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WoW Xmas Wishlist

December 6, 2014 by Belghast

Warlords of Faff

The one thing I have to give this expansion credit for is that they really have embraced the gospel of faff. There are more widgets and thing-a-ma-bobs for me to fiddle with in this expansion than any in any mmo to date. It seems like I can lose entire mornings with all of the little goals that I seem to have. Garrisons are a big portion of this, requiring just enough effort to make it worth doing… but requiring just enough time to eat up large blocks of your time. They are this glorious black hole for people who are like me and are huge fans of short term goals. On the other side of the equation there are folks who absolutely hate them, because they represent an end to the way certain portions of this game worked. For the folks that loved farming resources and then using those resources to play the auction house… unfortunately that time is over. To a lesser extent you can do this with savage blood because on my server that is going for 2000g each. However it takes 50 primal spirits to get a single blood, so the amount of farming to the reward is pretty minimal.

I like the way you gradually level your tradeskills and gathering skills through the use of the Garrison. I was never one who enjoyed grinding either of these things, and being able to know that through doing daily snippets of mining and crafting I can eventually max out makes me a happy person. I realize there will be a point where I run out of things that I want to do… but it is going to be a long time down the road. For example I am already plotting removing either my inn or my lumber mill once I have gained all that I can get from them and I figure there will be other buildings that I do the same with. In other faffy news you notice I am riding an Onyxia mount in the above picture. As part of this mornings faff while waiting on a cat to decide she was done laying on my arms… I took my mage over to onyxia. For some time I have been killing her on every single level 90 character that I thought could reasonably do it each week. Finally the mount dropped this morning and I can stop that extremely time consuming process. However I am sure there will be a new target of my mount farming obsession.

WoW Xmas Wishlist

One of the best parts of playing any Blizzard game is the integration with Battle.net so that you can communicate with your friends regardless of what game they happen to be playing. This was awesome in that even when I was not playing World of Warcraft, I still had access to my friends playing the game through the ease of the battle.net launcher chat. The system is extremely awesome for what it does, and the wow implementation is great as it works fairly well cross server allowing you to group up with your friends even if you don’t happen to be on the same server. The problem is however it is still very limiting in that you have a fixed maximum number of friends. You are allowed to have a maximum number of battle.net based friends be it through the Real ID system or the newer Battle Tag system.

Folks look at me like I am crazy but after being a guild leader for well over a decade you end up with a lot of people that you want to keep up with. Once you factor in places like twitter and other social media… the 100 slots are just too limiting. I hate the process I have to go through regularly of trying to find someone I don’t really talk to that often to delete… in favor of adding someone new to the list. So the first item on my Xmas wishlist is for Blizzard to greatly increase the number of available battle.net slots. I hate to admit it, but I would even be willing to pay some sort of premium subscription to have this number uncapped, or at the very least tripled. Especially once you factor in that I have different groups of friends that play different blizzard games… bumping this number up is going to become crucial.

Cross Server / Cross Game Social Channels

One of the ways we have managed to get around the limited size of friends lists in the past was through the use of social channels. During the heyday of non-guild based raiding, we had several channels that served the purpose of giving us a much larger extended guild chat for both the Late Night Raiders and Duranub Raiding Company. These were great, and I would love to see this concept come back into vogue. The problem is at this point single server channels are just too limiting. Our raid currently pulls in folks from other servers on a somewhat regular basis, and if we had a raid chat channel, we would really need it to work across realms. I realize you can have some limited chat functionality with battle.net but what we need are persistent channels similar to the way Diablo 2 used to have them. That way regardless of server you can keep in touch with your social friends.

