Blog status like the Drowned God

“What is dead my never die”

It has been another fast and tiring few weeks around the TyphoonAndrew household, with far too much non-gaming malarkey. That does not mean that nothing news worth happened, but gosh darn it – I can’t give my usual degree of rant on the topics.

Here is a rapid fire round-up of some things that I thought to blog in detail about, but won’t get time to.

Should characters be scaled?

At best, make it an option. No way I want this as a forced change.

If you want it to be forced and no choice to stay high level then I can agree to disagree with you, and then also decide that you really must be a tad selfish. Games can be about fun options, and it should not totally destroy an existing fun to crate a new fun.

Blizzcon News and Gossip

Frankly I’m beyond caring about Blizzcon, particularly where getting the information asap from the showroom floor is concerned. Australians are far too far from the noise and splendorous hype for me to worry about being current.

The general buzz is about the DOTA style game they are ramping up, but I really hope we do get an expansion announcement and then details about it.

Without one it feels like the end of Mists just sort of ends with a whimper.

Blackthorne can be downloaded.

I have no idea what it is (was) or it if it is worth downloading.The screenies I fond make it look like a side scrolling action game. Cool for some casual kicks.

wow p5.1 Valor Grinding Update by Ask Mr. Robot

You PvE folks don’t need more gear drops, just update the gear you have with Valor and Justice! Yay. Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory.

Mr Robot has an excellent summary with examples of how and how gear will soon be able to be upgrades with grind-able points. In Patch 5.1 for WoW you’ll get a +8 item level boost on any gear, costing 1500 points. That is pretty neat for a raider who is missing a key upgrade due to poor luck. It offers an alternative which was not available.

I have a niggling feeling though that it will make capping Valor/Justice each week so much more important. It was already very desirable, but now it feels even closer to a mandatory requirement.

Q. Where do you get the points?

A. Same places – boss kills, instances, and doing daily quests. Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory.

Q. Do we get more, or are the scales adjusted?

A. Nope, all is good in the ratios so I’m told. 25 points per boss kill is apparently what is needed.

Raiding and LFR offer between 40-50% max of the Valor, assuming that you are doing full clears. Not many guilds are doing full clears – so many raiders are not even close to max before they start doing Instances and daily quests.

Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory.

Q. Should I do progression, with wipes, long effort, etc or do Valor farming?

A. Both. You need to play more, or play more efficiently, or whatever – this is all about being given expanded options. Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory.

Q. How could the reward improve or valor system improve?

A. How about:

• Increase the reward from the instances from 80 VP first and 40 every run afterward to 100 and 60 each extra run. Make it so more people run instances to get their Valor – it can’t hurt. It still makes it a hard slog to cap. Increasing the JP reward is a good idea too.
• Reward both Valor and Justice from Scenarios, unless they are intended to be done once and then forgotten.
• Reward more from boss kills in PvE, from 25 to 40-45. This means that it is still very unlikely that a character will cap valor just from PvE clearing.
• Reward daily quest reward from 5 VP to 10 or 15 VP. This is for fools like me who are earning valor through daily quests a lot and are really bored with it.
• The bonus for valor capping a character changes so that instead of one character getting to 1000 valor and the buff kicking in, the 1000 can be gained on any set of characters, then all get more. This means more people are using alts – which would be their choice.

Remember: Grinding instances and daily quests is not mandatory. Are you happy citizen?

Refs:

•  World of Warcraft Patch 5.1 – Valor Upgrades | Ask Mr. Robot’s Blog.
• Wow Forum post discussing the grind of Valor being too long

Is Wrathion an evil mongrel?

That funny son-of-a-black-dragon named Wrathion has a new quest in a future patch, to continue the bump and grind of assembling a Legendary item. The quest is called “Test of Valor” and requires the collection of 6000 valor points. So it’s not important if he’s evil in a good vs evil way, more in terms of if he’s the sadistic expression of “Love that Valor” grind which Mists has brought us.

