February 2016 - Page 5 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Magical Moose

February 14, 2016 by Belghast

Luck and Friendship

Over in World of Warcraft, there has been an item that has lovingly started to be referred to as the Friendship Moose…. and there are good reasons behind it. The mount itself is pretty damned majestic, and makes me feel like Santa Claus when I ride it. It comes from getting the Ahead of the Curve achievement for Heroic Archimonde…. well in truth Archi drops a quest but same basic difference. The reason why it has become known as the friendship moose is the fact that there have been an extremely large number of people in the WoW Community who are going out of their way to try and get people the mount. To the best of my knowledge it was originally @Thomicks that started the #FriendshipMoose hashtag, and then it kinda just went out of control from there. I know @Zelse007 for example has been really knocking these out and as of last night he has gotten 639 Folks their moose. I won’t lie that the thought of getting a spiffy mount is partially what drove me back into raiding in World of Warcraft recently, but more than anything it was to be able to hang out with Horde friends that I had never really raided with. Quite honestly I never expected to get the Reins of the Grove Warden.

The thing is… I have some really amazing friends. Earlier in the week I was pinged by Damai to see if I wanted to join in with his raid for a farm run. The plan was to clear a bunch of bosses on Thursday and then pop in really quickly early in the evening on Saturday and take down Archimonde. Generally speaking I cannot participate in this raid because it happens to coincide almost exactly with our podcast recording session. However this time they planned on being in and out of the raid roughly two hours before our podcast was set to go. I ultimately had to beg off on Thursday, because I kept going into uncontrollable coughing fits, but I was however able to attend yesterday…. which was good enough to get me a moose. I was carried extremely hard last night, the above image is of me being the only dead member of the raid…. from when I tried to run my fixate to the edge and happened to run right in between two folks firing their lasers. Not only did I walk away with a moose but I also picked up a couple of sweet upgrades, one of which is REALLY amazing for my special snowflake Gladiator spec [ Worldbreaker’s Resolve, World Ender’s Gorget]. I gotta say I am happy beyond reason… because I absolutely thought this was far beyond my reach. I want to give a special shout out to Damai, Errya, Pugnodeum, and the rest of the Praetorian Guard crew for dragging my but along.

No AggroChat

So now that the warm and fuzzy bits are out of the way… I have to tell you that right now I am feeling like a complete and total failure. Sure being the only person to die on Archimonde should have done that already, but this is something different. We’ve been recording AggroChat for a little over two years now I believe, and during that time we have missed two episodes. This week being the second episode, and for the most part…. this time is completely because of me. While raiding last night, I was on listen only mode because I quite honestly had no voice to talk with. Throughout the day yesterday, as it went on my voice kept getting weaker and weaker until the point where I simply became a squeaky whisper. On top of this… Tam is out of pocket this week, Grace is out of pocket this week… and yesterday was Kodra’s birthday… leaving it up to Thalen and Ashgar to hold up an entire show. As a result throughout the day we simply decided to call it, and I really hate the fact that it was my fault for doing just that. This crud that I have picked up is driving me insane… I am so ready to be “better” but as the weeks go by it keeps dragging on.

I know last week when I went ahead and recorded… it was probably a bit of a set back. Because prior to last weeks show I was feeling a bit better…. and then afterwards I was pretty much dead to the world for a few days. What is killing me the most is that when I am in this condition I just don’t want to do much of anything. As a result I have been focused heavily on Elder Scrolls Online, which is a game that I am largely playing by myself. Sure there are a handful of awesome people playing with me like Ammo and Sol, but even then my interaction is mostly that of answering the sort of questions that new players have…. and not so much active grouping. I can zone out and zone into the storyline… and as a result I am probably enjoying it more than I have since I first played alpha. Part of me wants to at least push through the rest of the Aldmeri Dominion content before resigning the game to the back burner again. Another big thing that I want to do at some point is pick up where I left off in SWTOR, and play through the Reven content that I never actually got around to doing. I have this feeling at least in the near future that I am going to be focused on story games, less than I am going to be on raiding and grouping activities. The Final Fantasy XIV 3.2 patch might change that, and in part I hope it does…. because I would love to feel the drive to play that game again. However in the meantime I am going to quietly be piddling over here without my voice.

