MMO Archives - Page 328 of 336 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Transmutation

December 7, 2013 by Belghast

Trolls of Thunder

Yesterday went pretty much as I had intended it. I hung out around the house and ran first my Paladin and then my Shaman through a bunch of LFR. Things went a bit slower than intended since I kept getting in on the end of a run and having to queue again to catch the first boss or two. I managed to get both characters up into the 480ish range. Still no real luck with the weapon drops, which seem to be the issue with catching characters up enough to be able to do Siege of Orgrimmar. As a result my warrior, paladin and shaman are all using 450 level weapons still, and I have not really had much luck with getting spirits of harmony on the smith to be able to bump those up to 463.

Of the options I have at my disposal for weapons, none of them really seem palatable. I could queue for heroic dungeons and have a random chance of getting the dungeon that drops a weapon… and a random chance on top of that of getting the weapon to drop. This would only take me to 463, so not really great in the grand scheme of things. I could farm timeless isle coins, but it takes 10,000-20,000 to be able to purchase a weapon… and in those cases the weapon is only 476 which really doesn’t help that much. So the best option still seems to be to queue for Throne of Thunder each week and hope, all the while trying to accumulate Spirits of Harmony for the smith.

Transmutation

With all of my crafters going, I have really felt the lack of my alchemist. There are some pretty sweet items you can make as a blacksmith that are 502 ilvl but they require lots and lots of Living Steel. Once again the only way to get living steel is to get it transmuted by an alchemist. As a result I have been directing my extra effort towards leveling Gloam my rogue high enough to be able to raise his way through the Pandaria alchemy. Currently he is capped out at 450 and cannot progress again until I level 75. As a result I have been working on quests out in Borean Tundra and I almost have him up to 72. Thinking about just making a serious push to try and get him to 90.

Rogues are way squishier than I remember, and while they have recuperate it doesn’t seem to offer the level of survival I am used to with my other characters. As a result leveling the rogue has been less than enjoyable. I am not really a stealthy person, and I have always played my rogues more like a swashbuckler than an assassin. However the only time combat goes really smoothly is if I make sure I stealth up and get my opening attack. Hopefully with time I will get back into the swing of playing one, as in the past… burning crusade especially my rogue was my favorite alt.

The thing I find most humorous is that Paladins now kinda play like rogues. I have been doing a lot of Retribution paladin, and the mechanics are almost exactly like a rogue. Thing is in many ways it works better. Instead of everything being based on 5 combo points, all of the attacks seem to be based on 3 even though your bar can fill to 5. I keep thinking that rogues as a whole would benefit if most of the combo point dumpers capped at 3 as well. I think this is why I enjoyed my warrior in rift so much as opposed to my rogue. The three mechanic just seemed to work better, it made the game play feel more “in the moment”.

Too Many Choices

Right now I feel absolutely deluged with choices anytime I play the game. At this point i have yet to run Siege of Orgrimmar LFR on Belgrave or Belgarou my two best geared characters. I am 4 coins away from getting all of my sigils of power and wisdom, so I would not mind finishing that off so I can continue down the legendary cloak line. I have not even begun to work on Belghast, so in theory I could get his gear in order and start doing heart of fear or something like that to get him high enough to queue for Throne of Thunder. Additionally I really do want to get my rogue up so I can have a transmute spec person again. I spent a good amount of last night prior to our 10 man catching his herbalism up so he can now at least harvest whatever I come across in northrend.

In the past when I have quit the game I feel like it has been because I lost sight of the things I wanted to complete. I feel like I almost need to create a World of Warcraft Bucket List. There are so many little things that I forget about that I do want to complete. There are so many pets and mounts that I could be spending my time farming. The entirety of all of this is really almost overwhelming. I have never completely loremaster for example, and that’s a thing I have always wanted to do. I doubt I will ever work on the Insane title like Rylacus, but I am sure there are hundred of other little bullet points that I would actually enjoy. I feel as though if I had a list of these all, it would be much harder for me to lose sight of the progress I am making towards the total.

