- Still taking my little break with warcraft.
- Only logging on to raid for the most part.
- I finally won two tier pieces, my first two tier pieces.
- Sadly they are normal mode ones.
- It is funny how replacing 2 685 pieces with 2 670 pieces is an upgrade.
- To any hunters out there with this question rolling around in their head, yes, it is worth putting the tier pieces on.
- Yes, even with losing 15 item levels it is worth putting the two piece on.
- Hey, people, don't make me have to slap you with the wake up stick.
- How something works is more important than item level.
- The two piece set works better at 670 than the two pieces otherwise as 685 do.
- Don't let item level fool you.
- If blizzard wanted to keep things in line using item level as a guide I have an idea.
- The 670 tier pieces are, of course, 670 when alone.
- But as soon as you have two equip, they are both 690.
- There, hope that explains it better.
- So I finally got 2 upgrades and they "appear" to be down grades.
- Does this make up for not getting any gear for many weeks?
- Hell no blizzard.
- Don't think because you threw me a bone in normal mode I am going to come back all happy.
- Even if you did it in heroic I still would not come back all happy.
- Two pieces of gear do not make up for the total disaster of an expansion thus far.
- But I will admit, it felt nice to finally win something again.
- I had my new highmaul mission the last time I was on.
- I sent it out, 100% of course, and have not been back on to check it.
- Want to know why?
- Because the last thing I need is to see I won the neck for the 5th time in a row.
- See where I am getting at here blizzard?
- It is no longer "exciting" to log in.
- It is no longer "fun" to log in.
- I have a highmaul mission sitting there done.
- It could contain a piece I need.
- I just do not care.
- Because the game has beaten me.
- I no longer enjoy the process.
- I no longer enjoy getting spit in the face by the random number generator over and over.
- The game needs to be fixed.
- It is beyond broken in terms of how gear is attained.
- Week after week with no gear then I win three pieces in one night.
- One of which I will not use because it is a lower item level.
- I still have not won a piece on heroic, at all, outside of trash farming.
- And I keep getting the neck from my baggie after getting the ring multiple times before that.
- So, think about it, with no upgrades coming, where is the carrot.
- You want me to log in, you want me to keep playing, you need to dangle the carrot.
- RNG is not the carrot.
- RNG is the shotgun that will kill the game.
- At least for me.
- Admittedly the only thing I could get from the highmaul cache that I would need is the scales of doom.
- So the chances it would be something useful are slim, I understand that, but you would think it would at least not be another freaking neck.
- Would love the trinket with a gem slot, like it seems everyone is walking about with lately.
- The least, as in absolute least, blizzard can do to help the situation is add protection to the caches.
- So you can not get the same thing until you have cycled through everything available to you.
- Then it goes to random.
- Nah, why would blizzard do that.
- It would give me hope I'd get the scales mythic some day.
- I would get it last of course, but at least I "know" I would get it.
- And that my friends, is a carrot.
- Knowing you will get something is a carrot.
- I do so miss valor gear.
- Sure it never had a great piece like that for sale, but at least it gave me something to aim for.
- At least it gave me a reason to play alts because I could gear them up slowly if I worked at it.
- It did not leave everything to RNG and if you were lucky enough to get something.
- At least it gave me a reason to log in.
- Thanks blizzard for not giving me any reason to log in.
- Played FF 14 all weekend.
- Made it to 30 on one of my characters.
- Or should I say one of my classes to 30.
- You only need one character and that one character can play all classes.
- Just change your weapons and you change your class.
- Pretty cool idea.
- But I do have some gripes about FF 14 as well.
- As you might expect.
- It is giving hell to my color blindness.
- There are some areas I have to stare at the map instead of the zone because it is so dark I can not see where the path is.
- I walk into walls.
- I can't tell the difference between the wall and the way to walk.
- It is not fun, not even in the slightest.
- And they do the night thing where they highlight an area where the quest is.
- Doesn't help being I can not tell the difference between the highlight color and the background map color.
- I have to basically put my face right up to the screen and zoom in the map as far as it can go to see a tiny difference in the color.
- Is there a way to change that color?
