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MooCowadin

March 2, 2015 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff 5 – Evening with Qelric

We are going to put on our timey wimey stuff hats and pretend that this show is being released during the month of February, as it was originally intended. When I record a Bel Folks Stuff I tend to give the victim as much time as possible. So I approached Qelric back in January to talk about this show… and she every so graciously accepted. The problem is that life happened in the time between, with her getting an absolutely horrible case of chicken pox towards the beginning of the month, and me dealing this this insane bronchitis mess towards the end. The result is we recorded the “February” episode in March… and that I supposed is just fine so long as it came out in any form.

Qelric is quite literally one of the only youtubers I watch with any regularity because she brings to her craft a style that you don’t generally see on youtube any more. She presents extremely content dense videos in a news like format, making them far easier for me to digest without the rambling exposition. If you are not familiar with your videos, I highly suggest you check them out. On top of this however Q is just a downright interesting person, and we have interacted for what feels like years. I had a delightful afternoon/evening sitting down to record this episode. Before we knew it a couple of hours had passed and we had a mammoth hour and a half long show. The awesome thing is… even after the mic stopped recording we wound up talking for another thirty or forty minutes. I love it when the conversation is natural and flowing. Hopefully you will all enjoy this as much as I did recording it.

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Moocowadin

Yesterday was a surprisingly busy day, with dealing with the publishing of two different podcasts and a normal blog post. As a result especially while waiting for Qelric to get online, I wanted to play something but did not want to get too terribly engaging. With the introduction of the Heirloom system and the 6.1 patch, it has greatly increased my desire to alt. My number one frustration while trying to level a character is trying to make sure I have level equivalent gear. I realize that gear is never as important as I seem to make it, but I like to have at least as good of a weapon as possible while pushing through the levels. Now previously I had some heirlooms, but I had to choose which character would get to use them. Even with the ability to send them cross realm, it became a mess trying to track who had what and I was constantly afraid I would end up losing heirlooms in the mail… because I have done this before. The new system however is pretty much ideal for me, since I can generate copies of heirlooms on any and all characters.

When The Scryers server merged with Argent Dawn I set about creating eleven place holder horde characters, since I did not know how the actual merger would work. It makes me extremely happy that I can have 11 Alliance characters on Argent Dawn and 11 Horde characters on The Scryers… and use them to play with my AD Horde friends. I have always been one of those players that tried to span the faction divide whenever I could and through various community efforts I developed just as many bonds on the red side as the blue. I always feel like a louse however for never really spending much time leveling a character on the “other” side. As a result I started working on Belgrace my Moocowadin yesterday while waiting for Qelric and while recording the podcast. As of this morning I am now level 18 and starting the Ratchet area. It is insane just how fast the levels come when you are completely kitted out in heirlooms. The only slot that I do not have is the ring, and I am simply not a good enough fisherman to get that.

A Confidence Boost

Over the last few weeks since the launch of the Final Fantasy XIV 2.5 patch I have greatly tapered off the amount of time I am spending in World of Warcraft. It has become a Tuesday/Thursday experience for me largely which means simply showing up in time to raid. Now granted I am logging in periodically throughout the week to run garrison missions but in the grand scheme of things that takes ten minutes or so at a time, and I am really not online that long. I’ve felt kinda horrible because one of my long time friends has been slowing improving her ilevel gear wise on her priest. Every so often she would give me an update and yesterday she told me she had hit ilvl 626. I knew the answer before I asked it, but I asked her if she had managed to do any LFR yet? As I suspected she said no, that she was wary of raiding… and didn’t think she was ready for it. I hopped on Lodin my hunter, that could still use gear from Highmaul LFR and offered to queue with her for moral support.

Finni had raided before during the early days of World of Warcraft, and as such the bulk of her experience dated from the 40 man era. So when she thinks “raid” she equates it to super serious business. Fortunately and unfortunately at times… Looking for Raid is anything but serious business. Within what felt like fifteen minutes of queuing we were through the first section, and she got a much needed confidence boost… and thankfully a little bit of gear. I remember the first time I queued for Looking for Raid upon coming back during Pandaria. I was scared as hell because the concept of a raid for me too was “serious business” time. Thankfully we have this wonderful system that allows players without the time to dedicate to at least be able to get in and see the fights in one form or another. She ended up walking with a few upgrades, and I did as well… and can now queue Blackrock Foundry on my hunter. I think we both benefited from yesterday equally, because it seems like she won’t be quite so frightened of the LFR queue.

