I talked about Main Story Roulette some time back and it being one of the best ways to casually level a character. Last night I encountered the problem with this system, and weirdly one I had not encountered at any point prior in the process of pushing the Samurai to 80. The challenge is that when you queue for MSQ Roulette you are ultimately hoping to get Praetorium, because it is worth a significantly larger chunk of experience than the other option Castrum Meridianum. I’ve managed to pull Praetorium more times than not, and as a result when Castrum comes up I curse my fate… but largely play along nicely.
Apparently I hit a streak of people who are not willing to waste their daily bonus on Castrum. It took me roughly fifteen minutes to get through the queue each time, and when I got the first group within seconds all but four of us had bailed on Castrum. You can’t really run the place with four players reliably so I bailed as well and re-queued. Another fifteen minutes later I drew Castrum once again… and this time one of the two tanks refused to move until someone dropped from the party. Again once one person left there was a cascade of leaves until I opted to bail rather than run it down over half of the people.
A third time I sat through the queue and a third time I drew Castrum… and once again before I had even loaded in fully we were down a handful of people. The problem there is that no one queues for MSQ Roulette with the party in progress box checked. There is no reason to do this given that you would in theory be missing out on a bunch of experience that comes from the various boss kills. Again I returned to the queue a fourth time and finally this time it was Praetorium and everyone happily powered their way through it.
Unfortunately that does not stop the fact that Square has a problem on their hands, where a Roulette can produce one of two results and one of them is so disliked that folks are willing to take the 10 minute debuff that keeps them from queuing rather than deal with wasting their bonus on it. In theory they should probably buff Castrum to be able to reward the same amount of experience that Praetorium does. However if they do that… it will swing the balance in the other direction given that Castrum takes about half as long to run as Praetorium. There aren’t any great answers to this conundrum, but seeing as I encountered it three times in a row last night… it is a problem.
Belghast the Undead Warrior on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA-PVE RP server
The other thing that I took care of last night was reserving my character names on Bloodsail Buccaneers the PVE RP server that we plan on rolling on. As a result Belghast the Undead Warrior now exists there and is ready to start leveling when the gates open later this month. I also reserved a Belghast on Mankrik as a back up, but I doubt I will be using it. I don’t have a lot to say on this point other than the fact that if you are wanting names, you might want to log in and do this thing yourself. Several of my friends have already missed out on their chosen character names which is frustrating.
It seems as though I have steered a good number of my Horde side guild Facepull towards this server as well. So in theory we should have a decent number of people around at launch. Largely I just want to be able to field guild groups for dungeons and such. I fully expect to be running a bunch of Ragefire and Wailing Caverns. The only negative about playing a Forsaken is that they are so far away from everything. However the pull of having a second fear break is too great not to roll Undead.
I’ve decided to try a new series of sorts called “Weekend Update” (name shamelessly stolen from SNL) since my Monday morning post tends to just be a rundown of what happened over the weekend. Right now it feels like I have a bunch of competing projects that I have theoretically been juggling reasonably well. At the very least they all appear to be making progress at the same time, which is I guess the master plan behind the juggling.
One of them has been getting a second 80 in Final Fantasy XIV, and this process has largely involved me logging in every day and running the Main Story Roulette. This means that I have seen an awful lot of the cut-scenes surrounding Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum. While it isn’t the same voice actor… every time I hear a Gaius cutscene it reminds me of Dracula from Symphony of the Night. I seem to be the only one because when I type “what is man but a miserable pile of secrets” in party chat I just get confused responses.
As of last night I am just a sliver into 79 and have been taking this opportunity to clean up a bunch of the side quests that I never got around to doing. I’ve finished cleaning up the Dwarven and related areas in upstate Kholusia. I moved over after that to the secret zone that you end up at around 79, and it has a ton of quests to knock out. In theory if I pull another Praetorium I might luck out and get close enough to 80 to be able to ding off of a Trials roulette or something similar. Then begins the process of doing a bunch of dungeon grinding to gear it!