It is not clear if the counter for 6000 starts when the quest is accepted, or is retroactive. I’d suggest that making it retroactive is poor for three reasons:

1. getting a Legendary should be hard. 6 weeks work is nothing compared to the years of work to get early Legendary items like Sulfuron and Thunderfury. Yes it should be as hard as it was.
2. getting 6000 valor will count in the next expansion as well as this one. Meaning that from start it does not matter what you do to earn them, its just a questline for a particularly challenging set of content.
3. if it is retroactive then I have 6000 valor from ages ago when valor points were first introduced, considering some isolated mechanic which counts from one day, but ignores others makes the coding harder.

So make it count from the time the quest is accepted, and make it reset if the quest is dropped. The idea that this might upset people upsets me. I’ll say something rude and elitist which is hopefully out of character for me: play another game if six weeks work is too hard for a legendary item.

There is a thread on the official forms saying farewell to WoW due to the Valor grind. While I think the grind itself around gearing with Valor is poor in Pandaria, I’m all for the Legendary being brutally punishing, the harder they are the better.

Thoughts? Too harsh?

Faction reps gaining slowly

A quick toon update on Reputations in progress for Mortigen my Death Knight, making me think that daily quests do have a reward, but by golly that does not make them entertaining.

• Black Prince now Honored. Not a big deal without the drops needed from raid bosses, which are darn rare and most of what I need now coming from Heart of Fear.
• Golden Lotus now Revered, so I can save that little more valor and might soon have some upgraded epic Shoulders. Yay. Anyone got some spare Valor? Also means I can unlock the Shadow Pan to start more quests. And a step closer to the epic quest reward too.
• Klaxxi now Revered, also not a big deal due to the Valor requirement on rewards. I suppose it is one step closer to Exalted and a free 487 epic item. Yippee. Grind.
• Tillers now totally beyond my comprehension of which idiot farmer likes me, and which are snarky. I do not understand why Farmer Yoon (or whatever his name is) actually needs rep or help. What he really needs and actually has is a host of available players to be slaves on his farm while he stands idle beside the hut watching. That shovel pusher is lucky he is not a yellow-mob, because I’d be killing him every week. Yes, I am exalted which is why these turkeys get the biggest rant.
• I also do not understand how to get Cooking leveled quickly. All my non-“Way-of-the” cooking is gray.
• Anglers have had a brief look in, but fishing is no more compelling than before, which means that it’ll be one of the last things I do each week if I have the time.
• Archaeology is after fishing/Anglers. Yawn.

So I keep doing Golden Lotus and Klaxxi for the Exalted quest chain, garnering Valor to buy the Shoulders, then add Shadow Pan into the mix instead of Tillers so that the epic Helm will one day be something available too.

It’s nice to have an upgrade path. See you online.

A Few Silly Things

As wow game time flies by, the odd silly thoughts appear…

• What is a Lightwell? – click to adjust the light in the area briefly for the perfect screenshot. Strange that it is a Priest power, but then they are of the light.
• As a Melee dps I think my role in the last two encounters of the Mogu’shan Vaults will be spear-carrier and pop-pop-waver. Encounters designed to make range dps easy and melee dps difficult is something well beyond a meme by now. The designers of those fights can get stuffed. I bet they play warlocks.
• After each patch spam a Pally for buffs stating that they have changed. Chances are that either (a) they have, or (b) the pally won’t know that they have not – given how much Paladins change each update. You can also still snigger when somebody asks for “Wisdom”.
• I don’t troll /Trade as a rule, but someday I’d like to ask, “since patch which spec is better for aoe grinding guardian or sentinel?”.
• Or offer a gold seller a great deal on a Spirit of Harmony, say 530g per, but only if they can supply 25 of them. Hopefully/maybe they don’t understand the BoP nature and go off farming.

Is the bundle sale a sign for Mists?

I’m preempting the calls from forum trolls everywhere that will say the Mists + Cata bundle is a sales driven desperate search for the remaining 10 geeks hidden in a bunker who have not played Warcraft. The game must be failing! See proof! Exclamation!

Get back in your bloody basement and play Farmville (oh, wait).

Or I could suggest that they are looking to convert a few players cheaply so that they continue to play, or return to play. Well der-derp-duh. Good on them. If I was pondering a return I might do this too. This is not Age of Conan, and it is a silly thought to think that wow is anywhere near a decline.

The active players I know are mostly happy. A few bitch and hate some aspects (dailies, valor gates, etc), but for the most part are entertaining themselves and others on a daily basis. Money grab? Maybe. Dead? Bah humbug.

