Nogamara

Cross-faction in WoW

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“It’s happening. Cross-faction dungeons, raids, and rated PvP will begin testing soon.

So this tweet came out like 2h ago and as someone who has been playing for over 15 years (with breaks) my only reaction is: WHY? WHY NOW?

I played nearly exclusively on Horde from 2005 to 2014. I had a few lowbie alliance alts on random servers, and then one Rogue in a guild on the same server. I joined that guild full-time when I came back for BfA. Then I transferred my main off last summer, to another Alliance guild.

Had this been in the game in 2018 I wouldn’t have had to level all chars again on the other faction. Well of course no one pressured me to do this but I would have absolutely stuck with my old “Horde” chars if I could’ve played with my guild. Not all toons of course, but I would’ve led my old three main chars through all the content.

So yeah, there are no cross-faction guilds, but I maybe would’ve raided on my Troll Warrior in Castle Nathria and Sanctum.

So I guess, personal history with wishing for this feature aside, it’s a good change, but I’m not sure it’s as tremendous as it sounds, if there are no cross-realm guilds. There are some players who are mostly on their main, would they even notice when someone is asking for a group in guild chat where they are not? The people who always seem to be on alts.. those could probably be in the guild. It gets complicated quickly, if you don’t have a dedicated chat channel – or if your guild is not advertising guild dungeon runs on Discord, and honestly why would they? Only if a sizable percentage of people might be on their other-faction chars. I dunno, it seems half-baked.

I’m not mad, just disappointed. (And I am 100% not mad for “grr Horde, grr Alliance” reasons – that ship has sailed. We have worked together cross-faction since WotLK with the Argent Crusade.

Personal PS: If they would manage to get this live for the 9.2 raid, I might actually do this on my Blood Elf Warlock and raid with my Alliance guild. But she’s still cross-server, so maybe it doesn’t work out again anyway, so probably nothing changes at all… And I simply don’t believe that this will be live for the 9.2 raid.

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Wrath Classic

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Shintar had an interesting post about a hypothetical (but eagerly? awaited) further installment of the WoW Classic cycle. I’ve not thought a lot about it, whether and for how long “Classic” would continue to evolve. But from most people I talked to and what I read, the consensus seems to be that Cataclysm can’t be part of anything “Classic”, because that’s where everything changed and this third expansion was sort of the beginning of a new era. I can’t really say “the” new era, because between expansions some things have gradually shifted and some have changed the game a lot. Also as I stopped playing in MoP, the fourth expansion, that’s my personal big breaking point, as I basically skipped the next one and only then came back. I simply know I am not objective enough to see the end of MoP as anything but the greatest change for me personally, as it coincided with my first years-long break.

Anyway, about Wrath. I’d rate my involvement in the game only at medium in Vanilla, despite spending a lot of time in PvP battlegrounds at the tail end, but I had missed out on most of the start and was just casually levelling up. Having fun, but not really invested. TBC was very different. I was eagerly awaiting the launch, I instantly started leveling, then raiding Karazhan, then hating it, then there was guild drama, then a new guild, then a little drama, and finally getting together with the people I’d spend half of TBC and then Wrath and Cata and even MoP together. But TBC was a very long time ago, Wrath was a little less long ago. At the start of TBC I pretty much still felt like a noob, having played for ~1.5 years. When Wrath launched I’d been playing for for over 3 years, and I had raided Black Temple, the pinnacle of difficulty. Also I think in Wrath I played even more than I did in TBC. Leveling alts, doing Heroics, raiding. Raiding on alts, everything. As I continued into Cata like this there was no burnout or anything, but still after all these years…

When my interest in Vanilla Classic was kinda big, my interest in TBC Classic was already a lot lower. I had seen SSC and TK, I had raided Black Temple, I tanked and healed some raids in addition to playing on my Rogue Main. And then Wrath. I leveled so many alts, we went to ICC so much, we killed the Lich King on Heroic. I have the feeling I’ve been there and while it’s been over 11 years by the time I’m writing this, even more than in TBC I have so many memories where I can honestly say: I had fun at the time, but I don’t need or even want to repeat that. It was fun because of the time, because of the people, and because it was new. I think to a degree I stopped leveling first in Classic and then in TBC Classic because I did not have those rose-colored glasses. My estimates of how slow everything would feel were 90% correct. I knew it was slow, I just had overestimated my own perseverance, as these two times it felt like a chore so often.

