World of Warcraft Archives - Page 84 of 109

Dark Portal Closes

September 7, 2014 by Belghast

Larva and Whales

Last night we recorded our 21st episode of AggroChat, and it was a pretty enjoyable time. I was joined by the original cast of Ashgar, Rae and Kodra. This issue was more defined by what we didn’t want to talk about than what we actually wanted to talk about. A few of us wanted to avoid the gamersgate debacle at all costs, and overall I think we did a fine job of doing just that. The result was a very organic discussion that started with talking about what we had been playing, and ended with us delving into various items. Who needs show notes right?

I named the episode larva and whales because Kodra has been playing this super complicated puzzle game called English Country Tune. So far I have yet to figure out why exactly it is called English Country Tune, because it seems to be mostly about moving blocks around… some of which are called Larva for no apparent reason, and others are called Whales for similar lack of reasons. When I was listening to the recording, the whole discussion just seemed ridiculous.. and I figured that had to be our title. Later on we got into a discussion of the Wildstar server mergers and how our opinions might have changed a bit on the mega server concept after getting into Cactuar in Final Fantasy XIV.

Dark Portal Closes

It is a rather dramatic subheading for what in truth is not a terribly dramatic act. Yesterday morning while writing my blog post, I ended up talking myself into cancelling my World of Warcraft account. In a way I guess it was writing about the Nightmare Tide expansion in Rift, that made me realize just how not interested I am in anything to do with Warlords of Draenor. There have been a few times over the years when I have cancelled World of Warcraft, and in almost all of them it was the result of some negative reaction to the game. It wasn’t providing me this or that, or I was frustrated with these changes… or more often than not the lack of changes. This time around I feel completely apathetic about the future of this game. I have friends that work on it, and lots of blogger and gamer friends who are still devoted to it, so I hope it does extremely well and provides them a fun environment to run around in. I think it still provides lots of good things for the faithful, but at this point I have just lost the desire to be in Azeroth.

I think the biggest evidence of my need to just close things down is the fact that I have not played the game since April or maybe even earlier than that. I have kept my account active for one reason and one reason alone… I was wearing the Guild master title in the guild I started back in 2004. The only times I would actually log in, were to throw out an invite to someone who was wanting to check out the game. It felt frustrating to have a game I was not playing at all slowly bleeding money out of my accounts each month. Similarly I have come to the realization of just how much the game has changed, not in the content or the client… but in the community. Playing on the Cactuar server in Final Fantasy XIV has made me realize what I missed about Argent Dawn. The experience in Final Fantasy is much like it was in the early days of that server. Coming back each time seemed to remind me just how many people that I once cared about were no longer playing the game.

Similarly I came to the realization that I no longer need World of Warcraft as a $15 a month chat client. The folks that really matter to me I have contact with through social media, instant message, email or even the battle.net client. So I no longer have to rely on World of Warcraft to help glue together bits and pieces of my world. I realize the surest way to return to WoW is to claim you are never returning to WoW. I can’t make such a claim, but it does feel like it is over now. I am leaving not because I am mad at the game, or that I am disappointed by the game… I am leaving because I feel no desire to play the game. After months of having access to the Warlords of Draenor alpha, I find that I have maybe played the game a grand total of six hours. I hope it will be a rousing success, and they already have my money… but I won’t be crossing through the dark portal. At the end of November, my Dark Portal is closing and likely for good.

Fun with Malboros

If you ask a Final Fantasy fan what their most dreaded encounter is, I would imagine that Malboros rank pretty high up the list, more than likely directly below Tonberries. The constant fear of not being able to move out of the “bad breath” attack makes fighting them super frustrating. The Final Fantasy XIV version is every bit as terrifying as the worst versions in any of the console games, and in their infinite wisdom the developers of 14 decided to create a dungeon almost entirely devoted to them. Last night I got to tank Aurum Vale for my good friend Thalen who is slowly creeping up on 50. This dungeon is needed as part of the promotion system for your grand company, and it unlocks access to the highest rank stuff, so as a result we end up periodically running it for the up and comers.

I actually thought the dungeon was nowhere near as bad as I remembered it. It might be that we all greatly outgear the dungeon, but in truth that shouldn’t factor too heavily since Aurum Vale is the last of the dungeons that mentors you down. For the level 50 players this means a frustrating experience of losing all of the stuff you got when you dinged 50, as the dungeon mentors you down to level 49 exactly. The biggest frustration with this is the fact that I lose Infuriate the ability that gives me a 5 stack of rage on demand. It is basically my steel cyclone on demand button, as that is one of the best ways to get threat on all of the things quickly. In spite of these frustrations I had a really good time. I have to say I actually enjoy tanking the lower level instances for guildies as they need them.

