Gaming Log - October 11

This post contains spoilers for Hades.

World of Warcraft

We did some of the Throne of Thunder achivements. Ji-Kun took us a long while, mostly because it was difficult to kill ourselves when we failed the achievement. We failed to get the Durumu achievement, but got all the others. Heh, it's been so long since I've been to Throne of Thunder that I completely forgot how to get there.

Otherwise it's just waiting for the Pre-Patch.

World of Warcraft Classic

I broke down and got the Questie add-on. It makes a huge difference being able to see where all the quests you can get are. Especially post-35 where they start to be scattered all over the world. It also shows you the quest item locations like modern WoW, but in some ways that is overkill. I rather think the sweet spot would be showing you where all the quests you can pick up are, but needing to rely on the quest text to actually finish them.

My rogue also hit 43 and I bought my mount. I had about 60g total at 40, and it took two levels to get the remaining 30g. I've also finished the Scarlet Monastery quests and even got the Scarlet Crusade tabard. The quest also gave a very nice sword, so my Combat Swords rogue finally has 2 swords for the first time.

Hades

I managed to beat the boss of the third zone, Elysium! I made it to the end of the fourth zone, Styx, who turns out to be Hades himself. I was actually doing quite well, until I called upon the aid of Zeus (basically your ultimate, can get different ones from different gods). Hades did not appreciate me invoking Zeus, and made short work of me. I wonder if he reacts to all gods, or if Zeus is special due to their history.

That's the only time I've been able to get past the third boss though. I did respec, to make my build stronger. I completely forgot there was an expensive ability to get a Defy Death once per chamber instead of once per run. I think that will make future runs easier, and allow me to use a different accessory other than Skelly's Tooth (+1 Defy Death).

Gaming Log - October 4

Haven't written one of these in a while. Here's what I've been up to recently.

World of Warcraft

We've been doing various achievements. Just waiting for Shadowlands really.

I've been doing some of the Brawler's Guild. The BfA questline for the Brawler's Guild was very enjoyable. And you get a crocodile mount at the end. If you haven't done it yet, I strongly recommend doing it in the next week. At current gear levels, you can power through a lot of the fights. You still have to do mechanics, but you don't need to worry about DPS checks. Wowhead and Icy Veins have decent guides.

World of Warcraft Classic

I've been trying and failing to get a group to do the Stromgarde elite quests with my rogue. I think I'm just going to have to give up on them (and elite quests in general), and do normal quests instead.

My rogue did get to level 40. I have about 70 gold total, and I need 90 for the mount and training.

Hades

Thoroughly enjoying this game. I've done about 30 runs, and can get to the third zone regularly. On my last run I got to the boss of the third zone, but got killed there.

I am debating turning on God Mode though. I think I'm behind the curve, and the third zone is difficult for me. I just take too much incidental damage. The main reason I even got to the boss in the last run was that I got a boon from Aphrodite which gave me +2 health on each regular attack (at the cost of 60% lower max health). I can't really count on that boon all the time, though.

First Impressions of Hades

Supergiant Games has released their latest game, Hades. I am a huge fan of their previous games: Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. Hades has finally come out of Early Access, so I snapped it up.

I'm barely into it, but it's really good so far. In both Pyre and Hades, Supergiant is trying to weave defeat into the narrative, and it's really interesting to see their approach.

Hades is a "rogue-like" game. It's an isometric RPG like Diablo. You play Zagreus, Prince of the Underworld, son of Hades, as he attempts to escape to Mount Olympus. The basic game-play is you moving from room to room in a randomly-generated map. In each room you kill the monsters and get a reward. You keep going until you die.

When you die, you go back to Hades' palace where you pet Cerberus, talk to various NPCs, uncover more of the story, and spend resources on improving your character for your next attempt. Dying is part of the story, as various NPCs will comment on your last attempt. I got mocked for stepping in a spike trap.

Some resources exist only for the attempt, like gold and boons from the other Olympian gods. Other resources allow you to improve your character or unlock weapons or upgrade the underworld with new rooms. The gods' boons improves or alters one of your attacks, so each run plays slightly differently as you get boons from different gods.

That cycle of "attempt, death, conversation, improvement, repeat" is very well done. It makes dying become just part of the game. It also makes for nice stopping points for the individual play session.

There are multiple weapons. So far, I've unlocked a sword, a bow, and a shield. I'm not very good with the bow because it requires aiming, but I like the shield. It has a small knock-back which does extra damage if the enemy is slammed against a wall.

You also have a "Cast" ability which throws a projectile at an enemy. By default, the projectile debuffs the enemy and you can't use Cast again until you kill the enemy and pick up the projectile. It's an elegant way of allowing you a powerful ranged option, but keeping you from just kiting all the time.

So far, Hades is just superb. I'm playing on PC with a controller, but I hear that the Switch version is extremely well done.

Shadowlands Afterlives: Revendreth

There sure were a lot of jokes about Garrosh getting milked.

This video is very well done. It's always fun to get a video from the point of view of the bad guy being deliciously evil.

Revendreth seems interesting as well. It looks like the equivalent of a Hell, where evil souls are tormented until they repent. It is amusing that WoW cannot use demons for this traditional role, because demons occupy a completely different place in WoW's cosmology. Instead we have anima-drinking vampires (or possibly elves).

The only concern is that this story seems a bit like the Suramar storyline in Legion. Nobility hoarding a resource that everyone needs to live. There's probably going to be a revolution as well.

I just hope it doesn't end with Garrosh yelling "Revendreth is free!" at the end.

Shadowlands Afterlives: Ardenweald

Now this was excellent!

Apparently the WoW community is very fond of Ursoc, so they were saddened by this video. Despite (or maybe because) of killing him twice in qame. The video does an excellent job laying out the faction, and making them sympathetic.

I quite like the fae in urban fantasy, like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, Patricia Brigg's Mercy Thompson series, and Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. I am looking forward to seeing Blizzard's take on the fae. Though from this video, the Winter Queen is certainly nothing like Butcher's Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness.

Honestly, I rather think this will be my covenant of choice for my paladin. Perhaps a bit of an usual choice, as it seems more for nature classes like druids, hunters and shaman. But I've always felt that the heart of the paladin archetype is sacrifice, and this video embodies that well.

Shadowlands Afterlives: Maldraxxus

The next covenant featured is Maldraxxus. This looks to be a martial realm, with several warrior houses.

