Category Archives: WoW

Time Gating

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Stormrage update first.  Queues were under 1000 people and times under 15 minutes. Fun fact, on starter edition you can see the queue but you’re always pushed to the back.  Funner fact, WoW tokens are server-specific and if you can’t log into a server, you can’t buy a token, so you stay in the queue.  Funnerer fact, Blizzard has had 3 days of server crashes/DDOS events.  Onto less facts.

F2P

Where Zynga excelled (aside from stealing ideas) was in putting time gates everywhere in their games, then charging you to speed it up.  Charging made them money, but the time gates had people continue to log in for longer periods and spread their focus around.  It drastically slowed down content consumption.  Clash of Clans (and all its clones) follow the exact same model.  This provides a “long tail” to the game, where you may have seen bits and pieces of everything, but you haven’t seen it all.

This model works exceptionally well for casual players and frustrates the living heck of out hardcore players.  Imagine if Battlefield players started each map with 10 lives, and restored at a rate of 1 per minute.  That would be a game changer.  Or imagine Overwatch only allowing you to queue once every 30 minutes?

The Alternatives

What other methods exist to provide a long tail?  There are a few, though most have fallen out of favor.

Attunement was an older method, where you needed to jump through a specific set of hoops in order to move on.  Sure, it’s still there a bit, what with ilvl requirements, or just plain level requirements, but the days of the BC attunement process are long gone.  Thank goodness.

bcattunement

People still think this was a good idea.  I got up to TK/SSL and gave up.

The other main method is randomness, or as I like to say, praying to RNGsus.  Action RPGs (like Diablo, Grim Dawn, or Path of Exile) breathe this model.  MMOs have varying success here.  Lich King managed it somewhat with the badge system, Warlords was strong on random numbers on gear drops, and Legion sort of tried to find a middle ground with simple stats to roll and upgrades all over the place.  RNG works to a point.  Gating content behind stats, which is what RNG gives you, only motivates people so far. All stick and no carrot, tends to turn people away (D3 at launch, amirite?).

Moderation

All the methods of extending a game make sense.

Dailies have been a part of WoW for a long time, though they only really took off in Lich King (due to the massive money generation at the time), and they use all 3 of the methods to work.   In Legion, world quests are available daily, the tasks and rewards are random, and access to them requires faction attunement (which further rewards faction).

Dungeons, pet battles, raids, crafting… all of it.  While you can certainly play for 24 hours straight, a specific measure of content only lasts so long before you need to try something else.

The trick is finding the right balance of it all.  Making sure that the time gates are not too long, that the content within a gate matches a “play session”, that attunement is not exclusive and punitive, and that the randomness can be offset through other means (gear comes from factions, quests, dungeons and crafting).  I’m rather surprised at the level of balance achieved so far.  MoP taught Blizz some hard lessons about gating, and Warlords some lessons around attunement (grinding) and randomness (simplified rolls).

I’m turning more to the mindset that Legion is what Warlords should have been, mechanically at least.  The majority of those missteps have been corrected.

Well, except for Hunters and Warlocks blowing chunks.  But who cares about them?

I Liked Pandaria

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First note, Stormrage queues are still in the 3000s, and waits nearing 2 hours.  Still no peep from Blizzard on the issue.  No other server has a queue above 10 minutes.  It’s fine from the outside, since I haven’t renewed a sub, but it certainly blows chunks for those that are trying to play.  Getting a DC and sitting in a 90 minute queue has got to hurt.

Expansions

I like ’em, plain and simple.  I like the fresh(er) take on a game.  It fits a good spot between horse armor DLC and sequels that are just re-skinned games.  MMOs have a very poor track record on sequels, and their concept of DLC is either patches or the item store for sparkle ponies.

But an expansion, woo, that scratches an itch.

