Last night was the tale of me doing a bunch of things to avoid thinking about the fact that I was not yet playing Fallout 4. Throughout the day people were unlocking it through either legitimate means of happening to be in the right time zone… or through some chicanery. If you have access to a VPN tool, you can in theory make your system look like it is from a time zone where a game has already unlocked. This means however that you have to stay connected to said VPN the entirety of your time playing the game… either that or go completely offline. Thusfar Steam seems to have turned a blind eye to this practice but my fear is that someday… they won’t. I ultimately value my Steam account far too much to risk losing it just to play a game a few hours early. So as a result I was like the rest of the nation waiting on midnight eastern time for the game to unlock here. The problem is when you want to be playing one thing… and can’t… nothing else really seems that much fun.
I instead decided to work on some things that I had been meaning to do. Since the BlizzCon madness of the weekend I had been poking my head into Diablo 3 periodically, and before the season 4 crunch had played out for us… I managed to get a Demon Hunter within a stones throw of 70. In fact I was sitting at 68… which ironically is exactly the point at which I got my non-seasonal Monk. I oped to work on grinding out that last little bit so that I could at least say that I finished both the Warrior and Demon Hunter during the season. While I had some fun with the Hunter, I doubt I will play one again because in truth… it really just is not my style. My final play style centered around using whatever ability generated a ton of hatred… and then using that to fuel the fan of knives attack and rapid fire, and through a combination of those two I could pretty much burn down anything. I dinged 70, crafted a ton of gear…. and now my hunter is probably going to sit in this state for eternity. At some point I would really like to finish up the Monk just so I can check that one off the list. That leaves only the Wizard that I have never gotten close to capping.
Pre-loading is a Lie
The tale around Fallout 4 is a little bittersweet for me. Months ago I was happy as hell to have managed to get one of the rare elusive Pip-boy edition pre-orders. The problem being… it was silly expensive, but was going to be a one time only type thing. I have long wished I had gotten the bobble head version of the Fallout 3 collectors edition with the metal lunchbox. Fallout is one of those franchises that really gets me as a player… and since saving my pennies in college to buy the first one at Wal-mart… it has been one of those games that will just consume all of my time for a period of months. The problem being… in the meantime we have had a whole slew of unexpected expenses, not the least of which is the home renovation that we are going through. As such I ended up doing the adult thing… cancelling my Pip-boy pre-order and going with the significantly cheaper Steam version of the game. The positive is however that I was able to pre-load the game… and in theory play it last night.
I say “in theory” because while I struggled to stay awake until 11 pm central… when I finally was able to hit play a whole other process started of “unpacking” the game. At times this said it was only 13 minutes away… at other times 4 hours… because in truth the system had no clue how long this would actually take. After about ten minutes the progress bar was less than an eighth of the way through so I finally gave up and went on to bed. This morning however I got in and played through the first little bit of the game allowing me to create a character and at least get my family into the vault. This game is so damned pretty… but more than that the motion and movement just feels better. One of the many things I did last night to pass the time was to start a new game of Fallout New Vegas… and I had forgotten how much NOT a shooter that game was. I still love it immensely but the movement and motion felt pretty damned stilted. This however controls beautifully, and I was shocked to see my fairly old machine being able to run it on what it suggested as Ultra High. We will see just how well that actually works once we leave the vault and venture out into the world. But alas that will have to wait until after work tonight.
During the midst of the BlizzCon festivities I tweeted the above statement… and at the time I thought this would be a brilliant idea. BlizzCon brings up feelings in me at least that I didn’t even realize were still there about a game I have not been actively playing for six months. So yeah… it seemed like if they would just automagically make it so everyone can log in and play during BlizzCon and the two weeks after… they would probably re-hook a lot of players on the game or at least get them to stick around for a few months. The problem being… two weeks is probably long enough to make someone come to their senses. I phrase it like that because I am going through a bout of momentary insanity myself. Every instinct in my body tells me that I really want to play some World of Warcraft, which is odd because nothing really seemed that amazing while the presentations were going on. There is just something about the BlizzCon buzz that is real and tangible and makes you want to sift through your past characters and revisit old haunts that you had long forgotten.