So yeah, and then the fact that my dungeon group mostly stopped playing in the middle of something, twice. Or even three times. Guess next time I’ll just not fall for it.

And interestingly none of this is really Blizzard’s fault (unlike in Retail). People wanted to have the original experience, and that is fine. I don’t need to relive everything. I had fun in Classic and TBC, but looking back even now it feels like a bit of wasted time – because one of my goals is usually reaching max level, and I failed to do that both times.

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Savage raiding in FFXIV

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Last night we finally managed to get our static together on the third Sunday where we had planned and went into Asphodelos. Roughly 33 wipes, the last two were due to enrage and a lack of DPS, but at least we made it so far.

One of eight couldn’t make it today, but we planned to continue with 7, then sadly one more was sick, so we had to sub in two people (who had already both killed him) and after five more wipes we had him down. Yes, it was nice to get it done, but it was also a bit of a letdown because it wasn’t “the team”, despite us just having started now in this expansion and most of us not having played together ever, or not recently. And one of the replacement folks was a reaper who did 20.8% of the damage, versus an average 15.x for the other 3 dps.

This is not to lay blame on them in any way, of course. I was parsing 1% (instead of 0%) on Warrior, but at least I was over 10% better than yesterday – with 3.51k DPS (2.08m damage, 8.73%), and I shouldn’t be behind our Paladin MT – so I’m certainly not in a position to criticize them.

Anyway, raiding is moderately fun but I am not and will probably never be a fan of how DPS-focused all the non-DPS jobs in FFXIV are, at least compared to WoW. That’s currently my number one downside in this game. If I am healing I want to heal and not perfect my DPS rotation, if I am tanking I want to do other things than paying attention to my DPS rotation.

It just feels bad if I am learning a new class (and as I played my Warrior just a little before Endwalker, and never did any “hard” content, I am counting it as new) and no matter how good it feels to be doing all the mechanics correctly and mitigating at the right time, if you get a 1% parse it kinda sucks. Then again I looked at some of the numbers, a #1000 kill in ~8:17 instead of our 10:00 (Enrage), the numbers for some random Warriors are:

  • Orange 95% parse, 5,24k DPS, 2.61m damage, 10.96%
  • Purple 78% parse, 5.04k DPS, 2.4m damage, 10.55%
  • Blue 74% parse, 4.86k DPS, 2.42m damage, 10.17%
  • Blue 50% parse, 4.75k DPS, 2.38m damage, 9.99%
  • Green 39% parse, 4.66k DPS, 2.32m damage, 9.74%
  • Grey 18% parse, 4.36k DPS, 2.17m damage, 9.12%

So I guess around 4.5k would be the benchmark to be good enough for Green, so that would probably be a reasonable goal. Or maybe getting to 10-15% first 😛

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Getting back into WoW for 9.2, or not

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Back at the start of December when I stopped playing WoW I was kind of sure I’d come back for 9.2 and go raid with my guild. Meanwhile I’ve been having a blast in FFXIV and while Blizzard didn’t have anything newsworthy to report that was equally horrible as all the stuff in the summer… I noticed that I don’t miss WoW. Then I tried to read up on some bits and bobs about what’s coming and I’m also not excited, but I didn’t have a clear picture yet of the new patch.

Catching up on RSS I noticed this post by Kaylriene (yeah, 10 days ago) and it indeed sounds bleak. The Korthia grind in 9.1 is already the thing I hated most, in addition to having to run Torghast again.

