MMO Archives - Page 359 of 437 - Tales of the Aggronaut

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.

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.