WoW

I almost bought a WoW expansion

/ / 3 Comments / WoW

The weekend is upon us and after being out last night I thought.. today will be the day I grab Battle for Azeroth! Only had to grab 100 MB of patches, then I got an interesting popup. “Trial for BfA! 3 days of game time included”. This sounded good, I was on the way to buy it anyway.
So I logged in all my toons, cleaned up the bags for the mains, grabbed a quest, did a scenario (Fall of Lordaeron) and then… couldn’t continue. I would’ve expected a breadcrumb quest to lead me to a new zone, as with all the other expansions before, but nope. Went around a bit in Orgrimmar, nothing – so I went to search the web and apparently it only works with a freshly created Trial character. Not so cool. I was still interested so I checked what class/race combo I was missing among my high level characters and decided on a Gnome Warlock. Apparently I had created one to save a name, so I logged in, mailed the Heirlooms to another toon, deleted, and recreated. Then I had to do the scenario again (doh) – but at least from the other perspective now. After that I could indeed go to Kul Tiras and experience roughly half an hour of gameplay. At that point the game decided this was enough and I should now pay up. Including holding that character hostage with a big fat lock on the login screen and a “Trial Completed” message.
But what I saw from Kul Tiras and the new quests was really nice. Except for the jarring mouth animations when the NPCs were talking. I also feel drawn to the Alliance quite a bit, as the scenario wasn’t really more enticing than the preview cinematics. This also sucks, I’d prefer to play my old mains from before Legion.
So yeah, on the one hand it’s my own fault. On the other hand this “free” “trial” has pissed me off enough that I’ve not instantly gone and bought it. Actually I’m quite dissuaded at the moment. Good job, Blizzard, if it hadn’t been for the wording and execution of this trial I would’ve bought it already, incl. a subscription.

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Kind of back on track

/ / Leave a Comment / SW:TOR, WoW

I’m back and didn’t have a lot of plans this weekend so some gaming was achieved!
Did a few weeklies, working on getting more toons towards Command Level 300. The Sage is now 173, the Scoundrel 111, and the Juggernaut 77. The Scoundrel still feels very weak. Even Black Hole takes a while and I usually get help for Section X. Maybe the class just doesn’t suit me very well, or I should try another spec, it’s probably not the gear (230 Item Rating). I also finished my Conquest for the week, Rakghoul Resurgence on Alderaan, done by the Juggernaut. All in all not bad for a few days with a lot of breaks.
I’m still pondering if I should get WoW’s BfA expansion. Before I went away I was 100% hyped on SWTOR and 75% hyped on WoW, and now I’m kinda.. I don’t know? SWTOR is fun, but I don’t feel the urge to play 12h per day right now – and I’m torn on WoW. My SWTOR sub expires on the 15th, so until I need a decision. I just know I won’t really play 2 MMOs at the same time, so unsubbing makes sense, and if WoW is not soo awesome I can just resub. Or I’ll focus on one character in SWTOR and keep the sub… Decisions, decisions!

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To guild or not to guild

/ / 4 Comments / SW:TOR, WoW /

I’ve come back to SWTOR 3 months ago (insert 3 monther MMO joke here) and my sub is due to renew tomorrow. A week or two ago I pondered whether to keep it, because I was still really pumped for WoW, a feeling which had come up during the BfA pre-launch hype and Blaugust. But now after reading a lot of first month review posts (sorry if I forgot someone) I’m not so sure I’m still hyped. The reviews aren’t at fault, most people seem to be mostly happy with the expansion. I’m still kinda curious, but the hype has died down for now.
This brings me to my original thought though, I’m playing mostly solo right now and I’m wondering if I’d be happier in a guild again. It’s not that I was actively avoiding them, I’m now GM by of two dead SWTOR guilds, just by showing up in 2018…
Can I even say I have a mixed history with guilds? I’ve always been in a clan while I was playing FPS games 15 to 20 years ago, no problems there. In my first MMO, Ragnarok Online, I wasn’t lucky at first, but then found some cool people on IRC and joined their casual guild (as in non “non-organized group content”). I wasn’t in a WoW guild until I hit 60 in vanilla, since then I was in a few guilds. I think it was only ever in 2 clusters of guilds in 8 years, if you count reforming with half of the people.
So either I’ll buy BfA and play WoW in early October, then I will either play Alliance in the guild where I’m the “returns every 2 years” guy, or go back to my Horde mains and probably have to look for a guild. A quick search on the realm forums wasn’t helpful, no recruitment posts except for hardcore raiding, which I don’t plan to do and there’s no use applying before max level anyway. Maybe my friends list will be helpful once I login. Or maybe my guild isn’t as dead as it looks on the armory, but I guess it’s only 3-4 people and 2 of those hardly talk in chat.
Anyway, if I stick to SWTOR either by not buying BfA or by playing both (haha, fat chance)… the Tulak Hord (German server) realm forums also look dead, the Darth Malgus (English server) one has like three times the current posts, maybe even more. Also somehow my fellow Germans (and the minority of people speaking German) seem to piss me off much more than the people on EU servers, I don’t know why. I saw some recruitment posts, but never seen anyone of those guilds ingame. Apparently it’s a lot more common in SWTOR to have a sister guild on the other faction than in WoW. So at least that could help, as I’m pretty much 60/40 Empire/Republic right now.
So the only thing I know is that I guess I’d like to be part of a guild again after a few years of being the lonely ranger. I just don’t know yet in which game and in which faction – and how I’ll find one. Great.

