Whelp friends… I hopped on the bandwagon. I had finally seen enough folks talking about Pandaria Remix that after an evening of doing content in Guild Wars 2 I decided to fire it up and create a character. Since all of my Alliance characters are on Argent Dawn, I created my timerunner there and decided to choose a Dark Iron Dwarf since I had never leveled one of those since that race was added to the game. What is so weird about the way this works is that it is created as a normal World of Warcraft character on a normal server, but you ultimately play with only folks actively playing the remix content. When the event is over in roughly three months these characters transition to normal World of Warcraft characters and as such this becomes an alternate method for leveling something all the way to 70. Where this experience differs from normal leveling is that you start at level 10 and work your way up through the levels entirely on the Pandaria continent meaning there are significantly lower requirements to get into things like raids and scenarios.
The other thing that is significantly different about this experience is that normal loot does not exist. instead of quest rewards you get an item called the Cache of Infinite Treasure. Inside of these are what I can only describe as ARPG loot with some seemingly random stats and sockets for you to slot special kinds of gems. So far I have encountered Prismatic gems which give you a bump to a specific stat, Tinker gems which give you some proc or ability that can be used in combat similar to a trinket, and Cogwheel gems which give you a new ability that your class might not have had access to. For example, I found a gem that just gives me the Mage spell Blink. I have no clue yet how deep this rabbit hole goes because I have not made it super far, but so far it seems really cool.
Everything in this alternate version of Azeroth revolves around a currency called Bronze. This can be looted from individual monsters, is the reward for quests, and can be received from the loot boxes. You are also given an ability called the Unraveling Sands which pops up a crafting bench of sorts allowing you to salvage any loot you no longer need and turn it into Bronze as well. From what I understand there are traders scattered around Pandaria for the Infinite Dragonflight that allow you to trade in bronze for various items, some of which are unique to this game mode and I believe will transfer to your other characters after the event is over. Bronze becomes the currency you also use to buy eventual raid gear or probably more important mounts that are unique for this event like this 4400 Bronze Pterrordax.
I had a lot of fun last night and honestly, probably more fun than I have had since Pandaria originally shipped. Seeing this expansion again makes me realize how not into the last several World of Warcraft expansions I have really been. Pandaria has some deep Northrend vibes, of going to explore a whole new continent and seeing everything shiny and new about the cultures. I have no clue how far I will actually get in this because I would assume at some point it stops being fun and starts being super grindy… but until then it is a super chill way to play. Based on the general reception I am seeing, this seems to be breathing life into the game for a lot of folks. It is a more “classic” experience without falling into those super hardcore tropes, and so far it seems like everything is “Solo-Self-Found” to use the ARPG term. I don’t see a way to trade with anyone as mailboxes are turned off and you are walled out of guild banks or being able to leave the continent in any way.
Weirdly… the whole ARPG trope works for this experience. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those things that folks demand stick around in some form or another.
Good Morning Folks! I realize that I have been talking a lot about Diablo IV and Path of Exile, but I have also been playing quite a bit of Guild Wars 2. I dinged 95 last night in D4 and then treated myself to some super chill Tequatl game time in Guild Wars 2… that ended up being an entire evening of “faffing about” doing random things. I feel like first it is very important for you to encompass the majesty of this cat chair that I got from the wizard chore currency. I did not expect that each of the cats would be animated individually. The void kitty in the chair in the upper left quadrant for example arches its back and yawns periodically. The Siamese below them spends most of the time peering directly into your soul. It truly is a wonder of gaming kind and I feel like I might never use any of my other equally amazing chairs while waiting for events to spawn.