- Please tell me there is a way to change that color?
- Why do all games hate people that are color blind?
- And bag space.
- I thought wow had issues, I was wrong.
- There are a million and one items and you need them all for crafting one thing or another.
- And being each "profession" as we know them are actually classes and you can be all classes that means you can do all "professions" so you need to keep all of that stuff if you want to level them all.
- And you know me, I do want to level them all.
- So that means a billions items I need to hold on to.
- Yet they only give you a limited amount of space.
- This is not final fantasy, at least not the final fantasy I know.
- What ever happened to the drop down lists where you could keep everything?
- Massive amounts of everything.
- That is the bag system it could of used, should have used.
- At least for the crafting materials.
- Got a retainer, it is like a bank with added functions.
- Mine is a cute little cat girl which just seems so wrong.
- I cat girl, in a maid outfit, that works for you and will do anything you want.
- And I just sold this game to a bunch of pervs all over the internet that stumbled across that line describing it.
- She will go on adventures for me.
- She will sell stuff on the auction house for me.
- She will even collect the gold from the sales for me so I do not have to.
- She will then relist the items for me.
- Or she will just work as more bag space for me.
- Which is exactly what I am using her for at the moment.
- I found one thing warcraft does a million better than FF 14, that is for sure.
- And that is stopping gold sellers.
- I can not remember when was the last time I got a gold selling whisper in warcraft.
- It has to be years, maybe even many years.
- I think I have more people blacklisted on FF 14 than I have mobs killed on my way to 30.
- I can not go 10 minutes without getting a whisper trying to sell me gold.
- Or friend request from a gold seller.
- And even in the cities they spam 24/7.
- And I do not mean once in a while, I mean they hit it over and over again every 2 seconds.
- Why does square do nothing about this?
- Blizzard, props to you, you do a bang up job on keeping my whispers gold farmer free, I never appreciated it as much as I do now.
- Looked into addons for FF 14.
- Did you know addons are illegal in FF 14?
- Things like DPS meters even.
- Nothing, not even super simple things.
- Guess I will never be healing in FF 14 because I can't imagine what life would be like without something like healbot or some mouse over macros.
- Did a few dungeons that were required because of the quest line for my character.
- I have no freaking idea what all those symbols by everyones name means.
- Not a clue.
- The dungeons themselves where easy enough and having experience in other games made me not feel like a noob, even if I did forever feel completely lost.
- And for the record, tab targeting there sucks just as bad as it does in warcraft.
- Have something two doors down and on another floor but two mobs right in front of you and you hit tab, guess which one it targets 100 times out of 100.
- One of those mobs two doors down and on another floor, always.
- Will any game every make a tab targeting system that actually works?
- As much as people say recount does not matter, I hated not having it.
- I could not see if I was pulling my weight.
- I was trying my best, had no complaints, things died fast enough, and oddly enough even if I had never done the fights being I was experienced I followed all mechanics but I still would like to see the numbers I was doing, so I can see myself get better.
- If I can not see the numbers how do I know if I am doing it right.
- How can I test if what works and what doesn't.
- Performance might not matter in a leveling dungeon, but it is a start to the learning process for me at least.
- Not sure I can get into a game that does not allow me to have addons.
- But it is serving as a fun distraction for the time being.
- And it is really deep and with lots to do.
- The completest in my will want max out all classes, but not sure if it will catch my interest long enough to do that.
- Not to mention, I can't see leveling the other classes as being fun being I will have done all the quests already on my main class.
- So I just grind to level them?
- Well, I guess that "could" work.
- I will need materials to level up those crafting classes, or as we call them professions.
- Maybe I will just grind the mobs that drop what I need to level the other classes.
- Kill two birds with one stone.
- But that is still a long way away.
- I plan to log into warcraft tonight, check my highmaul cache and cry when I get the neck again.
- Maybe I should consider doing FF 14 a bit more than just on weekends?
- Funny part is, even if I got my scales of doom from my cache, even if it were warforged, even if it had a gem slot, it would be a case of too little to late.
- Blizzard already lost me.
- I am just like someone in a relationship in real life.
- You might know the ones I am talking about.