Team Akatosh

February 13, 2016 by Belghast

Psijic Order

Coming back to The Elder Scrolls Online has been this strange homecoming for me, in part because this is one of those games that I was part of something bigger than myself. Everyone has that one world that they would love to see done up as an MMO. It might be something from fiction like the setting of the Dune series, or something from a movie like Stargate…. but everyone I have ever known seems to have that one world that they would love to play in. For me that world was Tamriel, because since Daggerfall I have been a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series of games. Granted I don’t date back nearly as far as some folks, but it is safe to say that I have spent multiple thousands of hours roaming aimlessly in the various Bethesda games. On February 26th of 2013 I got the email that I had been longing to see since I first began trying to imagine other worlds to make these sort of games from. I am not sure if I was in the literal first wave of invites, but I was there pretty early and that first four hour testing session went by so insanely fast. I was completely hooked, and bursting with so much to talk about…. knowing that I would have to swallow it down because I wanted to do my best to honor not only the NDA but also the testing process. This time I had one of my best friends reputation riding on the line, because not only did he get me in the testing process… but he was also responsible for building a lot of the quests I was experiencing.

During the early days they fired up beta testing servers, and assigned different people to different teams based on specific traits about them. I still for the life of me have no clue what Team Akatosh was, or what demographic we happened to represent. It was pretty early discovered that the Mara team were made up of largely female gamers, and then there was I believe Stendarr that was largely made up of ESO purists. Collectively we became known as the Psijic Order once the tests opened up further and started letting in new people. We were essentially the “first wave” or as some have referred to it the “The 0.016% ” but I don’t even have a clue if that figure is correct or where it even came from. I ground the hell out of this game, and never missed a single test that I can recall… and in every single case until the very end of the testing process… the tests were specific times. I gleefully bug noted every single thing that I saw, and at one point it got back to me that Ashgar and myself were apparently in the top 1% of bug reporters…. something I am admittedly a little proud of. The problem being that I got into testing in February of 2013… and the game launched in April of 2014… which means I feverishly played it as a second job looking for flaws to report for roughly a year before the game actually launched. When it launched… based on the videos on my YouTube channel I streamed at least 45 hours of it. I had simply burnt myself out on the game because I focused on it so seriously.

Brackenleaf’s Briars

The awesome thing about coming back is that I am remembering the way I loved the game roughly three years ago when I first got that beta invite. Things feel fresh and new, and the pace is perfect for me. I can meander around aimlessly but still feel like I accomplished something at the end of the night. What is cool is the fact that the Psijic Order still apparently exists, in both the private area on the official forums, and the guild that we formed on launch. Over the last few days I have caught up with a few of these folks and it has been pretty cool knowing that someone stayed. While at launch we had around 150 people… until the other day there were only one or two of those that still poked their head in every now and then. Since then I have gotten Ammo and Solaria into the game, and they seem to be enjoying it. I have another friend that says he purchased it, since apparently you can now find it for around $20 and I will be meeting up with him to get a guild invite as well. Last night I did a significant amount of house cleaning, namely that I demoted everyone to recruit and removed bank access, largely just as a safety precaution since 90% of the folks are not active. The idea is as folks show up again, I will fix their permissions, but that allows those of us who are there to feel more safe sharing items in the guild bank.

I realize the Aldmeri Dominion quests were the last to go into the game… and that when they were created it was a bit of an all hands on deck crunch time. That said they are some really amazing quests. There is a quest sequence that deals with Brackenleaf a giant living tree…. that looks suspiciously like the Great Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time. The quest sequence involves protecting the tree from an enemy known as “The Outsider” and has some interesting plot points. I have to say…. I have always loved the Bosmer and if I was going to be an elf I think that is absolutely who I would be. I could absolutely live by the Green Pact, and eat nothing by tasty tasty animals. Also really enjoying the interaction with the Bosmer leader of Elder Root and the haughty Altmer that he is forced to deal with. I think the overall quest arc of Grahtwood is going to be pretty great to experience, so looking forward to pushing that forward a bit more. As of last night I dinged Veteran Rank 3, and I have an unknown number of champion points. I decided to go ahead and subscribe, and with that came a 10% experience boost… that was honestly immediately noticeable. Namely it was noticeable on the Veteran Rank progression, and I doubt I would have hit Rank 3 last night were it not for the boost. Essentially I mulled over the whole sub thing for a bit… and decided that the same amount of money could either go to outright buying some expansions… or go to three months of subscription and at the same time give me 4500 in currency to spend elsewhere. For the time being I went with the sub option because it just made more sense.