I was low-key planning to reroll Warlock because as far as I know we lost ours (switched to Hunter), but when this idea still sounded good to me I had completely forgotten about Legendaries and Torghast. My Warrior main is iLvl 240, and from a quick glance my active M+ running guildies are not higher than 248 for the most part, so I’d still have no problem just joining in when we start normal, I hope. But I don’t even know what gear I could quickly acquire on a yet-to-be-boosted character, and if I really want to do that. I think I want to subscribe and do Normal raids, maybe that even works in a single month – but I’m already leaning towards not participating in Heroic this time, just because then I’m feeling the need to keep up with gear and Legendaries and rep and everything. That simply sucks, I’m not sure you can really be a casual Heroic Raider.

I still can’t tell how the Extreme Trials and Savage Raids in FFXIV compare to Normal and Heroic Raiding in WoW, but let me tell you how easy it was to get iLvl 570/580 gear (in times of hours invested) for several jobs in FFXIV versus just getting gear on ONE CLASS in WoW, not even entertaining the thought of doing it on an alt. I had started Korthia on my Shaman, but my interest fizzled out in like week 3 and that was nowhere near the end, despite dutifully doing my dailies every day (not searching around for rares, just the dailies and weeklies).

Meh.

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Games I played for 500 hours

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Wilhelm had an interesting post about games with 500+ hours sunk in, via Twitter, where I had completely missed that. Of course I like stats and so I’ve dug around a bit and I think I don’t actually have that many titles.

Verified 500+ hours

  • World of Warcraft, probably even on my main chars alone, after all that’s “just” 20.8 days
  • Final Fantasy XIV – 1590 hours
  • Marvel Heroes – 1554 hours
  • Diablo 3 – 491 hours, let’s count it because it’s basically there

Pretty sure, but can’t verify now

  • WoW Classic + TBC
  • SW: TOR
  • EVE Online
  • Ragnarok Online
  • Action Quake 2
  • Quake

Maybe yes, maybe no

  • Guild Wars 2
  • WildStar
  • Heroes of Might and Magic III
  • StarCraft
  • WarCraft II
  • Diablo II
  • Diablo
  • Quake III
  • Any combo of Anno 1602/1503/1404 and Settlers 1-4, probably not per single title

Also while checking Steam I noticed that I don’t seem to have a lot of these 100+ hours games that other people have, the majority is 1-30h, for a single playthrough. Notable exceptions:

  • TESO – 60h, quite a lot for my Level 8 or something, and low for an MMO
  • Fallout Shelter – 146 hours
  • Picross Touch – 115 hours

Also I am pretty sure that without the aforementioned exceptions (Diablo 1+2, Quake 1+2, WarCraft II, StarCraft) there are no games I’ve played for such a long amount of time in the 90s, or even up to 2003/04 when I started with MMOs, and Diablo 3 seems to be the only “small group” game that has made the cut since, and it’s turning 10 years old in 2022 so that would only be 50h per year if it was distributed evenly. Also I don’t think I hit the mark with any console game.

So any exciting insights? Not for me. At first I played a lot of games for a small amount of time and in the last 18-20 years I played a small amount of games for a lot of time. MMOs in a nutshell.

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Uninteresting Eorzea stuff

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I want to say I didn’t play as much the last 2 weeks but I don’t think it’s true, it’s just that nothing big happened. Our second raid day went well, we killed Hydaelyn very quickly and then farmed her a bit for a few weapons. No one was really sure why it didn’t work the raid day before. Maybe it was time for a break and we would have managed, maybe not.

Today I got my first crafter to 90, Culinarian, so I can meld my gear myself now. How I did this was logging in before work (it’s Tuesday, reset day), using one of the gazillion 18h +crafting XP manuals, did my 12 deliveries, went to work, logged in again, did the deliveries again and then started crafting some Collectables until I dinged. Then I proceeded to do a few more for some other DoH jobs, but no need to rush it anymore. Also not completely sure where and how much the XP manuals helped.

No great new DoW/DoM dings to report either, although Paladin is close to 90, DRK is close to 80 RDM is close to 60, and I’m slowly getting AST from 70 to 80 as well. Also focusing on BLM a little, so I can have all casters at 60 soon.

Also when I met some friends on the weekend who still play, I noticed I hadn’t really thought about or missed WoW in any form the last 2 weeks. I heard a bit about 9.2 but nothing awesome. Let’s see if I’m in the mood to go back raiding. At least our times would not interfere with FFXIV…

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FFXIV Raiding and Chores

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There hasn’t been anything eventful happening in the last 2 weeks but that’s kinda good I guess.