- Where you know it is over but you just do not want to let go just yet.
- There is always a chance, but it is more just going through the motions at the moment.
- If I leave I can tell you FF 14 will not be the place I will go to get my mmo fix.
- I'd be lying if I said I was not enjoying it, I am.
- But I don't think it has the staying power for me.
- Not with the lack of bag space, no addons, and massive influx of gold spammers.
- Maybe if I get to max and find a raiding guild things might be different.
- But that will never happen.
- The community is nice and all but it lacks what warcraft has.
- There are no mmoc or wowhead sites for FF 14.
- There does not seem to be an active recruitment environment.
- But the game does seem alive.
- Everywhere I go there are people there.
- So it makes for a great pass time.
- While I hope my relationship with my main game can be fixed.
- I am just not holding out hope for that.
- Blizzard would need to add a content patch for warcraft, and add it soon, which adds back justice and valor and a few quest hubs.
- If it does not do that I don't think my relationship with it can be saved.
- Have a great day.
Blizzard Watch Weekly: Family togetherness
11 hours ago
Anon, Grumpy's former Guild Leader:
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder how WoW would have turned out without any addons available. Recount was the first really popular addon that I remember. My wife gave up tanking because of it due to a mage and a rogue constantly engaging in DPS contests with no regard for how it affected others. They weren't the only ones who affected her decision to stop tanking, but they were the most prominent example of an addon leading to a lesser desire to play the tank role.
Personally I think the over-analyzation of the game detracts from the gameplay itself. Maybe because it is true that most of my group play has always been from a healer's role, I have never seen the reliance on stats to be the real story behind success or failure. The only reliable stat I have ever found was at the end of the fight and that was win or lose. If the enemy is dead and most of me and mine aren't, it was a win, otherwise a loss. Now for me personally as a healer, I always aimed for all of me and mine to be alive and fully healthy at the end of the battle. Full health bars on living characters with a dead enemy at our feet gives me a pretty reliable idea that we did okay.
Do not misunderstand me. I use addons. I would have to be crazy to not use them when the game itself is not a finished enough product in its' native state. In a way that was a brilliant move on the original design, acquiring a world of developmental support without paying out one red cent for any of it. Sure I could live without them and play the game, but it would be far less enjoyable. I may not be a raider anymore, but I keep DBM installed anyway. It is useful to keep up with our raid team's attempts and wipes and successes. It also is good to have when soloing older content.
All in all, I suppose Blizzard fleecing the community into doing the developmental work for them has worked out well for the overall health of the game. I certainly think the addons I use are beneficial to my game-play. Still, I can't help but wonder how the game would be without that developers support from the community. At least a part of me wishes that Blizzard had chosen the other path and kept things out of sight of the community and done all their own developmental work in-house. Better? Worse? Who knows how that would have worked out? But tanks and healers would not have ever cursed Recount whores if no one ever had heard of it or used it.
Blizzard needs to add a lot of stuff that the addon makers have done into the game. They have in the past, they should keep with it.
DeleteNot sure why the pet battle system still only allows you to have 1 team. That is something they should have fixed a lot time ago. With 100s of different battles it would be nice to be able to keep a team for all of them instead of having to write them all down and switch them all the time. If it were not for addons, i would have never pet battled. Simple as that, and it should tell blizzard something about it.
Ok, I got an idea from my tailor. If your toon can 'create' gear for themselves (for example, my warlock is now a tailor), they can upgrade their own gear using the Essence (salvage blood, ton more cloth, etc.) recipes. Now if you manage to get a great rare copy of something, you could upgrade it to the epic edition..
ReplyDeleteWith regards to bag space, sigh, FarCry3. "Sorry, you have no more room in your wallet to carry cash dropped from this mob." You'd need to go kill 10 emu, to use their skin in order to make a bigger wallet.. Over crafting killed that game quickly for me.
DeleteThat sounds like that could be annoying. Needing to get a bigger wallet.
DeleteBag space has always been a hugely important part of game play for me. I always try to get max bags on anything I play when I first start. I would love a game where I can just play and not have to micromanage bag space all the time.
