Although I enjoy when a game is carried by a well written character, I often relish the opportunity to design my own avatar, and forge my own way. This is often limited by current technology, so a lot of the 'fleshing out' process would have to happen in my head, when playing console games. With MMOs there's the added bonus of playing with others, so the 'fleshing out' process can be done outwardly. This is called Role Playing or RPing.
I love that my toons, the ones I come to care about, have dimensions. But I never RP. There are a few reasons why. One of the more poignant is some degree of shame, and fear of rejection. Given, the only MMO I've played with dedication is WoW, and the lore of this game is not that complicated, but I have not boned up on the lore anyhow. So I would be at a loss often, when RPing with other people. This disadvantage, coupled with the fact, that what I do in an MMO I don't feel is worthy of critique, positive or negative, as I do it exclusively for fun, is pretty much the main precedent for an inward RPing experience. Another reason is laziness. You can always go 'out of character', but I feel I would do it so often it would defeat the purpose. I have no stamina for making believe. My imagination gets bored easily, I would want to say. It wanders a lot.
Then there's the fact that some of my toons lose steam, as they might only be a part of my own inner self-image.
Jurakan was my first serious toon. My first level capped character. Jura was supposed to be an innocent and naive soldier of the light. Most of my toons were the result of a pairing when playing with my girlfriend. Jura was a first attempt, and I actually came to flesh him out a while after I had been playing. He was a pretty simple character, a goody two shoes. And this didn't satisfy my more visceral fantasies. It's not that he was a badly thought out character, but a bit juvenile.
My second SERIOUS toon was Felwenn. Felwenn was a rogue, and it took me a long long time for me to come to terms with this toon. I kinda struggled to fall in love with him. I do not know if it had to do with the class (Rogues as a class are hard to play, although as I've stated before, there is a certain flair to playing a rogue that lends dramatism)or if it had to do with the fact that at that point I was not very intrigued by night elves, but it was a bit uphill. In the end, I never deleted Felwenn because I got so far with him, but to this day...I feel I failed to breathe life to Felwenn. I've jumped back to him from time to time, and I can't come to terms with the fact that I want to like him as a character, but I never fleshed him out in my mind. Something didn't click. Later on I revisited making a rogue and I tried a human- I don't like human models, but I made an exception- which I promptly deleted and made a dwarf instead. For some reason, that stuck.
I then made Akarius and Mendrick. Mendrick took a while to get used to, and to this day, his usefulness precedes his preferential treatment, rather than his appeal as a character. I imagined a life before becoming a Death Knight, of being a paladin full of righteous fury and vengeance that met an untimely tragic demise, but this is SO trite, it detracts from my enjoyment, to be honest. He quested with a Shaman. They were a great pairing gameplay wise, but storywise, it didn't click that well, I felt. He's terribly fun to play, not fun to RP with.
I then made a night elf warrior, and it was a big hit, and it had to do with the fact that I made an unpopular class with the most unpopular race for that class. I feel I projected myself well enough that the toon to this day, as nerfed as warriors got, is one of the more fun toons that I've made. As a contrast to Jura, Akarius was kind of a dick though, he was not a do-gooder. He had no qualms with cruelty, so I got to tap into my dark side.
There are other aspects that I have been able to satisfy through other characters though, and I have come close to try and RP with other RPers. It happens more often than not when on my rogue, Sicari. And I feel I fleshed out that character in my mind as best I could, but there's always the embarassment factor. The 'what if' holding me back.
It's kind of embarassing to come clean about other instances of embarassment. So weird.
Oh well. I'm currently working on two more, a new paladin called Sigridus. Sigridus I'm fleshing out as a pious and religious man, practical, but moral to a fault. It's fun to play as that character because in real life I'm more in the morally ambiguous spectrum, I THINK? Hmmm. The other character is Maximilianus, a worgen druid. I'm still coming to terms how a werewolf was a druid. Or how a human, a posh human, was a druid that THEN became a werewolf? It's a bit overwrought, and it bothers me, but I am a sucker for lycanthropy and shapeshifting.
As I mentioned, my reluctance to RP has to do with my lack of knowledge of the lore, and my being a stickler for purity to a certain degree; I could not just make it up as I go...I would feel I need to commit to my character and his background, with all the racial and 'cultural' baggage that ensues. Perhaps with SWTOR I'll have the upper hand, and my girlfriend and I will be able to RP and speak in emoticons until our fingers bleed, hah!
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Druid tanking part deux
Well, I finally got to tank on a druid. Given, these experiences are definitely NOT representative of what will/could be. I mean, I just dinged 20 on the bear.
I ran two instances, Ragefire Chasm and Van Cleef...now rightly called Deadmines, as Van Cleef is not to be found in the Deadmines.
Ragefire is not a hard one, in fact, I have completed this with just a healer at level, when running it with the paladins. It is a bit of a joke, actually. This went fine. The group actually asked to keep going to get all the bosses within the instance. Interestingly enough, we had a level 20 hunter, who took aggro ever so often, but I was able to tank for, at level 15. Hah.
Deadmines was a bit more challenging, and aggro was a bit of an issue at times, but I must admit that we had no casualties, and our biggest hurdle was the healer's grid going bonkers. We decided that we should level a bit more before we continued instancing, so I could manage aggro better, and so I could be less squishy, as the healer, my significant other, was complaining how difficult it was.
Tanking on druids is weird. You have -
1. Auto attack (oddly enough, a must. You can crit at 310% with auto attack, so, a must)
2. Taunt (which I feel should have a shorter cooldown)
3. Bleed attack- forget the name.
4. Go to-aggro grab attack
5. Aoe debuff
That's as of now. I know that soon enough I'll get more stuff, but honestly, it's not that much. The cooldowns are long too, so very similarly to dk tanks pre- 4.0.1, you get a lot of dead time where you're just waiting for stuff coming out of cd.
Where the druid gets interesting is this- unlike pallies, they have few (so far, no) aoe abilities to speak of, and there is little to no hang time when you cast the ability, only the cooldown. So I ended up tab-cycling quite a bit. It felt very similar to Warrior tanking. Except warrior tanking is now plagued by a queue system for their abilities. I jumped on Akarius last night and tried pulling big groups, to see what it felt like. The ability queue is still there, but it doesn't feel as blatant as before.
But as of right now there's one BIIIIIG problem with my druid. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, BUT, I find myself without rage ALL THE TIME, a problem I do not have with the warrior. Maybe this will change as I gain more talents, or as I start critting more, but dangit, was it difficult.
Questing as a tank on a druid though, is...retardedly fun. Questing as a protadin prior to 4.0.1 was....idiotic. It took forever. Post 4.0.1, it's...idiotic. It doesn't seem fair to the rest of the specs, that a tank can do so much damage. Questing as a prot warrior is nifty: you are hard to kill, and you can zip around with charge and intercept, but stuff still takes time to kill. Questing on a DK...is...weird. They have some very interesting resources, and hardy, but they don't necessarily kill things fast enough to make the going faster.
On a druid though...imagine this: you approach 1 mob, you root it to the ground, approach as cat, start killing it FAST, it starts running away and brings 3 more mobs, you turn into a bear, start killing them FAST, they start hitting hard, you rejuv fast and pop back into bear, it goes the mob's way, you turn into a cheetah, and run away.
...It's like a tanking rogue. It's awesome. OH! Except rogues don't turn into mutated sea lions and swim faster. Never mind.
...Druids are OP. More on this class when I level it up. But man...so OP.
I ran two instances, Ragefire Chasm and Van Cleef...now rightly called Deadmines, as Van Cleef is not to be found in the Deadmines.
Ragefire is not a hard one, in fact, I have completed this with just a healer at level, when running it with the paladins. It is a bit of a joke, actually. This went fine. The group actually asked to keep going to get all the bosses within the instance. Interestingly enough, we had a level 20 hunter, who took aggro ever so often, but I was able to tank for, at level 15. Hah.
Deadmines was a bit more challenging, and aggro was a bit of an issue at times, but I must admit that we had no casualties, and our biggest hurdle was the healer's grid going bonkers. We decided that we should level a bit more before we continued instancing, so I could manage aggro better, and so I could be less squishy, as the healer, my significant other, was complaining how difficult it was.
Tanking on druids is weird. You have -
1. Auto attack (oddly enough, a must. You can crit at 310% with auto attack, so, a must)
2. Taunt (which I feel should have a shorter cooldown)
3. Bleed attack- forget the name.
4. Go to-aggro grab attack
5. Aoe debuff
That's as of now. I know that soon enough I'll get more stuff, but honestly, it's not that much. The cooldowns are long too, so very similarly to dk tanks pre- 4.0.1, you get a lot of dead time where you're just waiting for stuff coming out of cd.
Where the druid gets interesting is this- unlike pallies, they have few (so far, no) aoe abilities to speak of, and there is little to no hang time when you cast the ability, only the cooldown. So I ended up tab-cycling quite a bit. It felt very similar to Warrior tanking. Except warrior tanking is now plagued by a queue system for their abilities. I jumped on Akarius last night and tried pulling big groups, to see what it felt like. The ability queue is still there, but it doesn't feel as blatant as before.
But as of right now there's one BIIIIIG problem with my druid. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, BUT, I find myself without rage ALL THE TIME, a problem I do not have with the warrior. Maybe this will change as I gain more talents, or as I start critting more, but dangit, was it difficult.
Questing as a tank on a druid though, is...retardedly fun. Questing as a protadin prior to 4.0.1 was....idiotic. It took forever. Post 4.0.1, it's...idiotic. It doesn't seem fair to the rest of the specs, that a tank can do so much damage. Questing as a prot warrior is nifty: you are hard to kill, and you can zip around with charge and intercept, but stuff still takes time to kill. Questing on a DK...is...weird. They have some very interesting resources, and hardy, but they don't necessarily kill things fast enough to make the going faster.
On a druid though...imagine this: you approach 1 mob, you root it to the ground, approach as cat, start killing it FAST, it starts running away and brings 3 more mobs, you turn into a bear, start killing them FAST, they start hitting hard, you rejuv fast and pop back into bear, it goes the mob's way, you turn into a cheetah, and run away.
...It's like a tanking rogue. It's awesome. OH! Except rogues don't turn into mutated sea lions and swim faster. Never mind.
...Druids are OP. More on this class when I level it up. But man...so OP.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Druids part 1- Why not?
Tonight the expansion comes out, and in about 24 hours or so, I should have a druid made, unless something goes wrong with WoW or my internet. Jinx.
I've tried making a druid 3 times now. Twice as a night elf, once as a tauren. All of these were within the year, but not recent enough to benefit from the more recent patches.
There's some few things that have always bothered me about druids.
-The lack of shield. This also bothers me in DKs. Somehow, it always clicks in my mind that a rogue could somehow tank better than a DK. Because they...dodge more? I dunno. But the lack of shields on tanks always bothers me. If they ever took shields away from pallies, it would bother me too.
-The lack of plate. Leather doesn't seem to have as much armor....sure, bear form fixes that, but those two things...I dunno.
-Having to shapeshift. See, I like the idea of shapeshifting...for fun. Not for tanking. It feels....weird. It could be argued that stances are the same thing. But the stance doesn't really change your cosmetic make up...just your repertoire.
-The fact that druids were considered the easy, OP class, aside from paladins. And this held true up to recently. It seems that druid healing is no longer as OP as it used to be. Druid tanking was infamous for being a no-brainer, but also lackluster. I've been reading that where it used to be somewhat difficult to tank mobs with a bear, now it's doubly so. And this particular tidbit fuels my interest.
We'll see how it goes. Right now, I don't even have bear form yet, so I wouldn't even know where to begin, truth be told. We'll see indeed.
I've tried making a druid 3 times now. Twice as a night elf, once as a tauren. All of these were within the year, but not recent enough to benefit from the more recent patches.
There's some few things that have always bothered me about druids.
-The lack of shield. This also bothers me in DKs. Somehow, it always clicks in my mind that a rogue could somehow tank better than a DK. Because they...dodge more? I dunno. But the lack of shields on tanks always bothers me. If they ever took shields away from pallies, it would bother me too.
-The lack of plate. Leather doesn't seem to have as much armor....sure, bear form fixes that, but those two things...I dunno.
-Having to shapeshift. See, I like the idea of shapeshifting...for fun. Not for tanking. It feels....weird. It could be argued that stances are the same thing. But the stance doesn't really change your cosmetic make up...just your repertoire.
-The fact that druids were considered the easy, OP class, aside from paladins. And this held true up to recently. It seems that druid healing is no longer as OP as it used to be. Druid tanking was infamous for being a no-brainer, but also lackluster. I've been reading that where it used to be somewhat difficult to tank mobs with a bear, now it's doubly so. And this particular tidbit fuels my interest.
We'll see how it goes. Right now, I don't even have bear form yet, so I wouldn't even know where to begin, truth be told. We'll see indeed.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Holy....tanks.
I feel like I can formulate an honest opinion about tanks once more.
I've been playing on my paladin, Sigridus, for a few weeks where I took a dive off the deep end and went from level 21 to 45. Pretty good progress.
Paladins. Where do they stand now? Oddly enough, they stand in a similar place to where they stood before. When it's all said and done, a few tenets still remain true:
1.It's easier as a paladin to sustain aggro (compared to a warrior) in a smoother fashion, but...
2.It's still harder to get aggro back once lost. We still lack abilities that enable an aggro bomb, so to speak. (there IS Holy Wrath, but it is not the same as Revenge on warriors. It is good, better than thunderclap is now, but thunderclap before was better)
3.It's still markedly easier to play a paladin than a warrior.
4. Tanking groups is WAY easier on a paladin.
Now...they took away the 6969 rotation away altogether. There is...a SORT of priority system. Shield of the Righteous has come off the mana cast and was made into a proc of sorts: you have to use certain abilities to generate holy power. At first I thought, well, it's best to generate 3 holy power to get the most bang for your buck. But it turns out that every time you hit the ability, ShoTR will trigger what used to be holy shield. So I guess it's best to just keep that proc up. We'll see.
This time around, when I got consacration, I was bemoaning how much mana it consumes (basically like 1/3 of the mana bar) but you can talent into it and have it just take 1/10 of it, which is much better and puts consacration back into the rotation. Avenger shield is now given to you for a minimal, quite minimal mana rate at level 10. It's basically your pull now, and the cd was lowered to 15 seconds, so it means you hit it as much as possible. Holy Wrath is new, and it's a sort of aggro bomb, but very situational.
Hammer of the Righteous generates holy power and is tied to the GCD, which means you hit it all the time possible, and it costs basically no mana.
...all this geekness.
My main concern is the mana pool vs. aggro, as I have not found an ability, seal or talent that will allow me to replenish mana without sacrificing aggro.
Basically, they have made pally tanks more versatile, less laissez faire, and I can accept that. Tanking on a paladin was markedly lazy when compared to tanking on a warrior. Now, that has changed, for the better I would say. It's still incredibly easier to tank on a paladin, not to mention...paladins feel way less gimped than warriors....Jill keeps bothering me that Im going to want to stay on my paladin...but ...I miss all my situational buttons when I'm away from my warrior! I guess it's why I enjoy my rogue when not tanking so much.
Next week? Druids!
I've been playing on my paladin, Sigridus, for a few weeks where I took a dive off the deep end and went from level 21 to 45. Pretty good progress.
Paladins. Where do they stand now? Oddly enough, they stand in a similar place to where they stood before. When it's all said and done, a few tenets still remain true:
1.It's easier as a paladin to sustain aggro (compared to a warrior) in a smoother fashion, but...
2.It's still harder to get aggro back once lost. We still lack abilities that enable an aggro bomb, so to speak. (there IS Holy Wrath, but it is not the same as Revenge on warriors. It is good, better than thunderclap is now, but thunderclap before was better)
3.It's still markedly easier to play a paladin than a warrior.
4. Tanking groups is WAY easier on a paladin.
Now...they took away the 6969 rotation away altogether. There is...a SORT of priority system. Shield of the Righteous has come off the mana cast and was made into a proc of sorts: you have to use certain abilities to generate holy power. At first I thought, well, it's best to generate 3 holy power to get the most bang for your buck. But it turns out that every time you hit the ability, ShoTR will trigger what used to be holy shield. So I guess it's best to just keep that proc up. We'll see.
This time around, when I got consacration, I was bemoaning how much mana it consumes (basically like 1/3 of the mana bar) but you can talent into it and have it just take 1/10 of it, which is much better and puts consacration back into the rotation. Avenger shield is now given to you for a minimal, quite minimal mana rate at level 10. It's basically your pull now, and the cd was lowered to 15 seconds, so it means you hit it as much as possible. Holy Wrath is new, and it's a sort of aggro bomb, but very situational.
Hammer of the Righteous generates holy power and is tied to the GCD, which means you hit it all the time possible, and it costs basically no mana.
...all this geekness.
My main concern is the mana pool vs. aggro, as I have not found an ability, seal or talent that will allow me to replenish mana without sacrificing aggro.
Basically, they have made pally tanks more versatile, less laissez faire, and I can accept that. Tanking on a paladin was markedly lazy when compared to tanking on a warrior. Now, that has changed, for the better I would say. It's still incredibly easier to tank on a paladin, not to mention...paladins feel way less gimped than warriors....Jill keeps bothering me that Im going to want to stay on my paladin...but ...I miss all my situational buttons when I'm away from my warrior! I guess it's why I enjoy my rogue when not tanking so much.
Next week? Druids!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Tanking break
After what was about two weeks of manic profession leveling, I saw myself wishing that the next three weeks would go by faster in WoW.