I played through a half dozen with UO, similar with EQ.  I tend to go back to older MMOs when they launch one – RIFT being a good example.  Not only do you get the new content, you also get whatever patches were put in between when you stopped and now.  Aside from the people (which are really the basis of an MMO), playing the game every 6/12/18 months is a really good deal.  For $15, you get a ton.  For $50, you get the expansion and everything before it.  The downside is that you have to relearn all the acronyms.

WoW Expansions

I made Asmiroth, my Rogue, on launch day in 2005 on Stormrage.  The servers barely worked until January 2006.  While my Rogue was the main, I also ran a hunter to max level.  I tried PvP servers, RP servers, all the classes… but the time investment was crazy.  WoW vanilla was better than other MMOs of the time, but looking back it was really rough.

I played all the way until Burning Crusade came out, raided for the first bit there and then moved on to other pastures.  Enough to get my Netherwing drake mind you!  If I remember anything it was that BC was hard and flying was a massive accomplishment for survival.  There were no catchup mechanics, and gating was a nightmare.  That said, the world was solid and interconnected, dungeons were fun, and there was a reason to log in daily.

Lich King I raided a tiny bit at the start, managing a few 3DS attempts and then life took over again.  I came back for ICC.  Catchup mechanics and LFD showed up here, which were amazing for my casual playstyle.  There was too much Lich King for my tastes, and a simplification of many parts of the game.  DKs were way OP.  This is the expansion where you could clearly see the shift from “hardcore MMO” to “casual MMO”, for better or worse.

Cataclysm I played for about 2 weeks.  I am truly struggling to recall much good from that expansion, aside from making alts a joke to level up.  I did get to try Firelands mind you, and that daily zone was solid.  I truly believe that if Cata had followed BC, it would have been a success.  The problem here was that the pendulum swung so far from the ease of LK to the bash-your-head of Cata dungeons that people just gave up.  LFR showed up here because less than 1% of the population ever set foot in Firelands heroic.  This expansion was the death of “hardcore MMOs”, for every game on the market.

Pandaria I played  a lot, both at the start and at the end.  The island of open quests and gear pinatas was cool and fun.  I really appreciated the lore here, even though it had nothing to do with Warcraft.  The zones were great, monks I liked, dungeons were fun.  Unfortunately the devs didn’t understand what worked in LK and what did not in Cata.  We ended up with daily quests for everything, gating a lot of stuff.  Which is too bad, because there was a great opportunity for more content.  Scenarios were great.  Proving grounds were an amazing implementation. Re-roll tokens were good.  Raids were smart.  The farm was neat.  The big picture worked, but the reason to log in daily didn’t work until the Timeless Isle was introduced, way too late in the game.  Plus, it took nearly 2 years to get the next expansion.

Warlords I played for about 2 months.  Well, more specifically I played the actual content for about 2 weeks or so, the rest was sitting in my garrison playing farmville.  I completed 1 dungeon and a few raids in LFR.  If I recall, I was making about 2K in 15 minutes of work per day across all the alts.  This was another pendulum swing from Pandaria.  No more dailies, do what you want, when you want.  Open quest areas.  Dungeons were useless past the first 2 weeks.  1 patch (selfies are not a patch).  Even the lore (aside from sending Gul’dan to start Legion) is meaningless.

As for Legion, I’m about 5 days in.  Once the server stabilizes, maybe I’ll go back.

Take Away

BC, to me, was an extension of Vanilla.  It mostly addressed bugs and provided some new content, with some tweaks here and there (most notably adding flying and removing resistances).

Lich King on, we saw iterations on design and a generalization of MMOs, and each expansion made some rather significant changes to core systems.  Sometimes the changes were good (talent tree revamps, as only 2-3 builds are ever viable), sometimes not so much (the badge system is the answer to making content relevant).  Each expansion feels more like an interconnected sequel, where you can import a previous save, as there are few ties to what came before.

