8/27/04
Today World of Warcraft officially launches and I'm super pumped up. I played a good portion of the beta and although the cartoony graphics are taking a bit of getting used to, the sound design is top notch and the game play has much smoother combat than Dark Age of Camelot. Like DAoC, there's a heavy PvP element, but there's only two factions instead of three: "Horde" and "Alliance". I think PvP only applies when you're on certain servers or in certain "PvP-enabled zones", called "Contested Regions".
Like DAoC, classes are locked to races and not every class can be played by every faction. Alliance, for example, have paladins (which are exactly what they sound like) and the Horde have "shaman", which are OP casters they do animal-totem stuff, I think. (I played an Alliance paladin exclusively in the beta). Alliance races are your standard D&D PC races: elves, dwarves, gnomes, and humans. Horde gets monster races: orcs, trolls, undead, and minotaurs.
The only thing I'm not too keen on (aside from the fact they stole the mini-map in the corner from Asheron's Call), is that there's a lot of forced grouping. You can't solo dungeons AT ALL. The terrain mobs are your usual "don't try to fight more than one at a time" and if you pull more than that, or if they are higher level, you'd better run or have some sort of skill that lets you feign death or something. If you die, you don't lose items or xp, which is weird, but I can see how they are probably trying to appeal to casual gamers. Your equipment does get damaged over time or when you die, so having to find a blacksmith to repair every so often is necessary and a little expensive.
Skills themselves are plentiful and really diverse. Like most other MMOs, skills are bought at trainers and level up the more you use them. Once you reach a certain level you start getting "Talent Points", which can be used to diversify your character. Sort of. A lot of the talents are a little underwhelming, like "+1% chance to hit", but others let you use new types of weapons or give you skills/spells to put on your limited power bar.
I haven't made up my mind on what class to play, but I'm leaning to either "mage" (which is a total glass cannon) or "hunter", which is like a mage, but with a pet. Hunters can use any weapon, although most use guns (!) or bows and let the pet handle melee. A dwarf with a gun appeals on a primal level, plus it looked really cool in the trailer video. Otherwise, it's a bit fiddly with inventory management. Mages require some spell components (but a LOT less than Asheron's Call), but hunters need to carry ammo (no shock there) to the point where they have to give up one bag slot for carrying it. Plus, you have to carry food for your pet to keep them happy (and effective). Each pet you can tame has its own strengths and weaknesses, and its own selective diet.
Overall, it's really fun, even if there are tons of bugs. Highly recommend.
Monday, August 26, 2019
Monday, August 19, 2019
An Offhand Weekend Wrap-up
Friday night came and went with a short trip into heroic Eternal Palace. We downed two bosses and luck finally found fortune by granting me a 430 dagger-- a nice uplift over my current 415 staff. Unfortunately, I didn't have an offhand, so equipping it would drop my effectiveness level by approximately one Strev. Weapons and offhands are difficult this patch. Basically, we can't craft anything higher than 370 and pvp rewards are on a schedule. You can't just farm conquest/valor or whatever and buy what you want. Terrible design, but it keeps people poking at the Skinner box.
Saturday night I had a work affair to attend, so I wouldn't have an opportunity to continue the push (they downed the 3rd boss for the first time without me then wiped 7 times on Lady Ashvane before calling it quits), so I pugged normal raids.
I want you to picture this. An undergeared warlock who had never been through LFR organizing 30 people who had signed up to "normal EP-- all are welcome". There's no voice chat and he has given assist to literally everyone so they can mark what they need to. We wiped 4 times on the trash leading up to the first boss. On the boss itself only half the people understood the fight and people were randomly placing and removing markers. It was, and I make no exaggeration to the claim, as if the Trade Channel and Barrens Chat had an unholy love child and led it through a dungeon. After the third wipe with 0 progress, one DK said "screw this. I'm going to form my OWN raid. I know what I'm doing. Drop and join." So I did.
Long story short: without voice and with competent leadership and some selectivity of the applicants, the Rando Brigade downed 5 bosses with no more than 3 wipes total. I didn't get an offhand, but I was able to funnel a couple of my drops to people who needed them.
I then ran the raid again through LFR because even a crappy version is better than nothing and hey, it might titanforge or something. No love there either.
That left mythics. Mythics have particularly bad affixes this week-- when things die they "burst" giving players stacking DoTs doing a % of their health per stack, bosses are buffer, and there was some other nasty at the upper levels that made bursting a nightmare. A scan through the dungeon journal showed 4 dungeons have the potential of rewarding an offhand. I picked one (A troll jungle themed one with dinosaurs and suffering) and spammed it. I figured that even if I wasn't great at the beginning, if I kept running the same bosses, I'd get GOOD at it. (For the record, this strat worked.) If it was a level +5 or below, I applied for it and got so. many. rejections. Either beefier people were applying or they knew I was secretly terrible at first. All total I ran this 5 times before my offhand dropped from the end chest. Happy day!
