Tales of the Aggronaut

MMO Blogging Dead?

December 5, 2017 by Belghast

One of the things I have failed miserably at lately is keeping up with my blog feed. During the heyday of Google Reader I was a voracious consumer of gaming blogs of all stripe, and regularly read through everything in my backlog of posts. Stuff happened and my attempt to expand my horizons when I was writing a column on the blogosphere saw my feed ballooning to some 700 sites… a good number of them posting about things that never really interested me on a personal level. As a result I find myself spending less time reading blog posts and tend to catch up in a flurry of reading on the weekends. That said I did end up doing a strafing run on Feedly yesterday afternoon and stumbled across a post from Tobold posing the question of whether or not the MMO Blogosphere is still alive. The short answer is yes, the community is still very much alive. The long answer however is a lot more complicated. While there are still a ton of active people that I see when I catch up on my feed, there are also a lot of names and faces that I have not really seen much from in years. There has been a changing of the guards and I feel like maybe I have done a poor job of catching up with who is leaving the community and who is brand new. Additionally the “community” aspect is a little on the ropes. We didn’t have a Newbie Blogger Initiative this year nor did I do anything with Blaugust… two previously big events that pulled people in. We barely had a Developer Appreciate Week… and only then because Ravalation was determined to make sure it happened. I’ve personally failed miserably this year at attempting any sort of outreach into the community because 2017 has been a time when literally all I can seem to manage to do is attempt to keep one foot moving in front of the other.

The other big change I have noticed is we no longer have the big MMORPG game looming on the horizon that we are all interested in playing. The community as a whole is way more fragmented in their tastes. In the run up to World of Warcraft expansions, Star Wars the Old Republic, Guild Wars 2, Wildstar or even as far back as Warhammer Online there was a community upsurge of blog sites that sprung up as players attempted to mitigate their hype levels by pouring that excess energy into post form. That is just a thing that doesn’t really happen these days as the traditional MMORPG outside of South Korean doesn’t appear to be a viable business model that big studios are really releasing these days. Instead we have the MMO-lite games that have some online interaction capabilities like The Division or Destiny but lack some of the rich imaginative landscape that us bloggers used to feast upon. Essentially when we started playing MMORPGs it was a novel concept and gave us a sort of interaction that we could not get in any other game. Now that same concept of being online and playing with a bunch of your friends while working on some long term achievement is no longer really something special… and instead describes almost all of the games on the market right now. Almost every game has RP elements that allow you to customize or build your character, and almost every game now has an online presence often with some sort of persistent progression system. MMORPGs no longer really offer something unique that you cannot get in dozens of other places… that also don’t require the level of community to support them. The games have changed and with that the amount of effort and time they ask of us… or at the very least the sort of skills that they require. While I can wax philosophically about the differences between two guns and the way they fire in Destiny 2… that isn’t exactly something more players even care about.

Lastly I think the players and their habits have changed. When I started playing Destiny at launch back in 2014, one of my big frustrations was how there were no blogs really dedicated to the game. Instead that community exists as a combination of Reddit posts and YouTube videos that you then need to somehow knit together to get an overarching picture of what is actually happening. I wish I could say that this phenomena is unique to Destiny, but it seems more often than not the newer games don’t really have much in the way of a blogosphere presence. In some ways I think we are aging out of blogs being a relevant experience. While I have never actually had the “thousands of vistors per day” that Tobold talks about in his post unless some major news site picks up one of my posts… I’ve had a steady trickle that has stayed pretty stable through the almost nine years I have been blogging. In honesty my daily readership comes and goes based on what I happen to be posting about. Each time on get on a Destiny bender, the folks who just do not care about that tend to disappear. When I pick back up a game they are interested in… they tend to come back. Most of our blogs were started during the most fertile period of MMORPG releases to exist… and with that ground turning fallow we are left to turn to other interests. My blog started as a World of Warcraft Warrior Tanking blog… with a super narrow focus and over the years has shifted over and over again until finally I don’t really have a “format”. This blog is me and my ramblings and if you aren’t interested in that you aren’t likely going to be here very long. I’ve seen many other bloggers shifting to the same sort of thing, and while I personally care about their lives and their opinions… it makes our blogs harder to digest for those who have not been along for the full journey.

