Monthly Archives: December 2014

Bloggy XMAS 5 – An Old Soul

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I’ve been gaming for a long time, I can’t really think back to a time where I didn’t game.  It’s one of my two main hobbies – hockey and gaming.  I’m 35 now, and I’d bet dollars to donuts I’ve been doing it for 30 years.  As with most folk, I’ve had ups and downs.  My hobbies have kept me sane through them.  In a particular rough spot, at the tail end of my teens and early twenties, I was having issues with home and finding some direction in life.  It got pretty dark for a while.  Ultima Online and Everquest were my two main releases.  Given that high speed wasn’t around, a modem was required.  That took up a phone line, so I ended up playing overnight to avoid conflicts with the house line.

Aside from that, you should know that I’m a high-functional introvert.  It’s getting better with time and practice but my wife is the family extrovert.  Makes for a solid team.

Social Gaming

Ultima Online I was pulled in through a magazine ad a friend pass my way.  We played together at launch for a few weeks but he moved on and I delved deeper.  I eventually became a PK hunter and that meta aspect to the game made me a fair amount of friends.  The actions I took were such that I ended up “grey” most of the time, rather than hunting the Illustrious title of pure nobility.  It was my first real foray into social groups and it really taught me a solid amount about group play, delegation and responsibility.  I was fairly active, even after the Trammel split in 2000.  I made a few alt accounts and used my personal house as a base of operations.  EBay was my friend and I sold/bought property and characters which subsidized my gaming hobby for a very long time.

Everquest came out in late 1999 and it honestly took me a while to get into the game.  The inability to see in the dark was a major roadblock and I didn’t really swap over until 2001, when the guild I had in UO finally dissolved.  EQ I started playing with another real life friend but he also moved on.  This was probably the lowest of the low for me in RL. EQ was crack, came at a perfect time, and it was common to have 8-16 hour sessions go through without knowing it.

I ended up settling with a Dark Elf Necromancer, as the late hour sessions made it somewhat harder to find groupmates.  That said, things took a turn once I found this Barbarian Warrior in my mid-teens.  We’d play together all the time.  ICQ was a mainstay back then and we’d be chatting all the time.  He worked shift-work, was married (at 16 on Hallowe’en of all dates) and had kids, even though we were both the same age.  I can distinctly remember camping the isle in OoT for days trying to get through the hell levels.  The only recourse was our chats.  While this certainly kept me afloat, I’d like to think I did the same for him.

I printed out dozens of these maps

Time has a way with things and eventually we parted.  He found another job (with Gateway if I recall) with different hours and he had to work things out with his wife.  We’d still chat every week or so but clearly there was a gap.  I would say he was my first real online best friend.

I did keep up with EQ and met a nice couple from California, in a small social guild.  That was a ton of fun and that lasted many years.  We all merged into an adult guild, the Companions, back in the RoK days.  I think that lasted an extra 2 expansions, as I clearly remember raiding in the Vellious expansion as well and starting planes.  The guild had a requirement that people be over 30, though made an exception for me.  These were professional people, lawyers and doctors for a large part.  I think I grew up 5 years in 1 during this time.  I managed the website (which cemented my direction in IT) and did all the art and updates.  A bunch of the folk were related too, so it was like being part of an adopted family.  That was an awesome feeling – of belonging somewhere.

But the time in EQ had to move on and I moved off to Horizons and the promise of player-built housing with a subsection of the guild.  This was my first foray into group projects.  We’d set out build orders and collect/refine the material.  It was a lot of fun collecting everything and working as a team on a non-combat goal.  Everyone could participate. Unfortunately, the higher end part of the game was seriously broken and that prevented future growth.  Even more bad timing was EQ2 and WoW on the horizon (pun not intended).  We split ways here because after playing both betas, EQ2 held no appeal while WoW seemed to hit the right nerve.  This also coincided with a rather dramatic shift in the personal space and a relative uptick on future outlook.  UO and EQ both helped me get through a heck of a funk.

I think in hindsight the social aspect really filled a need I had at that time.  As I’ve grown older and matured, I’ve found other ways to meet my needs.  I have a great wife who understands and supports my gaming habits.  My kids are amazing and are so much more fulfilling than I had thought possible.  The social aspect at work is great and my friends outside of work fill in a huge gap as well.   Games, in of themselves, are less a social thing for me now and more of a hobby to get the brain ticking.  It’s also challenging in today’s gamespace where there’s no whitespace or dead time.  There’s a reason EQ implemented the /gems function after all.  Today it’s more about voice chat and that option just isn’t so viable with 3 other people in the house.