#FFXIV #WoW #AggroChat

Finally Turquoise

September 6, 2014 by Belghast

A Stronger Message

Yesterday various things happened, and it left me feeling like I needed to present a slightly stronger message about my feelings regarding issues. I still stand by my statement earlier in the week that everyone simply needs to be excellent to one another, and that would go a long ways in fixing issues. Since then some things have happened and I feel like I need to make a blanket statement about a few things. First off I support equality and diversity in gaming and in pretty much everything else in life. I tend to think of myself as a Humanist, and I would like to think that I give everyone out there an equal shake. I believe human beings are infinitely wonderful things, and that we should treat each other with respect.

Similarly I like that gaming is slowly becoming a more inclusive place. I am almost 40 years old at this point, and I’ve watched gaming come in and out of acceptance several times and I figure with the influx of mobile devices, it isn’t much more different than every family owning an Atari 2600 or a Nintendo Entertainment System. Gaming has no less meaning today than it did when those events happened. So I feel like there is room in gaming for anyone who cares to pick up a game and play it. As such I totally support all sorts of games, even the games that folks have been calling “non-games” like Gone Home an Depression Quest. I come from an era when games didn’t have graphics, so I don’t see something like Depression Quest being all that different from a text based adventure game like Zork, and without it… and MUDs you all would not have the games that you likely love today.

Finally I feel like this most recent controversy is a deeply confused situation. I feel like there are most definitely people who in earnest believe that this is a fight about journalistic integrity. The problem is there is so much *ism being thrown into the discussion by folks supposedly supporting the cause that any sane and cogent discussion gets pushed out. So far the best run down of the entire issue is in this topic, where someone interviewed a bunch of members of the movement trying to find a thread of commonality. I highly suggest you give it a read, because I found it informative and coming out of it I have a better understanding of the intent. The problem is based on a huge informational dump that came out today… the noble members of this movement apparently were in fact being played by the very same folks they claimed not to support. It seems as though the woman for whom their outrage started this entire thing, really was a Social Justice Rogue… and I use that term with ultimate respect in what she managed to pull off.

#IStandWithGanondorf

Finally Turquoise

Now that I got my statement out of the way, and feel that I have underlined and bolded my views on the situation. On to really important things like the fact that I finally… after spending like 60k buying fruit and then growing my own batch and using almost all of it… managed to get to Turquoise. I have to say it is absolutely glorious to behold, and now I just need to either farm Leviathan for a barb and collect all the mats to get the Tidal Barding crafted… or hope the market prices go down to a place where I can afford to buy it. It does make me exceedingly happy to scamper about on the mount while grinding FATEs for my atma bits. At this point I have three more zones left: Middle La Noscea, East Shroud, and North Shroud.

The method that finally managed to get me there was in fact the spreadsheet. The problem is the method is not infallible. I think this is in part due to the fact that you get slightly randomized bits of color per fruit fed. So instead of hitting Turquoise green on the first try I hit Apple Green. I used the sheet to figure out the colors I needed to add to that to get to Turquoise and then BAM! I finally worked. Generally speaking there will be a 2-4 fruit spread where the sheet will “guess” that you will arrive at the color you want. Initially I was feeding the bare minimum to hit the color, but it seems safer to overfeed a fruit to hit more in the middle of that range. If you don’t play FFXIV and the chocobo dyeing game… this all sounds like madness… and more often than not it is. I hit my goal color and am supremely happy for the time being.

Nightmare Tides

I have not really played much rift for the better part of a year now, but once again it is expansion time and I find myself eyeing the game. Storm Legion more or less was a bust for me. It featured a couple of extremely interesting early zones, and a whole slew of extremely grindy later zones. I realize this is odd to hear me complaining about grinding when I am so happily grinding away for an Atma weapon. The problem with Storm Legion however is it felt much like the Veteran ranks in Elder Scrolls Online feel… grinding without purpose and progress. It took an immense amount of time to push through the levels from around 56 to 60, and while I have made it through on two characters… I have lacked the drive to do it again on either my Cleric or my Mage. This expansion however drops the 10 level grind to a 5 level one, and I am hoping that it becomes more manageable. I know I will likely be playing this, as I am far more interested in it than I am say Warlords of Draenor.

I don’t really plan on having a big rallying cry to get folks into the game. Quite honestly I would prefer if everyone stuck in Final Fantasy XIV and playing it happily. I want to stay playing FFXIV regardless of away missions out into Destiny or even Rift. I am of the opinion that had I not worn myself out doing NaNoWriMo I likely would not have left Final Fantasy XIV in the first place, and never ventured back into World of Warcraft. That might just be my brain revising the facts of the time, but it seems reasonable. I remember very much being unable to get into the game after a night of writing hard and fast to hit the goals. Anyways in any case… I would prefer Final Fantasy XIV to be my base of operations, and not Rift. That is not to say however that I am not intrigued by the content. I still have a whole bundle of good feelings about the game and the company behind it. I guess time will tell if I plunk down the money to play it, but I feel like October 8th the announced release date will be here before we know it. Also I feel like it is pretty damned brave to be releasing against the Warlords juggernaut.

