February 2016 - Page 7 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Tamriel Revisted

February 6, 2016 by Belghast

Point Click

Yesterday I kept being reminded by co-workers of just how horrible I sounded, so after I finished with my critical meetings I took off and headed home around 12:30. After eating a hastily grabbed lunch of convenience store pizza… I collapsed on the sofa trying to force fluids while finding something comforting to watch. I guess my version of comforting is a little different than most people, because I wound up watching the entire first season run of Rick and Morty. Granted I have watched a lot of this show, but it turns out there were a handful of episodes that I missed when they originally aired. Whatever this thing is that I caught down south, it is very much kicking my ass. Blogging has been a real struggle because it is very difficult to string thoughts together into enough of a cohesive mass to make into a blog post. It is my will along that I am committing fingers to keyboard and producing words… because I simply do not want the streak to stop. I am a couple of months away from my official three year anniversary on the whole daily blogging thing, and the seventh anniversary of my blog. So until I hit that at the very least, I will keep up doing the daily thing even if I have to struggle to make words happen.

Lately my crutch while sick has been Diablo 3, but I feel like I am running out of things I care to do right now. I’ve gotten the seasonal rewards, but more than anything I am farming content in the hopes of getting the last few items I need to drop for the build I am working towards. Clearing regular rifts and doing bounties is the sort of mindless interaction that works well when I am sick, but I am quickly reaching the point where I am questioning why I am bothering? The other side mission has been to gear my monk, but once I found out from several folks that you only get one set of gear per season…. a lot of my gusto was lost. I thought I would be able to go kill the bosses I needed to get my first set of gear, on my second character and be up and running and clearing content pretty quickly. Alas that is very much not the case, and my best option is to ride along with Rae who is regularly clearing TX stuff… but honestly after being able to participate, going back to just having to pray to stay alive… makes it pretty uninteresting. Yesterday my big problem was the fact that I had a very needy game install going on in the background, that kept slowing down my teleportation to the point that the battle.net would disconnect me before actually ending up in zone with Rae.

Worst Install

On a whim yesterday afternoon around 1 pm, I started installing The Elder Scrolls Online. I guess I had forgotten just how painful the install process was, because it took until roughly 8 pm for it to finally complete. During the last hour of that time I was pretty much unable to play anything else on my laptop. The thing is… I have installed much larger games in far less time…. so I have to fault the launcher for just how painfully slow it was going. I mean I say this as someone who was installing to a laptop that is using a AC Wireless card capable of 650 MB connection on a total internet connection that generally runs around 150 MB down. I should have been able to completely saturate my pipe and had this game down in short order… but it took quite literally 7 hours to finally get installed. Now for a good chunk of that time I was still playing Diablo 3 so that could have been slowing things down… but the total download was tortuously slow. The last hour or so it was thrashing my hard drive badly enough that I really could not do anything else functional on the machine, so I wound up mostly fiddling around on my phone while watching television. The problem with ESO was that I honestly can’t remember why we stopped playing, other than the fact that one by one we just stopped until I was one of the last four or so people still active. For me I guess the Veteran game system was so bloody boring because it felt like I was no longer making reasonable process. I made it roughly two zones into the Aldmeri campaign, when finally my desire to keep playing petered out.

I guess recently I had been curious about what was going on in game, and they have done a few high profile DLC releases. So around 8:30 last night I finally was able to log in and poke around. Firstly I have to say I guess playing this game for roughly two years in testing… means that I have some serious muscle memory going on. While I had to reset all of my talent points, I can still for the most part remember exactly how I played it. All of the little things like dodging, and blocking attacks… came back without any effort and before long I was up and running and questing again. I feel like maybe this is the speed of game that I need right now. What I am struggling the most with in my current state is interacting with other human beings. I have been pretty much oblivious to twitter and slack since coming back from Pax South, and as a result I am kinda cocooning in my own little world again. Much like SWTOR…. ESO was a great single player game… and as a result I found myself really enjoying questing around last night. That is of course until the nyquil kicked in and I simply couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer. I figure I will put in some more time today playing and maybe talk a bit about my experiences on AggroChat tonight. That is of course if I have any voice left. Right now my voice is pretty damned squeaky so I am thinking we might have to rely on someone else to do the bulk of the talking this evening.