Grind to a Halt

December 4, 2017 by Belghast

When we last visited my Orc Warrior on this blog I was just about to start the Warlords content, and this week when I have not been poking my head into Destiny I have spent it pushing forward in World of Warcraft. It’s honestly been a shock just how fast leveling went until I hit Legion content. The old world was a confusion slog where I jumped zones each time I saw an exclamation point show up on the adventure guide. This meant I was constantly jumping zones every few levels and most of that journey was a complete blur. When I started Outland I did the majority of Hellfire Plateau then jumped over to Terrokar Forest for a little bit before finishing up the grind in Nagrand. From there I jumped to Northrend and did a good chunk of Borean Tundra before jumping to Grizzly Hills and doing most of it and finally leaping over to Scholazar Basin to finish the run out. From there we entered the Cataclysm zones and did all of the 80-85 grind in Vashj’ir without actually completely finishing that zone. Then came Pandaria and I managed to do the entirety of the 85-90 grind without leaving Jade Forest. From there I went to Draenor where I managed to hit 98 by doing the entirety of Frostfire Ridge and finishing up with just a tiny tiny bit in Spires of Arak.

This is the point where the express elevator has come to a grinding halt and I’ve been confronted with normal speed leveling because all of my heirlooms petered out at 100. I chose to do Stormheim first largely because it is both my favorite and least favorite zone at the same time. All of the Norse themed Vrykul bits are awesome, but all of that faction nonsense is not. It did give me access to another Order Hall champion quickly however so I am down with that. At this point I have finished both the main story arc of the zone and the faction bullshit arc and am likely to move on to the next area. There are a lot of things I have noticed… not the least of which is how ridiculously huge this shield is on my female orc warrior. It is as thought they scaled the shield for the insanely bulky male models and then just called it good enough for the female ones. The second of which is how much more intricate and slower paced the Legion content is compared to Pandaria or Warlords. When I leveled through the content it seemed really quick, but what makes things slog a bit in comparison to what came before is how fragmented the quest hubs quickly become. This might also be an aspect of the map itself feeling so busy with so many world bosses and objectives hidden out there to slow your journey down. I cannot resist wasting a few minutes to find a chest that is nearby or going after a mini boss, and as a result my leveling pace has gone to hell.

At this point I am contemplating investing in a set of Heirlooms which will set me back quite a bit of gold. It isn’t as much about leveling quickly, it is more about not outpacing the gear I am wearing…. and also not looking like I am picking up scraps from the battlefield while I level. I’ve liked making outfits for my character up until this point and then progressing my way through the content without having to care too much about swapping out items. In a perfect world Warcraft would have heirlooms for every slot and I could simply level my alts without ever having to worry about swapping gear out. With the new races coming in I fully expect to be leveling a lot more alts, and in truth investing in plate 110 heirlooms now will probably helm in the long run given that I tend to play plate wearing classes more than any others. I am still really bummed about the direction they are taking with artifact weapons. I would have loved to see them turn them into leveling heirlooms much the way that the items that dropped off Garrosh in Pandaria served this purpose. It would have been a fitting end to a really awesome chapter of the game to be able to then use those weapons to level your alts. Still having a lot of fun but I am also ready for the ride to be over and for my character to get geared up.

Xur Week Twelve: 12/1/17

December 1, 2017 by Belghast

Destiny 2

This is potentially the last of these Xur reviews that I will be doing on this blog. It is not out of a lack of interest, but more than next week with the Curse of Osiris the reset time is changing and with it when Xur arrives. Right now Xur shows up in the middle of the night and as a result by the time I shower, get ready and sit down to blog is available for me to talk some shit about what he just brought. Starting next Tuesday however that reset time will shift from 5 am my time to 11 am … long after I have already been at work for a significant amount of time. This is a boon for the career YouTube types so they don’t have to wake up quite so early, but not really for me so alas this is probably the end of my recent Friday feature. The flash point zone this week is the EDZ which means Xur is hanging out near the Winding Cove drop zone. There is technically a cave that allows you access to the ledge he is on… but I never can remember where the entrance is and just end up jumping up the rocks to the right of where he is at.

Sweet Business is a really cool sounding weapon that winds up being a horrible idea. Maybe I am being a bit unfair but in truth I have never been able to get much out of this gun. Firstly it requires some wind up time while firing before it arrives at its final rate of fire and as such true damage potential. The perk payday in theory helps with the wind up because you can fire it from the hip relatively well and as such start firing ahead of when you are actually needing to deal damage to a target especially in the crucible. The magazine size of 99 seems really awesome… but given how fast this fires you will be empty and suffering the pretty horrible reload speed before long. Where the gun really lacks however is in the total ammunition you can carry. Payload might help your magazine but it doesn’t actually seem to help your pool of ammo and when I attempt to run something using this weapon I find myself always starved for kinetic ammo. Definitely pick it up if you do not already have the weapon, but I am not a huge fan of it.

