February 2016 - Page 4 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Hellfire and Gronnlings

February 18, 2016 by Belghast

Enter the Ramparts

Some things changed between yesterdays post and last nights festivities. Firstly I largely abandoned the notion of playing a Monk tank, because I got to thinking about what my actual “goal” was. That goal being helping Grace get a foothold on my server of choice, and prepping her for eventual raid shenanigans. My general theory was that still the fastest way to do that… would be to push hard on running the outland instances as a duo… with me largely just wrecking thinks with thunderclap. We however lacked the finesse to realize that it seems like the absolute best choice here is to hang out at Hellfire Ramparts until the person you are pulling is around level 65 and thus qualified to run all of the various Outland dungeon quests. Without a doubt, after having done all of the lower level Outland dungeons…. Hellfire is the fastest and in theory you could run it fast enough to push up another character extremely quickly. Sure it slowed down significantly after she reached sixty one, but I think the completion bonus would have been enough to keep pushing forward. Granted we probably would have hit the instance lockout of I believe 10 instances per hour… and had to take a brief break here or there. Still I firmly believe that had we actually stuck to this plan… Grace would have been in Wrath of the Lich King already instead of just on the cusp of it.

All told for the evening we managed to push her from 57 to 67 before I simply lost steam. With the recent illness, I have also largely weaned myself off of caffeine other than my morning coffee. This also seems to mean that my ability to stay awake and keep doing the same thing without getting drowsy… has also been adversely effected. I want to say we started up the dungeon train around 6pm and finished up around 8:30 so I guess 10 levels in that time is not that shabby. Essentially we ran normal and heroic versions of Hellfire Ramparts, Blood Furnace, Slave Pens, Underbogs, Mana Tombs, Auchenai Crypts, Sethek Halls, and finally Shadow Labyrinth. There was a period of time where we had to chain run Slave Pens for a bit… which is pretty much the point we realize that we should have been doing that with Hellfire Ramparts instead. Now we simply need to push a little harder to get out of Outland and into Northrend… though if WoWHead is correct we might not be able to do Utgarde Keep until 69. That is the big thing we are realizing through doing this is the strange quirks as to when you can zone into a specific dungeon. They don’t seem to make much sense, and it feels like at some point they just decided to pick random numbers that don’t actually relate to the quests you are receiving. Basically I am realizing that the older content has suffered greatly for all of the redistribution of crap that happened in Pandaria and Warlords.

Gronnback Riding

In other news I finally managed to get the Garrison mission that rewards the Coalfist Gronnling mount. I am honestly just not sure what I think about it… I mean ANY mount is a positive because it increases the total number of mounts I have and moves me closer to all of those achievements… but riding this thing…. it is ridiculously big. Warlords of Draenor has been the expansion of humongous mounts… from the Corehound mount from the 40 man Molten Core, to the Grinch Yeti… this is very much an expansion of irrational land yacht style mounts. As cool as I might think this mount is… I just cannot foresee myself ever riding it. When you ride around on it, the animation is in such a way as it feels like you are just about to fall off of the back… which strangely causes all sorts of anxiety in me. Regardless I am happy to knock another mount off the long list of mounts that I do not have. At some point I would love to get a group together and camp the various world mounts from Draenor, because as of right now I have ZERO of them.

Alas Troll Side

February 17, 2016 by Belghast

Changed Plans

Yesterday morning I had every intent of coming home last night and pretty much playing Street Fighter V the entire evening. During the day I did a bit of googling and found out that Game Stop apparently carries the Hori Fight Commander 4 controller for use with PS3/PS4/PC. The Game Stop website indicated that a store not terribly far from where I work had “limited” stock so I decided to pop by over lunch. I’ve been bitten by the whole limited stock thing before, but since this was a wild goose chase anyway… I didn’t really mind it much. The last time I was in a Game Stop was to snap up $5 physical copies of Wildstar to convert into play time and digital goodies. When I got there, it took me a bit to locate the controller… and they did in fact only have one. The goofy thing however is that it was being closed out for $20 unlike the almost $50 price tag on Amazon. This seems like some horrible timing, considering that Street Fighter V was just released… and that folks will be seeking out fight pads…. but whatever… their loss and my benefit. I have to comment that this controller is really damned comfortable… way more so than the default PS4 controller when it comes to dpad and face button feel. If you can find one anywhere near as cheaply as I picked mine up… I highly suggest grabbing it.

