MMO Archives - Page 409 of 436 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Faffing in the Fjord

March 10, 2014 by Belghast

Losing Time

It seems that no matter what I do to prepare for it, Daylight Savings time still kicks my ass every year. This go round I purposefully started trying to get more sleep from about Thursday onwards, in an attempt to get used to the earlier bedtime. Saturday night I even started referring to things based on EST instead of my normal CST time… to attempt to trick my brain into thinking that was normal. So last night… I hoped above hope that my brain would be able to power down and go to sleep at a decent hour. But instead there I lay in bed trying to get to sleep. I ended up taking some nyquil and playing Bravely Default in bed until I fell asleep.

I am sure Daylight Savings time made sense when we were primarily an agrarian society, however I have no clue why it still exists. Why do we as a country do this to ourselves each and every year. To be honest I do like having a lot more sunshine in the evenings, but since that is the case why not stay offset an hour permanently instead of shifting back in the winter? I mean the days are so short that it really doesn’t matter at all in November if we offset back or not. For whatever reasons even falling back and gaining the hour still seems to screw with my internal systems. I realize that bitching about it will do exactly nothing… but it makes me feel better.

Faffing in the Fjord

So yesterday thanks to the time drain I was feeling a little bit out of sorts. I got up like I do every Sunday morning and played through my Steampowered Sunday game pick for a few hours, then wrote my review of sorts over it. This week was of course Brutal Legend, and if you were interested in winning your own copy… make sure you click the extremely obnoxious vote here button at the bottom of the review. Once I got finished up with all of that silliness I began the massive chore of laundry for the week. Actually in truth it had been a few weeks since we had done laundry, so I knew I needed something that I could walk away from and check on the loads periodically. Generally speaking solo leveling fits the bill perfectly. I am not sure exactly why, but I decided to fiddle with FFSplit and try and figure out this live streaming business.

Normally speaking I always end up leveling my characters through Northrend in Borean Tundra. While it is extremely boring and grindy, it just seems quicker. The zone itself is laid out in more of a hub and spoke pattern and you can progress your way through the zone without a ton of travel time. However since I had not done so in a really long time… I opted to move my little dwarven Warlock to Howling Fjord. A few hubs into the zone I remembered why I stopped doing this… so much travel time. I figured I would share my pain by streaming it so the world could see. The above video is not terribly interesting, but is me spending my afternoon… or at least roughly two hours of it going through the paces of leveling a warlock in Howling Fjord. You can watch me playing video games badly!

More than anything I used this as a way to test how well streaming directly to Twitch.tv works, and then using that to upload to Youtube. So far so good, but I kept my microphone muted during this trial. I was feeling fairly antisocial, but at some point soon I hope to livecast something meaningful. I still need to figure out a good size to put my postage stamp video feed into the stream. At this point I am juggling back and forth between 320 wide and 240 wide, but before I do this for real I want to pretty up my twitch stream a bit with some artwork. Right now this is just stock FFsplit with no real alterations. However credit goes to Scopique, who told me this would be a much easier way to record videos… it just took me months and months to actually fiddle with it.

Belazon Lives!

The other big thing to come from this weekend is that I managed to push my Barbarian to 60 in Diablo 3. The irony of this is thanks to a certain drop, I have completely shifted focus in the way I play it. Previously I had been all about dual wield and cleave, using rend to soak back up some health. However it was either Friday or Saturday night that I got a truly amazing drop that caused me to completely change my build for it. I ended up getting the level 59 version of the “Three Hundredth Spear” to drop, which buffs my throwing damage by 55% and my ancient spear damage by 59%. So as a result I completely rearranged my abilities to be able to use this and now I am more of a hoplite build with spear and shield. Funny how my pure melee class ended up turning into a ranged.

Overall it works extremely well, and I can throw out some truly silly damage on a boss fight. At one point Saturday the trio shown above were working our way through the various bosses in the game, letting Ashgar get the achievement for killing them all wearing nothing but blues. At this point I was using the Boulder Toss rune for Ancient Spear, and it was insane to watch the bosses health move significantly each time a boulder landed. The only problem with this rune is that it changes the functionality of ancient spear significantly. The thing I like the most about it is that it acts almost like a League of Legends skill shot, in that if you can line up a bunch of mobs in a “wave” you can burn through them quickly as your ancient spear will hit each of them in a row.