Golden Tickets

February 5, 2016 by Belghast

Ultimate Movie Edition

It seems that last night while I was in my own little world of coughing and clicking the mouse button aimlessly… some more information came out about a promotion that will be landing along with the Warcraft movie. Over on reddit there is a thread with a screenshot taken from a supposed survey that was being passed around. Basically this is them giving away a free copy of the game, because now when you buy the base game you get through Mists of Pandaria for free. In theory once they release Legion it has been their standard to give everyone playing the game everything but the latest expansion, which is also the method that SOE chose to end up with on Everquest and Everquest II. So I guess the only real question is… will this work? There are most certainly going to be former players of the game that go to the theaters and see this movie out of a sense of fond nostalgia. Even if I was not currently playing Warcraft, I would be going to see it because it is a world I have deeply cared about. This would be the case for pretty much any other world I have loved in the past… and no matter how much of a debacle the Dresden television series was… if they made a movie I would be there on opening night.

So for former players this is basically a ticket to play the game for free for a month, and I have a feeling that pretty much every single one of them will at least poke their head in for a few days. Nostalgia is a very strong motivator, and is absolutely the reason why I keep ending up subscribed to this game. Now for the folks that are going to the theaters because they like big fantasy action movies… I think that is a potentially bigger prospect for new players. World of Warcraft has always had this ability to convert non-gamers into WoW players, in a way that no other game than Pokemon has seemed to be able to do. This movie, if it ends up like I think it will… seems like it is going to be the perfect primer course in the “history of the world” and give watchers enough of a taste for the setting that they might just check it out further. It does not hurt at all that some of the movie stars like Robert Kazinksky are being extremely public about their own experiences with the game and painting it in a very positive light. This feels very much like… “you watched the movie, now you can go home and live in the world”. I think it is going to work better than they might have even imagined, because the barriers between gamer and non-gamer keep slowly breaking down. It is not a far stretch for someone who is already playing Candy Crush, to go home and play Warcraft instead. After all the only way this genre is going to grow… is by converting a brand new generation of players.

Second Seasonal

I have to admit that my spigot of post ideas has pretty much been closed down to a trickle. It is really hard to think when you go into a coughing fit and would swear that you just felt your brain rattling. In this state I am just not doing much gaming other than logging in each night and playing the garrison game, and ending up over in Diablo 3. The simple fact that it is pretty lightweight on interaction, other than your mouse hand makes it something I can stand to do. Yesterday I had managed to get to within four levels of 70 when I finally caved and pestered my friend Rae for a boost. We ran around doing Torment VI for a bit, because I believe that was the highest that a sub 70 could go do. I managed to ding 70 in very short order, but when I sat down to craft something…. I realized I was almost completely out of the white parts. So I am guessing I will roll something new again if for no reason other than to run around and collect white weapons to turn into parts.

The next goal is to do the steps required to unlock the armor set, and then try and sort out exactly what I want for a spec to go with it. The irony is this is actually my first monk to hit 70, which reminds me that at some point I should really push up my non-seasonal monk so I at least feel like less of a slacker. I am sitting in this place where pretty much every game I think of playing leaves me uninspired. I am not entirely sure what can pull me out of this rut, or if it is simply a side effect of being sick. We have a clinic at work that employees can go to for free, and I went down there and got checked out. Turns out this “pox” is simply a virus, and there isn’t much that they can do rather than simply let it run its course. In theory over the weekend I should start to feel significantly better, and I am pretty much assuming that whatever the maximum recovery time will be the case for me. I have a largely broken immune system, and not only do I seem to catch everything… but I seem to get over them extremely slowly. My plan is to chill out, and get lots of rest this weekend, and hopefully by Monday I am a new person. My biggest concern right now is whether or not I will actually have a voice come Saturday when we record AggroChat.

