World of Warcraft Archives - Page 59 of 109

Juggling Games

April 21, 2015 by Belghast

Naeling It

The Monday night raid group has had quite the sequence of strange weeks since patch 2.55 went into the game. Either we were lacking the right people, or enough people at all to do turn 9. As a result after what seems like a month we did our first night of second coil attempts. We were all exceptionally rusty going in, but the spirits were extremely high. At times I would say our spirits were too high, because holy shit were we slap happy. I was one of the worse so it is not like I can really complain much. The positive take away is that we managed to get further than we had ever gotten before last night, and were starting to work on the fire/lightning phase of the fight. On our best attempt we got Nael to 30% which feels like progress. Essentially once we learn the phase four dance, we just have to keep that up until the boss is dead.

The only regret I have right now is choosing to get my 1300 poetics weapon on my warrior. I was torn, he is absolutely my main and I intend not tanking as often as I can. The problem is on Nael the fight we are struggling with I am having to dragoon it up. That dps boost would really help, but what is done is done… just kinda kicking myself for not picking a dragoon weapon first. That said since 126 is more than geared enough for anything we are doing… I am considering focusing on getting a 1300 weapon for the dragoon now before I pick up any more poetics gear for the warrior. He still needs a chest piece and a belt, which I was going to start building towards the chest next. However since that is still going to take a significant amount of time… I might work on getting that weapon instead. I really wish that today’s 2.56 patch would have uncapped poetics… because man do I need a lot of them.

Cap and Storm

Last night after the raiding shenanigans Thalen mentioned that at one point he had created a House Stalwart super group in Marvel Heroes as a way of stopping the random guild invites. So I popped over into game and got invites. From this point we grouped up for a bit until he needed to head to bed. I have to say that I thought Captain America’s charge in and shield whirl thing was good AOE… until I ran around a bit with Storm. While I got to tank bosses, pretty much all of the trash in the entire zone died horribly to a cloud of whirling winds. That said I am really enjoying the fact that I can tank almost any world boss without much issue by keeping my my defensive buffs. I noticed last night that there was a difficulty slider so at some point I want to play with that. There are times this feels a lot like diablo on “normal” and I am wondering if there is a “hard” setting that I really should be playing.

Quite honestly I have not been even vaguely close to death other than last night when I was tanking Gorgon. There I simply used the occasional med pack and made it through that fight without much issue. The only reason why it was dicey at all was because I was essentially soloing him, which is probably something I should not be able to do at this point. As of last night I am sitting at level 15 and still really enjoying the game. I think this is going to be my go to for mindless fun, and I swear there are so many times the zone layout reminds me of City of Heroes. I guess that might be because when I played that game I kept my camera zoomed out as far as it would go, which made it feel a bit like an over the top game. The competition for spawns is a bit annoying near the entrance of a zone… but if you wander off by yourself you pretty much get the place to yourself. When I hit the island of Madripoor it felt like the pack thinned out significantly, so I am guessing most people don’t make it out of the level 10 range before moving on.

Juggling Games

The problem with juggling multiple games is that one of them always ends up falling through the cracks. Right now I wish I had the time to devote to working on my character in Wildstar and trying to hit 65 in Rift. Instead I am logging in a few times a day in Rift to run minions… and just not logging in at all in Wildstar. Honestly my playtime is really spastic right now, because I have a bunch of things that I am trying to do each day. In Final Fantasy XIV I am playing the mini cactpot each day and trying to stockpile as much MGP as I can. Then while in game I run at least one daily expert so that I can cap my poetics each week. I am also logging into World of Warcraft in the morning and at night to run my Garrison missions in the hopes of getting those ever illusive raid gear crates. I am not 100% sure how they work, other than the fact that they show up every two weeks, so I keep clearing out other missions in hopes of making room for them when they show up.

Something new added to the rotation is logging into Marvel Heroes to get my log in reward. Similarly I am logging into Final Fantasy Record Keeper for the same reason, and to get my daily item chest. Record Keeper is one of those games I mostly play while my wife is shopping or I am out eating, waiting on food to arrive at the table. It is a moment of boredom game more than anything else, but that said I am really enjoying it. It is scratching an itch that I had not quite found from a mobile game. Realistically I should be trying to log into Wildstar each day so that I can do a boom box, but I have been failing miserably at that one. The funny thing is that I am spending a lot of time in a lot of different games but not really playing any of them. Finally after doing my routine I figure out which game I am actually going to play and run off playing that one. Most of the time that is Final Fantasy XIV but over the last few nights I have been playing a significant amount of Marvel Heroes. Basically… right now I am all over the place.

