmas Day. In a way we are a virtual village, with our blogs representing our homes and the town being made up of the gaming blogosphere as a whole. The idea that she talks about in her blog is that for each of us to create a post on an assigned day highlighting all of the positive things about the gaming community.

If you have a blog and are interested in participating, you can sign up by either leaving a comment in the post announcing it, or dropping Syl a line on twitter. I have been informed that since I helped with the logo, that I had no choice but to participate. Of course I would have signed up anyways, but I will just let Syl think she has some serious pull to order me around like that. I think it is going to be a really interesting event, and hopefully we can come up with some way of visualizing the days of the month to carry out the window on the world feel. All of the specifics about the topic, title, how you get your day assigned can be found in the original post. We have had so much negativity this year in the broader gaming community, and as such it is up to us the gaming bloggers to show that there are still positive voices in our world.

Gaming Blogosphere

While it was not my original intent, I am ending up making thankfulness posts that ultimately relate to the topic I just posted. Similarly this morning I am extremely thankful to be a member of the Gaming Blogosphere. That term in itself is a fairly ephemeral thing, because it means so many different things to so many different people. Ultimately it was the Blog Azeroth folks that gave me the spark to start Aggronaut.com so many years ago. Like so many Tales of the Aggronaut started as a single focus blog, with my intent being focused on World of Warcraft Warrior Tanking. However this shifted focus to being a general tanking blog, with some raid leadership topics… and then ultimately abandoning being World of Warcraft focused at all. At each step of my journey I have had supportive voices cheering me on from the community, and were it not for them I likely would have fallen completely into obscurity.

For a long time it felt as though we didn’t have a very strong sense of community out here in the “not entirely devoted to World of Warcraft” blog space. However the events I talked about in this post have helped to create a much more cohesive sense of community. This combined with the fact that this year we launched The Gaming and Entertainment Network has given me a deeper sense of belonging to something larger than just myself. I am deeply thankful for the other bloggers that I interact with on a near daily basis, and thankful that they have for some reason accepted me into their good graces. You have been a supportive voice when I desperately needed one, and I am so thankful to have all of you.

So Many Feels

November 9, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat Episode #30

I still cannot fathom that we have made it thirty episodes into our podcast and are still apparently going strong. Technically it is 31 weeks since we started this adventure, because we missed one week for various sundry reasons. What shocks me the most is that we still have listeners and that it seems like we keep picking up new ones along the way. I feel Sally Field screaming “You Like Me, You Really Like Me!” but in this case its the Us that is liked not necessarily me. AggroChat is really about pushing record on the type of conversations we have always had over voice chat on a near nightly basis. We are unscripted and unprepared and yet still seem to never had a drought of things to discuss.

This week we go through a whirlwind of topics including: Magic the Gathering Online, Infinity Minatures Game, Dawngate being cancelled, Blizzcon, Overwatch, and the constant frustration over Gnomes being the butt of every joke. I think we were all caught off guard by the news surrounding Overwatch. If you remember several weeks back we speculated as to what might be announced, and while we brought up an FPS we just as quickly dismissed that ideal. The FPS genre is pretty stagnant so I didn’t see much room where Blizzard could improve upon it. Here is hoping this is not the case because the gameplay footage I have seen has me absolutely intrigued. Wolfenstein Enemy Territory was my favorite competitive shooter, and here is hoping that they bring this same level of detail and strategy to the maps. Also hoping that by some token I can manage to score a beta invite.

So Many Feels

If you recall yesterday I talked about the “Blizzcon Spirit” and how that this year I had not really felt it. Well last night it struck with a vengeance. My friend Syl mentioned the Looking For Group documentary and how good it was over twitter. I had already planned on watching it at some point, because I am a sucker for documentaries… especially fan produced ones. I have to say it is so amazingly good, and I am glad that something like that exists. The negative is I am absolutely overwhelmed with feels about Blizzard, World of Warcraft and the community surrounding it. Had it not been super late last night I probably would have logged into the game the moment the documentary had finished if for no reason other than to visit my characters. The documentary is like some crazy aphrodisiac that makes you love World of Warcraft again. One viewing and you will be wanting to scream “For The Alliance!” or horde if that is your persuasion.

