WoW BfA – For Starters

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Let’s start off with the Stormrage Server population.

stormrage stats

There are more monks on Stormrage than there entire populations on other servers

 

It is #3 in total population, and the largest pro-Alliance ratio in the game.  There are over 900,000 Alliance toons.  There are only 2 other servers with more than 900,000 total players.  So yeah, it’s big. And a launch server, so it’s also old.  The general rule of thumb is that if there’s a problem with WoW, Stormrage is the first to feel it.  Guess where I play?

BfA Start

I had done all of the lead up quests to allow entry to BfA.  A lot of people have talked about what comes next.  Magni has you click rocks and gives you an uber azurite amulet.  Takes about 2 minutes, then you go see Anduin and he sends you and Jaina to the isles.  This coming from Legion, where each weapon had a unique scenario that lasted 10-15 minutes.  I remember finishing this quest and going “that’s it?”

Anyhow, you end up in a boat, Jaina talks to her mom who disowns her, and you end up in jail.  There are plenty of videos of this, but gosh does it look good.  Kul Tirans have amazing models.  The world simply looks amazing.  There’s green and brown, but no neon and no demons.  The city (Boralus) is sprawling, and a look that reminds me more of Borean Tundra (if it wasn’t frozen).  The art/world builders deserve a lot of kudos for what they’ve done.

Stormsong Valley

This is a bit more like Mist of Pandaria, with large rolling hills, waterchannels, tunnels to explore, and tentacles everywhere.  Ok, maybe not so much MoP.  But I wasn’t 10 minutes into this zone before I saw tentacles.

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Taken from r/wow

Those bad guys cover the entire east side of the map, with a dungeon on the NE.  I crossed what looked like the Bifrost to get there.  It looks great, and the story is cool.  It’s a bit on the nose though?

The middle of the map has the Horde coming in for a bombing run.  Not quite sure why, and that quest area is my least favorite.  There are animals to the south, bee area to the SE which is neat, awesome looking quillboars to the SW.  Then there are pirates.  Lots of pirates.  They look great.  I miss the BB days…

I did end up replacing my artifact weapon with a green weapon.  That hurt.  I’ll eventually transmog to something else, but after 2 years of the same general look, it is hard to let it go.

The questing is a lot different than Legion.  There are what seems like 20 or so questing nodes, and there are breadcrumbs between them, but no real order of preference to move forward.  It feels like the next logical step from Blizz after levels clearly don’t matter.  I am exploring at my own pace, and if I don’t like one part, I move to another.  It works.

The downside to this is that my questlog is overflowing.  I have targets all over my map. At least it looks like the quest cap has either been removed, or put to a much higher level.

Now What

I’m at 113 now, with about a quarter of the zone to go.  Then 2 more zones afterwards.  I have no interest in blasting through the content, I want to pay attention to the details and take in the sights.  Being a gatherer has a large boost to experience gain, which means I’ll hit 120 long before I’m done the questing content.

For now, I’m taking down a rare when they get in my way.  I’m leaving all the treasure chests for when I hit 120.  I know a lot of guides recommend putting your collected gear into the scrapper for material.  I am not all that convinced right now.  A weapon could get me ~75g.  So maybe I should scrap cheaper gloves.

At this rate, I guess I’ll hit 120 later next week and then try out some dungeons.  So far, so good in terms of minute to minute gameplay and world building.  Still wondering where this yellow brick road will lead…

Torchlight MMO

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Well, sort of an MMO.  A shared world action RPG seems a bit more like Destiny, Monster Hunter than the more RPG fare.

I really love action RPGs.  There’s something about that model that hits the right buttons for just 15 minutes more.  It takes the right combination of bits and bobs to keep me on one specific game, versus another mind you.  Diablo 3 usually lasts a week or two per season.  Path of Exile gets a few weeks of play every 4-6 months.  Grim Dawn gets some play every so often as well.

Torchlight 1 was a neat experiment on the model.  It did a lot right, but had some rough edges.  Torchlight 2 was a whole lot better.  If you recall, it launched about 4 months after Diablo 3.  This was the crappy version of Diablo 3, with the real-money auction house.  Torchlight 2 was a welcome reprieve, with a solid foundation and decent end-game play.  The issue there was scaling at the tail end.  Where Blizzard put a steep mountain (originally) then shaved it to a curve (in RoS), Torchlight 2 had what felt like a simple ramp, until you hit a massive wall.  It was also highly dependent on a set of specific builds that did not work during the leveling process.  Still, it was open to mods and was a game of the time.

