MMO Archives - Page 353 of 431 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Icecrown Revisited

November 28, 2014 by Belghast

The Force Awakens

While I was getting up and around this morning apparently this was released. For months and months there have been all manner of fake trailers floating around the internet, but finally today they release a real teaser trailer. I am guessing this is perfectly timed for the thanksgiving/black friday movie theater rush… as all these people realize they are tired of seeing each other and being in the same house. I have had mixed emotions with the prospect of more movies. For starters I really did not like the “prequels” that much. They were cool in the aspect that we got to see a lot of nifty things that were previously only written about, and even more things were flat out invented for the screen. But the movie stories themselves were just not that good, and the whole “jesus christ jedistar” sub plot seemed silly. Disney however is well known for protecting the hell out of their licenses and their future marketability… so when they bought out lucasfilm I started to worry a little less.

Then they announced the director was going to be J.J. Abrams, and I started to get a little more hopeful. For those unaware he is the man behind Lost, Fringe and the Star Trek reboots. The later of which is what is causing issues for the Star Wars purists. Granted I have never been a massive fan of Star Trek, it was always one of those things I watched because there simply was not enough science fiction programming on television during my formative years to be picky. Essentially I’ve never felt the Star Trek setting was believable, in that we could never actually join under one banner as a planet, and more importantly could not actually go out into the stars and be a mediator. We are entirely too divisive as a species for that ever to really work. Star Wars on the other hand was this beautifully chaotic universe where everything is pretty much in a constant state of “effed up”. This was believable to me as a kid, and it featured the Jedi… which is pretty much the pinnacle of my knight in shining armor complex.

The thing is I feel like the Star Wars universe could use a bit of a reboot after the horribleness that was the prequels. That said I don’t think that Disney is going to allow JJ to completely blow away a couple of decades worth of source material… that is highly profitable for the notalgia peddlers. What I think we will see is more of a reimagining of some of the constructs. You can see this in the form of the trailer. The X-Wing series fighters feel leaner and more aerodynamic, the Storm Trooper armor feels smoother, and the Dark Jedi lightsaber feels more brutal in the form of some crazy claymore looking thing. I am looking forward to seeing more details leak out about this film, but I am frustrated that we will have wade through over a year of hype before actually getting to see it.

Icecrown Revisited

Last night after a series of heroics I decided to continue my path of clearing old raids for fun. At first I picked up where I left off last night and did the Mount Hyjal raid in the Caverns of Time. This was easy before, but has gotten progressively easier considering I now have a spammable throw attack as a warrior that stacks deep wounds on the target. Generally speaking the first hit takes them down in health with the deep wounds dot eventually finishing them off. Since I also know where the mobs spawn, the first 16 waves went extremely quickly because I could simply stand on the spawn and thunderclap each new wave as it came into the world. The horde base however is still frustrating with constantly having to run back into the base to take down flyers. That said the entire raid maybe took 30 minutes to actually complete.

From there I used my engineer hacks and teleported straight to Icecrown with my original intent being to run Icecrown Citadel. That said I had forgotten that the engineer port takes you directly above the Crusaders Coliseum, so for shits and giggles I decided to run that place on heroic difficulty. Overall it was still rather easy with the only annoyances being the PVP battle, and having to take mobs in reverse the normal order… aka burn everything but the tree druid… and then the tree druid. Anubarak was still a bit of a challenge because he deals a lot of damage still while siphoning your health. Thankfully I was able to shield wall up, and reduce the incoming damage enough to take him down.

Storming the Castle

From there I moved onto Icecrown proper, but since the Belghast character had not actually cleared normal 25 man Icecrown… I had to set down the raid difficulty. Hopefully next week I will make an attempt on heroic and see if it goes as smoothly. The two points I was most concerned with were the Airship battle, and Dreamwalker. Airship turned out not to be a big deal at all, as the scaling in damage meant I could take down the airship before I actually needed to jump across. In fact the mage spawned like normal… and I jetpacked across… only to be standing on the wrong boat as it went down. Fortunately I guess at some point they implemented a teleport that takes you back to your boat, so I was able to get back there without taking a death.