Not that it’s a bad thing, so much as understanding that the people who liked hot dog v3 and have eaten nothing but that for a year and a half, may not be all that pleased with hot dog v4 when they can no longer get v3 at all.  That puts a lot of trust between the players and developers.  Even more so since there’s a vendor down the street that’s selling something that look a heck of a lot like the v3 hot dog.

And I think it’s fair to say that WoW passed that point a while ago with the majority of it’s playerbase.  People return to the expansions with a hope of nostalgia.  They get a hint of it, then find a crunchy bit they don’t like and move on.  I know I’m in that bucket.  Time will tell how many other folks are there too.

MMO Rushers & Entitlement

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I’ve been on the WoW forums for a bit now, trying to get a heads up on the Stormrage queues.  You know what keeps people from posting on forums?  A working game.  Cause once things are unplayable, or monotonous, then you get some very interesting posts.

Aside from the 3 hour queue times on Stormrage (which are apparently the players’ fault, since they rolled on a busy server over 10 years ago), there’s one particular theme that’s popping up a bit more.  And that’s entitlement from the rushers.

Apparently, 2 weeks after launch is an appropriate time to a) release raids, b) flying, c) maxed out artifacts, d) deep knowledge of every dungeon and skippable area, e) go-go runs on mythic, and f) have maxed out the Suramar rep.

Each of these items has been stated by the devs to take months, with various catch up mechanics along the way.  The people chomping at the bit are from a wide variety of places but they all have 1 thing in common – they rushed to end game and are more or less, maxed out.  They have the loremaster achievement (the one that will eventually unlock flying), which meant hours of grinding.  They are sitting at ilvl 850, which requires a fair chunk of dungeon grinding.  They’ve maxed Suramar rep and have a lot of points invested in a single artifact.  They immediately boot warlocks from any LFG group.  And they deserve better.

Why?

Entitlement is based on the concept of having something, and setting expectations to be the same in a separate environment.  Sort of like teens who never cooked/cleaned at home, end up in college and are totally lost and expect others to do the work.

In WoW (and the same thing happens in other MMOs when they launch, as compared to WoW), the content drought is so severe that people play for a year+ with the same set of rules.  MoP to WoD was disgustingly long, and people were loathed to give up flying after 10+ years of it.  Then WoD gave them flying, super powers, amazing gear, LFR pinatas and essentially made everyone a god.  Legion comes out and you hit like a wet noodle, lost all the perks you had before and are told you have to wait months to get them back, if at all.  Did I mention that Inscription was gutted since glyphs were almost completely removed from the game? And you’re paying a company to do this to you.

So yeah, I can understand why people feel entitled.  They paid their $60 for Legion, they paid their $210 (patch 6.2 was June 2015) to play from then on.  They were allowed to eat their fill from the trough for all that time, only to have it taken away.

Counterpoint, those people are not who the first 3 months of an expansion are for.  Blizzard isn’t so dumb to think that those hardcore players are going to leave, no matter the hardships.  They will post til their fingers bleed but they will still pay their monthly fees.  The expansion is for the group of people who were not playing in 2016.  It’s a spike in sales and Blizz wants that long tail to stretch as far as possible.

Because at the end of the day, the only thing that matters to Blizz is the amount of subscriptions.

 

#WoW – More Time in Queue than in Game

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I’ve changed my laptop’s power settings so that it no longer shuts down on it’s own.  Whether it’s 6pm or 11pm, there’s at least a 1 hour queue on Stormrage.  The highest I’ve seen was 2 hours with 4500 people waiting.  So my tactic now is to start it up expecting a queue, leave the laptop alone and come back and check on it every 15 minutes or so.  If I do get through, then the AFK portion takes about 15 minutes anyways.

I’d honestly take a server transfer.  I have 11 characters, 6 at 100 or more, so I would certainly prefer to bring them all over.  But Blizz has been adamant that free transfers don’t work.  Eh.  I’m gone for the weekend, so maybe it will get better on Monday.  Ya right.