Streaming Goodness

February 4, 2016 by Belghast

RWBY

Rooster Teeth is one of those groups that I have known has existed forever… but never really watched much of. I was not a Halo player, but I do admit to watching quite a bit of the first few seasons of Red vs Blue. Similarly RWBY is one of those products that I have known was available, but for whatever reason never actually watched. There was a certain bit of fitting tribute the other day that I started watching the show, on the Anniversary of its creator Monty Oum’s death. Over the course of several hours of watching I went from knowing absolutely nothing about this show, to becoming a huge fan. I had always heard it described as “An American Anime” but didn’t really know what to expect from that. I mean Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra are pretty much what I think of when I think of American Anime. I love both of those shows and a lot of other continuous narrative cartoons like Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and Bravest Warriors. So as to why I never started this one in particular, is as big of a guess as any.

I guess what I like about it so much right now is that it has pretty much everything I loved about Bleach, without all of the stuff I didn’t love about it. What attracted me to Bleach was this premise that created a universe full of really interesting characters. Sure while Ichigo is the “main character” there are a bunch of other extremely interesting good guys and bad guys that make up the tapestry. RWBY does this through the creation of teams that fight together, and can either be positive or negative influences on the story setting. Also there are shades of post apocalyptic, in that the characters exist in this world that is being plagued by a bunch of supernatural creatures known as the Grimm. The only way mankind has managed to survive is by harnessing the power of dust, refined elemental essence to power up their abilities and be able to fight back. The show itself takes place in a sort of Hogwarts for demon hunters, a school known as Beacon that trains individuals to become either Huntsmen or Huntresses. So all of those elements like Bleach and Naruto are there, to keep churning out interesting people to encounter in the world.

What makes the show better for me… is the fact that thus far at least over the course of the three seasons I chain watched… there isn’t a lot of repetition. The frustration with Bleach is when you have the realization that every single season is the same. Ichigo gets his ass kicked by some new bad guy > Ichigo trains to unlock some previously undiscovered ability > Ichigo wins… but just barely… but still enough to save his friends. While RWBY borrows heavily from Anime tropes, the way it puts things together feels more fresh to me… because it is based in a culture I already understand. The problem with Anime in general is that there are so many cultural experiences that I lack, and I simply cannot understand without having to research why the hell “this thing” was funny or important. When I watch most Anime, there are certain points where I feel I need footnotes to understand the subtle nuance of what is happening. RWBY however makes sense out of the box, with nothing lost in translation… because it quite truly IS “American Anime”. So I have to say… I am now hooked and will join the folks waiting every week for the next show to release. I’ve even gone so far as to hook others on the show, which I guess is the truest sign of enjoyment.

Heroes Reborn

When I am sick I seem to ratchet down my game playing and increase my television watching. So over the last few days I have been hunting for things to watch, and over the last two nights have picked back up on Heroes Reborn. I started the first episode of the show some time ago, but it either failed to grab me… or I got distracted. I’ve now chain watched my way through the entire first season and I have to say… I really enjoyed it. Heroes is one of those shows that I have both extremely fond and extremely negative memories of. The first season was among the best single television seasons I have seen… and then that second season…. I would probably rank among the worst. The third season came along and fixed some of the problems with season two… but by that time the audience was gone and the show was doomed. I don’t think I actually watched any of that fourth season… which honestly after watching Heroes Reborn, makes me want to go back and chain through the originals again.