What I really liked was the setting, music and art style.  The cartoon-look worked for me.  The fact that the screen didn’t fill up with a bajillion enemies worked.  That I could clearly see everything worked.  Pets that auto-sold junk, and returned with potions.  If Steam is accurate, I have over 200 hours in there.  It was a sad day when Runic stopped making games and was bought out.

Did I mention that Torchlight has fishing?  Yeah, that’s a quick way to my pockets.

So let’s just say I am pleasantly excited for what is to come.  The video above is just a teaser and probably reminds people more of Dauntless than other.  Still, I’ve put my name in for the beta when it comes out.

Server Woes

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Stormrage went down faster than… well it went down.  No surprise.  It goes down every major patch.

The advantages of an older server is that there is a large establishment of, well, everything.  It’s the highest % of Alliance as well.  Finding a guild means just logging in and taking one of the dozen invites you get within 2 minutes.  Auction House prices are usually pretty cheap.  The actual in-game world is part of a shared pool of servers.  I mean, I see Horde players, I just know they are not on Stormrage.

Still, my Stormrage roots are mostly gone.  The majority of folks I played with have long since left the game and a server transfer would not be out of the question.  CRZ would allow me to join another guild on a linked server… but those outside are off limits.

Except…I have 7 max level characters and transfers cost $32 a pop.  I am not spending $210 on that effort.  Sure, the DH would be the least impacted since I could get one to 110 in about 2 days of effort.  That leaves 6 folks to go – the youngest of all being the Monk. I am not all the interested in re-leveling everyone again, certainly not after the 7.3.5 / 8.0 changes that pretty much tripled leveling time.

Which really makes you wonder why Blizz doesn’t offer mass character transfer services.  I’m sure there are other people like me that would be willing to pay for a large swap, at a reasonable rate.  Say $100.

Who knows, maybe I’ll level yet another character on another server and see what happens.  Worst thing would be getting the costs for flight speed unlocked… everything else is account wide, right?

BfA Launch

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From the /r

In my humorous thoughts, I considered building my own bingo card.  Lo and behold someone had already done so and covered most of it already.  I guess we’ll see the Teldrassil/Server is burning memes later in the day.

I still have not ordered BfA.  I play on Stormrage, a launch server with 99.9% Alliance characters, which has gone down every single expansion launch for multiple days.  Which has also had stability issues since 8.0 – which apparently have a lot to do with the auto-groupfinder function it seems.  Gut says a full week before it’s considered “normal”.

Not to say I haven’t prepared for an expansion.  My bags are relatively empty. My Legion currencies are all spent and gold collected.  That action in the last week has added about 100,000 gold to my coffers.  I wonder if that actually has any meaning anymore, aside from WoW time tokens.

So tonight I’m heading back up to the cottage and working remotely tomorrow. I think it will be much more relaxing.  Plus, it’s the Perseid meteor showers right now combined with a new moon – making for some rather spectacular nights staring at the sky.

Related – I just came back from a weekend at the cottage with 2 families of friends.  Spectacular weather, food to die for, tons of tubing, great kids, long nights of guitar by the campfire, and very little sleep.  Likely the best weekend I’ve had in years.  Really makes you appreciate what you have.

 

Dark – Solid SciFi

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  • Do you like suspense?
  • Do you like sci-fi?
  • Do you like to see people tick when under a lot of stress?
  • Do you like coherent plots?
  • Do you like German film?

Then I have the series for you!

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10 x 1hour episodes

Good sci-fi is the depiction of people coping with life, and the science portion is a tool to help the story go forward.  Dark does a pretty good job with this.

It’s the story of a mysterious town (well more like cave) and how a family/town reacts when kids go missing.  It actually takes a while for that missing part to really get going, as it has a lot of exposure to the very large cast.  By the 3rd episode, you’re given 95% of the bits required to see the entire story.  It may not be obvious when you see something, but in hindsight the story is well structured.