I was never really a big fan of the Amazon in Diablo 2, but so far my Belazon build seems to be pretty enjoyable. While on a “role”-bending trick, I decided to start a baby mage and attempt to go for the melee mage build. While functional, it just doesn’t feel like a class I would really enjoy. I don’t really like feeling like a glass cannon, and apart from a few shield abilities the class has really weak survival. In my few minutes of playing with my friend Tibuant, I died several times… when I have maybe died twice in total on my Barbarian. I think it might be a class that is enjoyable to solo on, because many of my deaths were simply because Tib and I were not really in sync while playing. He would be off in one direction and I would be off in another, which always ended up with me getting swarmed. I think until the Crusader actually gets unlocked I will mostly piddle around on my Monk and Barbarian attempting to get paragon levels.

Savior of the Heavens

March 7, 2014 by Belghast

War of Guilds

A few days ago on a whim I decided to reinstall Guild Wars 2 and patch it up, which is not an insignificant process at this point. Last night before getting into anything else I decided to give it a spin. I have done this a number of times since launch, with essentially the same results. After a few minutes of running around I decided that I still don’t like the game. I figured this post is relevant with all of my recent Elder Scrolls fanboyism… that yes it is perfectly okay for you not to like a game. Guild Wars 2 is one of those titles that I want to like, because so many people have so many great moments with the game. However for whatever reason I just cannot see the magic in it that others can.

Guild Wars 2 stands alone as the only alpha program I have ever resigned from. I just did not like what the game was, and how it deviated from all of things I had read into their manifesto about the game. When it came close to release I got into beta and had a marginal amount of fun, and with it launching in a relative dead spot I decided to take the plunge and try it. On the initial play through I managed to make it through to about level 40 before running out of care to continue pushing forward. This is round and about the place most of us dropped out of it. Largely it was the chaos that is GW2 group combat that soured the milk for me.

All of that said… I want to see the magic that others see in this game. So every few months I patch it up and give it another try. I have always prided myself in being able to see the good in something despite its flaws, and as a result it drives me absolutely insane that I cannot grasp why people love this game. I don’t want the game to change to fit my desires, so after a bit of playtime every few months we agree to disagree and I end up uninstalling it again. Other than the chaotic game play, there is just something about the game that feels largely pointless… and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I love faffing about as much as the next person, and I do so happily in many other games… but there is just something about this games style of faffing that seems hollow.

I am not going to rage against this game and bash it for being bad… because it very obviously is NOT bad if so many people seem to be enjoying themselves. It is just not a game for me. I don’t pretend to believe that I could have built it better, nor would I even know where to start to make it feel more like a game I would want to play. So I guess in writing this… I want to show that it is perfectly okay to not like the game that everyone else likes. In doing so you can not like it, but also not seek to spoil the fun of those who really do enjoy it. There are a long list of games that I just don’t “grok” for one reason or another, but it is okay. They exist, and people like them… and it is just fine for me not to.

Savior of the Heavens

Last night I finished my play through of Diablo 3 this time on Hard mode. I am not sure why, but for whatever reason I prefer to level my characters linearly. I know I can jump around a bit after beating the game ages ago on my Monk, but it seems pleasing to see the story play out in front of me as I trudge through it. Last night I played with a handful of friends, and managed to get a few nice legendary drops. Traditionally I have stuck with dual wield, because in general I prefer that in most games. However last night I managed to get an early 50s version of the Zweihander and it good enough to get me to abandon my dual wielding ways… at least temporarily.

I am pretty sure at some point I flipped a slider and the game decided I needed “more spikey bits”, as I now am this bladed lord of death. The appearance is growing on me, and when you see it in small form on screen I look a bit like I imagined the Shrike looking from the Hyperion series. Upon defeating Diablo I promptly restarted the game, this time bumping the difficulty up to expert. As a result I have had to tweak my build a bit to add in a bit more survival. It is not quite as faceroll as it was during my run through Hard. Mostly I am noticing that my healbot spec Templar is starting to struggle to keep up, or at least allowing me to drop quite a bit before topping me back off. Wondering if this will change as I upgrade his gear a bit. I have been trying to keep it upgraded, mostly with my handmedowns.