Reborn is the perfect example of a show that stands on the shoulders of the original, but doesn’t actually require you to have watched any of it. Sure there are plot points that you will get earlier if you know who certain characters are from the original, but you learn soon enough what powers they have. The entire show takes place in a very “Days of Future Past” storyline, where the heroes… now called Evos are being forced to register their powers. There is very much a “humans” vs “evos” undercurrent that runs through the show, along with the expected “no evos allowed” signs. What makes this season work however is the same thing that makes me question if they are setting themselves up for a crappy second season again. Much like the “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” plot of the first season of the original, there is a clear narrative path that ends up being concluded in a massive event. The problem is… I am not really sure how they top this. I mean you can only quite literally save all of humanity so many times during a television show. All of this said… I really enjoyed myself and I guess I am along for the ride when the second season releases.

Pax Pox

February 3, 2016 by Belghast

The Convention Crud

So this weekend obviously was Pax South, and I am not sure how you could read my blog and not know this… but whatever. It went pretty well overall, but on the drive home Sunday my throat kept getting more and more sore. At first I was thinking that maybe I was getting closer to Oklahoma, and as a result my allergies were just going haywire. The entire time I was in the San Antonio area, I honestly did not have much issue with my allergies. It was just like they magically went away, so in theory driving back home… could feel like I was coming down with something. However yesterday I heard from Damai that he too is in the sore throat phase, so I am guessing we quite literally did walk away with whatever crap happened to be going around down south. PAX is this universal incubator for illness, and last year I somehow escaped catching whatever Ashgar and Rae ended up bringing home. This year however I was not quite so lucky, and in spite of using the hand sanitizer every single time I passed one… I still caught something.

I’ve been in hibernation pretty much the last two days. Originally I had requested off both Monday and Tuesday to recover, but had not planned on actually taking Tuesday. However it seems like I apparently was clairvoyant in knowing that I would need that extra day. This morning… I still feel like crap, but my fever broke sometime between going to bed Monday night and getting up Tuesday morning. My lungs are getting consistently clearer, and my throat while feeling sore still is getting consistently less sore as time goes on. While it felt flu-like at first, I am guessing it is just a run of the mill virus or cold, because I seem to be getting over it pretty quickly. The irony is… that I completely resisted catching whatever my wife had prior to the convention… but I am guessing that probably taxed my immune system to the point of catching something while there. In any case I think I am more or less on the mend, but going out and grabbing some groceries last night left me completely exhausted, so I can only imagine what state I might be in tonight when I finally get home.

Lady Monk

The great irony of a gaming convention is the fact that during those few days… I end up playing far fewer games than I usually do. The other strange side effect has been, that now that I am back at home…. I am not quite sure what to play. As a result I have been poking my head into Diablo 3, even though I have seemed to lack much purpose. Monday night I spent a good chunk of it running around with Grace and completing various stuff like greater rifts. Then when she logged to go take care of something, I ended up starting a brand new character. I realize that I could have probably gotten one of my friends to boost it to 70 within a few minutes… but instead I have been leveling a monk through doing bounties. The funny thing about this is that with all of my paragon levels, Master is the new Normal. I could probably ratchet up my difficulty some more, but I like how fast everything seems to be going right now. I’ve needed to run bounties for a bit, and doing so on a fresh character feels like I am gaining more than doing it on my crusader.

The truth is, I’ve never managed to get a monk to 70. My original non-seasonal one is 68 and I realize that I could very easily push it over the line. The problem being that I just haven’t had any desire to play non-seasonal characters. I have been in this mindset that “seasonal” are the “real” characters… and that the normal characters are almost like playing on some test server somewhere. I realize that it is backwards from the truth, but I have shifted to this point of view as looking at the season as the only thing that really matters. As a result I just can’t seem to bring myself to play any characters that aren’t in the current season, which I guess works out nicely since that seems to be what most people are playing. The only thing that worries me is how I am going to function when I need to merge this season into my existing already overloaded bank. At some point I need to spend some time eating some legendaries and unlocking abilities, because half of the junk that is clogging my non-seasonal vault is never actually going to get used. In any case as of last night I hit level 43 , and I plan on working it up some more tonight. I should be able to hit 70 in no time as I am gaining at least one level per bounty step on average.