I don’t want to go too much into the plot as that spoils a lot of the fun.  What I can say is that the story is consistent, and the characters actions have impacts.  Given the main sci-fi mechanism used in this story, that had to be in place.

Kids are generally taboo in sci-fi, in that they are pretty much invincible.  Teens, those are fair game.  That 5-10 range… that’s usually the domain of drama, not sci-fi.  That part was both refreshing, and disturbing, since I have not been de-sensitized to it.

There are some tough scenes to watch play out.  Even the people who appear to be evil, are actually trying to make things go forward for the greater good.  Except one guy – he’s a nutter.  Mind you even by the end of the series I still had a lot of questions around him.

The sci-fi part is still well done, and not the enemy of the series.  This is in contrast to Stranger Things 2.  In the first one, the bad guys opened up the upside down.  In the second season, the upside down was the bad guys.  It may seem minor, but that split away from human vs human makes the plot take a different path.  Dark manages to stick to the people factor all the way through.

In the technical realm, the series is quite, you know, dark.  Quite a few night scenes, very little color.  It feels almost dystopian, but then again few people ever seem to smile.  The shots are generally well done, if simple.  There’s next to no CGI.  The music is heavy on the strings, a bit like an orchestral flair for the intense moments.  I think it works.

The weakest point is the voice overs.  The leads are ok, but the supporting cast gets some rough treatment.  I tried watching in German with subtitles and that was less fun.  German seems to demand my attention as an evocative language, and staring down at text makes it hard to concentrate.

Overall, it’s one of the better sci-fi series on Netflix.  It’s entirely consistent, with no real astounding episodes, or weak ones either.  There’s a clear setup for a sequel, but then again, all sci-fi stories finish with a twist.

 

Morally Grey

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There is a big difference between and idea and the execution of that idea.  Great idea to go to the Moon but it took a very long time, and some really smart people to make it happen.

The idea of a morally grey character is a good one.  It fits in with the times of leadership trying to make the best of a bad situation.. and society’s fascination with anti-heroes.  We understand altruism and evil, but it doesn’t interest us anymore.  We need the complexity.

I’ll refer to a memorable character for me, and that’s Mark Purefoy’s portrayal of Marc Antony in HBO’s Rome.

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Smug bugger

The question of why he’s interesting is the point.  He is an anti-hero… in fact often times he’s simply a villain.  His quick to emotions, egotistical, violent, and will hit on anything that moves.  His is the embodiment of borderline control… as clearly he’s moved up the Roman ranks.  The audience can empathize with his situation in nearly all cases, if not outright support his actions.  When he does die, he does it on his terms.

His arc is known well in advance, given that there are still records of his actions from history.  It’s still an interpretation granted, and writer’s discretion does exist for some steps.  The point is that even we he makes reprehensible decisions, things that clearly will not work out in the long run (like his perpetual bender in season 2), viewers are still interested and wondering what will come next.  Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad.

In comparison, no less well written is Augustus, who represents technocracy and lack of emotion.  He goes from petulant child, to isolated adult with world domination in mind.  By the end, he’s lost all his close allies.  Which again, is based on historic records.  He makes the same difficult decisions, and without emotion.  He cuts off his family when he believes they won’t help the longer game.  Essentially the other side of the coin to Marc Antony, who acts with this heart.

In both cases, regardless of the actions taken, they are always in the scope of their character. They may not make rational decisions based on the viewer’s set of moral/ethics, but they do may them based on their own.

It’s a real testament to the writers and to the actors that this is pulled off.

HBO Factor

No question, in the short term most HBO shows that are green lit have solid writing for the first few years.  Few can keep going past 3 seasons, arcs are generally done.  And they get a lot of pitches over the years, they have the luxury of picking the best ones and going forward.  It’s not like we’re raining Sopranos.

Blizzard

I think the downside here is the lack of consistency and direction.  Story arcs are years in the making.  They clearly knew that Teldrassil was going to burn in order to allow their CGI team time to make the video, and build an expansion around it.  They are often 2 years in the future.  It’s based on concepts.  Great!

Then you get shoddy execution.  Yrel is very good example.  She’s a freed slave to start WoD, then becomes the world leader at the end.  No idea how that actually happened, since the middle act of WoD was never released, and it seriously looks as if Blizzard is ignoring anything that came from that expansion (except Garrosh’ death).

