The other day when I made my “done-ish” post I had essentially missed one entire zone of Dragonflight content before properly wrapping up the Main Story Quest. I’ve now done this as well as finished all of the Zaralek Cavern MSQ and am a good deal of the way through the Emerald Dream MSQ content. I have to say across the board this is some of the best content World of Warcraft has ever released hands down. Had I actually played along through the first two “seasons” of Dragonflight, I think I would have been extremely pleased with the level of detail and the amount of content that came with each. Zaralek and Emerald Dream are both excellent expansion areas and far more detailed and fleshed out than most of the ones we have gotten in the past. I also dig that each of these areas has a full set of gear that you can earn through the quest chain, which essentially acts as a catch-up mechanic and takes you up to around the item level of the LFR Raid that proceeded it.
It was because of all of these gear upgrades that I was able to set foot into LFR and am now capable of running Heroic Dungeons. I bought a few upgrades off the Auction House but legitimately did not need to do this as I got plenty of gear just through questing to make up for the difference in item level. Essentially on all of my alts from this point forward I will simply knock out the Zaralek Cavern content and then start Emerald Dream in order to get them to reasonable gear levels. The one thing that I wish is that the Account Bound items were a bit more common. While leveling I found two pieces of “Dreambound” armor that turn into gear for specific classes. One of these was a pair of 415 plate boots, and the other that I have sitting in my inventory is for a set of 415 cloth shoulders. I guess I need to see where this drops and potentially farm some up for alting as they seem like a great option.
The other thing that I spent a lot of time on Saturday doing was tracking down Dragon Sigils. These are objectives out in the world that give points that you can then spend on the Dragon Riding talent tree. At this point I have gathered all of the sigils from the four main areas of Dragonflight as well as all of them from Zaralek Cavern, and I believe the only ones that I have not picked up are the ones in the Emerald Dream. Some of these were fairly awful to get… like this one way the hell up at the top of a mountain that I had to stop several times along the way and let my stamina regenerate. The other day when I complained about Dragon Flying, I was met with a chorus of comments that I really needed to get all of the Dragon Sigils before I judged it. So I did that.
At this point, I have collected 15 talents so I feel like I can reasonably judge this system. I still feel like this is a poor copy of the flight options from Guild Wars 2. Essentially Dragon Riding is this kitbash that jams together some traits of the Skyscale and some traits of the Griffon from GW2 and is somehow worse than either. Don’t get me wrong… for World of Warcraft having access to flying almost immediately in this expansion is revolutionary. Mechanically the system is fine and does what it is supposed to do… but the system it copied homework from just feels better. Mostly the thing that kills me the most is how long it takes to summon the mount, how long it takes for stamina to regenerate, and that there is no dismounting attack. All of this combines to make the system feel way more passive and fiddly than the mounts in Guild Wars 2 do. That is not to say that the experience did not significantly improve as I got more talents… just that the final version is still a poor copy of the original.
The other place where Dragonflight seems to have copied Guild Wars 2 homework is that there appear to be “zone metas” now. I am not sure how many of these exist but I have seen ones in Ohn’ahran Plains, The Azure Span, and Emerald Dream, and for the most part… these are at least as good as the most simplistic zone meta events from Guild Wars 2. For the most part, the WoW version feels like a World Quest that spawns periodically and progresses through a series of phases until it finally culminates in some sort of World Boss. The only one that I have actually managed to participate in was the one in The Emerald Dream and it was enjoyable enough. Essentially you seemed to follow around a giant Treant and killed a bajillion mobs as they spawned in to attack him… then eventually took out a Druid of the Flame boss for fun and prizes. The higher the zone participation, the better the rewards you ended up getting. This was no Dragon’s End or even Tequatl… but was at least as good as the Svanir Shaman Chief or Great Jungle Wurm.
I am not trying to be overly harsh in my viewpoint of Dragonflight. It seems to have done a really good job of moving the needle forward for World of Warcraft. From what I can tell content releases seem to have happened more reliably over the last few years, and Dragon Riding really does greatly improve the feel of the game. I think the zone metas are an interesting addition as well, and I would like to see them try something a bit more ambitious with them. The biggest problem I see with the Metas is unless they are brain-dead… it is somewhat hard to get players to participate in them. World of Warcraft is a game that has spent the last two decades training its community to see other players as competition and not as collaborators. The metas work in Guild Wars 2 because there is never a time when other players doing things with you is in any way a negative, and instead, the more players you have the better your experience tends to be. Hopefully, the current World of Warcraft team can start to turn back years of antisocial game design to make something more cooperative.