The classes changed, and so did the stats, but the game remains somewhat the same so far. The Cataclysm, so to speak, has not come. One thing we were looking forward to was the change in classes. I look forward to making a Tauren pally and a Blood Elf warrior. Should be fun. But alas, without those changes, were back to the same old grind at level 80. And it gets old.
I decided early on that I didnt want to acumulate badges with heroic runs, and I didnt want to upgrade my armor any further than what I have on Akarius. What's the point? A month from now, I will either learn how to make myself a better shield, or get one off of a quest giver, for killing 15 Naga butt scratchers, so what's the point of grinding heroics and raids right now, other than it is fun? None. And it wouldn't be fun for me, as a tank. It would actually be gruesome.
So once I got to 450 on jewelcrafting, and to a comfortable skill level with skinning, I luckily had a PS3 game to keep me entertained during the weekends. About a week and a half ago, Blizzard graced us with mini events related to Cataclysm, which I thought was absolutely delightful. The earthquakes were a nice addition, but now, elemental rifts open up at random, there are doomsayers all over.... it's very cool, in my opinion.
I had been toying with the idea of playing with alts while I waited for the chance of leveling to 85, or leveling a worgen druid, or leveling my paladin in a new and improved Azeroth, or leveling Hordies (such a long to do list...) And there are a few go to classes, as I've said before. I don't know if I'm interested in playing with hunters any more, but I've always loved playing rogues, and I've become interested in playing with a mage. The idea of conjuring food and teleporting is just too enticing.
I'm dead-set on making a gnome mage, and I'm waiting for the gnomes to getting a facelift with the changes in Cataclysm, so I set to play a rogue. I already had made one, a human, who, for some reason, was not much fun. I don't know why not. Just wasn't. I promptly deleted him last weekend and made the same rogue over, now a dwarf. This time it stuck, and my obsession has taken over. I don't know what it is this time around, but for one thing, I have only died once on that rogueling, which is strange for a rogue. Rogues die. A lot.
I've also taken to alchemy, which is not the best choice, but I want to leave leatherworking to the druid. This means that my rogue depends on quest rewards, dungeons and the auction house. Yuck. Alchemy is a weird profession though.
Having fun, taking a break from tanking. Hopefully it won't be permanent.
edit- I take that back. I am dying. A lot. I had forgotten that worgen in Darkshire apparently do not have a word in their worgen vocabulary for 'fair fight'. Or maybe they're selling themselves short, and feel that 4 worgen scouts, level 27 and up, are no match for 1 dwarf rogue, level 24. These worgen need a self help book or something, a la Stuart Smalley.
Just feel its kinda balls to have every encounter be 4 vs 1...seriously.
The classes changed, and so did the stats, but the game remains somewhat the same so far. The Cataclysm, so to speak, has not come. One thing we were looking forward to was the change in classes. I look forward to making a Tauren pally and a Blood Elf warrior. Should be fun. But alas, without those changes, were back to the same old grind at level 80. And it gets old.
I decided early on that I didnt want to acumulate badges with heroic runs, and I didnt want to upgrade my armor any further than what I have on Akarius. What's the point? A month from now, I will either learn how to make myself a better shield, or get one off of a quest giver, for killing 15 Naga butt scratchers, so what's the point of grinding heroics and raids right now, other than it is fun? None. And it wouldn't be fun for me, as a tank. It would actually be gruesome.
So once I got to 450 on jewelcrafting, and to a comfortable skill level with skinning, I luckily had a PS3 game to keep me entertained during the weekends. About a week and a half ago, Blizzard graced us with mini events related to Cataclysm, which I thought was absolutely delightful. The earthquakes were a nice addition, but now, elemental rifts open up at random, there are doomsayers all over.... it's very cool, in my opinion.
I had been toying with the idea of playing with alts while I waited for the chance of leveling to 85, or leveling a worgen druid, or leveling my paladin in a new and improved Azeroth, or leveling Hordies (such a long to do list...) And there are a few go to classes, as I've said before. I don't know if I'm interested in playing with hunters any more, but I've always loved playing rogues, and I've become interested in playing with a mage. The idea of conjuring food and teleporting is just too enticing.
I'm dead-set on making a gnome mage, and I'm waiting for the gnomes to getting a facelift with the changes in Cataclysm, so I set to play a rogue. I already had made one, a human, who, for some reason, was not much fun. I don't know why not. Just wasn't. I promptly deleted him last weekend and made the same rogue over, now a dwarf. This time it stuck, and my obsession has taken over. I don't know what it is this time around, but for one thing, I have only died once on that rogueling, which is strange for a rogue. Rogues die. A lot.
I've also taken to alchemy, which is not the best choice, but I want to leave leatherworking to the druid. This means that my rogue depends on quest rewards, dungeons and the auction house. Yuck. Alchemy is a weird profession though.
Having fun, taking a break from tanking. Hopefully it won't be permanent.
edit- I take that back. I am dying. A lot. I had forgotten that worgen in Darkshire apparently do not have a word in their worgen vocabulary for 'fair fight'. Or maybe they're selling themselves short, and feel that 4 worgen scouts, level 27 and up, are no match for 1 dwarf rogue, level 24. These worgen need a self help book or something, a la Stuart Smalley.
Just feel its kinda balls to have every encounter be 4 vs 1...seriously.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The sky fell, and we're still here
The patch hit, and one would think that they had turned the game into hello kitty adventure island or something. People really need to realize one thing....if you don't like a product, don't get it. WoW is not a necessity, it's a luxury. It is not the ONLY MMO out there.
It's not as if bread was only available without crusts one day, and people who love crust on their bread were left in the dust forever and were forced to make their own bread so they could eat crust.
Anyway.
Changes. Lots of fucking changes.
Visual changes- the game looks crisper, and right now it's running on low settings, and it still runs beautifully. Ish. I'm convinced that my laptop would not have handled the tech requirements.
UI changes- some menus were streamlined, and I can say that I like it a lot. It looks fresher. A lot of add ons were rendered idiotic and superfluous. Also, when abilities proc, they light a glowy shine. It's a bit distracting, but I'm a fan.
Random stuff- They made dual speccing 100g, coming down from 1000g. Too much freedom all at once, but I sure as hell got dual spec on both my warrior and death knight. They also allow you to see the abilities you will gain in the coming levels, and when you ding, it tells you what you can learn at your trainer. They added a new tier of flying, making flight training beyond the basic training a whopping 10k g. A bit daunting. Glyphs were reworked, to my delight. Glyphs are now a permanent thing, which I imagine scribes hate. The economy will be in shambles for a few days, but who cares. It will stabilize.
Classes-
A. Hopped on to my death knight, just to respecc him. Blood is now the defacto tank spec. I haven't tanked with him, and I won't lie, I'm a bit scared to do so. Didn't do much else on that toon, other than respec and get the dual spec at the trainer.
B. Warriors- I spent the majority of my evening playing around with my toon. Wow. We ran two instances, and they went by passably well. One was UK,for which we were overgeared and overleveled, and then COS, which is basically what we should have been doing to begin with. I did not wipe, but I am far squishier. Hopefully it has to do with the fact that you are now penalized for mixing and matching plate armor with mail and leather pieces. Some abilities were removed, most noticeably mocking blow and bloodrage. Some abilities were reworked. I noticed that basically threat is more difficult to keep and establish, a fact that gives me a bit of the jitters in foresight: if DPS doesn't learn that you now need a few moments to hit shit with a stick before they can jump in on the fun, it will make this game a living hell. I have also noticed that I hit a LOT harder, and right now I'm getting hit a lot harder too. It's to be expected- I'm losing stam and armor from wearing a leather leveling piece, and I'm adjusting to the new way threat works, and my favorite healer is relearning how to heal, which she's taken to as a duck to water. Overall, I think I'm falling in love all over again.
C. Druids- I am still waiting to make a druid in December, but apparently these were REWORKED the heck out. We'll see.
D. Pallys- wow. Ok. So I logged into Jura, and the tree now is....well.... paladins now have holy power in addition to mana. I don't get it. Sadly for Jurakan, this seals his fate in a lot of ways. I get to use crusader strike ...as prot. Maybe it's that I haven't played a paladin in so long...but it felt like a lot to take at level 80. Jill agreed with me. So we agreed to reroll as human pallys in Silver Hand. This works, in a way, for me, as I wanted all my tanks in that server. It will suck if I ever have to move to another server. Holy power looks like some very pretty glyphs on top of your screen. I equated it to runic power for death knights, but we'll see.
I spent most of the evening figuring out stuff and fighting that nagging feeling whenever I looked at something that had changed. I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out that my #3 hotkey in bar 2, which was now blank, had been Bloodrage. I became a bit saddened, but then I figured that the shouts now generate rage. =D
All this game needs now is actual shouting, a la LOTRO.
ps- Hunters start with pets, wtf.
It's not as if bread was only available without crusts one day, and people who love crust on their bread were left in the dust forever and were forced to make their own bread so they could eat crust.
Anyway.
Changes. Lots of fucking changes.
Visual changes- the game looks crisper, and right now it's running on low settings, and it still runs beautifully. Ish. I'm convinced that my laptop would not have handled the tech requirements.
UI changes- some menus were streamlined, and I can say that I like it a lot. It looks fresher. A lot of add ons were rendered idiotic and superfluous. Also, when abilities proc, they light a glowy shine. It's a bit distracting, but I'm a fan.
Random stuff- They made dual speccing 100g, coming down from 1000g. Too much freedom all at once, but I sure as hell got dual spec on both my warrior and death knight. They also allow you to see the abilities you will gain in the coming levels, and when you ding, it tells you what you can learn at your trainer. They added a new tier of flying, making flight training beyond the basic training a whopping 10k g. A bit daunting. Glyphs were reworked, to my delight. Glyphs are now a permanent thing, which I imagine scribes hate. The economy will be in shambles for a few days, but who cares. It will stabilize.
Classes-
A. Hopped on to my death knight, just to respecc him. Blood is now the defacto tank spec. I haven't tanked with him, and I won't lie, I'm a bit scared to do so. Didn't do much else on that toon, other than respec and get the dual spec at the trainer.
B. Warriors- I spent the majority of my evening playing around with my toon. Wow. We ran two instances, and they went by passably well. One was UK,for which we were overgeared and overleveled, and then COS, which is basically what we should have been doing to begin with. I did not wipe, but I am far squishier. Hopefully it has to do with the fact that you are now penalized for mixing and matching plate armor with mail and leather pieces. Some abilities were removed, most noticeably mocking blow and bloodrage. Some abilities were reworked. I noticed that basically threat is more difficult to keep and establish, a fact that gives me a bit of the jitters in foresight: if DPS doesn't learn that you now need a few moments to hit shit with a stick before they can jump in on the fun, it will make this game a living hell. I have also noticed that I hit a LOT harder, and right now I'm getting hit a lot harder too. It's to be expected- I'm losing stam and armor from wearing a leather leveling piece, and I'm adjusting to the new way threat works, and my favorite healer is relearning how to heal, which she's taken to as a duck to water. Overall, I think I'm falling in love all over again.
C. Druids- I am still waiting to make a druid in December, but apparently these were REWORKED the heck out. We'll see.
D. Pallys- wow. Ok. So I logged into Jura, and the tree now is....well.... paladins now have holy power in addition to mana. I don't get it. Sadly for Jurakan, this seals his fate in a lot of ways. I get to use crusader strike ...as prot. Maybe it's that I haven't played a paladin in so long...but it felt like a lot to take at level 80. Jill agreed with me. So we agreed to reroll as human pallys in Silver Hand. This works, in a way, for me, as I wanted all my tanks in that server. It will suck if I ever have to move to another server. Holy power looks like some very pretty glyphs on top of your screen. I equated it to runic power for death knights, but we'll see.
I spent most of the evening figuring out stuff and fighting that nagging feeling whenever I looked at something that had changed. I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out that my #3 hotkey in bar 2, which was now blank, had been Bloodrage. I became a bit saddened, but then I figured that the shouts now generate rage. =D
All this game needs now is actual shouting, a la LOTRO.
ps- Hunters start with pets, wtf.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Need....more....RAGE!!!!!!
On the eve of the change, I thought I'd reflect a bit on rage normalization.
Rage is a warrior's resource. Paladins (and most classes, really) have mana, which can be thought of as magic points, druids also have rage when in bear form, druids and feral cat druids use energy, and Death Knights use runic power. Mana is basically just as I said, magic points. Magic spells and abilities use these. You start with 100% of it. And it recovers over time or with potions. Energy starts at 100% and is used for physical abilities at great expense most of the time, but it also recharges quite fast. Runic power is WEIRD, and it's coupled with runes as well. It....builds up according to damage received and done, as well as depending on certain actions taken, but it can taper off back to 0 if left dormant for too long; the runes have a short cooldown, and there are six of them. This is changing too.
So back to rage. Rage is a little red bar that starts at 0 but is built up by getting hit, by doing damage, and oftentimes, by a few abilities, one of which is my favorite: bloodrage. Basically, warriors and Druid bears can do more powerful attacks given POOR ANGER MANAGEMENT. They flip a lid and go APESHIT on everything.
I am a fan of this resource, because I wish I could act on fits of rage. It's one capital sin I will never understand. What's so wrong with rage? or ire?? I dunno. I like it a lot as a resource. I guess it makes more sense to me as a resource than mana, and truth be told, Jura would always go out of mana fast, and it was always a struggle until I learned how to play the class somewhat, but with warriors, it's never an issue. Sure, I go out of rage, I go dry sometimes, but it's not something that happens often.
And apparently they are normalizing rage. Now, the way some people have explained this is that they are making it so that you supposedly run out of rage less or so that it's less difficult to start off. Starting off a fight with a warrior is a bit of an issue. Like melting an ice cream cone, it can either take a looooong time at medium temperature, or, given enough heat, a few seconds. Sorry for the shitty analogy.
Either way, I am neither for nor against the rehaul that the entire game is getting, because I have no IDEA how it's going to play, my imagination cannot bend that way for whatever reason, and I have no point of reference (meaning, this is my first MMO, and aside from LOTRO, the only one I've played so far) with which to gripe about how Blizzard is ruining the game. A few repeated assertions about what the changes are going to bring to the table seem to stick out in my mind. One is that the game is going back to the style of gameplay of Burning Crusade. This sounds wonderful to me, as I regret having missed the formative years of this MMO. What this means, or what is meant by this statement, is that crowd control will be given a bigger importance once more. I am a FAN. I love rogues. Rogues are much maligned nowadays, underplayed, and oh so powerful. Where a rogue shines is in that it does damage, fast, and it can cripple and control their target with poisons, statuses, interrupts... it's a lot to take in. They do suffer in that they are EXTREMELY squishy....which is why they are probably underplayed. Who would want to go through the pains of dying so much when you could make a mage and nuke things from afar. No....apparently the rogue will have his day again. Also, as a budding warrior tank, this is very exciting. While Deathtanks have lots of statuses and mitigation they can bring to a fight, the blood spec is not that great at crowd controlling. Some of the statuses inflicted are pretty good though. Pallies suffer from only having one stun, and one judgement that slows movement if running away. Kinda lame. They are getting a nice shield reflection ability, so that's one way of fixing the lack of crowd control. Druids, I dunno, but it doesn't seem like they have much on their arsenal either....warriors have one stun, one cast interrupt with a jokingly short cooldown, gag order which causes shield slam to interrupt I believe, charge which stuns, intercept which stuns as well, shockwave, which stuns, and thunder, which slows attack speed. They also have an aoe fear, a disarm...oh, and if you can pop into arms stance, you can do hamstring, and slow movement speed.
....need I say more? Warriors will either be severely gimped or they will be the most sought out tanks again ( I say again and not still because they used to be, and then pallies and warriors kind of shared the spot, depending on who tyou ask)
Another consequence of crowd control being important again is that it will weed out the excess of players who concentrate on just doing bigger badder numbers on raids and five mans, and hopefully, maybe, crank down the pace that's expected out of a run nowadays: Nowadays, people expect a 530 soft cap for heroics. What. The. Fuck. I did NOT have 530 when I started doing NAXX! And I did JUST FINE. The difference between having that much defense (which won't matter in less than 24 hours) and not, is that you can afford to go at a faster clip. Hopefully the elitism will go out the window, in a way, and, undoubtedly, give way to a NEW elitism. I am sorta hoping that the old, vanilla veterans will start heckling all of us for being newbs. That'd be awesome.
Another little ditty that's going around is that threat is being reworked. To the point where it's going, again, back to the basics. Back in the day, you had to allow the tank 5 seconds, the time it takes for 2-3 sunders, to establish aggro, then you could jump in. Tanks aren't made to inflict lots of damage, that's not the idea. They deal lots of damage in long hauls, this is true (and I've become used to doing #2 dps as a warrior. Hehhee) and because they deal damage to groups, rather than individuals as some dps classes might. This will...change the game, for sure. In combination with CC being important again, this will make DPS as a role have to be PATIENT. A quality I seldom see on this game. I believe that it will become an acute symptom, and in some cases we will still see impatient DPS asking us to gogogog, and acusing the tank of not holding aggro. And well, those people will be blocked. By me. And other tanks. In the long run, they will be left to super long queues. Just thinking about that fucking druid that stole a fucking tank ring from under me, sitting around, waiting for a healer to queue for just a fucking random, waiting for 45 minutes, makes me happy. While I, in 45 minutes, could get almost two randoms done.
