Odds and Ends: November 12th 2014

I’m not going to promise that I am going to regularly update my journey to level 100 because I am generally horrible about updating this thing, but I will make a valiant effort.

My initial fixation with World of Warcraft has obviously passed, seeing as how I have not logged onto the game in about two weeks or so. There really though, is not a whole lot to do in WoW at the moment other than to level my alts and raid on my paladin, which I’m not in the mood to do at the moment. In theory I should clean up the mess that is my bank. I guess much like virtually everyone else, I am just biding time until the expansion pack releases in a couple of days.

I admittedly haven’t been playing much of anything other that The Sims 4. Partially due to being real-life busy, partially due to spending time with other hobbies, and partially due to obsessively playing and documenting my Legacy Challenge Family. I am actually pretty close to completing the challenge. Generation 8 just reached adulthood, so generation 10 isn’t all that far away. I haven’t decided if I am going to start a new challenge afterwards or if I will put this game down for a bit to play other things.

Watching:

  • We just started watching The Legend of Korra Book 3. Still greatly enjoying even even though Korra is kind of a turd at times..
  • Sword Art Online II: I will admit that, despite the show being mediocre, it is nice that the series has returned to Aincrad.
  • Parasyte: This show is new this season and is based off of a manga series that I read and enjoyed quite a bit about a decade ago. Just think of it as a more violent and more fucked up version of Midori no Hibi. Migi is by far the most interesting character in the show so far; Everyone else is pretty mediocre.

The Naruto manga has come to an end after 15 years. I started watching/reading it shortly after the anime series was released in Japan, so it’s a series that I have been following for quite some time. I’m not sure how I feel about some of the romantic pairings. It’s almost as if Kishimoto started coupling the leftovers (Choji, Karui, etc). Also, apparently everyone had sex and spawned at literally the exact same time, given that their kids are presumably all around the same age. Regardless, I am pretty satisfied with the ending.

Pre-WoD Gearing

wowscrnshot_102214_234320Thanks to circling the Timeless Isle hunting out treasure chests and what not as well as the fact that the Valor Quartermaster goodies are now available for purchase with gold, my gear is officially out of the green shit-tier status. I even managed to replace my blue 450 weapon with that one polearm available for 20k tokens from the Timeless Isle loot vendor. I still need to gem and enchant everything and in theory, I should probably also work on my tanking set, but since my gear is out of the red zone, if I really wanted I could probably join some of the lower tier MoP raids in LFR.

This activity of gearing my character up is probably pretty moot given that the expansion pack is being released pretty soon and given that it’s not like I am planning on doing any serious raiding other than occasionally hopping on LFR, but whatever. One interesting thing is that, despite not having played for almost two years (I think?) I still remember exactly where all of my retribution combat abilities are on my hotkey bar as well as what my old rotation was purely by muscle memory from hitting the same buttons repeatedly for years. A couple of things obviously were missing from the recent patch, but I am not entirely sure if I miss them?

Look What I Finally Did

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More than a couple of people that I know in-game and in real-life, aside from my husband, are playing World of Warcraft again or at least constantly talking about it. So after about a year and a half to two years of not playing, I actually resubscribed to WoW. Ugh though, it’s frustrating going from knowing virtually everything about the game to not knowing jack shit because it’s either something that’s new or something that I had forgotten.

My UI was surprisingly intact. Because of some of the new interface changes, I was able to drop quite a few things such has ArkInventory (BAG SORTING FINALLY) and my map mod. I haven’t really bothered respeccing my paladin or looking into what the new optimal rotation is for my gear level. Surprisingly enough, I was able to remember virtually all combat abilities based purely off of muscle memory from hitting the same key over and over for keys on my gamepad. I did end up forgetting a couple of important things like say, Redemption and a couple of other utility spells.

For what it’s worth, my character now looks really weird and vastly different from pre-patch 6.0.2 Keiya with the new models. Also, WoW looks pretty and smooth on ultra with my new video card.

My Pending WoW Return and What Not

Just a quick post since since I have not done one in a while. The one and only game, other than anything that I play on my phone has been The Sims 4. I think I had originally stated that I would do a follow up, state-of-the-game review post of The Sims 4 about a month or so after it had been released. The answer to that, given that this game is all that I have felt compelled to play for a while is: Yeah, it’s pretty fun. It’s also pretty spiffy that ghosts, pools, etc are being added in at no additional cost. So, good on you EA.

The Sims 4 will likely take a back seat pretty soon though, possibly this weekend. Word on the street is that the new WoW patch is out and that I should resubscribe because enough people that we know on the server are playing now to group together and instance. Neat. I wonder how broken my user interface is going to be? Also, I’ve heard that Blizzard has finally added in bag sorting among other things into the game. I can probably just dump half of the addons in my user interface folder.

Other things: We have been super lazy about the podcast lately but will be recording an episode and releasing it this weekend. We haven’t been home on the weekends lately, which is our preferred recording time. Legend of Korra is pretty good. Dave and I just finished book one. In all honestly, I had forgotten that Korra was on my to watch list until the Book 4 previews were linked on Reddit. We’ll probably end up discussing it on the show. Better late than never, right?

Throwback Thursday 7/17/2014

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I was digging through old screenshots and I found one of the earlier screenshots of my husband and I before we started dating. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any of the Zul’Aman screenshots from before we guilded him; That would have been closer to when we first met. WoW isn’t a perfect game and we had our share of in-game drama but we sure did have some good times.