Otherwise, I bought a small chest upgrade from the azurite vendor, hit level 62 with my necklace (we have people with 64 in the guild…yeesh), and got a new trinket from my raiding exploits. My arbitrary strength level is now "426", so yay!
Finally, I clawed my way past 570k gold, then spent 100 of it on more pets. (ALL! THE! PETS!) My menagerie shall be glorious!
Saturday night I had a work affair to attend, so I wouldn't have an opportunity to continue the push (they downed the 3rd boss for the first time without me then wiped 7 times on Lady Ashvane before calling it quits), so I pugged normal raids.
I want you to picture this. An undergeared warlock who had never been through LFR organizing 30 people who had signed up to "normal EP-- all are welcome". There's no voice chat and he has given assist to literally everyone so they can mark what they need to. We wiped 4 times on the trash leading up to the first boss. On the boss itself only half the people understood the fight and people were randomly placing and removing markers. It was, and I make no exaggeration to the claim, as if the Trade Channel and Barrens Chat had an unholy love child and led it through a dungeon. After the third wipe with 0 progress, one DK said "screw this. I'm going to form my OWN raid. I know what I'm doing. Drop and join." So I did.
Long story short: without voice and with competent leadership and some selectivity of the applicants, the Rando Brigade downed 5 bosses with no more than 3 wipes total. I didn't get an offhand, but I was able to funnel a couple of my drops to people who needed them.
I then ran the raid again through LFR because even a crappy version is better than nothing and hey, it might titanforge or something. No love there either.
That left mythics. Mythics have particularly bad affixes this week-- when things die they "burst" giving players stacking DoTs doing a % of their health per stack, bosses are buffer, and there was some other nasty at the upper levels that made bursting a nightmare. A scan through the dungeon journal showed 4 dungeons have the potential of rewarding an offhand. I picked one (A troll jungle themed one with dinosaurs and suffering) and spammed it. I figured that even if I wasn't great at the beginning, if I kept running the same bosses, I'd get GOOD at it. (For the record, this strat worked.) If it was a level +5 or below, I applied for it and got so. many. rejections. Either beefier people were applying or they knew I was secretly terrible at first. All total I ran this 5 times before my offhand dropped from the end chest. Happy day!
Otherwise, I bought a small chest upgrade from the azurite vendor, hit level 62 with my necklace (we have people with 64 in the guild…yeesh), and got a new trinket from my raiding exploits. My arbitrary strength level is now "426", so yay!
Finally, I clawed my way past 570k gold, then spent 100 of it on more pets. (ALL! THE! PETS!) My menagerie shall be glorious!
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Ghost Moose
Every now then (read: routinely) I get sidetracked. I start off with a perfectly reasonable plan for an evening such as "after running a few pet battles, make and disenchant a couple thousand bracers in between epic battlegrounds" and then wind up spending several hours running around the Broken Isles with a pickaxe in hand.
Why? Ghost Moose. I found out about this spectral flying mount, properly called "Spirit of Eche'ro" from guild mates a week ago and had. to. have. it. It is awarded by completing a Legion Archaeology quest that's only available for a couple of weeks twice a year. Basically, you run around Highmountain getting bonus "moose bones" from dig sites and witness a ritual when turning them in. So why doesn't everyone have ghost moose?
First, in true MMO capacity, it takes 600 bones to turn in the quest and you only get 0-2 per successful dig. You have a random chance of spawning an angered spirit than may drop an extra dozen, but those are infrequent at best. Second, very few people actually enjoy Archaeology. I myself am not a huge fan. I don't find the hunt and seek particularly interesting nor rewarding and so haven't poked around with it in many years. Finally, it's old content in a previous expansion. Put it all together and you have very few people going back to check out the Legion archaeology weekly quests that require hours of painful grinding. You'd have to be some weird, obsessive nut to do something like that. *cough*
The next question is, of course: how long did it take you? Surprisingly, only about an hour forty five total of absolutely non-stop running sites. Having access to flying, short range teleportation, and the ability to kill all wildlife in a 10 yard radius with a single keystroke cut down on the grinding time immensely. Every now and then I ran across another hunter and we'd yell out our current "to go" counts and give each other words of encouragement. Wound up chatting with a similarly single-minded priestess who refused to go to bed no matter how long it took her. (She ran out of time on the quest a couple of years ago and didn't trust the 13 day timer she saw on her UI) She also has an early day job, so I hope she got some sleep-- she had earned maybe 50 bones to my 200. I 'll send her a mail tonight to see how that went.