Dreamwalker on the other hand was a completely different problem. For those not familiar with the raid, this is a goofy fight that works backwards from almost every other encounter. This is the moment the healers shine, because they essentially are your “DPS”. Dreamwalker is a dragon that starts at 50% health and during the course of the battle you have to heal her up to full. The problem being… I am not a healer, nor do I really have any heals at all. I feel like this is the sort of thing a paladin tank could handle without much issue. I made a valiant attempt at using bandages to heal up the dragon… and in truth there is a point during the add rotation where you can get an entire bandage applied. Had I brought enough bandages I could have probably solo’d this one without much issue.

However there is a way to glitch out the fight, that I am not sure if it is intentional or not. The fight involves the spawning of these portals to the emerald dream. From there your healing is greatly increased but the fight will reset if there is no one in the “real world” with the encounter. So I learned that if I take a portal, it will glitch the fight, reset it and open both the door at the front of the room, and the door to Sindragosa. So essentially I was able to simply skip the other problem fight for soloing, which allowed me to unlock access to the Lich King. I have a feeling that none of these encounters will be quite so easy on heroic mode, but for the Lich King proper I was pretty much able to ignore all of the fight mechanics and burn him directly while standing in the crap that used to oneshot players. My passive healing abilities as prot warrior seemed to counteract any damage I was actually taking. The concerns about not being able to solo old raids for fun after the stat squish… seems to have been unfounded.

The Internet

I am in the age group that folks refer to as the “internet pioneers” the generation for which the internet became an ever increasing reality. I was in High School when things started changing, and during our college years we latched onto each new piece of technology with both hands. The problem is that everything has become so common place that we stop to appreciate just how magical this grand interconnectedness really is. It is because of the internet that I am here talking to you every day, and because of it that I get to hang out with people from around the world in a nightly basis. It is because of the internet that I met my wife, and we ultimately married, and because of it that I have my job as a web developer. On a day like today, when the stores are absolutely insane… it is because of the internet that I can stay within the warm comfort of my own home and shop the exact same deals online, and likely have them on my doorstep tomorrow if I really wanted to.

The real reason I am thankful for the internet is it allows someone like me who has issues dealing with people on a regular basis… to live a very rich and relatively normal life. Dealing with folks in person wears me out in ways that I will never be able to full explain. Up close and personal interaction just drains me… and while I loved every minute of Thanksgiving yesterday… I was more than ready to go home and not see anyone for awhile. The internet however acts as a bridge allowing me to be still social but in a way that is far more comfortable to me personally. For all of this and more… I am thankful we have an internet, and it is populated with just as many awesome people as it is horrible ones. I’ve made it my mission to try and gather up as many of the awesome ones as I can.

Happy Thanksgiving

November 27, 2014 by Belghast

Behind the Times

There are times I am just extremely far behind the curve. For weeks I had been seeing pictures of my friends characters with a little orange bird on their heads named Pepe. I thought this was absolutely adorable since one of the things I have enjoyed so much is the way that certain pets in Final Fantasy XIV will come rest on your shoulder. Turns out that this is a bit of a hack and not really pet interaction. For those not already indoctrinated in the ways of Pepe… he is a bird that will appear in one of the trees of your garrison. Apparently he can appear in either the phase 1, 2 or 3 version. I’ve started typing “/tar pepe” to find him and mark him with a symbol so that I can find him either.

In any case if you mouse over him you will see a gear icon meaning that he can somehow be activated. If you click on him, he will ride around on top of your head for an hour as you go off adventuring in the world. While adorable… it actually gets a little old since he is super talkative tweeting up a storm while you run around. It doesn’t seem like he actually interacts with what you are doing… like I thought it would be awesome if he chirped a certain way each time we killed a baddie or something. In any case it is a nifty easter egg found in your garrison, and one that I find myself using quite a bit. There is something fun about being this armored badass, with a fat bird on top of your head.