Then the reality sets in… that all the same problems I have had with the game, and the players and just years of history… are all still there. If I could return to a snapshot in time, when we were still raiding Icecrown Citadel as the Duranub Raiding Compny… I would do it in a heartbeat. If I could return to a period in time when we were fighting to clear Ahn’Qiraj as the Late Night Raiders… I would also do that in a heartbeat. The problem is there are these epic vignettes of time where it would be amazing to return to and experience all the love and wonderment that existed in that little vacuum. Sad thing is none of those things exist… time happened, years of guild, server and raid drama happened. Folks don’t just stand still in one place, they evolve and move on with their lives.

Glory Days Revisited

When I log back into World of Warcraft amped up on Nostalgia… I feel just like that once upon a time Quarterback reliving their big homecoming win. That world that was meaningful to me and the people that I fought to protect and keep moving towards a goal… just don’t exist any longer, or at least they don’t exist in the same combination that they once did. I have tried to return to the game on two different times and rally the troops to rekindle the spirit that once made my guild a great place to be. Each time I end up frustrated that no one is wanting to work towards those ends with me. People are happy to exist in the comfortable place they have carved out once the epic nature of the game died away. The glory days really can’t be relived, at least not in the same way.

So here I stand wondering what exactly I will do. I know there is no going back, but part of me wishes there was. I have a paid subscription through December, and a fully paid expansion because they allowed me to order it a year ago when I was actually amped up about World of Warcraft once more. I have no idea if I will attempt to log in come release day, and start playing through the new content. One of the things about being open to change, means you can’t fully predict what you will do when a different set of stimulus is applied. I think my time leading the Warcraft House Stalwart is over, and it is time for them to find new leadership that can make them great again. That doesn’t preclude me from occasionally playing the role of war hero and popping my head in from time to time.

Feels

Since this post is in large part about feelings, and me struggling with them… I thought it was fitting to state that while often times frustrating… I am glad that I have them. It would suck to go through life with the inability to surrender to your emotions and get caught up in a moment. While society has attempted to teach me that it is somehow “unmanly” to feel emotion, and moreso be swayed by them… for whatever reason this indoctrination never actually took. I feel no shame in choking back tears during certain moments of a lot of movies. There is that moment where you just can’t help yourself, and that story of whatever you are watching has peeled back your layers of defense and landed a blow to your inner core. I embrace that I can empathize with people I have never met, and care even more deeply about them that they will likely ever realize. While it is often cool to be aloof and uncaring about things… I like to care, I like to know I am making a difference. So today I am thankful that I was raised with compassion and the ability to grant that same compassion to others.

Blizzard Spirit

November 8, 2014 by Belghast

Christmas Spirit

I tend to be a scrooge when it comes to holidays. I am not sure exactly why I have reached this point, but it wasn’t always that way. Over time the world seems to have warn me down, and each year that passes I find it harder and harder to get into the right frame of mind. There are lots of reasons why it might be the case, not the least of which is the fact that my family has gone through far more deaths around Christmas time than I care to recount. I think in part this is just the way I am, as I don’t really get excited over any of the holidays, or at least have a harder time with each passing year mustering some excitement. It might also be due to the fact that in general we start seeing Christmas decorations showing up in the stores around July, and by the time the holiday actually shows up I am in full tilt overload mode.

Without a doubt all of this changes the moment I am face to face with a child. I can see the amazement, excitement and wonder in their eyes as they take in the experiences of whatever holiday it happens to be. This raises a torch to the little fire inside of me, and causes me to remember just how magical these events used to be before I became a “grown up”. Ultimately holidays are for the children, and it is only in them that they can be truly appreciated. Since I don’t spent my time around that many kids, it takes longer and longer for this little flame to be renewed each year. So while I don’t necessarily want to be a scrooge, that is ultimately what ends up happening. I am not out on my lawn yelling at the kids, but nonetheless we don’t do much if anything to celebrate holidays on our own.