Timewalking Frustrations

April 15, 2015 by Belghast

6.2 Disappointment

This week we have had a pretty massive information dump about the 6.2 PTR patch information. I have to say overall I am fairly disappointed, not necessarily in what is contained within the patch, but that everything about it feels like an “end of expansion” content patch. The patch information is super spoilerific, but it seems as though the Burning Crusade is now invading Tanaan Jungle. Soon the gates will open revealing a zone besieged by fel magics, that culminate in the Hellfire Citadel raid zone. All of that sounds pretty badass, but the problem is it also sounds like the end of an expansion scenario. If 6.2 is on the PTR that means more than likely we are a little over a month from seeing this content in game. Which would probably place it landing at the beginning of June. We have no new expansion announcement, which means that more than likely they will be announcing it in November at Blizzcon.

The problem there is that unless they launch immediately following Blizzcon, we will be looking at another Siege of Orgrimmar style content lag. I feel like if they announce at Blizzcon the earliest an expansion would be launched is Spring 2016. The best case scenario I can think of in my mind places a new expansion in our hands in March 2016 which would be a nine month content lag. While that is nothing near as bad as the sixteen month lag at the end of Pandaria, it is still not amazing. Sure they would I guess shoehorn another minor content tier like Ruby Sanctum, but I don’t think that will really make anyone happy. Maybe I will be wrong, and maybe they have an even more epic conclusion of this expansion planned. This Siege on Hellfire Citadel however just feels like the last grand hurray for the Warlords of Draenor expansion. Which leaves the question in my mind of… what next?

Timewalking Frustrations

The absolute largest disappointment coming from this however relates to the Timewalking system. This was hinted at quite some time ago in an interview that something was in the worlks called Timewalking mode, and my mind was set ablaze. My grand crusade has been for years that World of Warcraft needs a mentoring system, that allows higher level players to scale down to the level of lower level players… and do content with them “for real”. When this new game system was hinted at, I was absolutely giddy because this meant finally after all these years WoW was getting mentoring. This has probably been the biggest reveal as part of the 6.2 informational dump, and I have to say I am really frustrated with the result. I am going to full quote a section of the announcement below.

In Patch 6.2, we’re introducing seven different weekend events that will run from noon Friday through noon Monday every week. Two of those events will be Timewalking weekends, in which you’ll be able to queue up for a randomly selected old-school dungeon with a new sort of “heroic” difficulty: When you Timewalk these dungeons, you’ll find that your character’s power and gear has been scaled down to a fraction of what they normally are. For the first time in years, some dungeons you outgrew long ago will once more put your skills to the test.

So instead of a robust mentoring system, we are apparently going to get a weekend gimmick. If I am reading this statement correctly it sounds like these are going to be limited time events that will happen twice. Maybe this is going to be like the pvp weekend construct, and simply rotate through seven different events, or maybe there are literally only going to be seven events ever. Right now we don’t really know, but regardless of the situation it feels like a complete waste of resources to put these in as limited time events. I was hoping for and expecting a robust mentoring system, but instead I am getting a carnival ride. I really don’t know why I set myself up for these disappointments, because traditionally my hopes are dashed on a regular basis when it comes to this game. I still have so much hope and can imagine a game that is so much better than what we actually have to play, but we never seem to get there.

Cycling Down

I am more than willing to admit that some of my frustrations might just be me. I have reached that point with World of Warcraft that I often do… where I am simply not enjoying the game. In previous trips back to the game I would have left it months ago. I pushed three characters to level 100 and everyone to within Garrison levels… and simply lacked the drive to push any further. The moment to moment gameplay was extremely fun while leveling, but the non-raid end game content has felt like I had no real purpose. So instead I log in an hour before raid on Tuesday, so that I can get my extra roll tokens, and make sure I have potions and flasks. Occasionally I half heartedly log in to run Garrison missions on my main, just for the hopes of those raid loot boxes every other week. I feel like I am spending the absolute bare minimum of time in this game, and so long as we were progressing smoothly in the raid it felt like it was time well spent.

Unfortunately we are not progressing smoothly. We will have a good night, and then it feels like we regress five steps the next one. I am tied to this game because I am actively raiding in it, but I have to say I am starting to question why I am even doing that. When raid voice chat is full of frustrated and stressed out voices… it pretty much destroys the enjoyment for me. I am all about joking and having a good time… and kicking ass while doing it. When we stop being able to have that relaxed raid dynamic, and still be high functioning my will to care drains from me. Ultimately I came back to the game riding a wave of nostalgia. I stayed because I was raiding and getting to hang out with a handful of friends that I missed. When even Rylacus, the life of the party, is starting to sound stressed and worn down… I question why we are doing any of this? I am sure I will chill out in the coming days, but seeing the 6.2 content, and our current raid struggles… it is making me question why I am still playing.

