Sometime between 75 and 80 I switched to a Fire-based Frostfire build, the idea being to help us in questing and 2-3 man quests. Frostfire is a fairly interesting spell, which on the surface seems pretty subpar. On the surface, the spell doesn't seem that great--yay, a spell for fire/frost mage to use when their main nuke is worthless. It's in the details where Frostfire starts to get useful and interesting.
The trick with Frostfire is that it benefits from ALL effects that affect Frost AND Fire. So, for example, Frostfire can benefit from both Ice Shards (+100% to base Crit Damage), AND Ignite (40% Crit Damage dot). It can benefit from Frost Slow, and Freezes; AND Fire Stuns. And it benefits from +Hit, +Crit, and +damage bonuses from BOTH categories. This makes the build extremely interesting.
For leveling, I went with a mostly fire build. My Level 80 build looked pretty much like a strait 0/53/18 Fire build, with Ice Shards; and taking all Freezes, Stuns, and slowing effects I could. It was pretty effectively...with this build, if I crit I pretty much could kill the mob with 1-2 spells, long before it reached me. And if I didn't crit, I still had a 10% chance of a freeze, and an ADDITIONAL 10% chance of a stun hitting. In some cases, the mob would die before even managing to move from it's origional position; and the effect carries over fairly well into 5-mans. Plus, you still end up with Combustion, Dragons Breath, and Blast Wave for crowd control which is good enough for questing most of the time.
So far the build has worked pretty well. Frostfire is HEAVILY dependant on crit rate, and that's the main issue I have with it right now. My crit rating has tanked at 80, down 18% almost, and that's mostly just a stat-drop; I haven't made that back anywhere else. Of course, I haven't really gotten much in the way of 80 gear yet so things will only go up from here.
With that in mind, Frostfire has still proven useful and viable. With a crit rate of 25%, I'm hitting on average 2300-2600 on a non-crit; 6.5k on a crit + 40%. In 5-mans I'm generally hitting 7-8k on crits. That's not bad, seeing how right now Fireball's biggest benefit right now would be 500 points more non-crit damage and 2k less crits.
Of course, my Frostfire build is still more for questing than anything else. And I haven't picked up the Glyphs that will help yet--namely Frostfire Glyph, and Molten Armor Glyph. Those 2 will help significantly.
There is another Frostfire build option that I'm considering, one that is more of a true hybrid elemental spec. That has some definite advantages right now--in 5 man it ensures a higher base crit rating, and allows for more crits in general; with the loss of instant-pyroblasts and other useful fire stats. I might be trying that build out soon, and if I do I'll post something about it here.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Level 80 Post Mortem
I have a confession to make. I had fully planned on blogging on my experiences to 80 in Northrend, but it simply didn't happen. There are a few reasons for this. One is simply laziness. The other, however, is the fast pace and relatively mechanical way in which I leveled to 80 which just made it less fun to write about.
I'm not saying I didn't have fun leveling. In fact it was a blast. But the process in which I did it (duoing with another mage), and the pace made it hard to keep track of everything without taking notes and that would have slowed me down significantly.
In the end, I made 80 in 11 days...1 day longer than Burning Crusade where it took 10 days to get to 70. However, 3 of those days I didn't even log in, so by game time we were significantly faster this time through. For those counting, we did Borean Tundra - Dragon Blight - Howling Fjord - Grizzily Hills, the Basin, and hit 70 in Zul Drak. We aren't actually done yet...we won't be 'done' until we've completed all of the zones...so we still have Storm Peaks and Icecrown to go but those we will do a bit later.
During the questing I only replaced one piece of gear--a epic trinket with a simple green trinket that has 44 INT and 55 Spell Power. There were a couple of other pieces I kept as well, including a back-piece which is clearly better than what I'm currently wearing but am not b/c I would loose too much crit. There might be a few more options in the final two zones, but I'm not sure about that yet.
Of course, I've now moved on to 5-mans and hopefully 10 mans will be an option soon. Naxx is certainly a starter zone, which IMO is a good thing. My guild has already run 2 runs (I was not one of the 'chosen' few that got to go--like all guilds this one has an 'in crowd' and I, being relatively new, am NOT in that category. Not a big deal, b/c 25- man is still where it is at, but it still shows some of the more obvious flaws in the guild structure that could come back to haunt them. It certainly hurt my first guild--caused it to crash and burn, so we'll see.
I'm not saying I didn't have fun leveling. In fact it was a blast. But the process in which I did it (duoing with another mage), and the pace made it hard to keep track of everything without taking notes and that would have slowed me down significantly.
In the end, I made 80 in 11 days...1 day longer than Burning Crusade where it took 10 days to get to 70. However, 3 of those days I didn't even log in, so by game time we were significantly faster this time through. For those counting, we did Borean Tundra - Dragon Blight - Howling Fjord - Grizzily Hills, the Basin, and hit 70 in Zul Drak. We aren't actually done yet...we won't be 'done' until we've completed all of the zones...so we still have Storm Peaks and Icecrown to go but those we will do a bit later.
During the questing I only replaced one piece of gear--a epic trinket with a simple green trinket that has 44 INT and 55 Spell Power. There were a couple of other pieces I kept as well, including a back-piece which is clearly better than what I'm currently wearing but am not b/c I would loose too much crit. There might be a few more options in the final two zones, but I'm not sure about that yet.
Of course, I've now moved on to 5-mans and hopefully 10 mans will be an option soon. Naxx is certainly a starter zone, which IMO is a good thing. My guild has already run 2 runs (I was not one of the 'chosen' few that got to go--like all guilds this one has an 'in crowd' and I, being relatively new, am NOT in that category. Not a big deal, b/c 25- man is still where it is at, but it still shows some of the more obvious flaws in the guild structure that could come back to haunt them. It certainly hurt my first guild--caused it to crash and burn, so we'll see.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Wrath Day 1
Well color me surprised. I really expected for the servers to be a horrible mess last night, but instead they were rock solid stable. There were very few lag issues even though the server was packed full for much of the night. Considering how unstable the servers have been lately, this was a big improvement and because of that I'm probably going to take off early today to get a little bit of extra leveling in again.
Yesterday was a different experience for me than BC. Though I wasn't in the BC beta, I knew people that were and I had seen enough of the area to know what to do and where to go for the start. With Wrath, I had no clue at all. The first thing I did, of course, was to port to Stormwind and take the first boat to Northrend. I was wanting to go to Howling Fjord, but ended up in the Tundra.
The first thing I noticed was that the zone looked...fantastic, yet more normal seeming than most anything in Outlands. There was also less re-use of old building designs...the main castle there was different than the 300 different WOW castles I've visited. The Inn was different.
The second thing I noticed was just how dense everything was, and the large number of people wandering the area just enhanced that effect. The starting town isn't really all that big, but it still took a while to find the crafting trainers and starting quests. I was waiting for my partner to log in, but at the same time I did want to look around and see what I could see, so I started doing some of the initial quests right outside of town, talking to everyone and trying to get used to everything was.
The next thing I noticed was the quests. At least in the Tundra, there seemed to be a lot of quests involving 'kill this specific single mob who only spawns at one place and everyone needs'. These types of quests were rather rare in BC, but there were at least 7 or 8 we ran across last night; and 4 right at the very beginning. These quests were just an excersize in frustration--15-20 guys all waing for one guy to spawn, AOEs flying everywhere, and it was just a big pain in the ass.
After doing some solo quests, I figured that I should avoid getting too far ahead so I just started traveling around; collecting discovery xps and playing tourist. The Tundra is a large zone, with large vistas and very spectacular views. It is also very dense, and haphazard--the zone just seems to be a random mishmash of random terrain types; which robs the zone of some of it's flavor. The Tundra itself is beautiful when viewed at a distance; you can see a LONG way in the zone and therefore seems more worldly and real--or at least it would if it wasn't so random. Still, it's pretty and there is a TON of stuff to do in the zone.
While exploring I then got a chance to go to Utgarde Keep. I got summoned there, and the second I got there you could see the striking difference between the Fjord and the Tundra. While the Tundra is pretty--the Fjord is spectacular. And Utgarde Keep is stunning in it's size and color. The first 5-man there is pretty short (the first time we did it we took about 40 minutes, the second time 20). For a zone so short it seems relatively big though.
The first boss is a necromancer-like elf. He's pretty easy to kill; the only trick to him is that he spawns 4 undead adds that you have to kill which will keep being resummoned until he's dead. The second encounter is a pair of bosses, a warrior and a mage. This is a bit more serious of a fight--the mage hits relatively hard, but can be locked down pretty easily. The last boss is easy. He's only major ability is a massive short-range attack that the tank has to avoid; and in his second phase an annoying whirling blade that the tank needs to avoid.
We did the zone twice, had 1 or two deaths, no wipes; and the instance went very smooth. As a mage I got to spell steal some nifty stuff--including a fire AOE, and a damage shield; and the trash last far longer than anything in BC now allowing me to actually get some spells in.
After that, my friend was ready and in game, so we started questing for real. We caught up with the quests that I had done, and the one's near the mine which I hadn't done but he had started while I was in the Keep. Then we started hitting other parts of the zone. To be fair, we were kinda all over the place when it came to leveling--jumping from quest area to area; not always finishing everything before moving on. This was partially due to a bit of 'wow, look what is over here!' mentality, but also due to the fact that certain quest areas were so overwhelmed that there was no point messing with them.
I managed to hit 71, barely, by the end of the night. Tom didn't get so far--he made it to a little over half way to 71...those two Utgarde Runs must have really packed in some additional XP. So far I've liked the DEHTA quests, but otherwise there hasn't been any quest lines that have really stood out as interesting to me. Most of the quests have so far seen fairly simple, and to date no quest rewards have even APPROACHED being interesting to me. The Utgarde rewards were only slightly better--but still weren't worth it.
Today, I'm hoping we can finish out the Tundra and move on to the next zone. If possible I'd like to get 73 today--or at least get close to 73. I'm definitely going to need to start farming for crafting materials too--Enchanting is going slowly (I only got 379 last night), and tailoring is going just as slowly (380). There just hasn't been a lot of drops relating to materials yet, so we'll have to see where it goes today.
Yesterday was a different experience for me than BC. Though I wasn't in the BC beta, I knew people that were and I had seen enough of the area to know what to do and where to go for the start. With Wrath, I had no clue at all. The first thing I did, of course, was to port to Stormwind and take the first boat to Northrend. I was wanting to go to Howling Fjord, but ended up in the Tundra.
The first thing I noticed was that the zone looked...fantastic, yet more normal seeming than most anything in Outlands. There was also less re-use of old building designs...the main castle there was different than the 300 different WOW castles I've visited. The Inn was different.
The second thing I noticed was just how dense everything was, and the large number of people wandering the area just enhanced that effect. The starting town isn't really all that big, but it still took a while to find the crafting trainers and starting quests. I was waiting for my partner to log in, but at the same time I did want to look around and see what I could see, so I started doing some of the initial quests right outside of town, talking to everyone and trying to get used to everything was.
The next thing I noticed was the quests. At least in the Tundra, there seemed to be a lot of quests involving 'kill this specific single mob who only spawns at one place and everyone needs'. These types of quests were rather rare in BC, but there were at least 7 or 8 we ran across last night; and 4 right at the very beginning. These quests were just an excersize in frustration--15-20 guys all waing for one guy to spawn, AOEs flying everywhere, and it was just a big pain in the ass.
After doing some solo quests, I figured that I should avoid getting too far ahead so I just started traveling around; collecting discovery xps and playing tourist. The Tundra is a large zone, with large vistas and very spectacular views. It is also very dense, and haphazard--the zone just seems to be a random mishmash of random terrain types; which robs the zone of some of it's flavor. The Tundra itself is beautiful when viewed at a distance; you can see a LONG way in the zone and therefore seems more worldly and real--or at least it would if it wasn't so random. Still, it's pretty and there is a TON of stuff to do in the zone.
While exploring I then got a chance to go to Utgarde Keep. I got summoned there, and the second I got there you could see the striking difference between the Fjord and the Tundra. While the Tundra is pretty--the Fjord is spectacular. And Utgarde Keep is stunning in it's size and color. The first 5-man there is pretty short (the first time we did it we took about 40 minutes, the second time 20). For a zone so short it seems relatively big though.
The first boss is a necromancer-like elf. He's pretty easy to kill; the only trick to him is that he spawns 4 undead adds that you have to kill which will keep being resummoned until he's dead. The second encounter is a pair of bosses, a warrior and a mage. This is a bit more serious of a fight--the mage hits relatively hard, but can be locked down pretty easily. The last boss is easy. He's only major ability is a massive short-range attack that the tank has to avoid; and in his second phase an annoying whirling blade that the tank needs to avoid.
We did the zone twice, had 1 or two deaths, no wipes; and the instance went very smooth. As a mage I got to spell steal some nifty stuff--including a fire AOE, and a damage shield; and the trash last far longer than anything in BC now allowing me to actually get some spells in.
After that, my friend was ready and in game, so we started questing for real. We caught up with the quests that I had done, and the one's near the mine which I hadn't done but he had started while I was in the Keep. Then we started hitting other parts of the zone. To be fair, we were kinda all over the place when it came to leveling--jumping from quest area to area; not always finishing everything before moving on. This was partially due to a bit of 'wow, look what is over here!' mentality, but also due to the fact that certain quest areas were so overwhelmed that there was no point messing with them.
I managed to hit 71, barely, by the end of the night. Tom didn't get so far--he made it to a little over half way to 71...those two Utgarde Runs must have really packed in some additional XP. So far I've liked the DEHTA quests, but otherwise there hasn't been any quest lines that have really stood out as interesting to me. Most of the quests have so far seen fairly simple, and to date no quest rewards have even APPROACHED being interesting to me. The Utgarde rewards were only slightly better--but still weren't worth it.