Yesterday I crafted my second legendary weapon, but admittedly it feels a bit like cheating. For those who do not know the Wizard Vault has been selling these seasonal boxes for 1000 astral currency that gets you most of the way to crafting a legendary weapon. I missed out on the first box but I picked up the second and crafted the legendary sword named Bolt. This time around I picked Frostfang the Axe from the third starter kit set because I could see myself using an axe on several characters more than the other options. This box gave me the precursor weapon, a Gift of Frostfang, and a Gift of Might. That meant that in order to finish things up I would need to craft a Gift of Magic which cost around 300 gold worth of components and then assemble it with the Gift of Might, 77 Mystic Clovers, and 250 Globs of Ectoplasm into a Gift of Fortune.
The last step would be assembling a Gift of Mastery which requires 1 Bloodstone Shard which costs 200 Spirit Shards… something I have plenty of, 250 Obsidian Shards, a Gift of Exploration, and a Gift of Battle. The Gift of Exploration comes from getting 100% exploration on all of the old world zones and thankfully when you complete this you get two copies… so I had one sitting in my bank. However, I probably should go ahead and finish up World Exploration on my Ranger so I can get a pair to replace the one I used. That left the Gift of Battle which can only be obtained through the Gift of Battle Item Reward Track in WvW. I was about halfway through the reward track as generally speaking it is my default choice when doing WvW content, so over the last handful of days I have knocked out the rest of that reward track.
The thing that always floors me about WvW is how much I really truly do enjoy it. I spent most of Sunday afternoon hanging ut with a group of folks and taking down objectives in the Eternal Battlegrounds. It is one of those activities that I always enjoy, but because of my mental block against all forms of PVP in other games… I just rarely think to do it. I am way more likely to ride the World Boss train on any given evening than to pop into the battlegrounds and see if there is a group rolling around. Realistically it is an activity where you absolutely need a group, but they are common enough that you can pretty much port between realms until you find a commander tag and then seamlessly blend into the nonsense. Some groups will claim that you need to be on Discord or be kicked out of the squad but I have never personally had this happen and for the most part… you don’t REALLY need to know what is going on. Stay on the tag… and play your role which for me is Longbow Ranger and harassing the enemy from long range with AOE volleys targeting the entire team.
One of the things that I don’t love about Guild Wars 2… is that it has probably my favorite kit from any game, but it is rarely considered the optimal way to play that character. I love Longbow/Greatsword Ranger and specifically of the Soulbeast variety. While this is a great build for the open world and for world vs world… it is generally frowned upon for any serious group content as it does not provide useful buffs to the party. Longbow just feels so damned good because it does great ranged damage, has good AOE, and some fun buffs with good mobility. Unfortunately, it provides neither Quickness nor Alacrity which makes it “selfish” in the eyes of squad builders. I have this problem where in order for me to enjoy something the weapons have to “feel” good… and honestly Longbow and Greatsword feel the best and as a result, I will keep playing them no matter how bad they might be. I sort of feel like this is a problem that Guild Wars 2 needs to solve… so that every weapon combination can provide something that party play would actually want.
I got my “Catmander” tag in theory as a way around this… I thought maybe if I organized my own groups it would not be that big of a deal that I was the “selfish” player given that I was the one taking the time to organize things. Unfortunately, I have just not been able to push myself forward into taking that level of responsibility. I feel like there are just too many things that I don’t fully understand about the game and would end up just making a mess. Guild Wars 2 is a game where people give blind faith to whoever is wearing the tag… and I don’t want to feel like I am leading folks astray. Maybe at some point I will become the Catmander of my dreams… but for now I am still taking a backseat and watching.
Morning Folks! I completed what is probably the last of the challenges that I am going to face in this league. I am happy to sit at 34/40 because other than the memories challenge everything else is T17 or Uber Boss related. I took the lame way out and just bought some bulk constrictor maps at 21 of them for a Divine Orb which allowed me to grind out the last few guardian maps that I needed for this challenge. I feel pretty great with the progress that I made during the Necropolis League and would be perfectly fine at this point if I did not play again until the start of 3.25. I am not saying for certain that is going to happen but that I would would feel accomplished for the progress I’ve made.