Happy Thanksgiving

While the origins of the American thanksgiving tradition are somewhat suspect… it has always been a favorite holiday of mine for its sheer simplicity. It is a day where we are supposed to reflect upon the things we are thankful for, while sharing that time with our family. There is just something so pure about sharing a meal with someone, and it has become my favored way of meeting with someone. Over the years however Thanksgiving has turned into a sort of “Christmas Launch Party”, and this year my wife said one article was even referring to Thanksgiving as “Grey Thursday”. Black Friday has become this temple of holiday shopping excess and a three ring circus has sprung up around it constantly pushing further and further into thanksgiving in an effort to somehow earn our dollars. This year it seems like most stores will be open Thanksgiving night to start the Black Friday festivities. We had to go grocery shopping for our meal prep and Target looked like this claustrophobic bunker, with new priced to sell product stacked up in giant piles all over the store.

I guess I get it, because if I were a store I would be doing whatever it took to get your money before you can spend it elsewhere. As Americans we have become addicted to sales and clearance, which makes sense because our buying power has stagnated over the last decade. The part about Black Friday that frustrates me is that it is essentially a scam, played upon us by the retail industry. The items they sell for Black Friday are generally speaking not the same caliber as the items that they sell every day. So while they might be selling a 40 inch television for only $150… it is sure to have some gimping feature like the fact that it can only display images in 720i or lacks an HDMI port. The stores are giving you those cheap prices by selling you cheaply manufactured products. The part that frustrates me the most is that it seems like the majority of things are not actually going to people who will actually use them. Saturday morning I will be able to load our local craigslist and see half of the products offered as door busters being sold there as folks try and make a quick buck by flipping them.

All the while for me at least Thanksgiving is still a day about reflection and a day about sharing a meal with the folks who are close with, or the folks you wish you were closer with. This is going to be a rough thanksgiving for me, because this will be the first one without having a grandparent to visit. This past year my last grandparent passed away, and she was the glue that held together my mothers side of the family. Without here there, all of the thanksgiving traditions were in danger of completely dissipating. Thankfully my Cousin has stepped in and between her and us we are pulling together a grand thanksgiving feast. My wife has been making this and that all morning, and I am convinced we are going to have way too much food. We are taking care of the deserts and appetizers and are by ourselves bringing like a dozen dishes. In any case this is a year I am really looking forward to, because I am hoping we can forge out a new tradition of family and food out of the ashes of the old one.

Classic Content

Last night was extremely enjoyable. I started the night with Wulf and Damai doing our daily group garrison assault quest out in the blackrock pits. This was a bit insane because without a healer… we kept trying to pull as though we had one and getting into trouble. After that we made a trip into the Everbloom to knock out a few of the Garrison side quests. This went significantly faster than the previous times we had been in there, in part because we ended up skipping quite a bit of trash. After that and turning in all of the side quests, we randomed a dungeon and got the Iron Docks. I had not actually done this one before on heroic, but overall it went pretty smoothly. There were a few dicey places where I was trying to play while responding to texts from my wife about outfit finds… but in any case we muddled through without issue. It was around this point that I decided to step out of the group. The actual raid off tank has not been getting in on many of the runs, and as a result could use the gear far worse than me. I figured for the good of the raid, it was best to pull him in.

In the meantime I ran off to Black Temple in the hopes of getting Illidans shield for transmoggy goodness. I was pleasantly surprised to see just how easy it is now to solo everything. At level 90 there were a few places, especially the reliquary of souls that caused issues. However I was able to straight wreck the damage reflection face without issue. In truth most of the trash was so far below me that it didn’t actually aggro. I could walk almost freely between bosses, so the entire thing went extremely quickly. On the way back out however I killed most everything because I decided the reputation gain was worth while. After that I popped over to Tempest Keep in an attempt to get the mount, and between it and a Serpentshrine Caverns run that followed collected an entire set of Tier 5 warrior gear. That was one of the tiers that I never actually had, because for the most part our raid blew up before getting through Lady Vashj. It isn’t exactly my favorite set of gear, but ANY transmoggy bits that are unique are worth having. I had a great night running old content, because I have so many memories of running the places legitimately that it just feels awesome to be able to wreck them.