Shaman

I needed 20 leather and my shaman is a skinner, so only natural that I played him for a bit.  I got up to the chain shot quest in Stormheim before hitting 101.  Still way too underpowered, even though I’m sitting on 710 gear.  Which makes me think that scaling isn’t fully tweaked.

Still, 101 gets you some heroes in the Maelstrom and I started some missions.  Neptulon is back from his vacation.  The hall itself is a dank cave, not exactly what I was expecting.  Or maybe I’ve just been booned with the Monk class hall which is pretty darn cool.  I mean, I use a Turtle to upgrade my weapons.  My shaman uses a rock.

Monk

I finished the mask quest in Suramar and that took me to friendly.  The first chain is in the cave, second is to kill some withered and third is the mask thing.  So, about 30 minutes or so.  World quests are open but given that it was late, I called it a night.

Companion App

I am finding this thing to be quite useful.  Given the queue issues above and limited time, this allows me to manage the heroes on my tablet.  Otherwise, every mission would be a day+ long affair.  It also shows me the world quests, allowing for some planning before playing.  Now if they can only update the armory to include the adventure guide…

More #WoW

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I mucked it up in the comments but last night had a 1 hour queue at 7pmEST on Stormrage.  That’s nearly long enough for me to do an entire workout set, so I think I might actually try that out the next free night I have.  Mind you, I have 3 days left of time to play before needing to get another token.  I have quite a bit on my Monk that I should auction off…not like the ~30k it costs is something that bugs me.  I have over 500k, so I’m good for a while.

Monk Campaign

I figured out what I had done wrong here, and I needed to drop my outstanding quest for my 3rd (tanking) artifact before I could move on.  I needed to find a brewer over in Stormheim.  I hear tell that Stormheim has a fair chunk of campaign quests, which works great for me since it’s my favorite zone.

Anyhoot, find some folk, kill some buggers, get a key and rescue some more.  I will say that at 110, the scaling is on the rough side for a fresh geared player.  I’m a spot under ilvl 800 and things are hitting twice as hard as they were at 109.  Clearly that will get better as my gear does, it’s just a tad jarring considering the effort required previously.  The last “boss” in the zone wasn’t doable as a brewmaster and I barely scratched by as a windwalker.

Next steps are 5 class quests at 8 hours each, 20 leather to some bloke (why?) and then a dungeon run.  We’re slightly over the hump of people at 110 now, so melee queues are in the 20 minute range.  Think I’m going to polish up a bit on my mistweaver, then queue that way.  Not like I’m doing heroics anyways.

Brewmaster Artifact

I decided to do this one after all.  The lore was solid, again back into MoP world.  I needed to collect items to make brew, mix it together than run through Jade Serpent Palace.  I’m not sure if the difficulty was due to scaling or poor play but I did die at the eye boss.  The final parts were fine enough, given that you have access to a healer.  My talents are dungeon-based, rather than solo, something I’ll change next run.

All told, I prefer this artifact quest to the other two.  Windwalker is neat, what with LiLi running around the wind palace, but it doesn’t have the full feel that Brewmaster has.  And I can barely remember the Mistweaver one, other than the dumb AI (why would a DPS tank?)

What to Do?

When I was 109, my quest log had 3 items in it.  1 quest from Highmountain, 1 from the Class Hall and another for Alchemy.  When I hit 110 and exclamation marks appeared, all of a sudden I’m at 20 quests.  So from the narrowed experience leveling, to an open experience at 110, it’s hard to figure out what to do.

I guess I’ll work on my Suramar rep, so that World Quests open up, then follow that with some passive tries at getting my Campaign moving.  I could also work on my professions (including Archeology)… but that’s more passive I think.  Then there’s my alts to think about… though my gut tells me to wait until my Artifact Knowledge has moved up some ranks, so that catching up is easier…

 

#WoW Legion Day X

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I was out of the city for a few days, sitting on a lake, catching some fish and drinking some beer.  September is the start of hockey, but I’ll be going dry for the month to lose the weight I put on during August.  Should be a fairly straightforward affair.  Getting back into the exercise routine will be fun with 3 games a week…

Back to Legion.