So, how does the mount itself look? Beautiful. I have a toy that makes me appear ghostlike as well. If I can ever put together a Mountie-type mog, I'll look like the ghost of Canadian pride itself.
For now though…
GHOOOOOOOOOOST MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE...
Figure 1: Low-res Archival Stock Footage courtesy of the BBC
Why? Ghost Moose. I found out about this spectral flying mount, properly called "Spirit of Eche'ro" from guild mates a week ago and had. to. have. it. It is awarded by completing a Legion Archaeology quest that's only available for a couple of weeks twice a year. Basically, you run around Highmountain getting bonus "moose bones" from dig sites and witness a ritual when turning them in. So why doesn't everyone have ghost moose?
First, in true MMO capacity, it takes 600 bones to turn in the quest and you only get 0-2 per successful dig. You have a random chance of spawning an angered spirit than may drop an extra dozen, but those are infrequent at best. Second, very few people actually enjoy Archaeology. I myself am not a huge fan. I don't find the hunt and seek particularly interesting nor rewarding and so haven't poked around with it in many years. Finally, it's old content in a previous expansion. Put it all together and you have very few people going back to check out the Legion archaeology weekly quests that require hours of painful grinding. You'd have to be some weird, obsessive nut to do something like that. *cough*
The next question is, of course: how long did it take you? Surprisingly, only about an hour forty five total of absolutely non-stop running sites. Having access to flying, short range teleportation, and the ability to kill all wildlife in a 10 yard radius with a single keystroke cut down on the grinding time immensely. Every now and then I ran across another hunter and we'd yell out our current "to go" counts and give each other words of encouragement. Wound up chatting with a similarly single-minded priestess who refused to go to bed no matter how long it took her. (She ran out of time on the quest a couple of years ago and didn't trust the 13 day timer she saw on her UI) She also has an early day job, so I hope she got some sleep-- she had earned maybe 50 bones to my 200. I 'll send her a mail tonight to see how that went.
So, how does the mount itself look? Beautiful. I have a toy that makes me appear ghostlike as well. If I can ever put together a Mountie-type mog, I'll look like the ghost of Canadian pride itself.
For now though…
GHOOOOOOOOOOST MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE...
Figure 1: Low-res Archival Stock Footage courtesy of the BBC
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
In the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle
On Tuesdays, the guild hosts 1-2 hour RP/social gatherings/character building workshops for interested people and hosted by our RP-enthusiast officer, Ellendar. This week's took the form of a beachside luau along the sandy shores of tropical Stranglethorn Vale, just north of Booty Bay. I rather enjoy these as they provide a nice change of pace from my usual somewhat obsessively maniacal "must get all the pets, power, and gold" mentality. I also like seeing how well I can dress to fit a theme. I think I nailed the Jungle Explorer-ready-to-party vibe fairly well. [insert discord pic here]
Between tropical drinks and roasted meat, we danced around the bonfires and had a grand ol' time. Fishing and trivia contests rounded out the festivities and we delved into the rich lore behind STV, combining both fact and fancy as it came to the native troll and pirate populace. I think all total we had 12-14 people show up, which is a pretty typical turnout for a niche event. It's definitely a shift from my previous guild when we'd be lucky to have half that number online at any given time.
For my birthday I picked up Volumes 1-3 of Chronicles, which is an absolutely lovely hardbound series that codifies and explores every aspect of the history and lore behind Warcraft's universe, written by Chris Metzen, the former SVP of Story and Franchise Development, with quite delightful illustrations throughout. It is my sincere hope I'll be able to stop pet battling long enough to read them.
Between tropical drinks and roasted meat, we danced around the bonfires and had a grand ol' time. Fishing and trivia contests rounded out the festivities and we delved into the rich lore behind STV, combining both fact and fancy as it came to the native troll and pirate populace. I think all total we had 12-14 people show up, which is a pretty typical turnout for a niche event. It's definitely a shift from my previous guild when we'd be lucky to have half that number online at any given time.
For my birthday I picked up Volumes 1-3 of Chronicles, which is an absolutely lovely hardbound series that codifies and explores every aspect of the history and lore behind Warcraft's universe, written by Chris Metzen, the former SVP of Story and Franchise Development, with quite delightful illustrations throughout. It is my sincere hope I'll be able to stop pet battling long enough to read them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)