World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft Post

Actually Rubicante

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday I did something that I did not think I would actually manage to do… and that is get back into the Final Fantasy XIV Main Story quest. I’ve been saying for months that I left off at Rubicante but in truth apparently, I had played far enough to get right up to the Barbariccia fight. Look all of the vaguely Italian archfiend names from Final Fantasy IV have always flowed together in my head. When I last played the game I was apparently sitting at the Trial fight, so yesterday the very first thing that I did was dive into that. I feel like it is Pandaria Remix that is to thank for breaking my mental block against grouping with other human beings.

I’m actually somewhat into the storyline at this point. I did in fact play through to the point where I just finished fighting Rubicante and have plans to do some nonsense. The other thing that I did not expect is that I am now really invested in the character of Zero. I feel like I had just been very much locked in ARPG gameplay mode and coming back for Pandaria Remix has flipped a switch in my brain so that I am once again in “MMORPG Enjoyer” mode. I had been bouncing pretty freaking hard on anything that was not Guild Wars 2, which sort of sits in a happy medium between the ARPG and MMORPG genres. I figure that I will without a doubt catch up on the story before the Dawntrail head start begins at the end of the month. I am now actually finally in the mood for it I think.

Speaking of Pandaria Remix, I’ve now dinged level 70 on my Tauren Paladin over on Drenden. I’ve tanked a few world bosses at this point but have not gone so far as to tank any of the raids. I feel pretty weak at only having around 500k hitpoints. I still have a number of gear slots that I have not upgraded to the maximum dropped item level and in theory, I should probably do some more questing in order to get some more raw stats on my cloak. I really feel like blizzard screwed up on the cloak because they should have made the stats account-wide. It would have felt significantly better to play alts if everything you played was contributing to the same nonsense stat bomb.

I’ve also created a Viera Hunter over on Eonar that I am now starting to level. I named the default Cobra pet that you get “Smooples” but I think I am going to have to venture forth into the Isle of Giants and tame me some cool Dinosaurs soon. I’ve not had much desire to grind out bronze for the purpose of gearing, but I am enjoying leveling alts which in itself creates a large stockpile of bronze. At this point I am pretty close to buying most of the mounts, and then will start handpicking my way through the cosmetic gear sets that I want to collect. The only thing that I do not really care about in the least are the toys. Toys are one of those things that I completely forget exists in the game 99.9% of the time. However, I did see one that I would love to have so I need to figure out where it comes from… essentially it was a portable ocean allowing you to fish from anywhere.

The new summer-themed mounts and cosmetics are up on the tender store… and I am honestly not sure how I feel about them. Firstly I am throwing some side eye at this mount because it feels pretty much exactly like my memories of a mount that was available in Wildstar. I am weirdly against Fantasy characters wearing “real world” gear. Like Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV have a bunch of non-adventurer citywear and it sort of bugs me anytime I encounter someone wearing it. The other day I saw a Charr in a T-shirt and Cargo shorts and it sort of broke my brain. I don’t talk about it much because I don’t want to harsh anyone else’s fun… but I sort of hate the Fortniteification of World of Warcraft at times. I get that the Korean P2W MMORPGs did it first… but Fortnite was really the game that popularized in the West the “anything goes” style of cramming everything into a single game. Side note that is the preview on the Tender store… I did not buy the mount and likely will never buy it. It just is not my vibe.

Now that my brain seems to have had its switch flipped… I also want to get back into Guild Wars 2 and finish out the Secrets of the Obscure content. I’ve not unlocked Inner Nayos but I think I am getting pretty close to doing so. Hopefully, your week is amazing. We have a bunch of thunderstorms over the next few days but hopefully, they will not produce “twisty weather”.