The main character featured is Draka, mother of Thrall. Which brings up an interesting point. In most Western, Christian-inspired versions of the afterlife, it's a place to be reunited with your loved ones. Draka's husband is Durotan, who died alongside her. There's not even a mention of him. Instead, WoW's afterlife appears to be closer to the Norse Valhalla, where the dead have a job to do.

One really weird decision was to have Draka train as a rogue. There's already a famous female orc (or half-orc) rogue: Garona. It seems overly repetitive to have Draka become a discount Garona. I think it would have been better to leave Draka as a warrior.

Otherwise, I don't know. This video seems like you're supposed to go, "OMG, Draka is sooo cool!" But if you don't, there's really nothing else there. Kind of honestly, the most interesting bit was the mention of the House of Plagues. That seems like a pretty unusual martial House.

Shadowlands Afterlives: Bastion

This is the first intro video for Shadowlands. I guess there will be four, introducing the main factions.

I've been trying to avoid spoilers, or indeed any information about the expansion. But it feels like Shadowlands is making it harder than normal. Maybe it's just the extensive beta, but when this video dropped, all the discussion online was full of spoilers.

In any case, the video is decent. I'm a little tired of Uther and Arthas, though, so I was not particularly thrilled to see them again. In my opinion, that story ended, and it ended well, so let it rest.

This covenant, Bastion, seems like pretty typical angels. Paint-by-numbers, really. The standard "stay on the path" and ignore warning signs hierarchy that these sorts of quasi-religious factions usually end up being, followed by one going rogue and over-zealous.

I don't know, I hope Bastion is more interesting in the actual expansion. The thing is that we're supposed to be joining these Covenants, so I think these introductory videos should show what makes the Covenant attractive. I can't see anyone actually wanting to join Bastion after this video.

Horrific Visions - Mad World

 I've been working on the Horrific Visions over the last week or so. Today I got the [Mad World] Feat of Strength for successfully completing both the Horrific Vision of Stormwind and Horrific Vision of Ogrimmar solo with 5 Masks!

Mount and Title Rewards above Silithus

5-Masking both Visions (in a group or solo) awards a mount, the Black Serpent of N'Zoth. 5-Masking both visions solo gives a title, the Faceless One.

I actually did Stormwind last week, adding one mask a day until I did all 5 masks on Monday. Today I tackled Ogrimmar and went straight for all 5 masks. I did both visions as Retribution with 470 average item level, though it was my Holy Gear and corruptions (Ineffable Truth!) aside from my weapon.

Some tips if you want to tackle it in the next week or two:

• Adding one mask a run was good to get used to the vision and the path you want to run in.
• Add the 50% less Sanity mask early. It was the third mask I tackled. Adjusting for lower Sanity is the biggest thing you need to learn, as a couple of other mechanics don't happen until low sanity, so it's good to get used to the reduced Sanity early.
• I did it with zero net corruption. Having to deal with slows and extra circles is extra hassle.
• Use a flask and food. I used the food which increases movement speed in Stormwind and health regen in Org. In hindsight, I probably should have used health regen in both. I wasn't used to moving so quickly in SW. Also have a stack of K'babs and use them often.
• In Stormwind, I used the Sanity Orb before Mathias and Magister Umbric, and then before Alleria.
• In Orgrimmar, I used the Sanity Orb before the last elites before the Lost area bosses. Pull the elites into the Sanity Orb and start damaging them before it disappears. With the extra sanity from defeating the elite, you get to the boss at max or fairly high Sanity.
• Find the dead body near the start and identify the bad potion color. Drink all the good potions you can.
• Find the enemy that gives a buff in the first area early, then continue to the other zones.
  

I found Ogrimmar harder than Stormwind, though part of it might just be unfamiliarity. I found it a lot harder to dodge or avoid a lot of the Sanity-drain mechanics in Org, and ended up having to burn my last Orb early. My guild says you can avoid a lot of them, like the Void Torrent, by stepping into the bosses hitbox, but they only told me this after the run.

In any case, I feel like I've completed all my personal goals for Battle for Azeroth with this achievement. Looking forward to Shadowlands!

The Problems With the Battle for Azeroth Story, Part II

In the last post, we discussed the Burning of Teldrassil and Sylvanas Windrunner. In this post, I'm going to look at two more philosophical problems that the writers are having.

Fool Me Once, Shame On You

There is an old aphorism, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

In a nutshell, that sums up the problems with the Alliance side of the BfA story. This is the second time the Horde has attacked the Alliance out of the blue. And yet the Alliance cannot seem to learn any lessons. Thus they come across as foolish when they try to make peace, especially a peace without terms.

The story tries to portray (early) Jaina and Tyrande as wrong with their uncompromising stance against the Horde. But Jaina and Tyrande are right and sensible! Jaina's reversion in 8.3.5 to her previous stance is a huge mistake and erases all development for her character.

As for Tyrande, it feels like she's going to learn a "valuable lesson" about the dangers of vengeance in Shadowlands, completely ignoring that sometimes anger is justified.

 Battle for Azeroth turned out to be Garrosh 2.0, only this time the Alliance comes across as foolish. Not even a nod to Varian's declaration that "if your Horde fails to uphold honor as Garrosh did, we will end you." Nothing but paper tigers.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Perhaps the biggest problem with Battle for Azeroth, which ties into the previous point, is that characters' actions don't seem to matter. What matters is the words they say.

Take Sylvanas. The entire resolution of the story hinges on her saying, "The Horde is nothing". If she simply doesn't say that, the ending falls apart. All the actions she took, good or bad, none of them matter in the end.

As for Saurfang, he happily invades Ashenvale and Darkshore. Then he's sad and sorry, so obviously he's in the right.

There is a great disconnect between the actions taken and the words spoken. And the story comes down on the side that the words spoken are true and correct, and the actions are not. This is a major source of dissonance.

Maybe the WoW writers feel these aphorisms are old and outdated. But they're common wisdom for a reason, ingrained in how most people view the world. In my opinion, a writer ignores these and similar proverbs at their peril. It usually turns out badly, as Battle of Azeroth shows.