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Gear as character progression

/ / 2 Comments / Games, WoW / ,

Telwyn wrote about gearing, and gear as character progression in WoW in detail. I wanted to comment, but this was one of those “loo long for a comment” posts very soon..
I don’t want to say I have a strong opinion on the topic, but maybe I have several, mixed, not-so-light opinions 😉
Just relying on drop luck sucks, it’s what I’ve always hated in raids in Vanilla and TBC, thus I found DKP a lot better. Show up more, get more loot. I also didn’t like Loot Council (oh, the raid leader’s favorite people get their best in slot items, but the people who show up 90% don’t get anything, and the slackers get showered in loot so they catch up…), but let’s leave those organized multiplayer loot systems behind and just talk about “gearing” in general.
If my toon has no means of getting gear outside personal loot drops and tokens.. I prefer a mixed system. I don’t remember seeing a full-on “there are only tokens” system, you always get a modicum of gear to drop and then collect some kind of tokens or points and can buy stuff for your missing slots, hopefully one per week, or at least more than one every 2 months (hello WoW, looking at you). I don’t want to feel pushed to run a heroic dungeon every single day to not lag behind, but ok, 1h investment per day can still be considered fine for a raider – bonus points if there’s a weekly cap and not a daily one.
This had worked kinda fine in past expansions, I bought some items for Heroic tokens, sometimes even the odd PvP piece (Was that Bracers/Belt in TBC? :P). What I absolutely hate the most was this “oh I bought it yesterday and now something of the same quality or better drops after I had saved up 2 weeks for that piece. Just let me at least sell it back for half the value or get rid of random drops altogether. This makes me literally furious, much more than not getting the item (or its too-quick replacement) at all.
Legion changed all that – at least for the Weapon slot. For the first few toons (and specs) I kinda liked it. One less thing to care about upgrading, or let’s say – there’s no real alternative, it’s just a nice, quick progression. On the other hand.. there’s no catch-up mechanic (IIRC there came one, a lot later, but if you -like me- don’t spend the first 6 months on your main, but play some alts, the catch-up mechanic was kinda meh. I had already invested a ton of time into my alts’ artifact weapons). But in general I really liked it. No more “should I really upgrade this to X when tomorrow something with X+1 might drop for me?” I can get carried away real quickly in pondering about weapon upgrades. As an aside, I’ve always hated the PvP gear grind. My suggestion had been for years: Let everyone buy a set for 100g/1000g or something equally low (free is fine as well) and then it’s 100% a skill game, and has nothing to do with gear anymore. Not sure if they ever implemented that to the fullest, but by that time I had (and still have) burned out on WoW PvP for a long, long time. (I was Rank 11 in vanilla and didn’t too to bad in TBC arenas, then I stopped).
Now, I haven’t played BfA, but so far it sounds ok-ish. But I’m not sure I wouldn’t have preferred to keep the weapon approach (but transmoggable, and maybe not one per spec, but 1 per class). Sure it’s boring, but it’s nice and handy.
This Azerite artifact? amulet? seems to be some kind of proxy to your /played and meaningful earning of a certain currency, so the longer you play (regarding contributing activities ingame) the more your power grows, just like with the weapon, but it’s more customizable, as it’s a different tier that’s not tied to a certain slot. I don’t really see this as very different, but I guess I’d have to play to comment, really.
Oh, and all this talk was now just about the mode of character progression via gear, there are some totally different models, which all have something going for them:

  • I like SWTOR’s datacrons – you unlock them account wide and every single one gives you a little boost, but I haven’t run the numbers how many of them bump you like 1 Tier of gear, if at all
  • I like EVE’s training mechanic a lot. If I am “actively playing” that month (in the monthly active user metric *cough*) I get to level something – I don’t have to be playing 24/7. This had the downside of never being able to catch up, but as total noob I’d say that after N years (N might be 3 or 7 or more) you won’t get better for a certain amount of ships, you can only really go broader, not deeper. Also there were skill injectors, which fixed this problem to a degree but brought others. Wilhelm had a good post about it lately. And yes, this is pay-to-win on a very basic scale. On the other hand, I once forgot to cancel a 3-month sub for EVE and while in any other MMO I would’ve felt regret, in EVE it was “ah well, time to queue up some of the nasty long skills, while I’m not actively playing”.

PS: Blaugust has started and this is my twenty-eighth post; and even after all these years, “eighth” is one of the hardest words of the English language for me.
PPS: Something I’ve noticed this Blaugust: the more I post, the more likely I am to reference one of Wilhelm’s posts. This time it’s even two – because between me reading Telwyn’s post and posting this, he wrote something on the topic as well. Gladly I’m not that philosophic and don’t even get started on the reasoning if gearing and character progression makes sense, I’m absolutely happy to just voice an opinion 🙂

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Notable quotes

/ / Leave a Comment / Blaugust, WoW

Were there any quotes by guild mates or people on your server that became the stuff of legends or just quoted to no end? Some of them are probably in-jokes, but I have two I fondly remember even after many, many years.
The first one was about Illidari Council late in Black Temple.
WoWWiki says “[…] it sports a difficult pull and a rather chaotic battle for survival, which requires high situational awareness and fast reflexes from all raid members.” and thus someone called it
“The Super Bowl of… not standing in things.” and it’s the most apt and yet funny description I’ve ever heard about a raid boss.
The second one was spoken by our WoW guild leader at the time.
I can only paraphrase it, but it went something like:
I love all of you. But I also love the safe feeling that you’re all living hundreds of kilometers away.
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my eigth post.

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Random blast from the past

/ / 4 Comments / Blaugust, WoW / ,

Yesterday Jeromai posted something I didn’t know, that you can get a random blog post out of your WordPress blog by appending “?random” to the URL – of course I had to try it and see if it’s something interesting.
My lucky draw was: Mirror, mirror on the wall from March 2010, and there’s a reason I want to write about that post.
Basically when I wrote Ranking WoW’s races two weeks ago I was pretty sure I had a post about this exact topic and wanted to link it, but either I didn’t find it or, more likely, forgot at the end of my rambling post.
So yeah, my taste has stayed closer to 2010 than 2005, but also not completely. That’s why I blog, to remember what I was thinking about 8 or 13 years ago 😉
 
PS: Blaugust has started and this is my third post.

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Still trying to resist

/ / 3 Comments / Blogs, WoW

This blog lay pretty much dormant for the last half year, apart from a little talk about SW:TOR and a little Diablo 3, and I actually didn’t play much from January until July. No special reasons, I just didn’t enjoy any games except Picross on mobile while waiting for stuff.
But for some reason or another I started to play SW:TOR again like 5 weeks ago and now I’m playing too much again – every minute I’m not at work, or sleeping, or outside basically.
WoW’s Battle for Azeroth expansion is drawing closer and every day I’m feeling the pull getting stronger. It also didn’t help to join another Discord where people are excitedly talking and blogging in preparation of the new expansion.
That Discord… Belghast restarted Blaugust planning for 2018 already and while I have written about it in 2015 I haven’t ever taken part. But all the excitement is pretty infectious and maybe I’ll give in and do start. I actually thought I was part of NBI in some year, but I might be misremembering. (It’s a shame really, I just found a dead .com and a dead forum url for it, would’ve been a nice trip back in time, but I’m too lazy to scour the web archive now…)
Or maybe I can resist and neither join Blaugust nor jump into BfA, although there aren’t really any good reasons to skip either…