#Rift #FFXIV

Change is Scary

August 19, 2014 by Belghast

Gatekeeping a Hobby

Yesterday was one of those strange days where a lot of people were talking about the same ideas. I was not privy to the original source that sparked the discussion, but several of my friends over twitter were talking about the definition of a “real gamer”. It seems that someone was spouting off in their lack of knowledge that tablet and mobile gamers were in some way lesser gamers than the those on the console or PC. This once again gets back to the definition of what exactly a gamer is. Over on the Moderate Peril blog he questioned exactly why we need a label at all. In other hobbies, you don’t see the attempt to exclude people the way that we do within gaming.

I am very much one of those people that wants to assemble as many awesome people from as many different points of view around me as I can. As a result I am always open to new interpretations of what exactly gaming is. While I am not a huge fan of mobile and tablet gaming, just because the types of games I enjoy playing do not translate well without physical controls… that doesn’t mean there are not actual gamers there as well. If you boot up bejeweled while waiting on a bus, you are just as much of a gamer as someone who camps a rare spawn for 20 hours. There have been times in the past that I found mobile gaming to be lacking, but at this point there are tons of really detailed games that you simply cannot get on any other platform.

After seeing Hearthstone on a tablet for example, I feel like any other platform is somehow lesser because of just how cleanly it works there. After playing Carcassonne on my phone, it felt so natural and perfect to be playing a turn based board game that way. The big area that I am seeing taking over the mobile markets is the various kinds of simulation games. While it started out with things like Tiny Tower, it has involved into extremely detailed and lengthy games. Similarly I can see a lot of role-playing games flourishing on the mobile markets. All of these things are real games, played by real gamers. Shouldn’t we be including everyone in our big happy family instead of trying to exclude them?

Change is Scary

The cynic in me wants to think that the exclusion comes from a form of gaming Hipsterism. The realist in me however sees that it is pure and simple fear. Change is a scary thing, and we get rooted in our own inertia of the way we think things ought to be. This is the gaming equivalent of “I walked to school uphill both directions and I liked it”. In order to stay a vibrant and interesting market it needs to adapt to trends. While I deeply love the Fallout series for example, I don’t expect every game to be the Fallout series. Additionally while I have certain things that I like to play, it is perfectly okay that things exist that I don’t want to play. Guild Wars 2 has become somewhat of a whipping boy for me over the years as a way of explaining what I don’t want to play. That said I love that it exists because it makes a large number of my friends excited and happy to be playing it.

Expecting everything to be custom tailored for you is the surest way to end up angry in the end. It is like walking into a store and complaining that a red shirt isn’t blue enough for you. If you don’t want to wear a red shirt, don’t buy a red shirt and then expect it to change into the color you want it to be. If you are like me and don’t like sports games… simply ignore the fact that the sports games exist and move on with your life. If you want to spend your nights playing nothing but Japanese Role-Playing games then do that with your free time, but realize that there is still a lot of room for games in even that niche that you may not like. As the video states… it is perfectly okay to not like things, but don’t be a dick about the things you don’t like. There should always be room in our community for folks that don’t look, think, act or experience things in the same way as we do.

Harder Isn’t Better

Similar to all of the above, there was a second topic floating around that Liore specifically wrote about. I guess the old argument had resurfaced that you aren’t a “real gamer” unless you are always playing everything on the hardest settings. For starters I don’t even know what a “real gamer” is, because if you are playing games of any sort you are a gamer. There is no sign that says you must be this tall to ride this ride. Now granted it is perfectly okay for there to be skill checks in order to unlock certain things. These give us challenge and something to push for. That said when a person accomplishes said skill check, it does not immediately make them a better person than someone who didn’t. I find it completely valid that some content be gated behind these skill check mechanics, but the sort of elitism and classism that surrounds them needs to die in a fire.

Similarly playing something on hard mode does not immediately make you a better person. I personally mostly play games on medium to easy mode depending on what exactly I want from an experience. More often than not I am playing a specific game because I want to experience the story, and while I enjoy the moment to moment game play I am not there because I want the rush of excitement from being able to twitch my controls at exactly the right moment over and over enough times to unlock a special achievement. I just want to see the story through the point of view of the experiences of my character. In these cases I absolutely play on easy mode, and I personally love it when a game is like Wolfenstein New Order and allows me to drop the difficulty on the fly in the middle of a game session if I encounter a roadblock.