Social Blogging

With that gap in social from gaming I have moved on to blogs.  I’ve owned this domain for 11 years now, blogging for nearly as long.  A social network has been built over the years, supported through forums, games, twitter, podcasts and cross-posting.  The NBI is a great example of this, where the community comes together to help some new bloggers.  Blaugust was a cool challenge to post something every day.  Bloggy Xmas is obviously the most recent example of this.

With so many games available for our attention, the odds of a single community in a single game are long gone.  The bonds last across games but you still need a mechanism to share stories.  Blogs are an amazing way to do that.  While my blogroll isn’t as long as it should be, it’s a decent sample of the various folks sharing their ideas, with very little overlap.  In fact, there are a few that conflict with each other which provides some great counterpoints.

The community is small enough that everyone seems to know each other yet big enough for everyone to be able find something they can relate to.  I hope everyone reading this can find a few more friends through this Bloggy Xmas event.  We all share a same passion for games and that’s certainly something worth sharing.

Dragon Age – First Impressions

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So I found an online deal that shaved about $15 off of Dragon Age Inquisition.  Why not?  WoW servers are melting something fierce lately and SWTOR won’t open for a few more days.  26gig install was something else but interesting difference between Steam and Origin is that the download includes the install.  There have been more than enough times where I was sitting staring at a screen for an hour for a Steam game to install.  I mean, I know why it happens, just irksome.

So a few technical things to start.  You need a controller plugged in before launching the game.  Which is stupid but I guess since it changes the UI… I’ll live with it.  AMD video cards.  Now, I don’t have the best laptop.  It was top of the line 3 years ago and I paid mint for a custom one (actually, my guides paid for it) but it still handles every game I’ve thrown at it since, and at a decent clip.  Wildstar on max, ESO pretty darn high.  Even Tomb Raider was running everything but infi-hair.  But DA:I (if I can call you that) doesn’t like AMD chips.  I can get maybe 45 minutes out of the game before it locks up due to a memory leak or an invalid command.  I’m fully patched too, which makes it even more annoying.  But such is the master PC – video cards are always suspect.

Why is my hair shiny? I look like a plastic doll.

Why is my hair shiny? I look like a plastic doll.

That aside, the game plays fairly well.  I made a mage, playing on normal.  I find the actual skills much less interesting this time though the world is more engaging.  Instead of bits and pieces, now you have a relatively open world to fight in.  Combat has been streamlined too, so it’s closer to Mass Effect 2 than any other DA game before it.  I think the pacing is well done but I don’t like not having healing abilities or the ability to regenerate out of combat.  All I get are healing potions, shared across the group.  Why give me 4 characters to play with if the tank ain’t can only keep 1 target active and the support provides a temporary shield?  Bah.  It’s no longer strategic, it’s all tactics.  Take the heaviest hitting skill you can find and then support it with knockdowns/stuns to avoid taking damage.  Chain stuns keep you alive.

The story is neat. The characters so far interesting.  The quests are far from the fetch quests as they often involve exploration or dialogue.  You response choices are varied enough and the voice acting is decent.  Inventory management sucks, as usual with any RPG.  Things get tagged as junk when they clearly are not.

I’m kind of thinking this is in final beta right now and there’s a big kitchen sink patch coming my way – or at least in time for the holidays.  Let’s see how far I can get without the next crash though.

#WoW – Bodyguards

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A neat little feature in WoD is the ability to “hire” a bodyguard from one of your followers.  Now, there are only 5 per faction and they are set in stone.  You can’t miss them.  Each has their own perk, unlocked through faction with that specific bodyguard.  You gain 10 faction per kill, no exceptions.  It only works in the wild, so no dungeon runs.  And you need 2,000 kills to unlock the perk.  They also scale to your level, and have some decent skills.  Pretty good support actually.

I opted for Leorajh, as he comes with the ability to launch garrison missions in the field.  I already have a mailbox, a quick hearthstone to the garrison and repairs anywhere.  The summon a friend requires another person with you… so pretty useless out in the wild. Important note. While you can get a bodyguard to max faction earlier, you can’t complete the quest that unlocks the skill til 100. And even then it’s by knocking out a boss in a level 100 zone.