At the close of the night I managed to ding 56, so hopefully tonight I should be able to finish off my push to get this character to 60. At this point, I can’t really see playing up another character until the crusader. I am sure the Witchdoctor, Demon Hunter and Wizard are cool in their own way… but each of them is very much a ranged/finger wiggler class. They are just not the type of character I enjoy playing. I realize you can tweak them a bit to make them play in different ways, but at the core they will still be more glass cannonish than I care to play. I enjoy tanks and tanky dps… and I feel like the Barbarian, Monk and Crusader fit that bill just fine. If I continue to struggle a bit I might switch to a sword/board build on my Barbarian as I have done in the past. For the time being it is working, but I am having to finally start using my heal pots on elites and champions.

Steampowered Sunday Bioshock Contest

Just a quick reminder that I am running a contest of sorts to let you guys pick what I will be playing this Sunday for my Steampowered Sunday feature. The idea behind Steampowered Sunday is to get me to install and play a game from my steam backlog. Then I will write about the game play experience. Sometimes it is extremely glowing, other times not so much. This week I decided to mix things up a bit and post a google form that allows you guys to vote on which title I will be playing the following week. I have had a handful of votes to date, but I am really hoping for more. As of this morning it looks like if nothing changes I will be playing Alan Wake. Tomorrow when I blog I will be tabulating the results and declaring a winning game.

Additionally to make this more interesting, I have decided to use this as a way to get rid of some of the duplicates I have in steam and have gotten through the various indie bundles. This week I will be giving away a copy of the original Bioshock for Steam. So when you vote, make sure you let me know if you want to be entered in the running for the copy of Bioshock. If so make sure you include your steam id in the form. Saturday morning when I blog I will be picking a winner for this as well and sending off the free game. So get out there and vote… and decide my Steampowered Sunday Fate.

Vote Here!

Ninja Grouping

March 6, 2014 by Belghast

Content Void

This morning I am completely struggling to find purpose in writing. I suppose I could try and counter point Scree’s post about my post yesterday. But honestly I don’t really feel the need, as he didn’t really shoot down any of the points I had made, but instead provided his own points for why he won’t be playing ESO and moreover why he feels like it never should have been made. They are some pretty drastic points, but they are his points and he has every right to his own opinion. Additionally each and every one of you have the undeniable right not to buy Elder Scrolls Online and not to love it. But again yesterdays post was spawned out of what I felt were some factual inaccuracies about a few points. However after reading his post this morning it also feels a lot like “I really hate this game, and here is why you should too.”

I feel like that is the problem with the community right now. We have so much hatred but very little genuine love for anything anymore. Where is that child like sense of wonder that we can roam around and exist in fully fleshed out 3D worlds? If gaming doesn’t give you that, then really what is the point of playing? There are still moments in each and every game I play where I am wrapped up in awe of some moment that just happened that I was not expecting. It might be something cool over the horizon or it might be some interesting turn of a phrase. I play these games and I write about them because I love them… not because I hate them. Even when something frustrates me to the point of spawning a rant, like I have done so many times about World of Warcraft… it comes from a place of disappointment for not being as good as it could be.

I love the games industry for all of its flaws, and I love all the ways it manages to keep me enthralled and entertained and waiting for the next thing to happen. From the moment I first got a controller in my hand this has been my story, and my “thing”. While sometimes it is pen and paper or miniatures or even card games… I am in love with games at the root of my being. So when I see someone take a crap on something and exclaim that it doesn’t deserve to exist… it depresses me that we have come to a point where that is an accepted stance. All ideas even if you do not like them, deserve their moment in the sun. Yeah I realize this top of today’s post is the equivalent of me responding with a “Carebear Stare” to a rather targeted attack… but fuck it, that’s how I roll.

Ninja Grouping

Last night I really did not do a lot of gaming, which is in part why I am bereft of content this morning to talk about. Over the last few days I have felt pretty crappy, so I am taking the initiative to try and improve things a bit. Namely I am going to try going cold turkey on energy drinks… because while they help wake my sleepy butt up… they also tend to cause me to crash pretty damned hard later. I had gotten to the point where I was starting to drink four or so a day… and that is a bit too much. So last night I went to bed around 8:30 and crashed after a few minutes of playing bravely default. Thankfully I was able to sleep all night long, but partially that was nyquil assisted. The last two nights I have woken up at 4:30 am and 3:30 am… so I was running on a serious sleep deficit.