#WoW #Paladin #BelFolkStuff

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Fun With Trains

February 27, 2015 by Belghast

Bel’s Blog Bonanza – February 27, 2015

For those not familiar with it, I write a bi-weekly column on MMOGames.com and they made the huge mistake of letting me name it myself. As such I gave it the completely bombastic title of “Bel’s Blog Bonanza” and every other week I give a run down to the best of my ability of the current hot topics circulating through the gaming blogosphere. This week I talk about the echo effects of the rather brutal interview of Peter Molyneux by Rock, Paper, Shotgun. This had many responses out in the community, and I picked a few of the ones I felt represented the various feelings the best. Additionally the Crowfall Kickstarter has been huge on the blogging front with an absolutely overwhelming number of posts contemplating what everything means thusfar.

This week has also been huge as far as game patches went with the two remaining subscription juggernauts of Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft both releasing a significant patch on Tuesday. From the Final Fantasy XIV side from we had a large number of posts talking about their experiences with the Manderville Golden Saucer and related items that came into the game this week. On the World of Warcraft front we had quite a few reactions to the various features that were put in with the first patch of the expansion. While the viewpoints of FFXIV 2.51 seemed overwhelmingly positive, the reactions from the World of Warcraft players were a little bit more mixed… which I assume is what you would expect from having a much more mature community. The honeymoon was over long ago and now folks are viewing the game through less than rose colored lenses. In any case check out the post and let me know what you think of the column.

Fun With Trains

Last night I finally started to feel like I was getting back into the swing of things. Yesterday as a whole I felt considerably better than I had since last Thursday. With it being a raid night, and we had cleared all of the encounters we had worked on during my medicated stupor on Tuesday… this meant that last night was entirely a learning night. Some people get depressed at the concept of constant wiping, but for me it feels cool because we are getting to try new things. Last night we set our sights on Operator Thogar, which for those who are unfamiliar with Blackrock is the “Train Boss”. His room is essentially a train depot with four different tracks. At various points during the fight a train will come barreling through the room and if you are on the wrong track at the wrong time… it will flat out one shot you. For me as a bit of an abomination as Gladiator DPS… it will take me down very close to death but not actually kill me.

As you move through the encounter some trains will simply buzz through, and others will stop and drop off adds. Among the types that drop adds there are ones filled with simply mindless trash mobs, and others filled with what we have termed “specialists”. It is these specialist trains that cause the problems and quite simply last night we were not getting them down fast enough… while at the same time dodging trains. It seemed like melee had the dance down pretty well, which is generally the case since melee is used to constantly moving. We just need our ranged and healers to get used to the rhythm of the fight to be able to time when they can cast and when they have to be moving. Basically we died constantly at this same point… where we have a pack of specialists and we did not get them down with enough time to move to the far edges of the room and split up. I feel like this is a critical juncture and once we nail that we will have the encounter.

Killing the Flamebender

Generally speaking if we do not make serious progress on our first few attempts, it is almost better to switch targets and let folks digest the mechanics for a week. When we come back the following week there is absolutely a marked improvement. Since this is the case with our raid, our leader called the halt on the Orc Trainmaster and we went back to working on Flamebender Ka’graz. If you remember we actually made some solid progress on her awhile back getting her down into the 30% range if I am remembering correct, so I knew going into the night that more than likely this was going to be a fight we could fine tune and get through. Once again this is a fight with a lot of moving parts. Players have to avoid lines of fire that get drawn on the floor as she targets a ranged dps and attacks them. This means the melee spend most of their time shifting around trying to keep from standing in these.