Today, I'm hoping we can finish out the Tundra and move on to the next zone. If possible I'd like to get 73 today--or at least get close to 73. I'm definitely going to need to start farming for crafting materials too--Enchanting is going slowly (I only got 379 last night), and tailoring is going just as slowly (380). There just hasn't been a lot of drops relating to materials yet, so we'll have to see where it goes today.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Wrath
I have a confession to make. I forgot to pre-order the expansion! But fear not, I went ahead yesterday and ordered it from Amazon...and it's already on the truck destined to be delivered at home some time today!
So, while I haven't posted here in a few weeks, I think most of my upcoming posts are going to be about my experiences leveling from 70 to 80. Me and a friend (another mage) leveled from 60 to 70 together, and the plan is to do the same thing on the way to 80. It worked pretty well last time (with a bunch of late nights) and I would like to hit 80 sooner rather than later so I'm ready for level 80 10 and 25 mans around the time the rest of the new guild has started with it. With jobs and such, the last time when we worked on BC, we leveled very fast...we hit level 70 near the top 10% of our guild...and most of those ahead of us spent a LOT more time leveling than we did.
Unlike with Burning Crusade, I feel that my mage is well above the gear curve for Wrath. At level 60 I was wearing large amounts of Molton Core raid gear, nothing more (and I didn't have any of the rarer pieces). Most of that stuff got replaced quickly...if I remember correctly I replaced at least 4 epics with outland greens. Now at 70 I'm in MH/BT/Sunwell gear, and I'm not expecting to replace much of it. As an Enchanter/Tailor, I'm also considering dropping tailoring for Gemcrafting or Inscription--but I'm not going to make any major changes until 80 so for now it's going to be Enchanting/Tailoring to 80.
If I remember correctly, I hit L70 in 11 days. This time we may not be able to do quite as well (too much other RL stuff going on right now) but if possible I'd like like to hit 80 in no more than 2 weeks (14 days). Up to now, I really haven't done a lot of dungeons, etc, with the guild...it's honestly been hard to get into that stuff, so I'm hoping that doesn't remain an issue.
Anyway, I'm probably going to blog about my experiences leveling from 70 to 80, up to and entering Naxx if possible. Sure there are a lot of people doing it too, but it should be fun.
So, while I haven't posted here in a few weeks, I think most of my upcoming posts are going to be about my experiences leveling from 70 to 80. Me and a friend (another mage) leveled from 60 to 70 together, and the plan is to do the same thing on the way to 80. It worked pretty well last time (with a bunch of late nights) and I would like to hit 80 sooner rather than later so I'm ready for level 80 10 and 25 mans around the time the rest of the new guild has started with it. With jobs and such, the last time when we worked on BC, we leveled very fast...we hit level 70 near the top 10% of our guild...and most of those ahead of us spent a LOT more time leveling than we did.
Unlike with Burning Crusade, I feel that my mage is well above the gear curve for Wrath. At level 60 I was wearing large amounts of Molton Core raid gear, nothing more (and I didn't have any of the rarer pieces). Most of that stuff got replaced quickly...if I remember correctly I replaced at least 4 epics with outland greens. Now at 70 I'm in MH/BT/Sunwell gear, and I'm not expecting to replace much of it. As an Enchanter/Tailor, I'm also considering dropping tailoring for Gemcrafting or Inscription--but I'm not going to make any major changes until 80 so for now it's going to be Enchanting/Tailoring to 80.
If I remember correctly, I hit L70 in 11 days. This time we may not be able to do quite as well (too much other RL stuff going on right now) but if possible I'd like like to hit 80 in no more than 2 weeks (14 days). Up to now, I really haven't done a lot of dungeons, etc, with the guild...it's honestly been hard to get into that stuff, so I'm hoping that doesn't remain an issue.
Anyway, I'm probably going to blog about my experiences leveling from 70 to 80, up to and entering Naxx if possible. Sure there are a lot of people doing it too, but it should be fun.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sunwell Part 2
Well, some good news. A friend of mine got in the guild. He's been stuck in limbo since my old guild broke up. And with Wrath approaching he was very worried that he wouldn't get to see Illidan die. And while he did get into the guild, he did not actually get a raiding spot. However, despite that he got into a BT run this week and not only managed to see Council and Illidan die, but he also got T6 Legs and Chest. In 1 night he pretty much caught up to me gear-wise.
Last night the guild went back into Sunwell to work on the Eredar Twins. And while so far I've liked the fights in BC, Eredar Twins is easily the worst in the whole game right now, supplanting Leo for the worst-designed boss spot. Why is it so bad? It's mostly a matter of raid positioning being terrible; combustion insta-killing the raid, LOS issues, and massive raid wide damage. Combusion is definitely the most annoying ability I've seen in a while. It's living bomb, or Solarian, with no warning and only 3 seconds to react to it before killing everyone.
Eredar Twins fell fairly quickly. They don't have many HP, and Combusion is only an issue through Phase 1. So then we went onto M'uru. M'uru was probably the hardest fight in BC before the nerf, but we managed to figure out a strategy in about 2 hours. I'm not going to say that this fight is trivial...but if you've got good tanks and DPS and can coordinate well, this fight isn't too bad right now. I'm actually surprised that we got past it actually. Like Eredar, when things go south in this fight they do so with quickly. Things can go from OK to dead raid in about 5 seconds; and even with the nerf everyone needs to be on their toes.
Unfortunately last night also was one of the first times I've been so far down on the DPS chart. Eredar Twins, well, I was just playing uber-conservative, and kept falling off the ledge because I just couldn't get any LOS. But M'uru doesn't really seem suited for mage DPS. Oh well, I'll just have to work better next time.
We did go ahead and make one pull on Kil'Jaeden (sp?)...1 pull, no strategy = 70% before we wiped. That encounter truely looks...epic, something that was missing from the Illidan fight honestly. I'm really looking forward to more time with KJ tonight. There is even a chance we'll get him which would be awesome.
Last night the guild went back into Sunwell to work on the Eredar Twins. And while so far I've liked the fights in BC, Eredar Twins is easily the worst in the whole game right now, supplanting Leo for the worst-designed boss spot. Why is it so bad? It's mostly a matter of raid positioning being terrible; combustion insta-killing the raid, LOS issues, and massive raid wide damage. Combusion is definitely the most annoying ability I've seen in a while. It's living bomb, or Solarian, with no warning and only 3 seconds to react to it before killing everyone.
Eredar Twins fell fairly quickly. They don't have many HP, and Combusion is only an issue through Phase 1. So then we went onto M'uru. M'uru was probably the hardest fight in BC before the nerf, but we managed to figure out a strategy in about 2 hours. I'm not going to say that this fight is trivial...but if you've got good tanks and DPS and can coordinate well, this fight isn't too bad right now. I'm actually surprised that we got past it actually. Like Eredar, when things go south in this fight they do so with quickly. Things can go from OK to dead raid in about 5 seconds; and even with the nerf everyone needs to be on their toes.
Unfortunately last night also was one of the first times I've been so far down on the DPS chart. Eredar Twins, well, I was just playing uber-conservative, and kept falling off the ledge because I just couldn't get any LOS. But M'uru doesn't really seem suited for mage DPS. Oh well, I'll just have to work better next time.
We did go ahead and make one pull on Kil'Jaeden (sp?)...1 pull, no strategy = 70% before we wiped. That encounter truely looks...epic, something that was missing from the Illidan fight honestly. I'm really looking forward to more time with KJ tonight. There is even a chance we'll get him which would be awesome.
Chuck
I picked up a few DVDs last week. One of those was the first season of Chuck. This was one of the shows that I was interested in last season, but managed to miss and completely forgot about.
Chuck is about a regular guy who inherents the government's special secrets when his old college buddy emails him the information contained within the Intersec (a visual database of all government secrets). Both the CIA and NSA assign agents to watch over him, while having him go on missions that cause him to 'flash'--looking at something will frequently bring up mental flashes relating to what he is looking at.
Chuck is played as a light-hearted action/comedy adventure. It follows his life as a somewhat bumbling spy; and his life at home and at work. Chuck finds himself more and more caught up with his secret life, which begins to impact his relationship with his friends and family (his only family being his sister).
Over all, the show is surprisingly good. Even if the premise makes absolutely no sense. The show can be a bit spastic, switching from goofy comedy, to angst filled romance, to action-adventure in seconds. But then again that's also part of it's charm. None of these elements overpower the show, and it attempts to play a lot like a light-heated Alias more than anything else. Unfortunately, Alias eventually ditched the stories regarding main character's personal life and friends, something which caused show to loose a lot of it's charm, and lets hope Chuck doesn't make the same mistake.
At this point I've seen all of the episodes of the first season, and most of the ones of the second. I was expecting the show to be a bit more serialized than it actually is--normally that's a turn-off to me but honestly so far it's been fun. There hasn't been a lot of actual character development in the show yet, but hopefully that will change as the show continues to air.
The only downside with the show IMO is the will-they-or-won't-they romance between Chuck and Sarah. The two honestly make a great couple, there is a lot of good chemistry there, but they've already overplayed it too much. I honestly think the two would work together as a couple better than the on-again-off-again swingsaw that they are currently on. Though TV shows are rarely able to sustain a long-term relationship on a show like that so we'll see what happens.
Chuck is about a regular guy who inherents the government's special secrets when his old college buddy emails him the information contained within the Intersec (a visual database of all government secrets). Both the CIA and NSA assign agents to watch over him, while having him go on missions that cause him to 'flash'--looking at something will frequently bring up mental flashes relating to what he is looking at.
Chuck is played as a light-hearted action/comedy adventure. It follows his life as a somewhat bumbling spy; and his life at home and at work. Chuck finds himself more and more caught up with his secret life, which begins to impact his relationship with his friends and family (his only family being his sister).
Over all, the show is surprisingly good. Even if the premise makes absolutely no sense. The show can be a bit spastic, switching from goofy comedy, to angst filled romance, to action-adventure in seconds. But then again that's also part of it's charm. None of these elements overpower the show, and it attempts to play a lot like a light-heated Alias more than anything else. Unfortunately, Alias eventually ditched the stories regarding main character's personal life and friends, something which caused show to loose a lot of it's charm, and lets hope Chuck doesn't make the same mistake.
At this point I've seen all of the episodes of the first season, and most of the ones of the second. I was expecting the show to be a bit more serialized than it actually is--normally that's a turn-off to me but honestly so far it's been fun. There hasn't been a lot of actual character development in the show yet, but hopefully that will change as the show continues to air.
The only downside with the show IMO is the will-they-or-won't-they romance between Chuck and Sarah. The two honestly make a great couple, there is a lot of good chemistry there, but they've already overplayed it too much. I honestly think the two would work together as a couple better than the on-again-off-again swingsaw that they are currently on. Though TV shows are rarely able to sustain a long-term relationship on a show like that so we'll see what happens.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Sunwell!
Last night my guild hit Sunwell. They haven't been in the zone for a while due to burnout and other reasons. But with the raid nerf they had 35 people online waiting for a spot and the only thing that held us back were stability issues with the server.
Now I know there are probably a lot of people complaining about the change, but the raid nerf was brilliant. Instead of attendence and interest dropping through the floor, people are showing up in droves to try to see stuff they didn't think they'd be able to see otherwise. And while the gear may not matter post-wrath, the relative ease and pace of the encounters creates an entirely new experience. Pre-BC, my old guild was struggling to survive the hump; now it seems my new one is thriving. And I know this isn't just limited to me.
Of course, none of the new kills matter as much. But it's very nice to see the content. Sunwell actually looks more interesting than I was origionally thinking--the front loaded trash is a definite turnoff but once you get past Kalegos things definitely pick up.
Kalegos (sp?) is a fun fight. It definitely requires coordination and good healing. That didn't change with the nerf. It was definitely easier to keep the tanks up, but since special ability damage wasn't changed. Hit Points were much lower, though, reducing the strain considerably and making the fight much easier overall once you know the general strategy. For a guild that had already downed him, we took him with no problems.
Brutalus...after Illidan this was one boss I really wanted to see killed. Not sure why, but I guess him being a major gear check made him something I wanted to get past. Now, however, he is a complete joke. With raid DPS being much higher, and his HP total being 7 mil instead of 10...Brutalus is simply no longer anything but a trivial challenge. The definition of a tank-and-spank. Last night was the first time my guild ever attempted Brutalus and they one-shotted him.
Felmyst...so far this is my favorite fight in Sunwell. Its already one of my favorite BC raid bosses. Again, this seems like a boss less affected by the nerf than Brutalus; much of her damage wouldn't have been affected by the nerf making many of the mechanics just as dangerous as always; but again the loss of so many HP and easier tanking certainly makes the fight a lot easier than before. Still, this fight has it all. Massive raid-wide damage; huge spike damage, deadily laser beams, undead aoe packs; DEEP BREATH, and a chance to shoot the dragon while airborne! Took us 4-5 attempts to figure her out, but loved every minute of it.
Though we still had time left last night after Felmyst, the raid was called after doing the trash before Eredar Twins. I think the officers wanted to discuss some stuff, but who knows. I would have loved some shots at the twins. We did one pull, no strat, and still did fairly well so I'm not expecting us to have TOO much trouble with that boss either (i'm guessing the nerf is going to affect the Twins pretty heavily).
I didn't get any gear (and didn't expect it either) but it was definitely fun to see the fights. And if my guess is correct we're going to be hitting Sunwell hard for the rest of the expansion. I can't see a reason why we wouldn't go for KJ before Wrath. Sure it won't have any real meaning in the grand scheme of things, but hell, it's new content for us and something to do except farm.