It seems to me like some of these changes have been designed to shift the roles dynamics that became a plague in WOTLK. While the tank and the healer are basically the two intrinsic, without-us-there's-no-run, roles, DPS was and is running the show, through bullying. And we can trace to this becoming an acute problem when the LFG tool was implemented. Back in the day, you would have to wait for a tank and a healer to show up. Why? Why not just roll tank or healer? Uhhh, because they are incredibly fastidious roles to play. Especially healing. Guh. Fuck that. So you would sit around, waiting....waiting....when Jill finally decided to roll as healer, we used to get invited into groups super fast. And people would beg for multiple runs. Or, at the most, people would stave off their criticism until the end, until multiple wipes, or just be nice or silent for a run and then ninja loot at the end. But this abuse, this gogogo mentality...it became worse off when we got to WOTLK, where all the roles were available in some sort of abundance in Northrend, compared to the earlier zones. And then with the tool it just became a way to get in contact with douchebags....faster.
But maybe the bullying will stop now? I can always toggle walk, bwahhahaha! Or as I once told a druid who insisted on doing pushback- Don't piss off the healer, if the tank and the healer came into the run together.
Rage is a warrior's resource. Paladins (and most classes, really) have mana, which can be thought of as magic points, druids also have rage when in bear form, druids and feral cat druids use energy, and Death Knights use runic power. Mana is basically just as I said, magic points. Magic spells and abilities use these. You start with 100% of it. And it recovers over time or with potions. Energy starts at 100% and is used for physical abilities at great expense most of the time, but it also recharges quite fast. Runic power is WEIRD, and it's coupled with runes as well. It....builds up according to damage received and done, as well as depending on certain actions taken, but it can taper off back to 0 if left dormant for too long; the runes have a short cooldown, and there are six of them. This is changing too.
So back to rage. Rage is a little red bar that starts at 0 but is built up by getting hit, by doing damage, and oftentimes, by a few abilities, one of which is my favorite: bloodrage. Basically, warriors and Druid bears can do more powerful attacks given POOR ANGER MANAGEMENT. They flip a lid and go APESHIT on everything.
I am a fan of this resource, because I wish I could act on fits of rage. It's one capital sin I will never understand. What's so wrong with rage? or ire?? I dunno. I like it a lot as a resource. I guess it makes more sense to me as a resource than mana, and truth be told, Jura would always go out of mana fast, and it was always a struggle until I learned how to play the class somewhat, but with warriors, it's never an issue. Sure, I go out of rage, I go dry sometimes, but it's not something that happens often.
And apparently they are normalizing rage. Now, the way some people have explained this is that they are making it so that you supposedly run out of rage less or so that it's less difficult to start off. Starting off a fight with a warrior is a bit of an issue. Like melting an ice cream cone, it can either take a looooong time at medium temperature, or, given enough heat, a few seconds. Sorry for the shitty analogy.
Either way, I am neither for nor against the rehaul that the entire game is getting, because I have no IDEA how it's going to play, my imagination cannot bend that way for whatever reason, and I have no point of reference (meaning, this is my first MMO, and aside from LOTRO, the only one I've played so far) with which to gripe about how Blizzard is ruining the game. A few repeated assertions about what the changes are going to bring to the table seem to stick out in my mind. One is that the game is going back to the style of gameplay of Burning Crusade. This sounds wonderful to me, as I regret having missed the formative years of this MMO. What this means, or what is meant by this statement, is that crowd control will be given a bigger importance once more. I am a FAN. I love rogues. Rogues are much maligned nowadays, underplayed, and oh so powerful. Where a rogue shines is in that it does damage, fast, and it can cripple and control their target with poisons, statuses, interrupts... it's a lot to take in. They do suffer in that they are EXTREMELY squishy....which is why they are probably underplayed. Who would want to go through the pains of dying so much when you could make a mage and nuke things from afar. No....apparently the rogue will have his day again. Also, as a budding warrior tank, this is very exciting. While Deathtanks have lots of statuses and mitigation they can bring to a fight, the blood spec is not that great at crowd controlling. Some of the statuses inflicted are pretty good though. Pallies suffer from only having one stun, and one judgement that slows movement if running away. Kinda lame. They are getting a nice shield reflection ability, so that's one way of fixing the lack of crowd control. Druids, I dunno, but it doesn't seem like they have much on their arsenal either....warriors have one stun, one cast interrupt with a jokingly short cooldown, gag order which causes shield slam to interrupt I believe, charge which stuns, intercept which stuns as well, shockwave, which stuns, and thunder, which slows attack speed. They also have an aoe fear, a disarm...oh, and if you can pop into arms stance, you can do hamstring, and slow movement speed.
....need I say more? Warriors will either be severely gimped or they will be the most sought out tanks again ( I say again and not still because they used to be, and then pallies and warriors kind of shared the spot, depending on who tyou ask)
Another consequence of crowd control being important again is that it will weed out the excess of players who concentrate on just doing bigger badder numbers on raids and five mans, and hopefully, maybe, crank down the pace that's expected out of a run nowadays: Nowadays, people expect a 530 soft cap for heroics. What. The. Fuck. I did NOT have 530 when I started doing NAXX! And I did JUST FINE. The difference between having that much defense (which won't matter in less than 24 hours) and not, is that you can afford to go at a faster clip. Hopefully the elitism will go out the window, in a way, and, undoubtedly, give way to a NEW elitism. I am sorta hoping that the old, vanilla veterans will start heckling all of us for being newbs. That'd be awesome.
Another little ditty that's going around is that threat is being reworked. To the point where it's going, again, back to the basics. Back in the day, you had to allow the tank 5 seconds, the time it takes for 2-3 sunders, to establish aggro, then you could jump in. Tanks aren't made to inflict lots of damage, that's not the idea. They deal lots of damage in long hauls, this is true (and I've become used to doing #2 dps as a warrior. Hehhee) and because they deal damage to groups, rather than individuals as some dps classes might. This will...change the game, for sure. In combination with CC being important again, this will make DPS as a role have to be PATIENT. A quality I seldom see on this game. I believe that it will become an acute symptom, and in some cases we will still see impatient DPS asking us to gogogog, and acusing the tank of not holding aggro. And well, those people will be blocked. By me. And other tanks. In the long run, they will be left to super long queues. Just thinking about that fucking druid that stole a fucking tank ring from under me, sitting around, waiting for a healer to queue for just a fucking random, waiting for 45 minutes, makes me happy. While I, in 45 minutes, could get almost two randoms done.
It seems to me like some of these changes have been designed to shift the roles dynamics that became a plague in WOTLK. While the tank and the healer are basically the two intrinsic, without-us-there's-no-run, roles, DPS was and is running the show, through bullying. And we can trace to this becoming an acute problem when the LFG tool was implemented. Back in the day, you would have to wait for a tank and a healer to show up. Why? Why not just roll tank or healer? Uhhh, because they are incredibly fastidious roles to play. Especially healing. Guh. Fuck that. So you would sit around, waiting....waiting....when Jill finally decided to roll as healer, we used to get invited into groups super fast. And people would beg for multiple runs. Or, at the most, people would stave off their criticism until the end, until multiple wipes, or just be nice or silent for a run and then ninja loot at the end. But this abuse, this gogogo mentality...it became worse off when we got to WOTLK, where all the roles were available in some sort of abundance in Northrend, compared to the earlier zones. And then with the tool it just became a way to get in contact with douchebags....faster.
But maybe the bullying will stop now? I can always toggle walk, bwahhahaha! Or as I once told a druid who insisted on doing pushback- Don't piss off the healer, if the tank and the healer came into the run together.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Rocky reacquaintances...
If reacquaintance was a word. Is it? Let's say I looked for it in the dictionary, didn't find the noun 'reacquaintance', but say that it IS a word, ok? Ok.
I've been back to Azeroth for a few days now. My first few sorties were awkward. Playing on a better computer rather than a laptop is part of the shock. The key layout, and the fact that everything looks crisp and clear...like being able to taste ' salty' all of a sudden. I hopped into Akarius, and it was odd at first. It felt ungainly. Brewfest was going on, so I hopped on to Mendrick. I ...had forgotten that DK tanking is odd. But then again, I have my hotkeys in a way that I could faceroll and still tank something. I then decided to hop on to my other toons, perhaps in other servers-
I revisited Cairne, and I took to playing my rogue like duck to water. It's eerie how fast I picked up on some of the questing. I still regret having left Felwenn behind, and I think I will level him on my down time, for certain. He's more of a solo project to begin with.
Then I tried playing Jurakan...boy. Paladins have so much crap to take into consideration other than aggro. I basically queued for an instance, which ended in disaster. I could not keep aggro and I went OOM in two minutes. I forgot auras, seals, blessings....everything. It's something that I will need to review.
Either way, I've narrowed down why I prefer warrior tanking. I think it's got to do with the fact that warriors can stun fairly often, thus humiliating their opponents. I am all about humiliation.
Maybe I'll expound on this some other time, but I feel like I should get a good grasp on druids first, and then I could come back and maybe take a stab at all the tank classes, and analyze them.
I've been back to Azeroth for a few days now. My first few sorties were awkward. Playing on a better computer rather than a laptop is part of the shock. The key layout, and the fact that everything looks crisp and clear...like being able to taste ' salty' all of a sudden. I hopped into Akarius, and it was odd at first. It felt ungainly. Brewfest was going on, so I hopped on to Mendrick. I ...had forgotten that DK tanking is odd. But then again, I have my hotkeys in a way that I could faceroll and still tank something. I then decided to hop on to my other toons, perhaps in other servers-
I revisited Cairne, and I took to playing my rogue like duck to water. It's eerie how fast I picked up on some of the questing. I still regret having left Felwenn behind, and I think I will level him on my down time, for certain. He's more of a solo project to begin with.
Then I tried playing Jurakan...boy. Paladins have so much crap to take into consideration other than aggro. I basically queued for an instance, which ended in disaster. I could not keep aggro and I went OOM in two minutes. I forgot auras, seals, blessings....everything. It's something that I will need to review.
Either way, I've narrowed down why I prefer warrior tanking. I think it's got to do with the fact that warriors can stun fairly often, thus humiliating their opponents. I am all about humiliation.
Maybe I'll expound on this some other time, but I feel like I should get a good grasp on druids first, and then I could come back and maybe take a stab at all the tank classes, and analyze them.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
WoW: the off again on again (off again) MMO love affair
So it seems like I will be steppin into Akarius' boots once more. I cannot deny that I am excited.
In video gaming there are characters that are already fleshed out (Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Niko Belic, John Marston, Naked Snake) and there are characters that are left blank, for you to create. Normally, and because of technology restraints, you are only able to flesh out the appearance of a character and left to imagine a personality. Some companies have taken steps toward a more interactive approach, such as Bioware, where you are able to flesh out your character's temperament through choices in conversation responses, as well as actions, and subsequent repercussions. I normally have a love/hate relationship with making my own character. On the one hand, it allows for better suspension of disbelief, on the other, it makes connecting with a character in itself more difficult. Maybe you made the character look too dumb, maybe you didn't put too much thought behind the character creation process...all in all, it's led me to have a lot of characters on WoW that I never really played, because I didn't " feel" them.
I normally didn't like the nelf models, and the nelf lore is sorta boring to me. I tried making a night elf druid, a night elf mage, a night elf hunter etc. Why? because as much as I could have disliked night elves, I disliked humans and gnomes more. =/
I made a night elf rogue that took me a long time to level, and I finally made a night elf warrior. At first it was odd, it felt like an odd choice (a spindly, nature loving being doesn't strike me as spartan in nature) but he eventually grew on me. And I eventually learned to play the class somewhat well, even with crappy gear. And I eventually geared him correctly. And right before I quit the game, he was becoming incredibly powerful, even for his level, to the point where we could be bullies in pugs (got tank? will pug)
And now, given this on again off again attraction we have to WoW....it seems we will be stepping into Azeroth again, after a quite brief respite...and I will be able to take my shield up yet again, and get hit in the face, be it for praise, be it for glory.
Good hunting!
In video gaming there are characters that are already fleshed out (Ezio Auditore da Firenze, Niko Belic, John Marston, Naked Snake) and there are characters that are left blank, for you to create. Normally, and because of technology restraints, you are only able to flesh out the appearance of a character and left to imagine a personality. Some companies have taken steps toward a more interactive approach, such as Bioware, where you are able to flesh out your character's temperament through choices in conversation responses, as well as actions, and subsequent repercussions. I normally have a love/hate relationship with making my own character. On the one hand, it allows for better suspension of disbelief, on the other, it makes connecting with a character in itself more difficult. Maybe you made the character look too dumb, maybe you didn't put too much thought behind the character creation process...all in all, it's led me to have a lot of characters on WoW that I never really played, because I didn't " feel" them.
I normally didn't like the nelf models, and the nelf lore is sorta boring to me. I tried making a night elf druid, a night elf mage, a night elf hunter etc. Why? because as much as I could have disliked night elves, I disliked humans and gnomes more. =/
I made a night elf rogue that took me a long time to level, and I finally made a night elf warrior. At first it was odd, it felt like an odd choice (a spindly, nature loving being doesn't strike me as spartan in nature) but he eventually grew on me. And I eventually learned to play the class somewhat well, even with crappy gear. And I eventually geared him correctly. And right before I quit the game, he was becoming incredibly powerful, even for his level, to the point where we could be bullies in pugs (got tank? will pug)
And now, given this on again off again attraction we have to WoW....it seems we will be stepping into Azeroth again, after a quite brief respite...and I will be able to take my shield up yet again, and get hit in the face, be it for praise, be it for glory.
Good hunting!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
MMO withdrawals
I've been feeling it. I haven't seriously played an MMO in roughly a month. Uh, well, that's counting my stint coming back to LOTRO under a free trial account. I'm not sure that counts... If not, then it's been a long time. A few months at any rate. I've been missing my warrior.
And every time I miss WoW, I'm reminded of all the douchebags, all the lag, all the elitism.... and it kind of goes away. It's also left me a bit broken on the whole MMO as a multiplayer thing front. One thing I am totally looking forward to in SWTOR is how story heavy it will be. I know my girlfriend loves end game, she loves raid (truth be told, I LOVE end game lewt, seriously) but I get a bit cranky at the amount of dedication required. I'd rather do my own thing. And this game seems to allow for that for longer than WoW.
Anyway, SWTOR is still like 6-9 months away, so.... anyway, I tried Guild Wars this weekend. I was....delighted, but unimpressed. It seemed fun, the class repertoire was fun as heck, the surroundings were lush and attractive, but something was missing. There was something missing. Even...missing from LOTRO. LOTRO invited me to jump RIGHT in. GW is not ....it's missing something. I can't pinpoint it yet. Maybe it's the pace?
Well, we spent a good part of last week trying to play the FF14 beta. We were not able to get into it because our graphics card sucks. After roughly 50 hours of downloading, and prodding, and waiting for a key...we didn't meet the systech requirements.
...there was a battery test to check if your computer could handle the game, and it seems as if our computer passed it.
I dunno, Squaresoft...if you're going to make someone wait in line for a hot dog for an hour, you should let them know they need to have a drink already at hand in order to eat their hot dog. Just a thought, you know? (I want a hot dog)
We tortured ourselves and saw some of the intro videos for the classes and the races, and just went absolutely gaga over the game. It's so sad, because we both LOVE Final Fantasy...but with this fiasco, on top of all the accounts of how bad the beta was.
Currently cello is waiting for GW 2 and SWTOR. I think I'll just keep my candle lit for swtor. Im a bit concerned that Im just not into mmos anymore. It would suck, because it's something easy and low impact to do with your significant other. Plus, my gf is a paramount star wars geek.
And so am I. Or I was. Ish. Like Ben Kenobi.
And every time I miss WoW, I'm reminded of all the douchebags, all the lag, all the elitism.... and it kind of goes away. It's also left me a bit broken on the whole MMO as a multiplayer thing front. One thing I am totally looking forward to in SWTOR is how story heavy it will be. I know my girlfriend loves end game, she loves raid (truth be told, I LOVE end game lewt, seriously) but I get a bit cranky at the amount of dedication required. I'd rather do my own thing. And this game seems to allow for that for longer than WoW.
Anyway, SWTOR is still like 6-9 months away, so.... anyway, I tried Guild Wars this weekend. I was....delighted, but unimpressed. It seemed fun, the class repertoire was fun as heck, the surroundings were lush and attractive, but something was missing. There was something missing. Even...missing from LOTRO. LOTRO invited me to jump RIGHT in. GW is not ....it's missing something. I can't pinpoint it yet. Maybe it's the pace?
Well, we spent a good part of last week trying to play the FF14 beta. We were not able to get into it because our graphics card sucks. After roughly 50 hours of downloading, and prodding, and waiting for a key...we didn't meet the systech requirements.
...there was a battery test to check if your computer could handle the game, and it seems as if our computer passed it.
I dunno, Squaresoft...if you're going to make someone wait in line for a hot dog for an hour, you should let them know they need to have a drink already at hand in order to eat their hot dog. Just a thought, you know? (I want a hot dog)
We tortured ourselves and saw some of the intro videos for the classes and the races, and just went absolutely gaga over the game. It's so sad, because we both LOVE Final Fantasy...but with this fiasco, on top of all the accounts of how bad the beta was.
Currently cello is waiting for GW 2 and SWTOR. I think I'll just keep my candle lit for swtor. Im a bit concerned that Im just not into mmos anymore. It would suck, because it's something easy and low impact to do with your significant other. Plus, my gf is a paramount star wars geek.
And so am I. Or I was. Ish. Like Ben Kenobi.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Blizzard's gambit: Cataclsym? For who?
