35 Reps achievement screenie

Getting to 35 reps is something that I’d not planned on. Fundamentally now that Exalted does not grant a mechanical benefit, it is just something that might happen. Still a very long way to 9000 pts.

The Ultimate Boss Strategy

The Ultimate Boss Strategy. I love it. Perfect.

LFR and Random Boss loot luck

A small amount of luck goes a long way. Yesterday I got the LFR shoulder token, and today some Pvp boots. Rewards make the loot treadmill less crappy. Happy for this week, and hording my Valor points for a while to see what the cool kids buy at Revered rep with Shado-Pan.

Quick PvP Round 2

Despite the negative rant on PvP, I’ll never go down easy. Here are some screenies and achievements from a recent bout with pvp’ers.

Never quit. I can’t speak for most of the team in this match, but I was trying my hardest.

Curreny tab option I didn’t know about

There is an option in your currency tab to switch the things you’re not interested in to an unused category. I never knew this was there. Guess the patch notes are there for a reason huh.

I think it was shift+click to bring it up. Useful option. TyphoonAndrew.

Screenie – Leader said burn last boss

So I did. I like simple strats. Obviously. 153k dps, and 50% of the damage for the fight. Like all dps players if it had said avoid the XX, then I’d be lucky to pull 85k. 🙂

Mogu Rune Cost reduced from 90 to 50 Lesser Charms

WowHead has some news on a change in patch 5.3 for WoW, the primary change from the list I really like is the switch of 90 down to 50 lesser charms to buy Mogu Runes (src).

Less charms means more coins and less daily quests. Well potentially.

Wrathion’s PvP Battleground Quests

Go to hell whoever thought it would be wacky fun times to include a few pvp fights in a PvE quest chain.

I tried to be open minded.

I crafted, gem’ed, enchanted, etc a pvp set. Because I didn’t want to be carried too much.

I’ve joined fights and basically just got my arse handed to me.

Or the team are more interested in kill farming than actually winning.

Or teams that seem to get excited by the notion of the Perfect Loss.

I have no use for honor except buying more pvp gear, which I do not want once I have this lousy waste of bandwidth done.

If this is the only way that the PvP content will get seen by a majority of the playerbase, then your pvp content is *ahem* bland. This experience just tells me that pvp has not changed or improved fundamentally in 6 years. If I want to kill people I’ll play a 3d shooter, not WoW.

So go straight to hell, this part of the Legendary chain is plain crappy. I know it is supposed to be “hard“, but it is not supposed to be a shitty waste of my time.

Tests from Wrathion

Now that I’ve done the Test of Valor (yay, finally) I’m at the part in the epic quest chain to kill a special commander, and win two pvp battlegrounds.

I’m not keen to do the PvP part as I do not understand anything about the two games, and this late in the expansion I can imagine that random teams will not like a scrub. Tough luck for them though, blame Blizzard folks, the Epic quest chain is making me hurt your PvP fun. As such I’ve started collecting the ~458 pvp gear, so I don’t get roflstomped straight away and I won’t be a useless scarecrow for the team I join.

Getting a started Pvp set is cheap if you know the patterns (10-15 ore per item, + gems and enchants) or very expensive if you want to buy your way through the sets. I either crafted the items, or had them crafted except for one item. So an almost full kit out was around 2000g with gems and enchantments, with most of that cost coming from the gear I purchased and the gems/enchants. The 458 gear is a long way from the beautiful Conquest items that I can see the vendor selling (/drool). For a full gear-set 2k is cheap as chips. If only beginning PvE gear was so cheap; nice that there is a lower barrier to entry for PvP.

I’ve also purchased a pvp neck and ring with Honor, and using a few one handed LFR 483s to go Dual Wield Frost for the pvp battles. I;m not expecting to get top charts for Dps, and did not want to affect my main hand 2H dps weapon by reforging away to the “wrong” starts for PvE.

So far the biggest problem is bag space. A Dps, Tank, and now PvP-Dps set takes up a lot of space. I wonder if PvP-Blood is still fun and frustrating for the enemy? Coming to a battleground near you, Mortigen the scrub DK.