The Problems With the Battle for Azeroth Story, Part I

Unlike a lot of forum posters, I actually think WoW's writers are pretty good. There are a lot really well done small stories and small moments in BfA. For example, I loved the work they did with Jaina, at least until the aftermath of attack on Ogrimmar. However, the writers also have a tendency to make really big, bone-headed mistakes. These mistakes are so huge, that they wipe out all the good that has been done, has been built up. This series of posts is a discussion of what I see as the major mistakes in Battle for Azeroth.

The Burning of Teldrassil

I actually liked the Burning of Teldrassil as the initial move in the story. I thought to myself, "Well, the writers promised that this wouldn't be Garrosh 2.0, and now they certainly can't do a Garrosh 2.0 story." The joke was on me, I guess, as BfA soon became Garrosh 2.0.

The Burning of Teldrassil would have been an excellent opener for a story where the war between Horde and Alliance becomes hot, and stays hot for several expansions.

For the type of story BfA wanted to be, it actually would have worked much better without burning Teldrassil. The Horde pre-emptively sweeps through and conquers Ashenvale and Darkshore. The Alliance retaliates by attacking Undercity. After Undercity gets destroyed, both sides pull back and look for allies. Then the Horde attacks Brennadan. Next the Alliance escalates with the raid on Daz'alor and killing Rastakhan. Sylvanas then starts looking to weaponize Derek Proudmoore, and Baine intervenes.

In that story, you actually have an escalating cycle of violence, where breaking it makes sense. However, by starting with Teldrassil, there is no escalation. Everything the Alliance does pales in comparison. The story starts too big, and there's no place for it to go.

Sylvanas Windrunner

The writers clearly want to have Sylvanas to have a plan. To be a mastermind working towards some hidden goal. Unfortunately none of this is coming across. Instead, Sylvanas seems to whiplashing between good and evil, and it is really hurting both her character and the story.

Back when I played D&D, it was really common for me as a DM to construct this intricate plot and world in my head. It took me a long while to truly understand that the players couldn't see that plot. The channel between the DM and player is "lossy". If you're lucky, maybe 25% of what you want to convey will actually make it to the players. In this situation, you're better off being blunt and explicit, and repeating yourself several times. Especially when your story takes place over a long period of time, as players will forget the fine details of events which happened several months ago.

FFXIV is really good at this. If they want the players to know something about a villain or a villain's plans, they'll start hinting at it a couple patches in advance. Then they'll end up explicitly saying it in a few different ways. Maybe they'll show you the villain discussing things with a subordinate. And maybe you and your allies will discuss the villain. Sometimes it can feel like they're being overly blunt, but better too blunt than too subtle.

To Be Continued...

Gaming Log - August 28

World of Warcraft

We're continuing to try and get old raid achievements. We got the meta for Hellfire Citadel. Gorefiend was a huge pain because it requires at least one person to die during Feast of Souls. At max level it is very hard to die! We ended up removing all gear, and even then only one person died in the phase. Luckily she was able to do her part and spawned the achievement mob just as the phase ended.

We then returned to our nemesis, Thok. This time around we knew how to do the achievement so things went somewhat smoothly. Except two of our druids forgot they had the Resto affinity talent which automatically heals them. But we got past that, thanks to the stacking damage buff, and unlocked the snail and killed Thok. Sadly, someone was wearing a trinket which procced and killed the snail!

I guess we'll try again next week.

World of Warcraft Classic

I've been playing my Human Paladin and Warrior. I tried playing with the Horde Priest, but there was a lot of Alliance running around and I wasn't able to get anything done. I did manage to run away before being killed, though, so I'll count it as a moral victory.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

I set the difficulty down to Peasant (Easy). At this point, I really just want to finish the main story of the game.

I then finished sacking the Imperium Romana's port. The final boss fight was neat. Instead of a boss, it was a gauntlet where you had to run around and set ships on fire.

Now back to the underworld to steal a crystal from the dark elves so my blacksmith can make better weapons and armor.

Gaming Log - August 24

Been a while since my last post. Haven't really been up to a lot.

World of Warcraft

We did some more raid and dungeon achievements. We've been trying to get all the achievements in Siege of Ogrimmar, but we keep accidentally killing things we shouldn't. Garrosh and Thok were our banes, especially as it was so hard to wipe. We did get Garrosh, but Thok eluded us. We almost had it, but our paladin's Avenger's Shield killed Thok and bounced and killed the snail. So we'll have to do it again some time.

I also finished the Horde story with my Blood Elf paladin. My regular Blood Elf Warrior is a Sylvanas loyalist, so I made this one to see the story from the Saurfang side. There wasn't a lot of difference, mostly you defend Saurfang from assassins, and then you don't keep talking to Nathanos who directs you to pretend to be a traitor.

World of Warcraft Classic

I'm still playing the Horde priest. Up to level 32 now. I find that one of the problems with Classic is that whenever I get "blocked" on a quest, I tend to lose the desire to continue with that character. For example, I have an elite quest, The Den, in Stonetalon Mountains, and I just cannot get a group for it. Soloing it is pretty painful, as it is one of those twisty night elf barrows, but all the mobs are elites.

Retired Games and Services

I uninstalled and unsubscribed from Final Fantasy XIV and The Old Republic. I'm not really enthusiastic about the non-story gameplay and activities in both of them. Maybe I'll check in on them in a year or so.

I also deleted my Reddit account, and removed all bookmarks from my browser. I think I've spent an excessive amount of time on that site over the last few years, for little gain. Though I do wonder how hard it will be to keep up to date with the various fandoms.

I am leaning to the view that any social site where you accumulate "internet points" in some manner leads to undesirable outcomes. That perhaps the best sites are just old-fashioned forums and blogs.

FFXIV: Patch 5.3

This post contains spoilers for Patch 5.3 for Final Fantasy XIV.

FFXIV's latest patch came out last week. The MSQ was the finale of the Shadowbringers story.

Truthfully, I am not the biggest fan of Shadowbringers. It was quite good, but I didn't love it. And honestly, this patch was for the people who loved it. There were long goodbyes, as you go around to all the new zones and say farewells, having many of the story NPCs show up again.

The final fight was quite good, though, with a superb unexpected cameo. The only issue I have with the fight is that there is one of those active time events where you have to rapidly press a button. The problem is that all eight members of the party have to pass the event. I think it should have been 6 of 8 or so, to allow a little carrying of people who might have trouble with that.