Destiny 2 – PC
On the Destiny 2 front I have reached a point where I just can’t bring myself to push any further. During this weeks TWAB, it was announced that they were lowering the total number of EAZ Miniboss kills from 100 to 50. This means in theory if I just wait for the Tuesday patch, I can log in that night and get my purple armor set without a bunch of mindless grinding. As a result I have spent my time either working on the Hunter to get her the blue set, or working on various other things I have neglected like the loaded question quest. This is why I am rocking a double fusion rifle loadout above.
After I upgrade the armor I will need to sort out what exactly I can do as far as the masterwork quests. However I have heard that these will be something you could complete after the Solstice event is over. I don’t really want to risk it however so I am going to try and knock out what I can while it is going on.
World of Warcraft – PC
I don’t have a proper explanation for this one. I had not logged in since October of last year and then suddenly this weekend I found myself patching my addons up and logging into what had been my main when I was last actively playing. One of the things that I dislike about World of Warcraft when you are several patches behind, is that there is no real way of knowing what content you should be doing short of scouring WoWhead. The main story quest is a point of frustration for a lot of people in Final Fantasy XIV, but I love that there is zero risk of me doing things out of sequence.
I absolutely blindly accepted the quest that the game was trying to send me to… and apparently unlocked Nazjatar instead of all of the content I had seemingly missed between now and then. I guess this makes sense from a World of Warcraft perspective because it is a game that is constantly abandoning what has come before for the new and shiny future. I am going to blame this on the fact that we spent a lot of time this weekend talking about WoW Classic, and on that front we are going to be rolling Horde side on the PVE RP server Bloodsail Buccaneers. If you have interest in this nonsense let me know.
For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing” where I attempt to update the sidebar on my blog. I failed miserably at the last incarnation, because the side bar never actually got updated. Additionally May was a crazy month with all of the weather issues and I never quite got one of these done. Instead I am shifting to a June edition where I attempt to start doing these towards the start of the month instead of the end of the month. I seemingly inhaled my coffee this morning so… lets do this!
To Those Remaining
Dragalia Lost – Android
I continue to truck along happily in Dragalia Lost and especially now that I have my Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 there is rarely a night that goes by that I don’t at a minimum play through my dailies. I’ve said this before but there is a release cadence of content that keeps me engaged and the fact that another character summon is just around the corner. The whole summoning process feels much better than that Wyrmprints have been completely removed from the mix. After playing effectively the entire time I have gathered up a good stable of five star characters that I have not even bothered leveling yet. I still sorta wish there was a switch version.
Diablo 3 – PC and Switch
If you have read the blog over the last few days you will know that I am fully engaged with Diablo 3 right now. Last night I attempted to farm some more chests but sleep claimed me. I am however on a mission to get the Avarice Conquest and will get there sooner or later. I love Diablo 3 so much and while I fade in and out of its focus… I will always sooner or later return to it.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC
While I am not playing a ton of it… I am still very much engaged with Final Fantasy XIV and am looking forward to the upcoming head start on June 28th for Shadowbringers the next expansion. Pretty excited especially considering the drastic class changes that I think will lead to a more accessible environment. Right now the plan is to level the Samurai through the story quests and then level Warrior with Dungeon Finder given that Tank queues are a breeze. I’ve always done it the other way around and I think a lot of what leads to my burn out is trying to claw my way up to level as a DPS when I could simply go the easy route and level through the story.
Magic the Gathering Arena – PC
While I am not playing it a ton I am still fairly engaged with Magic the Gathering Arena and the War of the Spark expansion seems to be pretty interesting. We talked a bit about this on the podcast but I am really wishing they would make it so that constructed is a format that is always available for play, given that is probably my favorite of the “event” types. It also serves as an amazing way to obtain cards from a specific set.