I logged on to FF 14 over the weekend and played for 2 hours. 1 hour of it was working out bag space. Admittedly it was fun as the game is still new to me, but is that really "quality" game time?
How good is the 4 piece?
ReplyDeleteI have not really noticed it doing any better numbers for me as survival and that is the only thing I have tried with it so far. But it could just be that I have not had it long enough to test it out much. The two piece is golden however.
DeleteI agree with the two piece. But the 4 piece doesn't make up for 10 to 15 IL like the 2 piece doea.
DeleteIt really does not seem like it is worth it. I replaced 2 685 pieces with two 670 pieces to try to four piece and I did not see any noticeable difference. Did three fights the other night with it and (guesstimate) the numbers looked like this.
DeleteFirst fight, 47K without, 49K with. That could be luck of the proc, not a big enough difference to matter.
Second fight, 58K without, 57K with. Same thing, could be proc.
Third fight, 39400 without, 39000 with. Can't get more "same" than that.
Anecdotal as it may be from a little sample, but it seems 685 offset is at least equal and maybe even better than 670 for the 2 extra pieces to get the 4 piece as survival. However, with that said, the 685 versions will blow away the non tier 685 pieces without a doubt, and even if you have one 684 tier piece of those extra 2, it would probably be worth it.
Ah I guess that answers that question. If you are thinking of quitting then you're not engaged with the game, and I guess the same extends to comments. Blizz should really take notice of this, as if a veteran player like you who has been playing forever is having enough, then they are really doing something wrong. You have stuck by them thus far, through everything, and now reached the end. Surely they should want to keep such patient players. You know I wonder when the next earnings call, with the sub numbers, will be coming out. I wonder what it will say. I know that it won't be as low as it probably should be, as you and I remain subbed despite unhappiness, but I hope it's a drop, I hope it hits them and they think about it.
ReplyDeleteFor the first time in weeks I had a good time in Warcraft the other day. Why? Because an old friend messaged me and asked if I wanted to run a couple of dungeons. I'd basically not moved from my garrison mission table, except to run to the Salvage Yard or the War Mill in ages. Those two dungeons gave me a slew of achievements, as I guess I was at a bit of a tipping point and it was like dominoes. I love achievements so that was nice.
I played swtor yesterday. I had an absolute blast, I always do. Everytime I play I wonder why I don't play more. That game used to have a bad rep, not sure if that's still true. I've no idea what it's like at endgame, as I'm just having way too much fun with the class storyline, running around with companions, roleplaying light or dark etc.
The problem with swtor is, that I go months in between play sessions and I'm not sure why. I suppose it's because it's always there for me to pick up whenever I want. I don't lose anything by not logging in.
Given how much you enjoy levelling I would recommend swtor 110% and the rest. All I do is level and it is super fun. As I hadn't played in a while I started a new character, Imperial Agent, and I was just blown away by the little things. The animations of the abilities, the fact that I blew a bad guy off a ledge, he landed on the next bridge over - and I could hit him with my sniper rifle there!! In warcraft trying to shoot across terrain like that would give an error message but this was just smooth, I felt like the spy/agent I was playing.
After my session yesterday I was so tempted to resub to swtor and unsub from warcraft. What stopped me was that I don't have to sub to swtor, it's just more convenient with a sub, and that I have the nostalgia and the social ties to Warcraft. I have spent so much money and so much time in Warcraft that walking away for good is hard.
When I unsubbed from warcraft I was always coming back to try Warlords, I just wasn't going to pay blizz for no new content after 7 months of Siege. However, with the direction the game is going in, unless the next expansion reversed some of their decisions then I wouldn't come back, there would be no return and that's hard. As I said all that time and money, letting go is difficult. Then there's the social aspect, but that is so hit and miss. The other day was the first time all expansion that I'd played with a friend, I can't rely on them being around. It's like stay with a game that's no fun without friends, or play a game that's a ton of fun whenever I want to play it.
Warcraft is increasingly feeling like wasted money, so I'm sure to get forced into a decision soon. From the sounds of your posts, you might make a decision soon too. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on it.
