MMORPG Archives - Page 390 of 399 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Unicorns!

December 17, 2013 by Belghast

Unicorns!

Quick… type Unicorns if you want to live! I had to share this picture as it was pretty much my favorite thing from yesterday. Typing of the Dead was one of the most quirky Dreamcast games I owned, so I was super shocked to see that there was a newer version available on steam. I have no real interest in playing it to be honest, but this image particularly caused me several chuckles throughout the day. I am using it this morning as a crutch to get me started typing. So far this morning I have overslept, and since I really did not do a whole lot of gaming last night, I feel fairly empty of ideas.

My last night was spent with my wife, taking her shopping. I feel overall it is a noble if not maddening pursuit, but since she would be in teacher conferences tonight and Wednesday night… I figured it was a needed one. At least I got a good meal out of the ordeal. She has decided she wants to look more “put together”, and stop wearing so many neutral colors. As an art major, I keep getting called in to coordinate color palettes for her. If left to her own devices she tends to try and match everything, instead of pick a simple but coordinated group of colors. Hopefully overtime she will pick up what I am doing and I will no longer be quite so needed in the process. However for now I am her shopping buddy… but in truth I always really have been.

The Quest For Weapons

I really like my dwarfy elemental shaman, and I pretty much play him whenever I have the chance. Right now I am on a mad quest to get him a couple of decent weapons. He currently is using two matched blue weapons, and I have been pestering the guild to run nightly heroic scenarios on the hopes that I will actually luck out like I did on the paladin. I feel like even one weapon swapped would be enough to get me into Siege of Orgrimmar LFR, which is ultimately my goal. The problem that I have mentioned before is that there are really no good weapons you can get for characters. The weapons out on the Timeless Isle are 20,000 timeless coins for a onehander, which involves quite a significant amount of grinding. The problem with them is that they are only 476 ilevel which is not really that much better than heroic blue/crafted 463.

I might be insane, but I really do not see that it is worth the copious amount of grinding that it would take to knock one of these weapons out… to wind up slightly better but still very much undergeared to do the latest content. Another option generally are the 502 living steel weapons that are remakes of the weapon specialist items from burning crusade. Two problems here, firstly they take a month of Living Steel transmutes to get. Secondly there is nothing agility based that a shaman can use, the only agility weapon is a sword. Lastly there is the option that I have been avoiding like the plague, PVP.

PVP Gear without PVPing

I am not a PVP player at all, and I believe the last time I did any PVP was Baradin’s Hold. Even then it was an extreme rarity that I participated in that unless I also had a bunch of guild members backing me up. PVP is the worst sort of treadmill to me, and each time I do it I feel like a hamster as I quickly run back from the grave yard only to be sent back again. There may be a loophole I can exploit however. It seems you can convert 375 justice points into 250 honor through a vendor. So that means I need to get 2625 justice points per weapon that I can comfortably grind out in heroics. That would get me a 498 Axe or more likely the Fist weapon, as I seem to prefer those on my shaman.

This is something I can likely do, as I can probably even convince guild members to “roflstomp” some heroics with me to fill the guild bank with money. We did some the other night to bump me across the threshold of being able to buy the heirloom axe for my orc warrior. This seems to be the stopping place for all of the alts in the guild, we simply cannot get decent weapons. I could probably even organize some group effort of running heroics to get people the pvp weapons. The stats are not ideal, as it has that nasty resilience stat on them… but overall just the damage alone makes it worth it. They would be more than viable for Siege and would let people get their weapons up enough to do quite a lot of other things. Granted these are not as good as the 516 ilevel weapons from heroic scenarios… however it is something you can actually work towards without having to rely entirely on that mean on random number generator.

Faffing Overload

December 16, 2013 by Belghast

Holy Faffing

I had every intent Sunday to work on the various characters that I needed to run through LFR, however when other opportunities were presented I seized hold with both hands. A few members of the guild were running instances for transmog outfits, so I joined in the fun. The likelihood that I will play my little disc priest was just massively improved. Of all the priest sets, my favorite is absolution the Tier 6 outfit from Black Temple/Hyjal. Since I was the only cloth wearer along and the only other person on my class set did not need it… I managed to soak up an entire set of Absolution gear in the run. I also managed to get a pretty spiffy staff, that I remember all the priests desperately wanted back in the day.