Blizzard Spirit

So you might be thinking… Bel… why are you telling me all of this? Well once upon a time, no matter how forlorn I was about Blizzard as a company, Blizzcon was this magic bullet to relight the fires of wonderment inside of me. Whether or not I was actually playing anything from Blizzard at the time, when Blizzcon rolled around each year it would hold a torch to the little fire inside of me and stoke my nostalgia to a fever pitch, causing me to renew my subscription. This has long been referred to as the “Blizzcon bump” and can pretty much be charted on the subscription numbers every single time. This is part the majesty of Blizzcon itself, and part the fever pitch of excitement that reverberates through the community as a whole. It becomes contagious as you watch friend after friend succumb to a certain kind of madness and raise their Blizzard fan flags high.

The problem is… the pilot light deep inside of me keeps flickering and as of yet no amount of fire seems to be stoking it. I tuned in yesterday to watch the Blizzcon opening ceremonies stream, because I knew more than likely something would get announced that we would probably talk about tonight during the podcast. I had heard rumors of a big announcement, and honestly I halfway expected that big announcement to be Warcraft 4, since it was the 20th anniversary and all. Other than that I expected whatever was announced to be on a tablet, since that has been a major growth market for them with Hearthstone. I was completely wrong in all accounts, and while what announced was awesome looking… it didn’t really do what I thought it would and reignite the flame.

This is the first Blizzcon since the introduction of the Virtual Ticket, that I have not watched. While I pre-purchased my copy of Warlords back when I was actually regularly playing the game… this also looks to be potentially the first Warcraft expansion that I will not actually be playing at launch. I am jealous of the folks like Alternative Chat and Qelric that have kept their fires of nostalgia burning brightly. Maybe this will be like Christmas, and I will be overcome with the “Blizzard Spirit” days or maybe even minutes before the official launch of Warlords of Draenor. I am not a person of firm stances, and absolute positions. I change my mind about at least one long held belief on a nearly daily basis. So maybe just maybe I will be a late bloomer in my nostalgia and end up happily playing this expansion. Currently the signs are pointing to no, and while my account is still active I have gone through all the preparations to not be playing at all. I quietly handed over the reins of House Stalwart to my friend Rylacus during the dark of night. In any case I will try my damnedest not to be a true Scrooge and ruin anyone’s fun during the launch festivities.

Overwatch Looks Awesome

All of this said, is not to take anything away from the fact that Overwatch does indeed look like a really awesome game. When it was first announced I had mixed emotions about it. It felt very much like “Blizzard Does Team Fortress 2”, and I didn’t quite understand why this was going to be a ground breaking thing. Then again in truth nothing that Blizzard does is really ground breaking. They have this way of taking an existing genre and polishing it to a mirror shine, improving the playability and accessibility during the process and making the gameplay itself infectious. I have no doubt at all that when we actually get our hands on Overwatch all of these adjectives will be true, and it will be yet another blockbuster game in the crown of a company that is known for them. We still don’t know a lot of details about the game but my general theory is this will be “MOBA” like in that we will more than likely have a rotation of free characters that we can play, with the option to purchase them permanently and also purchase nifty skins for them.

What made me excited about the game was when I watched the above video of an actual match. I am not your traditional FPS player, in that I don’t really enjoy twitchy deathmatch back and forth gameplay. As such I have always favored games with hard fought objectives be it capture and hold or capture the flag. My all time favorite competitive FPS is Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory because it gave me something to focus on other than just my kill count. Watching the above video… feels like Wolfenstein. I love that the maps have tight corners, because the last few generations of shooters just feel too open to me. I prefer to play run and gun, and wide open maps pretty much mean certain death from above for my particular style. Though from the looks of it these maps seem like they will provide adequate places for folks who like to ambush like snipers as well. The focus on the objective tightens the focus of the map, since everyone will be swarming that one location, and the six versus six group size makes for more intimate play.

So while I am not just enraptured by the Blizzcon conference as a whole, that does not mean that I am not absolutely looking forward to this game. Right now the champions that I am looking forward to playing the most are Reinhardt because he is tanky and melee, and Winston… because he is an gentleman ape. Another champion that looks really awesome is Torbjorn because if you have followed me for long, you will know my love of Dwarves. Additionally when it comes to Enemy Territory games I almost always play the engineer, so that pretty much seems to fit right down his alley. Another champion that looks interesting is Symmetra for her awesome mini turret placing mechanics. The champion that I am not sure if I will like or not is Bastion, because he seems really quirky… but often times quirky is also interesting.