Now I know there are probably a lot of people complaining about the change, but the raid nerf was brilliant. Instead of attendence and interest dropping through the floor, people are showing up in droves to try to see stuff they didn't think they'd be able to see otherwise. And while the gear may not matter post-wrath, the relative ease and pace of the encounters creates an entirely new experience. Pre-BC, my old guild was struggling to survive the hump; now it seems my new one is thriving. And I know this isn't just limited to me.
Of course, none of the new kills matter as much. But it's very nice to see the content. Sunwell actually looks more interesting than I was origionally thinking--the front loaded trash is a definite turnoff but once you get past Kalegos things definitely pick up.
Kalegos (sp?) is a fun fight. It definitely requires coordination and good healing. That didn't change with the nerf. It was definitely easier to keep the tanks up, but since special ability damage wasn't changed. Hit Points were much lower, though, reducing the strain considerably and making the fight much easier overall once you know the general strategy. For a guild that had already downed him, we took him with no problems.
Brutalus...after Illidan this was one boss I really wanted to see killed. Not sure why, but I guess him being a major gear check made him something I wanted to get past. Now, however, he is a complete joke. With raid DPS being much higher, and his HP total being 7 mil instead of 10...Brutalus is simply no longer anything but a trivial challenge. The definition of a tank-and-spank. Last night was the first time my guild ever attempted Brutalus and they one-shotted him.
Felmyst...so far this is my favorite fight in Sunwell. Its already one of my favorite BC raid bosses. Again, this seems like a boss less affected by the nerf than Brutalus; much of her damage wouldn't have been affected by the nerf making many of the mechanics just as dangerous as always; but again the loss of so many HP and easier tanking certainly makes the fight a lot easier than before. Still, this fight has it all. Massive raid-wide damage; huge spike damage, deadily laser beams, undead aoe packs; DEEP BREATH, and a chance to shoot the dragon while airborne! Took us 4-5 attempts to figure her out, but loved every minute of it.
Though we still had time left last night after Felmyst, the raid was called after doing the trash before Eredar Twins. I think the officers wanted to discuss some stuff, but who knows. I would have loved some shots at the twins. We did one pull, no strat, and still did fairly well so I'm not expecting us to have TOO much trouble with that boss either (i'm guessing the nerf is going to affect the Twins pretty heavily).
I didn't get any gear (and didn't expect it either) but it was definitely fun to see the fights. And if my guess is correct we're going to be hitting Sunwell hard for the rest of the expansion. I can't see a reason why we wouldn't go for KJ before Wrath. Sure it won't have any real meaning in the grand scheme of things, but hell, it's new content for us and something to do except farm.
Monday, October 20, 2008
This Week in WOW
I have a confession to make. Friday night's non-scheduled raid of BWL and AQ40 was some of the most fun I've had in a game for a long time. Virtually all of that content was new and interesting, and AQ40 especially had some very interesting visuals and encounters which made it a great trip. I made a fool of myself a few times, unfortunately, but it wouldn't be a true raid if I didn't do something like that at least once!
My impressions of BWL was that it was too much like the other black rock instances. It's a zone mostly filled with boss fights, and relatively small amounts of trash--though I'm not 100% sure that I liked the boss to trash ratio. There were still a few unusually long sections that just weren't needed.
AQ40, however, was just about perfect. There was a lot of variety, and a lot of bosses. And it had some interesting trash sections. The only problems with the zone was it's confusing layout and large size--but honestly that added to it's charm. And I've heard lots about the C'thun fight...and it's everything I thought it would be. Easily the best, and most internally consistant end-raid boss in the game right now. (Though right now it's a bit buggy).
Otherwise, Blizzard is still suffering from server stability isues and big ones at that. No raid happened last night due to all instances being down (and people were getting kicked of regularly with bad lag times and other issues. Population levels are high on the server, but not THAT high, so I'm definitely worried about whatever problems they've introduced into the system. I don't think this is just a matter of load. And if it is, things are going to be damned painful when Wrath comes out.
My impressions of BWL was that it was too much like the other black rock instances. It's a zone mostly filled with boss fights, and relatively small amounts of trash--though I'm not 100% sure that I liked the boss to trash ratio. There were still a few unusually long sections that just weren't needed.
AQ40, however, was just about perfect. There was a lot of variety, and a lot of bosses. And it had some interesting trash sections. The only problems with the zone was it's confusing layout and large size--but honestly that added to it's charm. And I've heard lots about the C'thun fight...and it's everything I thought it would be. Easily the best, and most internally consistant end-raid boss in the game right now. (Though right now it's a bit buggy).
Otherwise, Blizzard is still suffering from server stability isues and big ones at that. No raid happened last night due to all instances being down (and people were getting kicked of regularly with bad lag times and other issues. Population levels are high on the server, but not THAT high, so I'm definitely worried about whatever problems they've introduced into the system. I don't think this is just a matter of load. And if it is, things are going to be damned painful when Wrath comes out.
Friday, October 17, 2008
The New Black Temple!
Is A Joke.
I was wondering if there was a reason behind the BC raid nerf, or not. And after last night I'm sure that if there IS a reason then it has nothing to do with raid balance.
I remember when I first started Karazhan, and how my guild had problems with it (it's been nerfed several times since). We got through it and seriously started hitting the 25 mans and after that I pretty much stopped going b/c I was rarely online at times people still did it. Then about 6 months later, well into T5, I finally went back and was shocked at how different it was. They weren't assigning off tanks or single targeting--they just AOEd shit left and right. Stuff died so fast that you could barely get a 3 second spell of before stuff died. And all of those encounters which used to require some careful execution now merely consisted of running inside and AOEing.
That is now the new Black Temple. It's 25-man Karazhan. The only boss that still took more than a minute or two for us to kill was Council (that took us 5). And the only time we wiped was when our MT DCed along with 3-4 others at the same time on Illidan. When we rezzed, we proceeded to kill him in 1 metamorphosis.
As a fire mage, I had 0 mana problems. I couldn't use it fast enough. DPS basically varied between 1200 to 2400 depending on my crit rating and Hot Streak. Everyone's DPS was higher, the average jumped from 1200 to 1800. And I'm sure everyone was acting sub-par as they adjusted to the new rotations and talents. I certainly improved a lot over the course of the raid, which took a little over 2 hours from start to finish.
Despite being a joke, last night was also probably the most fun I've had in a raid in a long time. It was extremely fast paced, and while all of the encounters were easier, they also all felt different because of the way we were doing them. I was very, very happy with it and can't wait to see more of Sunwell.
I was wondering if there was a reason behind the BC raid nerf, or not. And after last night I'm sure that if there IS a reason then it has nothing to do with raid balance.
I remember when I first started Karazhan, and how my guild had problems with it (it's been nerfed several times since). We got through it and seriously started hitting the 25 mans and after that I pretty much stopped going b/c I was rarely online at times people still did it. Then about 6 months later, well into T5, I finally went back and was shocked at how different it was. They weren't assigning off tanks or single targeting--they just AOEd shit left and right. Stuff died so fast that you could barely get a 3 second spell of before stuff died. And all of those encounters which used to require some careful execution now merely consisted of running inside and AOEing.
That is now the new Black Temple. It's 25-man Karazhan. The only boss that still took more than a minute or two for us to kill was Council (that took us 5). And the only time we wiped was when our MT DCed along with 3-4 others at the same time on Illidan. When we rezzed, we proceeded to kill him in 1 metamorphosis.
As a fire mage, I had 0 mana problems. I couldn't use it fast enough. DPS basically varied between 1200 to 2400 depending on my crit rating and Hot Streak. Everyone's DPS was higher, the average jumped from 1200 to 1800. And I'm sure everyone was acting sub-par as they adjusted to the new rotations and talents. I certainly improved a lot over the course of the raid, which took a little over 2 hours from start to finish.
Despite being a joke, last night was also probably the most fun I've had in a raid in a long time. It was extremely fast paced, and while all of the encounters were easier, they also all felt different because of the way we were doing them. I was very, very happy with it and can't wait to see more of Sunwell.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Mage Builds!
Oh, I almost forgot. With patch 3.0.2 comes the new talent trees. And with that I had to make some choices. Fire, Arcane, or Frost.
Well, with my new T6 pieces Arcane looses some of it's luster (especially with the changes to AB and the nerfing of 2-piece T5). And to me it seemed a simple choice considering that we got new Fireball and Frostbolt spells (and a new Arcane Missile, but that doesn't cover it).
So the choice was between Fire and Frost. And since I'm fire right now I decided to stick with it for the start. And that left me with some difficult choices. The two obvious ones were 11/50/0, or 0/50/11. At 70, you just don't have enough talents to hit everything, so no matter what you do you have to make some concessions.
It really came down to the choice of IV + Elemental Precision vs. Focus Magic + Arcane Concentration (hmm, I think that's wrong, but I can't look it up right now)
Now, IV is a great talent, an awesome addition to the mage class. And obviously Elemental Precision is extremely important (still annoyed they moved that to T2). But Fire now completely relies on crit rating for high damage output. Without it, the new Fire tree isn't that much better than the old one. Or to put it another way, in my short tests on the targets in IF yesterday, my fire DPS was sustaining about 1200 when I wasn't getting double crits, but was sustaining 1800 when I could.
If this works out, I might not switch to frost until Wrath hits. I'm almost certainly going to spec Frost for leveling (the spec kicks ass for leveling, and will do so even more with the WE for extra mana regen).
Not sure what to think about Arcane yet, so for the moment I'm avoiding it though that may not last long. I'm personally interested in what they do with that spec. The Devs have said they intend to do something with it, so hopefully they can fix some of it's current problems. As it is, I think Arcane is just too situational and reactionary to be fun over a long fight even if I could keep up in DPS with it.
Now IV is a great talent, but Fire now really relies on crits for it's damage output, so to me Focus Magic still made more sense.
So, I specced 11/50/0
Well, with my new T6 pieces Arcane looses some of it's luster (especially with the changes to AB and the nerfing of 2-piece T5). And to me it seemed a simple choice considering that we got new Fireball and Frostbolt spells (and a new Arcane Missile, but that doesn't cover it).
So the choice was between Fire and Frost. And since I'm fire right now I decided to stick with it for the start. And that left me with some difficult choices. The two obvious ones were 11/50/0, or 0/50/11. At 70, you just don't have enough talents to hit everything, so no matter what you do you have to make some concessions.
It really came down to the choice of IV + Elemental Precision vs. Focus Magic + Arcane Concentration (hmm, I think that's wrong, but I can't look it up right now)
Now, IV is a great talent, an awesome addition to the mage class. And obviously Elemental Precision is extremely important (still annoyed they moved that to T2). But Fire now completely relies on crit rating for high damage output. Without it, the new Fire tree isn't that much better than the old one. Or to put it another way, in my short tests on the targets in IF yesterday, my fire DPS was sustaining about 1200 when I wasn't getting double crits, but was sustaining 1800 when I could.
If this works out, I might not switch to frost until Wrath hits. I'm almost certainly going to spec Frost for leveling (the spec kicks ass for leveling, and will do so even more with the WE for extra mana regen).
Not sure what to think about Arcane yet, so for the moment I'm avoiding it though that may not last long. I'm personally interested in what they do with that spec. The Devs have said they intend to do something with it, so hopefully they can fix some of it's current problems. As it is, I think Arcane is just too situational and reactionary to be fun over a long fight even if I could keep up in DPS with it.
Now IV is a great talent, but Fire now really relies on crits for it's damage output, so to me Focus Magic still made more sense.
So, I specced 11/50/0
Patch Day 1 & 2!
Well, I haven't been blogging lots (this is still just for fun). And my interest in WOW has been rising again with the release of the new patch, which I knew would happen. So far it's been an interesting experience.
Patch Day 1
The install went pretty well, but I'm running Vista and it re-installed the entire WOW app to the \public folder...wierd, but interesting.
After the install...my server was down. In fact it was down until about 11 PM that night (though interestingly SOME people were able to get online, for me the server never even appeared in the list for me to choose it. I spent a little time puttering around on a scrub character on another server just to check out the new Stormwind, but other than that I had a lot of fun watching Iron Man on BD!
Patch Day 2
I was really hoping that we'd raid last night. And so after I get home the first thing I do is try to get online. World Server Down! Yeah. Apparently Outlands, and Eastern Kingdoms were down most of yesterday. Kalimdor was still up, and eventually Eastern Kingdoms too, but Outlands didn't come back online until after 8:30. So, no raid. Well, I did manage to get into the final stages of an MC run which was interesting. The frost mage that went sustained 8000 DPS on Ragnaros and even though I was fire-specced with 11/50/0 I was critting him for 10k (apparently Rag takes double damage vs. frost?)
After that, I was going to spend some time on my Horde mage, but ended up getting on my 62 Druid instead when Outlands came back online after being down 8 hours. The leveling speed is definitely faster, and I managed to make 63 pretty quickly compared to what it used to take. My Feral Kitty's DPS was also much higher by about 100 DPS. Managed to pick up a few useful quest pieces too with some Hit on it, so my hit rating is now sitting at 64.
Tonight, hopefully the guild will actually raid. I want to get some practice with the new spec, and see how I perform. I also want to see if the BC raid nerf actually speeds up the runs, or if it really is just necessary to make it through the raids now.
Patch Day 1
The install went pretty well, but I'm running Vista and it re-installed the entire WOW app to the \public folder...wierd, but interesting.