The hiccup here is the 2,000 kills.  My monk played the most out of MoP of all my characters.  From 1-100, including the bodyguard work, he’s amassed only 30,000 kills.  My rogue is sitting around 150,000 but he has way more hours in.  Anyways, 2,000 is a LOT.  I thought perhaps through normal play I’d see some decent progress but after a week, running the 1000 apexis dailies in a raid, I wasn’t making a huge dent in that number.  In comes Google.

For a while, 1hp critters gave you faction.  There was a neat spider spot in Talador that was just ripe for this action.  That got squashed a week or so ago.

Instead, through of all things archeology travels, I stumbled upon a neat spot in Gorgrond.

Stoneshard Grubling

Stoneshard Grubling

Now, in this 1 location there are 3 distinct spawning areas of these grubs.  A single run through all three will get you about 70 kills.  They respawn pretty much as fast as I could kill them.  I did the last 1,000 kills in less than 10 minutes.

The first 1,000 kills were done in Talador, at the Burning Front.

Burning Front

Burning Front

This place spawns demons, non-stop.  There are a few NPCs who can tank for you.  The mobs, while weak, still have decent hp so it isn’t a single shot deal.  If you’ve invested in the Artillery for this zone, then that works pretty well.  This one moves along at about 50 kills a minute, more if you’re lucky.

So yeah, neat feature. It’s time-gated, so my optimization subroutines kicked in.  The ability is sweet, the extra damage and healing is welcome and it’s nice to have a sidekick.

#WoW – Molten Core Run

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A funny thought occurred to me.  Blizzard’s trolling Wildstar, or at the very least, making fun of everyone who says 40 mans are the best.  I say this after having gone through a Molten Core 10-year anniversary run.

Now, I did MC back when it was cool.  Roster boss was a pain but sheer bad play was another one.  I can clearly remember dying multiple times to the core hounds, or the crazy respawn timers.  All of that glory is back if you want it. It took the group a solid 3 hours, with only 2 people leaving while it was underway.  I got my mount and lucked out on an ilvl 640 helm.

For those saying that LFR beats the roster boss, I disagree.  LFR, if anything, is a perfect example of the roster boss from the 40 days.  In those raids, you had a solid core of 20 carrying 10, with the final 10 more a hindrance than anything else.  LFR is exactly this.  A hunter pulled Shazz by accident.  A knockback into a pair of hounds wiped as well.  Mages who didn’t know they could decurse caused 2 wipes.  Players who honestly said “I don’t have any AE abilities in my bar” were a ton of fun on the hound packs.  It took the tanks a fair bit to understand that they couldn’t all taunt, which made many of the enemies spin around and AE the entire raid.  Every boss was a 1 shot deal but Shazz was the only one who took us to town (see decurse comment).  All told, out of all the 15 or so wipes, I would only consider 1 that wasn’t caused by someone doing something drastically wrong.

To compound this, the ilvl requirement is rather low in my opinion.  The difference between 615 and say, 630 is significant.  When I queued for LFR, it was by chance as I saw the option up.  I checked the eyeball and it indicated a 30 second ETA.  I found this interesting as most queues for DPS are around an hour.  When I actually got into the raid, I got assigned to heals.  And the raid leader since my name was the first alphabetically.  Hah!

I healed to the best of my abilities but clearly my gear was pretty crappy.  Monk healers are pretty crappy in terms of burst healing, though they apparently scale quite well.  After having healed as a shaman, woo, what a difference in a high damage raid.  I kind of like the mechanics of a monk healer but there are certainly some additional tweaks that are needed to balance out the good heals from the bad.  Let’s just say that of all the healers, I think the monk would have the hardest time overhealing anyone.

The fun part of the raid was that there were 2 core groups of raiders in the field, both from different servers than mine.  The banter was great.  It was a drastic change from typical LFR chat.  I really found myself chuckling at some of the stuff being said.  Tanks were smart, heals were smart.  DPS generally avoided the bad stuff.  In a raid where 1 bad move can wipe 39 other people, you can find some tough spots but here for some reason, people were good.

Now, would I want to spend another 3 hours doing MC?  Nope.  I have my mount.  I’m good.