It has been over a decade since Blizzard launched a new IP, and I have to say so far I approve. The cinematic trailer is great, when it started I was like “Blizzard does Super Heroes? Sign me up!”. I really want to play an MMO in this universe because I have not given up hope on a really good super hero MMO. DC Universe Online is fun enough, but it feels really limited in scope, but it is still the best we have. City of Heroes was a long time favorite of mine, and I miss it quite a bit at times… that said it had been years since I had actively played it when it shut down. Champions Online on the other hand has been a barely playable abomination… which is sad because I had so much hope for it. If project Titan was in fact going to be Overwatch the MMO… I mourn its loss. However the game that rose from its ashes looks amazingly fun. At the end of the day… I just really want to see a full length movie dedicated to the adventures of Winston and Tracer. Hopefully I can manage to get into beta because I am very interested in seeing how this game progresses.

Open-mindedness

This one is going to be a bit of an odd one, but in part it syncs up with what I have said today. I am thankful that my upbringing has instilled in me a sense of curiosity towards new ideas. I can’t really say how it happened, but I have a pretty malleable sense of self, and as such I’ve always been hungry for new viewpoints on different subjects. I gobble up as much information as I can, and each piece of information could potentially “upgrade” one of my existing views, or cause me to trash a “rough draft” and start over. There are very few things in me that are not open to discussion, other than a core barometer of justice and basic human decency. So at this very moment I can’t tell you how I will feel about something next week, or a year from now… because I am constantly evolving.

I think this is a strength and not a weakness, and it has allowed me to adapt to the line of work that I do and the ever changing cavalcade of new technologies and programming practices that I have to evaluate. All the while I try my best to keep a firm sense of all of my experiences, and the history behind them… while still putting myself out there and looking to take the best bits of knowledge that I happen to find along my journey. So Mom, Dad, Priests, Scout Leaders, Teachers… all are to be thanked for somehow instilling in me this sense of willingness to pick up new ideas and abandon the ones that no longer make sense.

#Blizzcon #Overwatch

Great Time to Start

November 7, 2014 by Belghast

Good Time to Return

This weekend is going to be a huge hyped filled occasion, and twitter will be full of news trickling out of Blizzcon from the stable of Blizzard games. However if you are not enthralled by that I have something to entertain you as well. With not surprising timing, Square Enix has announced that this weekend that officially started at midnight PST all players who have ever played Final Fantasy XIV will be able to return and play for free until midnight PST on the 10th. This means if you have the client already you just have to patch it up, if you do not have the client however thankfully Square Enix makes that relatively easy to find as well. I literally just typed in “Final Fantasy XIV Client” and was taken directly to the easy to find download link. Additionally if you are a Steam user, you can download a “demo” of the game which should download the full client as well.

For the my own purposes and the purpose of linking to friends I have maintained a playlist on my youtube account that contains each of the major patch trailers. Square does an amazing job of highlighting all of the content that they add into the game during these trailers, and some of them are over ten minutes long showing off new features. It has been two weeks now since the release of the 2.4 patch that added in a round of new stuff including the brand new Rogue class and Ninja job. This admittedly has thrown the world out of whack a bit, and be warned that DPS queues in the duty finder are a bit longer than normal… however this appears to be coming down rapidly as folks finish leveling their rogues and start playing the endgame. The positive is that this has been a slow trickle and the server is still super active with FATEs actually viable in practically every zone. This is also booned a bit by the improved Atma drop rates, making folks willing to work on Atma weapons for alts. If you haven’t played in awhile… none of what I just said probably made much sense… but just know that these are good things.

Great Time To Start

If you have never played Final Fantasy XIV before, it is now the perfect time to start as well. For starters there has been a 14 day trial system in place for a few months now, allowing you to get in and play for free. If you prefer to go through steam I believe clicking the demo option will do the same thing… but I am not sure how the billing works through steam. In theory everything has to go through the Mogstation, which admittedly the worst part of playing any Square Enix game is dealing with their extremely confusing account management system. The reason why it is such a great time to start is that right now until November 12th, Steam has the complete Final Fantasy XIV game for half off. That means the normal version is only $12.49 and the Collectors Edition that comes with a bunch of spiffy stuff including the adorable Fat Chocobo mount among other things is only $22.49. This seems like an absolutely insane deal, and I may have ninja gifted the game to a few people yesterday as a result.