AggroChat #479 – Froggers

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Featuring:  Ammosart, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! Apologies for another missed show last week but Bel very narrowly missed some Twisty Weather. This week we start off the show with a discussion of Grace’s recent experiences in Diablo IV and how the game has changed for the better. From there we talk about Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail and how a number of us are on the fence about playing it.  Ammo shares her thoughts about the expansion.  Bel talks about his recent experience with Pandaria Remix and how it has jarred him out of his stupor when it comes to forming groups and playing with other human beings.  Bel also shares some of the recent happenings with the Frogger incident.  Tam discusses his dive into Warhammer Orks and how they are maybe the best that game has to offer in the vibes department.  We close out the show with some discussion about a weirdly good Random PVP mode in AFK Journey.

Topics Discussed:

  • Grace’s experiences with Diablo IV
  • AmmosArt Explains FFXIV Dawntrail
  • World of Warcraft Pandaria Remix
    • The Frogger Incident
  • Orks are the best of Warhammer
  • Random PVP Mode in AFK Journey

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Siege and Throne Down

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It is no longer morning… and honestly, I have no clue why I have struggled to get blog posts out for the last few days. Whatever the case I had a bit of a lucky streak last night. After being largely unable to get a spot in either a Siege of Orgrimmar or Throne of Thunder raid for the last few evenings, I managed to knock both out in relatively short order. I am not sure if getting some jewelry pieces knocked out and bumping up my gear by a single level made my item level look more appealing… or if I just happened to luck into a more open-minded group. In both cases thought I joined when there were very few party members and maybe have just lucked into strong teams. Siege went pretty much flawlessly and I was surprised by just how fast the entire run went.

Throne of Thunder felt a bit more challenging, namely, we struggled a bit with Dark Animus. This was mostly due to the fact that it was VERY hard not to kill everything at the same time and in doing so blow the entire raid up. We had to each choose a robot and solo it… until we finally got it down to a few robots and finally merged them into the big one. Damage never seemed to be an issue, but I did feel sorry a bit for the healers who had to keep up with us. Going through all of this has made me realize that Pandaria really did have a number of very solid raids in it. I think the only reason why it was ever remembered less than favorably is because of how long it was between Siege releasing and Warlords finally coming out.

At this point, I have every slot unlocked for all of my alts going forward, and I think I might be calling it good for this character. I can’t really see myself pouring the bronze into upgrading every slot, so it is likely that I will pop in each day, kill the world bosses, and do the daily quests. I’m already powerful enough to pretty much do anything I might want to do in the open world, but also feel like now is a good place to start tapering down my playtime on this character at least. Blizzard has come out and said that they do not plan on reducing the amount of gold required to upgrade characters all the way to the maximum, and I can’t see myself being willing to grind the 600k Bronze or so that are required to upgrade everything.

I’ve shifted focus over to my Drenden Tauren Paladin character and have been shocked at just how fast I am pushing through the levels. After finishing up Jade Foreset I am basically sitting at level 53. I can see finishing out the leveling process and then maybe doing dailies on two sets of characters to pick up the rest of the cosmetic gear that I want. At this point I have bought three pages worth of mounts and have a few more of those to pick up, and then I will start snagging gearsets that interest me.

I think the part that has been most interesting is all of the random groups I have gotten in, and how I am way more comfortable listing my own groups. I would love this newfound focus to carry over into other games, because I would absolutely love to start using my commander tag a bit more in Guild Wars 2. Weirdly I feel way more confident in leading things in World of Warcraft, because of the scope of what is needed is so much more clearly defined. I still think group gameplay in Guild Wars 2 is a confusing mess, and I am uncertain I will ever truly grasp organized play in that game. At a minimum I would love to be comfortable doing strikes and fractals and getting them started on my own, rather than waiting for that Unicorn of a group to form itself.

All of this return to Pandaria has made me realize how far I have fallen. I used to be the person who was comfortable enough in crafting my own groups that I wrote a guide on doing so. Now I just hate the thought of taking responsibility over others in a video game. I miss being that guy though who was willing to take on that mantle. Mostly because I miss having groups available on demand rather than waiting around for them to form. I need to work on that, and I need to get over my performance anxiety. I would ultimately be a happier person if I did so.