A Loving Family

Today seems like it should be the culmination of my month of thankfulness, considering this is actually thanksgiving day. I was completely uncertain what I would write about until yesterday I saw a tweet from a friend on twitter. “My dad told me he will never love me as his daughter. I’m so heart broken right now.” I have always taken for granted that a loving family is just a default thing that everyone has, but I guess in truth that is not always the case. While I feel like that father is right up there with the worst human beings to every exist on the planet… I am thankful that I have a very loving family that is always ready to embrace me when I need it. I have an extremely complicated relationship with my family. I’ve never felt like any of them actually “got me” as a person, but at the same time I have never once doubted their love for me. Thanksgiving is one of those magical days where you can instantly become close to all the people you have not seen since the last Thanksgiving. That is the way it is supposed to work, and it pains me that not everyone has that sort of relationship with their kin.

My thanksgiving wish for you all is that you find the family that makes you feel warm and safe and wanted. Family is one of those amorphous things, that doesn’t directly mean blood relations. If you have a horrible genetic family, then I challenge you to branch out and go find the real family you have always been wanting it. My wife’s family for example this way of adopting complete strangers into their intimate family gatherings. Everyone is always welcome at any of the massive family shindigs, and there will always be more than enough food to feed anyone that arrives. If your biological family doesn’t love you the way a family should, then go off and make your own family out of your friends. Everyone needs a happy core to build their life around, and while I am not as close to my family as I could be… I have never questioned that they would be there for me if I needed it. For that, I am extremely blessed and extremely thankful.

Looking For Molten Core

November 26, 2014 by Belghast

Rose Colored Lenses

I have talked about this before, but many of my beliefs about World of Warcraft are in truth a product of the fact that I started raiding during the period that everyone refers to as “Vanilla”. The above screenshot is of our raid group the Late Night Raiders taking down Golemagg. In fact if I am placing this picture correctly, this is moments before I won the Giantstalker chest piece. There is so much nostalgia wrapped up in Molten Core for me, so much so that I pretty regularly returned there over the years to solo it just for that shot of nostalgia straight in the veins. While it used to take three hours of my Sunday night, to clear this place in full… it was worth every moment of it.

You would think that with all of this experience rooted in 40 man raiding and nostalgia about it… you would think I looked forward to a return to it. You would in fact be completely wrong. In many ways 40 man raiding was like a family trip, and you either bonded during it or learned to hate one another. There are folks that I raided with that I talk to on a daily basis and have become part of my extended family. There are additionally folks that I raided with that I would prefer never knowing they still existed, let along ever wanting to see them again. 40 man raids were this strange construct where 25 people who were paying attention, carried the 15 that were not to victory. It was a place of great victory, but also a place of great resentment, and I am more than happy to see that era of raiding dead and buried.

Looking For Molten Core

I have long held the belief that the people who have been clamoring over the years for a return to 40 man raiding, never actually raided in a 40 man environment. Either that or they did it once or twice with a really successful group that had everything “on farm” but never experienced the crushing defeat of having forty people doing something really stupid. I am struggling to find the exact tweet, but someone summed it up like this. Folks begged for 40 man raiding, and Blizzard did not want to return to it. As a result they gave us a 40 man raid, and made it LFR so we too would remember just how horrible it was. Last night as a guild we queued with roughly 25 members, hoping that if we brought all of the tanks, most of the DPS and a handful of heals… we would be able to turn what is normally sheer chaos into something functional. For the most part it worked, and in roughly two hours time we cleared all of the core. We had a few issues, like players pulling for us… which was pretty awesome because we had more than enough people to rapidfire kick them from the raid group.

The disturbing thing about the experience however was how much it felt EXACTLY like the actual thing. The experience of 25 people that know what they are doing, dragging along a bunch of people who are actively working against the strategy of the raid… that happened every single week. The problem with 40 man raiding was that almost no one had a stable of enough people to make sure it happened without fail every single week. As a result you had this grey area of folks that knew someone in the raid and could be pulled in when we were short. The truth is we were always short something, and always breaking in someone new that had never seen the content. LFR is pretty much the perfect representation of that shit storm of chaos, and to continue what the tweet said… whoever thought of making Molten Core an LFR needs a raise… and then a swift punch in the crotch. Thankfully my hope is that this will dispel the myth that 40 man raiding was somehow more epic and meaningful, because the way it feels in LFR is exactly how it felt actually living it.