As a result I think I am going to add a new section to my site, similar to my beta list for my WoW Bucket list. As I think of more items I will add them to the list and then as I complete them… I will check them off the list. Probably will keep it as a google spreadsheet for ease of use. I’ve seen a few other players with these and I thought they were pretty cool. All I know for certain is that I am having a blast with all the players that seem to be back from their own hiatus. It is wierd to see my battletag/realid lighting up with players I have not seen in years. At the end of the day, this game really is about the people you play it with.

Hot Coffee and LFR

December 6, 2013 by Belghast

Snowed In

Good morning everyone, hopefully you are staying warm out there. Here in the central part of the country we had a mass of ice and snow dropped on us. Generally my point of reference is when two school districts on opposite corners of town call schools the next day, I decide I am going to stay home. Since this happened I put in a day of vacation for today and slept in. Apparently my absence was noticed, since I have already received tweets saying that a snowstorm was no excuse for not posting.

I think we probably got an inch or two of ice last night and then over night that got covered up by three to four inches of snow. Which to the northerners probably doesn’t sound like much, but here in Oklahoma we get glaze ice that is nearly impossible to drive on. Additionally we really do not have the infrastructure to remove large volumes of ice and snow… since we only go through this at most once a year. Over the last three years we have had really mild winters that never really produced much in the way of an ice storm. While this is nothing like the 2007 or 2011 storms, it is far more significant than anything we have seen in years.

Hot Coffee and LFR

As a result I am snuggled up on the sofa with my fuzzy pants and my fuzzy blanket and a thermal shirt blogging away on my laptop. I just finished off hot oatmeal and some hot coffee, and the only thing of any substance I really have planned today is to play some World of Warcraft. I have five 90s in various states of gear and the easiest way to get upgrades for them is through the LFR system. As much as I have railed against pugging in the past, something odd happens if I pug as DPS. I simply stop caring much about the success or failure of the group. As a DPS I can compartmentalize things and focus only on what I am doing and stop caring that the group is burning down around my shoulders.

As a Tank or a Healer… I simply cannot do this. I have to care about the group and how stupid they might be acting. My job relies on them doing their jobs. When playing one of those group roles I simply cannot stomach pugging or lfr, it ends up stressing me out way too much. However apparently as a DPS I have the patience of a saint. I keep plugging forward towards the goal and right click reporting anyone who is too abusive. It all seems simple and pure, and in an odd sense relaxing. It’s like I have reached into my brain and flipping me into DPS empties me of “fucks to give”. That is not to say that I don’t care about me keeping up my end of the bargain, but I simply don’t care as much about others not doing so.

So my intent today is to run as many LFR instances as I can this week to try and get my tribe of alts gear. The hardest thing seems to be weapons, and as a nice side benefit from these runs my blacksmith seems to be getting quite a few motes which will help him upgrade the weapons of those who have not gotten their turn at the LFR treadmill. That is still one of my biggest frustrations that I hope they will address in WoD. Crafting resources like Spirits of Harmory should be bind on account. I like the feeling of all of my characters working towards a bigger goal, its like I have my own little imaginary guild. Anything that adds to this feeling is a positive for me, since you have earned the item on one character already.

Trove Patch

I am sure at some point today I will be hopping into trove. Yesterday they seem to have had another patch. I am really impressed at the speed at which they do updates. This one seems to be mostly a patch full of tweaks but one of the more interesting points is that the block destroyer is no longer an item and no longer works in adventure mode. This could have some odd ramifications since I know I used it in adventure mode quite a lot. Another needed note is that they reduced the quantity of treasure chest spawns in the desert and frost biomes. Normally nerfs like this meet a groan, but this one was really needed. There were times I could see 6 treasure chests on screen at a single time.

I wasted so much time chasing these down because seriously… you cannot bypass a treasure chest. I figure at some point over the next few days I will be making a new video as I am sure the server has reset again and I will have to collect more weapons and gear. If there is anything you would like to see me cover let me know. I am not above having a purpose for my videos even though they are mostly just me roaming aimlessly around the wasteland. I hope you all are safe and happy and warm, and that if you did get the snow and ice I did, you also had the presence of mind to take a vacation day.

