Good Morning Friends. Sometimes you react to something in ways you didn’t quite expect, and that ultimately led to my lack of a post yesterday. Wednesday we had the swearing in of the 46th President of the United States, and while my friends were celebrating this momentous occasional… for me it felt like I had just finished something terribly strenuous and had hit a wall. Sure I felt elation and excitement for the things to come, but I also felt like this pressure that had been grinding down upon me was lifted and when I finally allowed myself to relax. That pressure had been shaping me in specific patterns that I was not even aware of, and with it gone effectively collapsed. Come yesterday morning I just couldn’t function enough to string together a post.
Gaming is always the salve that I used to medicate my wounds, but I spent most of Wednesday night flailing aimlessly between games. When I did land on something, it was Minecraft a game I have used so many times in the past as a warm blanket when I was not certain what else to do. There is something about the gentle soundtrack and the repetitive sound of mining that orders my nerves. I started dinking around with the beta on the Windows 10 client and started a new world with a random seed. Building a base in Minecraft always takes me back to laying in the Livingroom floor with scissors, tape and a sharpie building a Cardboard base for my GI Joe and Star Wars figures. I just sorta wish there was more to the game where I could create NPCs and assign them specific functions within it.
This is going to be one of those posts where I am not exactly sure what order I should be talking about things, but some background that I feel like we need to get out of the way. I first got into Minecraft 11 years ago and it was this specific video that hooked me. I remember watching this and then buying my way into the then Alpha of the game and the rest was history. We ultimately ended up getting a Linux friend to host a Minecraft server for my World of Warcraft guild and for awhile we spent way more time in that game than in WoW. All of that said it is impossible to explain the impact that this one video had on me, and in turn all of the people that I sold on the notion of playing Minecraft as well. I’ve been a subscriber to DavidAngel64 or “X” ever since but most of the games he plays on the regular aren’t exactly my jam.
Now we scan forward to yesterday and I discovered that Minecraft Hardcore mode is apparently a thing, and not only that but X is doing a brand new adventure series as he explores Minecraft after a very long hiatus. So for those who also had no clue about Hardcore mode, essentially if you take a Death in Minecraft it deletes your save game. So you have one shot and as a result the stakes are so much higher for everything. When we first started playing Minecraft it was shortly after the release of survival mode and everything in the world seemed new, interesting and dangerous. Guildchat and eventually server chat was filled with all of these discoveries we had made. The challenge however is that after awhile Minecraft became a “solved problem”. We knew how to get what we wanted and how the world as a whole functioned, and as such the adventure aspect was gone.
I have to admit I kind of miss the danger that Minecraft used to represent. Granted playing on Hardcore is probably going to make me significantly more cautious than I normally am, but also with that comes a sense of excitement each time I get myself into a situation that is going to be difficult to get out of. I did some research yesterday and it seems that Hardcore mode is only available in the Java Client. It locks the game to the Hard difficulty setting and then triggers special logic if you die keeping you from being able to play that world again… though I think in theory you might be able to do something to recover it and edit it to a different game mode. I believe you are limited in your ability to use addons and maybe those are limited to just texture packs.
Now I find myself contemplating doing a thing. Part of me wants to start a hardcore game and record my struggles, and then chop it up into 10-15 minute chunks as individual YouTube videos. I realize that this is precisely the exact thing that X is doing right now and that I am just copying this thing I saw… but also I think the struggle of trying to play Minecraft seriously after all of these years might lead to some humorous moments. The last time I played Minecraft with any seriousness was right before The End was first put into the game back in November of 2011. Since then there have been so many updates and so many changes to the way that the game functions. I would in theory once again be forced to explore the world and learn the systems as I go.
I’ve been in this habit for a very long time of when I play Minecraft I am doing so in order to build with some virtual legos. Often times this is in creative mode or at least survival peaceful to allow me to just aimlessly wander and build things. So part of me wants to play Minecraft in a way that locks me down a specific path that I can’t actually deviate from. Sure I know how to survive that first night, but how well will I do when the pressure is really on. How much of my base building skills will be useful when I am desperately searching for a reliable source of food? Things like going for Diamond weapons… become way less important than just finding a reliable source of iron and coal.
I am still not 100% sure I am going to do this thing, but I really think I want to. I just have to set aside some time when I can record in peace.