When I got home from work I hooked up the new controller and booted into the game, where I honestly was undecided what exactly to do. The game reports cross console play, but as of yet I have yet to find anything even closely resembling a friends list. There is the ability to create a custom lobby of sorts… and in theory that might be the compromise. I know you set up a Capcom ID when you first boot the game, and if anyone needs mine it is once again “belghast” but you will have to be smarter than me in figuring out how to actually friend someone because I could not. For the most part I started working my way through the story mode, which unlocks alternate costumes and color schemes for the various characters. I made it roughly halfway through this when my wife got home from work with a friend of ours… and the three of us decided that the priority was to go find food. After eating silly amounts of Mexican food, I never quite made it back upstairs once we got home. So in theory I will pick up tonight when I first get home and continue unlocking the various story modes. All in all I like what I have seen of the game… which admittedly is not a lot. The game feels more deliberate and less twitchy than many of the other Street Fighter entries, so if you are someone who cut your teeth on Marvel Vs Capcom… you might find the game a little sluggish. For me who started on the original Street Fighter, the less frenetic pace is a big plus.

The Mission

Last night once I got back from eating…. I was a man on a mission. The mission was actually something that evolved over the course of the day, but the goal was pretty simple. Help Grace catch up and level her druid on Argent Dawn. Originally my thought was…. lots and lots of Hellfire Ramparts because well… when I was dual boxing WoW this was pretty much the go to instance for me when it came to pouring on some quick levels. So the first step was to hop on my Mage and port her little druid to Pandaria so she could bind someplace with portals. From there we met up in Shattrath and I flew her on my Obsidian Nightwing over to Hellfire. The only problem… at level 50 she could not zone in… and this is the point at which I remembered that World of Warcraft instances have level caps. So we ported to Stormwind since apparently they closed off the Dark Portal… because our original thought was Sunken Temple. From there we flew over to Blackrock Depths because in theory she should have been able to pick up several of the quests. We proceeded to lay waste to the Dark Iron empire, and through the course of that one instance she managed to pick up three levels. When we got down to the Molten Core gate, on a whim we tried to zone in…. and sure enough she was able to. Thinking “surely a raid gives good experience” we proceeded to lay waste to the entire place, and I did some of my most careful pre-clearing of a zone ever… shockingly she did not die once. Bad news however… she made like 2/3rds of a level in there but did manage to pick up some “moggy bits”.

From there we did in fact head towards Sunken Temple… which is now a completely nerfed joke. Firstly we completely missed the entrance because apparently at some point they moved it up near the top of the sunken pyramid instead of deep down inside the base. We did two clears of the place, and I would say that both times it took well less than ten minutes to clear the entire place. They apparently jettisoned “Troll side” of Sunken Temple and all that is actually there is the Green Dragon Flight stuff upstairs. We also noticed that none of the events actually required you to do anything… like I remember summoning Hakkar required you to drag snakes into the braziers or something of that sort… but this was a simple “click the pile summon a boss” scenario. From there we flew over to Lower Blackrock Spire thinking she was right about the appropriate level, and on our first clear…. I screwed up and forgot to grab the pike… meaning we couldn’t actually summon the optional boss. So we went out, reset and I managed to get that sequence of events right the second time. All in all the night took a little less than three hours, and we got the druid a total of seven levels. In theory… dungeon finder might have gone quicker. I have another theory, that is my Panda Monk is just slightly lower level now than her Druid… so I am wondering if we would be better served with me going Tanky and her going Healy and getting pretty much instant queues all the way to 100. Regardless it was a fun night… there is something relaxing about curb stomping old content and venturing back down nostalgic avenues.