I am having these desires to log in and run Icecrown Citadel or Naxxramas… or even Ulduar. Basically this is 100% nostalgia attacking me and making me want to go experience what I considered to be the best era of the game. I am fighting the urge with every fiber of my being because I know as soon as Tuesday happens… I will be devoting my life to Fallout… and thinking “Warcraft who?”. I know I could log in and play sub level 20 characters, and I have considered that… but have not been certain if that would make the desire better or just worse. The problem is… I don’t REALLY want to play World of Warcraft… I want to play the game circa 2009 when we were still in love with the Wrath of the Lich King patch cycle. Some of the Legion content seems like it could be really cool, and I do hope with every fiber of my being I somehow find my way into Beta, but I know all that waits for me on the live game is the same stuff that lead me to finally cancel my account again. Yes I am rationalizing the hell out of this because I am just trying to hold out until I am safely in a Vault Wednesday.
Closer to Sleeper
The above image was me yesterday morning while I wrapped up the AggroChat podcast and made my own blog post, waiting and hoping and praying to see a Warsat drop. Part of the time I spent trying to make Destiny Event Tracker work… which it does… but it feels like there is a paragraph of explanation text that needs to go with it that simply does not exist. It seems like this is a timer that shows when an event MAY spawn, and some of the spawn zones are not exactly active. For example I really do think that the Warsat simply no longer drops in Skywatch because of all of the other events that are happening there now. I waited that timer out for a significant amount of time and never saw one. However once I switched over to checking the Mothyard on earth, aka the location in the above image… I quickly got a Warsat and was able to move on. Similarly quickly I was able to get both the Mars and Moon Warsat drops which were pretty much accurate according to the timers listed above. That only left the archives mission on Venus, which I know I MUST have done at some point…. but damned if I can remember doing it at any point in the past. Maybe there is a special version if you are on the sleeper stimulant quest chain, but I do not remember something quite like that.
I have now finished powering up the Ikelos core, and have turned it in to the Gunsmith. In theory tomorrow with the reset he should offer me a new quest to go do a 280 light version of the Saber-2 strike. If I can cobble together a group for that, I should be able to loot the sleeper stimulant frame, which at least based on what I am reading will turn in at the Gunsmith for my finished 290 Sleeper Stimulant heavy pulse rifle. This will be the first of the exotic weapon quests that I have really completed… not counting the one you get from the gunsmith at rank 4. It definitely feels less arbitrary than the exotic bounties used to in year one. In all of the bounties I completed I only ever got the bounty for the last word. This at least gives me a ladder that I can climb, with more importantly a starting rung of that ladder that is clear…. well clear based on using external sources. I am not sure how the hell people figured these things out the first time… it seems like pure madness since the game doesn’t really give you much information to go on. I guess Bungie is accounting for the fact that the internet and YouTube is pretty much ubiquitous and someone somewhere would upload a video on how to do pretty much everything you can think of. I still at some point need to get the Cult Ghost from Paradox so I can eventually get No Time to Explain. Since my hunter is my Future War Cult devotee, I am thinking maybe I should try for it on them because at this point they should have all of the faction needed to complete the quest.
Yesterday was N7 day and what I can only imagine as reapers… continued to dismantle my house. What I mean by that is that this week contractors have been working on siding our house and other little home improvement things. Friday during the day and all day Saturday I have had to listen to them tearing parts of the exterior of my house off, and sawing bits to put back in their place. I have a headache that is completely insane and I think its simply from all the noise over the last few days. Another thing that happened yesterday was the ExtraLife Marathon, and at one point we had these grand plans to try and do it as AggroChat. I am extremely glad those plans fell through because with the contractors traipsing in and out of my house there would have simply been no way I could have done that yesterday. I did however get to hang out a bit with Liore on her stream, and my hope was that anyone who would have supported me would end up supporting her. Last I heard she raised something like $2200 which is pretty damned awesome!
