Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

Thundershrimp Invasion

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Sometimes you don’t have to look terribly far to find nonsense in games… sometimes it finds you. Mistlock Sanctuary is an extremely handy place to have access to, and honestly half of the time it becomes the unofficial Guild Hall of Greysky Armada given that it tends to be where we all meet up on the regular. It is essentially a tightly condensed area that has all of the vendors and services that you might need from a town, and allows you to teleport right back to where you were before entering. It becomes a hangout spot for lots of folks within the Guild Wars 2 community, including apparently a group of Thundershrimps. I briefly joined this hivemind when I noticed there were two players glamoured to this appearance following me around the Mists… and then shortly I received an mail message with a tonic attached.

It was fun… nonsensical… and we slowly gained numbers until I believe right before I left we had six players running around as shrimp. I think this might be the highlight of my weekend and I am leading off this mornings post using it as a reminder. There are moments in MMORPGs that are completely meaningless in the scope of the game itself or your own progression… but are absolutely moments worth indulging in. The above image is from our old FC house on Cactuar in Final Fantasy XIV, and that night a bunch of us just happened to be wearing the newly added Dragon Quest Slime Hat… and proceeded to dance around for thirty minutes. Moments like this is well worth indulging when they happen, and I think are good for the soul.

The other highlight of the weekend is getting a new ascended weapon for free. Since coming back I have been trying to run Tequatl as many times as possible. There are days where the stars have not aligned, but more times than not… I am running this each time the server resets. I have known for awhile that there is a very rare chance of getting ascended weapons to drop, and I believe Friday night I managed to get a Settlers chest to drop. Seeing as I had crafted a Greatsword already, I opted instead to go pistol given that I am spending so much time as Harbinger of late. I immediately took it to the mystic toilet and changed its stat package to something more reasonable for the sort of nonsense I have been doing of late. I may never actually see another of these, but it isn’t going to stop me from trying each day. I could now really use a dagger and a staff.

Another great moment from the weekend is that Sunday afternoon the stars aligned and a bunch of us ran some fractals. I needed three for the first part of the Twilight precursor quest, and Thalen needed three different ones for some other quest. I’ve decided that Fractals are more or less what Mythic+ feels like in World of Warcraft. While the Fractals themselves are shorter, the pace feels similar and the fact that they scale over time also feels similar. I really think that this was the dungeon content I had been looking for, and while Tam kept telling me that… I was bad at listening because my preconceived notions of what that meant kept getting in the way. This whole experience of coming back to Guild Wars 2 and it lighting a fire in me… has also made me realize how generally closed minded I have been when it comes to MMORPGs. If the game did not fit a specific mold that I had determined was optimized for my enjoyment… I wanted no part of it.

Lastly for the weekend I spent a good deal of time chipping away at Living World Season 4. If my theory is correct, I am nearing the end of Chapter 5 and will be starting the final chapter soon. Not every new map is a winner, but I have to say LW4 so far has had far more winners than losers. I love the intricacy of each new map, and this is honestly slowing me down in my progress because I keep getting distracted by events and metas. Admittedly this is artificially causing me to engage with the content as though it were releasing more slowly, rather than just powering through it. We talked a bit about this over the weekend, but when you are powering through things you have trouble realizing that significant chunks of time have passed in game between content drops. Essentially the expansions and Living World progress in real time, meaning that a number of years sit between the end of one expansion and the beginning of the next.

It was a pretty great weekend, albeit a pretty short one. I do need to get finishing up Horizon Forbidden West but lord it has been awhile since I have been this engaged with a game. During my months of playing Final Fantasy XIV every single day… I was deeply beholden to the mission. Were it not for my quest to get everything to level 80… I am pretty sure I would have bounced much earlier. This… I just have so many different dials and levers that I can interact with and it all feels fresh. I am sure doing Tequatl for the 200th time will start to tarnish it a bit, but I really do love the encounter. I mean I managed to do Praetorium every single day and find enjoyment it in while I was grinding out those 80s.

Worlds Collide

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Good Morning Friends. I was not feeling it yesterday at all, and as a result I did not blog. I felt guilty but I have been trying to be better about taking a day off when my mind and/or body decides it needs one. This morning I am still not really feeling amazing either, but I do have a few things to talk about. I’ve been getting updates from Ammo as she works on my commission and I have to say it is coming along swimmingly. If you are so inclined she has been streaming her work and there are two different streams where she has worked on it so far. I think maybe my feather mantle has throw her a bit for a loop how best to approach that as yesterday when I tuned in briefly she was working on some techniques for the feathers. I am now really looking forward to reworking my masthead to work this awesome art into the mix.