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Ranking WoW’s races

/ / 2 Comments / WoW / , ,

Yeah, I’m a bit late, but I wasn’t in town when I read Grace’s post which in turn linked Syp’s post about the core races in World of Warcraft, and it’s something I have an opinion about 😛
First of all, I can’t really rate them the same way, most of the time I don’t agree on the Male versus Female versions, so I kinda need to make two lists.
Female characters:

  • Really like: Orcs, Tauren, Dwarves
  • Like: Humans, Night Elf (but only Warriors), Gnomes (mostly Rogues)
  • OK: Blood Elf (Paladin and Warlock, not so much Warrior, Mage or Priest), Pandaren
  • Don’t like: Undead (except Warriors), Troll,
  • Meh: Draenei, Worgen, Goblins

Male characters:

  • Really like: Orcs, Trolls, Tauren
  • Like: Dwarves, Undead (only a few face options)
  • Don’t like: Gnomes, Pandaren, Goblin, Worgen, Blood Elf
  • Hate: Night Elf, Humans, Draenei

So first of all, the scale of female chars goes from say 1-5 of 6, the scale for Male chars goes 1, 2, 4, 6 with 3 and 5 missing.
I don’t think I can articulate my thoughts about the races as well as the 2 linked posts above do, but I don’t care much about lore in WoW in the sense of “what am I playing?” – I like to read up on it and the NPCs are part of it, but I am the player, the center of the world, I am not to be judged what my forefathers did 🙂
So just some quick points:

  • Draenei: Space squids, ugly, space ship story doesn’t check out
  • Undead: Too mopey and earnest, but overall ok.
  • Orcs: Totally overused in the greater WoW story, I hate Garrosh
  • Trolls: a bit over the top with the Jamaican thing and cannibalism, otherwise total <3
  • Blood Elves: snobs
  • Night Elves: “One day I’m gonna make a NE hunter and call her ‘Stereotype'”
  • Dwarves: Boring (but solid) run-of-the-mill fantasy dwarves (plus gadgets, like in Warhammer maybe, less than Gnomes at least)
  • Goblins: should’ve stayed neutral
  • Pandaren: shouldn’t have been playable, were awesome as MoP NPCs
  • Worgen: nice starter zone, meh models (high quality, don’t enjoy)
  • Tauren: used to be too big in Vanilla (PvP etc)
  • Humans: boring, but also solid, I hate Varian
  • Gnomes: weird limbs, too much armor clipping, overall fun

So on the one hand that means I straight out refuse to play certain races as male characters and to the best of my knowledge when I did try.. I deleted them all before Level 10, something I don’t do often in MMOs… on the other hand I’ve made some questionable choices in the past that I wanted to remedy but didn’t want to spend money on.
Also my view on certain combos have changed a lot over time. I didn’t like female Dwarves at the start (like vanilla to WotLK?), wasn’t a great fan of female Orcs and Tauren, I liked Blood Elf males when TBC launched. I liked male Goblins when they were introduced. I didn’t like Undead, period.
So much for the general view on WoW races, now some personal history of poor choices:
First is my female Blood Elf Warlock. I made her when TBC hit and Blood Elves were the new shiny thing (didn’t play Alliance at the time…) and she was awesome. OK, the Frozen Netherweave Tailoring gear was maybe a little overpowered, but hey, why not top damage meters on a fresh alt? I imagine I was just really good at Warlocking! For now I’ve made my peace and as a (practicing and at heart) Pen&Paper roleplayer I hate to retcon characters… Next is my female Blood Elf Paladin. Only Blood Elves could be Paladins, so it had to be Blood Elf. When race changes were announced I really wanted to make her a cow (and it was a less-played alt, so the RP thing wasn’t as bad..) but then I was too tightfisted to really do it, then I played her a ton more and then I collected T2 armor and it looks really, really good so.. no cow. Then my male Blood Elf Priest. Started as a duo with a female Blood Elf Priest and in the end.. he doesn’t bother me so much that I *need* to race-change. I still might, at some point, but it’s only “I made a mistake.. but I can live with it.” My male Pandaren Monk. Oh boy. I liked the male Pandaren at the start, they had this laid back Baloo/Yogi bear feeling to them but as I leveled to 80, 85, then 90 – maybe it was also because Monk was the first class that was decidedly unfun from Level 20 up to when I stopped.. I just don’t feel that character anymore… maybe if it was a female Pandaren which I at least find adorable with the right hairstyle.. meh. I also have a lowbie (<90) male Goblin Warrior on another server which I don’t hate, but as my first real (Blood Elf) Warlock, he was only levelled to experience the new starter zone and race, then played catch up in friends’ guild.. Never properly played, no real connection. On the other hand I still have some characters I like a lot better, and to a certain degree I think the race/class combo does matter: 81 male Troll Hunter, 100 male Undead Death Knight, 74 female Pandaren Priest (all wrong server again).
For all that moaning about races and classes, for all I can tell (been inactive in WoW for a while), I’m 100% or at least 90% happy with all the choices of characters I ever dubbed my main, main alt, or pet project (that female Dwarf Shammy I leveled up just for the Algalon achievement, that 3rd max-level Rogue at Level 90…).
Wow, that’s been a long post, but I quickly want to touch on the Allied Races. I only read about them and am a bit dismayed you have to do so much to unlock them. Especially as someone who had played for 10 years and stopped just before they were announced. We’ll see if I will play BfA and if I will try to have a look at some of them. I also don’t know if you can do a paid race change to one of them, I might investigate that. Not sure I want to level anything up again from 1, I did that often enough…
Some of them look quite interesting though, first and foremost the Dark Iron Dwarves and Zandalari Trolls. Also the Kul Tiran Humans as far as I have seen. Void Elves look ok (but only a Blood Elf reskin? Also the Lightforged Draenei?) Highmountain Tauren look cool as well. Not a fan of the Nightborne or Mag’hart Orcs.
Update: Another take on the matter, even if I vehemently disagree on most points 😉