Today is the launch of Diablo IV Season 4 and I know that I will be spending at least a bit of time playing it. Generally speaking… I tend to start a Barbarian since that has been the last that I have enjoyed the most to date. They feel a bit weak at the start of the game but once you start gearing them they feel great. Earlier this week Raxx released a Tier list video and apparently… Necromancers especially of the minion variety have been significantly buffed. This is making me consider a Necro start given that I do love me some minion gameplay. I am not sure which class I will spend most of my time playing, and really how good the state of the game feels is going to be what determines my level of engagement. I had a heck of a lot of fun during Season 2 so here is hoping that Season 4 feels equally good.
Other than that I have been spending quite a bit of time playing Guild Wars 2. Kodra has been back and active a good deal lately, which has prompted me to want to go back and explore Tyria. I would love to be able to find a time when I can be online with various folks that I know and actually do some of the content. Fractals are probably the lowest common denominator, but I would love to get more engaged in Strikes and potentially even Raids now that there is a training wheels mode. I have a commander tag so that is pretty much what is required for doing multi-group activities.
My favorite aspect of the game is just how easy it is to engage in open-world group activities. I had a Wizard’s Vault challenge that asked me to kill 100 Risen. I figured I would pop over to Orr and do some gathering while slowly completing that challenge, and before I knew it someone was calling out that the Arah event was starting up, so I joined the crowd and made my way to the legendary High Wizard easily soaking up enough kills along the way. It is moments like that which really sell me on Guild Wars 2, because it is so easy to start doing one thing and get wrapped up in a bunch of other things along the way that you were not planning on doing at all.
Later in the evening, I wound up in WVW because I had cashed in my Wizard’s Vault tokens in order to get the third legendary weapon box. This meant that I needed to farm up another Gift of Battle, which meant following around and helping a group of folks take objectives. I had not really played WvW since the most recent round of changes but pending you are going there to actually do the combat, it seems like you gain progress faster than you did previously. I’m about halfway to my next gift of battle and figure in the coming weeks I will poke my head back into WvW a bit more as I tend to find it shockingly chill.
Unfortunately, when I cashed in my Wizard’s Vault tokens I did not pay attention to the other rewards. This chair is amazing and I must have it, which means I need to be fairly active each day to make sure I am gaining enough progress in order to pick it up. Why yes I do want to be surrounded by lounging cats while I am waiting on World Events to start. Chairs in this game are such an odd pastime, but I am happy to see a really great one available that is not in the cash shop.
I’ve been kicking around this topic for a while now, and it seems like a good one to close out what has been a fairly busy week. This blog got its start originally as not only a World of Warcraft blog but more specifically a World of Warcraft Warrior Raid Tanking blog. From 2000 until around 2015 this blog was largely dominated by an endless cavalcade of MMORPGs. They were truly my primary gaming outlet and any time a new one queued up I was there with the rest of my friends grinding out a new batch of characters and classes. It was a love affair that started with Everquest and just kept continuing each time a new latest and greatest game was on the horizon. In part, I was enamored with the concept of playing with so many other people and most of my long-term friends stem from one or more of these games. Hell the entirety of the podcast I have been recording for over a decade, are folks that I met through Massively Multiplayer Online Games.
Tam and Kodra date back to my early days raiding with Late Night Raiders, and Thalen was a member of a competing raid that occasionally subbed in for assorted content. Ashgar is someone that Tam and Kodra met when they left Argent Dawn and was someone I was ultimately introduced to when I talked them back to the server for Cataclysm. Ammo I knew her mom first, but also stems originally from World of Warcraft on Argent Dawn. Grace/Ace is someone I met on Twitter but roped into our nonsense in Final Fantasy XIV and ultimately became someone that I am close enough to that I consider my sibling. The entire reason why I got on Twitter in the first place back in 2009… was to have a better way of communicating with other bloggers and more specifically the Blog Azeroth folks. I am uncertain I ever would have been attracted to the platform were it not for the rich MMORPG gaming community that I found there.