To take this to the next step we really need these channels to also exist across all of the current battle.net enabled games. As it stands currently we have House Stalwart folks that are playing all of the available Blizzard games. Last night we had groups in Diablo 3, World of Warcraft and a whole bunch of us in Heroes of the Storm. It would be so much easier to keep a common guild continuity if we could all hang out in the same “guild chat” in the form of a shared cross game battle.net chat channel. Essentially Blizzard has the beginnings of something amazing here, and they keep building these really infectious games in different genres. Coupling them all together in a shared communications infrastructure will only serve to reinforce the “stickyness” of each of the individual games. That way players can feel like they can have the freedom to play ANY game in their line-up without losing any aspect of that rich social structure they have built already.

Final Wish

The final wish I have for blizzard is to let me have European friends, or friends from other regions in general. I find it maddening that I live my life in a connected world that allows me to have friends from all around the world… but I am playing a game that tries to separate off these players into regional buckets. I realize this is likely a tall wish but I know so many people thats lives would be made better by it. Sure I would love to have cross region grouping… but I would settle with just being able to have some basic “hey how are you doing” style communication between the server regions. I realize that you guys kinda screwed yourself early on by recycling server names between the regions. However it seems like your current battle.net connection system takes this into account by referring to the servers by the fully qualified names of “Argent Dawn US” or “Argent Dawn EU”.

Blizzard already does some pretty amazing things, given the age of the game and what has to be an insane server infrastructure. At the end of the day however we just want to be able to play freely with our friends, without having to ask them to completely uproot their established social structure and server transfer… or in the case of other regions start completely from scratch. Warlords of Draenor is an expansion where you have very much learned the lessons of just how important nostalgia is. Players don’t want to abandon their servers and their existing pools of friends, but at the same time keep meeting new people from around the world that they also would like to play with. If you can somehow leverage this social connectedness it is only going to serve to strengthen the player bonds to your game. Here is hoping that you are at least working on some of the things I have talked about, because you have some really good systems at work here, but you are one or two steps away from absolute greatness.

An Evening With Alternative Chat

December 5, 2014 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff Episode 3

This morning sees the release of the third episode of my experimental side podcast, Bel Folks Stuff. For those who have not followed this development, as the title graphic says I have conversations with interesting people about the stuff they are into. So far I’ve had such conversations with Gypsy Syl and Rowan Blaze and his wife Scooters. Both of those were really awesome conversations and I suggest you go back and listen to them at your convenience. This morning however I am releasing an episode that I have been looking forward to with another good friend the Godmother of Faff behind Alternative Chat. As a strict devotee of the Faff lifestyle, or at the very least an aspirant to the lifestyle… I always appreciate her bringing the term to public consciousness. The funny thing is… we really didn’t even talk about this during the podcast. I believe in letting the conversation go where the conversation goes and we filled up an hour of time chatting away about various bits, and probably could have filled up another hour doing the same.

Of note for this episode I also wanted to make sure that the podcast was available on both iTunes and Stitcher radio to help those folks out who prefer to listen to podcasts through those avenues. I admit I was nervous with this episode because Alt herself has such an amazing production quality for her own podcasts. I felt like there was no way I could live up to that standard. That said I feel like this episode is really solid, and that maybe just maybe I am starting to get a hang of what exactly this thing is going to be all about. I don’t really sit down with a fixed number of questions or anything of the sort, but instead just try and keep the conversation flowing as best I can. With Alt the conversation flowed naturally even though later in the cast she admitted to having notes of her own. I still feel like we maybe got more than a few moments of genuine spontaneity there nonetheless. Speaking of spontaneity, I am always trying to evolve as a person and as such would love to hear your comments on how this side project is working.

Rifftrax and Raiding

With the shit storm that happened Tuesday with the Argent Dawn server, we didn’t actually get to start raiding as a group until last night. Unfortunately I had other plans, and had to miss the raid. Some of my co-workers and I have started this tradition of sorts of going to the RiffTrax live shows whenever they happen. Granted they are not truly “live” for us as in performed in theater. Nonetheless each time I go I think to myself “I have never laughed this hard ever” and then the next one trumps it. This go around they were riffing on a show they did during the 5th season of MST3K, a strange version of Santa Claus that involves Santa, Merlin, and some Christmas Devils… you know the standard fare. It turns out that apparently the film originally hailed from Mexico where maybe it made more sense? The final product is this insane dubbed over feature with so many absolutely absurd moments that they had pretty much endless ammunition to make fun of it. If you are really curious you can check out the MST3K version that someone has dumped on youtube, but apparently it was edited down heavily… and they had all new jokes to make at the movies expense.