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WoW: Legion, 10 weeks in

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Quick summary of what I did (achieved?) after 10 weeks since the launch of WoW’s 6th (if I counted correctly) expansion.

  • 5 characters at max level (NE DH, Orc Shammy, Troll Warrior, Orc Rogue, Dwarf Paladin)
  • 9 more level 100 chars (every class besides Monk, and Warrior/Rogue twice :P)
  • started to get mostly one of every class towards max level (or even just starting) on Alliance side as well (Priest 72, Hunter 60, Mage 20 – missing Warlock, Druid, DK, Monk)
  • used my Level 100 bost (Pally), still have the Level 90 boost
  • 2 class hall quest lines done, 2 more mostly done, 1 just started
  • iLvl 851 (Shammy), 848 (DH), 841 (Warrior), 834 (Rogue)
  • zero exalted WQ factions, many revered
  • started/grabbed at least one artifact weapon on 3 more chars
  • Finally levelled some pets with the event, sitting at 55 Level 25 ones now
  • Still trying to finish the Naval mission achievements
  • Started Tanaan on one character, very low prio
  • Timewalking is really fun
  • Still haven’t done more than one Mythic – I just don’t like 5mans
  • Transmog is still one of my favorite features

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This Legion thing is fun!

/ / 1 Comment / WoW

So yeah, just barely made it to not post for 2 full months. Too much work, too much summer, too much WoW I guess.
My main is a Female Night Elf Demon Hunter at iLvl 832 that has yet to tank a Heroic, but is doing some OK damage in Heroics and the one Mythic I tried.
I also levelled my Orc Ele/Resto Shaman to 110 (iLvl 820) but so far I’ve been very unimpressed with the damage, maybe I should try Enhancement.
Finally I got some Artifact weapons (Assassination Rogue, Fury Warrior, and Frost Mage) and brought the former two to 101.
During the Legion pre-events there was a lot of pushing. DK 90 to 100, 2nd Warrior 90 to 100, Druid 90 to 100, Warlock 90 to 100, Hunter 90 to 100, Mage 90 to 98, Paladin 90 to 93, Monk 85 to 90, 2nd Paladin 1 to 61. And maybe I even forgot some – but I was so unimpressed with Draenor levelling after the first time Horde and Alliance (still managed to get 5 toons to 100 the proper way, 4 back when WoD launched and one in my month before Legion) that I decided to take every advantage I could get from the easy XP.
All in all I’m really happy with Legion, especially transmog, Artifact Weapons, the Order Halls, the level scaling.
The only downsides for me are Professions (too different, too many dungeons, too many quests, too much focused on your main) and Reputations – I was hoping I could skip like one zone per character to not repeat *everything* but because of the reputation requirements for World Quests you have to do all of them (or at least the first half) and can only decide on the order. That is a very wasted opportunity for replayability for me.

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