Old-Lady Suit

February 12, 2016 by Belghast

Best Intentions

I had psyched myself up yesterday to go off and do some raiding last night. Some friends of friends had graciously offered to drag me along with them for the first part of Heroic Hellfire Citadel. I thought to myself that this was an excellent opportunity, that could lead to gear and maybe even a moose at some point, so even though they raid PST, I figured I would make the good college try. The problem being my body is still conspiring against me. This is officially the sickest I have been in years, as we are now going on thirteen days for this crud. Admittedly my wife had something super similar weeks before we went to PAX and while she got over the bulk of it… almost a month later she still has the constant cough. The thing that is killing me at the moment is the sore throat, only exacerbated by the constant body shaking coughing fits and drainage. So by the time the raid was starting around 9:30 my time…. I was already taking NyQuil and planning to slip into bed. I politely begged off as best I could and if any of them are reading today… I sincerely thank them for the opportunity. One which I kinda hope will still be available when I am not feeling like shit.

The problem I am in with Belghast is the fact that my item level is artificially low, because there are four pieces of gear that I simply cannot afford to get rid of. I have the four piece normal Blackrock Foundry set, and every time I try and sim out swapping out of it for higher item level gear… it is a major dps loss. The problem being that I am playing a special snowflake class that will be going away in Legion. Gladiator just works strangely, and it feels like Blizzard inadvertently gave use the most perfect class set ever. The two piece bonus is “Shield Slam has a 8% Chance to Automatically Cast Shield Charge” which is massive, and helps fill in those spots where I could not normally have Shield Charge up for the damage bonuses. The four piece is essentially “Shield Charge increases the damage of Heroic Strike, Slam, and Revenge by an Additional 20%” which is the single best damage booster that I can get right now. So I simply cannot abandon this set bonus, and the only real option right now would be to try and find a Mythic Blackrock group so I could get the Mythic four piece set. Because of the way the Hellfire Dungeon set works… I can also squeeze in the two piece of that set giving me “Bonus Armor Increased by 145” which while not insane… is a decent dps boost since every point of armor translates to 2 attack power for Gladiator spec. So needless to say I am stuck in a corner where my 686 gear score does not exactly equate to my performance… but I don’t really have access to the upgrades that would actually help. I mean as much as I hate to see it go, I totally see why Blizzard is getting rid of this special snowflake spec. It is extremely hard to itemize for and gear for.

Madness and Cheese

So after getting frustrated that there was very little I could do to improve my lot in life on my Warrior, I ended up logging over into Elder Scrolls Online for some nice and peaceful questing. I actually managed to catch Solaria on at the same time, and I spent a little bit of time attempting to help her get started in crafting. The only problem being that during prime time it seems like all of the ore is heavily farmed down. Since I have the insane “see it from a distance” glow effect, I am wondering about dropping down to Betnikh and helping farm up a bunch of ore for her. She decided to go with a Heavy Armor Two-Handed Templar…. which was one of my favorite paths from alpha testing. It feels a little bit like a WoW Retribution Paladin in the burst damage department, and has some really high survival when running around questing. It also greatly simplifies the crafting, since Blacksmith can literally make everything they would need to use from the weapon to the armor. The problem there is Blacksmithing honestly seems to be the most useful profession, and as a result ore is always in high demand. I could in theory just pass over a bunch of bars, but she really needs the skill-ups from refining the bars right now, so I would be better served just going out and farming ore for her.

One of the things I had forgotten about Elder Scrolls Online was just how well written the quests are. I completed a sequence in Grahtwood where I ended up encountering my favorite of all Daedra… Sheogorath the Prince of Madness. You never know if he is going to attack you… or offer you cheese… and then attack you. What makes this sequence so great is the fact that I have tangled with Sheogorath in the past of this game. He remembers my interactions and even seems to comment based on my decisions…. in this completely unrelated quest line. The amount of time that they put into making sure that the dialog trees had little gems like this, is just awesome… and I am still really impressed by them when I find them. All of the content was designed knowing that your single character might be completing all three factions worth of it. There is just something warm and fuzzy about playing this game… and while at one point I was disappointed in it… I think most of that was really just me trying to make it into something that it was not. As a largely solo experience the game is exemplary, and honestly I look forward to trying to scramble enough people together to do a dungeon or two and see if that experience improved as well. Cheese for everyone!