Managed to grab some loot from Tomestones and raids, getting Warrior to 570 and Bard to 569 before the patch, and of course now there’s better gear now, iLvl 580. I just filled my weekly quota of 450 new Tomestones (Astronomy) and have yet to decide what to do, but White Mage is also very close to 570 due to Aphorism Tomestones, so I will probably buy the rest of the stuff tomorrow.

We did raid in the static for the first time last Sunday, trying Hydaelin (is that EX already? Or just Hard? I am still confused). It kinda went ok (despite not succeeding after a while) but I was a little under the weather that day and felt bad and I guess I also played badly. Anyway, Sunday is our designated raid day now and we have a group of ~10 people with some fill-ins. Let’s see how this will pan out.

A major thing I did today after procrastinating for a while is redoing my hotbars for the roles. This means filling the same (or roughly equal) skills in the same buttons, something that has served me very well in WoW (and to a degree in FFXIV) over the years.

So for tanks (primarily WAR) for example this would be:

  • 1 + 2 Single Target Combo
  • 3 +4 AoE Combo
  • 5 + 6 third step of the Single Target Combo
  • ctrl-1 Sprint (*)
  • ctrl-3 + ctrl-4 situational AoE/spenders/big or on longer cooldown
  • ctrl-5 + ctrl-6 Self-Heals
  • Q – Interrupt
  • E – Stun
  • Shift-E – ranged attack
  • F – Charge (or gap closer as they call it)
  • Shift-F – some sort of damage skill, for WAR a spender
  • G, Shift-G, H, Shift-H, Ctrl-G – mitigations
  • Tilde – Taunt/Provoke
  • Shift-Tilde – Mount
  • Y – Shirk
  • X, Shift-X – big cooldowns
  • C – some sort of special: Fell Cleave, Sheltron, The Blackest Night
  • V, Shift-V – Beast Gauge builders
  • B – Toggle Aggro/Enmity Skill

I have a Logitech G710+ now, so that’s 6 G keys to the left of the keyboard, sadly not 18 anymore like with the G10.

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2021 in review

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End of the year means review post, a tradition started in 2014.

Again gaming was (sadly) the number one spare time activity this year, with other things not even really competing. Getting vaccinated at the end of the summer I’m hopeful I can do fun things outside again next year.

But anyway, here are the details.

What I played a lot:

  • World of Warcraft
  • EVE Online
  • Final Fantasy XIV

Other things I played:

  • Horizon: Zero Dawn
  • some Nonogram games (no new ones)

Gaming expenses in 2021:

  • WoW: 206 EUR for 11 months of subscription total
    • 4x 13 EUR = 52 EUR for a monthly sub
    • 2x 17.5 EUR = 35 EUR for server transfers (could’ve saved one)
    • 1x 40 EUR for the Dark Portal Pass in WoW BC Classic
    • 79 EUR for subs, paid last year but running into 2021
  • EVE Online: 576 EUR
    • 8x 49 EUR for 8x a 3 month subscription incl. 3 MCT
    • 1x 5 USD for a 7 day pack
    • 179 EUR spillover from last year
  • Final Fantasy XIV: 103 EUR
    • 5x 12.4 EUR for subscriptions
    • 1x 40 EUR for the Endwalker expansion
    • 2.40 EUR for additional retainers
  • GOG.com: 31 EUR for Horizon: Zero Dawn
  • Steam: 0 EUR
  • Humble: 0 EUR
  • Epic: 0 EUR

And the usual stats:

  • Amount of MMOs played: 3
  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid: 11 (WoW) + 5 (FFXIV) + ~33 (EVE) = 49, so 4 per month
  • Amount of games purchased: 1
  • Amount of MMO expansions purchased: 1
  • Amount of money for ingame/services stuff:
  • Amount of games I got for free and played a lot: 0
  • Amount of games I got for free and didn’t play: too many
  • Amount of games I bought and then didn’t play: 0

The math for next year will be easier again, no weird “I paid so and so many months already” because of course I am not counting single days or weeks in December that spill over, but this time nothing for February onward is paid.