MMO Superstitions

Dave and I were reminiscing about WoW the other day and got on the topic of MMO superstitions. For whatever reason back in OG Naxxramas, it was a pretty widespread belief that killing or not killing Mr. Bigglesworth would alter the loot drop quality, rate, and/or the boss difficulty to the point of guild drama outbreaks.

We used to have a weird superstition about loot seeding back in Vanilla and part of the Burning Crusade. Basically, loot drops aren’t determined upon boss death but are pre-determined when the instance ID is created. We strongly believed that whoever created the raid ID would in turn seed the drops that would appear (I am pretty sure that there was a blue post stating that a time stamp was used to seed the RNG and that there wasn’t anything that a player could do within the game to influence the outcome of the RNG). So every raid, we would intentionally have certain ‘lucky’ guild members create the raid and the raid ID.

Anyway, there was a period of time at around late Molten Core and early-ish Blackwing Lair where we would literally get almost nothing except for Warlock gear. I am pretty sure there were 3 consecutive weeks where Razorgore dropped double Nemesis bracers. Double warlock tier piece dropped on at least 2 other bosses. For whatever reason we correlated the bad RNG luck with the same person ‘seeding’ the raids every week. I guess looking back, it was kind of a silly thing to believe.

Warlords of Draenor

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So the new WoW expansion is as expected, WoD: Warlords of Draenor or more accurately: Way Over Due. I really was not expecting to be this excited about the WoW expansion. Truth be told, I wasn’t even planning on returning to the game or buying it at all because let’s be honest; While the last two expansion packs have many good qualities (improved graphics, improved questing mechanics and flow, wider variety/more level cap activities), as a whole they have at least in my opinion, felt mediocre and too far removed from core lore of the Warcraft franchise, if the lore even matters anymore. WoW for me peaked in WotLK, which has been my favorite expansion by a huge margin.

As things may be, Blizzard announced exactly what they needed to announce in order to entice me back to WoW. So come WoD time, both Dave and I will be back in business! This will be the first expansion pack in which there will be no new races or classes; So that in theory should mean that the time and energy normally spent developing the new starter areas will be distributed elsewhere. I guess we will see. Things that I am really jazzed about

  1. Garrisons
    I honestly did not think that player housing would ever happen.
  2. Insta-90
    I think that a lot of people romanticize the journey from level 1 to 90 and lose sight of the fact that for most of the player base, that so called journey was spread out over 9 years. Those 90 levels are a pretty daunting barrier when all that many new players want to do is play with their friends. I’m really interested in seeing how gear will be handled and if crafting/gathering professions will be factored in. You know what’s even more tedious than level a character from 1 to 90? Being level 90 and having to travel back to starting zones for the sake of having to pick weeds.
  3. New character models
    WAY overdue by at least 5 years but still very much welcome nonetheless. The fact that the environments have improved so much just further served to accentuate how out of date the character models were. Overall, I think the pictures and animations that have been shown so far look great and do a good job at capturing the feel of the original models.
  4. 10 levels
    I’ve never been much into leveling but the past two 5-level expansion packs have felt… I don’t know, not half-assed but, truncated?
  5. Bloat removal
    So far, there seems to be a lot of fat trimming with the announcement of Item Squish and the removal of reforging as well as the more useless gear stats. Also consolidating gear by having your items use your spec’s primary stat? Probably one of my favorite announcements thus far.

Regarding other BlizzCon announcements: HoTS may be the MOBA that I end up playing purely because of the fact that I am familiar with Blizzard’s franchise. Also, if blizzard is even mildly serious about eSports and the WoW arena they need to separate PvP and PvE abilities at a major level. Ultimately, I feel that both gameplay types would benefit from a change of that nature as balancing around both PvP and PvE simultaneously has never worked out all that well.

Ding, Level 90!

Ding 90

Not so much WoW time this weekend since we were out of town most of the weekend or out and about. Did manage to get enough playtime in to hit 90 while questing in the Dread Wastes, which is by the way very dready and wasty I suppose. Hopefully more instancing and what not next week. Oh man is it nice to fly again…

Mists of Pandaria, Week One

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Ding, level 88! I know, I’m the fastest leveler ever right? I swear that most people are either at or approaching level 90 but now and hopping on the gear treadmill. Definitely glad that I am not really feeling pressured to rush to the level cap, though being towards the bottom end of your social group’s leveling curve sucks a bit. It was exciting back in the day, running heroics ASAP at the front of the pack, it I just don’t seem to have the time or interest for that sort of play style anymore. Also, I will get there eventually so I don’t really see the point of rushing through everything.

I *gasp* actually got my crap together and started tanking instances the other night, which was interesting considering that the last time I had seriously tanked since what, the end of Burning Crusade? My tanking gear is mostly crap, in fact the vast majority of it was replaced by a half-night of questing. I must say, it was nice not having to wait for a tank in the LFG queue for a half hour.

So anyway, questing: Valley of the Four Winds was a fun zone, the brew quests are a blast. I like the WoW farming mini game, despite thinking that it sounded a bit silly when it was first announced. It’s simple, quick, different, and feeds right into the cooking profession. Currently working on Kun-Lai Summit. I am enjoying the East Asian martial arts aesthetic quite a bit; From peaceful meditation, training montages to trekking up a mountain Everest style. Departing from run-of-the-mill high fantasy archetypes is a breath of fresh air. The lighthearted pseudo-Chinese theme reminds me of Avatar the Last Airbender, which is most definitely not a bad thing in my opinion.

Like all MMO’s, I am curious as to what the general feel for MoP will be 3 to 4 months from now once the most people have settled in at the level cap. That was about the time when Cataclysm attrition has started to hit (for myself included), so I am very interested in seeing what Blizzard had planned to mitigate player loss.