Trove Crafting

December 5, 2013 by Belghast

First Winter

One of the things about weight loss that no one really told me is the fact that I would go from being very hot natured, to freezing all of the time. This is the first winter after losing roughly seventy pounds so far, and I have to say it is a pretty miserable thing. I am absolutely living in this Carhart black zip up hoodie. I pretty much wear it over everything, because it keeps me at least somewhat warm. I keep hoping that eventually my internal body temperature will regulate and I will get used to having less insulation. It is essentially the same feeling as you have when you have just gotten a long overdue hair cut… but instead of my head being cold it is my entire body.

I am not complaining, the weight loss has had many other tangible benefits. However as “snowmageddon” barrels down on my area I find myself shivering quite a bit. We are supposed to get all manner of icy nastiness dumped on us around noon. I am hoping that either it gets delayed long enough for me to get home tonight, or that it is not nearly as severe as they are expecting. I am not really looking forward my normally fifteen minute commute turning into an hour and a half as everyone suddenly forgets how to drive. At least my coffee helps warm me up.

Trove Crafting

Released another Trove video yesterday, this time covering the brand new crafting system patch. I have to say I am impressed with the game so far. The biggest thing for me was the addition of the ability to craft health potions. This has enabled me to make some really bad decisions and survive. I think over the course of the evening last night I much have gone through 30-40. Each time I saw a bottle plant I made a beeline for it just so I could make some more. Right now everything tends to drop monster parts, which I am guessing is a generic placeholder material that will eventually be updated to be various specific things. Currently a Health Potion is 1 bottle from a bottle plant and 1 monster part, which makes them extremely easy to craft.

Similarly they have made bombs extremely costly to craft, and as a result the world is not nearly as marred with bomb holes. I don’t even make them anymore, because really I don’t find them that useful even in combat with monsters. In the video I could not figure out for the life of me why I was unable to make bombs… but then upon re-watching it I face-palmed over the fact that I simply could not count. I want to say I was missing fire flower parts, or something like that. The crafting system is actually really efficient so far, and I like it overall quite a bit more than I did the Minecraft one.. especially when it comes to bulk crafting.

Acheesements

Since today is ending up a bit of a mixed bag update post, I figured I would also talk a bit about what I am doing over in World of Warcraft. A group of friends and I have been knocking out the various achievements needed for Glory of the Pandaria Hero. I am within a stones throw now of completing it, but at the same time we are catching up a player that has next to none of them. What is going to be most time consuming I fear is finishing off Polyformic Acid Science. Right now I think I have 3 of the 6 kills. However I just found out that you can go into normal mode, solo the instance, get the vial and then hold onto it to give you double the amount of time to get through all the mobs for the achievement.

Past that I am working on farming Motes of Harmony on my Paladin to make weapon upgrades for my various characters. That is the glaring flaw I have seen so far with the timeless isle. You get really nice gear to catch you up, but it lacks anything even remotely similar for weapons. The weapons you can buy off the timeless isle vendors are only ilvl 476, which are the same as the epic weapons that drop from the early heroic instances. I feel like what we are missing are the Icecrown 5 mans. They were a really good way during Wrath of the Lich King to help catch alts up, and the weapons there were viable enough to raid with, at least until you can get something better. As a result I have several 90s with full timeless gear, but walking around with a 450 blue weapon simply because there is no really effective way to improve that.

I am not looking forward to working through the halfhill farm again, but I am thinking that might be something I just need to bite the bullet and do on my characters that seem to be mote starved. At least that way you get roughly one spirit of harmony a day guaranteed. I really wish blizzard would apply a patch and make Spirits bind on account. On Belgrave for example, I have 5 stacks of them in the bank… because there really is very little you can use them on as an inscriptionist. However every other crafter is starving for them, and ends up spending them on something the moment they get more. I hope in general as we go forward into Warlords of Draenor that more things become bind on account. I feel like the ability to trade items freely between characters can only be a net positive. The more alts someone rolls, the more time they spend playing the game… which in generally makes them less likely to unsubscribe and go elsewhere.

Trove Feature Suggestions

December 4, 2013 by Belghast

Contest Complete

Over the holiday weekend I schemed up a contest as a way of getting rid of my spare Trove Closed Alpha key. The basic idea was for folks to post in the youtube comments a feature they would like to see added to the game. While I was not absolutely flooded with responses, I did get quite a few of them. Of them quite a number of them were really insightful. As I said during the contest I would be collecting all of the results and compiling them in a single post. Since the contest ended late last night, here goes nothing. I am leaving the content of the comments completely unedited.