Seeking Stimulant
This week once again has been largely devoted to me playing Destiny. As I had hoped it does in fact seem like the Sleeper Stimulant quest is going to be reappearing about once a month. I managed to complete the First Firewall and the follow up Shadow Call missions that are the ones that were time sensitive. Shadow Call in itself was pretty damned insane because it is a mission where you have to reach the top of a tower in three minutes. This tower is full of tons of Taken Fallen mobs, and essentially you don’t have time to fight ANY of it. You need to run past as best you can, and the only thing I ultimately took out were the blight orbs that robbed me of my ability to jump. When you get to the top you have to take down three Wizards all within the original time limit. It took me about eight tries to get to the top of the tower… but when I finally did I was able to take down the mobs without much issue. Now I am just left with the task of gathering up all of the elements required to recharge the Ikelos fusion core. The problem I am having is of course the Warsats… I spent most of last night waiting on Earth in the supposed area where the Warsat spawns. I waited through three different blights and did not see any Warsats at all during that process, so I am wondering if for some reason they have moved where the Warsat drops. I am getting conflicting reports of it happening in the Mothyards and Skywatch… which while next to each other are only connected by a series of tunnels that makes them hard to move between.
The other big thing I worked on this week was my Warlock, and I have managed to get him up to level 30. Doing the level 20 strikes I thought initially would be a great way to level, but for some reason I seem to only get the Omniguul one which is freaking annoying. I have a few more of those Red Bull experience stimulant things… and I plan on chain running some strikes with them up in the hopes of maximizing the experience gain. I still need to finish up the Black Garden quest, because ultimately when I am on I spend more time faffing about in patrol missions than I actually do in directed combat. I have a slew of quests that the various folks on the tower have given me as well that I should probably finish up. I am not sure what I have this drive to get the Warlock to 40 and geared, but in theory I guess I just want one of each. In an MMO it always bugs me when I get exclusive gear for a specific class but cant use it… and that has always been my strongest drive to level said class… because I knew I had it waiting on me when I got to level. I have most of a level 40 gear set waiting in my bank, and I am amped to be able to get the Warlock up to use it.
Halo: Combat Evolved
Another side project this week has been to go through and play the original Halo: Combat Evolved, or at least start it. The original Xbox and honestly the GameCube as well are like the biggest voids in my gaming history. They happened at a time when I was largely in an Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot shaped hole. As a result I never got to play Halo other than the pretty lousy PC port, and I never really caught back up when I finally got an Xbox 360. In my travels I have picked up copies of the Anniversary edition of Halo for 360, as well as 2, 3, and 4 and plan on playing through them at some point. What ended up peaking my interests is the fact that apparently on of the elder races in Halo were the Ecumene, which during the Book of Sorrows in Destiny you find out was a race destroyed by the Hive. So in theory at least it seems like the Destiny universe is the “future” of the Halo universe, or at least Halo is a universe that exists before the coming of the Traveler and the dawning of the golden age. I am not exactly sure why I am so fascinated with the lore of Destiny, but I guess in a way it reminds me a lot of the universe of Dune. Super complex… but you also have to dig hard to find that connective tissue that brings everything together.
I have to say that so far Combat Evolved holds up pretty solidly. My only real complaint is that I cannot actually remap my controls. You can choose from one of many presets, but you can’t actually swap around the buttons. If I had my druthers I would map things to match Destiny more closely… but I did manage to find a set that is “close enough” for me not to instinctively do anything stupid. I am mostly wanting to know the story of the Halo universe, so that I can maybe glean more information about the Destiny universe. Also I seem to be on an FPS kick so playing another one just seems to be in the cards. I am honestly considering playing Fallout 4 on the PC with an Xbox 360 controller just to continue this pattern. I do at some point need to get back into the swing of playing FPS on PC with the mouse and keyboard because I absolutely intend to play Overwatch that way.