I am getting to the point with my Warrior where I am thinking it might be time to swap characters and work on an Alt. World Quests seem to have a weekly timer instead of semi-daily ones… meaning there are just way less of them to complete at any given time. It also appears to not really be as viable of a method for gearing characters as it used to be. Again this is less of a problem because the quests chains now reward you with full sets of decent item-level gear, but my MO previously was just to ignore most of the quests and focus entirely on World Quests to gear up alts. I think I am going to try leveling the Paladin without going through the campaign. Mostly I want to play something for a bit with more viable tradeskills so I can experience how those systems work. Since the Paladin is Mining and Blacksmithing, I think that will feel a bit more enjoyable because Belghast sadly harvests NOTHING. I’ve always enjoyed letting the mining nodes dictate my path through an area.
Hey Folks! Happy New Year and Welcome to Season Eleven of AggroChat! We are back after the holiday break and are delaying our Games of the Year Show until a bit later in the month. This week we talk about the Dave the Diver Dredge Crossover, Super Mario RPG and Thalen’s child plotting an interesting course through the game, and a return to Monster Hunter World. With Bobby Kotick leaving ActiBlizz, Bel has stepped back into World of Warcraft and talks a bit about his thoughts so far and the inspirations taken from Guild Wars 2. From there we talk a bit about missing trade league despite how much of a capitalist nightmare it is and how it makes the players focus entirely on short-term gains. Bel talks a bit about how he has shifted his Chieftain into Righteous Fire and how it is a reasonable replacement for RF Juggernaut. Finally, some breaking news while we are recording… we talk a bit about the new FFXIV job Pictomancer, and the new limited job Beastmaster.
Topics Discussed:
Dave the Diver Dredge Crossover
Super Mario RPG Remake
Monster Hunter World
World of Warcraft after 3 Years Away
Influences from Guild Wars 2
Path of Exile
The line goes up, and the financialization of everything in another inflation league
Well friends with the help of my friend Eliyon, we figured out where I fell off the Main Story Quest. It does not in fact end at Valdrakken but instead spins off with a few quests inside of the city, that then lead out into what is the fourth zone of the game Thaldraszus. So I have a bit more questing to go before I can wrap things up and finish out the story… and then proceed onto gearing through World Quests. I remember having this issue as well with Shadowlands where I dinged the new level cap and still had one and a half zones to complete before I could join the open-world “reindeer games”. I remember it was during this chasm that my friend Ace bounced from Shadowlands never to return, so I can’t say this is a super great design decision. It would be nice if World Quests just unlocked whenever you hit level 70 no matter how far you were progressed in the story.
Feeling somewhat deflated I spent most of my evening in Path of Exile. I had converted my attempt at a Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Chieftain over to Righteous Fire and so far… I think this might be the closest to the glory that was Juggernaut Righteous Fire. If you are so inclined here is a POB of where I am currently. The thing is the Chieftain comes with a bunch of really nice perks for Righteous Fire, some of which I had overlooked or at least written off as less good than they actually are. Namely Ramako, Sun’s Light is something that I had skipped on my previous attempts at an RF Chieftain during the Blast from the Past league, and this was a mistake. You spend a surprising amount of time “stationary” as Righteous Fire and if you frostblink from pack to pack you can maintain this “stationary” state. All of that time everything just has -20 Fire Resistance which seems to override all other modifiers and while in theory you can get a resistance much lower than that… this just always works.
This allows me to run a curse that isn’t either Flammability or Elemental Weakness and have it feel like I am double cursing without needing to fiddle with the nonsense that is involved in making that happen. Of the other options, I went with Punishment which causes cursed enemies to take more damage when on low life… meaning that things die faster and hopefully proc Hinekora, Death’s Fury and clearing the entire damned screen. I went Primalist with the hope of eventually using charms to get more chance to explode but for the moment I am running two Percent Strength and Life Regeneration Rate modifier charms. In a perfect world, I would find something that gave me explode and life or regen but I will have to keep fishing in the forest to make that happen. I’ve also still never seen the ACTUAL King in the Mists fight so none of my characters have unlocked their final doodads.