Trove Feature Suggestions

XHeavenZX22

I would like to see pvp/duels

Zyckou

My thoughts will focus towards the combat system, even if I wanted a lot of things. I think that Trion should make the combat system more dynamic. Now, battles are way too soft and boring to be enjoyed. If, as the developers said, they focus on exploration, the combat system is the core of the game and they should make it great and complete. Imo they should AT LEAST: – add the base of MMORPG battle: physical and magical damage (and reduction), status effects (poison, stun, immobilize, knockback, etc…); – add a dodge mechanism, this way you greatly improve the dynamism, and you can also for example allow bosses to have greater skills that you have to dodge; – we should known the monster level we encountered, it seems pretty obvious but it not the case today. – add different classes. I think I’m not the only one to hope for this one, I think everybody want to play in various ways, for example to play a ranged character. They should allow to customize the way we play our class, maybe with a classic tree builder system. I also think that the M2 skill should be bind to the equipped weapon, and the other skills linked to your class, but these changes are not as important as the above ones. Hope to test this soon to give you a more in-depth throught of the game.

Miz Ick

I think it would be cool if you could link cornerstones with friends, and they would become neighbours or something. Also, cornerstone options where you can adjust who can and cannot build/manipulate terrain in your cornerstone. I would like to see easy party systems to keep track of the friends you’re playing with.
It would be really cool if they made content that needed a group to complete, AND had class/party dynamics similar to the trinity (traditional mmo) combat. What I’m trying to say is unique classes that work well together with other classes.
I could spend all night thinking up fun stuff, lol . Good luck all!
edit: I would love to see a pvp realm, where when you step out of "friendly territory" you go into pvp mode.. mua hahahahaahaa

Guitarstroke

I think player created instances would be cool. Kind of like being a DM, you could create a world for others to play and share

Vellauno

I would love for the cornerstones (private piece of land you bring with you from world to world) could be turned into massive vehicles like boats, ships, flying castles and/or moving fortresses.

Game By Night

Awesome video and thanks for the offer, Bel! There are two things I would like to see. First, is some kind of whimsical story with charming voice over ala LittleBigPlanet and Stephen Fry. The game’s art style just oozes charm and begs for good narration. Second is some equivent of Minecraft’s redstone. Building is great but could you imagine an MMO with player-built trollies and rollercoasters?!

Aymeric Bruzzo

Hello, Nice video :D; I’d like to see some building block ( that we can craft maybe?) that can float in the air and move back and forth, and maybe some that breath fire, for maze/ obstacle race etc :D

Lorenzokwant Kwant

I like having a key like all the another people who want a key to but my ideas are adding new weapons like a bow and a axe and my another ideas is for blocks doors and signs so people can create a home where nobody can walk in because it have a door what only the owner of it can open and a sign is for tips or warnings (example) like you walk to a dungeon and there is a sign says danger across fearless

Jack Buxley

I’d love to see the game adapt more toward the play style of traditional ‘grinders’ and ‘builders’, to compliment the adventure aspect already implemented.
These changes wouldn’t need to be supremely vast, but small additions in all branches add tones to the longevity of the game. There could be simple additions such as rare minerals which spawn underground (and don’t alter those who don’t want to mine) to a crafting system for furniture and other miscellaneous items.
Looking forward to seeing more!

Bridget TruLove

I’d like to see unicorns. Or maybe just ponies. No wait, bro-nies! Unicorn bro-nies.
Seriously, though, thanks for vid, Bel! (And mail me that code ASAP. ;p~GeekSprinkles

Nick Hoff

Dang, after reading through all the comments here, all the good ideas are gone! XD
I’d love to see customizable pets in the future. I think it would be really cool if you would have to sort of rescue them from dungeons and then they would be your partner. I live this sort of aspect most from Kotor, even though they are frok different genres.
I would like the key because I want to be a part of this game in early development but I can’t buy it as my financial situation sits, and I don’t have the time to sit around the subreddit all day hoping for a key.
Thanks, and good luck to all! :D

TheMagicRobot

Mounts, minions, guilds, custom capes, and crafting recipes out the wazoo!