World of Warcraft: it's basically synonymous with MMO. For the longest time, WoW has been the Coca Cola or McDonald's of MMOs. There are certainly a bunch of other MMos out there, but none seem to measure up to WoW.
So far anyway.
A lot of the current MMos eek out a living with a minimal customer base, and some have gone free to play (F2P) The idea behind F2P is the model now set forth by minigames such as Yoville or Farmville (or whatever crappy ville you play in your Facebook) The idea is you can play for free, and pay for premium content. It's genius, and when the market is basically cornered by a monopoly, it's a necessary move to keep afloat.
The tides, they are changing though. Coming up we have three pretty huge contenders: Guild Wars 2. I never played the first one, and never even heard OF it until I had been playing WoW for about 6 months. Apparently the draw here is that Guild Wars has no monthly premiums.The problem, as I could see it, was that it simply did not have the same appeal as WoW. But this game seems to be taking steps towards being more appealing. Apparently they're going the way of trying to reimagine MMOs (a path all three contenders seem to be taking...in one way or another) and make it feel more epic. I myself was not swayed by what I've seen regarding Guild Wars 2, but it does look pretty. Or prettier than WoW, which is not saying much.
Final Fantasy 14 is coming up soon. Final Fantasy has a huge following, even though the heydey of Squeenix as the paramount rpg machine is over, so this would be an MMO to look out for. It looks astonishing, and seems to provide a delectable gaming experience, which would provide what Aion tried and failed at: making an appealing game, both visually and in content. FF 14 will have a headstart on the fall season, which we all know is the blockbuster season for gaming. I'd say Squeenix could not have planned a better release date, in all earnest. My only concern, and this concerns me for all MMOs coming out in the next 12 months, is that the release go smoothly: if FF14 can keep bugs and server issues under control, they are positioned to take over the MMO market.
SWTOR...could be the end all Star Wars experience. First off, the call to two ravenous fanbases is incredible: the Star Wars fanbase (which admittedly is a batshit fanbase) and the Bioware fanbase (which is a pretty hardcore fanbase). If this game is remotely decent, they will come in droves. The game has an unique look. It looks animated, not as lush as say FF14, but it looks very stylized and very attractive. The atmosphere...well, come on, it's Star Wars. The lore is where SWTOR has every other MMO beat (save maybe LOTRO, but that's just comparing delicious apples and scrumtrulescent oranges) The Star Wars universe is, for better or worse, huge, and the lore involved, the Old Republic, is one of the more interesting chapters in the SW universe. Bioware has geared their gaming experience towards the story-telling experience, which, sad to say, is hard to find in MMos most of the time.
Wow on the other hand, has already peaked in consumer base, and is now shrinking in subscription numbers. It's going on to its third expansion, which poses a few problems too. The probability of new costumers catching on is not very good: if you show a consumer that is not on WoW already an advert for Cataclysm, this is what you're saying: Look! Our new expansion will enable you to play as a werewolf, and the world has changed greatly! You can fly your gryphon anywhere! And you can be level 85!!! BUT! You will have to buy the original game , The Burning Crusade, The Wrath of the Lich King AND Cataclysm. Cataclysm will go for $40, that's for certain. And Blizzard sells the game along with the Burning Crusade in a nifty package for $40. It can be found for $20-$35, if you look. AND The Wrath of the Lich King is another $40, but it can be found cheaper.
... so far, this werewolf party costs $100 AT THE CHEAPEST. And that's for the first month. I don't think a lot of new customers will run in packs to get into WoW because of this Cataclysm. It's to be expected, in all earnest, and Blizzard realizes this, so they basically cater to their established subscription base anyway. The only way I can see new business running in is if they included the original game and the two expansions already released in a $40-$50 package. And they're not gonna do that, I can guarantee it. Heck, I've seen Gamestop sell a prepared 14 day trial version of WoW for $2. It can be found for free online, but wow, Blizzard has balls.
As I said, Blizzard IS catering to their established costumers already, which are over 10 million people, so everything should be fine, right?
Maybe. Blizzard has been making mistakes, pronounced, glaring mistakes. The most obvious is the Real ID debacle. Basically, people do not want (DO NOT WAAANT!!!!) to lose their anonimity. Sorry so sorry. This trend, of putting your face EVERYWHERE on the internet, is a BAD one. People are dumb, but not so retarded that they can't see that they're turning the internet as a collective into a rampaging Big Brother (or are they? I dunno...)Blizzard lost some subscriptions with Real ID. And they backtracked on that one. Then there's a few issues here and there. First, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has been around for what feels like an eternity. It took a year and a half to get to kill the titular antagonist..no wait, it took a year and a half to be able to set foot in his fucking castle. And then it took about 3 weeks to be able to get to his throne room. Yeah. Nice work, eh? And everyone expected that to be it for that expansion, and for Blizzard to move on.
In what I thought was a huge faux pas, and the beginning of the end for me and my romp through Azeroth, the latest content patch opened up the Ruby Sanctum.
Uhh, what? The Lich King is dead...next in line please? Why are we killing dragons now? buh, uh..hey, bu...why???
It reeked of stopgap, and I hate it when a company insults my intelligence as a customer. It's not like they could've given us a Culling of Strath Raid or SOMETHING that has to do with the Lich King. Someone could argue that Ruby Sanctum makes sense because it sets the theme for the new expansion. And yes, that's true. But I know full well that this was not the way it was intended. If that were the case, a lot more would've been done in the way of tying in Ruby Sanctum with the new expansion, not to mention...the new expansion would've been released by now.
So why hasn't the expansion been released? Not even the release date has been released. What's more, Blizzard kept the beta under wraps for the LONGEST time. And then they made *another* mistake. On the day the release date for FF14 was released, Blizzard made an announcement that they would draw random beta invites for Cataclysm. They might as well have said the world was ending, because the forums went wild. The announcement literally stated that the invites would go out in 24 hours. Except it took closer to 72 hours. Ouch. Credibility much?
To this day, they have not announced the release date for Cataclysm yet, and it's a problem. FF14 will release on Sept 30. They will have a nice headstart, and enough time to generate buzz before the Holidays. SWTOR is rumored to release sometime after March 30.
The buzz was that Cata would hit on October. It COULD still steal some FF14 thunder if they did, but then, by the time SWTOR comes out it would already have grown stale, and by then the content would be irrelevant (only 5 levels...should have been 10 Blizz...) But we don't know yet. It could release around Christmas....thus allowing FF14 a HUGE headstart....or it could release AFTER Christmas...allowing FF14 a BIGGER headstart...and missing out on the Holiday sales....
I believe I had already explained my take in this, that basically FF14 and SWTOR have WoW on a perfect pincer hold. It's just interesting to see the passing of time is proving me right, so far.
All empires must fall. I forget who said it first, I think it was a Roman. They would know.
To Blizzard, I will say this though....that'll do pig. That'll do.
So far anyway.
A lot of the current MMos eek out a living with a minimal customer base, and some have gone free to play (F2P) The idea behind F2P is the model now set forth by minigames such as Yoville or Farmville (or whatever crappy ville you play in your Facebook) The idea is you can play for free, and pay for premium content. It's genius, and when the market is basically cornered by a monopoly, it's a necessary move to keep afloat.
The tides, they are changing though. Coming up we have three pretty huge contenders: Guild Wars 2. I never played the first one, and never even heard OF it until I had been playing WoW for about 6 months. Apparently the draw here is that Guild Wars has no monthly premiums.The problem, as I could see it, was that it simply did not have the same appeal as WoW. But this game seems to be taking steps towards being more appealing. Apparently they're going the way of trying to reimagine MMOs (a path all three contenders seem to be taking...in one way or another) and make it feel more epic. I myself was not swayed by what I've seen regarding Guild Wars 2, but it does look pretty. Or prettier than WoW, which is not saying much.
Final Fantasy 14 is coming up soon. Final Fantasy has a huge following, even though the heydey of Squeenix as the paramount rpg machine is over, so this would be an MMO to look out for. It looks astonishing, and seems to provide a delectable gaming experience, which would provide what Aion tried and failed at: making an appealing game, both visually and in content. FF 14 will have a headstart on the fall season, which we all know is the blockbuster season for gaming. I'd say Squeenix could not have planned a better release date, in all earnest. My only concern, and this concerns me for all MMOs coming out in the next 12 months, is that the release go smoothly: if FF14 can keep bugs and server issues under control, they are positioned to take over the MMO market.
SWTOR...could be the end all Star Wars experience. First off, the call to two ravenous fanbases is incredible: the Star Wars fanbase (which admittedly is a batshit fanbase) and the Bioware fanbase (which is a pretty hardcore fanbase). If this game is remotely decent, they will come in droves. The game has an unique look. It looks animated, not as lush as say FF14, but it looks very stylized and very attractive. The atmosphere...well, come on, it's Star Wars. The lore is where SWTOR has every other MMO beat (save maybe LOTRO, but that's just comparing delicious apples and scrumtrulescent oranges) The Star Wars universe is, for better or worse, huge, and the lore involved, the Old Republic, is one of the more interesting chapters in the SW universe. Bioware has geared their gaming experience towards the story-telling experience, which, sad to say, is hard to find in MMos most of the time.
Wow on the other hand, has already peaked in consumer base, and is now shrinking in subscription numbers. It's going on to its third expansion, which poses a few problems too. The probability of new costumers catching on is not very good: if you show a consumer that is not on WoW already an advert for Cataclysm, this is what you're saying: Look! Our new expansion will enable you to play as a werewolf, and the world has changed greatly! You can fly your gryphon anywhere! And you can be level 85!!! BUT! You will have to buy the original game , The Burning Crusade, The Wrath of the Lich King AND Cataclysm. Cataclysm will go for $40, that's for certain. And Blizzard sells the game along with the Burning Crusade in a nifty package for $40. It can be found for $20-$35, if you look. AND The Wrath of the Lich King is another $40, but it can be found cheaper.
... so far, this werewolf party costs $100 AT THE CHEAPEST. And that's for the first month. I don't think a lot of new customers will run in packs to get into WoW because of this Cataclysm. It's to be expected, in all earnest, and Blizzard realizes this, so they basically cater to their established subscription base anyway. The only way I can see new business running in is if they included the original game and the two expansions already released in a $40-$50 package. And they're not gonna do that, I can guarantee it. Heck, I've seen Gamestop sell a prepared 14 day trial version of WoW for $2. It can be found for free online, but wow, Blizzard has balls.
As I said, Blizzard IS catering to their established costumers already, which are over 10 million people, so everything should be fine, right?
Maybe. Blizzard has been making mistakes, pronounced, glaring mistakes. The most obvious is the Real ID debacle. Basically, people do not want (DO NOT WAAANT!!!!) to lose their anonimity. Sorry so sorry. This trend, of putting your face EVERYWHERE on the internet, is a BAD one. People are dumb, but not so retarded that they can't see that they're turning the internet as a collective into a rampaging Big Brother (or are they? I dunno...)Blizzard lost some subscriptions with Real ID. And they backtracked on that one. Then there's a few issues here and there. First, the Wrath of the Lich King expansion has been around for what feels like an eternity. It took a year and a half to get to kill the titular antagonist..no wait, it took a year and a half to be able to set foot in his fucking castle. And then it took about 3 weeks to be able to get to his throne room. Yeah. Nice work, eh? And everyone expected that to be it for that expansion, and for Blizzard to move on.
In what I thought was a huge faux pas, and the beginning of the end for me and my romp through Azeroth, the latest content patch opened up the Ruby Sanctum.
Uhh, what? The Lich King is dead...next in line please? Why are we killing dragons now? buh, uh..hey, bu...why???
It reeked of stopgap, and I hate it when a company insults my intelligence as a customer. It's not like they could've given us a Culling of Strath Raid or SOMETHING that has to do with the Lich King. Someone could argue that Ruby Sanctum makes sense because it sets the theme for the new expansion. And yes, that's true. But I know full well that this was not the way it was intended. If that were the case, a lot more would've been done in the way of tying in Ruby Sanctum with the new expansion, not to mention...the new expansion would've been released by now.
So why hasn't the expansion been released? Not even the release date has been released. What's more, Blizzard kept the beta under wraps for the LONGEST time. And then they made *another* mistake. On the day the release date for FF14 was released, Blizzard made an announcement that they would draw random beta invites for Cataclysm. They might as well have said the world was ending, because the forums went wild. The announcement literally stated that the invites would go out in 24 hours. Except it took closer to 72 hours. Ouch. Credibility much?
To this day, they have not announced the release date for Cataclysm yet, and it's a problem. FF14 will release on Sept 30. They will have a nice headstart, and enough time to generate buzz before the Holidays. SWTOR is rumored to release sometime after March 30.
The buzz was that Cata would hit on October. It COULD still steal some FF14 thunder if they did, but then, by the time SWTOR comes out it would already have grown stale, and by then the content would be irrelevant (only 5 levels...should have been 10 Blizz...) But we don't know yet. It could release around Christmas....thus allowing FF14 a HUGE headstart....or it could release AFTER Christmas...allowing FF14 a BIGGER headstart...and missing out on the Holiday sales....
I believe I had already explained my take in this, that basically FF14 and SWTOR have WoW on a perfect pincer hold. It's just interesting to see the passing of time is proving me right, so far.
All empires must fall. I forget who said it first, I think it was a Roman. They would know.
To Blizzard, I will say this though....that'll do pig. That'll do.
Monday, August 23, 2010
KOTOR II: Or why I hate Lucasarts a bit more than before
In response to the hooplah that is and will be SWTOR, I, after much prodding from the Girlfriend, embarked upon playing KOTOR and KOTOR II. I didn't play ALL of KOTOR. It was kind of droll. Could not finish it. After the big reveal (the game is not 10 years old yet, so I'll stay my tongue)the action kinda drops. I had a big issue with how it felt a bit repetitive. But overall, the story was good and so were the characters. Very enthralling stuff. Then I set forth to play KOTOR II. And it was quite a bumpy ride. First off, it is the fucking buggiest game I've ever played (and I suffered the infamous Fallout 3 freeze quite a bit, as well as watching Altaïr from Assassin's Creed falling through the floor ad nauseum more than once) It would freeze every few hours, the little robot would not move, it would simply just detract from the experience. And then, 26 hours into the game I made a small mistake: I had taken care of playing a light side of the force playthrough...and I made a small mistake and sided with evil f'ckers on some backwaters planet, and suddenly I was on the path to darkness. So I had to go back to a save 19 hours in. This kinda killed it a bit for me. To be fair, I was still very hooked on seeing the experience through, on playing what was aiming to be an incredible conclusion to a game that, bugs aside, spun a tale in a manner so masterful, it should be remade, leaving the storyline and storytelling mostly untouched.
Except for the end. I'm trying to think of a movie that fell so short of greatness at the very end. Or a book. I've got it. KOTOR II acomplishes, by accident, what Terry Gilliam acomplishes on purpose on each and every movie: that feeling of having sat through great scenes that illicit childlike wonderment, only to be met by abject disappointment and a feeling of staleness at the end (it's my contention that Gilliam's purpose in life is to confuse his viewers and depress them a bit/a lot)
Basically you get to the end, and the resolution is this: your mentor spews predictions for roughly 5 minutes regarding your companions, and the state of the planets you visited in your travels, and how balance is restored to the galaxy. Yes. the ending is reduced to walls of text. Very very NES-like. Oh yeah, there's voice overs in this game. It's like an audio book then.
Then you're treated to a short cinematic of the Ebon Hawk, your spaceship flying away. Into space. Yep.
....WTF!?
Apparently Lucasarts rushed this game to completion, or I should rather say, release, so they could partake of everyone's Christmas money.
So now I kind of hate Lucasarts for ruining yet another thing that could have been great. I mean, it's great as it is, but....still. so much wasted potential. Much to my chagrin, the continuation is in MMO form. MMOs, so far, and to my knowledge, are not famous for incredible storytelling. And Bioware has made sure everyone knows that this will be an incredible, cinematic experience. And I have to trust them, I mean, they ARE Bioware. But ionno...part of me....just wishes for a KOTOR III, a game that married Dragon Age and SW in perfect, nerdgasm marriage.
That and, come on, HK 47 in HD would be fucking awesome.
Except for the end. I'm trying to think of a movie that fell so short of greatness at the very end. Or a book. I've got it. KOTOR II acomplishes, by accident, what Terry Gilliam acomplishes on purpose on each and every movie: that feeling of having sat through great scenes that illicit childlike wonderment, only to be met by abject disappointment and a feeling of staleness at the end (it's my contention that Gilliam's purpose in life is to confuse his viewers and depress them a bit/a lot)
Basically you get to the end, and the resolution is this: your mentor spews predictions for roughly 5 minutes regarding your companions, and the state of the planets you visited in your travels, and how balance is restored to the galaxy. Yes. the ending is reduced to walls of text. Very very NES-like. Oh yeah, there's voice overs in this game. It's like an audio book then.
Then you're treated to a short cinematic of the Ebon Hawk, your spaceship flying away. Into space. Yep.
....WTF!?
Apparently Lucasarts rushed this game to completion, or I should rather say, release, so they could partake of everyone's Christmas money.
So now I kind of hate Lucasarts for ruining yet another thing that could have been great. I mean, it's great as it is, but....still. so much wasted potential. Much to my chagrin, the continuation is in MMO form. MMOs, so far, and to my knowledge, are not famous for incredible storytelling. And Bioware has made sure everyone knows that this will be an incredible, cinematic experience. And I have to trust them, I mean, they ARE Bioware. But ionno...part of me....just wishes for a KOTOR III, a game that married Dragon Age and SW in perfect, nerdgasm marriage.