Welcome Back System

February 11, 2016 by Belghast

Honey Coated Goodness

Yesterday the topic of Secret World came up on twitter, and as always I give my normal response of that I need to go back and play some more. This will forever be one of those games that I remember very fondly…. so long as I don’t really focus on the end game content and frustrations we felt there. As far as narrative storytelling… I have to say this game probably provided the best experiences I have ever seen in any MMO to date. The mixture of real world and game world puzzles, that required me to look things up in the provided in game browser…. which often lead to “fake” websites about in game companies… was just a level of integration I had not experienced and honestly have not since. The storyline itself was this wonderful blending of so much real world lore, that quite honestly… it blends so well into almost any modern fantasy genre. I remember thinking that this fertile ground should provide for plenty of additional adventures, and in truth it has. Since June of 2012 the game has released 13 major content updates called “Issues” and a handful of smaller packs, which is a far cry from the original goal of “monthly” content releases… but not horrible by any stretch of the imagination.

The problem is… the game has struggled to find an audience that is also willing to pay for the game. One of the best purchases I ever made was the original “Lifetime Subscription” that was available back at launch, that honestly was still available until recently. According to MMOWatcher this officially went off the market on February 5th, meaning that there will be no more new Grandmasters. The problem is…. the Grandmaster system is so amazingly good, that after my initial one time purchase… I have never NEEDED to give them any more money. I have this feeling that a lot of the folks who are actively playing are in this same boat. Now they cranked up the benefits of a monthly membership, because quite honestly…. Funcom has been hurting for a long while. Once again however as a Grandmaster I am “grandfathered” into this system… but the perks are pretty insane.

A 30% increase to all Experience earned. (This replaces the Time Accelerator)

A 50% boost to all Black Bullions gained.

20% extra capacity for Black Bullions and Marks of the Pantheon.

8-hour Mission Cooldowns.

18-hour Raid Lockout Timers.

2 Lockout Timer Resets every 30 days. This item resets all active Cooldowns (Missions/Raids/Scenarios).

A 10% storewide discount for everything in the item shop (20% for Grand Masters).

1200 Bonus Points every 30 days.

Free Anima Leaps!

Then in addition to this there is a reward system that you get various really cool items available to you at fixed points in your subscription much like the Final Fantasy XIV or Everquest II veteran reward systems. This is also on top of getting the monthly items, that have been acrueing on my account since launch. Once again as a Grandmaster… I just get all of them unlocked at once. Some of the rewards available are.

30 Days: Anima effect on sprint and faction jackets
60 Days: Hoverboard and Panoptic Core in faction colors
90 Days: Ur-Draug pet and an additional Agartha Conduit
180 Days: Portable bank and a baller costume
360 Days: Weapon skins and a scooter mount

The Challenge

The problem with being away from a game like The Secret World this long however is that I quite honestly have no idea where to start. I know I completed Issues 1-4, and 6… but all of the ones I missed I have no idea where they even start. Normally speaking in a traditional wow-style MMO you can simply run around until you see exclamations over the top of NPC heads. However in TSW almost every quest can be repeated as many times as you like, so as a result you end up with a sea of possibilities, and several years later I have no clue where to even start. I’ve talked about this before, but games really need a better “welcome back” system, that presents the players with a guess at what they were doing last, and also presents them with five or so items that they should consider doing. Initially I had this idea of starting a new character, like I do in so many other games when trying to ease back into them. The problem being…. that I am already capped on the number of characters I have access to. During the 2014 Extra Life I created the horribly named “Belstream” to stream the Secret World newbie experience, and even then… I have no clue where I left off with him.

The challenge is that I don’t really WANT to play an Alt… I would prefer to just keep trucking along on my Templar main. However the level of investment that I will have to make to get into the game… sort out what I did and where to start doing again…. is ultimately want keeps me logging in and then after futzing with my wardrobe a bit, logging right back out. Similar to Everquest II, the other big challenge for me is sorting through my inventory… which is full of so much crap that I can no longer recognize if it is even useful. All of these candy colored icons mean nothing to me right now, and the fact that I am wearing epic gear in most of my slots makes me doubt if they are even useful to upgrade anything with. I would break stuff down… but honestly I would even have to look up how you did that again. I have the desire to play, but right now there is entirely too much “friction” standing in the way of me doing that. I realize Funcom more than likely lacks the funds to devote to new systems, but this at least is a huge challenge for me. I guess I could simply start by looking up the patch notes for Issue 5 and then going forward from there, trying to go find the quest chain starter for each additional Issue that I missed. But this is the point where I ask myself…. do I care enough to devote a few hours of research, or do I just want to spend my limited evening hours playing something else that I remember how to play?