As far as the raid goes they apparently had a pretty great night of their own right. It seems as thought they managed to two shot Kargath, and then down The Butcher a well. The sounds like they made some good progress on Tectus as well, so they are hoping to easily down that next Tuesday and progress to the next boss. We apparently ran the raid on personal loot and the RNG gods were good to a lot of players. I know Rylacus walked away with three pieces of gear, which means he can officially no longer complain about “never getting drops” for the remainder of this expansion. Admittedly he has always had pretty shitty luck with getting drops he actually needs, but the moment a rare assed mount drops… his dice immediately improve. I can’t really complain because I too have a collection of rare mount drops, but most of those were diligently farmed… and the only one I actually won when it was relevant was the Fiery Warhorse Reins.

Less Communicative

Last night after my post yesterday, I had a friend check in on me to make sure I was doing okay. It made me realize that I am doing a pretty bad job of reaching out to say “hey” to people lately. This friend has been logged into WoW at the same time as me for many nights, but I have been stuck in my own little world quite a bit. Right now I have a batch of things that needs to be wrapped up at work before going on my holiday vacation after the 19th. Then there is the daily blogging, and the two podcasts that I am keeping going… one of which records weekly. After that it seems like I always have some OTHER side project to work on, like my upcoming post for Syl’s Bloggy Xmas. Someone started a conversation the other day with “I know you are busy but” and I thought… am I busy? It seems like I very much am, and as a result when I get busy I tend to encapsulate myself in a little bubble or just shift into “speak if spoken to” mode.

Mostly this morning I wanted to take a moment to say that essentially “its me not you”. I feel like I am failing miserably at keeping in contact with people during this holiday season. I promise I still care, and I promise I am still interested in what’s going on in your worlds… but at this point I feel painfully behind in everything. I’ve always taken the Stanley Spadowski “Drink from the Firehose” approach to information intake. The problem is I seem to be falling further and further behind as my blog reader consistently has hundreds upon hundreds of posts to read. Between that and trying to juggle playing World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV and entertain semi-focused raiding in both of them… my attention circuits are maxed out. I promise I am still out here and still caring… I am just not taking it upon myself to engage directly nearly as much as I previously did. All of that said… if you need help with something I will do my best to assist in any way I can. Hopefully after the holiday break things will calm down a bit and I can reach a point of equilibrium.

Honeymoon Over

December 4, 2014 by Belghast

Old Familiar Beast

It feels very much like the honeymoon is now over as far as my return to World of Warcraft. Each time I have come back there has been something that ultimately drove me back away. When I came back before the launch of Pandaria, it was the “failed state” feel of the guild and how the once shared guild ethics seemed to have vanished. When I left last April, it was in part due to the fact that two factions of the guild quite literally hated each other, and it caused this giant rift right down the middle. Last night it felt like a brand new yet very familiar Maelstrom was opening, and I essentially supported it. One of the ideological things I have fought for years was the creation of a “Raider” rank in the guild, that granted special access to the guild banks. I hate the concept of a rank that can in any way be used to say that “this person” is better than “that person”. The problem is as a former raid leader myself I can see that it is entirely logistically needed.

Last night I helped to set one of these ranks up, and immediately after doing it I started to question my sanity. This only served to be reinforced later as a new acquisition to the guild started asking questions about how to get into the raid. This is going to be something that comes up over and over, especially now that there is a very noticeable raid rank. The problem is don’t have any good answers to give them. There is no path to follow to get into raiding, because House Stalwart is not a raid guild. Maybe it is moot at this point but I keep saying that over and over. I never wanted it to become “just another raid guild” because it used to be more than just a group of folks who mutually benefited from one another. It used to be this awesome extended family, and while pockets of that still exist… it feels like that era is just gone.