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew

LFR Fun and Loot

Across a week or so I’ve done some LFRs, and thought I’d share two things – LFR is still a place to be horrified at the sub-human types who feel they are mighty and powerful in World of Warcraft (screenshot #1), and despite my gut feel LFR does grant loot. Sometimes (screenshot #2).

Overall I’m going to struggle to raid casually with the Insidious raid team and also get any LFRs done, especially when there are 4x different queues to do. That said, having more choice and more options are better than less, and three bosses in LFR certainly take long enough.

The LFR behaviour is still poor.

I won’t retype what the silly angry Shaman said, but it was dismally uninspired as far as insults go.

Tier 14 leg token from an LFR run. Wait what?

A bit of loot is a nice way to end a run. Thank the LFR gods that the reward was there. My next goal is to get something apart from gold from the coins.

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew

Achievement bounty

I’ve been getting the odd and strange achievements recently, and instead of sliding them by there are screenshots.

Firstly here are some shots from the Blacksmith quest-line to use the Thunder Forge, then onto some random shots from doing daily quests, the 5000 quest achievement, and also getting Mortigen’s Black Prince reputation to Exalted. Then another for looting 50k gold.

Standing atop the Thunder Forge

Mortigen staring at the forge itself after clearing up the Mogu hanging around the entryway. This forge really deserves more attention, it is beautiful.

The Achievement for Pay to Slay, which I don’t understand the meme for.

And the Achievement for 5000 Daily Quests. Jesus that is a lot of regular activity.

And I am also now Exalted with Black Prince.

And then “Got my mind on the Money”, to loot 50k gold.

wow Loot Specialization Menu

MMO Champ reports a fine new feature for Patch 5.3 in WoW:

The new Loot Specialization menu is in, allowing you to choose what spec you want loot for when getting bonus rolls, Raid Finder gear, and Pandarian quest rewards

Yehaw. Darn good feature. Its very welcome. A good step toward getting a friendly loot system. It might be seen as a change which makes World of Warcraft more friendly to casuals, which is true and not a bad thing but it is also something that makes the loot system more friendly for hardcore players and those player who love Alts.

I cannot see a drawback which is not related to a whine about “back in my day…”

Related articles

• World of Warcraft Patch 5.3 PTR Patch Notes (wow.joystiq.com)
• The Azeroth Ethicist: Is it cheating to trick the LFR loot system? (wow.joystiq.com)

Camelot Unchained Kickstarter thoughts

Apparently the Camelot Unchained design goals are a counter-revolution. By focusing on design principals which harken back to MMOs of yore, they seek to provide that which has become lost in an age where (apparently) every MMO is replicating World of Warcraft, and wow is selling out to the greater dumber audience.

Sorry, not buying into this hype. Not again. For a start somebody better tell Eve that it is a wow clone, and ignore the plethora of smaller online games which have existed for ages…Puzzle Pirates comes to mind.

As I wrote in a comment in Keen & Graev’s blog – I get that CU is going back to earlier design goals of MMOs and the designers cite WoW as an example of what is bad in mmo game development trends…such things as pandering to casuals is specifically raised. Now the devs of CU have every right to believe this, and have formidable game development experience to back this thought, but holy hell what an arrogant perspective. That aside what struck me about the blurb on CU is the design is not really a step forward evolution at all either. It stinks of back in my day thinking. OK. Got it. At least its been said up front.

The idea of looking backward is not new, CU is going back to hard difficulty pvp based worlds. That is a good thing for the audience that loves it, but it is not an innovation at all. Killing lots of folks in an online game ain’t new.

The community of wow is the same community of people in every other game. Do you think the online chess community doesn’t contain dickheads? Gevlon disparaged WoW until he left and now disparages Eve’s population of morons and slackers. The nights where Wow was patched the server pop in Star Wars jumped up, and the same shitty people played against the same brilliant people. Community in CU will contain the same range of people as every other game, unless the build also includes the budget for a previously impossible amount of moderation and gm involvement – which seems doubtful given the reduced subscription cost.

When I read the CU kickstarter all I saw was a dev company using the strong thematic dislike for mainstream (theme park?) MMOs as a platform to fund the game style they like. Good on them. It has the same hyperbole, and will have the same spread of players as wow – but they’ll have bought into the idea that they are special snowflakes playing a different game. A revolutionary game built for them. Good for these players too, but until I read a feature-set which is actually an evolution I’ll call bullshit on most the CU hype.