The Nier 24-man raid story also continued. There were so many deaths during that raid. I think we had one healer healing and the other constantly ressing. Several times our group got wiped out and the other groups had to come save us. Heh, one time, our healer managed to use Limit Break 3, ressing everyone in the group, right into a mechanic which killed most of us. He was very upset.

However, it is one of those raids where it will be much better when people get used to the new mechanics.

The final bit of the patch is the Sapphire Weapon story. Here the game went full Gundam with piloting a giant robot and everything. I think the entire thing, including a lot of the dialogue, was a Gundam reference, but I'm not very familar with the franchise.

 There was also a season summer event which was pretty weird. There was a FATE where you had to dance to encourage a bomb to blow up and defeat a giant shark with arms and legs.

The problem I'm having with FFXIV is that there doesn't seem to be much to work on. Too much story, not enough grind, if that makes sense. This expansion is really missing something like Eureka, where you can just log in and work on something at a light pace. Admittedly, though, it's been very crafter-centric, and I haven't really leveled any crafting jobs. And unfortunately, I'm really not fond of max-level dungeon gameplay, wall-to-wall AOE, which is the main gearing grind.

Ganking on an RP-PvP Server

Grobbulus is an Role-Playing Player-vs-Player server. That means it's a little bit weird.

On a normal PvP server, a Horde lowbie gets ganked while trying to quest in Hillsbrad Farms by max-level Alliance players.

On a Role-Playing PvP server, a Horde lowbie gets ganked while trying to quest in Hillsbrad Farms by max-level Alliance players pretending to be farmers.

Seriously, there were four of them, dressed up in overalls and plaid shirts and carrying shovels.

Gaming Log - August 10

 World of Warcraft Classic

I did a couple of quests in Stonetalon Mountains and Ashenvale with the Horde Priest. Then I foolishly went to Hillsbrad Foothills and got ganked twice by a 34 gnome rogue. 

The priest is up to level 27. I took Tailoring as a profession, and surprisingly it's turned out to be very useful. I think I'm wearing four crafted pieces at the moment. Retail WoW is much better about giving you a complete set of gear as basic quest rewards, so the crafting professions are much less useful while gearing up.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

I did the next map in Vikings. This time I was attempting to make an alliance with Simul, but she refused and forced me to fight Guarm, guardian of the portal to Hel, so that she could enter Hel. Not sure what Simul is after, but I have been side-tracked to sack the home port of the Imperium Romana's northern navy.

Goals

Here's a list of goals or games that I want to play in the next few weeks:

• Vikings: Wolves of Midgard - I haven't played much in the last week or so, but I really should focus on finishing this game.
• Final Fantasy XIV - Patch 5.3 comes out today. I want to play through the story, and try the next Nier raid.
• World of Warcraft Classic - Try to get the Horde Priest to 60.
• Control - There's an DLC coming out at the end of August.
• Horizon Zero Dawn - One of my friends loved this game and enthusiastically recommended it when it came out on console. It's just been released on PC, but there seem to be a lot of people complaining about crashes. Maybe I'll wait for the first patch, or clear up some of the other goals before getting it.
• Crowfall - Beta is starting. I backed it so long ago. I tried to look at some things in early Alpha, but I couldn't really figure anything out. I really should take a look at what they've built.

Gaming Log - August 8

World of Warcraft

We went after the raid achievements for Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold. We did some of them in Mythic, but then dropped back to Heroic when it turned out that the Botanist achievement requires 10 people in Heroic, but 20 in Mythic.

The only difficult one was Xavius, and that was because it requires a Demon Hunter or a Warlock, two classes that we don't normally have in raids, to find creatures hidden in the darkness. A bit annoying because we have a lot of Hunters, but Flare doesn't show you the hidden creatures. The guildmate who switched to Warlock was very excited to use Eye of Kilrogg, though.

World of Warcraft Classic

I found out that a guildmate plays on Grobbulus, an RP-PvP realm. So I made an Undead Priest on that server and have been focusing solely on it. It's actually kind of surprising how fast one can level without distractions. I'm currently level 27.

It's kind of interesting playing on an PvP realm again. I'll probably regret it though. So far, my PvP experience has been:

• Chased into Tarren Mill by a skull gnome warrior
• One-shot by a skull night elf hunter after landing at Tarren Mill
• Killed twice by a skull human rogue while questing near Tarren Mill
• Killed by a 31 gnome warrior while questing near Tarren Mill
• Killed a 31 human rogue while in a group of 4 (28 druid, 27 priest, 23 warlock, 23 priest) in Stonetalon Mountains 

Not really sure if the last was fair or not. The rogue didn't Vanish though, so maybe he thought he had a chance at taking out the warlock.

In any case, there's mostly been a common theme in PvP, and that's being ganked at Tarren Mill.

When did the Forsaken Change?

I'm leveling a Forsaken priest in WoW Class at the moment. It's been a long time since I played Horde or did the early Forsaken quests. But there's a really big difference in how the Forsaken are treated in Classic versus Battle For Azeroth.

Classic makes it really clear that the Forsaken are different after being raised from the dead. They're the same person, but warmer, positive emotions are greatly muted, and the more negative emotions dominate. For example, Clarice Feldman was the wife of a paladin who went off to fight the Scourge. In life she both loved him and resented him for leaving her. In death, the love is muted, and the resentment magnified. There's another quest about a husband who's wife was killed by his best friend. He sends you to kill that friend, and keeps his hands to remind him of his revenge, but gives you his only momento of his wife, her ring.

Classic is pretty clear that this is normal for Forsaken, that it's just how they are. 

In D&D terms, it's like their alignment takes one step towards Evil after being raised. Someone who was Lawful Good in life is Lawful Neutral in death. Neutral in life becomes Neutral Evil in death.

In Battle For Azeroth, on the other hand, this doesn't happen in most cases. There are 3 new Forsaken raised during the story: Amelia Stone, Thomas Zelling, and Derek Proudmoore. All three of them seem like the same person after being raised, and don't exhibit the change in emotions. Zelling in particular is deeply concerned about his family, and hurt when they reject him. A Classic-style Zelling would care about his family in an intellectual sense, and insist that the Horde carry out their agreement to take care of them. But he wouldn't seek to see them or bond with them.

There is one case where the newly-raised Forsaken behaves in the Classic-style: the Night Elf Wardens. They come back angry at the world and Elune. Ironically, I've seen more player complaints about the change in personality for the Wardens than for Zelling or Proudmoore.