Again EVE takes number one as a spender game, but I did have 3 accounts running all year and they’re now all unsubscribed as well, but 2 still have some time running. WoW also got a full year of subs, but nothing from December onward. Let’s see when the next raid comes and if I will come back. Final Fantasy brought it up to a respectable 5 months, and in that time I didn’t really play a lot of WoW, I just logged in to raid and that’s why I stayed subscribed.

The total this year is 916 EUR, which is 76.33 EUR per month – 5 less per month than last year and still providing 90% of my spare time entertainment. Not bad, but overall still a bit high.

The list of free games I actually wanted to have a look at grows. Epic leads the way here, but GOG also gave out a few freebies. I’d actually feel bad if I never bought any and got them all for free, but again my conscience is clear if I’m not touching them anyway, even if that sounds a bit weird.

  • Frostpunk
  • XIII
  • Pathfinder: Kingmaker
  • Shenmue III
  • Rage 2

Maybe I should actually set aside a budget of 10 EUR per month for an indie game (or every second month), because this is something I kinda feel bad for. The question is if I’ll play it then.

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More grinding

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Today I didn’t really have a lot to do except enjoying my spare time, so I did some duty roulettes and managed to get enough Tomestones that I am iLvl 565 on Warrior now and am only missing the headgear on the Bard I think, I even got the weapon. And then I managed to ding 90 on White Mage by doing some Endwalker leveling dungeons, then finally not forgetting to do the role quest this time and then finishing off with 5 sidequests in Sharlayan.

So the plans for the immediate future are now to do the four raid wings for tokens every week, kit out the Warrior with that 580 gear, and get some 570 Tomestone pieces for White Mage, preferably the Accessories again first. What’s next to level? Not sure, maybe pushing Scholar a bit as getting Summoner at the same time is nice. I don’t see much reason to grab Dancer/Machinist right now. Paladin would be ok. Maybe it’s good to have one job leveling in Endwalker content.

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Asphodelos Normal

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So, apparently FFXIV and gearing up is VERY different from WoW, I published the last post at 1m, in the morning of the 22nd, then went to bed, slept around 7h, got up, did some stuff and then ran all my roulettes until reset at 4 in the afternoon. And then… I was nearly there. My left side equip was all 560s from the role quest and by having already saved up 200 odd tomestones and then just running the roulettes on one day I nearly had enough. Sadly the ring is unique, so had to resort to buying (more expensive boots) and then only 5 were missing, so we did a trial roulette after 4 and just like that I was iLvl 565.

Then we went into the 4 wings of Asphodelos as a party of 3 dps. The first boss was a pushover, the second one is my personal nemesis, number 3 needed one or two wipes and the fourth was also pretty easy. So that was my first FFXIV raid when it was new and at level.

So yes, as a mostly WoW player I am kind of surprised. First of all, it’s actually easy, but not Raid Finder easy. Stuff is actually telegraphed (or foreshadowed by animations/effects) well enough that you can go in without watching a video and succeed, if you have a general grasp of mechanics. I would be even happier if it was a little bit harder, like not oneshotting a boss in week one. But I guess that is what the harder difficulties are for. Overall people seem to do mechanics, it’s not like Raid Finder where there seem to be people every time who have never done a raid boss at all and stand in everything. And by that I mean it’s such a running gag already, when Castle Nathria was new I had to explain tactics every time in RF. But then again they seem to be pretty convoluted and not so learnable as in FFXIV. If you haven’t done the fight in a WoW raid and have not read up I think most people (including me) will just blankly stare at what to do. In FFXIV I feel I can learn this a lot better.

Anyway, got 4 tokens (Legs/Chest need 4, rest need 2 each) and I will save them up for the Warrior, as my iLvl 565 is fine and I’m already at 795 tomestones, which will be 4 tanking Accessories. Or I’ll do some math tonight and see if I should spend them on more Bard gear. I like how easy this gear is to grind out. A couple of hours for a set, not… dozens of hours like in WoW.

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