Monk hit 110

I finished Azsura, which as you may recall wasn’t too hot on my list.  I then moved onto Val’sharah, with even more night elves, though a focus on Malfurion, Xavius, Cenarius and Ysera.  The zone was a lot better lore-wise, up until the near-last battle.  Spoiler, you end up killing Ysera to save the zone.  Ysera, the ex-dragon aspect.  As a solo quest.  Remember Cataclysm where the last 3 raid fights where Deathwing?  Even Malygos had his own raid.  Anyhoot, finished the zone and ran the dungeon.  Every boss there was “don’t stand in front”.   Nearly every fight is an AE fest, but the bosses are all tank and spank.  I was 109 when I left it behind.

Highmountain was the last zone and the FIRST thing you do in that zone is take an elevator.  I’m not enamored with the Tauren lore, what with the saturation of tree-hugging elves just before it, but this zone does an OK job with it.  Lots of earth elemental stuff.  Oh, and drum collection, all around the main hub (reminded me a bit too much about the poop collection quests). I hit 110 and left the zone ASAP.  Suramar was next and I only got far enough to unlock the main hub.

I’m not trying to move the Class Hall campaign forward, though it’s far from intuitive what needs to be done.  I had to hand in 100 bandages for some reason…now I’m not quite sure what I need to do.  And apparently, 110 is when the game really opens up.  Soon enough I hope, once I figure it out.

Alt – Elemental Shaman

I have a rogue, hunter, druid, demon hunter, and shaman sitting at 100.  The rogue is from day 1 of launch but was more or less replaced by my monk in MoP.  The hunter is broken in group play due to Barrage.  The DH is going to sit for a while, since it’s the same mobile playstyle as the monk.  I’ve tried playing a druid for years and can never get into it – always feels like it’s a lesser version of other classes.  That left the shaman to get going.

I met Thrall, and the class hall is in the middle of the world (the Cataclysm starting experience).  I completed the elemental artifact quest, which was inordinately long.  The lore was good (more MoP is a good thing), but the overall process focused a bit too much on self-healing to my tastes.  My reward was a set of claws.  An elemental shaman, one who shoots fire and lightning, gets a pair of claws.  Hoping the alternate skin can be found quickly.

Experience so far

It’s a drastically better leveling experience than Warlords, as I’m not continuously needing to go back to my garrison.  The quests themselves work.  The art/sound is excellent.  The zones may not be my cup of tea, but the scaling is a great thing to me.  Combat mostly works, artifacts and power as well.  Dungeon layouts are good.

There are rough spots, and spots that I think won’t be fixed for a while.  Professions are wonky from 100-110, where they are mostly useless while leveling.  And when you hit 110, then the stuff you make is useless at that level (for a fair chunk).  Engineering is mostly broken.  Boss abilities are inconsistent and either are tank and spanks, or very melee unfriendly (except Odyn, which is solid fun).

The good is outweighing the bad so far.  Once I get my teeth into the word quests, a month or so in, then it will really be the meat of the game and a solid understanding of the longevity.  I can say that moving away from farmville and grinding, making all content relevant, should be a good thing.

Stormrage

This part needs it’s own section.  I play on Stormrage, one of the launch servers way back when.  Day 2, the server started conking out and has continued to do so since then.  It would appear that Blizz has reduced the server capacity (for queueing) since then, to help.  So last night, 10pm EST, there was a queue of 4,000 people with a 1 hour wait.  That was after a 15 minute break.

I get that server load is a problem every expansion.  Stormrage though… is by far the worst (Voljin and Dalaran are close).  It has a 99% Alliance population.  Either free transfers off are required, OR character creation should be restricted to those who already have characters on the server, OR through invites.  This would be similar to the linkshells in FF11.  Anything to keep the random “new” players from playing on that server.