The problem is that as my life changed, and the bulk of my active gaming group shifted two timezones away… I found myself in a position where I was drawn to MMORPGs but largely ended up never playing with anyone else. I reached the point in my life where I could no longer stomach the late nights of staying up until 1 am and then getting back up at 5:30 am to start the next day. I needed to take better care of myself and also started getting more real-world responsibilities that required it. Around 2013 I shifted from being a worker bee, to a team lead, and eventually to an official supervisor. Then in 2017, I made another big shift to Management. All of this… brought a dislike for actually having any modicum of responsibility in my downtime. So I went from being a Guild Leader and occasional Raid Leader first… to trying to stay in the background and take on as little responsibility as possible.
I loved raiding in World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV and spent a lot of time leading raids over the years. However, I reached a point where I was no longer willing to give up multiple evenings of my time for the express purpose of progression. From 2004 until around 2012 I was devoting at least three nights every single week to raiding, and pushing everything else to the side. Once I stopped raiding… it became harder to work it back into my schedule. I made attempts to raid seriously again during Warlords of Draenor and Legion… and over in Final Fantasy XIV during A Realm Reborn and Heavensward but all were relatively short-lived. Legion I made it through a few tiers of content and Heavensward we never really made it past the Extreme Primals before I faded into the background. I would always get to the point where I was dreading raid night, because of the loss of freedom it posed.
In spite of not really having active groups on demand like I used to during most of my World of Warcraft days, I still actively pugged. My class of choice has always been some form of a Tank, which meant that I needed to take on a lot of responsibility in dungeon runs. I am not sure if the groups got more aggressively toxic… or if I just became less tolerant of other human beings, but over the years I found myself not wanting to run dungeons with other random players anymore. I built up this mental block to the responsibility of leading a dungeon, and I’ve found it extremely hard to get past it. While I still like the concept of tanking dungeons I just never do it… not unless I have at least one friend along with me. As my time tables shifted out of the range of most of my friends… it just meant that I didn’t run group content anymore.
I am legitimately not sure how it started, but in 2015 I got pulled into running Seasonal content in Diablo III with my friend Grace/Ace. I had always been a fan of the Diablo-like ARPG genre and often played them in my downtime from raiding or other MMORPG shenanigans. I fell in love with Diablo in college and obsessed over the game and then followed the long sequence of games that came after it from Dungeon Siege to Sacred to Titanquest to more modern games like Grim Dawn and Wolcen. Running Diablo III Seasons with Grace gave me all of the excitement of an MMORPG launch… all the fun of rushing through the objectives and trying to build a powerful character as fast as you could… all condensed within a few weeks. Then I could walk away, do other things, and know that in three or four months we could do it all again.
More than that ARPGs gave me all of the complexity and loot chase that I craved, but the ability to take all of it at my own pace. I could play rich and mechanically interesting characters and did not need other players to accomplish any goals that I set out for myself. Sure it was fun as hell to play with friends whenever our paths happened to cross… but I never found myself in a holding pattern needing more people to make something happen. That was always the worst part about playing MMORPGs… was the waiting around for something to happen. In the early days of World of Warcraft, I had fostered this arcane tapestry of social channels that I relied upon to be able to form groups… but even then having access to all of those people and so many different relationships… it would still sometimes take upwards of an hour to get things started.
Playing MMORPGs in a post-dungeon finder economy meant that most people were not actively creating groups. Those who did exist in the group finder were divorced from any personal connection and often had a wealth of toxic behavior associated with them. It just became easier for me to be off doing my own thing and having a less rewarding gameplay experience… than to subject myself to having to deal with other people. Even when the groups went smoothly and everyone was kind… the imagined specter of potentially being called out for missing a cooldown or not mashing my buttons hard enough or in the correct order was enough to keep me from ever trying most nights. Occasionally I would get brave and put myself out there… and those were often the times that I ran into the worst possible individuals.