Do you want to punch things? Do you want to punch all the things? Then these might be the gauntlets for you. In the grand scheme of things they probably are not that good, but are pretty fun to at least play with while running around doing planetary content. The biotic enhancements per does two things really, firstly it greatly increases the range of your punch allowing you to hit targets at roughly the distance warlocks can. On top of that it gives you a version of surrounded where the damage your punches deal increases based on the number of targets around you. This is insanely fun against boss type encounters with a lot of minions and would potentially pair nicely with either the Sentinel or Striker trees that allow you to gain health regen on kills. Definitely a pick up if you do not already have it… and in truth I am even going to log into the PS4 and buy this since it is the only Titan exotic I am lacking there.

Arc Bolt is one of those grenades that only seems to work in really ideal conditions. This chest is all about making that grenade be able to chain a little further, giving you some wiggle room on what those ideal conditions actually are. The problem is… there are WAY better hunter exotics than this one and in truth until Arc Bolt gets some sort of a rework it isn’t exactly worth building an item loadout around. The positive however is this version does come pre-slotted with an arc grenade recharge mod so at least they realized the only edge case anyone would ever want to use this item. It’s worth picking up for unlocking but not really much more than that.

Do you like Nova Bombs? Do you want to always be Nova Bombing? Me too… sadly this helmet won’t actually let you do that thing. The perk Actual Grandeur in theory grants you super energy on Nova Bomb kills. The rate that I have seen is that if you are able to Nova Bomb and kill five targets, it will take your super bar roughly to the halfway point. So sure this does a decent job of regeneration but it also falls drastically short of the dream of being some sort of Evil Ryu throwing void fireballs. In my experience if you are dedicated to Voidwalker you are far better off with Nezerac’s Sin or even the Eye of Another World. Once again, pick it up for the unlock because Bungie occasionally balances exotics to make them better and you might as well have it in your collection.

Destiny 1

This week Xur is hanging out at the Reef and offering a few items, including a Helm I never managed to get on my Titan. This week he is offering.

Legacy Primary Engram – 31 Strange Coins
Eternal Warrior – Titan Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Young Ahamkara’s Spine – Hunter Arms – 13 Strange Coins
The Stag – Warlock Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Monte Carlo – Primary Auto Rifle – 23 Strange Coins
Monte Carlo with Royal Flush Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Trespasser with Crucible Assassin Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Bungie Mostly Gets It

November 30, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday I made a post talking about some of my frustrations and some of the frustrations of the community at large. In lieu of giving the final Bungie Curse of Osiris reveal live stream, they opted to instead give us an extremely dense blog post paired with a podcast episode expanding on the theme. As a programmer by trade I am generally slow to assign malice to the actions of game developers, especially when said problems get patched out of the game. There have been so many times in my own life that I have thought something was going to be a really good idea, and in the end it only served to hurt my user base. As a result I haven’t really talked about the whole XP gain issue because it didn’t really directly effect me. I essentially told myself there were three reasonable bright engrams that I could get per character and past that I didn’t attempt to go out into the wilds and grind for more. I didn’t even really have time to participate in the Clarion Call event that was happening over the Thanksgiving weekend because family and reasons. Also as a programmer I read yesterdays post as a game company attempting to peel back the curtain and show the players the mess that is hidden behind it. I more or less accept their explanations and I figured this was something I should state up front before I dig too far into the specific issues. I highly suggest you read both the blog and listen to the podcast because hearing the voices of Luke Smith, Mark Noseworthy and Eric Osbourne explain why things are the way they are… really drills home the point that they did mean the best. None of them are really polished orators and there is emotion in those voices that helps to add accent marks to the commentary.

One of the biggest announcements is that there is a brand new tier of weapons coming. Yesterday I talked about the whole static roll thing and mostly how I was bracing for the return of randomized stats. In truth I was preparing for the worst because I actually like static rolls on gear because it lets me know directly what I am shooting for, and not always wondering if there is a better roll around the corner. I feel like they sort of shot down the middle and landed in a happy place that I can accept as reasonable. Masterworks will be legendary weapons that roll with an extra mode that provides some amount of randomized stats. The above image is lifted from the Bungie blog post and shows a Uriel’s Gift with a bonus 10 to reload speed and also shows that they are starting to track how many kills you have made with a specific masterwork weapon. They announced a couple of things about this that make them more reasonable… firstly you can re-roll the stat node until you get the one you actually wanted. Secondly you can break down masterwork weapons that you do not want to get upgrade materials to turn your normal legendary weapons into masterworks themselves. Functionally this gives players what they said they wanted… in the ability to get different versions of weapons but also makes it sane and rational for those of us who actually liked fixed rolls in being able to upgrade our existing stash to the new version. Also it allows us to slowly work our way to perfecting the roll with whatever combo we were wanting on it by re-rolling that node.