To The New and Returning
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – PC
I did a lengthy post about this the other day but I am starting to play Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night which is as close as we will probably ever get to a proper Symphony of the Night sequel. While I only have the E3 demo version right now, I will be getting access to the full thing on my birthday… June 18th and plan on picking it up for pretty much every console that it will be available for. It is likely going to be a toss up between Switch and PC as to which version I actually play the most.
Destiny 2 – PC
With the Season of Opulence starting I believe today… I’ve been poking my head back into Destiny 2 of late to try and reacquaint myself with the way that the game as a whole feels. I completely missed the Season of the Drifter because I was off doing other things, and the start of a new Season seems to be a good time to get engaged again. I still very much love the game but at this point am so far behind that I am not exactly sure what the most ideal catch up mechanic would be. This is the problem with Destiny as a whole is that there isn’t a painfully obvious way to gain a ton of light levels quickly.
The Elder Scrolls Online – PC
I’ve also of late been spending a significant amount of time playing Elder Scrolls Online. A new expansion released and it has made me want to start playing again… in spite of not actually being willing to start the new content. Instead I am working my way through Vvardenfell… aka two expansions ago? The game is pretty great and ends up filling the same niche that Star Wars the Old Republic does… in that I mostly want to come in and gobble up a bunch of story content and then wander off.
To Those Departing
Grim Dawn
I know I will revisit this game again, but for now I am not playing it and it leaves the list. Based on screenshot evidence I seem to have stopped playing sometime mid April. Still a really great game and I expect to get the itch at some point in the near future… but being engaged with Diablo 3 again mostly pushed it off the table.
Marvel Future Fight
I played this a significant amount of time for a short period of time… and now find it really hard to get back into it. I feel like I hit the free to play wall where I have done as much of the content as I want to do before needing to spend a significant chunk of money. The grind set in and all of the things that would offer advancement require either a lot of money or a lot of time.
Mortal Kombat 11
Going forward I am going to try to filter titles like this off the list in part because there are a lot of things that I play furiously for a weekend and then never play again. Mortal Kombat 11 was one of these and while I fully expect to return to it periodically it isn’t really worthy of the moniker of “regularly playing”. Its still a really cool game and you should check it out especially when it goes on sale.
Outward
This again is another example of a game that probably shouldn’t have made it onto the list since I played it obsessively for a few nights and then never again. I’m going to start an honorable mentions section below for some of the games where I play in this manner because I have a few of them this month as well.
Star Wars the Old Republic
I came in… I gobbled up the entire Eternal Throne storyline and then wandered off once I started the content immediately following that. I have no clue why I suddenly stopped playing but I did. I expect honestly at some point soon to add this back to the list especially with a new full expansion on the way. I still really like this game and am happy it found its feet post launch. I would love more of the content along the lines of Fallen Empire and Eternal Throne because both were phenomenal.
Honorable Mentions
Again for those who didn’t read all of the blurbs above, this is a section I am adding in part because every month there are a handful of titles that I play furiously for a few days and then wander away from. They don’t really deserve the title of “regularly playing” but they are also worth noting.
Crowfall – PC
While there is actually a game here I am not entirely certain if it is a game I want to play. This is something I have been poking my head in to check on since the backer alpha began. I had a few fun nights with it but more or less have consigned it to hibernation once again.
Dragon’s Dogma – PC
I have no clue how much of this I will be playing. I randomly installed it and started playing a few weekends back after watching a series of videos on it by Gaijin Hunter. It is a really cool game and I think it might be something that I could settle into as a bizarre “what if capcom had made skyrim” experience. Not quite ready to add it to the regularly playing list, will see if it returns by the end of the month.
Rage 2 – PC
I had a lot of fun with this game right around the time of launch and then I wandered away… and am not exactly sure why? I really need to get back to playing it and at least make my way through the main story. I get easily distracted when it comes to gaming and I am guessing me getting into World of Warcraft Classic beta was the shiny object that caused this one.