That and, come on, HK 47 in HD would be fucking awesome.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
LOTRO: The MMO vacation
I was also thinking about LOTRO maybe as a snack. Or an amuse bouche.
I have a love-hate thing for LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online)The things I like about it, I really like, and the things I dislike break the game a bit for me. I don't know how I feel about the art direction. Jillian loves the look of the game, because it looks less cartoony than WoW. I dunno if I like that. Then again, my laptop cannot handle LOTRO at a proper pace, so...yeah. I prefer the lore to the WoW lore, by far, and the surroundings. The music though makes me want to simply click it off. Your characters have a wider array of emoticons, which oddly enough allowed me to bond with Sigridus, a gruff dwarven guardian at a greater level than most of my toons on WoW (Jillian's argument that Sigrid is a girl's name, notwithstanding)
For one thing, LOTRO doesn't have factions in the strict sense, and the races are a mere four, with variations on locations where men, dwarves, hobbits or elves could come from. Not a fan of that, because I'm not knowledgeable of the lore inasmuch as to know what Breeland is, where it is, or if it's made of Brie cheese. The human models look better than the WoW models, but then they gave them douchebag faces. The hobbits look like dwarves who developed under-age alcoholism at the onset of adolescence (and you can give them a beer belly, to boot). Elves look like anemic, effete humans. Dwarves are super cool in this game though.
Then the classes to me are a handful of what Turbine thought would be a good way to confuse people with choices that should be narrowed down to magic user, fighter, and creeper who can't cast magic OR fight, but is nimble. You have some magic using classes which never really appealed to me, a bard (yes...a musician... for the love of...) a champion, a captain (who supercedes here, a champion or a captain?) a guardian, a hunter, and a burglar. Ohh, and a warden. Warden is what turbine likes to call ' 2nd rate guardian using lances'. I, loving shields and getting hit in the face, made a guardian. I actually made a champion first, but found out that I wouldn't be able to tank as that, so I quit. At level 20. In a game where leveling is like paying off a car in installments.
To me LOTRO has a certain allure...as I said, there are a lot of emoticons you can use...you can smoke, for example. That's....so cool. I ...don't LOVE smoking. But smoking is cool, despite what any campaign says. it is cool as heck. You look wayyyy cooler when smoking. It's a scientific fact. Hans Landa looked incredibly cool smoking that Alpine Apfelfluegelthing. It just is. If smoking wasn't bad for me, and super expensive, I would do it. But it doesn't HOLD me tight, as WoW did, for whatever reason. I blame the music. It's like middle of the day children's show music. BUT....MMos...are a way of life....and...LOTRO is cheaper than WoW, by a lot... something has to tide me over until SWTOR.
I have a love-hate thing for LOTRO (Lord of the Rings Online)The things I like about it, I really like, and the things I dislike break the game a bit for me. I don't know how I feel about the art direction. Jillian loves the look of the game, because it looks less cartoony than WoW. I dunno if I like that. Then again, my laptop cannot handle LOTRO at a proper pace, so...yeah. I prefer the lore to the WoW lore, by far, and the surroundings. The music though makes me want to simply click it off. Your characters have a wider array of emoticons, which oddly enough allowed me to bond with Sigridus, a gruff dwarven guardian at a greater level than most of my toons on WoW (Jillian's argument that Sigrid is a girl's name, notwithstanding)
For one thing, LOTRO doesn't have factions in the strict sense, and the races are a mere four, with variations on locations where men, dwarves, hobbits or elves could come from. Not a fan of that, because I'm not knowledgeable of the lore inasmuch as to know what Breeland is, where it is, or if it's made of Brie cheese. The human models look better than the WoW models, but then they gave them douchebag faces. The hobbits look like dwarves who developed under-age alcoholism at the onset of adolescence (and you can give them a beer belly, to boot). Elves look like anemic, effete humans. Dwarves are super cool in this game though.
Then the classes to me are a handful of what Turbine thought would be a good way to confuse people with choices that should be narrowed down to magic user, fighter, and creeper who can't cast magic OR fight, but is nimble. You have some magic using classes which never really appealed to me, a bard (yes...a musician... for the love of...) a champion, a captain (who supercedes here, a champion or a captain?) a guardian, a hunter, and a burglar. Ohh, and a warden. Warden is what turbine likes to call ' 2nd rate guardian using lances'. I, loving shields and getting hit in the face, made a guardian. I actually made a champion first, but found out that I wouldn't be able to tank as that, so I quit. At level 20. In a game where leveling is like paying off a car in installments.
To me LOTRO has a certain allure...as I said, there are a lot of emoticons you can use...you can smoke, for example. That's....so cool. I ...don't LOVE smoking. But smoking is cool, despite what any campaign says. it is cool as heck. You look wayyyy cooler when smoking. It's a scientific fact. Hans Landa looked incredibly cool smoking that Alpine Apfelfluegelthing. It just is. If smoking wasn't bad for me, and super expensive, I would do it. But it doesn't HOLD me tight, as WoW did, for whatever reason. I blame the music. It's like middle of the day children's show music. BUT....MMos...are a way of life....and...LOTRO is cheaper than WoW, by a lot... something has to tide me over until SWTOR.
Friday, August 6, 2010
With only months and months to go, the speculation begins
Well, I'm off WoW. My time ends on the 21st, and I won't be renewing. I will not be partaking of Cataclysm goodness either. I might not come back.
Dunno.
The significant other insists she wants to go back to LOTRO for a while, but I am not really into it anymore. I'll hold my MMO enthusiasm for either Star Wars: The Old Republic or Final Fantasy 14, and I'm not planning on getting FF14...sooo.....
It's been a while since I've been on a Star Wars kick. It's...odd. You go away for a while, and they've gone and changed everything quite a bit. Anyway, much of my concern with SWTOR is ' what class will allow me to hack shit up while tanking?' seeing as how there is a lack of shields in the SW universe. You know who had shields? Gungans. I don't want a motherlovin' gungan, sorry.
Troopers will apparently be the tanks par excellence...which means I'll probably make one. But playing a trooper... is not really my bag. I'll be honest, it's the fact that they wear the armor and they remind me of all the storm troopers from the movies, specifically the storm trooper that does the Willhelm scream in A New Hope. And TK 427. So I dunno. But apparently, Sith warriors will get this particular special class -
(I got this from Wookiepedia)- Sith Juggernaut were a specialist class of the Sith Warriors under the Sith Empire. They were known for their heavy armor and cybernetics which allowed them a special protection in battle making many strikes by an opponent against them useless often filling them with despair. Their stamina was considered by many to be unrivaled in battle.
So it follows suit that Jedi Knights get an equivalent specialization. In which case, sign me up. Hey, just because it's a jedi doesn't mean they can't get hit in the face. Look at Qui Gon...ooooooooooooooooohhh, don't tell me it's too soon!
Dunno.
The significant other insists she wants to go back to LOTRO for a while, but I am not really into it anymore. I'll hold my MMO enthusiasm for either Star Wars: The Old Republic or Final Fantasy 14, and I'm not planning on getting FF14...sooo.....
It's been a while since I've been on a Star Wars kick. It's...odd. You go away for a while, and they've gone and changed everything quite a bit. Anyway, much of my concern with SWTOR is ' what class will allow me to hack shit up while tanking?' seeing as how there is a lack of shields in the SW universe. You know who had shields? Gungans. I don't want a motherlovin' gungan, sorry.
Troopers will apparently be the tanks par excellence...which means I'll probably make one. But playing a trooper... is not really my bag. I'll be honest, it's the fact that they wear the armor and they remind me of all the storm troopers from the movies, specifically the storm trooper that does the Willhelm scream in A New Hope. And TK 427. So I dunno. But apparently, Sith warriors will get this particular special class -
(I got this from Wookiepedia)- Sith Juggernaut were a specialist class of the Sith Warriors under the Sith Empire. They were known for their heavy armor and cybernetics which allowed them a special protection in battle making many strikes by an opponent against them useless often filling them with despair. Their stamina was considered by many to be unrivaled in battle.
So it follows suit that Jedi Knights get an equivalent specialization. In which case, sign me up. Hey, just because it's a jedi doesn't mean they can't get hit in the face. Look at Qui Gon...ooooooooooooooooohhh, don't tell me it's too soon!
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
A new ho..me. Maybe.
So...after weeks of high pitch feverish obsession, my WoW momentum has waned. I'm officially not having fun, again. It first happened last year. I was not having fun, because the game turns into a grind at end-game. Now I'm not having fun, because I am sick of not leveling my favorite new obsession, the warrior, and I can't level it without my darling healer Girlfriend. And she's sick of WoW. So... the bloom is off the rose. I will let the subscription come to an end, and I do not know if I will be back. We'll see.
We, however, are looking towards the new MMO bad boy coming out next year: Star Wars The Old Republic, or SWTOR for short. I'm a Star Wars geek, sue me. As you might imagine, there will be jedi, and I will be toting a lightsaber, certainly. But apparently the tanking class in this game will be troopers: heavy armored fellows with huge guns. I don't know how I will take to that change. I'm used, as a tank, to being in the thick of it, face to face with whatever is bashing my head in. Apparently this will be a bit different. What I saw was a group battling it out with a huge fucking robot, and two jedi were running around smacking it with a lightsaber, one smuggler was shooting at it from a corner, and the big bruiser was running around with a big rifle taking potshots at it, keeping it pointed at him.
Maybe when the GF is not looking, I will make a sith. See, evil will always prevail...because good is dumb.
We, however, are looking towards the new MMO bad boy coming out next year: Star Wars The Old Republic, or SWTOR for short. I'm a Star Wars geek, sue me. As you might imagine, there will be jedi, and I will be toting a lightsaber, certainly. But apparently the tanking class in this game will be troopers: heavy armored fellows with huge guns. I don't know how I will take to that change. I'm used, as a tank, to being in the thick of it, face to face with whatever is bashing my head in. Apparently this will be a bit different. What I saw was a group battling it out with a huge fucking robot, and two jedi were running around smacking it with a lightsaber, one smuggler was shooting at it from a corner, and the big bruiser was running around with a big rifle taking potshots at it, keeping it pointed at him.
Maybe when the GF is not looking, I will make a sith. See, evil will always prevail...because good is dumb.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
My alternate projected self, or why I love playing rogues
I've noticed that when I'm not into playing a toon I've made that's a tank, I tend to play one of two classes: Hunters and Rogues. Hunters are fun, and I've never played one to completion, but they get a bit boring. I think I like the idea of having a companion in the form of a pet, but the end result is less fun than I realize (I can tell you what my real issue is: if I have a bear, I want my bear to be big as hell! I don't want my bear to be a smaller version than the bears elsewhere! It just makes me cranky. Sue me.) And most of the times I end up playing/making a rogue. I think it's my inner asshole, or my need to be an inner asshole in my time of leisure, because I'm more or less a pushover in real life. Rogues are difficult to play. A rogue is basically a hunter without the pet, who can't shoot that well, and who won't get to wear good armor ever; It's a gimped hunter. Sure, they get to sneak around, poison people and pick locks. So you have a character with potential to perform epic and heroic feats, but at the cost of moral high ground; an anti-hero, if you will. And I'm all about anti-heroes.
Rogues are not superheroes- Rogues possess no superpowers. They do not cast magic. They do not possess an uncanny ability to not die. They cannot turn into animals. They cannot control beasts. They can turn semi-invisible. That's about it. And you still have to make sure to not walk in front of anyone. They also have the ability to fall from real high up and not die (may not sound by much, but I used to wish for this ability in college, when I had to take physics on a 4th floor) So, to recap- ability to be inocuous (because theyre not fully invisible) and the ability to be a cat.
Rogues look out for the important guy- Even if you look up the information on this class on a wowwiki, it will say that rogues excell at escaping. This means that rogues are basically Sir Robin, who nearly beat the Chicken of Bristol. Some classes fight, some defend, some heal and some turn you into sheep. Rogues bravely run away. The fact that this class is custom made to watch out for #1 is my kind of deal- self preservation ftw. Reminds me of Hoggle.
Rogues cheat- an encounter on a rogue normally goes as is- sneak up, sap (stun with a bonk to the head), pick pocket, laugh at the 3 copper you just stole, then stab in the back. It's pretty horrible and reprehensible.What's worse is, if you manage to escape, you have a few things to worry about: 1. The gun on your back (or arrow, or throwing dart. Rogues are evil) 2. One of the various poisons the rogue might have infected you with. It's like getting scraped with a rusty needle after you get mugged. Yes, if you know, you know I have a sick sense of humor. And this is my bag.
And despite all of this, rogues retain a certain romantic flair to them. They are the spies, the assassins, the brigands of this MMO.And they certainly appeal to my machiavelic side. A lot.
Post 4.0.1 Patch Scriptum- Apparently CC has become a necessity, and I have seen a resurgence in rogues around. They are not as rare as before. This is interesting.
Addendum- I re-rolled my rogue into a dwarf rogue. I think we have a winner. And this time, I specced subtlety, again. I always specc subtlety. Combat is for out and out fights. A hardier, swashbucling rogue who has a penchant for an open fight and setting up combos with harder hitting weapons. Assassination is more for those who like using daggers and inflicting poison damage. I had tried both at one point, and got used to combat. I never liked the feel of assassination.... it felt...lacking. That's unfair. The style just didn't click with me. Subtlety is all about sneaking about and striking from the shadows. Combat relies on a continuous stream of damage, assassination depends on spurt damage, subtlety relies on, and I like this philosophy- opening damage. If your overture is strong enough, forward momentum will carry you. They say the spec also relies on finishers, but, as I said, if you can kill your foe in one blow.... who needs a follow up?
So I started my little dwarf rogue...now, whenever you get to level 10 with any class and anys spec, you are awarded an ability characteristic of that spec. Combat gets blade flurry, which given, is fun. And useful. I forget what assassination gets. Subtlety gets a reworked shadow step. I say reworked because I dont remember it working this way before... basically, it's a ' move behind your opponent instantaneously' ability that can be used every 25 seconds. >D. This also makes your ambush hit harder.
On an RP note... Sicari is a scary mofo. Right up my alley.
Rogues are not superheroes- Rogues possess no superpowers. They do not cast magic. They do not possess an uncanny ability to not die. They cannot turn into animals. They cannot control beasts. They can turn semi-invisible. That's about it. And you still have to make sure to not walk in front of anyone. They also have the ability to fall from real high up and not die (may not sound by much, but I used to wish for this ability in college, when I had to take physics on a 4th floor) So, to recap- ability to be inocuous (because theyre not fully invisible) and the ability to be a cat.
Rogues look out for the important guy- Even if you look up the information on this class on a wowwiki, it will say that rogues excell at escaping. This means that rogues are basically Sir Robin, who nearly beat the Chicken of Bristol. Some classes fight, some defend, some heal and some turn you into sheep. Rogues bravely run away. The fact that this class is custom made to watch out for #1 is my kind of deal- self preservation ftw. Reminds me of Hoggle.
Rogues cheat- an encounter on a rogue normally goes as is- sneak up, sap (stun with a bonk to the head), pick pocket, laugh at the 3 copper you just stole, then stab in the back. It's pretty horrible and reprehensible.What's worse is, if you manage to escape, you have a few things to worry about: 1. The gun on your back (or arrow, or throwing dart. Rogues are evil) 2. One of the various poisons the rogue might have infected you with. It's like getting scraped with a rusty needle after you get mugged. Yes, if you know, you know I have a sick sense of humor. And this is my bag.
And despite all of this, rogues retain a certain romantic flair to them. They are the spies, the assassins, the brigands of this MMO.And they certainly appeal to my machiavelic side. A lot.
Post 4.0.1 Patch Scriptum- Apparently CC has become a necessity, and I have seen a resurgence in rogues around. They are not as rare as before. This is interesting.
Addendum- I re-rolled my rogue into a dwarf rogue. I think we have a winner. And this time, I specced subtlety, again. I always specc subtlety. Combat is for out and out fights. A hardier, swashbucling rogue who has a penchant for an open fight and setting up combos with harder hitting weapons. Assassination is more for those who like using daggers and inflicting poison damage. I had tried both at one point, and got used to combat. I never liked the feel of assassination.... it felt...lacking. That's unfair. The style just didn't click with me. Subtlety is all about sneaking about and striking from the shadows. Combat relies on a continuous stream of damage, assassination depends on spurt damage, subtlety relies on, and I like this philosophy- opening damage. If your overture is strong enough, forward momentum will carry you. They say the spec also relies on finishers, but, as I said, if you can kill your foe in one blow.... who needs a follow up?
So I started my little dwarf rogue...now, whenever you get to level 10 with any class and anys spec, you are awarded an ability characteristic of that spec. Combat gets blade flurry, which given, is fun. And useful. I forget what assassination gets. Subtlety gets a reworked shadow step. I say reworked because I dont remember it working this way before... basically, it's a ' move behind your opponent instantaneously' ability that can be used every 25 seconds. >D. This also makes your ambush hit harder.