Good Morning Friends. This is a post that I have found myself avoiding for a month now, but I think it is probably time to make it. If my screenshot archive is correct, I have not logged into World of Warcraft since December 10th. That means I have had over a month to try and summon the desire to return to the game and it just hasn’t arrived. Shadowlands represents the expansion that I made the least amount of progress in before ultimately leaving. Generally speaking when a new MMO expansion launches I get two to three characters to the level cap and then ultimately bounce. This time I made it through one character and just could not bring myself to repeat the content again for a second character. I attempted to level a third character with Threads of Fate since that is a permanent choice and locks you out of the story content, but found it equally unenjoyable.
The Leveling Process
The disappointing thing is that I was greatly enjoying the leveling process prior to the launch of the expansion and managed to push up a full roster of horde characters to the new squished level cap of 50, along with six alliance characters as well. I am not exactly sure what is wrong, but I didn’t enjoy the overall leveling experience in Shadowlands. There were some zones like Bastion were just pure hell for me to make it through, and other zones like my favorite Maldraxxus were nowhere near as enjoyable to go through a second time once the story beats were known. On my second character I stalled out a little bit into Maldraxxus, and on my Threads of Fate character I didn’t complete a single zone worth of content. My favorite leveling experience was probably Legion, and I am not entirely certain what differs so much between the two expansions. It might simply be that I was in a different frame of mind this time around and as a result I had a vastly different experience.
Torghast
The feature that I was looking forward to the most in Shadowlands was Torghast, and the end result did not match up to my expectations. In Final Fantasy XIV there is a system called the Palace of the Dead which is this amazing endless dungeon leveling experience that has a chance of dropping some really cool items along the way, and also serves as a way to unlock once powerful and now at least cool looking weapons. Mentally I was expecting that sort of system to make its way to World of Warcraft and not a largely pointless mini game. Sure you get Artifact Power… I mean Soul Ash… but the end result is just a long grind for a benefit that feels like it does not match up to the amount of time that the activity just took. It feels sorta like you are being asked to solo a Heroic dungeon with no gear payout. Were I to fix it I would make it so that mythic+ dungeon loot could drop in there or something worth chasing.
Legendary Gear
I loved the Legendary armor from Legion, and as a result I was super excited to see a system like that returning. In Legion, knowing there was a chance of getting a Legendary drop pretty much elevated every single activity in the game for me. The problem was there was no way of chasing a specific legendary item, but past that the system was perfection as far as I was concerned. With shadowlands instead we got a system where you collect the patterns for Legendary items, grind Torghast to get soul ash and then combine that with exceptionally expensive crafting materials in order to craft a piece of gear that is going to fall behind the curve unless you pour a constant supply of money and materials into making it better. I essentially bankrupted myself crafting a single Legendary, and the piece that I liked about Legion was having multiple allowed me to rapidly swap up my play style to fit a specific encounter. Sure I got one that was useful immediately, but knowing it is likely the only one I will have kinda kills the Diablo 3 build creation joy of the earlier system.
Then there are the Legendary patterns which were extremely poorly implemented. They drop from specific encounters, some of which are the first boss of a dungeon… or can be engineered in such a way as to force them to be the first boss of the dungeon. Players are going to take the path of least resistance every single time and what ended up happening as a result is that folks would queue for a dungeon, steamroll the first boss… not get the drop they wanted and then bail out accepting the deserter buff. Most of my runs of Mists of Tirna Scithe saw us loosing either a Tank or a Healer after the first boss… and in some cases the entire party. De Other Side is a great dungeon, but Tanks would join… make a beeline for a specific one of the three starting encounters and then bail immediately following. Sure in some cases people were chasing gear, but more often than not they were chasing whatever happened to be their best in slot Legendary pattern.
The Maw
The Maw is all stick and no carrot. The attempt was to create something Soulsbournian in World of Warcraft with this purposefully obtuse experience that you have to struggle with to slowly improve and unlock new things. The problem here however is that essentially The Maw, Torghast and Legendary Crafting are supposed to be this self perpetuating cycle. You run Torghast to get the material gate for crafting Legendary items and you run Maw to improve your experience running Torghast. The problem is that if any of that cycle is broken then the entire cycle of reward is broken. For me since I did not enjoy Torghast and ran out of money to craft Legendary items… The Maw quickly became something that I was doing each day to complete the daily quests but wondering why the fuck I was putting myself through the hassle. I logged in a few minutes ago to snag a screenshot… and apparently had just bailed in the middle of the maw the last time I played.