Yes, bad mood today. Rants will continue until the alcohol arrives.

A few years ago I blogged…

As a navel dazing distraction, here are a few posts from this blog over the years at or just around mid-October. Blog has been going since late 2006.

That’s a lot of ranting, even for me.

Dinged 90 and the race is just beginning

Well I dinged 90 a few days ago and even as the warm yellow glow of achievement left my character I began recalling the plan for the next stage.

• Ring of Blood v.Panda for the weapon upgrade
• Then BLacksmith skill to Max level to unlock the nice gear upgrades
• Rep grind with the Klaxxi bugs, farmers, and all the others.

As far as activities at 90 the Mists expansion has gobsmacking amounts of activity. You can even get Valor points (yummy) from daily quests. Given the time I think I could do at least 50 productive advancing quests in a day. Shucks that’s got to be over 10 hours of dailies just there – and they all count an are productive!

Happy farming, grinding, and wow’ing it up.

Mists does well in the market place

Approx 2.7 units of Mists sold early, plus the sales just at/post launch, plus China coming on boards soon – WoW is back to 10+ million players and may get to a higher mark.

Mike Morhaime – “It’s been gratifying to see the results of all of the work we put into this expansion and to hear all of the positive feedback from players so far.”

I’m pleased, as it reflects how good I think this expansion is. Congratulations. There were initial reports that sales were less than Cata and less than expected, and however true they were they were slanted toward the retail sales of boxes which ignored the digital sales. I purchased a digital version, and think it is the logical way to pay. Sorry stores, you do not have a compelling offering. I guess there is Blizzard spin there too. The 3 month figure will be telling, and the 6 month stats will be definitive. As a player we generally know how it is going  in a broad sense anyway by who is online and what they are saying.

I’ve seen some players return to try out the game, but not a massive amount of the really “old” players who left with significant burn-out in place. Some folks have had enough of the game, and feel that the flavour of wow’s treadmill is not for them anymore – fair call. I respect that, just as I respect that a player can return and get a new lease on life too. We have to do what we enjoy above all else.

There are also some bloggers returning too, so we should see an increase in the general wow chatter through the internet. It is exciting.

It’s odd to think that games will cycle in this manner on first impression, but it really is logical. Something is new and entertaining, then it becomes old – the manufacturers make a cal of how long to keep content out there, and how fast they can release it. 1 year with an end boss is too long, and the anti-subs reflected that.

Anyone else like to roll a Mogu character?

Related articles

• Blizzard moves 2.7 million Mists of Pandaria units in first week (massively.joystiq.com)
• Analysts: Mists of Pandaria sales disappointing (massively.joystiq.com)
• Blizzard talks ‘Mists of Pandaria’ launch, lack of BlizzCon (theverge.com)
• How successful is Mists of Pandaria? (tobolds.blogspot.com)

What a few nights a week can do? A lot actually.

Recently…

I’ve been happily playing through the Mists content with my Death Knight, and so far the questing has been excellent. I am now level 88 and getting close to the end of the second zone. By the level of the other players around me I get the impression that others are moving faster through the zones, and having rested XP might be a good cause for that – I am getting more xp per quest because I am generating more rested due to time not playing. Hey, not bad.

If given the choice I would be playing 16 hours a day and not in rested XP at all, but you can’t have everything. If I get to 90 without completing all the zones then I am sure I will get the opportunity over the next year or so to see them fully. Or I’ll complete them at max level and horde all the gold and drops.

The gear from questing is darn good – far better and specialised for the roles of a DK than any other expansion and this is by design. For some classes it might seem odd that they get given two dps options, but each of the plate melee classes/specs has slightly different needs for stats and this gives flexibility.

The Voice of the Deeps heroic two handed sword is ilevel 410 and still far better than any quest drop (at the moment). I guess that eventually I’ll see a weapon that is better, but so far the ilevel 415 greens and blues are not as good. VotD has a damage buff per mastery and the buff in mastery at for the gear above ilevel 400 is huge. I get the impression that it is not meant to be this good. I love it.

…and then last night…

I had the pleasure of playing for a prolonged period and was able to get through level 88 and I am now level 89. This was my stretch goal as I really wanted to get the dps and tanking trinkets from the Brewfest encounter before is ended.