My defenses are also extremely solid and quite honestly… now that I have equipped a Lightning Coil I don’t feel that much less tanky than the Juggernaut version did. What I bring to the table is roughly 25k armor, almost 5000 life, 2500 life regeneration, 90% to all elemental resistances, and 50% of all physical damage is taken as lightning damage… as well as 30% crit damage reduction and some things to limit damage over time which I don’t believe the Lightning Coil applies to. Now that I have the lightning coil I am going to try my hand at juicing some T16 maps and see how that goes. Essentially the gameplay is a bit odd in that you are trying to kill enough small stuff so that you proc an explosion and then the entire screen around you evaporates before moving on to the next big pack. It feels better than it sounds.
All told it is fun to map on albeit a bit slower than Lightning Arrow. Lately, I have been alternating between Cemetary and Tropical Island because both are fairly enjoyable maps and relatively open. I should run some of the crappier and less bow-friendly T16s that I have rotting in my bank and see how that goes. Mostly right now I need a good deal more levels. I am working on getting a Fan the Flames gem up and running while trying to roll a slightly better version. If this works like I think it will… my ignites will proliferate among the packs of things that I am killing, and then also “proliferate” again when one of those things dies thanks to Berek’s Respite. If nothing else this should be fun as hell to watch happening. If I could somehow manage to keep my resistance high enough… I would love to have a set of Maven’s boots as well to only further add to the nonsense explosions.
One of the things that has gotten me down in Path of Exile lately is the frustration of trying to link things. Essentially I had a 900 DPS bow that I was working on getting linked, a Lightning Coil in RF colors, and more recently I finally got a Fourth Vow to drop which I am trying to link for my Boneshatter build. After spending about 1000 fusings trying to get the Bow linked, this morning I had gathered up another hundred or so and managed to get both the bow and lightning coil to six links. That alone has helped increase my enjoyment of the league. I still do not love being isolated from the trade environment, but finally getting some of the things I needed up and running is a significant improvement.
Good Morning Friends! It is that time of year when I drag out my spreadsheets and present an increasingly difficult-to-read picture of the games that I have played since 2012. I keep scaling down the browser zoom so that I can capture a screenshot representing the spreadsheet’s totality each year. What you are looking at is a representation of the games that I have played each month and I started this nonsense in 2013… but backfilled some information that I happened to have on hand for 2012. Essentially I am a fairly rabid screenshotter when it comes to video games, in large part because I need something to break up the massive chunks of prose that appear on my blog. So I have cataloged and kept careful tabs on the games that I play during a given year and stored them away in my “Gameshots” vault which as of the time of writing this post is roughly 550,000 files and roughly 180 Gigabytes worth of storage space. This “paper trail” gives me a fairly accurate accounting of what I happened to be playing during a given month, but does nothing to tell me exactly how much I played a given game.
For years I used a service called Raptr, and I always like looking back to see what all I had played in a given year and more importantly how many hours. When I started tracking this manually I decided that trying to determine an hour count was going to be a bit onerous, so instead I made do with a simple binary count of whether or not I played a game in a given month. The black squares that you see scattered across the above screenshot represent a macro that I run that shades in any square with the number 1 in it… I then tally in the final column giving me a total count of how many months I have played at least enough of a game to take screenshots. Patterns emerge where I have a handful of “forever games” that I return to over and over, and then a wide variety of games that I have played for a few months at a time. Since starting this process I have logged 396 games that I have played at the time of writing this post, but by this evening that number may be larger.
Exploring the Games Played in 2023
We will talk about specific trends a bit later, but I tend to have years where I play a wide variety of games and then years where I entrench more into “forever games”. This was absolutely a year for forever games, but I have to admit the data tells a few lies. For example, this would give you the impression that I played a lot of Final Fantasy XIV and Fallout 76… when in truth it was more a few hours each week poking my head in to check out things and do a few daily “chores”. Guild Wars 2 however gets an honest place at the top of this list because it has been my most reliable MMORPG since I finally reached a point of acceptance for the type of game it was trying to be rather than constantly attempting to push it into the World of Warcraft mold.
The game that I spent the most time playing this year however is Path of Exile. I stole this screenshot from my Steam Year in Review that shows I had a grand total of 1246 gameplay sessions with the longest streak being 71 days in a row that I played the game. This does not shock me in the least because I have over 2100 hours on record in Steam for this game. Granted there were several attempts at playing it made from 2014 onwards, but when it finally grabbed ahold of me in 2021 and 2022… I’ve never really let go of it. My happy place this year has been playing some Path of Exile while listening to an Audiobook, and as a result, I have wiled away many hours doing this sitting on the sofa with a cat beside me and another on my legs.