This could have been really cool, but again the reward systems are the problem. Just like Torghast you need to have some sort of reward other than more systems in order to interest me in coming back. I am super loot motivated and without loot as the reward waiting on me at the end… I am not sure I want to go through your obstacle course. Even if they had put a rare chance of something interesting dropping from the boss encounters, I probably would have farmed them every single day dealing with the constantly escalating series of bullshit in the form of the eye of the jailer. Instead I knew that going to the maw was going to yield absolutely nothing useful and little things like the inability to use a mount just pissed me off to no end.
Covenant Faction Systems
Now this is the one that I probably understand the least. I loved the Class Order Hall in Legion. It grounded me in the expansion and played into the whole class fantasy narrative in a way that has never been in the game prior to that point. It was amazing and each of them was filled with so many neat easter eggs linking back to past content. On paper the Covenant system seems like it should be fairly similar but in practice it just did not feel good to experience. I realize that the gates are there to keep players from finishing the Covenant system in a single week, but the gates also served as a disincentive for me to keep playing given that I knew I could only do so much in a given weekly reset period. It felt like everything I wanted to do required something that I could not get until the next reset and there were no slow and grindy systems that allowed me to make up that difference.
Additionally there were too many different systems going on at once and creating a dissonant experience. I’ve never loved the War Table style systems in World of Warcraft, but in the past you could always automate this experience with an addon. The Covenant table system looked like it might be different and more interactive, but in reality it is just complicated enough that you can’t easily automate it but requires no more interaction. As a result it sorta ends up being the worst possible version of the War Table because now you can’t even employ an addon (or couldn’t last I checked) to just sorta take care of it for you and it is still just a series of dice rolls. The soul bind system was kinda cool but the acquisition of these felt bad especially given that there were slightly better versions that you needed to somehow track down.
Loot Drought
The dungeons felt really good, and I give them credit for making a cycle of really enjoyable experiences. Unfortunately it also felt like I was not really making much in the way of progress. I ground my face against Heroic dungeons with a reckless abandon in an attempt to “gear up” and so often I walked away with nothing but an expenditure of time and a repair bill for my trouble. Blizzard shifted the way gear dropped in an attempt to make obtaining loot feel more important, which is probably a double edged sword. Sure when I finally got the thing I had been chasing it felt amazing… but similarly the thirty two times I attempted to get it before and got nothing felt soul crushingly awful. I have no clue how this applies to raiding but I feel like more than likely the loot distribution feels equally bad there. I didn’t survive long enough to actually attend a raid.
Healer Drought
I think the thing that probably contributed the most to my bouncing is the fact that I could not find a reliable source of healing to make groups happen. I have a lot of friends and almost all of them seem to be playing DPS these days. My usual partner in crime Grace, did not even make it through the leveling experience for some of the reasons outlined above. My guild seemed to have two active healers, both of which were available during times that were generally too late for me to commit to running anything. This ended up with me abandoning my goal of being a Paladin Tank, and instead spending most of my time pugging as a Retribution DPS. There are a lot of things I am willing to do… but tanking for pugs is not really one of them. I tried tanking a Mythic plus from the group finder and it went just as frustratingly as you might expect.
I think I probably would have stuck around a little longer were I able to reliably run all of the Mythic plus dungeons each week, but the struggle to make a single one happen just didn’t make the possible rewards worth the effort. Had I been enjoying any of the above items… I could have shifted my play style up and just melted back into the background leveling alts. Unfortunately the only part of the game that I did enjoy was the Dungeon game… and that required a constant flow of healers that simply did not materialize in order to make it happen. I am not sure what is up with healing this expansion, but it seems like folks that have been constant healers previously have abandoned it for the way of the DPS.
Unintended Path of Post
So here we are at the end of a post that I did not mean to turn out the way it ultimately has. I’ve said before that I often times have no clue what I am going to say until I sit down and the keyboard and start typing. Originally I meant this to be a post just stating that I was largely giving up on World of Warcraft Shadowlands after a month of not playing it and having no desire to return. What ended up happening instead is a long rant about the things that frustrated me. I guess maybe I needed to get it out of my system and since this is my blog and everything is me editorializing… rant happened. I have friends who are still enjoying the expansion and I am happy to see that. The last thing I want to do is burn down the building on the way out. I am just not sure if this specific combination of systems was what I wanted out of World of Warcraft.