Last night I missed the reset because I was in the middle of a rather long quest that I did not want to start over. Instead however I managed to catch the meta event for Jahai Bluffs or at least the final step of it. I did not realize that I would be fighting a new and improved version of the Shatterer, but I guess that makes sense as it showed up in the last quest chain that I completed leading me to Jahai in the first place. The fight was extremely fun and featured this cool section where what looked to be fel energy twisters shooting us up in the air so that we could glide to platforms and battle champions, before dropping back down and resuming the fight. Having no idea what to expect I think I did pretty good rolling with the punches and learning as I went.

What was even cooler however is that the same Squad Commander announced that we would be rolling over to do Dragon Storm next. This is an event that I have been wanting to do for weeks but honestly was a bit intimidated by. Instead of taking place in the middle of a standard zone, it is instead an instanced area and felt like it was the sort of thing that required a full group. So we entered and did the encounter and I loved every minute of it. Something you need to know about me is that I love Kaiju and Monster Battle movies. This entire fight felt like the battle of two Kaiju, and effectively I guess that is in fact what Elder Dragons are. There is a lot of this encounter that I do not fully understand because I have not arrived here organically through the Living World story, but it was a blast. This was easily the single coolest fight I have experienced in Guild Wars 2.

While on our way to the Dragon Storm event, we made a stop off and fought the Angry Pet Rock. This is apparently a bounty in Jahai and is just as nonsense as it sounds. I also noticed the adoption of some more clear markers akin to those of Final Fantasy XIV. Notice on the ring there are arrows pointing towards the boss which is an indication that we should get in for the attack, and later there were arrows facing the other way indicating that we should get out for the attack. The “In” was a little superfluous as i could also out range the attack by moving away, but still I am glad to see them adopting some significantly more clear advisement over time.

The other thing that I have been doing lately is piddling around on the Warrior a bit more. I want to unlock Bladesworn so I can play around at being a gun samurai. I am not sure what has happened but I think my understanding of the game and my play style has evolved to the point where the Warrior no longer feels as bad as it once did. Sure it feels squishier than my Necromancer, but not so squishy as to feel awful. I’ve been running around with a power build and Dual Axe paired with Rifle just to give me some sort of a reasonable ranged option. Dual Axe really is a freaking blender and it feels good to shred things with it. I’ve mostly been slowly working on soaking up some hero points in Path of Fire, but I might switch over to doing some WvW and get Maguma credit that way. I finished off unlocking Berzerker first as I was already extremely close, which opens up some other builds for me.

I don’t really want to talk about spoilers but hopefully those who have gotten this far will realize what this title card represents. That was an annoying sequence and I am glad it is over… and I am hoping that maybe just maybe that situation is finally resolved for good. There was a sequence that I hated so much, but I am just glad it is over. I really need to return to Horizon Forbidden West and wrap that game up, but I have just been so deeply engaged with Guild Wars 2 of late. It doesn’t help either that my wife has been commandeering the television and now that I moved my consoles downstairs… it makes it a challenge to play them when I want to play them. I might be moving my PlayStation 5 back upstairs, but I am not entirely certain yet. I need to deep clean my office and essentially tear everything apart and reassemble things to change how my setup works honestly.

DragonFlight Rumors

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While I have not played World of Warcraft for well over a year at this point, it is still a game that I attempt to keep tabs on. We know for certain that we are going to get the reveal of the next expansion on April 19th thanks to a twitter post. For months however there have been a number of rumors about what this expansion might be called and what it actually entails flying around the internet. As is the case with most of them… it involved a lot of nonsense and wish fulfillment. However more recently a thread of what I believe to be truthful information has started to trickle up. Essentially there is a concurrence of information from WoWHead doing some data mining and a supposed leak from a print shop that point to the next expansion being called “Dragonflight”.

The above image is pulled from Reddit and represents what is supposedly a print shop where some marketing material is being printed. The thing is that is an exceptionally believable image to me, because I spent some time working in and around a few print shops and came through college at a very specific time where I trained on both offset printing and digital methods. When something leaks out of a print press… I generally believe it because in the chain of custody of art assets… that is always going to be the weakest link. Similarly back in the day the Warez kiddies used to get their hands on titles when they went to the disc duplication plants and the two problems share a similar root. Printing and disc manufacturing have very slim margins, and as a result they generally pay their employees really poorly.

While the management might try their best to keep a tight reign on the marketing material, there are going to be a bunch of folks who are effectively working for minimum wage that are in and around everything being printed. I have to be honest I remember doing something very similar to this regarding the Phantom Menace and sending out some marketing information to some friends. I thought it was largely harmless to give some friends a peek at what was effectively a single piece of artwork carved into four magazine covers. I am sure this leak probably started in a similar manner where someone was excited to be working on something so recognizable and once it is out on the internet… it spreads. I guess in thirteen days we will be able to tell for certain if this was in fact a real thing or not.