I of course had to transmog to the gear immediately, even though I am only 80 and wearing a mishmash of quested greens. My hope is I can maintain the outfit as I level through all of the cataclysm content. I am sure there is a crafted set that will likely hold me much like the crafted gear has on my rogue. Belglorian my priest is also my tailor so hopefully he can take care of that as I level. I hope to get this character up to Pandaria level since I am stalled out 5 points away from maximum.

Twilight Faffing

While we were out and about our monk healer mentioned that he had a severe absence of flying mounts. Immediately we all thought about the three drakes achievement for Sartharion with its guaranteed mount drop. So very shortly we wandered our way over to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight and formed up a quick group to do 10 man three drakes. It was insane just how fast we were able to kill it at level 90. It was pretty easy to do at 85, but Sarth just absolutely exploded with our current epic gear. We all passed on the mount drop, and let the healer pick it up unattested.

However since we all had an army of alts, we figured we would swap around a bit and go ahead and knock out the 25 man version as well. Several of us were missing that mount, so the monk healer said for us to roll on it as well. While not as much of a cakewalk as the first one, especially since we were all on alts… it was still rather easy. As you can tell by the image I am now the proud owner of a new twilight drake mount. For whatever reason I never managed to get this one in all the times we did three drakes after Icecrown raids during Wrath, so I was happy to knock out yet another mount.

Utgarde Faffing

We did a quick heroic Ruby Sanctum since one of the folks had a quest still active from the Wrath era, and with that most of us had hit our instance lock. I however still had one more to go before I hit it, so I logged back over to my Paladin who I had logged out at Wyrmrest. Since I was so close, I decided to fly over to Utgarde Pinnacle on a whim. I have run this place on heroic so many times chasing the mount, but each and every time I have walked away empty handed. Yesterday however, I was completely shocked to see a brand new Blue Protodrake mount in my loot window. I have always liked running the zone, and to some extent I am a bit sad I have no real reason to ever return.

While I cannot get the black or plagued protodrakes, this completes the set other than the Time-lost protodrake. I simply do not think I have the patience for that camp. Each time I am in Northrend I buzz through Storm Peaks just in case it is up, but so far all I have seen is the place holder and the time-lost corpse a few times. Similarly I make a trip to Deepholme every now and then and fly the circuit, but again I don’t really expect to ever find that stone drake up either. Both camps are extremely tedious things and I simply do not want the mount bad enough to go through it. I figure I will get my share of camping done when I start collecting spirit beasts on my hunter.

Faffing Overload

One of my really good friends Ashgar came back to the game this weekend, and similar to what I do he spent a lot of time running old raid content for fun. We had talked about going and doing Blackwing Lair earlier in the day, but it never really materialized until shortly after I had gotten the blue protodrake above. He was struggling to solo Razorgore, and I knew I very much could not do it on my paladin… but there were two items I really wanted desperately from there. The first is the Untamed Blade, that I am now modeling in the above screenshot. The second is a proper set of Judgment. While I love the blue/brown set from the opening of Northrend event, simply because it is super rare… I have always wanted a set of the red/gold judgment, that matches the untamed blade. To me that is the archetypal paladin look, and I will not be completely happy until I at least have that as an option.

Needless to say I managed to get the Untamed Blade, but over the course of the dungeon only a single piece of judgment gear dropped. We did however see every single pet, so at this point I am only missing Broodlord Lashlayer, as I managed to pick up mini Razorgore and mini Chromaggus. After we made quick work of Blackwing Lair we decided to wander over to AQ40, since thanks to Twin Emperors it is annoying to solo. There we did not have quite as much luck, but I did manage to pick up the mini Skeram pet, and Ashgar managed to get one of the other ones along the way. The highlight of the run for me however is that moments from joining up the Red Qiraji Resonating Crystal dropped.

The various colors of Resonating Crystals were a source of so much drama for our raid back in the day. We formed “teams” based on the color of mount we managed to get to drop. This was egged on by the fact that one of the raid leaders was strongly opposed to any color that was not “gold”, and as such tried to get as many people on his team as possible. My hunter was a member of this strike team… and we vehemently argued when someone called us “yellow”. The above screenshot was from the first time we saw a Red mount. Prior to that moment the mount war had reached a fever pitch, with various people not willing to accept the “wrong” color of mount. After a point the raid leader just started force-looting people various colors just so they would stop slowing down the raid.