What little I did play last night was Diablo 3. One of the aspects of the game that I absolutely adore is just how easy and seamless it is to group up with your friends. While the above image is old… because I didn’t think to take any new ones… my friend Rae ninja grouped with me while I was working on the beginning of Act 3. We did about five levels in a really short period of time and had I stuck around any longer I would have suggested popping out and bumping up the difficulty to expert. Hard really is the new normal, and none of us play the game on anything lower than that now even solo. When you add in additional people, it feels like the scaling just isn’t quite enough to compensate for the new gear fountain so we end up bumping the difficulty up a ways.

Rae managed to pull a couple of legendaries during our time grouping, but after getting three in a row last night I think the loot gods were frowning on me. For the most part I got no upgrades, but I am wearing a really nice green suit of crafted gear, so it might be a long while before I upgrade out of Aughild’s Victory. At the close of the night I was just a stones throw away from 50, which means I should be able to push through to 60 on my next big play session. I am really surprised at just how much crusader specific gear I have been getting. I even managed to get a crusader only legendary flail the other night. My only worry is that the Reaper of Souls launch is pretty much happening at the same time the head start for Elder Scrolls is, so I am not sure how much time I will really devote to leveling a crusader until I have hit a lull in ESO.

Plea for Larger Battle.net Friend List

For the love of god… can we please get a significantly larger friends list for battle.net? At this point I am actively or at least semi-actively playing three different blizzard titles. I have friends scattered between them all, some of them playing multiples, some of them playing only one. I am the guild leader of a wow guild with over 900 characters, and have a big twitter/social media community that I want to be able to play with and communicate with while in game. The current size of I believe 200… is just too damned small. It has become a weekly thing to try and prune out people that I have not played with in awhile to be able to accept friend invites from new people. I hate doing this… this goes against every instinct in me to “delete” people that I care about.

At this point we have had multiple upgrades to the battle.net infrastructure… so can we please get a significant increase in the number of people we add? Bumping it up to 1000 seems like a safe place to be, even 500 would be significantly better than where we are currently. I am sure someone is going to post and ask me if I really need that many people… yes… yes I do. Sure I might not talk to each and every person every day, but I am constantly pinging someone I have not talked to for awhile and we end up spending the evening catching up. Gaming for me is a social thing, and anything that helps me in that mission is a good idea. One of my favorite features of Rift is the fact that I can take my entire twitter feed with me. So please Battle.net do something to help out the people for whom 200 is just too small.

Elder Controversies

March 5, 2014 by Belghast

Icy Fire Drill

Yesterday here in Tulsa it was roughly 13* Fahrenheit… aka really freakin cold. About 9:30 in the morning the fire alarms went off, and since we had just gotten chastised for not taking them seriously, myself and another coworker made a brisk pace to the stairwell and descended the 6 flights to ground floor. Problem is… the sidewalks we were supposed to follow as an escape route were an absolute death trap. In Oklahoma we barely clear snow from the roads, let alone the sidewalks and parking lots. At 9 am we had not gotten enough melt to clear them, and what did melt the day before had turned to a solid sheet of glaze ice. As we penguin walked the three blocks to the parking lot we are supposed to meet in, I was certain that any moment someone would fall and hurt themselves… and I was hoping it wasn’t me.

In front of me there was a woman in a walking cast, and as crappy as the traction on those are… I expected that any moment she would slip and go down. So as I walked I was trying to be prepared to grab her if she started to slip. Remarkably she navigated the ice rink just fine, but the lawyers in front of me in slick bottom shoes struggled a bit in a few places. We get to the corner near the parking lot, and one of the floor wardens is there waving us back into the building. Apparently it was not a fire drill but instead a malfunctioning fire alarm on the 5th floor. So I suddenly had to jettison all the righteous indignation I had built up over the course of our ice skating trip around the block. Knowing where I work, I was just absolutely certain that this was a case of a poorly planned fire drill.