It makes me wonder if I missed something in the story. A plot point where Forsaken resurrection was "fixed", and newly-made Forsaken started coming back with an unchanged personality.

AQ Drama in WoW Classic

The Ahn'Quiraj phase started in WoW Classic recently. This phase starts with the War Effort to unlock the gates in Silithus. It also has the race to be the person who unlocks the gates and gets the title of Scarab Lord.

And so we have drama. So much drama.

Check out the WoW Classic forums and reddit. Horde and Ally guilds colluding. Guilds interfering with each other. People being forced to farm so their GM gets Scarab Lord. People mass-reporting each other. Guilds acting like a mafia and controlling the pace of the opening. Half the guilds want to delay the opening so they can have more Scarab Lords, and the other half insists the gates open early so that there are more chances to get loot from AQ40.

You can see why Blizzard took steps to reduce all this drama. 

And yet, the drama is what makes it fun and entertaining, even for those of us not participating. You have actual server communities with guilds who know each other and are fighting and cooperating with each other. There are known personalities on each sides. Check out this video from Grobbulus:

In some ways, there is more "life" in this one event in a replica of a 15-year-old game than there has been in the last five years of Retail WoW.

Perhaps drama is the most attractive point of the MMO genre, what makes it special. And in removing anything which can cause drama, MMOs become just another game.

Legion Antorus Raid Achievments Done!

We only had six people show up for raid this week, so we went and did the achievements in the Antorus raid from Legion. We started trying them on Mythic difficulty, which wasn't too bad, until we got to Eonar. Mythic Eonar requires a bit more coordination than we were expecting, with having to send a team to the ship and everything. So we dialed it back to Heroic.

The only difficult achievement was Aggramar, and that was mostly because we didn't have a second tank who knew how to tank swap during the combo while keeping the boss from moving. We made our DPS warrior learn to tank. It took us a few tries, but we got the tank to combo one of the adds twice, and got the achievement.

We also accidentally killed the last boss on Heroic. The achievement requires you to be in phase 4. So we unloaded on the boss in phase 1 to speed things up. Unfortunately we sped things up a little bit too much, and killed the boss as he was transitioning from P1 to P2. So we had to go to Normal difficulty and slowly whittle him down and make sure all the phases transitioned properly.

We did get all of the boss achievements this week, giving most of us the meta-achievement for that instance, and some sort of mount. Kind of interesting to go back to it after all this time.

Gaming Log - July 27

I was out of town for most of the weekend, so not much happened gaming-wise.

World of Warcraft Classic

• Priest - I did the Dun Modr elite quests. It was a small group, just me, a hunter and a rogue. We died a few times trying to get Balagaras without pulling many adds. But we were successful in the end, and my Priest is up to level 30.
• Rogue - finished off a couple more quests in Stranglethorn Vale. The run from either Booty Bay or Darkshire is so long that it makes me avoid the Rogue.

Final Fantasy XIV

I dropped into FFXIV just to see what was going on. My guild, never active at the best of times, seems pretty dead. Oh well, I guess I'm contributing to that as well. 

I did some Beast Tribe quests, a leveling dungeon as a Dancer, and a couple of FATES.

The Old Republic

Dropped into this one to see what happening as well. I did the Onderon Weekly on my Jedi Sentinel and surprisingly hit Legend reputation with the Onderon faction. I had no idea I was that close, or that I had done Onderon that much with the Sentinel.

Ny'alotha Achievements, Part III

We finished all the Ny'alotha raid achivements and got the mount! Sadly, I don't have a picture, but it's one of those worms which fly through the sky. We actually attempted both of these achievements on a previous raid night, but failed to do them correctly.

Carapace of N'Zoth

This time around we made everyone take off essences and corruptions which do automatic damage. We also were more specific about assigning people to blobs on the side. We also settled on a system where DPS got them down to 30%, then a tank took them down to 10%. Then we all used the cloak, got back to full sanity, got into position, and burst them down after the shield buff expired.

The first time through we took too long in P2. We had a couple people go insane, then we had to kill them and res them. We did kill all the blobs in 10s, but the boss actually enraged and wiped us in P3. We then had a couple of tries where we flubbed it and had to wipe.

The fourth try was the charm, and we killed the blobs after the first cloak in P2, then finished off the boss.

N'Zoth

This time around we didn't do anything special in the first two phases. We did the fight like normal, and went into P3 with high sanity for everyone in the group. Then we got the boss down to 15% and everyone's sanity below 50%. Everyone stepped out of the Harvester's circle, and we all went insane at the same time and then killed the boss.

I imagine we'll do these achievements a few more times in the next couple of weeks. A few of the raiders missed some of the bosses, so hopefully we'll be able to get them their mount as well.

Gaming Log - June 22

World of Warcraft Classic

I managed to find an group going to Shadowfang Keep on my paladin. I even got to DPS instead of tanking or healing. The run went fairly smoothly with the exception of two parts. There was one point where we seemed to get a large number of worgen at once, like we pulled extra packs somehow. We wiped twice there until we managed to pull just one group by itself. The other difficult part was the end boss, Archmage Arugal and his crazy shadowbolts. We wiped there a couple of times.

But we got through, and I got my [Verigan's Fist]! The paladin is up to level 24.

I also did some Loch Modan quests on priest, which is up to 29. Finally, I finished a few quests in Stranglethorn Vale on my rogue, which is level 35. For Alliance, the run just to get to the questing areas in STV is so long. I really miss the flight point at the rebel camp in Retail. I also really need new weapons on the rogue. I think I'm using a level 20 sword and a level 13 dagger.

Ny'alotha Achievements, Part II

A couple more raid nights, more achievements down.

Hivemind

This one is pretty easy. Near the entrance to each of the three wings there's a friendly critter that you can pick up. You'll have to clear a little of the trash to find them. Three people pick up the critter. Then when you start the fight with Hivemend, the critters will appear and 'evolve'. Kill the evolved critters, kill the boss, done.

Ra-Den

There are two obelisks on the sides of the room. The black projectile that a single person soaks bounces in the direction that you face. You have to bounce the projection on top of the obelisk to destroy it. The achievement is to break both obelisks, which you can do in two black phases.