Another big announcement is that they are adding duplicate protection for exotics, so that the game will by nature favor giving you exotics that you do not already have over exotics that you have seen over and over again. This has been a major point of frustration for a lot of players, myself included… in that we keep getting the same exotic items over and over when there are still a bunch on the list that we have never seen. I hit a streak of six prospectors in a row awhile back, and anything to blunt that would be much appreciated. They also announced the return of Three of Coins in a modified form of just providing a 4 hour buff that gives you an increased chance at exotic drop rates. I had a love/hate relationship with Three of Coins, and to some extent I like Xur serving more of a purpose each week than just presenting you with exotics you have already seen him sell numerous times. Lastly while on the Xur front they announced that he would begin selling an additional item called a Fated Engram which decodes into an exotic item that you have not already unlocked on that character. The above image shows that this costs 97 shards… which is a hefty price but by the time you need this you are probably going to be swimming in them.

Another thing that I was extremely excited to see is that Banshee-44 will start just straight up selling a limited number of mods each week for a combination of Mod Components and Legendary Shards. Now at first this doesn’t seem a amazing because it is not like we are swimming in Mod Components, however they are attempting to create a bridge for that too. The biggest problem I have with the mod system is that in theory I need to hold onto every single blue mod in the hope that I get three of them to turn in for the purple variant. As a result I regularly have no room left for mods because the 50 slot inventory is just inadequate. Now they are going to make it so with blue mods you can break them down for gunsmith materials but they will also have a chance of dropping a mod component at the same time. While saving them up for a guaranteed mod is nice… I will absolutely start breaking down every blue i get because I just don’t have the room. They did state that eventually he will sell Kinetic Damage mods which in truth are the only ones we really have a hard time chasing. Side notes… apparently Master Rahool will start straight up selling Legendary Engrams to help those chasing Masterwork weapons, and Benedict will redeem raid tokens before you get your first clear. Additionally faction merchants will only now beckon you… if you have enough tokens to turn in for a faction package. So no more every icon in the tower blinking at once.

Functionally everything I have talked about is coming in either the December 5th update or December 12th. I am going to attempt to list out the various things appearing in each, but I am certain to miss stuff so again I highly suggest you read the blog post and listen to the podcast for yourself.

December 5th

Armor Ornaments
Gunsmith Selling Mods
Blue Mods Occasionally Dropping Mod Components
Master Rahool sells Legendary Engrams
Benedict allows immediate raid token turn-in
Reputation Token Economy changes – way more tokens per activity but slightly higher turn in amounts
Cayde’s Treasure Map Minimum Payout
… and of course the Curse of Osiris storyline and related stuff

December 12th

Masterwork Weapons
Selection of Faction Armor/Weapons Purchasable for Legendary Shards
Xur Changes – Fated Engram + Three of Coins
Zavala/Shaxx sell Gift consumables that give interesting bonuses
No More Empty World Chests
Vendors leave you alone until ready to turn a package in

All of this sounds great to be honest. The problem is we rarely get one of these posts like this. All the player base really wants is to know what is coming down the pipe and roughly when they can expect it. This is true for Bungie and Destiny but also equally true for World of Warcraft or any persistent game that receives a constant slow trickle of content. Sure dates may not be final and they can shift and slip… but it is still nice to know what exactly we are waiting on. I can only hope that this is the beginning of them giving us more information in greater detail… but in truth I feel like this is triage to stave off the angry pitchfork mob. As players we get deeply invested in these games, and to hear them talk about it as a Hobby is a step in the right direction. I would love to see one of these posts each time there is a content drop brewing just to let us know what folks are thinking and how they plan on addressing the concerns of the community. Deej and Cosmo both do excellent jobs of giving us information… when they are allowed to. Most of the frustrations with online games in general come from a feeling of not knowing what is going on in this thing that we are spending so much of our time doing. If we got a monthly post that outlined the timeline of what they were thinking about doing during that month… I feel like we would be in a much better state and more willing to give the benefit of the doubt. However this is a double edged sword and they talk about it a bit in the podcast. They have been so gun shy to say anything because they don’t want an idea they had to turn into a promise when they maybe don’t even know if it is possible yet. In the end… its a tricky situation but I think the combination blog post and podcast were the right decision to make at this time. I’m pretty excited about a bunch of the quality of life changes, and ready to tear into the new content next Tuesday. My sodium levels have lowered greatly.