On an RP note... Sicari is a scary mofo. Right up my alley.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Casual vs Hardcore
There's an argument in video gaming in general between casual gamers and hardcore gamers. Generally speaking, a casual gamer has a life, and plays ocasionally. A hardcore gamer will play avidly, and forego other activities (such as social interactions) to play games. Added to this argument is the argument of which KIND of game casual and hardcore gamers play. Some argue that someone that plays concievably 'casual' games (Such as Tetris, Mario, or puzzle games: games normally thought of as 'for kids')in an almost obsessive compulsive fashion is a hardcore gamer. Others feel that hardcore gamers only play 'hardcore games', such as Gears of War, or Grand Theft Auto, or Call of Duty (violent games, normally)
In the MMO world, the definition takes a different spin. Why? Because you're all playing the same MMO, so there is no argument about what game makes you hardcore or casual (although there is something to be said about the feud between, say, Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft)The argument is normally focused on A. how much you play B. Gearscore (Gearscore is basically a score on your equipment. The higher the score, the better your armor is. )C. What you have accomplished in the game D. What you do when you play. It could be said that some of these arguments are better measures of hardcore/casual gaming than others, and some not so much.
1. Play time- Well, it could be said that people that play the game casually play for small increments of time, and hardcore players play for long periods of time. This could be construed as a phallacy, and I'll explain why in the last point. (Sorry, I organized my list a bit sloppilly and now I'm too lazy to organize it so it's coherent. Bear with me)
2. Gearscore- Some people argue gearscore, or GS has ruined this game. Basically, people will gear up insanely fast with the new additions to the game and have ridiculous gearscores with little to no effort, then they expect it to be representative of their skill as a gamer. It's as if wearing Nike's made me great at basketball (in the 90s, it did) Some people go so far as to use items that will improve their score, but that aren't really useful to them (like a chromed grill on a rusty Beetle...it LOOKS pretty garish, and it doesn't do that much good)
3.Accomplishments- I would say this is actually a fairer measure of how hardcore or casual you are. If you can prove that you've killed some fire breathing dragon (normally an achievement or a title. Titles are cool, and hard/difficult to get; titles such as "Champion of the Frozen Wastes") then it means you probably did kill it, right? It's not as if the dragon laid down and said, "Um, so you'll be choppin' my head off now? " Except not necessarily. In today's real world, we know that some people go through life with special titles such as Doctor, or Honorable, or Lt. or something. And these titles are hard to get! ....99%. We all know that sometimes, some people luck out and get a free ride. And sometimes, in the game, all you have to do is be CLOSE to someone successful (or in their party) to get a title or an accomplishment. So there will always be, even in MMOs, moochers. Still, it's a better way of figuring who plays hardcore and who plays casually.
4. Activities- Going back to my point 1. An MMO can be a wondrous thing. You can spend your time questing. And you can spend your time raiding, or doing instances. And SOME people spend their time playing the auction house like it was the Stock Market. And some people dedicate their hours upon hours on the various trade and general chats WHILE they play the game. Or they collect pets or special mounts. Or, nowdays, they spend their time on old raids. Some other people dedicate days upon days on the current, harder content. And yet, some people have been able to see the same content while not playing that often.
I consider myself a casual gamer. I am not barreling towards the harder content, I do not have many accomplishments to show for and my GS is crap. And yet, as of late, I have been playing quite a bit (I've been increasing my 'reputation' with the dwarves) Am I hardcore because I've been obsessing about a minute detail of a game, sacrificing other activities over this?
I dunno. I always thougth I was just a completist, a consequence of a compulsive personality.
=/
In the MMO world, the definition takes a different spin. Why? Because you're all playing the same MMO, so there is no argument about what game makes you hardcore or casual (although there is something to be said about the feud between, say, Lord of the Rings Online and World of Warcraft)The argument is normally focused on A. how much you play B. Gearscore (Gearscore is basically a score on your equipment. The higher the score, the better your armor is. )C. What you have accomplished in the game D. What you do when you play. It could be said that some of these arguments are better measures of hardcore/casual gaming than others, and some not so much.
1. Play time- Well, it could be said that people that play the game casually play for small increments of time, and hardcore players play for long periods of time. This could be construed as a phallacy, and I'll explain why in the last point. (Sorry, I organized my list a bit sloppilly and now I'm too lazy to organize it so it's coherent. Bear with me)
2. Gearscore- Some people argue gearscore, or GS has ruined this game. Basically, people will gear up insanely fast with the new additions to the game and have ridiculous gearscores with little to no effort, then they expect it to be representative of their skill as a gamer. It's as if wearing Nike's made me great at basketball (in the 90s, it did) Some people go so far as to use items that will improve their score, but that aren't really useful to them (like a chromed grill on a rusty Beetle...it LOOKS pretty garish, and it doesn't do that much good)
3.Accomplishments- I would say this is actually a fairer measure of how hardcore or casual you are. If you can prove that you've killed some fire breathing dragon (normally an achievement or a title. Titles are cool, and hard/difficult to get; titles such as "Champion of the Frozen Wastes") then it means you probably did kill it, right? It's not as if the dragon laid down and said, "Um, so you'll be choppin' my head off now? " Except not necessarily. In today's real world, we know that some people go through life with special titles such as Doctor, or Honorable, or Lt. or something. And these titles are hard to get! ....99%. We all know that sometimes, some people luck out and get a free ride. And sometimes, in the game, all you have to do is be CLOSE to someone successful (or in their party) to get a title or an accomplishment. So there will always be, even in MMOs, moochers. Still, it's a better way of figuring who plays hardcore and who plays casually.
4. Activities- Going back to my point 1. An MMO can be a wondrous thing. You can spend your time questing. And you can spend your time raiding, or doing instances. And SOME people spend their time playing the auction house like it was the Stock Market. And some people dedicate their hours upon hours on the various trade and general chats WHILE they play the game. Or they collect pets or special mounts. Or, nowdays, they spend their time on old raids. Some other people dedicate days upon days on the current, harder content. And yet, some people have been able to see the same content while not playing that often.
I consider myself a casual gamer. I am not barreling towards the harder content, I do not have many accomplishments to show for and my GS is crap. And yet, as of late, I have been playing quite a bit (I've been increasing my 'reputation' with the dwarves) Am I hardcore because I've been obsessing about a minute detail of a game, sacrificing other activities over this?
I dunno. I always thougth I was just a completist, a consequence of a compulsive personality.
=/
Monday, July 19, 2010
Professions: They suck less in MMOs
As I had stated previously, in World of Warcraft, you have professions. There are secondary professions, gathering professions and crafting professions. Secondary professions, and I might be referring to them incorrectly, are basically professions anybody can choose to pursue aside from the other two professions they choose to follow. These are first aid, cooking and fishing. First aid allows you to make bandages. It's a nifty time suck. Fishing is as well. The caveat to fishing is eventually you have to go fish in some real exotic locations (like off an iceberg, surrounded by viking corpses) to get some interesting fish. Cooking requires you basically take care to kill every single living thing you come across and keep their innards in the off chance you get a nice recipe for it later on (bear guts apparently do not have an expiration date...)
Then there are main professions. You're only allowed two at a time. And it makes sense to only pick two, because they require as much time as an actual part time job! This weekend I dedicated more time to my professions than my girlfriend. I'm one lucky sumbitch. She was rooting me on!
Anyway, some professions are for crafting things. Making things basically. There's:
1. Alchemy- this allows you to make potions from herbs and stuff. Basically you're a drug dealer. =D
2. Blacksmithing- allows you to make mail and plate armor from metals. This is what I chose, because I'm stingy. It's apparently the hardest one to level, or so I hear/read. It's quite fun, and excruciating, much like, I imagine, having smelted copper fall on you.
3. Leatherworking- allows you to make leather armor and bags, as well as capes. It's actually a very fun profession when paired with skinning. More on that later. Basically you can make yourself ridiculous looking armor.
4. Tailoring- allows you to make cloth armor, bags and capes. It also allows you to make a flying carpet. A fucking flying carpet. I hate tailors. A lot.
5. Engineers- Engineers are weird. They make thingamajigs. Like bombs. And guns. And robots. They also make a motorcycle and a helicopter. They also dont make as much money as other professions, but god damn, bombs and a motorbike. Engineering is quite fun, to be honest. It's kind of like the terrorists' choice =D
6. Jewelcrafting- JCers make rings, jewelry, and cut gems. It's an incredibly fastidious trade, and I like to imagine that my Death Knight who has JC is gonna die from breathing in diamond dust some day. Except he's already dead so it's all good. Apparently it will make me rich some day. I can't wait.
7. Inscription- basically, you take herbs, and you mash em up, and make ink. Then you make scrolls. It sounds....bookish and nerdy. And it is. It's not that hard to level, it's, I dunno...see, I went from making drugs to writing on a piece of paper on this list. It's a bit of a downer.
Then there are gathering professions. Gathering professions aren't AS BAD, but to be honest, sometimes it's a pain having to compete with every other a-hole in the game.
1. Herbalism- you gather herbs. A flower picker profession. Nice eh? It's hard to feel epic when you're out gathering herbs. Like ...Grandma the Barbarian, tending to the Rose Bushes!!!! AND NOW A SHRUBBERY!!!!
2. Mining- you basically look out for rocks. Not crack cocaine. In mines. Nodes. Its a bit harsh, how much mining you have to do to level engineering, blacksmithing and jewelcrafting. Oh well. Thankfully there's no black lung in MMOs.
3. Skinning- the greatest profession to level ever. See, in WoW, you're always killing stuff. And stuff leaves corpses. And 7/10 times, it's a corpse you can skin! See, you're always knee deep in corpses, which means....more leather for you! Woooo! Seriously, easiest profession ever.
4. Enchanting- not exactly a gathering profession...you take items that are at least somewhat good, or green items, and you break them down for magical essences. You need a metric FUCKTON of items (armor, weapons, jewelry) to level this profession. It's like going to a thriftstore and breaking up every single second-hand sweater for the thread. Then you USE this thread to make better things. Actually, you use the magical essences to improve other items. If it wasn't such a drudgery, which it is, I'd consider this one as a profession. It pays off in the end though.
Aside from all this, rogues have an interesting skill which you could count as a profession. They basically have lockpicking. In some parts of the world you can find lockboxes strewn about, so you're encouraged to enact various counts of theft in order to be able to open proper chests in your quests. I wonder if I could go around embezzling in order to attain experience... hey, I'm only leveling up my 'sleight of hand' for future endeavors! I could need it to steal from the rich (and keep for myself...) I had been debating making a rogue on our new server to open boxes, but then I saw it was viable as a blacksmith to make keys. And it feels slightly less like crime.
Blizzard is supposedly adding archeology to the list of secondary professions. I don't know if I rightly care. It took me a good weekend to level up my professions so they are of some use to me, so much so, that on Saturday night I went to bed planning how to level up even faster the following Sunday.
If only I was as industrious at real life as I am here...
Then there are main professions. You're only allowed two at a time. And it makes sense to only pick two, because they require as much time as an actual part time job! This weekend I dedicated more time to my professions than my girlfriend. I'm one lucky sumbitch. She was rooting me on!
Anyway, some professions are for crafting things. Making things basically. There's:
1. Alchemy- this allows you to make potions from herbs and stuff. Basically you're a drug dealer. =D
2. Blacksmithing- allows you to make mail and plate armor from metals. This is what I chose, because I'm stingy. It's apparently the hardest one to level, or so I hear/read. It's quite fun, and excruciating, much like, I imagine, having smelted copper fall on you.
3. Leatherworking- allows you to make leather armor and bags, as well as capes. It's actually a very fun profession when paired with skinning. More on that later. Basically you can make yourself ridiculous looking armor.
4. Tailoring- allows you to make cloth armor, bags and capes. It also allows you to make a flying carpet. A fucking flying carpet. I hate tailors. A lot.
5. Engineers- Engineers are weird. They make thingamajigs. Like bombs. And guns. And robots. They also make a motorcycle and a helicopter. They also dont make as much money as other professions, but god damn, bombs and a motorbike. Engineering is quite fun, to be honest. It's kind of like the terrorists' choice =D
6. Jewelcrafting- JCers make rings, jewelry, and cut gems. It's an incredibly fastidious trade, and I like to imagine that my Death Knight who has JC is gonna die from breathing in diamond dust some day. Except he's already dead so it's all good. Apparently it will make me rich some day. I can't wait.
7. Inscription- basically, you take herbs, and you mash em up, and make ink. Then you make scrolls. It sounds....bookish and nerdy. And it is. It's not that hard to level, it's, I dunno...see, I went from making drugs to writing on a piece of paper on this list. It's a bit of a downer.
Then there are gathering professions. Gathering professions aren't AS BAD, but to be honest, sometimes it's a pain having to compete with every other a-hole in the game.
1. Herbalism- you gather herbs. A flower picker profession. Nice eh? It's hard to feel epic when you're out gathering herbs. Like ...Grandma the Barbarian, tending to the Rose Bushes!!!! AND NOW A SHRUBBERY!!!!
2. Mining- you basically look out for rocks. Not crack cocaine. In mines. Nodes. Its a bit harsh, how much mining you have to do to level engineering, blacksmithing and jewelcrafting. Oh well. Thankfully there's no black lung in MMOs.
3. Skinning- the greatest profession to level ever. See, in WoW, you're always killing stuff. And stuff leaves corpses. And 7/10 times, it's a corpse you can skin! See, you're always knee deep in corpses, which means....more leather for you! Woooo! Seriously, easiest profession ever.
4. Enchanting- not exactly a gathering profession...you take items that are at least somewhat good, or green items, and you break them down for magical essences. You need a metric FUCKTON of items (armor, weapons, jewelry) to level this profession. It's like going to a thriftstore and breaking up every single second-hand sweater for the thread. Then you USE this thread to make better things. Actually, you use the magical essences to improve other items. If it wasn't such a drudgery, which it is, I'd consider this one as a profession. It pays off in the end though.
Aside from all this, rogues have an interesting skill which you could count as a profession. They basically have lockpicking. In some parts of the world you can find lockboxes strewn about, so you're encouraged to enact various counts of theft in order to be able to open proper chests in your quests. I wonder if I could go around embezzling in order to attain experience... hey, I'm only leveling up my 'sleight of hand' for future endeavors! I could need it to steal from the rich (and keep for myself...) I had been debating making a rogue on our new server to open boxes, but then I saw it was viable as a blacksmith to make keys. And it feels slightly less like crime.
Blizzard is supposedly adding archeology to the list of secondary professions. I don't know if I rightly care. It took me a good weekend to level up my professions so they are of some use to me, so much so, that on Saturday night I went to bed planning how to level up even faster the following Sunday.
If only I was as industrious at real life as I am here...
Friday, July 16, 2010
LFG: The quest for the perfect PUG
For those of you who do not play MMOs, LFG means looking for group, and PUG means pick up group. See, in MMos, there are dungeons. In World of Warcraft they are called instances and raids. Instances are closed settings for quests, with difficult bosses and good armor and items. They are normally played with a 4-5 people. Towards the end of the game, they are always done with a group of 5, again, consisting of a tank, a healer and 3 damage dealers. These instances can take some time to complete. Some of the newer ones take about 20 minutes to complete. Some of the older ones can take up to 2 hours. The reason is, even though the older dungeons are for lower level characters, Blizzard, the company itself, was still learning a bit. The game USED to be a bit more hardcore as well. People spent...way more time doing this. It's hard to believe, isn't it? But it's true. Then you have raids. Now raids are even harder dungeons. They are normally considered end-game dungeons. Meaning, this is what you do when you're at the top of the game. There were level 60 raids, then level 70 raids and now level 80 raids. Raids used to be for up to 40 people. That's a lot of people. Nowadays there aren't any 40 people raids, only 10 and 25 people raids. They call em 10 man and 25man raids. Suffice to say, these often take hours to complete. The shortest one takes about 45 minutes, and it is one single room with a few dragons in it. It is also not that difficult nowadays. Raids go out of style, as the game keeps progressing, and some of these become redundant to complete, but some people complete them to get good armor and items that will enable them to go on even HARDER raids. Or for shits and giggles. Preparing for a raid is strenous. You have to be good, you have to be well equipped, and more often than not, you need to have leveled your professions up to par in order to contribute to the group. Professions, which I will explain some other day, for my sister's benefit, hehe, entail a few skills, such as mining, and armor making, and leatherworking, and even cooking! Cooking is a much sought-after skill, because you can make tasty meals that benefit the entire group. Cooking goes hand in hand with fishing too! My dad would be thrilled! No, there's no crochetting, but there is tailoring. Anyway, raiding.... it's a long process to be ready to raid. And more often than not it's necessary to do instances, or 5mans, up the wazoo.
Blizzard implemented this nifty tool a few months ago where you'd be able to pair up in a database with other people looking for groups. Before, it meant asking on a general chat in your own server if someone wanted to do this or that. And it could mean waiting around for hours, depending on the day and trend of that day. Nowadays, it can still take an hour or so, if you're just dps. If you're a tank, or a healer, it could take much less time, and if you're a tank AND a healer queueing together, it's basically instantaneous! And this has been basically the case for my gf and I.
Now, when you pair up with random players, with players who are not your in-game friends or are your guild mates, this is called a PUG, because you're looking for other players. You call the group and the random players pugs.
An unexpected secondary effect of a game having SUCH a large and diverse user base, is that you get to meet all kinds of people. Including people who will irritate the feck out of you by: A. Being self entitled B. By being elitist jerks C. By Being thieves (we call them ninja looters- whenever something that's good drops, be it an equipment item, a weapon, a recipee, a gem, the party can 'roll' for it. This means that party members will basically roll from 1-100 on a need or greed basis. Need trumps greed. A higher number wins out. And ninja looters will wait for everyone to roll first and then roll need, when they don't really need something)D. By being douchebags overall or E. By being bad players in various ways ( Any sort of things, such as being bad on purpose, being bad and a jerk at the same time...no one is perfect, a bad player is not a bad thing, but a touch of humility and good manners go a LONG way in this game) Not to say that there aren't decent people in this game, there are, but just like in real life, there are more assholes than nice people, for whatever reason. It's as if the game mimicks real life a bit too well.