The big danger here is that everyone goes to help with the achievement mechanic, and forgets about the other mechanics. On our first try we had several people die because no one was near the boss to soak the other mechanic which requires you to split damage.

Shad'har

Here everyone needs to pet the dog. You need to pet him one at a time, so we just had one person call someone every few seconds. Here's a simple macro for healers (who may not be targeting the boss):

/tar Shad

/pet

Pretty easy, about the only issue is that you might kill him too fast for everyone to pet him. There's always someone who doesn't hear their name and you have to call them again, which slows everything down. Also, try to do all the petting in the first two phases. Extending the last phase is a pain.

Drest'agar

Here you need to get two tantrum phases within 60 seconds. Drest'agar does a tantrum at 100 energy. Each tentacle you kill gives him 20 energy. Kill 4 tentacles, wait for a second set of tentacles to spawn so that there are at least 6 active. Then burn down all the tentacles. Pretty easy.

Il'ygnoth

This one was a little difficult. You need to kill 10 bloods within 3 seconds. What we did was during the first intermission phase we just let all the bloods come out. People being targeted just ran in circles around the center. We had to wait until 15 bloods were released, before everyone ran into the center and unleashed AoE. Healers popped their big cooldowns to survive. We had all the DPS use the AoE laser Azerite essence.

We ended up waiting for 15 bloods because you have wait for them to actually reach the center. So with 15 out, we had 12 dragged to the center. We still lost half the DPS in the resulting explosion, but the remaining raid was enough to finish the fight on Normal.

Gaming Log - June 19

World of Warcraft

Not a lot happened here. Mostly emissaries and N'Zoth invasions on the paladin.

I also bought 6x Ineffable Truth I corruptions. The sad part is that it reduces the cooldowns of my abilities, but does not reduced the cooldown of trinkets. I had a trinket which perfectly lined up with Avenging Wrath, but no longer does. I ended up swapping it out for a different trinket with an equip proc.

World of Warcraft Classic

Been playing my paladin in Classic. I've been working on the Verigan's Fist questline. I did Deadmines again, found a group for the ogres in Loch Modan, and managed to solo a couple of the elite Naga outside Blackfathom Deeps. Luckily, the second Naga dropped the Kor Gem. Now all I have to do is Shadowfang Keep. Not sure how difficult it will be to find a group for it, though.

Vikings - Wolves of Midgard

I attacked the Imperium Romana's northernmost holdings, but they hunkered down in their impenetrable fortress, Castrum Ignis. I had to bargain with the troll-witch Grindill (mother of my skald, you may recall). In return for the hero Sigurd's ring, she would provide me a path into Castrum Ignis.

So I raided Sigurd's barrow, killed his shade (and a lot of other undead), and took his ring. The troll-witch kept her side of the bargain and showed me a portal from Utgard that led to the mines below Castrum Ignis. I took the portal, sacked Castrum Ignis and killed their leader, the Bishop of the Sea, thus ending the Imperium Romana's northern ambitions.

Now I have to try and forge that alliance with the giantess Simul again.

This game is just great when you recount what happens in the story. They throw in all the twists and turns of a Norse saga. And really, it's just an ARPG where you go and kill everything on the map. But they have the presentation done quite nicely.

Ny'alotha Achievements, Part I

My guild has decided to go after the Ny'alotha raid achievements over the next few weeks. We did the first five yesterday. We had about 12 raiders in the group (2 tanks, 2 healers, 8 dps) and we did it on Normal.

An invaluable tool for this is the Instance Achievement Tracker addon.  I strongly recommend this addon if you are trying for achievements.

Here are some thoughts on the achievements we did:

Wrathion

Every single person in the raid already had the achievement to destroy 10 spikes in 3 seconds. Judging by the dates of the achievements, we actually meet the requirements are every week in the regular raid.

Skitra

This was fairly easy. Just clear the trash before the boss. Have a tank run out and get the Disciple and drag it to the boss. Make sure everyone is in the raid is inside, pull the boss, and wait for the Disciple to split into 3 before attacking it.

Maut

We had our second tank hold an add in one of pools until the stoneskin phase. Then the tank got an orb to hit the add, we killed the add, and then finished attacking the boss. 

This one took us two tries. The first time, the orb accidentally hit the tank instead, and the add did some sort of self-sacrifice move before we could get it to hit a second orb.

Xanesh

This one was the hardest of the ones we did. You have to knock the ball into the goal in the last 3 seconds before the debuff expires, and do this 3 times in one fight. We had two people bounce the ball back and forth in front of the goal, and then they or the third person knocked it in at the 4-5 second mark.

The biggest problem here is that there is no feedback if you are successful or not. Blizzard should have had a chat line on a success or maybe have the fireworks that go off if you score be a different colour.

The one saving grace is the enrage timer on Xanesh is really long. We ended up doing about 6 ball phases, just to make sure we got three successes. There was a whole bunch of "Did that go in on time? I think it did, but I'm not sure." After the second ball phase, we had to stop dps entirely. The tank did get one-shot at some point, but I think we could have avoided that with better tank swaps.

Vexiona

Everyone in the raid needs to get hit with 30 stacks of the beam debuff. A lot of the guides emphasize stacking and using raid cooldowns. I think it's easier to just take your time, and hit everyone with a few stacks every beam, while doing other mechanics properly and avoiding death. 

IAT is a lifesaver here, as it notifies you when people reach the limit and who still needs stacks.

The plan is to do a few more achievements tomorrow and finish up over the next couple of weeks.

Decisions in Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

Every so often in Vikings: Wolves of Midgard, the game presents you with a couple of dialogue options. For some reason, I thought these were just for flavor. But it turns out they actually change the story slightly!

For example, the crone Vala was urging my character to forge an alliance with the giant Simul, the enemy of my enemy. There was an option to say "Alliance? Doesn't she have any treasure?" I took the option on a whim. Then the next map turned out to be attacking Simul and stealing her ring Draupnir.

Once I stole the ring, Vala asked that I give it to her, so that she could return Draupnir to Odin. I chose the "No, I stole it. It is mine!" option. Vala informed me that I had succumbed to curse of the ring. The game then announced that I would get an extra 3000 gold per map, but could not sacrifice to Odin to level up anymore. This would last until I gave up the ring to my soothsayer.

The next quest text, narrated by Vala, then talked about how the "rapacious greed of the Ulfung she-wolf might doom us all." I was greatly amused!