Elder Controversies

I spent a good chunk of last night playing Elder Scrolls Online and working my way through the Daggerfall quest chains. While the starter islands are very much optional in the new build, I still plan on doing them just because it gives you a significant level boost. By the time I completed Betnihk last night I was roughly halfway through level 8. As compared to previously when you would be roughly level 6 about the time you completed the starter island experience. I know a lot of people hate Betnihk for some reason, but to me it was a blast. I love “dances with orcs” as I refer to it. It has really awesome Orsimer architecture, plenty of undead, and lots of ancient ruins… all of which are things I look for in a zone. Hell if they put in player housing, I would probably locate myself on Betnihk if possible.

One of the things that is frustrating having played this game for so long, and watched it evolve is to see new players spin up all sorts of tinfoil hat controversies about the game. I watched a back and forth on twitter that left me absolutely baffled, so I wanted to take a few minutes to address a few of the more egregious ones. I am not trying to call anyone out here, because I have seen these so many places from so many different people. So without further ado… lets begin.

Any Race in Any Faction is Lore Breaking

Honestly I have seen two versions of this, firstly that it is lore breaking and secondly that it erodes “faction pride”. I call a massive bullshit on both of these points. I wonder if the players who are saying this have ever actually played an elder scrolls game. In Skyrim, most certainly the Nords were front and center, but you could not go through Whiterun the archetypal Nord town without also seeing at least one Altmer, Bosmer, many Redguard, a Breton or two and the ubiquitous group of Khajiit nomads. The Elder Scrolls universe has always been a melting pot of races, and while there are most certainly groups like the Thalmor that are essentially racial supremacists, they are very much not the majority. It is expected that you will have a Nord fighting alongside a Breton fighting along side a Bosmer, all working to take down a greater evil. While Elder Scrolls has purposefully conflicting lore, just like there are different sides to a tale in real life, there is no place one could ever say that racial exclusivity is a “Elder Scrolls Value”.

Now to the second point bout breaking down “Faction Pride”. If you wanted to play only with your factions races… then quite honestly Elder Scrolls is not a game series for you. The Factions we have in ESO are relatively artificial constructs and most of the alliances do not get along at all. They have banded together to fight greater forces in a bid to try and claim the Whitegold throne. Lets take the Ebonheart… the faction that most people will play…. because Skyrim. The Dunmer view the Nords and country bumpkins that are barely intelligent enough to pick up a weapon, and they view the Argonians in the same way they view Guars. The Argonians view both the Nords and Dunmer as oppressors, and the Nords view anyone that can raise a weapon as a potential enemy… especially other Nords. Granted this is a great over simplification of things… but suffice to say the races do not really like each other, and the alliance they have formed is barely holding together. Alliances in this game series are not racial boundaries but instead political organizations, and the sooner players realize this the happier they will be.

Personally I wish there were not faction walls, because I hate having to decide which group of friends I get to play with, on which characters. I feel like the Horde/Alliance red versus blue bullshit is the absolute worst thing about World of Warcraft. However I realize I am in the minority here. The bonus with Elder Scrolls is that I can at least tell my friends that if they preorder they will be able to play whatever race they want to play in the Daggerfall faction that the guild voted on and chose. After living through the launch of WoW and how it split my friends between two different servers and two different factions… I welcome this olive branch with open arms. While they have not said anything about it, I am sure at a later date you will probably be able to pay to unlock this functionality as well. For the time being however it is a really awesome perk for those players who bet on the game at launch time.

Imperial Edition is Paywalled Content

While I cannot really go into details because some of the testing is still covered under NDA, I can firmly call bullshit on this one as well. While the Imperials are a different race, they are very much a cosmetic one. At least I think I can say that much, if not many apologies to the ESO community staff, but the information needs to be out there. The feeling on the ground however is that Imperial Edition has something that players will not be able to get otherwise. Sure the racial graphic for imperials and all the armor styles are unique… but they are just cosmetic. It is not like you cannot be effective in the game without access to the Imperial race. I personally plan on making Belghast an Imperial but that is for mostly Lore reasons, and the fact that I can make an Imperial look exactly like how I always make Belghast look.