 

#WoW Legion Day 2

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I’ve been on Stormrage since launch.  It is an OLD server.  Day 2 was not fun, as the lag was crazy for a couple hours.  I could move fine, but looting was a 3-5 minute affair.

I ended up in Azsuna, the one with all the naga and night elves (well, high elf ghosts I guess).  The zone is not as cohesive as Stormheim, with scattered quests throughout.  The main questline has to atoning for a prince’s sins 10,000 years ago as he betrayed his people to Azshara.  I have a natural dislike for elves, so this didn’t help.

There’s a quick portion on a dying group of blue dragonflight… but nothing decent.  Lots of Murlocs and Naga.  The former aren’t so bad, but the latter I’ve had my fill.

I did to a run of the zone dungeon and that was not much fun to be truthful.   It’s a “wheel” dungeon, where you need to kill 4 outside bosses to take down the middle one.  Every single boss had “stay out of the stuff” as their tips.  Serpentrix was the worst, as he continually spits poisons everywhere.  Again, as a melee, this makes it stupid because you can’t be in melee range when there’s crap all around the boss.  There’s a sleeping giant boss that is so huge that his dozen mini-AE attacks (that move no less) are next to impossible to dodge when he’s on top of you.  It’s a decent thought of a dungeon, but requires some significant tuning.

I hit 105, which unlocked another perk in the Class Hall.  I also completed the 2nd artifact for my Mistweaver, which was a fairly easy run through a dungeon boss.  It was longer than it was hard, which doesn’t really mean much.  I wonder what it would have been like if I had done that first?

All told, day 2 was a negative experience overall.  Azsuna is boring, and poorly constructed.  The dungeon is poorly tuned.  Stormrage took a nap.  Considering that all zones are mandatory if you want to do world quests… this doesn’t bode well for any alts I have.  I guess I’ll have to speed through it later.

#WoW Legion – Day 1

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It’s ok.

 

So a few more words.  I started with Stormheim, which is a cross between Game of Thrones and How to Train Your Dragon.  It’s mostly Vrykul lore (think Nordic gods) and you get a hook shot tool to swing yourself up on ledges.  The zone has quite a few vertical spots, so the hook shot is very useful.  I completed the overall zone story and I have to say it’s pretty solid.  The part where you get sent to hell and have to come back is pretty neat.

You know what’s great about Stormheim?  Not a single Orc.  Screw those guys.

I also started my Class Hall (Monk, since I want to heal) and it’s exactly in the spot it should be – turtle island.  The legendary quest was pretty straightforward – it scales with your gear and not level.  Instead of Garrison missions you now have Class Hall missions.  I am curious as to how that plays out at max level…

The cinematics are top notch, though each intersects with the other faction so you’re missing out on a lot of context. I have no idea why the horde is attacking the alliance (should be the other way).

Each zone has a flavor, which is more based on the most popular aspects of previous expansions.  Where each expansion had a unified lore behind the land, Legion does not.  Remember, this was supposed to be an island with only the Tomb of Sargeras.  Now it has people who have been living on it for centuries, people who were isolated on other continents (as per their lore).  So if you’re looking for a cohesive view of the expansion, look somewhere else.

Shout to the music.  I usually keep the music on for the first month or so of an expansion before tuning out.  So far, great stuff.  If you hate bagpipes though… might want to turn on mute.

Dungeon

I completed the Halls of Valor.  That was a neat dungeon that took just the right amount of time.  Boss mechanics were fairly simple, though there was a fair chunk of AE in each.  When I see “spread out” or “move from boss”, I think to my previous post.   The art is solid, the lore is great (sort of like Valhalla) and the final boss is hyuge (again, sucks for melee).