Relating to Sylvanas and her actions, Rohan has a good point:

In my opinion, the problem is the writers’ use of emotion. Emotion must be anchored in reason. If emotion is divorced from reason, the character is irrational. And no one likes following irrational leaders. It’s especially bad for Sylvanas, who’s basic character is the cool, calculating, ruthless archetype. A night elf talks smack to Sylvanas, she gets mad, and burns the tree in a fit of anger? That’s so far out of character that it’s just senseless.

Legion had plenty of morally grey stories, along with lot of redemption.  It feels real and rational.  Suramar works in particular because of this… the story is just a bunch of bad options and people trying to make the best of it.

The bridging novel and comic have some interesting threads.  It’s a good thing that they brought Christie Golden to help with the overall story arc.  It’s jarring to have such quality provided in a consistent fashion, and then have the past few weeks of delivery that are rough.  Time will tell if that improves.

 

Battle for Lordaeron

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1 week to go.  I still have yet to purchase BfA, so that gives you some context.  Seems more of an experiment and thing to do rather than hype at this point.  WoW has typically been about building, about growth.  Forward movement.  Everything since Sargeras was given the boot has been about loss. As much as the world loses 2 major capitals, players are losing every neat bit of Legion (gear/skills)… and I’m still having no idea what it is we’re getting back or building towards – other than more war.

Back on point, this week saw the release of the Battle for Lordaeron event.  Same concept as the starting event for Legion, you and 19 random people go through events related to the cinematic from last year.  Reminder, this video:

Neato!

Well… the actual scenario doesn’t play out that way.  There is no mass res from Anduin (he does cast a large bubble though).  Sylvanas doesn’t join the fight.  Feels like a movie trailer which incorporates the feel of the movie, without any actual scenes.  Fine.

In isolation, the event does work.  It has the major faction leaders… a best-of run of heroes.  It takes about 30 minutes to get through all the parts.  There are 3 main phases, all of which consist of filling a bar, then taking out a big-baddy.  That would be a tank, a druid, then Saurfang.  Tank is a patchwerk fight.  Druid has some neat wind effects and would be a fun dungeon boss.  Saurfang… I’ll get to that.  The event is a nice one to participate.  It rewards you (at the start no less) with a weapon that is worse than what the War of Thorns could provide… so that’s a bit odd.  Useful for fresh 110 I guess?

Recap

I like sci-fi fantasy.  I am fully aware that there are tropes that Blizzard depends on (the hero journey for one, and WoD was a trope-fest).  Blizz has come a long was from the BC days of story telling, with highs and lows along the way.  Legion was, ignoring the artifact questlines, a consistent tale.  The best part to me was seeing how Xe’ra was arguably a bad “thing”, trying to convert Illidan to the light against his will.

Sargeras is dead.  He plunged his super sword into the planet.  Magni/Khadgar convince the heros to sacrifice their uber weapons to stop the forward damage, and we agree.  That still causes Azerite (planet blood) to seep out.  Apparently it’s both powerful and valuable… and somehow after a couple thousand years we never knew it existed.  Fine.

Before the Storm (novel) is about the discovery of Azerite, the bonds between the Horde and Alliance, and the want of the Forsaken to either really die, or find peace.  Sylvanas wants none of this.  Novel ends with a new type of Forsaken joining the Alliance (Calia), that’s resurrected by a mixture of light/void.  Nice setup, right?

Battle for Azeroth

For reasons Sylvanas wants to conquer Teldrassil.  Ok, that’s actually a passable story for her character.  For poor reasons she gets offended and burns it down.  I won’t bother with the logistics of how this is not possible, but let’s just agree that she goes bonkers.  Blightcaller is good with it.

We learn from another video that Saurfang is not happy with this choice.  He knows what’s coming and it will wipe out the Horde.  He wants to quit/die.  Zappy boi somehow makes him change his mind.  This makes sense to this point.  When Saurfang decides to take on the entire Alliance force solo that seems a bit much, no?  Maybe this is a Loki ploy, in that he knows he’ll get captured?  But his lens is that he wants to die… so I don’t quite get what’s going on.

Blightcaller is usually mob boss #2 and does whatever Sylvanas says.  Alrighty.  There’s a scene of hesitation when she orders the city blown up.  Curious.