However the moment we all saw the “red one” the mount war dissolved just as fast as it had begun. No one cared about the green, blue or “gold” teams… we were all somehow lacking because we were not riding around on a red mount. During our entire time raiding Ahn’qiraj I think we only actually saw two red mounts drop. The screenshot above was from the night we first saw it… we all lined up to pay homage to the new “red leader”. Lleandryn will always have the distinction of being the man who brought an end to the “mount wars”. I joke about it these days, but very seriously… the animosity over the color of mount we were using had really reached a point of ridiculousness. Lots of hurt feelings were happening over having the wrong color, so the fact that the Red mount “saved” us made looting one yesterday all the sweeter. Now if only blizzard would stop being a pain in the ass and let us ride them everywhere.

Without Burdens

December 15, 2013 by Belghast

Of Holiday Parties

This morning I am slowly eating my oatmeal and trying to make my head stop throbbing. I feel like I have a “hangover” but I didn’t even drink last night. I think this means I am now officially “old”. Last night was the Christmas party for my group at work. I think I said it yesterday, but we are the only group that actually likes each other enough to hold a party. It has been years since I have felt the way about a group of people that I do about these people. Quite honestly I probably never have felt exactly the same, but my very first work environment was a similar “family” feel.

The highlight of the evening was dirty santa, which for folks who do not know what that means. Gift exchange with the ability to steal from others. The best gift was… a large thing of crown royal, a pair of captain america underoos, and a package of fake moustaches. I cannot and nor do I really want to picture the scenario that was planned with that combination of items… but it was needless to say hillarious. Even better… someone had inadvertedly brought a Captain America mask and shield… the underoos were donated to the winner for the full effect. I brought some legos, and they were hotly contested… as were the call of duty mega blocks that were brought.

Probably the coolest item of the night was one I ended up winning initially but then was quickly stolen from me. The “Boozequet” was a floral bouquet made up of individual shots. The creator had hot glued the individually sealed shot drinks onto floral wire and then arranged all of them in a bouquet. Extremely clever, I told the creator that she should market it and I am sure during this time of the year she would get a lot of business. She even made a cute little “drunk santa” tub for the base of the arrangement. The whole night was pretty amazing. I go through this “I don’t want to go” phase right before any party, because my body rejects being around lots of people. However when I actually do go I have a blast.’

Without Burdens

I really do not have a lot of gaming news today. When you have a big event going on in the evening the entirety of the day tends to be dominated by planning and preparing for it. My day yesterday was either planning or waiting to play for the holiday party. As a result I didn’t get into anything that I could not rapidly exit if needed. That meant my only real options were LFR. After some moving stuff around I managed to get my ilevel high enough to queue for Vale of the Eternal Spring, the first section of Siege of Orgrimmar. In fact currently I am sitting at 502 with a 450 ring still equipped that I have not been able to replace. I am proud of myself because I got there on this alt without “actual raiding” and without leaning on Burden of Eternity gear at all.

Why does this matter? Well a Burden of Eternity is one of those things from the timeless isle that is either a super rare drop, or super costly (50,000 timeless coins). When you apply it to the gear tokens that drop from the island it transforms what would have been a 496 ilevel item to a 535 ilevel item. The problem is, just like the normal tokens there is no control whatsoever on what stat package you will get. This creates a lot of odd situations like tanking items with no avoidance stats on them. I personally find the burden gear to be a bit of a crutch, and what I mean by that is… I cannot seem to make my brain ignore the fact that it is higher ilevel and instead evaluate the stats of an item. Many 502 items will be better for your character than these 535 items just because of the particular stat distribution and the inclusion of gem slots.

Having these extremely high ilevel but not very optimized items just confuses the mix for me. I have or have had quite a few of these on Belgrave my main, and in each case I find it really hard to make myself abandon them for a better itemized but lower ilevel item. This is the double edged sword of ilevel after all… the number does not adequately represent how well a player is geared. I could have a bunch of extremely high ilevel items equipped that are functionally useless for my class. On my shaman I admit that I equipped a healing trinket that I got from a random loot bag… just to get my ilevel up high enough to be able to run Vale of the Eternal spring. I am sure there are lots of other people out there doing the same. I like the feeling of seeing my gear score going up incrementally, but I feel like as a gauge of quality it has never really been valid.