Relearning to Fight

February 16, 2016 by Belghast

Nostalgia vs Reality

I feel like I grew up at exactly the right time to be a fan of fighting games. For the most part these were what consumed my High School game playing years, well apart from a healthy dose of pen and paper role-playing and miniatures. I remember when the local Circle K got in the original Street Fighter back in middle school, my friend and I were completely enamored with it. Sure we had played fighting games before, but there was just something different about this one. Then when Street Fighter II started showing up in Arcades during early 1991… it was quite literally all we could talk about. Electronic Gaming Monthly had become our bible, and when it released full move sheets for each character, my friend Wade and I practically memorized them. We were set on course for a wild ride over the next several years, as a new game would come along and dethrone the previous king. I spent so much money in the arcades playing Street Fighter II derivatives, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, Mortal Kombat 1 and 2…. and finally culminating for me at least with Killer Instinct. I went off to college…. got poor… so I missed a whole generation of the early Tekken games, finally re-entering the fighting game world with Soul Edge in the basement of the university center. I stayed engaged for most of the original Playstation and for the first bit of the Playstation 2… and then thanks to my addiction to MMOs… checked out of the scene once more.

From that point onwards I have tried to poke my head in, every now and then… even purchasing the original release of Street Fighter IV on my fairly new Xbox 360. There is still very much a will in me to play these games… but I have had to realize that I am not nearly as good as my nostalgia believes me to be. Generally speaking I get my ass kicked and get it kicked extremely hard when I try and play anyone with much skill. I also have completely killed any of those key callouses that we used to need to keep from getting a nasty case of “raw thumb”. There is something about Street Fighter V however that has reinvigorated my desire to try and learn to play Fighting games once more. At almost 40… I simply don’t have the reflexes to ever really be “great”, not that I ever was in the first place. I could dominate an arcade cabinet for a few hours on a single quarter during my prime, but that part of me is just no longer around. Gone is most of that competitive spirit, and instead I just want to have some fun playing a fighting game. So much has been added to the genre since I last played, that it feels like I will be simply starting from scratch again. We will have to see how long the drive stays with me, but as of right now I have every intent of sitting at home tonight and trying to remember how to play a Street Fighter game. I ended up picking it up on PS4, so my PSN id is Belghast as is my Capcom fighter tag, though I don’t expect to play against anyone for a long while. I wish I had ordered that Hori Fight Commander in preparation of this…. because I am not sure if I can get used to hitting shoulder buttons for heavy attacks.

Goodbye Grahtwood

In other news… I have now finished the bulk of the quests in Grahtwood and am moving forward to Greenshade. There are I am certain a few points of interest that I did not take care of while I was in Grahtwood, but a lot of them are simply going to wait for another level… and a fresh infusion of gear. So many of the world bosses that I encountered were actually two separate boss mobs that interacted with each other. I can absolutely whittle down one world boss, by simply out surviving it and self healing…. but when it comes to two at the same time my damage output is lacking. So my hope is that when I hit Veteran 4 and can craft a whole new set of gear… that I will be able to return and kick their ass. Right now I am largely wearing a crafted set of Veteran 1 gear… and at this point it is starting to feel a bit dated. In other news I got this installed once again on my upstairs gaming rig, so my hope is to maybe start streaming some of my evening shenanigans. I am not sure what it is about playing Elder Scrolls Online, but it very much feels like returning home. Its like the world waited there quietly for me to return, and has thus far welcomed me back with open arms. If you ever played this game in the past… you might take the bit to patch up your client and give it a shot. I know a few people recently have restarted after not enjoying the beta testing at all… and are enjoying themselves. The game certainly feels more polished now than it was at launch.

Please Mind Spoilers

February 15, 2016 by Belghast

Spoiler Town

Last night was the second half premiere of Season 6 of the Walking Dead, and man…. was it a roller coaster. I am not however going to talk much about the show, because I don’t want to give anything away for those who have yet to see it. This seems like a sensible position, and it also tends to color my reactions on twitter… because just like Star Wars Episode VII I didn’t want to be the one to rob the magic of the moment from anyone. With a big show like this, there is always talk on Twitter about the inconsiderate nature of some, who start emoting about specific events on a show or a game immediately. For me personally… spoilers don’t mean that much and if I was going to watch a show or play a game in the first place… I am still going to play said game/show even if I know the entire plot. However I realize most people are not like this. There are a lot of folks who love the thrill of not knowing if our team of stalwart heroes will survive the episode, or if they really can get out of this jam. For the sake of the people who are not me, I’ve learned over the years how to share my excitement over something… and emote freely… without actually giving much detail away. So this largely involves focusing on my feelings, or the overall experience and not necessarily plot details. Once I got used to it, I honestly find it a much more enjoyable way to share my experiences.