After the install...my server was down. In fact it was down until about 11 PM that night (though interestingly SOME people were able to get online, for me the server never even appeared in the list for me to choose it. I spent a little time puttering around on a scrub character on another server just to check out the new Stormwind, but other than that I had a lot of fun watching Iron Man on BD!
Patch Day 2
I was really hoping that we'd raid last night. And so after I get home the first thing I do is try to get online. World Server Down! Yeah. Apparently Outlands, and Eastern Kingdoms were down most of yesterday. Kalimdor was still up, and eventually Eastern Kingdoms too, but Outlands didn't come back online until after 8:30. So, no raid. Well, I did manage to get into the final stages of an MC run which was interesting. The frost mage that went sustained 8000 DPS on Ragnaros and even though I was fire-specced with 11/50/0 I was critting him for 10k (apparently Rag takes double damage vs. frost?)
After that, I was going to spend some time on my Horde mage, but ended up getting on my 62 Druid instead when Outlands came back online after being down 8 hours. The leveling speed is definitely faster, and I managed to make 63 pretty quickly compared to what it used to take. My Feral Kitty's DPS was also much higher by about 100 DPS. Managed to pick up a few useful quest pieces too with some Hit on it, so my hit rating is now sitting at 64.
Tonight, hopefully the guild will actually raid. I want to get some practice with the new spec, and see how I perform. I also want to see if the BC raid nerf actually speeds up the runs, or if it really is just necessary to make it through the raids now.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Fringe
So I watched the pilot episode of Fringe yesterday. It was one of the new shows I was hoping to watch this year, but so far this is the first chance I had to watch it. Caught it on Hulu, which is actually a pretty good way to watch a TV series, though there are a few things I don't like about it.
The pilot involved the release of a bio-terrorist weapon, some sort of 'virus' released on an airplane which caused the flesh of the passengers to dissolve. A multi-agency task force is created to explore this, and the main character is a female FBI agent involved in the investigation. It becomes personal when her partner and secret lover is infected with the same virus after tracking the culprit.
I had high hopes for the show, but honestly I'm not sure it lived up to them. I liked the concept of a conspiracy show regarding technology run amuck. Certainly there was the undertone of the threat of a rapidly approaching technological singularity, which isn't really stated in the show but is certainly hinted at. (The concept of a technological singularity as a doomsday scenario is an interesting one to me).
Unfortunately, I had a hard time liking the characters. And while the spooky technology and conspiracy stuff was good, the investigative work and methods for assembling the various characters of the show seemed rather...dumb.
Seriously, ok the FBI agent is in love, which causes her to grasp at any straw to try to save her lover; yet she finds a wacky scientist who may be involved by doing a google search for a 'flesh eating virus'? (or whatever). And hes in an insane asylum? And her boss (who seems to hate her) lets her run with it? But tells her she can't see him because he's not allowed to see visitors unless they are immediate family...even when it's a case of national security? um, what?
And the son, whom she tricks into getting her to help him, is an ass for the most part. Yet, he has to be the scientist's guardian, so he's now stuck with them and involved? And considering how blind she was to accept that she was told no matter how crazy, at the end she is the 'sceptic'?
I don't get it.
The fact is, the show didn't do a very good job establishing the premise. No motivations were given. And the characters are so loosely connected as to make the whole situation unbelievable. And at the end, she becomes part of this super secret investigation regarding the pattern...after it turns out that her lover, who she risked everything to save, was a bad guy.
Now, I'm not saying that its terrible. The actual show might be OK. But the setup just plain sucked. And I just didn't like any of the characters...at all. The FBI agent was bland. The crazy-scientist...too crazy (but the best and most interesting of the bunch), the son was a dick, the boss was a bigger dick. And no one else mattered.
Oh well. JJ Abrams normally knocks pilot episodes out of the park (the pilot for Alias is one of the best pilot episodes of all time, and Lost's pilot kicked ass)..but this was a definite foul ball. Not quite a miss, but nowhere close to a home run.
The pilot involved the release of a bio-terrorist weapon, some sort of 'virus' released on an airplane which caused the flesh of the passengers to dissolve. A multi-agency task force is created to explore this, and the main character is a female FBI agent involved in the investigation. It becomes personal when her partner and secret lover is infected with the same virus after tracking the culprit.
I had high hopes for the show, but honestly I'm not sure it lived up to them. I liked the concept of a conspiracy show regarding technology run amuck. Certainly there was the undertone of the threat of a rapidly approaching technological singularity, which isn't really stated in the show but is certainly hinted at. (The concept of a technological singularity as a doomsday scenario is an interesting one to me).
Unfortunately, I had a hard time liking the characters. And while the spooky technology and conspiracy stuff was good, the investigative work and methods for assembling the various characters of the show seemed rather...dumb.
Seriously, ok the FBI agent is in love, which causes her to grasp at any straw to try to save her lover; yet she finds a wacky scientist who may be involved by doing a google search for a 'flesh eating virus'? (or whatever). And hes in an insane asylum? And her boss (who seems to hate her) lets her run with it? But tells her she can't see him because he's not allowed to see visitors unless they are immediate family...even when it's a case of national security? um, what?
And the son, whom she tricks into getting her to help him, is an ass for the most part. Yet, he has to be the scientist's guardian, so he's now stuck with them and involved? And considering how blind she was to accept that she was told no matter how crazy, at the end she is the 'sceptic'?
I don't get it.
The fact is, the show didn't do a very good job establishing the premise. No motivations were given. And the characters are so loosely connected as to make the whole situation unbelievable. And at the end, she becomes part of this super secret investigation regarding the pattern...after it turns out that her lover, who she risked everything to save, was a bad guy.
Now, I'm not saying that its terrible. The actual show might be OK. But the setup just plain sucked. And I just didn't like any of the characters...at all. The FBI agent was bland. The crazy-scientist...too crazy (but the best and most interesting of the bunch), the son was a dick, the boss was a bigger dick. And no one else mattered.
Oh well. JJ Abrams normally knocks pilot episodes out of the park (the pilot for Alias is one of the best pilot episodes of all time, and Lost's pilot kicked ass)..but this was a definite foul ball. Not quite a miss, but nowhere close to a home run.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
T6
Well, over the last 2 weeks I have picked up 2 T6 pieces: the legs, and the chest...giving me the first opportunity to spec something other than Arcane in a LONG time.
And just in the nick of time too, since Arcane gets demolished as a spec in just one week.
Still, I'm curious to see what happens this week with the raid. My guild, which has certainly been going through expansion blues, turned it around this week with a pretty solid outing. Wednesday BT to Council; Thursday MH to Archimonde; Friday 1 shot council, 1 shot illidan, and 6 shot Archimonde (don't ask me why this guild has so much trouble with Archi). Last night they did not raid sunwell b/c they didn't have enough people show up.
So it's not done yet. This is the last regular raid week before the BC Raid Nerf and 3.0.2 goes live. I'm still not convinced on what spec to pick for live next week...Fire? Arcane w/ an Abar rotation? Or Frost? 3 weeks ago the choices seemed clear, but now I'm not so sure anymore.
At least now I've got a replacement for T5 before it's arcane bonus gets nerfed to oblivion.
And just in the nick of time too, since Arcane gets demolished as a spec in just one week.
Still, I'm curious to see what happens this week with the raid. My guild, which has certainly been going through expansion blues, turned it around this week with a pretty solid outing. Wednesday BT to Council; Thursday MH to Archimonde; Friday 1 shot council, 1 shot illidan, and 6 shot Archimonde (don't ask me why this guild has so much trouble with Archi). Last night they did not raid sunwell b/c they didn't have enough people show up.
So it's not done yet. This is the last regular raid week before the BC Raid Nerf and 3.0.2 goes live. I'm still not convinced on what spec to pick for live next week...Fire? Arcane w/ an Abar rotation? Or Frost? 3 weeks ago the choices seemed clear, but now I'm not so sure anymore.
At least now I've got a replacement for T5 before it's arcane bonus gets nerfed to oblivion.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Raiding Game
So far the new guild I am in has it's ups and downs. I still have no official status with the guild = bad...but I've pretty much made it into every guild run since that first week = good...but they've been having tons of problems getting people to show up to raids = bad...but they don't seem to be suffering from the rampant angst that had plagued my previous guild during bad times.
Obviously, with WOTLK right around the corner now raiding interest in dropping. And for this guild, who is nowhere close to finishing Sunwell, I think the reality of it has sunk in. It's bound to happen to most guilds (in fact I was expecting and predicting it), though it might have hit this guild a bit earlier due to loosing 2 full weeks back to back due to other issues and the hurricane.
Still, last night they did raid and they did reasonably well. They have obviously tried to adjust; they are letting people bring their alts to the main raids now to try to keep interest up and it looks like they are going to try switching a few nights that are more friendly. We'll see what happens. I'm still hopeful I'll get a chance to get 4-piece T6 soon but I'm not going to hold my breath. At this point, killing Illidan is all I really care about. T6 chest would be sweet--I'd rather get that than even legs at this point just so I can look different. Thoughout all of BC I've been stuck in red or orange gear and it's time for something different.
So based on what I heard last night they are raiding again tonight (trying different days). We'll see what happens--usually when my old guild tried to switch days it just meant even fewer people showed up. And with more people playing alts, my chances of gear scaps drops even farther.
Obviously, with WOTLK right around the corner now raiding interest in dropping. And for this guild, who is nowhere close to finishing Sunwell, I think the reality of it has sunk in. It's bound to happen to most guilds (in fact I was expecting and predicting it), though it might have hit this guild a bit earlier due to loosing 2 full weeks back to back due to other issues and the hurricane.
Still, last night they did raid and they did reasonably well. They have obviously tried to adjust; they are letting people bring their alts to the main raids now to try to keep interest up and it looks like they are going to try switching a few nights that are more friendly. We'll see what happens. I'm still hopeful I'll get a chance to get 4-piece T6 soon but I'm not going to hold my breath. At this point, killing Illidan is all I really care about. T6 chest would be sweet--I'd rather get that than even legs at this point just so I can look different. Thoughout all of BC I've been stuck in red or orange gear and it's time for something different.
So based on what I heard last night they are raiding again tonight (trying different days). We'll see what happens--usually when my old guild tried to switch days it just meant even fewer people showed up. And with more people playing alts, my chances of gear scaps drops even farther.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Witch Hunter Rules!
My first impressions with Warhammer Online weren't necessarily the best. It certainly plays a lot like WOW, but the PVP aspect seemed to one-sided that my interest immediately dropped.
However, you don't drop 60 bucks on a game to stop playing it after one night. So, I created a Witch Hunter and tried setting up shop in a different area and see how that went.
I have a confession to make, I absolutely loved the Witch Hunter class. It's rogue-like sensibilities, followed up with some pretty cool finisher moves involving sticking some gun into an enemy's face and pulling the trigger, really appealed to me.
At the same time, doing the scenarios stopped being completely one-sided and things seemed to improve all around out just after a day with it. I didn't play it much yesterday, but Saturday I played it for a good part of the day and I had a lot of fun with it.
The best part of the game at the start is the amount of options available for starting characters to progress with your character. BGs (or whaterver they are called), seem pretty good for earning XPs. Questing, and RVR objects seem to be useful and provides a bit of variety. On the flip side, while the BGs seem much more even now; RVR is still 100% dominated by destruction. Here it's a combination of population, and high level intruders. This weekend there were lots of 20-21s operating in the T1 RVR zones--all of the Destro, where the average Order guy was level 7-10. So when you couple that with the fact that Destro usually outnumbered Order 2 to 1 in the area (some times worse), it became something of a pain to complete all of the PVP quests in the area.
So far, ganking hasn't seemed like a big deal. PVP fights definitely seem to last longer (at least they do at low level), and there doesn't seem to be lots of ultra-high damage abilities leaving you completely vulnerable in a situation like that. In AOC, I was frequently 1 or 2 shotted by stealthed characters who'd gank me just as I finished off some PVE mob; but that hasn't happened to me even once in Warhammer.
Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the game at this point. I'm liking Witch Hunter, and I know Destro's Witch Elf is similiar. I'm also a little nervous about being on a Open RVR server. Even as one-sided as RVR was this weekend on my server, it being Open RVR didn't seem to hurt it so bad. Of course, it'll probably get a lot worse when bored higher level pukes start messing around with the low levels. So it's kinda hard to say what's going be be best right now.
However, you don't drop 60 bucks on a game to stop playing it after one night. So, I created a Witch Hunter and tried setting up shop in a different area and see how that went.
I have a confession to make, I absolutely loved the Witch Hunter class. It's rogue-like sensibilities, followed up with some pretty cool finisher moves involving sticking some gun into an enemy's face and pulling the trigger, really appealed to me.
At the same time, doing the scenarios stopped being completely one-sided and things seemed to improve all around out just after a day with it. I didn't play it much yesterday, but Saturday I played it for a good part of the day and I had a lot of fun with it.
The best part of the game at the start is the amount of options available for starting characters to progress with your character. BGs (or whaterver they are called), seem pretty good for earning XPs. Questing, and RVR objects seem to be useful and provides a bit of variety. On the flip side, while the BGs seem much more even now; RVR is still 100% dominated by destruction. Here it's a combination of population, and high level intruders. This weekend there were lots of 20-21s operating in the T1 RVR zones--all of the Destro, where the average Order guy was level 7-10. So when you couple that with the fact that Destro usually outnumbered Order 2 to 1 in the area (some times worse), it became something of a pain to complete all of the PVP quests in the area.
So far, ganking hasn't seemed like a big deal. PVP fights definitely seem to last longer (at least they do at low level), and there doesn't seem to be lots of ultra-high damage abilities leaving you completely vulnerable in a situation like that. In AOC, I was frequently 1 or 2 shotted by stealthed characters who'd gank me just as I finished off some PVE mob; but that hasn't happened to me even once in Warhammer.