Honeymoon Over

All of this was compounded by the fact that at the very same time there was an incident that happened over voice chat, about someone potentially being muted that reminded me all too clearly of why I have left in the past. I have always despised the concept of the haves and have nots. I’ve always been someone who cared more about attitude and personality than skill, but by the same token this is what has held me back in my own raiding endeavors. If you want to be successful you do have to erect some barriers saying you have to be this tall to ride this ride. I just can’t bring myself to be the person to do that. I’ve never been able to decide that this group of friends is more important to our success than this group of friends. I just want everyone to get along and treat each other with some basic human dignity, but that always seems to be impossible. So last night underscored for me with a big bold line that if House Stalwart is going to be successful moving forward, I need to make sure I never permanently take back the crown. If I do I will started trying to make the guild a much more egalitarian place again, and tie a boat anchor around what was successful last expansion.

That said things are not as dire as I might make them out to be. The same raiders that need to be super serious to break the raid, are the ones that were grabbing anyone and their brother trying to make sure they got heirloom weapons for leveling. So while the bar has to be set pretty high to make sure things are successful, I have a feeling that once the current tier of raid content gets on farm status… those same barriers will start to break down as we have folks that can carry the others to victory. I just know that the guild was more successful than it has probably ever been during Pandaria as far as raid content clearing, and I need to stay out of the way of whatever mojo is required to return us to that status. I know that is going to involve a lot of things that fundamentally make me uncomfortable as a human being. I do however have faith that the raid core knows what it is doing, but I also feel like our fearless raid leader is stressed beyond boundaries. We have some fundamental problems… like too many melee and tanks… and far too few ranged and healers… but I feel like that will all be sorted as things move forward.

Sit Down, Shut Up, Enjoy the Ride

If I am going to stay in World of Warcraft for this expansion I am going to have to make some fundamental changes in who I am as a player. Right now I feel too much responsibility for the happiness of others in the House Stalwart World of Warcraft guild. It has been my baby for years, and I have nurtured it as such during all of that time… constantly trying to keep an influx of new and awesome people flowing through its doors. The thing is… before the launch of Warlords of Draenor I freely gave up the crown, as I have done multiple times since Cataclysm. I need to realize this means I am no longer in charge, and also by the same token no longer responsible for whatever happens in guild. Last night Rylacus passed the crown to me, but also gave me a speech that he really thinks it is best if I give it right back. Ry doesn’t care a bout the power, he just wants to keep me in game and happy as long as he can, because he knows each time I start taking responsibility for the happenings of all of these people… I burn out and run away screaming into the night. I need to also allow myself to be absolved of the guilt that comes from giving up that crown.

There is a thing I do really well, and that thing is acting as the guild cheerleader and chief recruiter. I am always going to be trying to find awesome and interesting people to draft into my family, because ultimately that is precisely what a guild is to me… a big extended and sometimes contorted family. It is joked that I have a white panel van full of candy, and drive around abducting people into our guilds… and more or less that is precisely what I do. I have always done it for World of Warcraft, and I currently do it for Final Fantasy XIV… for a guild there that I have NEVER been the leader of. I feel like I never much cared about actually directing the people once I got them, my focus has always been on the acquisition of more of them… hoping that the rest would sort itself out in the meantime. The problem is… just because I am friends with two people… doesn’t mean that they will be friends. Basically at this point if I am going to be happy in World of Warcraft, I need to be the friendly voice in guild chat and let other people worry about the minutiae. I hope that House Stalwart can remain mostly the same place it has been since launch, but I expect we are going to go through some rough times until folks realize fully… that this is not a raid guild, and raid membership is not guaranteed.