The crucial part of the fight seems to be dealing with the two lava wolf spawns. This was the point at which we spent the most effort improving last night. We shifted around trying several different combinations and finally landing on actively calling which target which group of players should be attacking. Like I said last time these work like Corehounds and if they are not brought down at the same time… they both re-ignite. The other big thing we tweaked was where the group collapsed, attempting to do so in the center of the room rather up within melee range of where the boss is tanked by default. I think the combination of both of these was what actually allowed us to get through that second flame puppy phase with essentially a full compliment of players. From there it was just repetition of the things we were already good at doing… and when the third dog phase happened we were able to ignore them and finish off the last 3% of the boss. As is rare for us we actually managed to get everyone to stand still long enough to take a kill shot.

Things Did For Loot

November 24, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat #32 – Azeroth, Mordor and Beyond

Normally Sunday mornings I talk about the happenings from the night before when we record our weekly episode of AggroChat. However yesterday it just didn’t really fit the theme of the post, so I opted to push off advertising it on my blog until this morning. We recorded for roughly two hours, but thankfully after I edited it was condensed to only an hour and twenty minutes… which is far more reasonable. It is always strange when we go into a show with what we feel like is not a lot to talk about… and then a show happens and it ends up being a length one. I feel like some of those are the most natural because the conversation just went where it needed to go without our direction.

We talked about a dizzying range of games from Shadows of Mordor and Tam and Kodras views on the game. They both still say it is very much a “bel game” and at this point I am planning on picking it up hopefully when it goes on sale during the Steam Christmas Sale. It does look really interesting, and I like the seeming focus on mechanics rather than story. We once again delve into a discussion about 4X games namely Beyond Civilization, Civilization 5 and Endless Legend. Similarly there is a length discussion about our feelings surrounding Dragon Age Inquisition and Kodra has finally made some progress in Dragon Age Origins. Finally I talk at length about my experiences returning to World of Warcraft as I gush about finally having a strong female in World of Warcraft that is not also moments away from being turned into a raid boss. Seriously if you have not followed the Yrel character you should check her out.

Things Did For Loot

My focus this weekend entirely was getting geared up enough to be able to do Molten Core on Tuesday night with the guild. Since this is a 40 man looking for group experience… and various members of them guild have said it took upwards of three hours to complete… we are wanting to try and pull in as many people as possible Tuesday night so we can hopefully carry the random players to a rapid victory. The only problem is that in order to join in the fun, you have to have 615 ilevel. Unless you had some extreme luck with item upgrades in Nagrand, it is not exactly easy to hit that kind of level without a lot of dungeoning. Arria and several others kept telling me that I needed to PVP in order to get my ilevel up high enough to run Molten Core, but at first I rejected this notion entirely. However after a period of time without a guild group online that I thought we could make dungeoning work… I resorted to queuing for battlegrounds.

Over the course of the weekend I ran enough battlegrounds to be able to purchase a neckpiece and bracers at roughly 1250 honor each. I have to say… I actually enjoyed myself, and it shocks me just as much to be able to say those words. Remember I have gone on length diatribes about how faction based combat destroys a sense of community. The thing is… battlegrounds are not open world pvp and I did not enjoy Ashran the open world pvp zone at all. The strange thing is that I have quite literally not PVP’d in World of Warcraft since Burning Crusade other than once or twice here needed for some holiday achievement. Once upon a time I was part of an Arena team if you can believe that, with the sole purpose of gearing my paladin in some healing gear. It is strange how cyclical things are… in Burning Crusade PVP gear was extremely useful for PVE purposes… and now in Warlords the exact same thing has happened. I guess I don’t mind PVP so much when I know there is a loot piñata at the end of my efforts.

Heroic-palooza

Between the two pieces of PVP gear I was able to bump my ilevel up high enough to be able to do Molten Core. However yesterday I spent most of the day running Heroics with the guild. The strange thing is that I tagged along as dps. It feels so strange that sword and board gladiator is actually viable dps, and for most of the runs I was competitive with the person sitting in first place on the meters. The awesome thing about this is that the gear needed to tank and needed to Gladiator dps are essentially the game. Bonus Armor it turns out is just as much of a DPS boost for Gladiator as it is survival for Defensive. All of this makes me wonder if we will see a resurgence of viable specs to allow tanks to tank as Arms or Fury like they used to back in Vanilla WoW. In any case I ran Bloodmaul Slag Mines, Grimrail Depot, Auchindoun, The Everbloom and Skyreach and between them I managed to get several upgrades.