After din’ing 89 I was fortunate enough to have a few guildies online who joined me in killing Direbrew a few times, and grabbed the dps trinket and one of the tanking trinkets.

Stoked!

Related articles

• What I did first? Heck, I’ve just only started (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)

Round-up of WoW news Snippets

A few smallish things worth briefly pondering…

Challenge Mode Leaderboards are live, showing the characters doing particularly well in Challenge Modes. It has some neat filtering options for classes and removing the same toon-groups.

Free realm transfers for some realms due to population troubles. If you’re on these realms you might be interested – not so much for most of us. Oceanic players on Frostmourne particularly might be keen.

Blizzard have released a graphic novel – The Pearl of Pandaria, which is getting reasonable reviews so far from what I’ve heard on blogs and podcasts.

Pet battles are proving to be darn popular, which I did not expect. Many guildies are raving about how good it is and the achievement junkies are going spare to get all the battles in. blogs and podcasts too seem to be loving them, somewhat ironically. Good call Blizzard, wow – given that I might try it in a few weeks.

Dark Legacy have a cute comic about the pre-release emptiness in the cities – moot now but still funny.

I’m reading the Tides of War novel to gain some lore background on the setting for Mists. While I can appreciate the books are different from the games (or films, or whatever) there are things in the novel’s timeline which do not mesh with what I am playing in the game.

For example the game lore just released has everyone discovering the moving island of Pandaria. This discovery leads to a few changes for major Non Player Characters and also to the escalation to war between the Horde and the Alliance. The novel by contrast has the escalation based upon the destruction of Theramore, and the ongoing battle using all sorts of non-typical war machines. It is a disparity in terms of I am not sure which is missing on what lore, or which is meant to be right.

Am I at war because of Pandaria, the bombing, or some other reason? “Why do we fight” is a reasonable question, and one that perhaps the more roleplaying focused players have already answered for themselves in spite of the odd contradiction. I’m kind of expecting a RetCon somewhere in the post-Mists round-up to declare that the novel is authorative, but who knows.

There is also the possibility that the segment of story told in Tides of War is removed from the events of Pandaria and these things are all happening in parallel. That would be almost plausible, except for one of the NPCs (who I won’t spoil).

Many distracting things which take us away from the leveling. Must play…must play…

What happened second? I looked at how I’m leveling

Here are a few thing I’ve noticed about how I level; apart of slowly.

Mists is doing a great job to present the lore of the situation into the player’s eyeballs. Some quests give blunt information, others are more subtle. At times this means that the task we are asked to do is not to the style of my character, but that is totally forgivable when the context it gives is useful. The lore as it stands now is very engaging and I am loving the new content.

I tend to read the quest text, but sometimes skim read if the task is obviously to kill X of Y and come back for more. Those quests might have a context of “create a potion”, “deliver this rare”, or whatever. The nature of WoW’s quests have not changed, and honestly I cannot see how it could in a theme-park style mmo. In fact it is a good thing, and something which mean of the community enjoy as well. There is always the question of how re-playable the content is, but I see that as moot for now.

Despite being in the first zone and still level 85 I have already maxed out Mining to 600 by chasing nodes over doing quests. It’s slower but the mats are too valuable to ignore, and I do not want to return to an area to back fill the skill, or find a node later that I cannot grab. The nodes also grant xp so its not a total waste.

I’m trying to stretch away from a totally linear quest series, as having a small degree of choice is empowering (have a read of Tobold’s post below for a view on linear quests). Essentially though the content must have some sort of pathway, and linked hubs make sense for 80% of players. Completing a quest hub is a must as while the gear is not an upgrade yet, often the next hub is unlocked by the last stage in the previous hub.

Silly aside – Why do we Fight? Why do the leaves fall?

I fight because I have to to get to the mining nodes and all the monsters get in the way. Sometimes other players too. The leaves fall because I keep bumping into the trees, monsters, rocks, and all the other terrain artwork and widgets. I abuse auto-run.