Holy hell this episode….. so many ups and downs

— Bel@NotDeadYet (@belghast) February 15, 2016

The above tweet is an example of something I said last night while watching the show. It helped me to get the jitters out that were building up inside of me, but at the same time… gave away nothing. What Walking Dead episode doesn’t have a bunch of ups and downs… and while everyone who was also watching knew exactly what I was talking about… it didn’t do anything to spoil the folks who get the show two full hours behind. This isn’t just Walking Dead, or Game of Thrones, or whatever else happens to be the hot “It” property. I would love to see this same logic applied to almost anything. Games like Final Fantasy XIV, Elder Scrolls Online, and The Secret World all have deep story content… that involves the same sort of ups and downs and plot twists you might expect from a novel. In the guilds I have been responsible for, I have always tried to stress keeping guild chat as a spoiler free place so nobody had to accidentally log in and get all of that build up spoiled. Some however are always careless, and while you can scold someone…. once the spoiler is in an open channel it is impossible to remove. Mostly what I am asking for is for folks to be more considerate about the shared space we have be it Twitter or the chat channels in games themselves. It is lovely that you don’t mind spoilers…. because largely I am in the same camp as you… but be thoughtful of the folks who really do. Is your few minutes of excitement really worth ruining someone else’s entire experience?

RWBY Season 3

Another event from yesterday that could have been spoilerific… was the public release of the final episode of RWBY Season 3. There is so much amazing stuff happening in this show right now… and a lot of stuff that also makes me super sad inside. For similar reasons to Walking Dead, I am not going to go into a bunch of detail since I know folks are still catching up. Over the last few weeks I have gone through this interesting evolution of not actually knowing what RWBY was really, to getting interested… to binge watching my way through the entire series run to this point. This means that I actually got to watch the last three episodes with the rest of the world as they were publicly released around noon on Sunday. Now for sponsors they get access to the show on Saturday, and I honestly expect that come next season I will be counting myself among this number. It isn’t often that I find something that I literally want to tell people to stop everything they are doing and “watch this thing now”, but with RWBY it definitely falls into that category. There is just so much to love here, that it is going to be hard to cram it into a blog post. Basically RWBY takes all of the parts of Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Naruto that I truly love…. and gets rid of all of the parts that annoy the fuck out of me. On top of that… it is populated with tons of awesome women characters…. who are not simply there for gratuitous eye candy.

There are a lot of aspects of Anime that are just lost on me, mostly because I don’t understand the Japanese Cultural references… or at least not all of them. I’ve called RWBY an American Anime… but in truth it is more than that… it is a global internet Anime because in truth… the references and reactions that it draws upon could be understood by pretty much ANYONE using the internet and social media. The most impressive thing about this show is how watching it compressed like this… has made me realize just how damned impressive the improvement from season to season has been. The first season… while really good… was cludgy as hell, and it quite literally felt like they were using poser to do this (which they were). From that point on however… they started to master the tools and by season 2 it was already feeling more like traditional animation. Season 3 however skyrocketed that quality bar, and I would pretty much put the show up against anything in the air. I really look forward to seeing just how much improved Season 4, because they are teetering on that edge of what traditional animation can provide…. but with motion capture and 2D rendering. If you are already indoctrinated into RWBY, we need to talk… because so much shit is going on. If you are not however… I highly suggest you catch up… this playlist has through S3 E6 but it is the best playlist I was able to find on YouTube. Once you are hooked then it is time to go to the actual source and the Rooster Teeth RWBY page. Most of the episodes are 12-16 minutes long, and it is well worth your time even if you squeeze them in between other activities.