For years Final Fantasy XIV was the exception to the growing toxicity of gaming communities. It was downright wholesome in comparison and there were so many moments like above where someone needed to AFK and all of the players just chilled out and chatted while waiting. However with the downfall of World of Warcraft and the mass migration of players to XIV… with it has seemed to come a lot more of those cultural norms. Now I have friends talking about struggling to find a static raid group that does not require you to use tools that violate the terms of service. I’ve absolutely seen a lot more talk of damage numbers and open calling out of folks who are not performing up to some imagined bar in the few groups I have exposed myself to. All of this just makes it that much harder to get over my growing mental block to putting myself out there.
If I were the type of player who could happily subsist on casual “Stardew Valley” style gameplay, I could probably still find fulfilling gameplay in MMORPGs. I am not that player. I love loot and quite honestly the only reason why I started raiding in the first place back in World of Warcraft is that I wanted access to shiny purple items. Sure raiding with other people is its own kind of rewarding, and sure it feels great to finally take down a boss… but it feels much better to get that item you have been trying to get for months. Legitimately I probably had more fun in World of Warcraft raids by soloing them years after the fact… than I ever did actually doing them legitimately. I liked collecting things and I absolutely loved collecting appearances. That sort of mindset was not always conducive to a need-based or points-based raiding economy.
Do you know what causes endless mountains of loot to climb? Action ARPGs absolutely do, so much so that we set up complicated loot filter systems in order to show us only the “best” items, and even then… nonsense like this occasionally happens. So it was a few months back that I realized that a lot of my shift from MMORPGs as my core focus to ARPGs is that it largely scratches all of the itches for me. I can play with friends and have a heck of a lot of fun when our schedules happen to align, but the rest of the time I have endless progression and complexity buried behind a constant dopamine hit of loot acquisition. I get all the things that I love about MMORPGs but none of the obstacles standing in my way.
More than that I get to feel like I am part of a larger community and get to help others in their own progression. I get so deep in the weeds at times when I am writing about ARPGs, but I feel like someone out there is benefitting from the nonsense I am doing. Then there is the whole concept of guilds and shared stashes that let me legitimately help my friends who happen to be playing along with me. Games like Last Epoch and the resonance system allow me to share items that I have collecting dust in my massive treasure trove… even if I was not playing with a friend at the time it dropped. Bel League in Path of Exile was a heck of a lot of fun, and while it seems like most of the AggroChat crew is over that game… there will be times in the future when I can share things through the Guild Stash with other players who are active in the game at that time. If nothing else my blog and my constant ramblings serve as a locus of information for anyone who might want to get into these sorts of games.
That is not to say that I don’t still play MMORPGs, but when I do so I go into them knowing that I am likely never going to actively group with another player. I think this is why I have had a bit of a renaissance with Guild Wars 2 because it is a game that lets me do large-scale raid-like events in the open world… without ever having to organize or manage other players. I had a heck of a lot of fun recently playing through the Dragonflight story, and doing some of the World Quests in World of Warcraft but also reached a point where I felt like I had experienced enough of that game. At some point prior to the release of Dawntrail this summer I will pop back into Final Fantasy XIV and complete all of the content I have missed and then happily play through the new expansion, but also know that once the credits roll I am probably out again.
For the foreseeable future, I am very likely to be devoted almost entirely to ARPGs, because they scratch the right itches for me and fit my usage patterns. I’ve had similar phases with Monster Hunter World or whatever the latest Looter Shooter happens to be because they operate in similar patterns. I had several weeks of joy when Enshrouded launched into early access because it gave me a lot of the same dopamine hits. I don’t think it is that any of the MMORPGs have changed… and more that my patterns of play have changed. I’ve just finally reached a point where I am ready to accept it and stop trying to push myself to do things that I no longer find as comfortable as I once did.
Anyways! I had been kicking around this topic for a while now and like I said at the start… it seemed like a decent way to close out the week. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you all on Monday for a recap of whatever the hell I end up doing this weekend.