Taking a massive cheap shot at WoW in an opening bid for funding is a strategic marketing gambit. They had better hope they don’t get 3-4 million players because that will create exactly the same in-congruent feedback which makes the wow community so polar.

In the rush to cash in on the WoW phenomenon, publishers/designers tried to simply “out-WoW WoW”, leading to most MMORPGs becoming more risk-averse, more “casual player”-focused, and overall, less challenging. This produced, among other things, a loss of the pride and sense of accomplishment that came from succeeding in the older, more difficult titles. We’re not talking about spawn-camping for 24 hours straight, but rather the sense of pride from succeeding in a challenging game rather than one which hands you everything on a silver platter. In CU, you will have to earn your skills by deeds, and they will increase slowly over time. Magical items will not be found everywhere like road-kill on highways, so gamers won’t feel the pressure to “keep up with the Gandalfs.”

The current design “foundation principals” are listed on the CU website. My fav is #13 called Chaos Goes Boing which I couldn’t understand on the first read, but embraces the chaos that can occur in an MMO. The foundation principals make for good reading too, although they do somewhat meander. Again, more power to them, in communicating in advance about what and why the CU devs are giving a very open view to their potential customers.

They are a small dev shop looking to create something that they love, and seeking a very effective and valid way to measure the interest and gain capital to make it happen. This is exactly why Kickstarter is a great service. Consider though Kickstarter itself is more revolutionary change for online games than another RvR MMO is.

To be clear – I hope the CU game is created and I think there will be a small and dedicated market for the gameplay. I’ve taken a few shots at CU here, but overall it is more a dig at their approach to the comms/PR than the actual desire to create something. Warhammer Online had some of the same banter, and could not stay afloat, CU by comparison looks at this initial stage stronger.

New game, known dev house, quasi-related IP reuse, reliable known theme and features, niche/different audience, boosted funding from a community; thus a respectable goal. Alas not worth my pre-investment.

Camelot Unchained by City State Entertainment — Kickstarter.

LucasArts Closed

Rhetoric surrounds the closure of LucasArts. I feel for the folks who have lost their jobs, and agree with the popularist cynical view that most of what made the company iconic originally has not been the daily activity for many years. That said the company did have some interesting different games in production for Star Wars and I was excited. 1313 was a new direction, and I was watching it. I was even a little excited despite feeling that the Star Wars MMO failed to deliver anything different or as good as WoW. It will be a shame if those games do not get picked up by other software development houses, and hopefully some of the staff too.

Of course the comments are a range of support and snide, the move is not totally unexpected given Disney has Star Wars now and can do as it wishes. This is a significant point in time to watch…will Disney provide vision for the franchise, or produce garbage?

IMHO Disney is a monolithic company operating in ways that only rarely connect with my daily life. I watch their films when I get around to them, and generally don’t buy merchandise or go to theme parks. They have purchased a powerful brand in Star Wars, with a very passionate support base. With that passion comes expectation and management of feedback, some fans are not forgiving.

I hope they have a new angle and create something in the spirit of the first Star Wars film. That would impress, and have a chance of providing a continuing fan-base well into the next decade.

Src: LucasArts Video Game Development Shutdown by Disney.

Blacksmithing the new Bars

The new Blacksmithing daily conversion grants a special BoP Lightning Steel Ingot bar, and also grants a chance to learn a pattern you don’t have. I really like this idea. Many of the BS patterns were expensive in mats and low use, but I like having the oddd chance to pick them up while creating a daily bar.

Even better was the fact that the pattern to learn it drops from a PvE kill (from Itoka) and has a small mini-quest to complete. This is spot on, and should be repeated for each tweak or enhancement to each profession. It is a way to bind players into the world.

As silly as it may sound too – these Lightning Steel Ingots are core materials for a set of ilevel 463 BoE items, which can be further enhanced to ilevel BoE 476.Yes, finally we have a way to craft 476 BoE items.

For my character who is still using a crappy upgraded blue weapon in my Tank set, it might be better. Sad, but hey – an upgrade is an upgrade. It will take 15x uses of the daily cooldown, so a fairly high investment in time.

Related articles

• Lightning Steel Ingots (ownedcore.com)