I was hoping for another expansion to rival Legion, which now sits atop the list of my favorite expansions. Instead I got something that is more down towards the Battle for Azeroth end of the list. Truth is I probably found more joy in BFA than I have so far in Shadowlands, but I feel like I am certain to give it another shot after a few patches to see if that impression changes.
One of the things that I have learned about myself is that I have to be in the right mood at the right time in order to get engaged with a game. This has caused a bunch of problems in the past when I felt like I needed to play something, but for whatever reason kept bouncing from it. I think it is almost like I take this as a challenge, especially if I don’t fully understand why I bounced in the first place. For example I have spent so much time trying to like Guild Wars 2 and Warframe, because on paper they are games that I should like. However thus far no matter how many times I keep trying them, I fail to grasp the thing that my friends who are into them are so engaged with.
I wrote about this the other day in a post called Changing Perspective, as I chronicled my feelings about the Dragon Age series. Currently I show that I have 101 hours played in Steam, but originally I was attempting to play the game through Origin where I show 125 hours and I also own it on PlayStation where I attempted to play for an unknown amount of time. I kept thinking that maybe it was the platform or the way in which I was playing the game that lead me to struggle with it. The last thing I wanted to admit was that there was a game in the Dragon Age series that I just didn’t like at all. Thankfully I stuck with it and kept trying it every so often, with this fifth attempt at playing through the game seeming to finally be successful.
I can’t tell you with any certainty what is different this time around. However I have reached a point where Dragon Age Inquisition was my least favorite of the Dragon Age series, to where it may just be my favorite now. The game goes through a lot of changes and I’ve learned to love characters that I was absolutely diametrically opposed to going into the game. Cassandra for example I viewed as the enemy of the second game, but over time I have reached a point where I think she is absolutely one of the better written characters. Similarly my first time encountering Dorian I was annoyed by him, but now I have come to love his braggadocio.
I’m at a point in the story where I am effectively two quests away from the end of the game. As a result I am going back and wrapping up content that I had not had time to do yet. Yesterday I played through the entire Jaws of Hakkon DLC and then last night I started the Deep roads based one called The Descent. Once I wrap that up it will ultimately be time to face down the big baddy of the game and see the credits roll. I’m doing what I ultimately do every time I reach this point in a game and delaying the inevitable. I have come to love the characters that I am on this journey with and I don’t want it to end. So I will keep finding one more thing to do rather than committing and ultimately closing this chapter in gaming.
Sure I have a stack of games waiting to be played, but for now I am fully engaged with this one and that feels like a special time that I don’t want to end. I am sure I will revisit this game at some point in the future, but that will be then and a different sequence of choices will ultimately lead to a different experience. For now I am trying to savor the last drops of goodness in this experience before I ultimately dive into another. Dragon Age Inquisition is a game that does more for the larger world building of the setting than any of the previous games. The other two games were focused on a very narrow scope and this is more centered around wider themes of existence.
It makes me extremely interested to see where things go from here. I feel like we are going to the Tevinter Imperium, Nevarra and Antiva given that those are settings we have heard so much about in past games but never actually visited. I expect more information to unfurl about the core arc of the which centers around the events of when humans first set foot into the fade thousands of years ago. I mean effectively everything we have done to this point have been dealing with the ramifications of those events. Knowing what I know now… the teaser footage so far makes a lot more sense.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we have a bunch of toppings that have been hanging around on the list for awhile. We talk a bit about the announcement that Riot is making an MMORPG and our general thoughts about that. Bel talks about the need for Attract Screens in game and this leads into a discussion about Tutorialization in games. From there we venture forth into how exactly you teach a non-gamer how to play games and if games are too complicated right now. Bel talks a bit about how much he misses F-Zero and why Mario Kart actually won the battle of the racing game that Nintendo cares about. From there we talk about the vast array of experiments Nintendo is doing right now surrounding Mario. Bel talks about revisiting Jedi Fallen Order and we wrap things up with a discussion about struggling to find a good tabletop cyberpunk game.
