Krasarang Wilds

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Good Morning Folks! I was someone who played through Mists of Pandaria at launch, and it was only this morning as I was titling this blog post… that I realized it was “Krasarang” and not “Kasarang”. I have been saying it wrong for twelve years… not that I spend much time talking about this exceptionally skippable zone. Generally speaking, I would do just that, ignore ever going down here on characters and instead make a faster route either out to Townlong Steppes or up to Kun-Lai Summit. However, since all that really matters is the level that I obtain… and since everything scales to my level I figured it was a better call just to bop down and knock out the wilds while it provided the most experience. At this point, I am level 45 and have just started through the first few quest chains in this zone. I figure tonight I will wrap it up and then move to Townlong as I just like that zone better than Kun-Lai.

This is one thing that I miss the most about modern World of Warcraft expansions… is that it felt like there was merit in determining which path you took through the content on each character for efficiency’s sake rather than just sort of needing to do all of it. In this era of the game there always seemed like there was way more content than any given player really needed to do, and as such you could vary things up each time you ran a new alt through it. This is partially due to the fact that Mists of Pandaria has seven zones at launch, with a number of external islands added through the course of the expansion and Dragonflight for example shipped with 4 zones… and a 5th that only really matters if you were creating a new character. Similarly, Shadowlands shipped with four zones… and a fifth which was considered a pseudo-endgame zone in the form of The Maw.

One of the biggest pains with Pandaria Remix is dealing with gear and all of the gem sockets. Essentially tinker gems are a resource that once collected you never have to deal with getting again as you can remove gems freely from gear. However, this means each time you pick up an upgrade, you have to strip the previous piece of gear of gems and then outfit the upgrade in a similar manner. When watching some of the content about the Remix so far, one of the addons that folks kept pointing out is something called Narcissus which has an interface to make this a bit more simplistic. Essentially it gives you a talent point like interface that allows you to select the gems that you want to run and then will automagically socket those into gear. I wish it did this on its own as you swapped items, but unfortunately, it does not. But equipping an item and then checking the two to three gems afterward to remove them from the previous item and equip them into the new item is at least saving me a bunch of clicks.

The real purpose of the addon seems to be a replacement for the default character gear and stats system. There are features that allow you to enter photo mode as well as options to create virtual “group shots” combined with a bunch of characters. There is also a way to save off barbershop customizations to simply the process of swapping between looks. None of these things are things that I really care about right now however… for me, it is just the addon that makes the gear swapping in remix less dumb. Essentially my gameplay pattern is to run a bunch of content and get a bunch of caches until I start to feel like my gear might be weakening… then chain open them with a macro and equip any upgrades before diving forth into the next barrage of questing. My only real complaint is that I wish the infinite caches were stacking and as such took up less inventory space. I am also slightly annoyed by all of the consumables that I get because quite frankly… I hate dealing with consumables.

#showtooltip
/use Cache of Infinite Treasure

For anyone who is curious and needs it, this is the Macro I am using to open the caches. I basically just place it on my hotbar and spam it to chain open them. Far easier than clicking on each individual one.

August Phoenix

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Morning Folks! Right now I am pretty much splitting time between Diablo IV, Guild Wars 2, and World of Warcraft Pandaria Remix. Last night for example I farmed the world boss in D4 and got another level, and then did a round of dailies and some World vs World in Guild Wars 2, and finally settled into some leveling in PMIX as I seem to be calling it. At this point I am level 30 and have just entered the Valley of the Four Winds… or more so that first rest stop just inside the zone. I have to say that it has been a while since I have experienced any of the Pandaria content and I feel like collectively we the players… judged it way too harshly. Currently, the mechanical state of World of Warcraft is in one of the best states it has ever been, and combining that with a more classical era World of Warcraft expansion… is absolutely wonderful and refreshing. Not that Dragonflight, Shadowlands, and Battle for Azeroth were bad… but they don’t feel anywhere near as “epic” as Pandaria did. The whole stranger in a strange land aspect of the game really works here.

Last night I also unlocked the first of the exclusive mounts, the August Phoenix. This comes from leveling any character to 20 during the Pandaria Remix event. I guess my long-term radar for playing this event is to try and gobble up as many of the exclusive rewards as I can. A number of these are tied to quest completion and finishing each zone’s story, and other batches are tied to purchases with the event currency Bronze. I am pretty much ratholing all of my bronze to this point because I am still seeing viable upgrades from drops. I feel like at some point that is probably going to stop and I will need to invest in some of the big upgrade items from the vendors. For the moment I am holding onto as much of the event currency as I can until I know specifically what I need to spend it on in order to be viable.

One of the things I think I briefly mentioned yesterday but did not really go into detail on is the Cloak of Infinite Potential. This is an item that you get from completing one of the very first quests before diving into Pandaria proper, and it grows with you as you adventure. At seemingly random intervals you will find threads of time from defeating enemies and they will add equally random stats to your cloak. I figure at some point in the far future I will have an equal number of stats in all of the possible columns. The other aspect of the cloak is that as you collect threads, you gain achievements that will cause your alts to start out with ever stronger versions of this cloak adding to the replayability and speeding up your leveling process from that point forward. I already feel exceptionally powerful as is, but it will probably be truly silly to level an alt once you have a fully unlocked cloak.

The other thing that I thought I would give some examples of is the various special gems that I am picking up and slotting into my gear. Like I said yesterday prismatic gems are good old fashioned stat hits, but throughout gameplay, I am picking up all manner of unique abilities and procs that I now have associated with my gear. Of these, the only one that is an active ability is “Lifestorm” which is a big AOE lightning attack that heals me when it finishes. Trailblazer is one of the movement abilities that you slot into your boots and most of these are active, but this one just gives you a 30% boost most of the time you are out of combat. Slay is just “does an execute” which is pretty amazing and I am a fan of the two fire-based procs as they seem to be firing off all the freaking time. All of which is making this experience feel way more interesting than leveling would normally be.

Getting used to hotbar combat again is very much “a thing”. However, all of the tweaks and changes to the normal formula of World of Warcraft combined with seeing a living breathing world full of players who are actively calling out world boss spawns… makes this feel like a totally different game. I feel like the experiments that Blizzard is trying with these alternate variants of World of Warcraft are probably paying extreme dividends in player engagement. While the Battle Royale mode was not really my jam I still gave it a shot and found it at least partially enjoyable. Pandaria Remix is entirely in my wheelhouse and the fact that it is a 90-day event gave me the drive to go ahead and give it a shot. So as much as I hate FOMO mechanics… it seems to have worked on me this time.

One of the best aspects of fan-run private servers was always that they could have slightly modified rulesets. Project Ascension for example is an attempt to take World of Warcraft and make it completely classless. I’ve not played it but it certainly seems interesting. It feels like the core Blizzard team is maybe taking inspiration from some of these custom server types out there and deciding that they can in fact do that as well. While “Retail” World of Warcraft may never really be my main squeeze again, I fully support nonsensical alternate realities like Pandaria Remix. Maybe the future of Warcraft is not a single monolith but a bunch of custom slices that cater to specific player interests. Classic Warcraft seems to be thriving and I can see timewalking remixes thrive as well pending they roll them out regularly enough.

Have you been playing Pandaria Remix? What are your thoughts so far?

Warcraft but an ARPG

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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.

Frostfang Get

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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.