worgen Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Mecha Belgrave

One of my big goals over the last few days was to get both Tallow and Belgrave through all four parts of Siege of Orgrimmar LFR. Both of them could use gear out of there, and instead of piece-meal like before, I wanted to clear all of the bosses during this reset. The other day I talked about how much success I had with Tallow in that he got both a mainhand and offhand weapon and two pieces of tier 16. Yesterday I may have just blown that completely out of the water. Previously on Belgrave I had gotten a shoulder drop, but was not using them as I had slightly better shoulders from flex. Christmas day when I got home that evening, I popped into LFR and it inspired yesterdays topic on a social justice system.

However even though it had some frustration I managed to get Garrosh to drop two of the tokens that could be turned into any set piece. I used those to give myself the tier 16 chest and legs, and then yesterday Nazgrim graced me with dropping the gloves token. Just like that over the course of two days my Deathknight is wearing nearly a full set of tier 16. I already had a helmet with the same graphic so for all intents and purposes I have a complete visual set. I am really not sure what I think about the set, because honestly it feels a little out of place for being a Deathknight set. Where are all the skulls?

Instead of being straight out of a deathmetal video… I guess I am fresh from some manga? I need to find a similarly mecha inspired two hander to go with it. Thinking about maybe one of the ones from Ulduar… like Abaddon from Yogg Saron. I am sure if I try hard enough I can find something suiting the look and feel of it. Maybe it is just that it looks goofy on a worgen. I remember seeing this in most of Qelric’s videos, and on her character it does not look half bad at all. I feel that is the problem with most bestial races… the armor either looks really amazing or really awful.

Graduating the Cataclysm

After finishing my tour of Siege of Orgrimmar for the week, I hopped over on Gloam and started working on him again. I guess in a way for the good of the various raids I have been participating in… I felt like I needed to try and gear both Belgrave and Tallow. In both cases I did very much so, and I figured I could take a break from LFR to work on my little rogue. I managed to push him last night from 83 to 85 and finish off his Cataclysm era Alchemy. I figure at some point soon I will farm up mass amounts of Pandaria materials and push him up in level to 600, but for now I am working on the leveling portion. I would really like to find a pair of Fists of Fate to level him to 90 with, however there have been absolutely none of the auction house of late. These carried my enhancement shaman all the way to 90, and I was still using them when I got my first epic weapon drop.

Instead in the mean time I guess I will make a pair of Ghost-Forged blades, which are not nearly as nice but should give me a decent boost through the Pandaria content. The only problem is each takes 2 Spirits of Harmony, which are bind on pickup. This means I will be out farming something that gives Black Prince reputation trying to collect four of them on my Paladin. For whatever reason the characters that need them, cannot get them to drop… whereas the characters that have literally NO use for them like my Inscriptionist has 200. This gives me a good excuse to get him to honored with the Black Prince, which is a normally tedious task. I did however make a complete set of leather gear on my leatherworker so as soon as the blades are acquired I can begin my push to 90.

Onwards to Joplin

Needing to wrap up quickly this morning as we have a bunch of running around to do. We are going to be running up to Joplin for a bit to check things out there. I didn’t figure I would get time to do a blog post, but after showering and getting ready I decided to try and rush one through. I had no clue what time we would be getting home, and after a day of running around the last thing I want to be is creative. Hopefully you all had a great Christmas, and hopefully the loot gods have been smiling on you as well.

Familiar Itch

Over the last few days I have been feeling immensely nostalgic about World of Warcraft. This tends to happen to me as we near Blizzcon time, and I start to see twitter a buzz with people excited to be attending the convention. Some of my tweeps have even resorted to Blizzcon countdown clocks, and yesterday they finally reached the 20 somethings in days left til the conference. With this wave of nostalgia comes the all too familiar desire to re-up my account and play some of it. It would not have been the first time I did so on a whim, and is more than likely not going to be the last.

However I am wise to this trickery, or at least have a contingency plan in place. I have come to the realization that I like the idea of playing WoW a lot more than actually playing it. As a result I keep a trial account at the ready for when of these urges strikes, and last night I patched up my client once more. I figure if I make it through playing the trial account with the desire to play more WoW… then it is probably time to re-up. I figure this is a decent litmus test to see whether or not the desire to play is real before I spent $15.

Fighting Nostalgia

As a result I rolled a brand new Worgen Warrior on my trial account and proceeded to play. Immediately the buzz of the nostalgia started to wane. I had honestly forgotten just how spammy playing a low level warrior was, and by example EVERY World of Warcraft melee character. The unpredictable nature of rage and to a lesser extent energy left me with a decision. I either spent the entire time fighting watching my bars to optimize cooldowns… or I could just spam whatever basic attack I wanted to ALWAYS go off. Being a relatively impatient player… I always chose the spam route.

After a few minutes of spamming Heroic Strike… I remembered just how much my fingers used to ache after a dungeon run, always banging on the key I wanted to fire next because I could not be bothered to actually watch my bars. Basically my master plan of fighting the wave of nostalgia worked, all too well. I made it to about level 5 on my baby Worgen, to the point at which the forsaken show up… at which point I was supremely bored and logged out of the game. Having a taste of the gameplay reminded me that it really was not as fun as my mind had built it up to be.

Project Phoenix

Sometimes a game is much more enjoyable to remember fondly, than to actually play it. Right now there is a kickstarter going on called Project Phoenix. The goal of it is to essentially recreate the magic that was City of Heroes/City of Villains. I had so much fun playing these games, and regularly descend into bouts of nostalgia swapping with another friend of mine on mumble. The problem is… I think CoH is another game that is much more enjoyable to talk about fondly than to actually play it. I remember so much about the game, but every time I tried playing it again during its later free to play years the whole experience just felt lacking.

I wish this project the best of luck, but super hero games for me seem like they were a phase of a bygone era. I have tried Champions Online and DC Universe Online and in both cases… I was carried into them on the nostalgia of City of Heroes but found both gaming experiences somehow unable to live up to my memories and as a result my expectations. I think World of Warcraft and City of Heroes are both games for me like the original Everquest… extremely enjoyable to sit around and talk about the “good old days” but not really fun for me to play any longer.

Thing is… I think that is perfectly okay. I think nostalgia works that way, it makes us romanticize things that would now be trivial. For example I can remember being amazed at just how huge the sandbox that my father made for me was, and how I spent hours playing in it with my Tonka trucks. However were I to evaluate it from adult eyes, I would likely find it tiny and boring… and be ready to stop in a few minutes. Often times things we remember so fondly end up tarnished if we go back and re-experience them. This has been the case for Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft and a long list of other games that I have moved on past… but tried to rekindle that flame.