Mechanics

I think this deserves some consideration.  Combat is mostly the same as before – press buttons, things die – though there is arguably more AE stuff going on than before.  There are no new talents for existing classes.  There are less skills, though the skill dance is more complex than before as everything seems to be on cooldowns.

No flying.

Dalaran has it’s own Hearthstone.  But it doesn’t have an auction house.  So… everyone should be in the MoP capital, for practical reasons.  Again.

Very similar to WoD, there are world uniques and treasures to collect on the map.  Dissimilar is that all the bosses I’ve found so far can be soloed, and scale to more people.  Treasures seem more abundant and less based on climbing to weird places, but more about exploration.  It’s an overall improvement.

I’ve died.  A few times.  Not to gimmicks, but to actual combat scenarios where I mucked up – again mostly due to AE.

Artifact weapons are ok.  I’ve leveled mine up a bit based on drops (lots of drops) and taken some additional skills in its tree.  Item levels are boosted by slotting items in the weapons, and those are obtained from quests.  So there is some progression.

Quests are a mixed bag.  Lots of kill X or collect Y.  Lots of it.  There are some different ones, where you need to follow a set path, or sneak around.  Just not a whole lot.  The optional quests require you to spend double or triple the time in an area to clear the objectives.  Since they go away at 110, I would argue that they are not worth the time.

Overall

Clearly these are first impressions.  The game is an overall improvement over WoD.  It’s not baby-bathwater, but it’s forward movement.  I have some questions about longevity of certain design choices, but time will tell.

The Myth of Melee

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If the Legion invasions have taught me anything, it’s that melee is an ever-aging design mechanic.  Aside from an MMO, what multiplayer game has anyone playing melee combat in open spaces?  (Slight side note, why do bosses give such big chunks of XP and nothing when dead?  It means you’re safer tagging and hiding.)

Whether it’s indicative or not for Legion bosses going forward, invasions are incredibly anti-melee.  There are rings of death everywhere, and most have range issues, so that you need to run away from the boss for periods of time.  I’ve done it on my Monk, Hunter, Warlock, DK, Druid, and Shaman now and woo-boy does it suck with a DK (monk at least has some self-healing).

Wildstar has very few massive AE attacks, and those that do exist impact ranged as much as melee.  Honestly, it sucks evenly for everyone.  FF14 takes a similar approach, where attacks are either cone based (tank dancers) or massive AE that fill the screen.  Why does WoW still focus on AE mechanics that are within 20 yards?

Hell, more importantly, why do melee attacks have such a small range/hit box?  Positioning, I can get that.  Anyone can face the cone behind a boss.  But short-ranged AE attacks, or AE pulses that require 2-3x more time for melee to get out of, and that you deal zero damage… that’s just punishment.  Playing recently makes me remember why I shelved all my melee players – my Rogue in particular, due to the dumbness of the melee penalty.  Did I mention that bosses are bigger, hit boxes are smaller, so that you can barely see what’s going on?

You can certainly make an argument that it makes thematic sense to have melee combat.  You could also make the argument that spell casting loses accuracy/power the farther away you are from the target.  Yet the mechanical implementation is where the trouble begins.  Other games are able to find a viable balance, where the benefits of range are offset by the sacrifice of cast time (FF14 in particular with a 2.5s GCD).  It certainly was that way in vanilla – even the hybrid tax made sense in terms of time investment. (Makes no sense today, since you can level an alt in a couple days).

But over time the ranged folk were upset they were losing uptime due to mobile mechanics and class homogenization starting taking hold.  There’s honestly very little difference between the classes now, you press 1, 2, 3 then 2 again.  It’s just that some of the classes are going to eat dirt way more often.

Demon Hunters seem to exemplify that to me.  They are highly focused on movement, almost like an early apology for what’s coming.

Perhaps it’s more that I’ve been playing games where there was a balance between melee and range, and that the lack of it in WoW is so jarring.  Maybe it’s expectations that with a new expansion that rejigs many mechanics is somehow not fixing one of the key gripes since the game launched 12 years ago.  Hell, maybe I’m just too old for this.