A Better Night

April 10, 2015 by Belghast

Perplexed

Roughly a month ago I wrote a piece about the WoW Token, when it was officially announced and seemed to be something coming into the game “Soon ™”. There are a number of websites that index the price of wow gold, but I don’t plan on linking to any of those for reasons. At the time of writing those sites seemed to indicate the going rate for gold was something along the lines of $15 for 30,000g. Now the strange thing was that there were some absolutely insane outliers, like sites offering nearly 100,000g for $20. Now this week the WoW Token has launched, and I have been watching it thanks to an extremely excellent market website showing the current token price. Firstly I expected the token currency to drop in gold value, but not this fast and not for this long. I expected there to be a significant rebound once players started snapping them up in lieu of making subscription payments… and we may still see that towards the end of the month. The token started at 30,000g, raising to 35,000g and then tanking quickly down to as low at one point as 18,000g before coming back up and hovering around 25,000g.

All of this while more volatile than I had expected, doesn’t really shock me. What does shock me is the reaction from the third party gold sellers. Those same gold index sites seem to be painting a bizarre story. Gone completely are those 100,000g outliers, and they have been replaced by values that are almost lock step in line with the legitimate wow token pricing. I expected that as the wow token gained traction that the third party sellers would start offering more outrageous deals trying to tempt players into taking that risk. Instead if anything it seems like the WoW Token is now setting the standard operating price for gold regardless of how you obtain it. This is just puzzling to me, and I cannot fathom why this would be the result. Now as far as the WoW Token goes, I still think we will see a significant climb in price as folks subscriptions start coming due. For me personally the WoW Token still is not “worth” the price. Now if I could buy one or two of them and immediately purchase some big ticket items… I might be enthralled. For the time I already have access to the sorts of gold that it is currently worth so it is not a huge draw.

A Better Night

Tuesday night was unequivocally horrible. I am still not sure what was wrong, but for whatever reason we were completely off our game. We started as we often do with Heroic Blackrock Foundry, and downed Hans and Franz without much issue. Then we moved on to Gruul and wiped until we had lost our will to live. Finally towards the end of the night we moved on to Darmac… and squeaked by with a victory by the slimmest of margins. Last night once again we started with some attempts on Heroic Gruul, only to end up wiping over and over once again. I am not sure what has happened to us, or happened to the encounter… but it went from something we can do fairly easy to being damned near impossible for us. Thankfully we chose to shift gears and take on Normal instead after a handful of wipes last night, and in a large part that made for a more enjoyable evening. We went on to clear all of the content we have cleared before in the past, and since we were used to bashing our skulls against heroic… it seemed pretty simple.

The problem is we still have yet to touch the Iron Maidens fight, make any real progress on the Heart of the Mountain encounter… and then there is still Blackrock. I really want to make some traction on those fights and get to a point where we can at least say we are clearing normal. This piecemeal heroic work is nice, but it feels like right now we are doing it in lieu of forward momentum on actually beating the instance. This is one of those places where I am torn, because by god I really really want my heroic sword from Gruul. Once again I am pantsless, and I am trying to keep from going through the bullshit required to craft a comparable pair. I know the second I do… I will get a heroic drop, or mythic pair from my bi-weekly garrison crate. I simply don’t want to deplete all the money I have to make it work. Maybe the effect of the WoW Token will drive the price of Savage Blood down… with people trying to sell them in order to make the gold to “make rent”.

Elder Scrolls Online Console Pre-order

One of the cool emails that I received yesterday was to notify me that for the next thirty days I had the option of purchasing a digital copy of Elder Scrolls Online for my console of choice for only $20. This was one of the big selling points that they made several months back when they announced the official launch date of the console version. If you purchased the game prior to April 9th 2015 on the PC you could then get a cheap copy on the console, as well as the ability to transfer your PC characters to the console version as well. Since I was a long time alpha player, and ultimately a launch day player this was no major incentive but I am absolutely taking advantage of it. I honestly wish more games would give you a significant discount on other platforms when they re-release the game. For example I have purchased State of Decay on Xbox Live, Steam, and will more than likely purchase another copy when the Year One Survivor Edition comes out. It just feels nice to have at least some sort of a break here. As such I have already pre-purchased and am hoping that it offers a preload of the game as well.

From the day the game came out it always felt like it would potentially work better with a controller. I will tell you the real reason why I am picking it up with the ps4 is that I hope to play it through my vita. I spent a fairly significant amount of time faffing about in Destiny while playing on my Vita, and I cannot imagine a better experience than hanging out in bed and playing some Elder Scrolls Online. Similarly it gives me something to do while waiting on other things to happen in other games. Upstairs I have my ps4 set up beside my computer, and in the living room I have a PSTV so I have four places I can comfortably play some Elder Scrolls Online. I am amped for this release and I am hoping the game finds its true potential with the console audience. Right now the console players really do not have that many “meaty” mmorpg options, with Final Fantasy XIV pretty much being the absolute best choice. Elder Scrolls Online should cover a very different niche of players, and I think it will ultimately be extremely successful.