Heroes of the Storm
As I mentioned briefly above… I ended up playing a bunch of matches with Liore and Elly yesterday during their Extra Life stream. It had been a really really long time since I had played any Heroes, more than likely not much since the game officially launched awhile back and reset. They have really added a bunch of nifty stuff, and I noticed that one of my previously “cool” but largely just a recolor skins.. has turned into this elaborate Diablo Tyrael thing which I absolutely approve of. Unfortunately while playing I just saw a bunch of skins that I really want to get… like Marshall Raynor… and Judgement Uther. Later last night I poked my head in again, this time alone and noticed that I had more than enough gold to purchase Uther, which is one of those characters that I have enjoyed on free weeks, but never actually picked up. I have also heard that Rehgar is equally enjoyable in the melee support role, but not really played him either. I ended up winning a game as Uther which completed a quest. I guess at some point they backed away from the concept that you could not complete quests in bots only games, which makes me happy because I can actually pop in and get stuff done on days that I don’t feel like dealing with other players. This is still a really fun game, and probably the only MOBA that I would actually play by myself and solo queue. Funny how making chat option improves my experience, the only negative is that you always seem to have one player that is off by themselves and not really paying attention to what the team is doing.
Rift
I also popped my head into Rift for a bit while we podcast last night, and continued to work on my primalist. At this point I am level 14 and I feel like I am starting to wind down the content in Silverwood. I guess I am just a die hard Defiant… because I just don’t have near as much fun when I am playing Guardian side. I liked the idea of a Dwarven Primalist, but man do I wish I had the option of choosing to play the Defiant content instead. I mean I know you can race change, but it simply was not worth it for me to roll a Defiant and then race change to Dwarf. I just kinda wish that races were independent of the path you choose to take faction wise… since the faction as fiction patch made all of that really a personal preference not a hard line. I mean Freemarch has all sorts of awesome Undead that you get to fight… and what does Silverwood have? Goblins… Fae… and more Elves… just not nearly as cool on the “fun to slaughter” meter. Complaints aside I am continuing to progress but not really playing that often. This is one of those games that I keep returning to when I want some low key activity, and I don’t feel like I have time to get into something more serious. I guess I play Rift much the same way as a lot of people play Guild Wars 2. Get in, do a few things… and get right back out.
Last week I had this grand plan of hanging out at home and watching BlizzCon 2015, so I took the day off work. Then as we got closer to the day, it suddenly filled up with other things I needed to do. Our house looked like madness yesterday with three vehicles of the contractors working on the siding and minor renovations, and another truck for the heating and air company. All of this while my wife and I were being forced to park in the next door neighbors driveway. Thankfully they were not here the last few days, otherwise I have no clue what we would be doing for parking. I am sure the neighbors are wondering what manner of insanity we are up to… as at one point yesterday we had a guy stop and gawk for a few minutes without asking anything. I guess that is the benefit of not actually knowing half of your neighbors is that you don’t have to make the same small talk over and over when something like this happens. This morning in honor of BlizzCon however I am going to talk about the things that interested me.
Diablo 3
I am leading off what was I originally thought going to be the big disappointment of the day. Blizzard did what they always do and rolled out everything that was new and shiny in their opening ceremony. The problem being… they said absolutely nothing about Diablo 3 which has turned out to be probably the game in their lineup that I care the most about. I had hoped they would announce another expansion this year, but alas that didn’t happen. However I am completely fine with this because the Diablo 3 panel later in the evening pretty much showed me that the team is quietly doing awesome stuff, in spite of apparently being ignored by Blizzard as a whole. The presentation was essentially a rapid fire series of announcements of new features. The one nearest and dearest to my heart surrounds the season play functionality. They have essentially sorted out that they are going to make seasons three months long, meaning at the end of that three months there will be new content leading into the next season. They said this gives players enough time to really deeply experience it… and also fits players like myself that swoop in… play enough to get the easy rewards and stop playing for a bit.