Unfortunately, I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the game at this point. I'm liking Witch Hunter, and I know Destro's Witch Elf is similiar. I'm also a little nervous about being on a Open RVR server. Even as one-sided as RVR was this weekend on my server, it being Open RVR didn't seem to hurt it so bad. Of course, it'll probably get a lot worse when bored higher level pukes start messing around with the low levels. So it's kinda hard to say what's going be be best right now.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Warhammer Online
So Warhammer Online went life yesterday and I picked up a copy. That had been my plan for a while, though with me being guilded again in WOW I might not have the time to spend with it that I was origionally expecting.
SO, the install went ago. The patching took a while, but everything worked. Even on my Vista 64 machine, so few problems there. I picked a server where I knew at least someone, chose order b/c that's what they are and started creating the character.
The first thing I noticed, buy these characters are ulgy. Their faces just look off and everything else just looks off about them. I don't know why companies have so many problems creating attractive models for their characters, male or female, but it's always disappointing to me. The non-human characters looked much better as a result. At least they animated well.
Picking a class was simple Archmage! :) And with that it was on to the game!
First couple of quests were easy, having to adjust to the new interface was more difficult than I was expecting...I'm just too used to WOW (I had the same problem with AOC).
The next thing I noticed, the game animates smoothly like WOW does. Animation isn't jerky, you don't seem to get stuck on random flat terrain, and you don't feel like you are fighting the interface except for the camera which always seemed to reset it's default zoom level to something I didn't like.
For all the talk about how this game was different than WOW; from what I can tell it's pretty similiar. The main difference seems to be that you can go into a PVP scenario almost immediately after entering the game. You even get XP for it; and some form of PVP XP too.
So, I'd heard rumors that Destruction completely dominated in Beta; and well, last night i got first hand of that. Over the course of the night I leveled from Rank 1 to Rank 7 and did the PVP instance 13 times. The goal is simple. There are 2 Altars; when a side grabs both they get 80 points and the portals explode killing everyone near them before they reset. The first side to 500 wins. You also get a single point per kill (at least I think that's how it works on the points).
The BEST showing Order had in the 13 times I played the Scenario (got to PVP Rank 5)...we had a score of 16. Pathetic. And while you certainly seem to get rewarded more for losing, if this is the way this game is going to be I just don't see it surviving very long. There are only 2 sides, and if one side completely dominates the other from Day 1 in what is supposed to be primarily a Realm v Realm PVP game then either everyone is going to go Destruction or they are going to quit.
Personally I think this is the WOW factor. There doesn't seem to be the racial differences here that gave Horde an advantage. And I don't think it was class issue (but having not spent time with many of the quests that might be wrong). I think it's because people equate Destruction = Horde = GOOD PVP. The other major factor is, the Destruction races probably have more character. Hell, even the opening CGI movie in the game is basically Destruction kicking Order's collective ass in a completely one-sided engagement.
As for the Archmage class itself, it's a strange mix of Ranged Magic DPS and Healer. And it's fairly hard for me to control honestly. I was also having a hard time damaging things, but maybe that was because I was Rank 3 and usually running across Destruction guys which were Rank 7-11. Still, I'll probably create a Destruction character next and maybe a few other classes just to see what I like and what I don't.
Other than that, the quests were easy and generally easy to track. Much like AOC was, though the map markers could be alittle easier to deal with and it would have been nice if the active quest areas were shaded differently because the red tends to blend into the map making it hard to make out.
So, while I did have fun with the game, I also had problems. Warhammer certainly has more options from the start; but I'm very worried about it having fewer options at the end. WOW has Raids, 5-mans, PVP, specialized PVP which appeals to just about anyone. Warhammer I've been told will NOT be a raiding game, and will demphasize PVE at the cap making it less important. That leaves PVP...the thing I like least about MMOs.
So I'll have to see where this goes. Hopefully a few of my other friends will start playing as well.
SO, the install went ago. The patching took a while, but everything worked. Even on my Vista 64 machine, so few problems there. I picked a server where I knew at least someone, chose order b/c that's what they are and started creating the character.
The first thing I noticed, buy these characters are ulgy. Their faces just look off and everything else just looks off about them. I don't know why companies have so many problems creating attractive models for their characters, male or female, but it's always disappointing to me. The non-human characters looked much better as a result. At least they animated well.
Picking a class was simple Archmage! :) And with that it was on to the game!
First couple of quests were easy, having to adjust to the new interface was more difficult than I was expecting...I'm just too used to WOW (I had the same problem with AOC).
The next thing I noticed, the game animates smoothly like WOW does. Animation isn't jerky, you don't seem to get stuck on random flat terrain, and you don't feel like you are fighting the interface except for the camera which always seemed to reset it's default zoom level to something I didn't like.
For all the talk about how this game was different than WOW; from what I can tell it's pretty similiar. The main difference seems to be that you can go into a PVP scenario almost immediately after entering the game. You even get XP for it; and some form of PVP XP too.
So, I'd heard rumors that Destruction completely dominated in Beta; and well, last night i got first hand of that. Over the course of the night I leveled from Rank 1 to Rank 7 and did the PVP instance 13 times. The goal is simple. There are 2 Altars; when a side grabs both they get 80 points and the portals explode killing everyone near them before they reset. The first side to 500 wins. You also get a single point per kill (at least I think that's how it works on the points).
The BEST showing Order had in the 13 times I played the Scenario (got to PVP Rank 5)...we had a score of 16. Pathetic. And while you certainly seem to get rewarded more for losing, if this is the way this game is going to be I just don't see it surviving very long. There are only 2 sides, and if one side completely dominates the other from Day 1 in what is supposed to be primarily a Realm v Realm PVP game then either everyone is going to go Destruction or they are going to quit.
Personally I think this is the WOW factor. There doesn't seem to be the racial differences here that gave Horde an advantage. And I don't think it was class issue (but having not spent time with many of the quests that might be wrong). I think it's because people equate Destruction = Horde = GOOD PVP. The other major factor is, the Destruction races probably have more character. Hell, even the opening CGI movie in the game is basically Destruction kicking Order's collective ass in a completely one-sided engagement.
As for the Archmage class itself, it's a strange mix of Ranged Magic DPS and Healer. And it's fairly hard for me to control honestly. I was also having a hard time damaging things, but maybe that was because I was Rank 3 and usually running across Destruction guys which were Rank 7-11. Still, I'll probably create a Destruction character next and maybe a few other classes just to see what I like and what I don't.
Other than that, the quests were easy and generally easy to track. Much like AOC was, though the map markers could be alittle easier to deal with and it would have been nice if the active quest areas were shaded differently because the red tends to blend into the map making it hard to make out.
So, while I did have fun with the game, I also had problems. Warhammer certainly has more options from the start; but I'm very worried about it having fewer options at the end. WOW has Raids, 5-mans, PVP, specialized PVP which appeals to just about anyone. Warhammer I've been told will NOT be a raiding game, and will demphasize PVE at the cap making it less important. That leaves PVP...the thing I like least about MMOs.
So I'll have to see where this goes. Hopefully a few of my other friends will start playing as well.
Friday, September 12, 2008
More Random Mumblings
One thing I have no real intention of discussing here is politics. But, I really, really hate the way the media is portraying and analyzing the election this year. It's so slick, yet all of the time and converage is spent not on the the candidates, or their stances but who said what, and fake 'scandals'. It's all about making the election process an entertaining event, and it really torques me especially since everyone involved (candidates, and the new media) treat the general public like their are uneducated, dimwitted, ADD addled children with the attention span of about 1 day. It's just damned frustrating.
Anyway, I got to do some raiding on Wednesday with the new guild. It went pretty well (if my damage meters were at all right, I was pretty much at the top of the damage chart...though I take that with a grain of salt). I was pushing it pretty hard, which usually gets me killed...but Wednesday I had no deaths, no major mistakes, no real issues. Hopefully I'll get in tonight and maybe get some T6 gear. I still need Chest, and Legs if I can get them and from what I can tell most everyone has it already so we'll see.
Anyway, I got to do some raiding on Wednesday with the new guild. It went pretty well (if my damage meters were at all right, I was pretty much at the top of the damage chart...though I take that with a grain of salt). I was pushing it pretty hard, which usually gets me killed...but Wednesday I had no deaths, no major mistakes, no real issues. Hopefully I'll get in tonight and maybe get some T6 gear. I still need Chest, and Legs if I can get them and from what I can tell most everyone has it already so we'll see.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Starting Work on a New RPG Campaign
I have another confession to make. I love coming up with new RPG scenarios and characters. It's a hobby of mine, one which I usually try to keep some of my writing skills from completely falling apart (and they really need some work).
The problem is, I've been having a harder time focusing lately. Made worse by the fact that I've been having a hard time keeping my interest up in any one thing. My ideas have been more haphazard than normal, as if my mind keeps pulling me in many different directions all at once. That makes it hard for me to settle on one thing. And it's even been interfering with me writing these concepts down. It's actually been a hard time getting a paragraph or two into something before my mind pulls me in a different direction.
I think the problem is my tastes are changing, but I don't really know where to yet. Nothing has really grabbed me by the balls and squeezed me till I can't pay attention to anything else.
But, I've been wanting to try my luck with a RPG set in a space setting for quite some time. I went ahead and bought the GURPS 4th Edition rule set specifically to try a new game system. And even with that I'm a bit mixed. I love the available options within the game, but I'm not 100% convinced that I'll like the game system.
Of course, the alternative is to try to find something else, adopt something else, or make my own. I think I'd like to make my own, honestly, but that takes even more time and effort and I'm not entirely sure I want to spend that much time with it.
And even with that, what to do with a space setting? I've got a fairly good concept for a character, but it's a bit generic to me. I'd really like to spice it up, but stay unique. Too many people spice up a character, only to make it less interesting in the process because it's not thought through enough or is too derivative in the first place. Amnesia, for example, is a good but very over-used tool. It's a great method for allowing the reader/player find out about the character through the course of the campaign--but at the same time it's been done to death.
Also, adventure style campaigns often work the best. My concept is relatively straightforward--that of a telepath/telekinetic high-tech thief and mercenary working for a mysterious interstellar agency whose agenda is not as friendly towards the character as it might at first seem. The character gets into trouble when she begins having doubts and hallucinations, including severe headaches, which suggest that what is happening to her isn't quite what she thinks it is. And she may not even be who she thinks it is.
That, unfortunately, is relatively clique and generic. It's been done before, and done again...and it might actually work as is but I'm not sure. Throw in some alien conspiracies, maybe it will work. But I'm not happy with it. And so I keep looking.
The problem is, I've been having a harder time focusing lately. Made worse by the fact that I've been having a hard time keeping my interest up in any one thing. My ideas have been more haphazard than normal, as if my mind keeps pulling me in many different directions all at once. That makes it hard for me to settle on one thing. And it's even been interfering with me writing these concepts down. It's actually been a hard time getting a paragraph or two into something before my mind pulls me in a different direction.
I think the problem is my tastes are changing, but I don't really know where to yet. Nothing has really grabbed me by the balls and squeezed me till I can't pay attention to anything else.
But, I've been wanting to try my luck with a RPG set in a space setting for quite some time. I went ahead and bought the GURPS 4th Edition rule set specifically to try a new game system. And even with that I'm a bit mixed. I love the available options within the game, but I'm not 100% convinced that I'll like the game system.
Of course, the alternative is to try to find something else, adopt something else, or make my own. I think I'd like to make my own, honestly, but that takes even more time and effort and I'm not entirely sure I want to spend that much time with it.
And even with that, what to do with a space setting? I've got a fairly good concept for a character, but it's a bit generic to me. I'd really like to spice it up, but stay unique. Too many people spice up a character, only to make it less interesting in the process because it's not thought through enough or is too derivative in the first place. Amnesia, for example, is a good but very over-used tool. It's a great method for allowing the reader/player find out about the character through the course of the campaign--but at the same time it's been done to death.
Also, adventure style campaigns often work the best. My concept is relatively straightforward--that of a telepath/telekinetic high-tech thief and mercenary working for a mysterious interstellar agency whose agenda is not as friendly towards the character as it might at first seem. The character gets into trouble when she begins having doubts and hallucinations, including severe headaches, which suggest that what is happening to her isn't quite what she thinks it is. And she may not even be who she thinks it is.
That, unfortunately, is relatively clique and generic. It's been done before, and done again...and it might actually work as is but I'm not sure. Throw in some alien conspiracies, maybe it will work. But I'm not happy with it. And so I keep looking.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Spore!
It seems like lately, after my old WOW guild broke up, my time in the game has actually increased instead of decreased. I usually don't play the game that much, but I've been playing it almost every day for a month with very little in the way of breaks.
So, finally I've taken a little break and started playing Spore. I know this thing has been hyped to hell and back...the whole thing literally reeks of corporate over-hyping. However, the game did appeal to me on several levels and it was worth it to try something out. And, for what it's worth I've been pleasantly surprised by it. Though I'm not convinced of it's long-term viability to hold my interest--or the interest of anyone else either.
The game is pretty simple--you start as a small micro-organism and feed, mutate, and grow into a large land-based creature into a galaxy-spanning civilization. It's a high-ideal game, which is surprisingly effective in presenting it's development from such humble beginnings to it's massive ending.
Unfortunately, the game is perhaps a bit too simple at each stage to make it truely compelling.
Now, the cell stage is surprisingly fun in a simple arcade-ish sort of way. You have a little cell, who eats either meat or plants. And you have 6 basic adaptions you can add to the cell. As you find all 6, you mutate your cell into something more sophisticated using the cell editor. It doesn't take that much time, and your options are a little too limited here, but then again you are playing a single-cell organism so I guess it can't be that complicated.