A Quiet Day

This has to be the slowest I have taken to eat my oatmeal in the morning. I blame the multiple directions my head seems to be spinning right now. As a result of my present state… I am hoping for an extremely quiet day. Far as I know we don’t really have much of anything to do today, so my hope is that other than doing laundry I can pretty much sit on my comfy couch and relax. Said relaxation is probably going to involve a lot of LFR for a shot at shiny shiny loot drops. Now that my paladin can queue for Siege I want to get him all the way through to Downfall. I also should run my shaman, dk and druid through as well. Who knows how much I will actually get accomplished but needless to say I will be enjoying my day today.

Mentorship Matters

December 15, 2013December 14, 2013 by Belghast

Hot BBQ Sauce

This is one of those mornings where I have consumed breakfast and am really struggling to get started on the whole writing thing. At least when I was doing NaNoWriMo there was a clear point to begin with again. However in the case of thinking thoughts about things… I don’t have the clear starting place. It is still cold as hell here in Oklahoma. I really wish that my Canadian friends would take this weather back. Cyfer one of the many Canadians in my life said it was an early Christmas present… and no re-gifting. I keep wondering what the postage is on a tornado.

Today is a bit messed up and I think that might be part of the problem. We have my group at work’s Christmas party tonight. It is a minor miracle that we actually like each other enough to have annual get-togethers like this. I am pretty certain we are the only group in our department that has one. Since that is looming over my head it makes everything else I do today feel like I can’t really get involved in much of anything. I had to wake up relatively early this morning and handle raw pork so that they could have pulled pork this evening. Nothing says cold like handing meat fresh from the refrigerator.

Actually doing something potentially cool this year. We got a 3 mini crock pot thingy with individual temperature settings. Since I prefer my pulled pork with hot bbq sauce, it bums me out a bit when I have to shoot down the middle and go for a mild and sweet sauce when I am making it for guests. So this time I am using our biggest crockpot to cook the pork and then am going to divide it up into the smaller pots. Will have one flavored with hot, one with regular and one with hickory bbq sauce for a variety. This way each of us can have a flavor of our choice, and it will let the timid easily experiment without committing to too much heat.

Mentorship Matters

Yesterday in the comments of the blog one of my good friends Scarybooster made an excellent suggestion, and then later Athelia added some tweaks. In raid guilds it is common to have class officers that see to the tutelage of new members of that class to make sure they are doing things as they should. This works great in the case of a raid guild, because winning is generally the ultimate goal. However in the case of House Stalwart, a social guild this paradigm doesn’t exactly work. Most of our members don’t want someone telling them how to play their class, and for good reason. However I still see a specific need for someone to turn to that is able to answer core questions about their spec.

So I took the ideas they provided and spun it around a bit. Last night I introduced the Mentor Program on the forums. For those without Stalwart Online forum accounts, I will preface it here.

How to Qualify

Be a Member of House Stalwart of at least Stalwart rank or higher.
Be maximum level in a given spec (this is currently level 90 in World of Warcraft)
Be willing to answer questions from players and explain the inner workings of your class and spec in simple terms
Be willing to provide outside resources that the players can study
Be extremely patient

What Benefits do You Get?

A Sense of Accomplishment From Watching Players Improve In Your Chosen Spec
Admiration and Respect of Your Guild Members for Giving of Your Time
A Special Mentor Rank (pending you are not already of higher rank)

I have taken what is normally a hierarchy system in raid guilds and turned it into an opt in service. As a result the mentors get recognized easily by the special guild rank, and in the guild note it would say what specific spec they are a mentor for. Ultimately my whole goal with a lot of my changes is to encourage engagement between the members of the guild. The more engaged a player is the more involved they are in the guild as a whole.

Looking for Scribes

Additionally yesterday I announced that we were looking for guild scribes. I can’t be everywhere all of the time. As a result I have requested help in keeping the guild front page updated with nifty things that people are doing. Doesn’t matter if it is a raid victory, random farming of world bosses, soloing a raid, or hosting an in game event. If House Stalwart members are involved I want to know about it. My hope is that folks will write a paragraph or two blurb and send along with it some screenshots that I can then use to adorn the frontpage.

One of our newer members Gueraloca has been helping me out with trying to gather up a census of our guild. When you have almost 900 characters in the guild, everything becomes daunting. As a result Guera is helping me connect the dots between alts and mains. If you are a member of Stalwart please check out her thread on the forums and fill in the alt/main information. The final goal of this process is to have neatly organized guild notes. That in itself will be a pretty massive undertaking, but the goal is to build them in a way so the addons that link alts and mains can work off of them.