The biggest announcement as far as I am concerned is the “Rebirth” feature, which will allow you to essentially reboot a previous character and turn it into a new seasonal character. All of the gear that was on the character gets mailed to the account, and that character gets dialed back to level 1… but keeps achievements, hours played etc. It sounded like maybe there would be a special set of achievements for reboots, but essentially it solves the problem I always have of feeling like I have to create something brand new to be able to play along in the season again. They are also adding additional stash space… and the ability to earn slots by completing the seasonal journey on a character, up to 10 slots total. This all honestly would have been enough for me, but they are revising the buff system, changing the way damage is shown… adding a whole item set dungeon functionality where specific dungeons will require you have an item set equipped and then have challenges based on the strength of that set. On top of all of this… new zone and some expanded areas which makes 2.4 pretty damned awesome and it apparently goes up on the PTR next week.
Heroes of the Storm
The highlight of the Heroes discussion is the fact that we are getting Genn Greymane as a playable champion. This is absolutely hands down my favorite Alliance leader… that isn’t given the respect of having his own damned town to govern. I am still a little sore that Gilneas never became someplace we could actually use as a capitol city. I would seriously bank in that town all of the damned time if they allowed me to. All the same however it is awesome to have him as a champion and it looks like the gameplay is going to be based around changing in and out of Worgen form. The other interesting tidbit is that it seems like they are introducing ARAM for Heroes of the Storm. The details were pretty scant and I have not watched any of the panels for Heroes yet… but from the sounds of it, the mode seemed to put a random group of champions against another random group of champions just like “All Random All Middle” mode in League of Legends.
I am honestly all about that because ARAM is probably my favorite mode to play in League. Mostly because it takes all of the pressure off in that if you are getting randomly assigned a champion… no one can complain too much about you not being able to play it terribly well. I’ve found it a great way to get my feet wet and get used to how a champion performs under actual combat situations. The other interesting thing from the show was the introduction of Cho’Gall the two headed ogre. This is a champion that is literally played by two different players. I am assuming that one controls the movement and the other controls the combat at least to some extent. Everyone with a BlizzCon virtual ticket will be getting it added to their account… and then they can play matches with other players to pass the character on. After two matches a player will earn their own copy of Cho’gall and after I think they said four matches the original player gets a sack of gold for spreading the madness. It sounds cool and it is awesome to see this game thriving.
Hearthstone
The highlight of this announcement was awesome new Brann Bronzebeard artwork. Hearthstone is one of those games that I like, but rarely actually boot up to play. I am not sure what it is about the game, but essentially I keep playing the same deck over and over without changing it up much. It is like this game requires too much of me to actually get in and sort out the decks I might want to build. I am happy that it seems to be doing well, and I am happy that it has a meta that is very much alive. That said I felt generally meh when listening to them talk about the gameplay. I feel like maybe if it ran for shit on my iPad I would play it more, but I struggle with this game in the same way that I struggle with so many mobile games. It requires too much of me to pop into it while waiting on something… but it just isn’t sticky enough to make me choose to play it over literally any other game I have installed on my computer or consoles. There just is rarely ever a situation where I am going to pick this over an MMO or a single player game experience. I have so many other games to play… and honestly most of the time too damned many. The hearthstone fans seemed to be really happy, so I am never going to rain on their parade with my own “meh”.
Overwatch
I won’t lie the highlight of the Overwatch presentation for me was seeing just how awesome the Mercy Wings are in Diablo 3. Other than that I loved the Mei reveal, because she was freaking adorable… and also looked like a really fun zone control champion to play. Similarly I thought D.Va was a pretty cool concept, but I doubt I could ever see myself playing her. The boot up sequence of her HUD was awesome, in that it showed a cute bunny icon while it was loading. I really don’t care for the design of her Mech, which is my main problem with her as a champion. There is just something wrong looking about it… I get they were going for a jet with legs after the reboot that allows her to fly… but a Guardian Mode Veritech is a better version of what they were trying to accomplish. Though I think the design they came up with was largely a compromise to save space on the screen.