Once you reach a set size, you go into the creature stage. Basically your cell develops legs and goes onto land. This stage is the second longest, and is also a bit of fun. The point of this stage is to develop sentience, by killing, or befriending other nearby creatures and reach the top of the food chain. The amount of options available in this stage is truely bewildering, and you are limited on what you can find scattered around the game world which can force you to evolve your creature in some very different ways. This stage is actually a lot of fun, probably the best part of the game really. And it's wonderful going back and looking at the creature you started with after you get through the stage and seeing how it evolved. The only problem with the stage, really, is the fact that for all it's options, I don't think there are enough of them. It would be better if there had been more options here.
Past the creature stage is a the relatively short Tribal stage. This stage is essentially a poor-mans RTS. And it's a serious poor-man's RTS. At this point you are no longer making modifications to your creature, and you get through the stage through a combination of war and diplomacy. You collect food, equip weapons, or musical instruments, to either kill, or seduce members of other tribes. I didn't really like this stage because it's simply TOO short.
The tribal stage leads to the Civilization State, which remains nothing more than a poor-man's RTS, though a higher-level one than the Tribal Stage. In this stage, cities are divided into Military, Economic, or Religious cities, each type allows you to conquer enemy cities either through destruction, buying them out, or conversion. It has a more sophisticated diplomacy system, and you can have a lot of fun building and designing various units (Land, Sea, or Air)...but it's ultimately hollow.
Once you complete this stage you can step into the Space Stage. This is the final, and by far the longest stage. And quite frankly after 4 days of playing I haven't beaten it yet. It's...expansive..and daunting at first. From what I can tell there are 10s of thousands of possible star systems and worlds to explore, though that might be an optical illusion. And frankly, the Space Stage gets very hard to manage very quickly even as early as 5-6 systems. Events happen almost constantly, money is a huge issue, and once a war starts it's almost an unlimited amount of constant annoyance. I think that most people who dislike the game will dislike it because of the space stage.
The Space stage has a LOT of options. Terraforming, Starflight-like elements of trading and space combat; artifact hunting, diplomacy, and ship design. Oh, and it's got a plethura of options. But it's simplicity and lack of resources really does get in the way. Oh, and the constant zooming in and out is so constant that it was literally starting to make my hand hurt in only an hour of playing. And I use a computer, mouse, and keyboard a LOT.
I haven't completed the Space stage yet...not for lack of trying. Unfortunately, this is where the game has gotten buggy for me. It's not constant, but I've had numerous non-recoverable crashes which has set me back, and frequent issues in getting my colonies started which have set me back.
I'll definitley try to get through this stage and play with some of the options. I still can't figure out what making a Crop Circles does, or successfully terraformed a T3 planet (though I've got the terraforming piece down now). I know you can Uplift other creatures, and theoretically I've heard that you can genetically mutate and modify creatures but I haven't seen options for that yet. So there's still a lot of stuff to look into.
So, finally I've taken a little break and started playing Spore. I know this thing has been hyped to hell and back...the whole thing literally reeks of corporate over-hyping. However, the game did appeal to me on several levels and it was worth it to try something out. And, for what it's worth I've been pleasantly surprised by it. Though I'm not convinced of it's long-term viability to hold my interest--or the interest of anyone else either.
The game is pretty simple--you start as a small micro-organism and feed, mutate, and grow into a large land-based creature into a galaxy-spanning civilization. It's a high-ideal game, which is surprisingly effective in presenting it's development from such humble beginnings to it's massive ending.
Unfortunately, the game is perhaps a bit too simple at each stage to make it truely compelling.
Now, the cell stage is surprisingly fun in a simple arcade-ish sort of way. You have a little cell, who eats either meat or plants. And you have 6 basic adaptions you can add to the cell. As you find all 6, you mutate your cell into something more sophisticated using the cell editor. It doesn't take that much time, and your options are a little too limited here, but then again you are playing a single-cell organism so I guess it can't be that complicated.
Once you reach a set size, you go into the creature stage. Basically your cell develops legs and goes onto land. This stage is the second longest, and is also a bit of fun. The point of this stage is to develop sentience, by killing, or befriending other nearby creatures and reach the top of the food chain. The amount of options available in this stage is truely bewildering, and you are limited on what you can find scattered around the game world which can force you to evolve your creature in some very different ways. This stage is actually a lot of fun, probably the best part of the game really. And it's wonderful going back and looking at the creature you started with after you get through the stage and seeing how it evolved. The only problem with the stage, really, is the fact that for all it's options, I don't think there are enough of them. It would be better if there had been more options here.
Past the creature stage is a the relatively short Tribal stage. This stage is essentially a poor-mans RTS. And it's a serious poor-man's RTS. At this point you are no longer making modifications to your creature, and you get through the stage through a combination of war and diplomacy. You collect food, equip weapons, or musical instruments, to either kill, or seduce members of other tribes. I didn't really like this stage because it's simply TOO short.
The tribal stage leads to the Civilization State, which remains nothing more than a poor-man's RTS, though a higher-level one than the Tribal Stage. In this stage, cities are divided into Military, Economic, or Religious cities, each type allows you to conquer enemy cities either through destruction, buying them out, or conversion. It has a more sophisticated diplomacy system, and you can have a lot of fun building and designing various units (Land, Sea, or Air)...but it's ultimately hollow.
Once you complete this stage you can step into the Space Stage. This is the final, and by far the longest stage. And quite frankly after 4 days of playing I haven't beaten it yet. It's...expansive..and daunting at first. From what I can tell there are 10s of thousands of possible star systems and worlds to explore, though that might be an optical illusion. And frankly, the Space Stage gets very hard to manage very quickly even as early as 5-6 systems. Events happen almost constantly, money is a huge issue, and once a war starts it's almost an unlimited amount of constant annoyance. I think that most people who dislike the game will dislike it because of the space stage.
The Space stage has a LOT of options. Terraforming, Starflight-like elements of trading and space combat; artifact hunting, diplomacy, and ship design. Oh, and it's got a plethura of options. But it's simplicity and lack of resources really does get in the way. Oh, and the constant zooming in and out is so constant that it was literally starting to make my hand hurt in only an hour of playing. And I use a computer, mouse, and keyboard a LOT.
I haven't completed the Space stage yet...not for lack of trying. Unfortunately, this is where the game has gotten buggy for me. It's not constant, but I've had numerous non-recoverable crashes which has set me back, and frequent issues in getting my colonies started which have set me back.
I'll definitley try to get through this stage and play with some of the options. I still can't figure out what making a Crop Circles does, or successfully terraformed a T3 planet (though I've got the terraforming piece down now). I know you can Uplift other creatures, and theoretically I've heard that you can genetically mutate and modify creatures but I haven't seen options for that yet. So there's still a lot of stuff to look into.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Random Musing
Well, I am now a level 53 druid. 5 levels until I can move on to Burning Crusade content. I'm much farther along that I would normally be with a character at this point. I have yet to step foot in Western or Eastern Plaguelands, Felwood, Winterspring, or Silithus. I haven't even finished all of the Un'goro Crater quests (though I am close). If all goes well, I should be 60, or at least close to 60 by next week. One small hiccup though is that my mining/herbalism skills are pretty low. Especially mining...I'm going to have to spend some time just grinding that. Especially since in Un'goro I was running across tons of thorium veins that I coulnd't mine which was annoying the crap out of me.
And I did manage to get a guild invite. Not as a raider though so I'm a sad panda. I'm not even sure I was invited as a backup. I'm still hoping I'll get a few chances to raid, but I'm guessing it's not going to happen quickly. I did manage to get a big benefit out of dual-boxing though, something I had not originally thought of or intended. Last night I was able to chill with Mal patiently waiting for an offer to join in if they had room; while in reality I was grinding hard with my druid.
I was also a bit surprised listening to their raid...they were very quiet. Now in Nerfed we were pretty strict about talking in vent, but we did allow light chat between pulls. This group was virtually silent. Also, there raid leader (also the guild leader) seemed to follow my general belief when it came to raid leading...only talk when you have something meaningful to say. Our raid leaders were very chatty in comparison, calling out every single thing while I generally preferred to call out the important stuff and leave the obvious stuff for everyone to be smart enough to know what to do without having to be told every pull.
And I did manage to get a guild invite. Not as a raider though so I'm a sad panda. I'm not even sure I was invited as a backup. I'm still hoping I'll get a few chances to raid, but I'm guessing it's not going to happen quickly. I did manage to get a big benefit out of dual-boxing though, something I had not originally thought of or intended. Last night I was able to chill with Mal patiently waiting for an offer to join in if they had room; while in reality I was grinding hard with my druid.
I was also a bit surprised listening to their raid...they were very quiet. Now in Nerfed we were pretty strict about talking in vent, but we did allow light chat between pulls. This group was virtually silent. Also, there raid leader (also the guild leader) seemed to follow my general belief when it came to raid leading...only talk when you have something meaningful to say. Our raid leaders were very chatty in comparison, calling out every single thing while I generally preferred to call out the important stuff and leave the obvious stuff for everyone to be smart enough to know what to do without having to be told every pull.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Tailoring or Inscription
Ever since I started playing WOW, my Mage (my first character) has been an Enchanting/Tailor. Now, Enchanting has generally paid off for me, though I've never been one to try to sell enchants. And in BC Tailoring was awesome...at least until I got into T5 and then any use for it disappeared.
The truth is, while the Spellfire Set + Spellstrike Set provided me early T4.5 gear...allowing me a very heafty DPS bonus...my other mage friend who was not an enchanter or tailor was always close to me...the truth is while Spellfire was a very good DPS set, it sacrificed all survivability for it. I remember the days of T4 and early T5 where no matter what I did I would die simply because of the lack of hit points. The sets were just too specialized.
Today, Tailoring has no real benefit for me. I have no access to the Sunwell patterns (though I'd love the chest piece)...and other Sunwell gear is almost as good.
But still, the real reason to keep Tailoring would be Wrath. And it's not just what gear is available in tailoring...it's what -exclusive- gear is in tailoring that defines what professions to take or keep. So far, Tailoring seems to have 1 exclusive that I've seen so far--and that are Back-enhancer that restores mana occassionally on cast spells.
Now, I've also been considering Inscription. Inscription looks to have some fairly interesting benefits in general...but what does it bring to the table exclusively? So far it looks like the only exclusive benefit to Inscription is that you get another free inscription slot.
So, 1 free Inscription Slot vs. Cloak-Enhancer + Possible Gear?
Depending on how good Inscription looks, so far it's looking like Tailoring is going to be the best bet here...at least at first. However, it really depends on how good that extra inscription slot is.
The truth is, while the Spellfire Set + Spellstrike Set provided me early T4.5 gear...allowing me a very heafty DPS bonus...my other mage friend who was not an enchanter or tailor was always close to me...the truth is while Spellfire was a very good DPS set, it sacrificed all survivability for it. I remember the days of T4 and early T5 where no matter what I did I would die simply because of the lack of hit points. The sets were just too specialized.
Today, Tailoring has no real benefit for me. I have no access to the Sunwell patterns (though I'd love the chest piece)...and other Sunwell gear is almost as good.
But still, the real reason to keep Tailoring would be Wrath. And it's not just what gear is available in tailoring...it's what -exclusive- gear is in tailoring that defines what professions to take or keep. So far, Tailoring seems to have 1 exclusive that I've seen so far--and that are Back-enhancer that restores mana occassionally on cast spells.
Now, I've also been considering Inscription. Inscription looks to have some fairly interesting benefits in general...but what does it bring to the table exclusively? So far it looks like the only exclusive benefit to Inscription is that you get another free inscription slot.
So, 1 free Inscription Slot vs. Cloak-Enhancer + Possible Gear?
Depending on how good Inscription looks, so far it's looking like Tailoring is going to be the best bet here...at least at first. However, it really depends on how good that extra inscription slot is.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Preparing for Wrath of the Lich King
I have a confession to make. I hoard everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. I have a very hard time letting anything go and I've always been that way. This has actually worked out pretty well for me, though since I've also spent a lot of time playing with alts over the last 2 years.
But, now Wrath is coming and a lot of things are going to change and the same thing is going to happen again with the new expansion. Items, and gear that used to be very expensive will tank in price. Inscription is going to cause the cost of herbs to skyrocket. Many L60 blues will drop even further in price, with the exception of useful blue weapons and plate armor. And many crafting items that are in high demand now will either completely disappear or become worthless.
So, I've started selling off items and equipment that I don't need on any of my alts. Spell Cloth. Primal Moon Cloth. Some old blue items. Saved up greeds and enchanting reagents that I don't need. Much of this is designed to make sure I have the most gold possible going into the expansion; while at the same time trying to clear out inventory spots in preparation for a new influx of reagents and gear relating to the push to 80.
My mage is an Enchanting/Tailor. I've stored up a lot of tailoring and Enchanting mats at around the 375 level...but it looks like they aren't going to be needed quite so badly. I'm also seriously thinking about dropping Tailoring for Inscription on my Mage. That would make me an Enchanter/Inscriber...which doesn't necessarily sound like a bad combination. Of course, my mage isn't an herbalist, so I'm at least commiting myself to at least 1 gatherer alt (my druid? or my Warlock).
I'm also strongly considering liquidating my badges and converting them into epic gems and selling those. I have around 250 badges stored right now...enough for quite a few gems. In fact I would have already done that if not for the fact that I've still held up hopes for getting into a raiding guild pre-expansion and if that happens I still might need those gems. Or that 100 badge chest piece if I have to go fire.