Daniel Brown

This game looks awesome, and I’d love a key for the alpha!
My suggestion would be leaderboards/rating/voting on the structures and buildings. There could be different categories of awards; Aesthetically, decorative etc. leaderboards would work the same, you’d get a global and a local category here. The people with the number 1 position could get special rewards in their account to redeem?

Magneticsyndrome

Hey man, awesome idea with the random number generator!
I have to say, I’d love to see a lot of features. One I was really hoping for is falling blocks, like if you destroy the bast of a tree, it falls down, I feel that really changes the perspective of the game.
I’d also love to see some flying type of item/class, like jet boots or a jet back, with some kind of a short burst of flight.
I also want to see some really big world bosses, ones you’d need a few people to take down! That really appeals to me, I’d absolutely love something like that.
Thanks for the added chance for this man, I really appreciate it! I’ve been having horrible luck with all the current contest, and I’ve been so close. Hope I’m lucky! haha

Kwongger

I really want to see some Town/City/Faction features. (MC I know, but I think that the devs could put a twist on it ;)
I’d also LOVE to see a party/group system (with Private Text/Voice chat of course). I think It would add to the community part of the game 😀
I REALLY want to WIN! GOOD LUCK TO ALL!

TheTrueLasec

Awesome vid man! i already love the game but i guess i would like to see a rework on how the ingame avatar looks? his face looks so long. Another thing is mass quests, like a main story line different to each server or world, and then multiple quests creating a side story line like in various RPG’s! I really want this game too cuz i wanna make some vids on this too, it looks sick!

Josh Geoff

I think that having pets that follow you around would be cool. I would also like being able to customize your weapons (such as color, name, designs). since i have not played the game i can’t know what is in it. but i would have many more things to say then too. I have liked and subscribed, so i’m all good, see ya’!

Grayson Soldahl

I would love to see programmable minions! That way you can build kingdoms like in adventure time. By programmable minions I mean npcs that you can create and determine a function for them such as crafting, building, security, etc. It would add a whole new way to play the game!

Michael McGlade

I’d very much like to see this game done right and one of the biggest gripes I seem to always have about online multiplayer games is the poor implementation of the chat and community features in game.
I’d very much like to see guilds/clans be a keystone of this game. Getting together to do massive dungeon raids, large scale boss fights, or even attack opposing guilds. It would help drive a real, true sense of community as players strike bonds with allies and clash swords with foes.
As far as the chat interface goes, I think World of Warcraft did it best. Have three separate tabs on the chat box; Chat, Loot, and Combat with the ability to create additional tabs and modify existing ones. Without this, servers would be filled with players talking over one another while messages pertaining to obtained items or money and critical strikes against monsters flood the chat logs even further.

Paul Zelano

crafting would be a great idea. A talent tree of some sort would also bring it closer to the MMO side of things. Its hard to really say what I would want, I mean its already a cross between two types of game genres (MMO and Building game) right now and that seems to be pretty good from my point of view.

Drumroll Please

For the sake of fairness I created a Google doc that you can see here, and dumped everyone’s names into the list. All in total we had 20 contestants. I then went to Random.org a free random number generator and put the range in as 1 to 20. I hit the generate button and the results ended up picking 10. You can check out the screenprint of the results right justified in this paragraph block. If you refer to the list that means that our winner is Bridget TruLove aka GeekSprinkles.

I want to thank everyone who commented greatly for their results. I will be cross posting this over on the Trove Reddit so hopefully the Trion folk will benefit from your work. Additionally it would be really amazing to do something like this again in the future. So maybe just maybe they can throw me a few more keys over the months of alpha to do other contests. I have a few ideas that might be interesting. Basically I want the end result of any contests to benefit the community as a whole. Additionally let me know what you think. Was this a useful idea, or do you think I should have changed the prompt slightly? I will be contacting Bridget TruLove to pass out her key, I doubt in any circumstance she will not accept it, but if she for whatever reason does not… I will be doing another roll off against the list I posted.