I feel like I need to take a moment to praise Blizzard for the changes to the way that personal loot works. I made a comment the other day on twitter when they removed personal loot as the default for pugs, that going back to need before green only really helped the trolls. It turns out that they just felt they needed to tweak personal loot a bit before returning it to the dungeons, which ultimately they hotfixed back in within a days time. The new version is extremely awesome, because no matter how bad your luck is early in the dungeon… the final boss will always drop an item for your spec. Mostly what makes the system great is there are no more instances of unusable loot. Granted what you get may not actually be an upgrade, but we did several runs with nothing but plate wearers… and no leather rotted in the dungeon.

Finally a Worthy Helm

Over the course of the weekend I went from 609 ilevel to a respectable 623 and I feel that I am fully ready for Molten Core tomorrow. I am not sure if I will be called on to tank or to dps, but in either scenario I feel comfortable thanks to the fact that Gladiator dps is esentially just tanking without the taunts. One of the things that I have tried to be religious about is doing my crafting and resource workorders in my Garrison. The primary one is the Gearspring Parts needed for engineering, or in truth every single tradeskill that makes things seems to have a limited resource that can be sped up significantly through the use of your Garrison. This expansion has returned to having an exceptionally useful helm gained through engineering, and this time it is upgradeable three steps to make it competitive with raid gear.

This morning I managed to collect the last of the 100 Gearspring Parts needed to craft it, and finally I have a helmet that is worth of displaying helm. Traditionally I run around sans helmet, because in truth World of Warcraft has pretty much nothing but ugly helms. These goggles however are fantastic, and I am proud to let my engineer flag fly high. Unfortunately I am going to have to figure out a way to get savage blood, which I am afraid that I do not have a source of it in that I did not build the barn. Since it is a tradeable resource my hope is that I will be able to obtain it through an alt. Honestly my biggest hope is that eventually they add it to the primal spirit vendor at a significant loss, so that I can use my stockpile of those. In any case I feel like I am fully ready for the rigors of raiding, but still have plenty of upgrades that I can get from heroics.

My Routine

There are mornings I have an idea immediately and others that I struggle to find purpose in my writing. There is something about being under pressure to write a post each morning that makes it work for me. I’ve long found that on the weekends I dawdle considerably more and struggle to get a post out. Whereas in the morning as I am drinking my morning coffee if I just start writing a post materializes before I really know fully what I am going to write about. As such for this mornings thankfulness post, I am thankful for my routine. I am thankful that I embarked upon this journey over a year ago, and thankful that I realized that the morning would actually be a viable time for me to write. Writing a post feels like I am starting the day having already accomplished something, which in turn I feel makes the day as a whole a better one. May each of you also find the routine that works for you.

Collaborate Not Compete

November 13, 2014 by Belghast

For Azeroth

Last night while I slept Warlords of Draenor launched in the United States. Once again the launch time was based on Pacific Standard Time meaning that it occurred at 2 in the morning for me. I actually got to see some play last night from Qelric, due to the fact that this time it actually launched ahead of time for our European friends. I think it is pretty awesome that finally it launched for them at the same time it was slotted to launch in other territories, it just meant that they technically got a head start. In part I think this decision was influenced by the fact that with this expansion they have completely removed the concept of world and server firsts. So while folks are hustling around like mad, presently there are nine people online in guild for example… there really isn’t much of a broader point to it.

I think removing the world and server firsts was a good step, but I think it is so ingrained into the Warcraft culture to rush headlong towards the finish line. My hope is that this will at least cause some of the players to slow down and enjoy the journey. That said I realize I will probably level quickly… because I always seem to level quickly. This is more of a necessity this time around since I am actively juggling two different games and trying to be available for grouping in both. Unfortunately I will not really get to experience Draenor until after work, though I have popped in this morning to at least take a screenshot of the trio standing outside the Dark Portal. I must admit that while I played in Alpha… nothing I did actually felt real. This time around I will be actually working on things like Garrisons permanently, so I think a lot of the stickiness of this expansion will have more effect.