Lava Puppy Mount

Wow-64 2014-11-25 22-13-53-11

All of the above said, it was still a fairly enjoyable night and it was fun showing people who had never actually run Molten Core “for real” the ropes. It was shocking just how fast the various things came back. Also it was shocking just how well they replicated the feel of the original. There is some trash that happens immediately following Garr and before Geddon that has been lovingly referred to as “pain packs”. Thing is… they are still just as painful. The moment I pulled one, folks were simply not ready for the amount of torture that was about to be dished out, and both me and the other tanks simply evaporated wiping the raid. We had to adjust our strategy a bit, but it was a reminded of just how deadly that place was. There were things I remembered exactly how to handle, and then there were fights that I did not remember at all… like Shazzrah. Apparently as Rylacus said that was a fight where the melee didn’t actually engage the boss, so that is likely why I don’t remember much about it.

There were so many “greatest hits” of dumb things done in the core last night. Some jackass warlock tricked half a dozen people into peering through the crack behind Golemagg to try and see Ragnaros. Someone fell off the bridge and aggro’d Golemagg as we were clearing the trash. It was shocking just how stealthy a big damned core hound can be, because they almost always add to packs at exactly the wrong time. Fortunately however the other super common thing of getting knocked off the bridge near Lucifron by a Lava Surger didn’t actually happen. Neither did the ever so fun experience of having a lava spawn constantly duplicate to the point of overwhelming the raid. As such I am thinking that more than likely some of the really heinous effects were toned down for LFR. For example there were no longer 8 flame walker priests with Sulfuron Harbinger, but we still did the “Drag one out and kill it” method. For the most part all of the bosses went extremely smoothly, but it was the trash that took the longest amount of time… and caused the most deaths.

Death of 40 Man Raiding

This morning I am supremely thankful that I have now finished the Molten Core LFR, and that I have a very awesome Core Hound mount to show for it. I am also at the same time extremely happy that 40 man raiding is a thing of the past. I realize that Wildstar attempted to revive this concept, but I really feel that this was a massive mistake. That is just too many people to have to be responsible for as a raid leader, and too large of a pool of players to constantly have to keep refilling. While I will still solo Molten Core for fun, when I get the twinge of nostalgia… I have no desire to ever return to the way it actually felt. Same goes for any of the other 40 man content we did. I am thankful that I got to experience them when they were legitimately rough experiences, but I am also thankful that the era is long past. My hope is that 40 man LFR will let the folks who have always pined for this era to realize that it was not actually a magical time.. instead it was something we slogged through because it was all we knew. While we may have “raided uphill both ways in the snow”… I most definitely know we are better off not having to do it.

Angriest Red Ball Revisited

November 25, 2014 by Belghast

Bridge Refresher Course

With all my recent posts about World of Warcraft, you would think that I had switched allegiance entirely, but this is not the truth by any means. Right now it is new and shiny and I am attempting to claw my way to a reasonable foothold of raid preparedness. That said I am still very much playing Final Fantasy XIV, and for the last few weeks we have been pulling together “raid” content on Monday nights. We really want to see the new Ultros fight, but unfortunately Thalen still had yet to do Battle at Big Bridge, so last night we started the evening off knocking that out of the way. It made a rather nice high point to start the evening on since that fight is so amazing. The majority of us are Final Fantasy V fans, so seeing the fight is like watching the bridge fight play out in that game.

The strange thing is that as many times as we had run it, I had never actually tanked it. Not that there is actually anything to tanking the fight. For the tank at least it is as tank and spank as they really come in Final Fantasy XIV. The only challenge was the various adds between the two phases of the boss, and even then it is was only because we have some extremely overgeared dps for the fight that just melted them. While I attempted to hold aggro it was pretty much futile. In any case it knocked that out of the way so that hopefully this week the folks that needed it can catch up on the Hildebrand storyline and get ready for Ultros. I would really rather do that fight for the first time as a guild, so we can have the experience of figuring out the content on the fly.