Related articles

• What I did first? Heck, I’ve just only started (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Blizzard repeating old mistakes (tobolds.blogspot.com)
• WoW Insider interviews Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak (wow.joystiq.com)
• Day one in Pandaria. (grimdem.wordpress.com)

What I did first? Heck, I’ve just only started

Many blogs out there posting about what they did first, and what the experience in Mists is like, which is great to see high praise for the content released. I played for less than 1 hour between dinner, baby tasks, and spending a non-wow night with the better half.

No download (that was done), no patch issues (also done), no latency issues (cool).

In an hour I was able to:

• Accepted the new “come to the King” quest that appears auto-magically. Great touch – this is a superior way to get the content in the player’s eyeballs.
• Ramped up my professions (mining, first aid, archy, cooking, fishing), but could not get the Stormwind Blacksmith to talk to me; ah well. Better things to worry about.
• Checked my quest log to get rid of the naff naff quests that I might have left.
• Logged in each lowbie and 85 alt character so that the rested ticks over. I’m not sure if I actually had to do that, but I figure it was a few clicks to be sure.
• Created my Pandaren Monk, did the “get your staff quest”, then logged. Rested will be ticking slowly, ready for a good run in a week or so.
• Then headed to Pandaria to help recover the Prince! Cool. An actual reason for a hero and highly regarded character to head across to an unknown place and “adventure”.

So my initial impression is that the introduction was solid, and worked well as an Alliance character. I loved that the first real quest was a vehicle mode, and then straight after it was a “Kill a Set of Dirty Stinking Horde snotlings”. Yes, the tone is right. Get players into the mindset that we need to hurt the Horde. If the lore is adding in-game to back the destruction of Theramore, then I’ll get on board with the Horde killing.

So I’m stoked. It’s too early to say its all wonderful, but the chatter in Guild seems to be that everything is darn interesting and the characters are racing toward maximum level at a smooth pace. A few characters were already 86 last night, and I’m sure we’ll see a few 87’s today; if not already.

Happy (misty horde scum) Killing, TyphoonAndrew.

Related articles

• Blizzard launches fourth World of Warcraft expansion, Mists of Pandaria (thenextweb.com)

Awesome MoP prep blogpost by Mr Robot

Mr Robot team have prep’ed a great post for what to do first. It’s so good I was thinking of not sharing it so I had a slight edge. Even a quick scan told me things I didn’t know – like the goggles that Engineers can craft that allow others to see extra nodes and herbs!

Pre-weekend Round-up

A quick round-up before I slide into a flat-out weekend of social activity and non-nerd related stuff. The last week was a bonanza of cool activity all based upon completing aspects of Cataclysm at the last minute, but my stuff will make it into another post.

This is just some odd news.

Privacy for BattleNet

We get a privacy option in battleNet games soon, which lets us go into a hidden mode while online. Good. This extends to the friends list as well as battleNetID mates.

I wonder if that will have an illusory affect on the apparent server populations?

In the coming months, we’re planning an update to Battle.net that will give you more control over your online presence when playing Blizzard games. Soon, World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Diablo III players will be able to select “Appear Offline” as one of their Battle.net social-status options (along with Available, Busy, and Away) for those times when they want to wander Azeroth by their lonesome, dominate the galaxy in radio silence, or slay demons in solitude. When you choose this option as your status, all of your Real ID friends, BattleTag friends, and character-level friends will see you as “Offline” in their friends list whenever you’re logged into a game. (source)

Reminders to Buy – We get an email reminding us to pre-purchase Mists to the account which has already pre-purchased Mists of Pandaria. And another to my old account which I don’t play, and another to the test account I had to muck about on. Two of those were valid to get, the message sent to my account which should already be upgrade is likely to push the Collector’s Edition opportunity rather than the standard digital version.

Promotions and Vids for Mists – Wow Insider has a summary of Everything that Awaits in Mists. Blizzard have committed to making this release the best ever…

With this expansion, we’re using a new bit of tech that will unlock the expansion content, make the intro quest magically pop up in your quest log, and allow you to begin playing the expansion immediately without the need to log out and back in. If everything goes as planned this will be a smooth transition to the adventures that await you in the new continent (source).

Re-remember Theramore is a snarky jab at getting the Theramore scenario re-worked to be something wonderful.

Bring on Tuesday.