Tower Diving Time

December 3, 2014 by Belghast

Server Go Boom

Last night was the launch of Highmaul in World of Warcraft, or at least it should have been. For the majority of the night we tried in vain to log into Argent Dawn. While a handful of us made it to the character select screen, even fewer of us made it in game. Those in game however could not actually play the game, as the world was just fundamentally broken… mobs un-lootable or not spawning at all. All of the problems seemed to be related to the Chicago data center, where the Ruin battle group that Argent Dawn is attached to is located. Lately there has been a lot of talk of Distributed Denial of Service Attacks going on against the various MMO providers, but this is a nebulous concept that most people struggle to really understand. Thankfully there is a site like IPViking that can visualize this traffic in a way that it makes sense. Watching their attack map is like watching missile launches in some war game simulation… both terrifying and mesmerizing at the same time. The above image sadly is not from last night, but just one they have as an example on their website.

During the launch of Warlords of Draenor, there were very clear attacks against Blizzard. Last night however I did not actually see attacks targeting blizzard, but instead attack after attack targeting the St Louis area. I could only assume that the attacks are associated in some way to the things surrounding Ferguson in the St Louis metro area. This however speaks to the way the internet actually works, instead of the way that we all assume it works. The hard facts are there are a limited number of pathways across the United States, and if an attack is blocking traffic from reaching the Chicago data center, it is effectively also blocking anyone from reaching those servers. I ran a traceroute last night and from Tulsa area my packets went to Dallas before going over to the AT&T network somewhere in the vicinity of Wichita before the packets just died. I can only assume that the packets kept getting lose in the maelstrom of attacks between me and the Chicago data center.

Tower Diving Time

After a point I gave up on trying to get into anything within World of Warcraft, and wandered between a couple of games. My original intent was to do some Syrcus Tower on my Bard job, but when I got into Final Fantasy XIV the dps queue for Syrcus was reporting 30 minutes… which is significantly longer than I have ever actually seen it. So I abandoned that notion and instead decided to play some Heroes of the Storm. My good friend Rae finally managed to get her invite from Blizzard and apparently spent the better part of last night playing it as well. I had a strong feeling that she would like the game, based on her seeming love of League of Legends. For me it is a much stronger game because I like its focus on the team win, and not so much on individual performance. That said Rae was still constantly checking the meters during the matches, which I can only hope will be something that fades over time as those League tendencies potentially fall away.

I had really not played it much since the game reset that happened awhile back, wiping out our progress. As such I had completed the tutorial but was still sitting at level 1, having not actually played any real matches to level up with. Thanks to the +50% xp friend bonus, I managed to level up last night to five, and unlock many of the features of the game. I’ve noticed that they have front loaded a lot of the stuff so that you get the interesting items sooner. At level 5 it feels like I have all of the tools needed to really play the character how I would want to. I am a huge fan of Muradin and in all the times playing the game, that has been the character that most fits what I want to play. That said I am also rather fond of Raynor and Tyrael… and if I am going to play a support you can’t beat Uther. I think the main reason why I like Muradin is his Avatar ability that causes him to grow in size and become extremely sturdy, allowing me to tower dive obstacles if I really need to, or survive team fights. With passive health regeneration he has some serious sustain, and most of the time I never actually needed to return to base.

Bloggy XMAS Countdown

I feel bad that I did not advertise this sooner, but there is an event that I am going to be part of that is happening in the blogosphere. The awesome Syl of MMO Gypsy had this idea of creating a virtual advent calendar of sorts within the blogging community. Apparently in her country it is custom to decorate the various shops and houses around town to represent a day of the advent. As such she has created this truly awesome Advent Calendar of gaming blogs. I am currently scheduled to be one of the posters for 12/9 and I will begin prepping for that soon. The problem is I am still not quite sure what I am going to talk about. I have a few ideas, but we will just have to see how that sorts out. In the meantime this is day three of the postings and I highly suggest you go back to the first and read your way forward. I thank Syl for coming up with the idea and making it happen, and once again there has been this massive outpouring of support which is truly awesome.