Angriest Red Ball Revisited

Turn Five of Binding Coil of Bahamut has been looming over our group for some time. I have to admit there has been a sense of fear about it, because in truth it has been content than killed many a static raid team on our server. It is the notorious gatekeeper to turn 2, and there are many folks that have cleared one through four never to actually manage to get in a turn five kill. The fight itself just has this insane array of mechanics that are almost impossible to memorize before going into the fight. Since it had been months for us clearing the first four turns we opted to start with those as a fresher course. Overall it went nice and smooth and we burned through the first few coil instances getting the folks who had not been there realm exploration achievements. I managed to get the Heavy Allagan chestpiece to go with my other two pieces of Allagan gear.

When we downed turn four after a few baubles here and there we decided to use that momentum and push us forward into a couple of attempts at Twintainia the boss of turn five. There is a lot of stuff to focus on during this fight. However we did manage to get to roughly the halfway point in the fight after a couple of attempts. I mark this as pretty damned good progress, and a pretty good night overall for us to down Big Bridge, four turns of coil and make that much progress on five. I feel like as a whole we have way more confidence in regards to our success chances at turn five. It is no longer this looming and scary target that we have not actually experienced. Folks talk about it with so much frustration and reverence, but I feel like we can totally down this. Now after seeing the fight I also feel like I have a far better point of reference for doing my own research in the coming week.

Up Too Late

After our evening of raiding in Final Fantasy XIV, I popped out and got into World of Warcraft in an attempt to find a group to run Auchindoun with. Much like there was a legendary cloak chain in Pandaria, there is a legendary ring one in Warlords. The first phase is actually relatively simple and only actually requires that you run Skyreach and loot and item off the final boss. This nets the player a really nice ilevel 640 ring for there troubles, which is a much needed gear level boost for getting into content. The next steps require you to clear four heroic dungeons, gather up a silly amount of apexis crystals and then complete a solo event of sorts. Last night I was up to the final step in this sequence which requires a trip into Auchindoun to loot an item off the final boss. However there was another player that required one more “core” the step before Auchindoun, so I agreed to run that heroic first before we ran the one I actually needed so that both of us knocked out the final step at the same time.

The end result was that I ran two heroics back to back and did not actually make it to bed until almost 1 am. The other result however is that other than 100 apexis crystals and a solo event, I am really super close to the next step in the ring quest chain. As a result in theory I should be able to knock out the 680 ring before we step foot into Molten Core as a guild tonight. I am really looking at venturing forth into Molten Core, it has been years since I last experienced the raid “for real”. I remember there was a time where a “good clear” took about three hours of my life. I am hoping we can manage to do it in a far shorter time. That said I have prepared myself for the potential of it taking that long if not longer. I know we are going to try and go into it with as many tanks and healers as we can so that we can potentially control the pace of the run. If everyone other than a handful of dps are with us on voice chat… hopefully things will go more smoothly. In any case hopefully at the end of the night I will have a spiffy mount.

Furry Children

I’ve always had a soft spot for animals. In this age of global strife and suffering, I’ve become rather accustomed to it… but the moment that Sarah MacLachlan animal charity video plays on the television… and it is like a sucker punch to the gut. There has never been a time when we have not had several furry children, and each of them is unique and special. This morning I am thankful for all of them that have shared our life. Presently we have four cats, which I think officially qualifies us for “crazy cat lady” status. Our eldest came home with me years ago on a Thanksgiving day, so this time of year is all the more important to me. She is getting up there in age and has many issues but I am so thankful for each year we have with her. In addition to our cats we also have two amazing ferrets, that are both as sweet as can be and are always clamoring for our attention. They both know exactly what it takes to get daddy to play with them, and they are the source of many delays while getting ready in the morning. Animals enrich our lives in ways that I cannot fully account for, and this morning and every morning I am thankful to have them.