Awesome Communities

The other day I made a connection that I had failed to grasp until then, when a friend from twitter pointed something out to me. For weeks I have been talking about just how amazing the community has been playing Final Fantasy XIV. It is the little things, like the fact that the other morning I zoned into North Shroud looking for the B Rank Phecda. It has been common place for me to /shout in zone asking if anyone has seen the spawn. I had a pretty quick response from a player who not only gave me the location, but also hung out at the spawn point to help me kill it… even though she didn’t need the kill. Then a good ten minutes later, another person sent me a tell asking if I still needed it, because they just ran past the big bear. This little Vignette plays out over and over… and I have added so many random strangers to my friends list through casual interaction like this. There is this global sense that we are all in things together that I cherish.

If I had to rattle off the four best server communities I have been part of it would have to be Cactuar in Final Fantasy XIV, Landroval in Lord of the Rings Online, The Secret World (mega server), and Antonia Bayle in Everquest II. In each case there have been so many positive random encounters that make living in those worlds enjoyable. I’ve had completely random strangers run up to me in Bree on Landroval offering me crafted goods to help my leveling process. I’ve had folks offer me a group during the various Everquest II holiday events, that then turn into multiple hour long treks through the world. I’ve had random strangers stop me in the Secret World to tell me that they liked my outfit, and ask where I got various bits of it. These casual interactions remind me of the way servers used to feel back during the early days when the MMOs were a little less “massive”.

Collaborate Not Compete

It was around this time in our conversation that my friend pointed a thread of connection between all of these games that I had never really noticed myself. None of those games have real and meaningful faction rivalries. Sure in The Secret World and Everquest II you have certain alliances, but largely this work out to be personal choices. Being Templar versus being Illuminati is largely just a flavor choice, since from the moment you get out of London or New York you are grouping together and communicating freely. Games like Final Fantasy XIV and Lord of the Rings online don’t even have these artificial divisions. From the moment you start playing any of these games, you are instilled with this spirit that all of the players are ultimately battling something more sinister than they can imagine. So it makes perfect sense to lend another player a helping hand along the way, since you are not competing against each other in any meaningful way.

There might be a certain measure of self sorting going on when it comes to players of these games as well. Since none of the four really have a strong PVP aspect, that flavor of super competitive player is just not interested in playing them. That means you are left with a more collaborative “role-playing server crowd” type player. Ultimately this shared struggle, and spirit of cooperation has always been why I have self sorted myself onto Role-Playing servers, because in general this type of player is more prevalent there. Essentially what I am coming to realize is that the awesome communities that I have held out as paragons against normal online gaming horribleness… all exist for pretty similar reasons. They are all environments that teach the players to get along with each other, rather than compete.

Collaborative Environments

To tie into today’s post, I am thankful that games exist that teach players to work together rather than work against each other. So many games set up an artificial conflict between players, and try desperately to draw them into it. As I said in my “Sandboxes and Sheep” post, these artificial faction boundaries have no meaning to me personally. I have no real emotional ties to the Horde or the Alliance, other than the fact that I mostly chose Alliance because that is where the Dwarves were. However this decision did not immediately make me hate the horde, in fact I have 11 Alliance characters on Argent Dawn… and 11 Horde characters on The Scyers… the realm that is connected to Argent Dawn. Over years of playing on that server I made just as many friendships across the faction barrier as I did within my own pool of players. In fact one of my key problems with World of Warcraft has always been that it made us choose sides in a war that was largely meaningless to us.

All of this is the reason why I am thankful that there are games that have transcended faction. I was hugely impressed when Rift decided to abandon the artificial conflict with their “Faction as Fiction” patch removing the hard lines between Defiant and Guardian. I think as a whole that game has been greatly improved for doing so. More than that however I am thankful for the games that never put up those walls in the first place. Eorzea is this wonderful land where the races don’t always get along, but they are not openly warring either… because the writers have created a threat so great that in its face… squabbles seem petty. After talking this whole situation through, I feel like this sort of environment really does breed a player willing to help others freely. It is for that spirit, that I am thankful for. If you are actively making your community better, you are doing awesome work.