The one that surprised me the most is Wayfinder because I had not even really been tracking my play of this game until the Steam Year in Review happened. This was in large part due to the fact that I was under a pretty nasty NDA regarding my playtime and was following the rules… and not taking any screenshots. I participated in several months worth of playtests before the game “launched” or at least started charging exorbitant fees to keep testing it. It is a bit of a bummer honestly because I thought this game had a lot of promise, but what I played was not worthy of spending cash on yet and needed a heck of a lot more work before it was ready for primetime.
I am also surprised that I spent more time playing Diablo IV than I did Diablo III. Though to be fair… once I dove into Path of Exile head first… Diablo III took a backseat as my ARPG of choice. For Diablo IV… I just keep poking at its corpse trying to make it be a fun game. I will admit though that Season 2 was really fun until I got to level 70. I managed to grind my way up to 90 and then lost all interest in finishing the grind to 100. I think there is hope for this game, and the team seems to be making some fairly rapid changes… but cannot seem to turn fast enough to keep the players engaged fully. The best thing that ever happened to Path of Exile was the launch of Diablo IV full stop. I’ve seen more players discover POE than players who really seemed to love D4.
As I said earlier, I tend to move in a rhythm where I have a year where I play a large variety of games… and then a year where I retreat into forever games. This was a retreating year which tells me that coming up in 2024 it will be a year where I catch up on all of the games that I missed while focusing on “comfort gaming”. I am sure at some point I will tire of Path of Exile, and one of the things that I am looking forward to spending a bit more time in is World of Warcraft. I had been hesitant to engage much with Blizzard games while Bobby Kotick was at the helm of ActiBlizz… but with him leaving the company and his official last day being yesterday… I am planning on diving into Dragonflight and giving that game a proper shot. I enjoyed the testing that I did of the game prior to the expansion launch, so I am looking forward to diving back into playing the ACTUAL Belghast character, my Human Warrior on Argent Dawn. I’ve been gone long enough that NONE of the Belghast’s on the WoW Armory are actually me anymore.
This is the point where I compare the top played games of 2023 to the top played games of 2022. Again there is some lying happening here specifically with Final Fantasy XIV and Fallout 76, so you can pretty much ignore those. I felt like I had to count them by the rules of this process but I have not spent a ton of time actually playing either of them… mostly doing “wizard chores”. Guild Wars 2 saw quite a bit more regular play with me pretty consistently spending several hours a week playing it. I got completely caught up with the expansions and started working on a second character that is now doing Secrets of the Obscure. Path of Exile absolutely saw a ton more play… Torchlight Infinite dropped to almost no play… and Destiny and Elder Scrolls Online left the list.
Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 both saw considerable play as did Last Epoch and Grim Dawn as I seem to be going through a heavy ARPG phase. Honkai Star Rail grabbed my heart for quite a bit but I have fallen off playing the game over the last several months. New World has continued to be a comfort game for me that I keep returning to, and there have been some truly shocking improvements in the game as a whole making it a really great experience. I had actually gotten back to playing some Final Fantasy XIV and had begun working a little each day to level new jobs having gotten five of them to 90. However, Affliction League in Path of Exile and our “Bel League” private league happened and completely threw me out of the rhythm of playing anything but it for a while.
Games Played Since the Start of this Project
This is the point where I attempt to tackle the totality of the list and make the massive grid of checkboxes make some semblance of sense. It is here that we can start to see some of the trends in how my gaming has changed over the years. I cut off this year at 14 months total played with a game, which makes the cut-off around EQ2 and Wildstar. Last year was the first year where Final Fantasy XIV took the lead spot away from World of Warcraft, and the thing is position on this list takes several years to shift as there are a lot of games that I played for a very long time that are still extremely entrenched in the list. For example, Rift has been a game I have not played in any form since October of 2018… but it still holds on tentatively to the sixth slot in the list. Given how much I have been enjoying Guild Wars 2 I fully expect by this time next year that Rift will have fallen to seventh and GW2 will have moved up to sixth.