Then there are times when what is probably complete nonsense… happens to align with the artifacts that seem more legitimate. Back in February during the height of fake wow expansion news, a post was made over on MMO Champion outlining “World of Warcraft: Dragonflight”. I am significantly less certain about this information because it is entirely possible that the “fake leakers” slung enough word salad together to happen to guess the right name. There are a few pieces of this that I find interesting. Firstly the idea of having new “skins” for classes that change the appearance of the abilities without actually changing the mechanics. I think this is probably a good call because it lowers the new complexity of trying to balance another class but also gives everyone something new and shiny to strive for. Once a system like that had been tested and working, it is a possible source of future new content with a lower development barrier.

I do feel like whatever is coming next is going to feel a lot more like Legion because that is clearly the last point Blizzard released an expansion that was fairly universally loved. Both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands have been major disappointments, and I expect the new expansion to feel like taking a step back and reassessing the path that the game is on. While Covenants draw lineage back to the Class Order hall, the “fun” was lost along the way. Another thing I find really interesting about this leak is the mention of no new level cap. I have to be honest I feel like maybe it is time for World of Warcraft to start growing horizontally rather than vertically. Granted this might just be me talking because I am playing an excessive amount of Guild Wars 2, but I do have to admit I greatly prefer the games with evergreen content to those with a strict progression path.

So essentially I am left in a place where I absolutely believe that the next expansion for World of Warcraft is going to be called Dragonflight, but that the information “leaked” to the forum… is probably less than accurate. World of Warcraft for me is like a bad break up that no matter how much time I spend out of the game… I cannot stop paying attention to it. It has been sixteen months since the last time I played the game, which incidentally is the longest time that I have ever not played World of Warcraft since its release in 2004. That said I wish the team and the game luck and hope that they can find their footing and start to claw the game back into fighting shape. I know I will be trying to tune in for the reveal on April 19th to see how much of this information was truthful.

Sandswept Isles

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Good Morning Friends! This is going to be a bit of a meandering post as I don’t have anything terribly pressing to talk about, but also a handful of blurbs. So as is something that often happens when I get into a game… I have commissioned my good friend and unofficial blog/podcast artist AmmosArt to do a version of my Guild Wars 2 Necromancer. I got an update yesterday that she would probably kill me if I shared… because it is still very much in the rough sketch phase but the idea is coming along nicely. I am going to have to fiddle with the masthead at some point soon in the future to determine who stays and who goes. I also have a secondary project which is to add some more game critters to the bar similar to the Moogles… maybe a Choya or a Quaggan.

As far as game progress goes, I am now in the second zone of Living World Season 4, but immediately allowed myself to get distracted by the world boss train last night. I’ve been trying to farm Tequatl each night since it spawns as the game is resetting and is easy to track. I have singled out this boss more than any in part due to the convenience and in part because it has a chance of dropping Tequatl’s Hoard which is a chest granting you a choice of ascended weapons. Additionally there is the chance for Wings of the Sunless which is a back item that I would not mind having either. Often times I stay on the world boss train for a few kills before finally tucking into some daily achievement content. Last night I rode the train longer than normal and never quite got back to working on story content.

One of the things that I dig about games like Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online is that they allow you to be in multiple guilds at the same time. So I can for example stay in a smaller tight knit Greysky Armada or Kamikaze Runners and still have access to larger guilds. I’ve been in a few Gaiscioch guilds before and given that I kept bumping into members while doing the World Boss train I decided to investigate. Gaiscioch for those who do not know is a large multi-game guild with many “adventures” that span into different titles. I likely SHOULD have followed them into New World as from what I can tell that branch is still rather active. The Guild Wars 2 seems extremely active as well with around sixty or so people being online last night when I was playing. My theory is this should give me access to some larger events when I have the social and emotional energy to participate in them. A lot of activities tend to start around 7 pm my time which is something I can easily join in without becoming sleep deprived.

In another news we’ve done some recent renovations on the Super Dungeon Friends discord. This concept was envisioned during my fevered pitch of playing Final Fantasy XIV, as having a way to help more shy and social awkward folks get groups going. The problem with this concept is that since so many of us are on Aether… the busiest of all data centers, it became a challenge during the crush of new membership to really make cross realm groups happen on the regular. However what has evolved instead is just a place to hang out and chat about games. Recently I threw out a question about expanding this beyond the scope of Final Fantasy XIV and to a lesser extent our brief foray into New World. The end result is that I collected some games as suggestions and then spent a chunk of time reworking things over the weekend to condense the structure a bit.

Now the “Games You Play” selector has a wider swath of games available, and each role toggles on a little area with at a minimum a chat channel devoted to the game and a voice channel. So far the “Lion’s Arch” channel devoted to Guild Wars 2 seems to be among the busiest. Basically this is not me abandoning the FFXIV mission, but more expanding it out since we have a great group of people gathered here. Of these the only game that I am personally playing on the regular is in fact Guild Wars 2. However I think it is awesome that folks were interested in seeing who was playing the other games. If you’ve ever been active, swing on by and check it out again. If you stayed away because you simply did not play FFXIV, it might be worth checking out. You can find the discord invite link here.