I also really need to get a peek at WOTLK tailoring...Tailoring was quite useful to me at the start of BC...very useful in fact. But once past T4 that usefulness evaporated. Now they did add some really nice Sunwell recipes...but they are effectively out of my reach and are not THAT much better that what I could get otherwise in Sunwell.
The problem is...does inscription have any meaningful bonus in regards to taking it? Jewelcrafting really didn't at the start of BC...and one extra Inscription spot, while nice sounding...may not be enough. It will really depend on if there are any Inscriber-only effects that really effect raiding in a meaningful way. If not, I'm probably better off staying with Tailoring.
Of course, Wrath is still a few months out...at least. Word started being spread yesterday that 3.0 might hit the test realms soon...and they'll stay there for at least 6-8 weeks. That means we can maybe see the first major content patch in October. And by the time that hits, I'm betting raiding interest will dive opportunities will begin to present themselves. Hopefully I'll end up in a good place.
But, now Wrath is coming and a lot of things are going to change and the same thing is going to happen again with the new expansion. Items, and gear that used to be very expensive will tank in price. Inscription is going to cause the cost of herbs to skyrocket. Many L60 blues will drop even further in price, with the exception of useful blue weapons and plate armor. And many crafting items that are in high demand now will either completely disappear or become worthless.
So, I've started selling off items and equipment that I don't need on any of my alts. Spell Cloth. Primal Moon Cloth. Some old blue items. Saved up greeds and enchanting reagents that I don't need. Much of this is designed to make sure I have the most gold possible going into the expansion; while at the same time trying to clear out inventory spots in preparation for a new influx of reagents and gear relating to the push to 80.
My mage is an Enchanting/Tailor. I've stored up a lot of tailoring and Enchanting mats at around the 375 level...but it looks like they aren't going to be needed quite so badly. I'm also seriously thinking about dropping Tailoring for Inscription on my Mage. That would make me an Enchanter/Inscriber...which doesn't necessarily sound like a bad combination. Of course, my mage isn't an herbalist, so I'm at least commiting myself to at least 1 gatherer alt (my druid? or my Warlock).
I'm also strongly considering liquidating my badges and converting them into epic gems and selling those. I have around 250 badges stored right now...enough for quite a few gems. In fact I would have already done that if not for the fact that I've still held up hopes for getting into a raiding guild pre-expansion and if that happens I still might need those gems. Or that 100 badge chest piece if I have to go fire.
I also really need to get a peek at WOTLK tailoring...Tailoring was quite useful to me at the start of BC...very useful in fact. But once past T4 that usefulness evaporated. Now they did add some really nice Sunwell recipes...but they are effectively out of my reach and are not THAT much better that what I could get otherwise in Sunwell.
The problem is...does inscription have any meaningful bonus in regards to taking it? Jewelcrafting really didn't at the start of BC...and one extra Inscription spot, while nice sounding...may not be enough. It will really depend on if there are any Inscriber-only effects that really effect raiding in a meaningful way. If not, I'm probably better off staying with Tailoring.
Of course, Wrath is still a few months out...at least. Word started being spread yesterday that 3.0 might hit the test realms soon...and they'll stay there for at least 6-8 weeks. That means we can maybe see the first major content patch in October. And by the time that hits, I'm betting raiding interest will dive opportunities will begin to present themselves. Hopefully I'll end up in a good place.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Playing Alts in WOW
You know it's interesting how the game experience in WOW changes outside of a raiding guild. I've learned to be somewhat orderly in regards to my play time, mostly due to the limited amount of time I have to play and the large amount of time required to raid. But with the raiding game pretty much taken out of the picture for the moment, I find myself still planning ahead.
First, I've been leveling a druid alt. Now that's not really a change for me. I've always had alts...I like variety and diversions, which helps keep my interest. This time I did something that at one time I swore not to do (and I feel bad about it), but I bought another account. I did it for several reasons. First, I didn't want to delete any of my existing characters (which I have 10). Second, I wanted to be able to dual-box 5-man instances while leveling. I figured that way I'd still be able to keep my horde characters in case I ever switched sides, and level grinding would be easier with extra gear.
Now, less than 2 weeks later I'm level 41 (almost 42). I've run many of the low-level instances at least 2-3 times; and I've ended up with tons of crap to sell. Not only has leveling been easier, but I've made a ton of money for my druid...900g, and only 50g of that was seed money. You'd be surprised how many low-level green items will sell if you don't hyper-inflate the process like so many seem to like. I'll put up some random l23 sword up for 1G, when everyone else puts them up for 5, 10, or even 50!?!?! gold, and still make a decent profit out of it. Plus I guess I've been lucky when it comes to blue drops; I've had several which have sold for over 100, one that sold for 200, and 4-5 that sold for 40-60g.
One other thing I did with my Druid was to make her a gatherer. Mining/Herbalist to be specific. Now mining doesn't necessarily give me all that much, but it does let me stock up on valuable materials that I might need for an alt jewelcrafter or smith (DK?) and herbalism lets me prep for Wrath by collecting low/mid/high level herbs for Inscription. I'm considering just leaving druid as a pure gatherer alt, doing the epic flight-form quest, and using her to collect materials later. That would give me the option of dropping tailoring on my Mage and taking Inscription instead (which I'm actually leaning towards).
Of course, tailoring might end up being as good as it was in BC, but I doubt it. Sure Tailoring turned into an invaluable skill at 70 pre T5; but it really left me without many options in T4 for quite some time (and even T5 until I got the 2-piece bonus, which took forever).
So, while I'm no longer planning for item upgrades and watching DKP, or planning to sneak in 1-2 hours of alt-time between raids, I'm still planning but it's all focused on the next expansion.
First, I've been leveling a druid alt. Now that's not really a change for me. I've always had alts...I like variety and diversions, which helps keep my interest. This time I did something that at one time I swore not to do (and I feel bad about it), but I bought another account. I did it for several reasons. First, I didn't want to delete any of my existing characters (which I have 10). Second, I wanted to be able to dual-box 5-man instances while leveling. I figured that way I'd still be able to keep my horde characters in case I ever switched sides, and level grinding would be easier with extra gear.
Now, less than 2 weeks later I'm level 41 (almost 42). I've run many of the low-level instances at least 2-3 times; and I've ended up with tons of crap to sell. Not only has leveling been easier, but I've made a ton of money for my druid...900g, and only 50g of that was seed money. You'd be surprised how many low-level green items will sell if you don't hyper-inflate the process like so many seem to like. I'll put up some random l23 sword up for 1G, when everyone else puts them up for 5, 10, or even 50!?!?! gold, and still make a decent profit out of it. Plus I guess I've been lucky when it comes to blue drops; I've had several which have sold for over 100, one that sold for 200, and 4-5 that sold for 40-60g.
One other thing I did with my Druid was to make her a gatherer. Mining/Herbalist to be specific. Now mining doesn't necessarily give me all that much, but it does let me stock up on valuable materials that I might need for an alt jewelcrafter or smith (DK?) and herbalism lets me prep for Wrath by collecting low/mid/high level herbs for Inscription. I'm considering just leaving druid as a pure gatherer alt, doing the epic flight-form quest, and using her to collect materials later. That would give me the option of dropping tailoring on my Mage and taking Inscription instead (which I'm actually leaning towards).
Of course, tailoring might end up being as good as it was in BC, but I doubt it. Sure Tailoring turned into an invaluable skill at 70 pre T5; but it really left me without many options in T4 for quite some time (and even T5 until I got the 2-piece bonus, which took forever).
So, while I'm no longer planning for item upgrades and watching DKP, or planning to sneak in 1-2 hours of alt-time between raids, I'm still planning but it's all focused on the next expansion.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thoughts on Wrath of the Lich King
My first MMO was Final Fantasy XI. I was originally very much against MMOs, mostly due to having a poor connection (dialup, and a rather crappy one at that), and I enjoy playing games on my own terms and my own pace. However, a ton of online people decided to play FFXI and form a guild and I got drawn into it. It was some of the most fun I've ever had with any game.
Of course, in hindsight, FFXI was a frustrating, difficult, and ultimately unfriendly game which at least 75% of your time spent playing was waiting for a party invite or farming and the end-game comprised of waiting 3-4 hours for a boss to spawn, and the challenge of that boss wasn't fighting him, but tagging him before another guild did.
But still, I played with a pretty tight knit group of people. Despite the problems it was a lot of fun. And because of that, I completely dismissed WOW as a game. There was no way I could support playing two MMOs at one time. Of course, like all things, people got bored, started leaving. As people hit max level they left our friendly linkshell and started joining serious end-game guilds. And as more people moved on from that guild, and I started logging in by myself...I started seriously wondering what the point was anymore.
Then a new guy started at work. A WOW addict. And, the moment he found out I played computer games and even an MMO he tried to get me to play on his server. It was surprisingly easy to quit FFXI. And WOW truly is a different experience.
My favorite class in FFXI was Black Mage. And so I created a Mage as my first WOW character. I think I also created a Warlock, and a Paladin too. At first I was shocked at how simple WOW was compared to FFXI. A Mage in WOW have a much more restrictive list of spells available compared to FFXI. Though the mechanics were fairly similar (sit back, play artillery).
Once I started playing WOW, I never looked back. Over a 3 month period I got my mage from 1 to 60, and the day I got to 60 my friend got me into a Raiding Guild. It wasn't a very advanced raiding guild...they were in MC where lots of raiders were already clearing Naxx...but I didn't care. Hell, I had like 3 blue items, and the rest were greens. If I hadn't been a friend of someone in the guild, I would have never got in.
Equitas was a fun guild, I met a lot of people there and had fun. My first raid ever I got the T1 Chest Piece (which I've kept for nostalgia purposes); and I went from being the worst mage in the guild (Hell at the time I was Fire/Frost) to the 2nd best in a little over 3 months. It was a good time, and I felt a serious sense of accomplishment when we finally killed Ragnaros and began looking at BWL.
Unfortunately, by the time we started BWL Burning Crusade was only a month or 2 away; rumors were flying about how BC greens were replacing vintage purples...and interest in raiding in any form plummeted to nothing. And with all of the new super-special PVP gear they released with the PVP revamp, any remaining interest tanked completely.
Man I had high hopes for Burning Crusade. I wasn't sure about the idea of 25-man raids vs. 40...though I liked AQ20 and ZG. I thought the idea of a ton of new, smaller 5-mans was a nice idea; and I liked the idea of Heroics. Plus, with all of the new gear, new spells, new visuals, etc, BC was sounding pretty damned sweet.
And then it came out.
Leveling in BC was fun. It was slower than I would have liked, but I duoed with my friend (another mage) all through BC and had a blast doing it. However, even at the beginning, some of the flaws started showing up. Everything past the quests themselves seemed over-tuned. Many instances had simply way too much trash for the number of bosses in them (I still dread Shadow Labyrinth between the first and second bosses).
Heroics were an awesome idea; but some of them were extremely difficult; with very little in the way of rewards. (Heroic MGT is the way heroics should have always been). Not to mention the fact that with Badges, most players simply refused to go back to standard 5-mans...making it more difficult for late-comers to progress.
Of course, past heroics was Karazhan. It was a fairly interesting raid zone, long, a little trashy at points but with plenty of bosses. Of course it was a 10 man raid zone, not a 25 man...and Karazhan completely destroyed guilds. (It effectively destroyed Equitas)...Gruul's Lair and Mag's lair were simply not designed as introductory raid zones...they were damned near impossible for people not in Karazhan gear when they were first introduced.
The thing is, BC was designed to reset the bar, and brought in a lot of new players...but they never bothered to ease people into the 25-man raiding game...hell after the attunements were dropped I know a lot of guilds simply skipped Mag because Lurker in SSC was easier.
So, BC had a lot of good ideas; but suffered from poor execution. Nerfs. Bad instance designs. Poor tuning. With very little attempt to ease players into the end game.
And now WOTLK is coming. And it follows much the same strategy of BC. Shorter 5 Mans. Heroics. A few introductory 1-2 shot raid bosses. And the re-use of Naxx. This is both a good and bad thing. Due to how similar it is, hopefully Blizzard has learned its lesson about the mistakes they made in BC; though I'm a little worried.
Already, interest in raiding has started to decline...while the gear shift in Wrath won't be as big Sunwell gear will begin being replaced in later 5-mans in Wrath. And I don't think it's possible that Blizzard can introduce a new class, 10 new levels (with new abilities) and not undergo a large number of class changes and nerfs after release. So in that regard, I don't think WOTLK is going to be any better (I just hope Mage is safe from the nerf bat).
Though I'm not in beta, I've been listening to what people say. 5-mans are supposed to be shorter...hopefully that means less trash, not fewer bosses. A better trash-to-boss ratio in WOTLK will go a long way to making the game a bit better all around. The new badge system, with tiered badges sounds like a good idea too. Already the badge system in BC has gotten out of whack--no badge gear should cost more than 50 badges IMO.
The idea of making 10 man versions of 25 man raids is a brilliant one, but one I'm also the most worried about. In BC, Karazhan was it for most of the game; ZA was late, and rather annoying. But by having all 25-man raids having a 10 man equivalent...means that people who like that sort of play style will have plenty of options down the road. Unfortunately it could also mean that Blizzard will just assume that 25-mans are for the hard core and make them all extremely difficult. And I don't know about you, but SSC/TK just wore me down with all of the trash and the overly long fights...MH was rather annoying; and BT was actually fairly good except for a few bosses that were just damned annoying. If we see more instances like BT, and fewer like SSC/TK, I'll be happy. And hopefully Naxx's very design will accommodate that...a large, sprawling instance broken into wings, with lots of bosses and options...just about a perfect combination for a 25-man raid zone.