Related articles

• “Appear Offline” Option Coming Soon to Battle.net (us.battle.net)
• Mists of Pandaria Pre-Sales NOW OPEN (us.battle.net)
• World of Warcraft(R): Mists of Pandaria(TM) Launches in China October 2 (sacbee.com)

In a friendly guild, who should get the Legendary?

Update: Apparently the tokens/widgets for the legendary quest will drop randomly and all members of the raid will get them (heard it from a guildie who is a voracious reader). This makes the drama and selection totally moot. Legendary for all. Mains, Alts, everyone gets a shiny orange item.

The Legendary item in Mists will be something that every class can get, and every player will want it on at least one character. It appears that the quest / story line will be at least worthy of significant effort, and that guilds will need to prioritize which characters are up for the rare drops first.

Once again a choice must be made. The degree of severity and scale of that choice unknown at the moment, and I’m assuming that the drops will be rare enough that selection to receive them will be something worth considering, much like the random Fragments in Ulduar. I doubt the tokens will be as rare as the Eye from Rag or the Bindings from Molten Core. If so we have a really rare adventure ahead. Instead I suspect that these will drop with a low-ish percentage, so that guilds will get enough of them to progress as they kill through a raid.

The following has a very large amount of my personal opinion and bias build in. After writing it I came around to one question which is perhaps the best question to ask:

If it cannot be yourself, who else would you wish it to go to first?

Cheeky Upgrade option in Character Screen

Those cheeky fellows working in Blizzard have plonked an ad for Mists of Pandaria in the character screen you see after login.

It is not subtle or unreasonable, and after my initial reaction of “what the f?” I considered using that to purchase my upgrade.

It makes me ponder if we will see character customisation, race change, name change and such in that screen too. Heck it would even be handy to be able to buy month-by-month time as well. The user is logged in, so might benefit from it. All the special offers for pets and such could be there too.

Are you pondering that already Activision?

Started update, gone fishing…

I got up on Wednesday morning (Australian time) and started the World of Warcraft update. Like many folks I had to kick the updater in the guts a few times (started multiple times) so that it would work.

Then I saw the updating file message and was frustrated that after 20 minutes it had not moved from 0%. What in hell?

So rather than staring at the screen, I went to work. I don’t know how long it took, but the game tells me that its done and its 6 hours later. I won’t login until after I get home, eat, say happy things to the family, and then maybe eat more.

Would have been nice to see this start when patch started, but really has zero effect on my gameplay. I’m pleased that the Theramore event is not starting day one of patch 5 either, as I’d be feeling like the delay/outage/issues might rally create a backlash. As it stands now I’ll just read about it.

I was also very confused by the game loader when it replaced the Cata branding with Mists branding. That is silly – I have not purchased Mists as yet so why show me the title? Anyway I’m happy that it should be ready when I am.

Grumble.

Related articles

• Patch day, and I’m… « untamedhellcat (untamedhellcat)
• Today’s Conspiracy Theory – The WoW 5.0.4 Patch (tagn.wordpress.com)
• World of Warcraft releases pre-expansion patch (massively.joystiq.com)

Love or Hate the Mists Artwork?

One thing I like about Blizzard games is the peripheral artwork and assets which get developed. When Panda-rama was announced I was very negative about the idea as it felt cutesie and childish compared with the dramatic setting of Cataclysm, Wrath of the Lich King, and The Burning Crusade. Wrath was my favourite by far in terms of setting artwork, holistic style, and zone assets.

Now that I look at the artwork for Mists of Pandaria I really like it. It has an elegance and classic “asian style” which is stand out as beautiful to an anglo Australian mutt like me. I like it enough to create a top banner for the blog using one of the boilerplate artworks by Blizzard. Imagine how cooler that same image would look with non-panda races fighting in it! Perhaps a bloodelf vs human monk fight. I just have to love monks finally being playable in the game after so many years of killing them in the game already.

The art is perhaps not enough to put at ease all my reservations about fur-covered-love-bears being introduced into the game, but enough to place them next to the other races I dislike a little like Gnomes and Goblins. Yes, I don’t like stunties – both races look like snotlings in fancy dress.

Related articles

• Mists of Pandaria cinematic review (wow.joystiq.com)
• Blizzard Artwork Page for MoP (battle.net)