I don't think the story greatly changes, I think we're still on track for an alliance of necessity with Simul. But I really like how the developers have woven a little bit of choice into the game.

A Novel RPG Resolution Mechanic

I came across a homebrewed tabletop RPG based on Magic: the Gathering. In particular, it has a really neat resolution mechanic.

As background, there are five colours in Magic: White, Blue, Black, Red, Green. Each represents parts of the world. For example, among other elements, White is order, Blue is knowledge, Black is death, Red is raw emotion, and Green is nature. If you arrange the colours in a circle, adjacent colours are considered allies, and opposite colors are enemies. For example, White is allied with Blue and Green, and is enemies with Red and Black.

This RPG uses a Fate deck composed of 2 land cards of each colour, and 1 Wastes (colorless). If you attempt something difficult, the Game Master first chooses the color your challenge belongs to. You then draw a card from the Fate deck. If it matches the color of the challenge, it's a success. If it matches an allied color, it's a partial success. If the character you are playing belongs to the same color, you get an extra draw and you take the best result.

For example, if your character is attempting to research something, that's Blue. Drawing a Blue land is success. Drawing White or Black is a partial success. Red, Green, or the Wastes is a failure. If your character is Blue, you get two draws, making it likely you'll get a partial success at least.

This is a very clever mechanic. It matches Magic: the Gathering intuitively, especially the color wheel which all players know well. As well, it's an 18% change of full success, and 36% chance of partial success. I find the clean use of partial successes particularly interesting, because partial success often lead the players to solve additional problems and makes the story more memorable.

Of course, this mechanic isn't really suitable to a numbers-heavy type of game. It looks to be more appropriate for a lighter, story-telling game.

Heirloom Changes

Yesterday, it was announced that heirlooms in Shadowlands won't provide XP bonuses.

I think this is a great change. I am not a fan of heirlooms. One of the elements of leveling that I really enjoy is upgrading gear and watching your character's visuals change. But the XP bonus made heirlooms too advantageous.

This way, the people who don't want to upgrade gear can use heirlooms, while others can avoid them. Or maybe only use them for trinkets or weapons, if that's important enough.

I hope Blizzard does not add any other bonuses, and just makes them very optional.

Blizzard should also take the opportunity to simplify the heirloom system. Right now there's a complex series of upgrades with different prices and different sources in order to increase the maximum level of the heirloom item. It would be best if the concept of upgrading heirlooms was just removed entirely. All heirlooms simply scale to the max level before the expansion. When a new expansion is released, all heirlooms have their caps increased simultaneously.

Stealthed Enemies

In the last post I complained about a Classic quest where you have to kill some monsters who are in stealth.

The thing that makes these quests particularly annoying in Classic is that you can't even be sure that you are in the right area. If you can't find any mobs, it might be because:

• You are in the wrong area. Classic directions are often somewhat vague.
• You might not get close enough to the mob to detect it. This is especially true if you are under-leveled.
• Someone else may have come through just before you and killed the mobs, so you're waiting for them to respawn, but you don't know that.

In retail, the minimap displays the area where you can find the mobs. So at the very least, you know where to search.

In Classic, there's just too little information, and that makes the whole thing a frustrating exercise. These sort of quests really need something to offset that loss of information. For example, a tracker that told you if you were hot or cold.

Or possibly if the geography was constrained to make finding the mobs easier. For example, stealthed mobs in an underground mine or complex. Here you can traverse the corridors, and be reasonably certain that you've found or not found any mobs in the paths that you've already taken.

But stealthed mobs out in the Classic open world are just overly frustrating.

Gaming Log - July 7

World of Warcraft

I did the first part of Heroic Nya'lotha with my Paladin. Also did a couple of Emissaries. Nothing really new happened.

I would like to finish up BfA Archeology, though. Perhaps I'll dedicate some play time to that goal.

World of Warcraft Classic

I've been doing quests in Wetlands with my Priest. This Fen Creeper quest is terribly annoying. I've been wandering up and down the waterways trying to catch a glimpse of these stealthed mobs. Actually, stealth mobs in Vanilla are really terrible quests.

General

I've been writing these Gaming Logs for about a month. I'm not sure what to think about them. On the one hand, I actually wrote more posts last month than I have in a couple years. On the other hand, I'm not sure if these posts are actually interesting or worthwhile.

Gaming Log - July 5

World of Warcraft

Did Heroic Nya'lotha on my Paladin again. We did Mythic Jaina afterwards. One of mounts went to a hunter in our guild. Oddly, of the five Mythic Jaina mounts our guild has, four of them have been won by hunters. Now we do have a lot of hunters--3 of 12 in the raid were hunters--but we also have a lot of mages--3 of 12 were mages--and none of them have won it. Makes me want to roll a hunter.

We also got a new tank who joined the guild/raid, but I don't think he's going to last. He's a good guy and a good tank, but he didn't realize the server/guild was PST. Unfortunately he's on the East Coast, so I think the raid times are just not going to match, and he's going to have to move on. 

My advice when looking for a guild is to determine what times you want to play, and make sure the prospective guild matches. It should be your first consideration, before anything else. There's not much point in being in a guild if you can't play with other guild members.

World of Warcraft Classic

In the constant rotation of Classic characters, I've been focusing on my Warlock lately. On this one, I made an effort to go to Loch Modan early. Bouncing between the Human and Dwarf zones has made questing a lot easier.

Warlock is an interesting class in Classic. Between Life Tap, DoTs, Demons, and Drains, it's a little more intricate than most of the others at low level. It's a real pity it devolves into Shadowbolt spam at max level.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

I did a second map fighting the Roman Imperium, this time killing a Bishop with a funny hat. The game made a big deal about the hat. Now my character is off to Utgard, to forge an Alliance with a rival Frost Giant. Or possibly to kill her and steal her treasure, the ring Draupnir. To be fair, the Frost Giant stole Draupnir from Odin first.

In any case, I loaded in the new zone at level 10, and the enemies were level 13 and higher. I'm reaching the point where gear and talents makes up for level, but I decided to do a side map to gain another level first.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

My installation is doing something weird, where the game believes that it is not installed and you can only play on the starter planets with a new character. I looked online, and the fix is to disable the Bitraider streaming client, and basically download and reinstall the game again. I'll probably end up doing that, but maybe Bioware will issue a fix this week.