One thing of note, in the world gone mad with F2P games… this is a traditional subscription model. One interesting twist however is that there is something called an “Entry” subscription that is $12.99 a month and allows you to play a single character per server. In truth this tends to be the sweet spot for most people, as you really only need one character in the game period. The job system allows you to swap back and forth between many roles at will, allowing that one character to do damned near everything there is in the game. For example right now my character Belghast Sternblade is a 50 marauder, 50 gladiator, 50 archer, 50 lancer, 40 conjurer, 33 pugilist, 26 thaumaturge, 19 arcanist, 15 rogue and 35 miner. So for awhile I have considered dialing back to the one character account because the likelihood that I will ever care about another character on my server is supremely unlikely.

Better For Not Being Free To Play

Yesterday I had a bunch of folks say essentially the same thing. “I would be excited if this was free to play”, which frustrates me a little bit… but I can see saying it. There are some games that free to play would ruin, because in truth the “free” aspect of that name is generally a bold faced lie. Sure there is some stuff you can do for free, but at the end of the day everyone needs to make money to keep their doors open. As I have watched games go f2p, I have watched two things happen. Either they greatly slow down the pace of content releases, or they start erecting paid walls between you and that content. In truth ONE of the two has to happen or quite frankly the companies end up going out of business. The once lightning pace that content dropped for Rift players feels like it has slowed to a trickle. Then you have games like Star Wars the Old Republic where each and every thing in the game has some price tag associated with it.

The thing that has impressed me the most with Final Fantasy XIV is the pace at which they have released content over the last year, and more so than that the sheer volume of content that gets released. Roughly once a quarter they release a new major patch, and roughly once a month they release a minor patch… that is not just bug fixes but serious new system improvements. For example… these are the 2.35 patch notes… that are several pages long full of new systems and usability improvements. When they add content they add it not just for the highest end players, but they trickle it through all play styles. There are new max level dungeons, new raids, new crafting recipes and materials to go find, as well as a continuation of the really awesome storyline that is woven through the game. They seem to care about all of the different playstyles that make up their community, and are wanting to give each of them a reason to keep logging in and playing. Quite frankly… free to play and having to worry about getting enough money to survive would absolutely tarnish the spirit of this game and its community.

Cactuar Server Community

I figured this was a good bookend to the post I made above. Today I am going to talk about something probably strange to be thankful for, but I am going to anyways. I am extremely Thankful for the existence of the Cactuar Server community and how awesome the people there are. Once upon a time I was deeply connected to most of the server communities I was part of when I played games. I was a huge supporter of Gaheris in Dark Age of Camelot and Xegony in Everquest… so it was not strange when I landed in World of Warcraft to get involved with the Argent Dawn community as well. The problem is that Argent Dawn broke my heart, the longer I played on it. During those heady days after release we had a vibrant and thriving community, full of lots of interesting groups of people more than willing to work together towards larger goals. Argent Dawn was a hotbed of non-guild based raiding and it was awesome. Over time, especially with the release of Cataclysm… this all changed and the old guard of players that were community focused slowly drifted off into the nether.

It was hard to watch the Argent Dawn community fall apart, so as I played other games I really never took the time to dip my toes into the larger server. I stayed fairly insular and only really cared about my own guild and its well being. This changed this summer when I came back to Final Fantasy XIV. I think in part it is because when I first renewed my account, I was the only one to do so for a few weeks. This meant I no longer had my life support system of known good players to run dungeons with, and was forced to get out and meet people in the community. I am so thankful that I did because I have met some amazing people on this server and found it to be a throwback to a simpler time when people generally were nice to each other. I’ve embraced our community whole heartedly and while it is not terribly well used yet… I’ve built a nook for the community and will be trying to get folks using it over the coming weeks. So today I am thankful for finding the Cactuar community, because it has revitalized my faith that servers are a thing that can be super important to my game playing experience.

#FFXIV #Cactuar #MonthOfThankfulness