Baine objects to letting Saurfang die alone, then swallows his pride knowing he can’t do anything – yet.  The other Horde heroes are inconsequential to the story line.

Jaina quit the Alliance council at the start of Legion.  Outside of the game (novel/comic) Jaina reflects on her rage after the Legion is defeated and vows to support Kul Tiras.  Fine, pull that story string of redemption.  Doesn’t explain at all why she chose that specific time to join Anduin with a magic flying boat.  It’s a bit too much on the nose for me, but hey, that’s how Blizzard write stories.

Anduin does what Anduin does.  As much as Sylvanas is the trigger for this expansion, Anduin is the one who makes the story progress.  The anti-hero days seem gone, and we’re in black/white mode.  Which is too bad.  Leadership is about making the best choice out of multiple bad options.

 

So where are we now?  Teldrassil is burned.  Lordaeron is blown up with the blight.  Sylvanas escaped, and sacrificed a significant part of the Horde to do so.  Her teammates don’t appear convinced, and Saurfang is captured.  Jaina is back in the Alliance fold, and Anduin has to be wondering what’s coming next from the Horde.

Looking at all the Warcraft media, it seems clear that there are larger plans at work, for a more unified planet.  Sylvanas is the outlier here.  A story that can only go one way, unless there’s a massive rug being pulled from under.  I am waiting for the shoe to drop.  And all sorts of other idioms. When are the void lords coming again?

No Man’s Sky

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Half price + content patch = curiosity.

I think the best way to explain NMS is that’s it’s a prettier version than Minecraft.  An a scale larger that cannot adequately be represented with words.

I started off on an inhospitable planet, with breadcrumbs to tell me what I needed to do to get off said planet.  The controls are simple enough.  WASD to move.  Mouse to interact.  Z/X for menu access.  The rest sort of works itself out.  There’s a sort of suspension of belief that sodium from 1 plant is enough to keep your hyper-complicated hazard suit working… but hey – I can make anti-matter with rocks.  Don’t argue with it.

Planets are fun to explore, though not in the sense of “an entire planet”.  After about 10 minutes you’ve seen all there is to see and can go to the next.  Or skip that one entirely if it doesn’t have resources that interest you, or a climate that won’t kill you.  Space movement feels a bit slow in terms of turns, but fast in terms of distance traveled.  It is really hard to represent 3D space in computer games, when the background is all black. For a long time I was wonder “is this it?”. Then I went to the Galactic Map.

Good golly miss molly.

nms

You can visit those dots.  Nearly all of them.  Not just the ones connected by lines.

That’s pretty much when the whole thing sort of came crashing down upon me.  In a few hours I had explored a half dozen planets and 2 space stations.  If the numbers check, there are actually close to 18 billion planets to explore.  The math makes my head hurt.

I just keep moving on, one small step at a time.  Trying to learn some of the local (Gek for me) language, one word at a time. Mine a planet, explore the local fauna, see if there’s secrets to be found, move to the next.  I am purposefully avoiding wikis or reading about the game outside of playing.  It’s a game based entirely on exploration, so why spoil it?

It is a tremendous technical achievement.  It’s rare enough to see a high concept game come out, but to see this one come out, take a severe beating, then this “super patch” is on another level.

I’ll hold off a larger opinion for later in the game.  For now, I consider myself highly interested in what this onion has to show below the layers.  Even if it only ever becomes a mining simulator with lots of customization, it’s a damn fine looking one.

Poor Saurfang

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Blizzard was in China and due to that timing, this launched late on Thursday.  I won’t even both saying spoilers anymore…everyone knows that a giant tree was burned, right?

First thing, holy crud the animators at Blizzard are good.  They should have worked on Superman’s mustache.  In isolation, this is is a tremendous technical achievement, not to mention the poignancy of the actual storyline.  This is the honorable orc I mentioned previously… who’s lost pretty much everything and everyone he knows (including his son).  You get a tremendous sense of that in this video.  Hats off.

Second, Zappy Boi!

 

Now the nuanced bits, in relation to how this video intersects with the actual War of Thorns.  If you recall, Sylvanas was pitied and she decided to burn down a city in spite.  It was such a self-serving act that made absolutely no sense in the larger scale of things.  The interwebs went nusto.  In succinct terms, it was dumb.