The Mixed Bag of Group Finder

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Good Morning Folks! I had a very weird evening in Pandara Remix. I’ve basically reached the place where I have only a handful of vectors to scale up my character. I could pour copious amounts of bronze into upgrades… but I would FAR rather have a fat stack of mounts than buy temporary power in a game mode that has a shelf life of 80 more days. This means that in order for me to fill out my character I am going to need to knock out some achievements. One requires me to do all of the Raids on Normal Mode… which admittedly feels like a bad call from Blizzard on this one. The other steps of this progress are governed by “Finder” tools, but this step requires you to wade knee-deep into the scary realm of the Group Finder.

Weirdly however this was for the most part smooth as heck for the first bit of my evening. I ran through Mogu’shan Vaults, Terrace of the Eternal Spring, and Heart of Fear and it was an extremely delightful proposition. The groups assembled quickly and the only time I took a death was a some point during Terrace where I pulled aggro on one of the trash mobs that a tank had not picked up yet. This success story however ground to a halt as soon as I started shopping for a group for Throne of Thunder or Siege of Orgrimmar. This is where the tropes I had feared were starting to come out… where group leaders were asking for unrealistic gear scores or were “full on DPS” and were looking for a “pumper” or “frogger” for their last slot. I could have shifted over and tanked but honestly, I don’t remember half of these fights anymore.

I spent about an hour applying for groups, joining groups that never went anywhere because they had no tanks or healers… and generally just flailing around in hopelessness. The only thing I can think is that my luck was so smooth in those first few groups because it was extremely early in the evening. The Sweaty McTryhards of the world had not woken up from their slumber and all that were available were us casual scrubs who go to bed at 9 pm. So tonight I am going to set my goal to attempt to get in a Throne or Siege group first thing and MAYBE get my way through both of them if I am lucky.

I know one of the things that currently makes my character look bad is that I don’t have my Rings or Necklace. Admittedly I need all of the raids to get the damned necklace but given that I did not start on day one and I am not as far along in this curve as some players… it does not really seem to matter. So when I could not get the raids rolling I decided to take a step back and chip away at my heroic dungeons. This is the point where I realized how much I have missed this. Heroic Dungeons were always super fun and something that you could smash mindlessly for fun and profit. I’ve missed this game mode being relevant. Mythics came along and largely destroyed any purpose for running Heroics but also made them a bit too sweaty to be truly enjoyable in mass quantities. I get that in their hunt for more competitive game modes they can attempt to monetize into an esport… Mythics made sense… but I still miss heroic smashy fun.

My goal tonight is to knock out the last two dungeons that I need and then start chipping away at the fat stack of scenarios that I need for that ring. Currently, I have only run two of these on Heroic mode and there are so many freaking Scenarios. This is honestly a game mode that I would love to see make a return because it allowed for something similar feeling to a Heroic Dungeon… but that had little to no mechanical requirements. It also served as a way to allow them to pour more story bits into the game which is always good. I feel like World Quest Chains probably replaced these, but does anyone pay attention to the story bits attempting to be told through those? Probably not. Anyways my focus right now is on completing out the missing gear slots, because this will also help any alts that I decide to run up during the event.

The last bit for today is that I am legitimately contemplating changing mains for War Within. Hume Belghast has had a good run and I still like the character quite a bit… but Dark Iron Dwarves. Dark Irons have been something that I have loved since Vanilla World of Warcraft and Blackrock Depths in its original weird twisting form is probably my favorite dungeon. I loved that there was this entire Dark Iron City down there and I loved knowing my way around it. I also kind of love that they have a racial teleport around the world via Mole Machine. I am just having way more fun with this character than I expected given it was only ever intended to be something throwaway for the event.

Anyways! I hope you are having a wonderful week. Are you playing Pandaria Remix or PMIX as I have taken to mentally calling it? What are you playing? Drop me a line below.