Path of Exile is rapidly moving up the lower half of the list as is Fallout 76 and New World. Destiny sits high on the list but I am not playing the game at all and have not for this entire last year… so it will begin to sink down slowly. I am somewhat sad to say that I only played Elder Scrolls Online for a single month last year which means it is likely going to keep slipping down as well. It makes me happy that Everquest II holds a position on the list still since most of my time playing that game predates the start of this project. I’ve returned to it several times but I just can’t jive with its combat systems and as much as I want to love it… because I love the world and the way it was created… I just can’t go back. That is one thing I have noticed about myself is that I have a really hard time diving back into hotbar combat games. I greatly prefer the more action-oriented combat of Guild Wars 2 or New World, and I keep hoping someone will give me a new World of Warcraft or Everquest but with action combat.
This next chart shows only the games that I have played for at least six months. This really whittles down the massive list given that there really have only been so many “forever games” that end up holding my attention for the long haul. Rift had held as a bit of a rampart against the lower tier with a big drop off last year of 58 months for Rift and 30 months for its nearest competitor Guild Wars 2. However, that wall has fallen a bit with Guild Wars 2, New World, and Fallout 76 all starting to climb that slope. Considering that Path of Exile has now hit 24 months of play if it can hold my attention going into 2024 it will start to rapidly pass a number of games in the middle ground. There are a number of games on the list that are just not going to get any more progress… Dragalia Lost fore example was really strong for awhile but given that the game is now dead and closed… it will never gain more months. Similarly, Horizon Zero Dawn is a game that I have played multiple times… but is unlikely to really draw more attention. I know the story very well at this point so when the sequel comes out on PC it is very unlikely I will play through it again.
I think what is probably more telling though is the “Streak” chart. This shows the longest number of months unbroken that I have played a game. Destiny still holds the top of this chart but there are several other games that are starting to chip away at its lead now that I have effectively stopped playing it. Specifically, Final Fantasy XIV will absolutely topple it next year and take the top position with Diablo III probably also eclipsing it pending I play a similar amount next year as I did this past year. I think what is more telling though is how quickly Path of Exile has climbed the list from being only at 7 months unbroken last year at this time to 19 months. New World is holding pretty strong with 24, but it is very unlikely that I will ever hit a streak like that again with the game. Dragalia Lost like I said above is a dead game so it will sit there much like Rift… waiting for someone to push it down the list. There is no way that Guild Wars 2 does not move up in the list and will honestly probably be sitting up around Destiny by this time next year.
Another Year Down
More than anything… this was the year of books for me and they were more of my focus than necessarily the games that I happened to be playing. As far as games go… it was the year of the Righteous Fire Juggernaut as I played one as my main character in Sanctum, Crucible, and Ancestor leagues in Path of Exile… and now mourn the death of the character in Affliction. Right now I am trying to find a character that I enjoy even half as much as I did the RF Juggernaut. Currently, I am working on an RF Chieftain… but there is no way it is ever going to feel as tanky and comfy as the Juggeranut did. I am hoping maybe we see some changes that make the class viable again.
I’ve said this numerous times, but I would really like to get back into doing things as a group. I’ve been a solo-only murder hobo for far too long, and I would like to get back to doing things with other players. I am not even sure if that is a Guild Wars 2 thing or a Final Fantasy XIV thing… or even maybe a World of Warcraft thing. I am not sure I ever want to get back to playing on a hard schedule and the raiding life… but I would like to actually do things with someone other than myself going into the new year. I have a catmander tag… I just need to get over my anxiety and start using it. That wall of anxiety has been what has been holding me back from doing things with strangers for years and I am getting somewhat sick of it.
To be fair… group with other players was a goal from last year as well. I did at least finish up my Skyscale which was a goal I talked about last year so there is that. I am not sure what the next year is going to hold and as a result, I am hesitant to make too many predictions. It was a hard year for reasons that were not necessarily manifest in this blog or the games that I played. So next year I really want to work on myself a bit. I’ve still not really recovered from the massive changes we all went through at the start of the pandemic… and I feel like I need to do some drastic things in order to carve myself out a new “normal” or at least one that I am willing to accept. I’ve become a bit of a hermit and I need to change that because I have effectively given up doing a lot of things that used to bring me joy.
I hope you all have a wonderful 2024, and I am sure I will keep this tradition going for at least one more year… so I will see you next December to see what fate has in store for me. Thanks as always for reading my nonsense and if you have made it this far I love you all.