Before the LFG tool for instances, looking for a group was a bit difficult, and more often than not, you would end up with douchebags. And it would often deterr you from trying that again for a while. Nowadays...you're basically paired up with douchebags faster. It's not perfect, but at least you have a way of simply dropping that particular group and trying again. It's like speed dating basically: all the awkwardness and regret just comes at you faster, and eventually it all happens so fast, you've rubbed yourself raw and numb, and it doesn't smart as much anymore. Pretty picture, I know.
I remember one evening we had the perfect group: we ended up doing the same labyrinthine dungeon 5 times over. Everyone in the group was perfect: corteous, respectful, and by the 3rd time of doing the same dungeon, it was clockwork, to the point where we were basically a ravenous pack of pixels, or some sort of high fantasy hit squad carrying out a Troll pogrom or something. ANYWAY, it was great. I was sad to have to break for food, because, well, it was perfect. Suffice to say when we came back, we had probably the worst group we had had all evening, and my girlfriend and I ended up carrying the group (meaning, pulling all the weight). Last week we were doing an 'already in progress' 5man. This means it had already been started and the roles we were filling in had been vacated. When we came in, I saw a bunch of corpses, meaning that some or all in the party had died and come back in. I asked what happened, and the party explained in short words that they had a 'noob dk tank'(meaning, an inexperienced Death Knight Tank) to which I said 'ahh. I see' and proceeded to do my thing (my thing being killing chit, as a friend of yesteryear used to say) Or at least I attempted to do so. As soon as we started, we were bombarded by a party chat full of question marks. My gf thinks the spammers were speaking in korean and the chat was not recognizing the characters. Í don't know. And then the real fun started. We had a hunter and a boomkin (a rather large owl with antlers that casts magic, also called crit *for critical* chicken. ) The hunter decided that my going breakneck fast was not fast enough, and started to shoot things for shits and giggles. Which made my job that more strenous. Then the boomkin thought it would be ok to start pushing things away from me with gusts of wind (this ability is more for player vs player action, where distance from another player is desired. In an instance it's bad because A. The tank, meaning moi, could not hit things as I was supposed to and B. He started pushing them into other enemies, so then we all had one big american party where I had to chase everything around) We asked him to stop, and explained this was not pvp (payer vs player) and he proceeded to say it was, and called my girlfriend a slut. I was not happy. See, you should never anger the tank or healer, because you might die. It's like being carried into an ER and spitting at the doctor's face and calling him a pansy. You're not making a case for yourself. So we proceeded to leave the party and left them to die.
Now, if we could only muster the courage in life to leave douchebags hanging, everything would be simply awesome....
Example:
Me: Hey Boss, I don't like this assignment. I know I volunteered, but it's really not great. Can I please drop it?
Boss: Nope. You trained for it, you get to keep it.
Me: But, this is not what I was hired for...
Boss: Suck it up, buttercup
Real Life resolution: I get to keep my job and now I hate it even more than before
MMO resolution:
Me: ok, well, Let me...click this...Leave group...ok, hey, I'm putting you on ignore, have luck finding another schmuck! l2p nub!~
If only...
Blizzard implemented this nifty tool a few months ago where you'd be able to pair up in a database with other people looking for groups. Before, it meant asking on a general chat in your own server if someone wanted to do this or that. And it could mean waiting around for hours, depending on the day and trend of that day. Nowadays, it can still take an hour or so, if you're just dps. If you're a tank, or a healer, it could take much less time, and if you're a tank AND a healer queueing together, it's basically instantaneous! And this has been basically the case for my gf and I.
Now, when you pair up with random players, with players who are not your in-game friends or are your guild mates, this is called a PUG, because you're looking for other players. You call the group and the random players pugs.
An unexpected secondary effect of a game having SUCH a large and diverse user base, is that you get to meet all kinds of people. Including people who will irritate the feck out of you by: A. Being self entitled B. By being elitist jerks C. By Being thieves (we call them ninja looters- whenever something that's good drops, be it an equipment item, a weapon, a recipee, a gem, the party can 'roll' for it. This means that party members will basically roll from 1-100 on a need or greed basis. Need trumps greed. A higher number wins out. And ninja looters will wait for everyone to roll first and then roll need, when they don't really need something)D. By being douchebags overall or E. By being bad players in various ways ( Any sort of things, such as being bad on purpose, being bad and a jerk at the same time...no one is perfect, a bad player is not a bad thing, but a touch of humility and good manners go a LONG way in this game) Not to say that there aren't decent people in this game, there are, but just like in real life, there are more assholes than nice people, for whatever reason. It's as if the game mimicks real life a bit too well.
Before the LFG tool for instances, looking for a group was a bit difficult, and more often than not, you would end up with douchebags. And it would often deterr you from trying that again for a while. Nowadays...you're basically paired up with douchebags faster. It's not perfect, but at least you have a way of simply dropping that particular group and trying again. It's like speed dating basically: all the awkwardness and regret just comes at you faster, and eventually it all happens so fast, you've rubbed yourself raw and numb, and it doesn't smart as much anymore. Pretty picture, I know.
I remember one evening we had the perfect group: we ended up doing the same labyrinthine dungeon 5 times over. Everyone in the group was perfect: corteous, respectful, and by the 3rd time of doing the same dungeon, it was clockwork, to the point where we were basically a ravenous pack of pixels, or some sort of high fantasy hit squad carrying out a Troll pogrom or something. ANYWAY, it was great. I was sad to have to break for food, because, well, it was perfect. Suffice to say when we came back, we had probably the worst group we had had all evening, and my girlfriend and I ended up carrying the group (meaning, pulling all the weight). Last week we were doing an 'already in progress' 5man. This means it had already been started and the roles we were filling in had been vacated. When we came in, I saw a bunch of corpses, meaning that some or all in the party had died and come back in. I asked what happened, and the party explained in short words that they had a 'noob dk tank'(meaning, an inexperienced Death Knight Tank) to which I said 'ahh. I see' and proceeded to do my thing (my thing being killing chit, as a friend of yesteryear used to say) Or at least I attempted to do so. As soon as we started, we were bombarded by a party chat full of question marks. My gf thinks the spammers were speaking in korean and the chat was not recognizing the characters. Í don't know. And then the real fun started. We had a hunter and a boomkin (a rather large owl with antlers that casts magic, also called crit *for critical* chicken. ) The hunter decided that my going breakneck fast was not fast enough, and started to shoot things for shits and giggles. Which made my job that more strenous. Then the boomkin thought it would be ok to start pushing things away from me with gusts of wind (this ability is more for player vs player action, where distance from another player is desired. In an instance it's bad because A. The tank, meaning moi, could not hit things as I was supposed to and B. He started pushing them into other enemies, so then we all had one big american party where I had to chase everything around) We asked him to stop, and explained this was not pvp (payer vs player) and he proceeded to say it was, and called my girlfriend a slut. I was not happy. See, you should never anger the tank or healer, because you might die. It's like being carried into an ER and spitting at the doctor's face and calling him a pansy. You're not making a case for yourself. So we proceeded to leave the party and left them to die.
Now, if we could only muster the courage in life to leave douchebags hanging, everything would be simply awesome....
Example:
Me: Hey Boss, I don't like this assignment. I know I volunteered, but it's really not great. Can I please drop it?
Boss: Nope. You trained for it, you get to keep it.
Me: But, this is not what I was hired for...
Boss: Suck it up, buttercup
Real Life resolution: I get to keep my job and now I hate it even more than before
MMO resolution:
Me: ok, well, Let me...click this...Leave group...ok, hey, I'm putting you on ignore, have luck finding another schmuck! l2p nub!~
If only...
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Goldilock's Catharsis: It only took me three attempts
I started playing WoW on May 2009. I've already established that. And I took to tanking rather well, I feel. Or rather, It's what I preferred doing. I started on a pally, which is considered by most 'Easymode' tanking. Since then, I leveled a DK tank to 80, I'm currently leveling a warrior (almost at Northrend) and I plan to level a druid when the next expansion hits. All in all, I expect to have a closet of tanks some day. Because I am that OCD.
It's kind of bittersweet that I've left the druid for last, because at this point I kind of expect to like it the least of all the four tanking classes. I'm extrapolating possibilities from what I've heard vis-á-vis what I already know I like and dislike from other classes.
I had a long rundown of how each class works, but blogspot did not save it for me, so I have to rewrite a lot of it...=/
in a nutshell:
Paladins - are like beating your smaller sibling at any sport, if they were not already athletes: it's easy to look good on a pally, it's like driving on automatic. It's a nice loop. The only time it's kinda loopy and odd is when offtanking, and Paladins seem to have a button for everything. Mage is getting chewed out 20 yds away? There's THIS button to make them INVINCIBLE!!!! Healer is getting shot in the face? There's THIS button to make YOU get shot in the face FOR them! Is the entire raid retarded and standing in fire (And fire sadly does not give you the "awesomeness buff")???? You have THIS button to make you take damage FOR THEM!!!! WOOO!!!!! All in all, the hard part about paladins is gearing them, and later on taking shit for A. Having leveled a pally instead of a warrior and B. For sucking at single target tanking in some specific bosses.
Druids- I don't have one, but I can't wait to have one. I'll have you know though, from what I hear I can gear them however I want, and I'd only have three buttons. Three buttons!?!?!? Wtf! It's like staring at fish in a buckett!!!
DK- DK is said to be a convoluted tanking class, and IT IS!!! Basically, as of now, you can do a dk tank...however you want. Could be ANY spec, and it's still feasible. It's like freeform poetry: It sucks, and you can't do anything about it except order another beer to make it go down smoother. Basically, I went with blood tank, because I dislike not having a shield, but I like being slightly independent of a healer as a tradeoff. I didn't know it was gonna be THE tank spec for Cataclysm, the upcoming expansion. Basically a DK tank goes as follows: it's a gimped paladin that makes up for getting hit harder than any other tank class, and not dodging ENOUGH by doing a LOT of damage. The reason why people say it's complicated? Because A. you don't have mana, you have runes, which work in a weird gimicky way B. all the damage you do is based on ilnesses you pass on (Like a Typhoid Mary Tank) C. They have a rotation VERY MUCH like a paladin....except the rotation ....has a few seconds of hang time while you wait for a rune or two to come off it's cooldown D. It's hard to gear with one less item to enchant (shield, I mourn you) and E. Nobody can make up their mind so far which spec is better. All in all, Dks are much maligned in general, so whenever you tank somewhat passable as a DK, it's a bit of a miracle, but everyone expects you to screw up. They do make good tanks though, very flashy. And eventually, very very laid back. Their lack of 'OH SHIT' buttons bothers me though. They have a few, yes, but all for self preservation, not many to save other very important people, like maybe the healer? Hmm.
Warriors- So far, I've only leveled a warrior to 70, and working, but I LOVE THIS CLASS. Here's the deal with warriors: It's hard to gear them, they have too many specs for too many kinds of tanking, they have issues with rage, people take advantage of them at the beginning of pulls, tanking groups is stressful enough to give you a headache, they have very few abilities to save other party members (compared to pallies) and they have NO SET rotation, but rather a priority system....it's like going from a laptop to a clickey clackey typewriter. BUT THEY ARE SOOOOOO overpowered. I haven't had this much fun in so long. This was the class I was meant to play on. The few abilities they DO have to save other party members simply make them shine as heroes, and the group tanking mechanics are so incredibly hands on, it's hard not to feel like you're actually skilled when it works! Not to mention that warriors are loaded with abilities meant to hinder and humiliate your opponent (Pvper running away? How's about a mad dash to them that does damage and stuns them? Then you can lower their armor by 8% in one fell swoop while doing damage and have the chance to hit them in the face with a big plank of iron you tote around to cover your ass. It is GLORIOUS)
So it took me three journeys to level 80 to get a taste of what I really loved to do. It's sad I left the druid for last, seeing as how I will probably not like it as much, and the experience will suffer in the process, but who the heck cares? I'm having fun now!!!
It's kind of bittersweet that I've left the druid for last, because at this point I kind of expect to like it the least of all the four tanking classes. I'm extrapolating possibilities from what I've heard vis-á-vis what I already know I like and dislike from other classes.
I had a long rundown of how each class works, but blogspot did not save it for me, so I have to rewrite a lot of it...=/
in a nutshell:
Paladins - are like beating your smaller sibling at any sport, if they were not already athletes: it's easy to look good on a pally, it's like driving on automatic. It's a nice loop. The only time it's kinda loopy and odd is when offtanking, and Paladins seem to have a button for everything. Mage is getting chewed out 20 yds away? There's THIS button to make them INVINCIBLE!!!! Healer is getting shot in the face? There's THIS button to make YOU get shot in the face FOR them! Is the entire raid retarded and standing in fire (And fire sadly does not give you the "awesomeness buff")???? You have THIS button to make you take damage FOR THEM!!!! WOOO!!!!! All in all, the hard part about paladins is gearing them, and later on taking shit for A. Having leveled a pally instead of a warrior and B. For sucking at single target tanking in some specific bosses.
Druids- I don't have one, but I can't wait to have one. I'll have you know though, from what I hear I can gear them however I want, and I'd only have three buttons. Three buttons!?!?!? Wtf! It's like staring at fish in a buckett!!!
DK- DK is said to be a convoluted tanking class, and IT IS!!! Basically, as of now, you can do a dk tank...however you want. Could be ANY spec, and it's still feasible. It's like freeform poetry: It sucks, and you can't do anything about it except order another beer to make it go down smoother. Basically, I went with blood tank, because I dislike not having a shield, but I like being slightly independent of a healer as a tradeoff. I didn't know it was gonna be THE tank spec for Cataclysm, the upcoming expansion. Basically a DK tank goes as follows: it's a gimped paladin that makes up for getting hit harder than any other tank class, and not dodging ENOUGH by doing a LOT of damage. The reason why people say it's complicated? Because A. you don't have mana, you have runes, which work in a weird gimicky way B. all the damage you do is based on ilnesses you pass on (Like a Typhoid Mary Tank) C. They have a rotation VERY MUCH like a paladin....except the rotation ....has a few seconds of hang time while you wait for a rune or two to come off it's cooldown D. It's hard to gear with one less item to enchant (shield, I mourn you) and E. Nobody can make up their mind so far which spec is better. All in all, Dks are much maligned in general, so whenever you tank somewhat passable as a DK, it's a bit of a miracle, but everyone expects you to screw up. They do make good tanks though, very flashy. And eventually, very very laid back. Their lack of 'OH SHIT' buttons bothers me though. They have a few, yes, but all for self preservation, not many to save other very important people, like maybe the healer? Hmm.
Warriors- So far, I've only leveled a warrior to 70, and working, but I LOVE THIS CLASS. Here's the deal with warriors: It's hard to gear them, they have too many specs for too many kinds of tanking, they have issues with rage, people take advantage of them at the beginning of pulls, tanking groups is stressful enough to give you a headache, they have very few abilities to save other party members (compared to pallies) and they have NO SET rotation, but rather a priority system....it's like going from a laptop to a clickey clackey typewriter. BUT THEY ARE SOOOOOO overpowered. I haven't had this much fun in so long. This was the class I was meant to play on. The few abilities they DO have to save other party members simply make them shine as heroes, and the group tanking mechanics are so incredibly hands on, it's hard not to feel like you're actually skilled when it works! Not to mention that warriors are loaded with abilities meant to hinder and humiliate your opponent (Pvper running away? How's about a mad dash to them that does damage and stuns them? Then you can lower their armor by 8% in one fell swoop while doing damage and have the chance to hit them in the face with a big plank of iron you tote around to cover your ass. It is GLORIOUS)
So it took me three journeys to level 80 to get a taste of what I really loved to do. It's sad I left the druid for last, seeing as how I will probably not like it as much, and the experience will suffer in the process, but who the heck cares? I'm having fun now!!!
Monday, July 12, 2010
MMO 101 (or, what I've been doing for fun for the last 15 months or so)
So, last May 2009 I joined a very obscure, even tabboo demographic: I play an MMO avidly. For the benefit of those of my peers that HAVE a life and DON'T play an MMO, I'll explain in layman's terms. MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online (game).
I have been playing, for a greater part of my last year, the much disputed/reviled/acclaimed World of Warcraft. I started playing it because of a girl, and stayed because it's addicting as hell. The game is, for the lack of a better definition, an RPG- you basically play a role in a video game. You choose from a limited list of avatars, who you want to be, and you go out and do quests. The setting is a quasi-classical fantasy, but I'll go into that in a moment. There are guns and airships too, so it appeals a bit to the steampunk in me. But most of it are swords and armor and magic and stuff. When it came to taking the plunge into this game, I was way in over my head, and had to have it broken down for me in a way that I could digest it better. My now girlfriend, then girl I liked so much I spent 40 bucks over, gave me a list of the classes available to me. The classes are thus-
Hunter: a hunter basically is a guy with an animal doing the fighting for him. S/he uses bows or guns and goes around with a bear or a dog or some other kind of pet (sometimes even a huge spider) and kills stuff from afar. Later in the game you find out this person screws stuff up 80% of the time it goes wrong, much to your chagrin.
Priest: pretty self explanatory. I was not interested in dying as much as this class portends (Hi! Do you need some godly/priestly influence? No don't kill me..yarrgg!!!!! dead)
Mage: again, pretty self explanatory. The prospect of turning stuff into sheep or frogs, or freezing things or blowing them up was pretty enticing, the mortality rate I assumed these suffer (and later confirmed as correct) was a deterrent.