Sam, I did the same. I took a year off from WoW because I hated that Isle of Eternity. I saw that MOP was doing SOO for an entire year. As amazing a raid as it was, it didn't have the staying power of the end of expansion raids prior (and I felt Throne of Thunder was a better raid).
DeleteI've mentioned before that things have gone downhill since Ghostcrawler left. Love him or hate him, at least news got out letting us know what was going on and why. Changes were made frequently (which caused much consternation) but things seemed more fun.
The game isn't bad off right now, but it seems like there is a lack of things to do at end game (isn't that the plight of most MMO's?). I recently got with a guild of older folks with real lives and we only raid on Tues/Thurs 930pm EST and that time slot and the personnel absolutely work for me. A no pressure guild that is actually progressing. Nobody yelling, "Many whelps left side. HANDLE IT!!!"
But alas, that doesn't fill the void of non raid nights. I'm maxed out on fishing, archeology and cooking. I don't have the patience to do arch for items without flying. Dungeons are fun, but too many bad players spoil it. There has been a rash of stupid hunters that don't turn off growl and pull everything with barrage.
Looking forward to the next big patch. There is still a huge zone left to explore (and they may bring out an island too). There is so much potential for this expansion that hasn't been revealed. The last cinematic (the spoiler for the legendary ring) hinted at a redemption story for Grommash. It's like Darth Vader all over again. But he will probably have a tragic death sans his fight with Mannoroth. If you haven't seen the spoiler, check it out. Pay particular attention to Kilrog's beard (before and after he drinks).
Let me add that one of the reasons Burning Crusade was so awesome was that it defied the MMO medieval game and did a sci-fi twist in a broken world with DEMONS!! A fight with the Burning Legion is what we need. The current stuff in Draenor is boring because it's like going to a magic devoid area. Very Spartan compared to other places we visited. Sure, Nagrand is still pretty, but we play this game to see grimy, nasty places that are surreal and need a major cleaning. We want to kick ass and take names. We want to fight monsters that defy definition (Yogg-Saron and C'Thun). None of that is here right now.
Delete@ Sam
DeleteStill have not quit completely yet, but as I was adverse to the idea on my many breaks in the past this time I am not so much. I don't think I would mind letting go and saying good bye now. Which is a huge change for me.
@ Savvy
But yelling many whelps can be fun. If said in a fun way. I do it all the time. ;)
I like dungeons normally as well. I loved running them on my alts to get valor and gear them slowly, it is how I played my non raiding characters and kept them close to in shape to bring in for an alt run and not be a complete carry. The removal of valor gear, and need to do dungeons by process, killed the game for me as I love to play alts. That is what I did on most non raid nights. Now I do nothing in game because there is nothing to do.
I agree with you about the RNG. Depending on how much you raid, with whom, and how fast they progress/how lucky they are, it can be a game-breaker. It reminds me a lot of Diablo3, where RNG is "tolerable" only because one can solo spam/repeat content until "something better" drops. But this only appeals to the super-obsessed (or bored), and really has no staying power.
ReplyDeleteAs for add-ons, WoW is unplayable without them. Classes like Warlock are built around them as far as I can tell, since our rotation assumes we will be placing our damage into small windows of opportunity, and to see that we use timers. My DKs runes would be virtually illegible without add-ons. But can I imagine playing a different kind of game without them? Yes. Many of my add-ons are pointless before end-game, and yet I enjoy levelling and playing my toons before they need any of it.
I'm also finding WoW somewhat unfinished in its current state -- a lazy effort that relies on the beauty and complexity of what was built in the past. I'm still there, and trying out new ways to try to enjoy it. But mainly, I hope they fix it.
I think they are coasting on their past success too. This expansion has seemed very light in the variety of content there is and it does not seem as they have any intention to change that.
DeleteI think they are hoping people like me just keep sticking around because we hold out hope but how long can that really last? They need to throw us a bone once in a while.
I really do hate RNG. More so now than ever before. With flex there is always someone else tagging along and that means more people that can roll on something you want on the very rare occasion it drops.
How about your take on 6.2 notes?
ReplyDeleteI put some in my random thoughts today.
Delete