“Twitch moments” are absolutely the number one thing that kills my gaming experience. When I encounter a moment that is significantly harder than the rest of the game play surrounding it, that is often a roadblock that keeps me from completing the game. In an MMO or a Role-Playing game I can wander about and level up or get significantly better gear to mitigate the difficulty. In most single player games however I simply have to have faster reflexes. While I realize I can train myself to have faster reflexes, years of not playing twitch games have caused me to dull significantly. The problem is… most games are not worthy the time commitment it would take to improve. I don’t generally find achievement getting fun, nor do I find repeating the same mission over and over until I finally grasp it. One of two things happens, either I lower the difficulty and beat it… or I simply stop playing the game likely to never return to it.

So I ask you the question, am I no longer a gamer because I do this? No and I feel like you would tend to agree or you wouldn’t be wasting your time reading my blog on a regular basis. I am a gamer because I game, not because I live up to some artificial bar set by someone being elitist and exclusionary. Gaming is about having fun, and if in the course of whatever you choose to do you are enjoying yourself… then mission accomplished. While gaming is about the journey and not necessarily about the destination… anything that stalls you out along the path is a bad thing. This is why I love mechanics like the Echo system in Final Fantasy XIV and the system that World of Warcraft has. Where over a series of wipes you are slowly buffed until you can defeat the content, because it maintains bragging rights for the folks who don’t need the buff… but still allows things to be fully accessible by anyone else. At the end of the day I am an easy mode gamer… deal with it.

Play What You Love

August 17, 2014 by Belghast

AggroChat Episode 18

This week on AggroChat I am joined by regular hosts Rae, Ashgar and Tam which means we are unfortunately without a Kodra this weekend. He is off enjoying the sights, sounds and gaming opportunities of GenCon. I swear one of these years I want to go to this, because it has been like the pinnacle of all gaming shows in my head since I was a youngin reading Dragon magazine. I realize that in reality it is a fair bit smaller than likely even PaxSouth that I will be going to in January, but there is just something extra epic about GenCon. In honor of this convention we talk at length about the latest rendition of Dungeons and Dragons… the fabled Fifth Edition and why you should be excited for it. Wizards of the Coast at this point pretty much knows that they made some serious mistakes with fourth edition, allowing for the meteoric rise of Pathfinder. In 5th Edition it feels like they are trying to pay for the sins of the past with awesome.

In addition to D&D 5th, it was a pretty significant week in gaming in that GamesCom, the Blizzard Warlords announcement and SOE Live were going as well as an event for EVE and SWTOR. I talk about the things that really stuck out to me from the GamesCom feed, including the PS4 Shareplay system and the controversy over Tomb Raider exclusivity. We talk about the World of Warcraft Warlords launch announcement and the subsequent trailer, and the general feeling of “blah” we seem to have towards it. Finally we talk about Everquest Next and that it does in fact seem to be a game they are actually working on and not just vaporware. Additionally we talk about the upcoming changes in Landmark, and how it is a step in the right direction but not enough to get Ashgar interested again. It is a pretty packed show so hopefully you will tune in.

Play What You Love

Since coming back to Final Fantasy XIV and the release of the 14 day trial program, I have had a number of friends give it a shot. A good number of them have gone ahead purchasing and subscribing to the game and this is awesome. However for a handful of players it just didn’t click for whatever reason and they sent me heartfelt apologies for not being able to get into the game. This is perfectly natural, not all games are for all people… and in the current gaming climate we are in there is more diversity than ever, so there really is no excuse to play something you don’t enjoy. So I feel like each of us owes it to ourselves to play whatever it is that we love, and never apologize for doing it. Life is too short to spend time playing something you just don’t enjoy for some reason.

Right now I am enjoying the hell out of Final Fantasy XIV, and I feel like this is a game I could settle down in. However if I reach a point where I am not enjoying it any longer, you can bet I will move on to whatever seems to “feel good” to play at the time. If you stick around and play a game you just aren’t enjoying it only really leads to you either getting completely burnt out, or extremely bitter about the fact that your friends are forcing you to play something you hate. If you allow yourself to glide along through a whole bunch of different fun experiences… I feel like we all end up happier as a result. So please if you try this game or any other and you really don’t enjoy it… go play something else. All you ever have to tell me is that it just “wasn’t for you” and I will completely understand.

Blaugust Prompts

I have been rather slack with a lot of the Blaugust related things, but the biggest of these is my original intent to collect a bunch of writing prompts. While the threat on the forum has a ton of these already I still need to add a bunch more. So today here goes a few related to this weeks podcast and this weekend post.

What game do you love that none of your friends seem to enjoy? Is there a game that you keep returning to but wish your friends were playing along with you?
For me GenCon is this fabled event, what is yours? What is the event that you would love to attend but have never had the opportunity to do so for whatever reason.
What makes a good community? What aspects of a game or social community do you enjoy, and what aspects detract from it?

I am extremely proud of all the bloggers who are participating daily in the Blaugust event. Thanks for making this a truly awesome month.

#FFXIV #AggroChat #Blaugust