Warlock: a warlock is pretty interesting class- it's basically a mage of sorts that calls upon demonic powers and summons a 'minion', which is just a fancy name for 'ugly pet'. I was not really interested, supposedly it's the hardest class to level, and I was just starting, so no. Skipped.
Warrior: self explanatory. Weapons, armor, the whole shebang. I was partially interested, but I chose another class because it was the 'easier' choice for beginners.
Shamans: Shamans are sorta like spirit warriors. They use totems and call elemental and spirit forces forth to fight with them/for them. I was definitely NOT interested.
Rogues: Rogues are basically thieves. In WoW, the thievery part is more of an on the side thing: they do pick pockets and open locks, but it's not as beneficial in a fight as you might expect. They do sneak around a LOT. And I must say, I was verrrrry interested in this class, and made a rogue eventually, but could not bring myself to making one as my first foray into WoW.
Paladins: Ahhh, the 'easy' class. Basically you're a rolling ball of armor that kills stuff with piety and can heal itself and render itself indestructible. Yeah, a lot of people hate paladins for having it 'easy'.
Druids: Druids are pretty interesting, and will try to make one in the near future- basically, you turn into animals or even trees and use nature as your ally. You can also turn into a manatee, and a blue hawk-owl thing. I am insanely jealous of not having a druid. I didn't choose druids, DESPITE the prospect of having a dancing bear (more on this some other time) because I preferred how Paladins sounded.
There's another class unavailable to me when I started this game, and thankfully so, called the Death Knight. As you might expect, the Death Knight is basically a videogame version of many a death metal band fantasy. You're ...undead. And you go around in plate armor killing things in horrible ways. And when you laugh, it's a spectral laugh. It's eerie. The class has since proven itself fun, but it would've sucked if I started the game with this class.
So long story short, I chose a paladin. Paladins are basically goody two shoes. And they get to wear nice luxurious armor and are able to heal themselves with the power of 'the Light' and yadda yadda yadda. Now came the hard-ish decision of what race (yes, race) I wanted to play. World of Warcraft is a classic (...quasiclassic, we'll see) binomial dichotomy. Good vs Evil. Ish. Not really. See, there's the Alliance (standing for what's good in the world and blah blah blah) and the Horde (misfits who go around looking for fights....that were actually started by the Alliance at some point...because the Horde are fugly)
I went Alliance. Because my now girlfriend hates the Horde. =/ These are the races, per faction:
Alliance
Humans: ....humans. I don't like em. They look dumb. They sound dumb. Just not my cup of tea. The chicks do the macarena when they dance. Yuck.
Gnomes: ...ugh. We hate gnomes. A lot. Like, with a passion. I can't think of any race I dislike more. They're tiny, and their laughter is annoying as feck. Punt-the-gnome is something which dreams are made of, I'll say.
Dwarves: Much like every other dwarf-lore, they drink, they burp, they laugh rambunctiously, and they have scottish accents. I have a VERY soft spot for dwarves. A drawback of playing with a girlfriend (the only drawback) is that they will not allow you to play a character of a race they don't think matches with their own character. And dwarves, as endearing as they are, don't match. Ever. With anything. (Point of interest, dwarf females in this game are like unicorns)
Night Elves: Night elves are spindly, gaunt, tall, very graceful woodland creatures. With bright eyes, pointy ears, and I dunno. They kinda look like tall, kind vampires. I like vampires, but the voice they game 'em makes em sound like a pissed off David Schwimmer.
Draenei: Draenei are basically Eatern European space goats. Let me explain: They are refugees from another planet, they speak in an Eastern European accent, they have tendrils on their faces that make them look like an octopus-head, they have horns, a tail and are cloven. Oh, and they're about twice as tall as most anything. This is the race I chose for my paladin. They had me at space goat.
To offer a counterpoint, here's what I missed on the Horde:
Orcs: Orcs are pretty much what you'd expect of an orc, they're a growling greenish thing that looks like a gorilla mated with a demon. I think that's their origin actually. They are warlike and honorable. They do the Hammertime when they dance. It's...odd.
Trolls: Trolls in this game are unlike trolls elsewhere. They do have the crazy hair, but they have huge fangs and are the response to Jar Jar Binks when it comes to offensive stereotypes: Trolls apparently emigrated from Kingston. But they do Capoeira. I dunno, Blizzard was throwing ideas around after a kegger, and thus the troll was born. I have a soft spot for trolls, they're kinda the representatives of the Caribbean in this game. But alas, they're ugly as sin (see dwarves as to why this is important)
Forsaken: Forsaken are basically zombies. Walking dead. This sounds pretty cool, but the models are sorta lacking, in my opinion. I dunno. Maybe I'm just not into the whole zombie thing as much as I thought I was. Although creating something with a missing lower jaw is pretty interesting.
Tauren: Tauren are minotaurs, basically. Tree hugging minotaurs. Um, yeah. I like the Tauren quite a bit, they make everything else look tiny by comparison, which was quite fun. These were basically made to be the Native Americans of the game. I dunno how I feel about THAT, but it's fine. Whatev. They hug trees. Very menacingly.
Blood Elves: Blood elves are like metrosexual night elves. They're like the foppish, snobby aunt of the Horde family (I dunno about you, but I have a snobby aunt. Meh) They all look delicate, and groomed, and meh. Not very dangerous. And yet they're annoying as heck. They give gnomes a run for their money on 'Race I want to choke to death'.
There are two races coming out in the coming months: the Alliance got Worgens and the Horde got Goblins. Worgen are a cute word for Werewolves. Yes. Werewolves. Nobody wants to say it, so I will: Blizzard loves the Alliance more. Werewolves, are you serious?? How cool is that! Anyway, as you might have guessed, Goblins are an insult by comparison: they are short green gnomes. Good deal huh?
By the way, I know this suddenly turned into a wall of text. But I'm not done. Once I made my Space Goat goody two shoes in armor, I was made to decide what *role* I wanted to play as. Role, wtf?
See, the MMO world is dominated by a powerful triumvirate: Healer, DPS (Damage per Second) and tank. Another brief explanation of this:
Healer- heals. Healers are like the drama majors in high school. Or maybe like the chess nerds. Thing is, healers get stepped on a lot, it's a thankless job, or rather, it's been said, a horrible godforsaken responsibility. To keep 4 other players alive? of which 4 could be potential morons?! of which 4 could blame the healer for everything??!? It's a horrible role, and I wanted no part in it. However, when a healer is good, the recognition is profuse. My girlfriend chose to go the way of the healer, which is cause for much stress whenever we play. I feel her pain. She yells at the monitor a lot. A lot of "NO!!! Don't step on FIRE!!!!" can be heard when we play.
DPS- DPS basically does damage. DPS are the bulk of the game. In a party of five people, three of them should be DPS. DPS are like the jocks. They love numbers. They LOVE outstaging each other. And they LOOOOVE blaming the healer and the tank for their own misgivings. They also like to think they could do the healer and the tank's job. As the saying goes, dpsing is 'fun'. DPS can be clumped into one, but there's different kinds of dps classes: you have casters, which normally mean they do damage from afar. This normally includes anything that casts magic. You have melee damage, which basically includes anything that hits stuff from a closer range, and normally gets killed in the process. And you have hunters, who insist on just hitting random stuff for fun, causing both healer and tank much stress.
Tank- a tank is basically a character that has ways of making everything on screen hopefully hit HIM and not kill the healer...and maybe leave the rest of the group alive. Maybe. Basically, a meat shield. They say tanking is a job. Why a job? Because it PAYS to be a tank, but man, it's thankless. (Basically, tanks and healers are always in demand, because these actually take some skill to play passably well) If something goes wrong, anything, it's the tank's fault. The only time it's not the tank's fault is if the tank dies. ...not really, but...still.
After much debate, I chose to become a tank. Why? Well, those who know me might say that it makes sense for me to have chosen something that looks to get hit in the face repeatedly. All in all, healing sounded too stressful for me, and killing things sounded (and resulted in being) too competitive for me, so I decided to play as an Eastern European Space Goat Goody Two Shoes Meat Shield, or EESGGTSMS for short. Not very catchy. AFTER all that deliberation, I uhh, started playing. More on that some other day, =P
I have been playing, for a greater part of my last year, the much disputed/reviled/acclaimed World of Warcraft. I started playing it because of a girl, and stayed because it's addicting as hell. The game is, for the lack of a better definition, an RPG- you basically play a role in a video game. You choose from a limited list of avatars, who you want to be, and you go out and do quests. The setting is a quasi-classical fantasy, but I'll go into that in a moment. There are guns and airships too, so it appeals a bit to the steampunk in me. But most of it are swords and armor and magic and stuff. When it came to taking the plunge into this game, I was way in over my head, and had to have it broken down for me in a way that I could digest it better. My now girlfriend, then girl I liked so much I spent 40 bucks over, gave me a list of the classes available to me. The classes are thus-
Hunter: a hunter basically is a guy with an animal doing the fighting for him. S/he uses bows or guns and goes around with a bear or a dog or some other kind of pet (sometimes even a huge spider) and kills stuff from afar. Later in the game you find out this person screws stuff up 80% of the time it goes wrong, much to your chagrin.
Priest: pretty self explanatory. I was not interested in dying as much as this class portends (Hi! Do you need some godly/priestly influence? No don't kill me..yarrgg!!!!! dead)
Mage: again, pretty self explanatory. The prospect of turning stuff into sheep or frogs, or freezing things or blowing them up was pretty enticing, the mortality rate I assumed these suffer (and later confirmed as correct) was a deterrent.
Warlock: a warlock is pretty interesting class- it's basically a mage of sorts that calls upon demonic powers and summons a 'minion', which is just a fancy name for 'ugly pet'. I was not really interested, supposedly it's the hardest class to level, and I was just starting, so no. Skipped.
Warrior: self explanatory. Weapons, armor, the whole shebang. I was partially interested, but I chose another class because it was the 'easier' choice for beginners.
Shamans: Shamans are sorta like spirit warriors. They use totems and call elemental and spirit forces forth to fight with them/for them. I was definitely NOT interested.
Rogues: Rogues are basically thieves. In WoW, the thievery part is more of an on the side thing: they do pick pockets and open locks, but it's not as beneficial in a fight as you might expect. They do sneak around a LOT. And I must say, I was verrrrry interested in this class, and made a rogue eventually, but could not bring myself to making one as my first foray into WoW.
Paladins: Ahhh, the 'easy' class. Basically you're a rolling ball of armor that kills stuff with piety and can heal itself and render itself indestructible. Yeah, a lot of people hate paladins for having it 'easy'.
Druids: Druids are pretty interesting, and will try to make one in the near future- basically, you turn into animals or even trees and use nature as your ally. You can also turn into a manatee, and a blue hawk-owl thing. I am insanely jealous of not having a druid. I didn't choose druids, DESPITE the prospect of having a dancing bear (more on this some other time) because I preferred how Paladins sounded.
There's another class unavailable to me when I started this game, and thankfully so, called the Death Knight. As you might expect, the Death Knight is basically a videogame version of many a death metal band fantasy. You're ...undead. And you go around in plate armor killing things in horrible ways. And when you laugh, it's a spectral laugh. It's eerie. The class has since proven itself fun, but it would've sucked if I started the game with this class.
So long story short, I chose a paladin. Paladins are basically goody two shoes. And they get to wear nice luxurious armor and are able to heal themselves with the power of 'the Light' and yadda yadda yadda. Now came the hard-ish decision of what race (yes, race) I wanted to play. World of Warcraft is a classic (...quasiclassic, we'll see) binomial dichotomy. Good vs Evil. Ish. Not really. See, there's the Alliance (standing for what's good in the world and blah blah blah) and the Horde (misfits who go around looking for fights....that were actually started by the Alliance at some point...because the Horde are fugly)
I went Alliance. Because my now girlfriend hates the Horde. =/ These are the races, per faction:
Alliance
Humans: ....humans. I don't like em. They look dumb. They sound dumb. Just not my cup of tea. The chicks do the macarena when they dance. Yuck.
Gnomes: ...ugh. We hate gnomes. A lot. Like, with a passion. I can't think of any race I dislike more. They're tiny, and their laughter is annoying as feck. Punt-the-gnome is something which dreams are made of, I'll say.
Dwarves: Much like every other dwarf-lore, they drink, they burp, they laugh rambunctiously, and they have scottish accents. I have a VERY soft spot for dwarves. A drawback of playing with a girlfriend (the only drawback) is that they will not allow you to play a character of a race they don't think matches with their own character. And dwarves, as endearing as they are, don't match. Ever. With anything. (Point of interest, dwarf females in this game are like unicorns)
Night Elves: Night elves are spindly, gaunt, tall, very graceful woodland creatures. With bright eyes, pointy ears, and I dunno. They kinda look like tall, kind vampires. I like vampires, but the voice they game 'em makes em sound like a pissed off David Schwimmer.
Draenei: Draenei are basically Eatern European space goats. Let me explain: They are refugees from another planet, they speak in an Eastern European accent, they have tendrils on their faces that make them look like an octopus-head, they have horns, a tail and are cloven. Oh, and they're about twice as tall as most anything. This is the race I chose for my paladin. They had me at space goat.
To offer a counterpoint, here's what I missed on the Horde:
Orcs: Orcs are pretty much what you'd expect of an orc, they're a growling greenish thing that looks like a gorilla mated with a demon. I think that's their origin actually. They are warlike and honorable. They do the Hammertime when they dance. It's...odd.
Trolls: Trolls in this game are unlike trolls elsewhere. They do have the crazy hair, but they have huge fangs and are the response to Jar Jar Binks when it comes to offensive stereotypes: Trolls apparently emigrated from Kingston. But they do Capoeira. I dunno, Blizzard was throwing ideas around after a kegger, and thus the troll was born. I have a soft spot for trolls, they're kinda the representatives of the Caribbean in this game. But alas, they're ugly as sin (see dwarves as to why this is important)
Forsaken: Forsaken are basically zombies. Walking dead. This sounds pretty cool, but the models are sorta lacking, in my opinion. I dunno. Maybe I'm just not into the whole zombie thing as much as I thought I was. Although creating something with a missing lower jaw is pretty interesting.
Tauren: Tauren are minotaurs, basically. Tree hugging minotaurs. Um, yeah. I like the Tauren quite a bit, they make everything else look tiny by comparison, which was quite fun. These were basically made to be the Native Americans of the game. I dunno how I feel about THAT, but it's fine. Whatev. They hug trees. Very menacingly.
Blood Elves: Blood elves are like metrosexual night elves. They're like the foppish, snobby aunt of the Horde family (I dunno about you, but I have a snobby aunt. Meh) They all look delicate, and groomed, and meh. Not very dangerous. And yet they're annoying as heck. They give gnomes a run for their money on 'Race I want to choke to death'.
There are two races coming out in the coming months: the Alliance got Worgens and the Horde got Goblins. Worgen are a cute word for Werewolves. Yes. Werewolves. Nobody wants to say it, so I will: Blizzard loves the Alliance more. Werewolves, are you serious?? How cool is that! Anyway, as you might have guessed, Goblins are an insult by comparison: they are short green gnomes. Good deal huh?
By the way, I know this suddenly turned into a wall of text. But I'm not done. Once I made my Space Goat goody two shoes in armor, I was made to decide what *role* I wanted to play as. Role, wtf?
See, the MMO world is dominated by a powerful triumvirate: Healer, DPS (Damage per Second) and tank. Another brief explanation of this:
Healer- heals. Healers are like the drama majors in high school. Or maybe like the chess nerds. Thing is, healers get stepped on a lot, it's a thankless job, or rather, it's been said, a horrible godforsaken responsibility. To keep 4 other players alive? of which 4 could be potential morons?! of which 4 could blame the healer for everything??!? It's a horrible role, and I wanted no part in it. However, when a healer is good, the recognition is profuse. My girlfriend chose to go the way of the healer, which is cause for much stress whenever we play. I feel her pain. She yells at the monitor a lot. A lot of "NO!!! Don't step on FIRE!!!!" can be heard when we play.
DPS- DPS basically does damage. DPS are the bulk of the game. In a party of five people, three of them should be DPS. DPS are like the jocks. They love numbers. They LOVE outstaging each other. And they LOOOOVE blaming the healer and the tank for their own misgivings. They also like to think they could do the healer and the tank's job. As the saying goes, dpsing is 'fun'. DPS can be clumped into one, but there's different kinds of dps classes: you have casters, which normally mean they do damage from afar. This normally includes anything that casts magic. You have melee damage, which basically includes anything that hits stuff from a closer range, and normally gets killed in the process. And you have hunters, who insist on just hitting random stuff for fun, causing both healer and tank much stress.
Tank- a tank is basically a character that has ways of making everything on screen hopefully hit HIM and not kill the healer...and maybe leave the rest of the group alive. Maybe. Basically, a meat shield. They say tanking is a job. Why a job? Because it PAYS to be a tank, but man, it's thankless. (Basically, tanks and healers are always in demand, because these actually take some skill to play passably well) If something goes wrong, anything, it's the tank's fault. The only time it's not the tank's fault is if the tank dies. ...not really, but...still.
After much debate, I chose to become a tank. Why? Well, those who know me might say that it makes sense for me to have chosen something that looks to get hit in the face repeatedly. All in all, healing sounded too stressful for me, and killing things sounded (and resulted in being) too competitive for me, so I decided to play as an Eastern European Space Goat Goody Two Shoes Meat Shield, or EESGGTSMS for short. Not very catchy. AFTER all that deliberation, I uhh, started playing. More on that some other day, =P
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