Saurfang clearly articulates this within the video.  There is no long game to be had here, and the Alliance is going to act in revenge.  Not like they have a choice, if Sylvanas is going to randomly burn down cities, then they need to take her out of the picture.  He knows what’s coming, he’s seen it before.  He’s tired of it.

I’m not sure if he wants to die so much as surrender in that walk across the field.   The Alliance would surely capture him.  Zappy Boi gives him a really weird talk about how the Horde is all he has, and Saurfang turns around, then gives a big roar.  This is where it goes off the rails for me.

Sylvanas’ actions will cause the death of numerous members of the Horde, for no sane reason.  She demonstrates worse qualities than Garrosh did.  He may have been mad, but he at least had a goal and took steps to get there.  The Horde is still healing it’s wounds from that time period, and now this crazy nut is in charge.  At no point has she shown any care for the Horde as a whole – it’s always about herself and the Forsaken.  I can appreciate that character trait, but the folks around her (in lore) certainly should take some issue to that.

Saurfang is put in a position where he has to support yet another leader that is acting irrational and putting the Horde in grave danger.  He almost decides he’s had enough and wants to quit, then through some weird twist decides to take up his axe and go to town.

Everyone has seen Braveheart?  You know that part of the war where Wallace looks back for support and the supporting armies desert him?  He still manages a win and then goes after them – ball on chain fun is to be had.

Saurfang in this spot is provided three options.  One is to quit.  One is to follow.  One is to lead.  Quitting apparently is not in his blood – that’s been pretty evident over the years.  Following is something he does well, but it seems to be driving him off the deep end because he sees where it’s going to lead (worse than Garrosh).  He could also simply decide to abandon the Banshee Queen and take 80% of the Horde under his leadership.  He’d get all the Orcs, Trolls, Tauren for sure.  Probably a solid set of the various Elf races too.  That leaves Goblins to make a strategic choice (lore dictates they take the easy/life path).  There’s a risk that Sylvanas lives through this fight and goes more crazy.  It’s pretty easy to see how the Horde + Alliance vs Sylvanas ends.  We already did that raid.

 

All that to say that as beautiful and well-crafted a video as this is, and at how it presents the Horde as not being unified behind their leader, it just reinforces the difficult storyline predicament that Blizzard has put themselves into.  Any Horde player that does not support Sylvanas’ actions is going to instantly empathize with Saurfang.  And that splits the Horde up – again.  Vs. an Alliance that has never been more unified and focused.

I am so utterly confused as to what’s being attempted here that I am paying even more attention to the storyline than normal.  So I guess that’s a silver lining?

Blaugust

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blaugustrebornlogo2018

Just dooo eeeeet!

The list for this is pretty large.  I am not on that list for really poor reasons.  I know the majority of the folks that are mentors on that list, so it would seem a sane step to be part of it too.  Ahh well.

I do think that this is a great initiative.  In the wide majority of cases, I prefer written form to video.  There’s a concise and direct aspect to this.  Unless I’m trying to build/fix something, opinion pieces are much more palatable when in written form.  The main reason here is that people think faster than they speak, and speak faster than they write.  The end result is that the written word is often a reasoned position, while the talking points are broken ides.  Mostly.

I am selfish in that I write for myself, as an outlet for my ideas.  There’s often too much in my head and this is really quite useful to get some space in there.  It just so happens that those ideas resonate with other folks.  As Bob Ross would say, happy accident.  As with other bloggers who have been around for a while, I’ve been offered to write targeted posts, and be compensated for it.  I’ve certainly done that on other sites, but never on this one. I stopped doing it after a while since it felt more like a job, and I want to have fun while writing.

I write in spurts, but rarely more than once per day.  I prefer to just schedule my ideas, or save them in drafts (I have about 50 of those).  I find that I can go weeks without inspiration, then it comes back.  It isn’t so much a habit as it is a hobby.

I firmly believe that writing has to have a personal goal, otherwise you lose interest quickly.  It takes time to write, even really small bits.  You want that writing to feel rewarding.  Sure it feels good to get a like, but if that’s your goal, then you’re going to have a bad time.  Love the act of writing, start small, and figure out what parts of that process you enjoy the most.  Then focus on those.  Have fun writing and it will be with you for the rest of your days.