Maybe at some point I'll get a chance at the beta, though really leveling doesn't give a good idea of what the expansion is going to be like. Most of my time with BC was spent with the end-game, and that's a LOT harder to test or get a feel for in a beta.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Guild Searching
Well I finally did it. I started looking for a Guild. The pickings are very slim on Malygos right now, but I'm really not wanting to switch servers. I put in one app yesterday, but I'm not that hopeful...it looks pretty full...but at least there's some question regarding whether it is or not unlike the others which are definitely packed.
Of course, I still have the option for settling for a guild lower in progression...but I don't think I'm really ready to sit with another guild through the cock-block that is ROS & Bloodboil.
Of course, I still have the option for settling for a guild lower in progression...but I don't think I'm really ready to sit with another guild through the cock-block that is ROS & Bloodboil.
Thoughts on Characters
Work and other issues have been leaving me a little burned out lately. It's sometimes hard to be creative when you are just feeling tired, strung out, and nothing seems all that interesting. But I am very interactive with my entertainment...one of the reasons why I don't watch TV and will rarely watch a movie alone. I still like reading books, but I haven't seen a book that's interested me in a while much to my dismay.
I have a confession to make, if there is one thing I would really like to accomplish in my life it would be to publish a novel. I even wrote a full length story once (it's been years now), and I have tons of different character and story concepts that run through my head every day; and I often dream about them at night.
It's not like I have any real chance of publishing anything. I don't practice or write enough, especially nowadays. I still plan on doing it, perhaps when I'm a little older and more wiser and experienced. Still, not a day passes where I don't think, or dream, about some story. A few of them are surprisingly though out.
I have another confession to make. I am a pen-and-paper roleplayer. Even to this day I play D&D, or Shadowrun, or other games with friends. And back when I got drawn into these forms of entertainment, the characters I created were just a collection of stats, items, and powers (if any). A story usually involved something simple--go into a local dungeon and loot it for treasure, or go to a bar and see what unusual hijinks ensued (that was always fun...I once had an Elven Ranger named Calin die within 3 seconds after entering a bar...damned those save-or-die spells!
As I have gotten older, though, my taste in RPGs have evolved from an interest in stats or items, and transformed into an interest in history, background, personality, strengths, flaws, and weaknesses. For example, my first character was a young elf-mage named Natasha (yeah, a Russian Elf...make fun all you want). She was young, by elven standards (around 48), and while extremely attractive she was also quite shy and dressed very frumpy. She was one of 2 characters I created (along with Calin, the Elven Ranger I mentioned above). Why 2? Well in the campaign that I joined most people played 2 characters instead of one mostly because the players preferred it that way (I personally hate that playstyle, go figure).
I don't think I had any real concept behind the character, except she was a elf-tomboy, attractive but went out of her way to hide that. There wasn't very much flavor to the character; and most of it came from the character's attributes, race, and stats (I'd rolled a natural 18 Intelligence, Charisma, and 17 Dexterity...still one of the best set of straight rolls I've ever had). It was a little bit of flavor, really, and something that as I played the character eventually developed into something more.
Even though it was just a simple D&D character, nothing more than a collection of stats, the game I played in allowed me to create an emotional attachment to the character. And with that attachment came a desire to flesh the character out. Why was the character shy? She was a freakin mage who blew people up, often quite creatively? Why did she hide herself? Why was she adventuring in the first place?
When I started asking myself those questions as I played, I naturally started answering them and as I did so I started adding history and background to the character. She gained a last name. A family. Goals, and motivations. And somewhere in the middle of that she ceased being just a collection of stats and became a character. I was fairly young at the time, and the concept was full of cliques, but I was happy with it and still think fondly of the character to this day.
It was from these rollplaying roots that I got interested in telling stories (though I guess it's more true to say that my at-the-time unknown interest in telling and creating stories is why I found RPGs so interesting in the first place). That basic framework allowed me to go beyond the stats and mechanics of an RPG character, and begin to develop a story about something beyond that. And to this day, I usually create characters through the same form of process. First I'll create a basic framework; an occupation, age, etc, and include some arbitrary list of attributes (not necessarily statistics, and then start asking questions. Most of the time I'll have a specific story, or concept in mind for the character and a lot of my questions will relate to that. It is through forumlating, and then answering these questions that most of the characters I have created have taken shape; though they don't really come alive until they are mated with a story.
Of course, a character is more than just a sum of his or her history. People are certainly shaped by their history, even defined by it to a certain extent, but even similiar individuals can react very differently to the same situation; and even their perceptions of those events can be radically different. It all comes down to perspective. The true nature of a character can often be found not in their history, but in the choices they made in life. When creating a character, it's important to realize that and to sieze upon that. It's important not to ask whether this did this or that deed, but why they did it in the first place. To me, it's the WHY that begins to make a character stand out. And it's one of the questions that I always ask and answer. The more of those sorts of questions I can identify, and answer, the more fleshed out the character becomes.
Of course, a character is nothing without a setting to put him (or her) in, but that's a topic for a different post!
I have a confession to make, if there is one thing I would really like to accomplish in my life it would be to publish a novel. I even wrote a full length story once (it's been years now), and I have tons of different character and story concepts that run through my head every day; and I often dream about them at night.
It's not like I have any real chance of publishing anything. I don't practice or write enough, especially nowadays. I still plan on doing it, perhaps when I'm a little older and more wiser and experienced. Still, not a day passes where I don't think, or dream, about some story. A few of them are surprisingly though out.
I have another confession to make. I am a pen-and-paper roleplayer. Even to this day I play D&D, or Shadowrun, or other games with friends. And back when I got drawn into these forms of entertainment, the characters I created were just a collection of stats, items, and powers (if any). A story usually involved something simple--go into a local dungeon and loot it for treasure, or go to a bar and see what unusual hijinks ensued (that was always fun...I once had an Elven Ranger named Calin die within 3 seconds after entering a bar...damned those save-or-die spells!
As I have gotten older, though, my taste in RPGs have evolved from an interest in stats or items, and transformed into an interest in history, background, personality, strengths, flaws, and weaknesses. For example, my first character was a young elf-mage named Natasha (yeah, a Russian Elf...make fun all you want). She was young, by elven standards (around 48), and while extremely attractive she was also quite shy and dressed very frumpy. She was one of 2 characters I created (along with Calin, the Elven Ranger I mentioned above). Why 2? Well in the campaign that I joined most people played 2 characters instead of one mostly because the players preferred it that way (I personally hate that playstyle, go figure).
I don't think I had any real concept behind the character, except she was a elf-tomboy, attractive but went out of her way to hide that. There wasn't very much flavor to the character; and most of it came from the character's attributes, race, and stats (I'd rolled a natural 18 Intelligence, Charisma, and 17 Dexterity...still one of the best set of straight rolls I've ever had). It was a little bit of flavor, really, and something that as I played the character eventually developed into something more.
Even though it was just a simple D&D character, nothing more than a collection of stats, the game I played in allowed me to create an emotional attachment to the character. And with that attachment came a desire to flesh the character out. Why was the character shy? She was a freakin mage who blew people up, often quite creatively? Why did she hide herself? Why was she adventuring in the first place?
When I started asking myself those questions as I played, I naturally started answering them and as I did so I started adding history and background to the character. She gained a last name. A family. Goals, and motivations. And somewhere in the middle of that she ceased being just a collection of stats and became a character. I was fairly young at the time, and the concept was full of cliques, but I was happy with it and still think fondly of the character to this day.
It was from these rollplaying roots that I got interested in telling stories (though I guess it's more true to say that my at-the-time unknown interest in telling and creating stories is why I found RPGs so interesting in the first place). That basic framework allowed me to go beyond the stats and mechanics of an RPG character, and begin to develop a story about something beyond that. And to this day, I usually create characters through the same form of process. First I'll create a basic framework; an occupation, age, etc, and include some arbitrary list of attributes (not necessarily statistics, and then start asking questions. Most of the time I'll have a specific story, or concept in mind for the character and a lot of my questions will relate to that. It is through forumlating, and then answering these questions that most of the characters I have created have taken shape; though they don't really come alive until they are mated with a story.
Of course, a character is more than just a sum of his or her history. People are certainly shaped by their history, even defined by it to a certain extent, but even similiar individuals can react very differently to the same situation; and even their perceptions of those events can be radically different. It all comes down to perspective. The true nature of a character can often be found not in their history, but in the choices they made in life. When creating a character, it's important to realize that and to sieze upon that. It's important not to ask whether this did this or that deed, but why they did it in the first place. To me, it's the WHY that begins to make a character stand out. And it's one of the questions that I always ask and answer. The more of those sorts of questions I can identify, and answer, the more fleshed out the character becomes.
Of course, a character is nothing without a setting to put him (or her) in, but that's a topic for a different post!
Friday, August 22, 2008
Guild Woes
Just recently the WOW guild my mage was in broke up rather suddenly. I've been in a raiding guild since the week I hit 60 back in the day, and really it's been something of a shock to suddenly find myself guildless and without many prospects. Malygos just doesn't have a very active high-end raiding community, and coupled with me being a Mage and no one seems to want one I'm kinda stuck.
For now I'm kinda chilling. I've got a Shaman which is 68 that I'm going to get to 70 and I've started on druid too. Honestly it's been better to do that than to stay on my main, with an empty guild channel and no one on Vent to talk to. Leveling alts, at least, is by it's very nature a more solo experience and the lack of anything else isn't quite so obvious.
Hopefully I'll have a chance to get back into raiding soon, at least by the time WOTLK comes out.
(boy, this post turned into something completely different than what I wanted...oh well)
For now I'm kinda chilling. I've got a Shaman which is 68 that I'm going to get to 70 and I've started on druid too. Honestly it's been better to do that than to stay on my main, with an empty guild channel and no one on Vent to talk to. Leveling alts, at least, is by it's very nature a more solo experience and the lack of anything else isn't quite so obvious.
Hopefully I'll have a chance to get back into raiding soon, at least by the time WOTLK comes out.
(boy, this post turned into something completely different than what I wanted...oh well)
Wow, I created a Blog!
Well, this is my first blog post. Not much here at the moment, and I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it, honestly. Think of it as an experiment, an opportunity for me to talk about things that interest me and about where I am in my life for the moment. I'm thinking this will be more of a gaming blog, concentrating on my specific interests in the gaming world (online, or otherwise). But other stuff might crop in from time to time. hehe!
(and if this never goes past 5 posts, well, at least it was a chance to see what blogging is like).
Well, so with that goal in mind...
Currently Playing:
Unfortunately, my guild, Nerfed, broke up a few weeks ago, leaving me in a bit of a limbo. Most everyone I know has scattered to the four winds, switching guilds, or servers...and me having no idea of where to go now. Even worse, Malygos is a bastion of raiding mediocrity...Nerfed never got past Archimonde or Council; but there aren't that many guilds above us in progression and none seem interested in taking on mages. Mage's were crapped on pretty badly in Burning Crusade, and just don't seem to be as desired in raids anymore. I guess I'd just never paid attention to those trends.
In the meantime, I created a Druid and I'm leveling it. It doesn't feel as lonely leveling a low-level alt; not sure why, I guess it's just that my expectations are different. I've leveled several alts before now, most of them solo, so this seemed like a good diversion. In just one week, I've gone from 1 to 27 and should hit 30 pretty soon.
Past that, I'm really looking foward to Spore and Fallout 3 (though I'm a little nervous about Fallout 3). It's also looking like Warhammer Online might be fun, if some of my RL friends and former guild-mates decide to hook up for some action there. I've been reading stuff about WAR, and I'm not entirely convinced that the game is for me (I prefer the raiding game, not PVP)...but I'm also always willing to give something a shot. Hell, I had avoided WOW like the plague until a friend finally convinced me to play.
Well, anyway, this post is been a bit rambly and I have several topics I want to discuss about different topics on my mind, but I'll save them for different posts. Hell, I haven't even looked at the template yet!
(and if this never goes past 5 posts, well, at least it was a chance to see what blogging is like).
Well, so with that goal in mind...
Currently Playing:
- World of Warcraft
- Fallout 3
- Spore
- Wrath of the Lich King
- Warhammer Online
- Final Fantasy XIII
Unfortunately, my guild, Nerfed, broke up a few weeks ago, leaving me in a bit of a limbo. Most everyone I know has scattered to the four winds, switching guilds, or servers...and me having no idea of where to go now. Even worse, Malygos is a bastion of raiding mediocrity...Nerfed never got past Archimonde or Council; but there aren't that many guilds above us in progression and none seem interested in taking on mages. Mage's were crapped on pretty badly in Burning Crusade, and just don't seem to be as desired in raids anymore. I guess I'd just never paid attention to those trends.
In the meantime, I created a Druid and I'm leveling it. It doesn't feel as lonely leveling a low-level alt; not sure why, I guess it's just that my expectations are different. I've leveled several alts before now, most of them solo, so this seemed like a good diversion. In just one week, I've gone from 1 to 27 and should hit 30 pretty soon.
Past that, I'm really looking foward to Spore and Fallout 3 (though I'm a little nervous about Fallout 3). It's also looking like Warhammer Online might be fun, if some of my RL friends and former guild-mates decide to hook up for some action there. I've been reading stuff about WAR, and I'm not entirely convinced that the game is for me (I prefer the raiding game, not PVP)...but I'm also always willing to give something a shot. Hell, I had avoided WOW like the plague until a friend finally convinced me to play.
Well, anyway, this post is been a bit rambly and I have several topics I want to discuss about different topics on my mind, but I'll save them for different posts. Hell, I haven't even looked at the template yet!
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