World of Warcraft Classic – PC
And… last but definitely not least… we have World of Warcraft Classic the aforementioned shiny object. This is coming in as an honorable mention and not a regularly playing in part because I have forcefully pulled myself away from it. This game launches officially in August and given the amount of time you need to spend leveling in this game… I don’t see a point in burning myself out before that point. We are completely nonsense and are going to be making an attempt at 40 player raiding again. I will give more information about this as time gets closer. However for now it claims a spot on the Honorable Mentions.
Over the last few days I have been doing a number of minor renovations to AggroChat.com which is a site that you may or may not know about. Essentially the site is a mirror of the content that the various members of the AggroChat podcast do on the interwebs along with the resting place of each of our episodes. We use a plugin that is no longer actively supported… but still seems to work… to make a local copy of each post that comes out on the various sites that make up our group. What this means in practice is that the site is mostly filled with Aggronaut posts and podcast episodes given that I am way more prolific than the rest of our crew.
The site itself had been in a weird place for some time, largely due to the fact that the previous web host made it very hard to modify anything as I had to go through a manual install process. So over the last few days since moving the sites over the weekend I have been making small tweaks here or there to the site to refresh it. The main change that I made is to swap from the cumbersome theme that I had been using over to Generate Press, the same highly modular theme that I use with Aggronaut. What makes this theme extra awesome is the fact that the licensing allows you to pretty much use it on any site that you own.
I may be tweaking colors a bit, but I think for the most part things are now in a fairly stable state. The last major changes I made yesterday were to make private any content not related to the current staff, and to re-associate the podcast episodes to the AggroChat account instead of my account. What this gives me is a much cleaner Author widget in the sidebar that shows the last several podcast episodes lumped together as well as the last several posts from each author. Previously I really didn’t make proper use of the sidebar and now it has a much more consistent feel to it as well as linking to the various “AggroChat” branded social media accounts. I’m fairly happy with the current state of things and just felt like talking about it a bit this morning.
As far as gaming goes… I started my night attempting to do some Diablo 3. I say attempting because the thing that I really need to do is a round of bounties, and the thing that I keep struggling to do… is a round of bounties. For some reason over the last few days I have encountered issues where I get disconnected from Diablo and battle.net entirely… so much so that I often have to crash the client and restart it. This happened the other night while Grace and I were grouping up, which didn’t make it that big of a deal because she kept the session active. However when I am playing solo… this means whatever progress I made towards a round of bounties was lost since I only really need the Bounty Caches at this point and not whatever I happen to loot along the way. This also meant that Diablo 3 was not my final resting place for the evening.
My next go to was World of Warcraft Classic, but after screwing around on my newly minted Undead Warrior… I was not having much gusto there either. I think I might be in a holding pattern with this until it officially releases in August. Were they to tell me that they were not going to be resetting progress between now and release… then that would be one thing. However since leveling in Classic is not exactly fast… I am not exactly relishing the prospect of getting to a happy place in beta and then losing all of that progress for live. Classic served to tell me that yes I did in fact want to do this… and now I am more or less ready for launch.
Instead I largely opted to watch some episodes of The Toys that Made Us on Netflix. For the uninitiated this is a docuseries that outlines the various decisions that went into making the toy lines I grew up with in the 80s. I watched the first season when it initially was released, and yesterday was made aware that season 2 was available. So I watched the first of the new episodes on Star Trek toys, and then the majority of the episode on Transformers before I eventually gave up and went to bed. I think a lot of my restlessness from last night comes from the fact that I did not sleep well due to the storms. I was more or less dead to the world until the alarm went off this morning… and then was groggy enough that i couldn’t figure out how to turn the alarm off on my watch. Hopefully tonight will be more fruitful on the gaming front… and if not I will just keep on watching Toys that Made Us because it really is a charming show.