Players with access to the Imperial Edition are not getting anything that you cannot get otherwise in the game other than what amounts to some cosmetic skins. What I don’t get however is why this is somehow more angst inducing than a World of Warcraft collectors edition, or any other MMO collectors edition when you get exclusive items that you cannot ever get any other way. They have already mentioned that you would be able to upgrade to Imperial Edition at a later date if you wanted to unlock the Imperial race and its gear styles. The rest of the argument against the Imperial race seems to go back to point one. While Imperials are in fact native to central Tamriel, they have never been uncommon in ALL parts of continent as you have encountered them in every single game to date. The Elder Scrolls setting is extremely racially diverse, so it makes complete sense that you can be an Imperial anywhere in the world.

Elder Scrolls is Triple Dipping

Essentially this controversy stems from the fact that Elder Scrolls has a box price, a monthly subscription and there has been talk of an in game cash shop. I have no clue why this is a big deal, because until the Free to Play model rode in with its promise of something for nothing… this was pretty much the model of every single AAA game. Even today World of Warcraft is doing this exact same thing. You pay for the game, then you pay a monthly fee and then on top of that they have the audacity to offer additional cosmetic stuff for more money in an easy to use cash shop? Those blasphemers. they should bow down to the god of something for nothing! Pardon me if I get more than a little bit hyperbolic here, but that is generally how I view the cult of free to play, as a bunch of people who are wanting something for nothing. If you are not actively supporting a game, either through a monthly subscription or regularly buying stuff from their “priced to own” cash shop… you are actively a drag on that game.

I realize that is a controversial stance, but these are not charities running the games you want to play. They are companies with staff and that staff has families they need to feed. Everyone gnashes their teeth and laments the death of an MMO, however had they given some monetary support to the game rather than just lip service it might have not died in the first place. Granted sometimes there are situations like Star Wars Galaxies that were absolutely doomed from the start. Lucasfilm wanted their license back, so as a result a game that was marginally successful had to die on the process. However City of Heroes and Vanguard are squarely on the shoulders of players who love those titles but just stopped paying for them. If we love games we have to put our money where our mouths are and show them the only kind of support that keeps the lights on in the building… our cash. Granted this little rant is going off in a completely different direction than I had intended it… but that is the side effect of writing my posts on the fly.

Back to the “Elder Controversy” at hand. Why shouldn’t Elder Scrolls have a cash shop? Everyone else does. So long as they limit thing to cosmetic unlocks and game services like character renames… it seems like business as usual to me. If we accept this as “normal” when World of Warcraft is concerned, I feel like we have no real ground to stand upon when another game wants to do the exact same thing. There are many people who are going to “wait for free to play”, and if it goes that direction I am fine as well. So when a game converts from subscription to free to play I have never felt “robbed” of the time and money I spent on it when it was a subscription. In fact I tend to continue to subscribe to these games after their conversions. While I may not play Rift as much as I have in the past, it is always a game I return to and as such I keep a yearly patron account subscription. I view it as my way of supporting a game that I love, even if I am not actively playing it.

Can of Worms

Firstly I feel like I should apologize for some of the tone I have in this post. It has ended up being a bit more vitriolic than I had intended it to. As a fan of the Elder Scrolls franchise and a fan of Elder Scrolls Online, I can completely accept when someone tells me “meh, it just isn’t for me”. What frustrates me is when someone decides that for some reason Elder Scrolls Online has stolen their puppy. Then decides to come up with a complex lattice of paranoid reasons why NO ONE should play the game. In this post I tried to address a few of these “elder controversies”, but in fact I got more than a little bit hyperbolic myself in the process. I am passionate about gaming, and I am passionate about the games I want to play. Some of that passion spilled out onto the page today.

This gets back to an overall problem I have with the gaming community. We tend to view it as a zero sum game. There are many who view the world in terms of… if I want my game to be successful I have to take a crap on the competitors. While I am 100% on the Elder Scrolls bandwagon… I also really want to see Wildstar succeed and Everquest Next succeed… because quite frankly we NEED more successes in the MMO genre that are not named “Warcraft”. That is not a jab at the juggernaut in the room, because I play WoW as well… but we need to see more equitable sharing of the love if we hope to salvage this genre. I feel like free to play works for games that have already repaid the costs of development, but it just simply does not work for every game… nor should it be the cure all to every gaming ill. Free to Play feels like a death spiral for the genre, and while the fact there is a subscription cost will likely keep me from playing a game I only marginally cared about like Wildstar. It most definitely is not a substantial barrier between me and a game I am passionate about like ESO.