Race to the Bottom

April 8, 2015 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff #6 – A Good Friday with Liore

Listen to the Episode Here

I had these grand ideas about having two episodes during the month of March to make up for the fact that I missed a February episode. That never quite worked out. I had a handful of people that I had talked to but scheduling never quite worked out since I try really hard to squeeze these episodes in whenever my wife is otherwise busy. With the weekly schedule of AggroChat and the various guest spots I end up getting called on to do, it means she is having to bend her time around me quite often, that I try my best not to make this podcast also do that. As such I tend to schedule people on a whim, and I am super thankful that the amazing Liore was amicable about that sort of timing. I literally talked to her Thursday to see if she was available, and we recorded on the afternoon of Good Friday since we were both off work.

Liore and I have known each other for what feels like forever. She’s been in my guilds, I’ve been in her guilds… and for a period of time in Rift we raided together multiple times a week. During all of this time we have forged an unconventional friendship. It feels like we end up on opposite ends of so many discussions, but at the end of the day we do so with the greatest of respect for the other. During this podcast we talk about all sorts of things, but one thing in particular we highlight because we found it extremely humorous. Both of us have been getting commentary from the community about a supposedly rivalry between the two of us since we do similar columns now for gaming websites that are technically in competition with each other. I had a blast spending the afternoon talking with Liore, and had I allowed myself to do so I could have easily spent another full hour chatting away. I always love it when the conversation flows naturally.

Race to the Bottom

Yesterday we saw the release of the WoW Token out into the wild, and the demand for gold greatly outstripped the availability of people snatching up subscription time. At the beginning however it was skewing the other direction. The token started at a prematurely low 30,000g and I watched it yesterday raise up to 35,000g before taking a big dive into the territory that it is currently sitting. Someone thought ahead and created an excellent stock market like tracking system on https://wowtoken.info/ and you can see the bottom starting to drop out. Thing is… most players already have an active subscription for the moment. It was not until the end of the month when in other games with similar systems we started to see the demand finally climb again. My advice, just like Wildstar is to snatch up these cheap tokens now because once the system matures a bit you will be paying significantly more per month of subscription.

The reason why I feel like this is the largest benefit of a system like this is it removes the temptation of players to turn to less than legitimate sources of currency. When I wrote about this a month ago, my research at the time indicated that in the aftermarket this same $20 was buying players around 100,000 gold. This means the legitimate route now costs you roughly five times as much as the illegal market, which is still going to be a huge draw for some players. The WoW Token is a failure for Blizzard unless they can squash the third party gold sellers by starving them of their market. Right now the token is new… and a lot of people are trying it out. Given a month or two of sanity they will realize that it is greatly overpriced. I guess for me, I won’t be doing this token unless I can buy a couple and get a big ticket item like an expedition yak, one of those things I have always wanted but was much too far out of my price range. I have a feeling that this is going to be the case for your average customer. If by the end of the month we do not see a massive spike in the price of a single token… then I will be extremely surprised.

End of an Expansion

Now for the hardest part of my morning… how exactly do I talk about the wrapping up of the storyline in Final Fantasy XIV 2.55 without giving any spoilers. I chose a very careful screenshot out of the stack of them that I took because this one really doesn’t say much about what is going on. In the most spoiler free fashion I can, I am going to talk about my impressions of the events. I have to say Final Fantasy XIV knows how to end an expansion. This is hands down the most satisfying and at the same time most anxious ending to an expansion I have ever experienced. In games like World of Warcraft everything is generally resolved at the end, and all the loose bits tied up… because the intent is for that expansion to live on its own forever without actually continuing the storyline in the next expansion. In Final Fantasy XIV… every aspect of this closing means massive ramifications that will hopefully be resolved as we travel into Ishgard. Instead of wrapping up the lose ends neatly… for each one that is concluded two more ends stand open waiting to be explored.

The awesome thing is… this game has proven that it WILL actually explore them. How frustrating has it been in the past as games have hinted at things, that never saw fruition. After all there are still I believe three portals under Wyrmrest temple that go nowhere, that will likely NEVER go anywhere because the narrative has moved on past the original plans. I expect that each event that happens during the closing of “A Realm Reborn” is going to factor heavily into a future storyline chain. It was a pretty shocking and brutal conclusion, but it makes me damned happy that I am playing this game. I quite literally did not see this one coming, and I highly suggest you push hard so that you can see this content before the expansion. I pushed through in part because my friend Ashgar said that the trailer that was releasing this Friday supposedly spoils some parts of this impact. As the credits rolled they showed a number of scenes from the past block of content… and I have to say sometimes you lose sight on just how much we accomplished during “A Realm Reborn”. I am extremely excited to see what happens as we turn our eyes “Heavensward”.