I have to admit I was largely tempted when they announced this would be coming to PS4. The problem there is that the Xbox and PS4 Blizard games are disconnected from Battle.net. That is my biggest problem with playing Diablo 3 on the PS4 is that I am stuck with only having access to my PSN friends… which are in no way as long of a list of Blizzard fans as the Battle.net account. So even though I am going through a bit of a renaissance of console gaming… I am ultimately going to go with the mouse and keyboard of the PC and essentially have to reacquaint myself with that sort of game play. I agree with Kodra in his belief that playing with a controller on a PC is a trap when it comes to a competitive FPS. There are times I have even considered picking up a XIM4 for my PS4 so I have the option of playing with a keyboard and mouse there as well. The PS4 natively supports USB and Bluetooth keyboards and mice… but very few games actually support that. Mostly right now I just want to get into the Overwatch beta… and I am hoping that will be a thing that happens soon.
Warcraft Movie
I have to admit on this one that before this trailer I had not really given much of a shit about the Warcraft movie. But man… those feels while I watched this. I have just been burned in the past when a franchise that I love was turned into a movie… at least from the gaming side of things. Does anyone remember how horrible the Dungeons and Dragons movie was? or Doom? This however…. looks like it is going to be a really good movie and revitalize the Warcraft franchise for a whole new generation. Maybe it is just the hype I am feeling about Star Wars spilling over into Warcraft… but I am feeling like now is the time to set aside old grudges and just embrace any fandom wholeheartedly. Both Durotar and Lothar were awesome in the trailer, and I think they were probably right to make this a Warcraft movie… and not a World of Warcraft movie. My hope is that along with this we maybe see a rebooted version of the original Warcraft RTS franchise. In any case regardless I know what I will be doing next June… sitting in the theater and watching this movie.
Legion Expansion
Now we finally get to the low point of Blizzcon… which I guess tells you how far my tastes have changed. I was completely amped about most of the above announcements other than maybe Hearthstone. I wholeheartedly love Blizzard games… but I have just reached the point where World of Warcraft is my least favorite of them. The cinematic trailer was nice… but I honestly had hoped that maybe we would have seen Varian die during it… or at least I thought that was what we were going to see for a bit. For years Varian was supposed to be “our thrall” but he has always been this paper thin super one dimensional character. His son on the other hand… Anduin has gone through some actually interesting changes especially during Pandaria. So my hope was that we would see Varian dying during this siege and passing the banner to his son who is more than likely far more capable a leader. The trailer also gave me hope that maybe just maybe they would finally be retiring the tired old shtick of Alliance versus Horde and giving us the ability to play with friends from both factions. Look… it is a dream that I am not going to let go of ever… I hate faction bullshit.
For the most part there is a lot of interesting things at work here… but I lack the faith that they are going to be carried out in a fashion I am going to like. It is my honest hope that I get into the beta testing process so I can see if I like it or not. I big nail in the coffin for Warlords was how badly they made the Deathknights feel… so I guess there are a lot of things that sound good on paper but never quite work right when you put them into practice. I am absolutely willing to give this game a shot, but I want to know that I will actually like it before I plunk down that pre-order. The new zones do look absoultely amazing however. They are pushing this aging engine for every ounce of oomph that it can muster, and I love that. The way WoW looks right now, reminds me of the way late in a generation console games look… when they have really figured out how to make the most of the resources they have to work with. This expansion is a bunch of really good ideas, that just don’t seem to be connected by enough tissue to hold them together. My disappointment largely was that the game didn’t really give me that moment of “fuck yeah!” that I have had in previous expansions. It did however give me a lot of moments of “that sounds cool”, especially when it comes to the non-linear leveling process for the new content. Unfortunately that same level scaling won’t apply to the rest of the world… so we are again creating this walled garden of “good” content and everything older will feel like crap as a result.