Either way, looks like I’ll be benching my melee squad.

Summer’s Over

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Alive and well, thank you.  As in the last couple posts, we bought a cottage on a lake/river and have spent the majority of the summer on its shores.  Canadiana.

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Spent the summer with a small boat to fish, as fishing is extremely fun for me (so much so, that an MMO has to have fishing for me to be hooked).  Sadly, there were issues with the motor and my last week of vacation wasn’t all that much fun being land-bound.  So we bought a new (used) boat.  A Legend Excalibur 18, with a 115ETEC motor.  We pick it up on Friday, but here’s a pick of the current model.  It’s a good compromise for me wanting to fish, and my wife wanting to cruise/pull things.

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Health

Cottage country and exercise don’t usually go hand-in-hand.  Still, I made due with a pair of adjustable free weights (up to 50lbs each) as much as a I could.  When I was home, I continued to use the barbell and StrongLifts 5×5 program.  Squats are 240, Bench is 175, Rows are 160, Press is 130, Deadlifts are 260.  Accessories are good too, with a 25lbs chinup/dip going, 250lbs shrug and 95lbs curl.  I still have progress on a few of the movements, but not that much before having to swap programs.  Maybe another 2 months worth, as it’s about 90 minutes of work due to the rests between sets.

Also, I really like beer.  Like is probably not the correct word.  I had too much over the summer (I always do) and am a few lbs heavier now than in June.  I can get rid of that in the next couple months anyhow, and be close to ideal weight for the holidays.

Gaming

The cottage doesn’t have high-speed internet, so what gaming I had was board-based, or an emulation on my tablet.  In the few spots I did have at home, I gave the Batman Arkham Knight a try.  It’s better than the previous ones, certainly, but the batmobile/tank is off-putting.  I gave up on the Division pretty quickly, as the end game is non-existent.  It’s worse than when D3 originally launched and Inferno mode required perfect stats.  At least there you could game the AH and it was a PvE game.  Division requires the same perfect stats but you need to be in a PvP zone to get them.  Surround by demi-gods with nothing to do other than ruin your farm because they already have the gear.  Too bad, because the game from 1-30 was great.

I have recently installed another game though.

WoW and Legion

I have no shame in admitting I reinstalled WoW.  You can buy time with gold, and I had more than enough gold to last a year+.  I also purchased Legion, because I have spare money to burn (not really with a cottage/boat).  Where WoD was a baby-bathwater exercise after Pandaria, Legion is taking a different approach, with multiple game paths and simplified builds.  My monk in WoD (remember, they came out in Pandaria) had 3 bars of skills – now he has 5 buttons.  My Hunter is down to 4 skills.  It makes for a clean interface.  There are interactions (procs) between skills, so yeah, you could mash 4 buttons, or learn to read the patterns and do more.  The whole easy to learn/difficult to master portion I guess.

Demon Hunters are ok.  I’ve mained a Rogue and a Monk, so  I have certain expectations.  DH don’t feel as smooth as either of them, more of the clunkyness of a DK waiting for rune procs way back when.  They feel more powerful mind you.  Time will tell.

The invasions going on now until launch are a neat way to level alts.  Heirlooms have been streamlined into a separate interface and I already had the level 90 variants.  An extra 8k gold to get them to work until level 100 (cloth ones) and send the alts to invasions.  The extra 45% is noticeable.  Clearing one invasion gives about 75% of a level (from 90 beyond), and there are 6 that spawn every 2 hours.  Each takes about 30 minutes or so to clear.  And each gives 2 loot boxes that provide level appropriate gear.  My hunter went from 90-100 in 3 days and has ilvl700 gear.  That’s the gear required to to heroic raiding.

Long story short, it’s fun enough for now and doesn’t have any monthly costs for the foreseeable future.