Swoop Racing

The Old Republic's latest patch introduced Swoop Racing! There are courses set up on Dantooine, Onderon, and Tatooine. It's pretty neat.

There are three team, each focused on a different aspect. One likes explosions, one likes flair and jumps, and one is about speed. Though they all use the same course, it changes slightly for each team.

Basically you're on a vehicle that is always moving faster. You can slow down or speed up a bit, but it isn't very hard to maneuver. Bioware made good use of SWTOR's optional mission directives. The base mission just requires you to complete the course and do a few of the team's specials. A timed run is optional.

You also aren't racing against anyone, but everyone else is all on the same track and going in the same direction. So it feels active and a bit like an actual race.

Apparently Bioware has tied some story to the faction reputation, and it is supposed to advance as you gain reputation. I think this is the first time Bioware has done this, so we'll see how it works out. Reputation is shared between your characters, though there is a cap on how much can be earned each week. Bioware also puts the bulk of the reward into weekly quests, further reducing the grind.

All in all, I found it pretty fun. It's a nice change of pace.

Gaming Log - June 29

World of Warcraft

I did some Emissaries on my Paladin. I also did a few digsites for archaeology. I do want to max it out before Shadowlands.

I also did the Nazjatar introductory quests on my Mage. I really like the way the base Fire mage plays.

World of Warcraft Classic

I decided to play my Warlock for a bit. I trekked to Loch Modan and started doing quests there. Eventually I came back to Westfall. My Warlock got to level 17.

I think I'm going to give up on dungeons in Classic. Now everyone is selling boosts, and the whole scene is weird, in addition to being difficult to find groups. Maybe I'll see how far I get with just questing.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

The Roman Imperium showed up! These Romans appear to be from after the conversion to Christianity, though they also worship the Vanir as well. Or possibly the Vanir substitute for Christianity in this mythology. In any case, they have catapults and paladins in addition to legionnaires.

So far, the Romans appear to be side enemies, and not directly involved in the main quest with the Jotun. But I've only done one mission with them so far, and maybe they will play a greater role.

Gaming Log - June 26

This post contains minor spoilers for the early part of Vikings: Wolves of Midgard.

World of Warcraft

I finished the Broken Shore questline on my Priest, and got the class mount. The Priest mount, the Seeker, is a bit weird looking. It's like a gryphon, but with an owl's head instead.

[Edit: Not really sure what went wrong with the picture here. I've removed it for now.]

I think I'm going to shelve the Priest for now. I'm not really enjoying healing with it for some reason.

On my Paladin, we finished Heroic Nya'lotha like normal. We did Mythic Jaina again. This time it only took us two tries, and two guildies won the mount.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

This game is pretty fun. So far, my character, jarl of the Ulfung tribe, has subjugated two neighboring tribes, which pay tribute in gold and iron. She's discovered that her skald is really the daughter of a troll witch and a human runeseeker, and accidentally killed the skald's brother, a full troll. (To be fair, he attacked first.) And finally she led a raid on a Jotun fortress in retaliation for the Jotun's razing of her village. And she's only level 8.

The names the NPCs use for your character are also greatly amusing. Other games go with "hero", "champion", or "Outlander". This game uses "she-wolf". At least the friendly NPCs do. Enemies are more likely to call her "Ulfung bitch".

First Impressions of Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

On a whim I picked up Vikings: Wolves of Midgard from Steam. It's an ARPG like Diablo where you play a Viking. It's set in a Norse mythology setting with Frost Giants trying to bring about Ragnarok.

It's not a AAA game, but it's pretty decent. The developers put a lot of effort into the Norse setting and themed the mechanics of the game to match.

There are no classes, but weapon-styles are tied to the Norse gods. For example, 2H is Thor, 1H+Shield is Tyr, Dual-Wield is Loki, etc. As you kill things you gain Blood (basically XP). Once you have enough Blood, you can sacrifice at an altar, level up and gain Gift points. Each God has a skill tree where you spend your Gift points for abilities and bonuses. The important part here is that each tree is only active while you wield a weapon of the matching type. You have two weapon sets, and can switch sets with X. For now, I'm just putting all my points in Tyr's tree, 1H + Shield.

There are 3 resource types: Gold, Iron, and Wood. You collect resources to upgrade your village. One interesting thing is that each map has 3 secondary objects (kill X goblins, break 10 flags, etc) that reward a large amount of materials and encourage you to explore the map.

For gear, you can wear all armor types, but different type have different properties. Cloth gear has less armor, but faster cooldowns. For healing you have a totem (which is an item like the others), which acts like a potion. It has three charges, but can be refilled at cauldrons on the map. There's also a dedicated 'relic' item which has a special effect, but only a few charges and a minute cooldown. For example, my current relic freezes enemies and deals damage, and started with 9 charges.

Another mechanic is that in the wilderness maps, you are exposed to the cold and can only survive for so long before you freeze to death. This is shown as an icy-blue bar under your health. You can warm up at campfires across the map. The locations of the fires are shown. As you get colder, your character starts commenting on the cold and screen takes on a frosty tint. So the map plays in an interesting fashion where you move from campfire to campfire, and you have to judge if you will make it to the next fire in time, or if you should go back to the previous fire.

The best thing about the game is that it leans heavily into the Viking mythos. For example, in the first main quest you rescue a shipwright. He builds you a longship, and you promptly set out to raid a neighboring village. No reason other than the fact that it is there. Your character even yells out, "Time to bathe in the blood of fisherfolk!"

I was quite taken aback at that. It is certainly very Viking.

Mythic Jaina

Apparently there was a quasi-exploit Horde-side where you could skip to the end of Mythic Daz'alor and only fight Jaina Proudmoore. Surprisingly, instead of removing the skip, Blizzard added an NPC for both sides that takes you directly to Jaina. This is unlocked if one character in the raid has beaten Mythic Jaina previously. This has become the newest activity in organized raiding, farming Mythic Jaina for the Mythic-only mounts.

Jaina drops two mounts for the raid, distributed via Personal Loot to people who don't have the mount yet.

The factor that makes this really viable is that there is a "cheese" strategy where you only have to do Phase 1 on the boat. You then run to Jaina, and do not interrupt her cast. Instead you just dps as hard as you can and you kill her before the cast ends. Now, at the end of expansion, a geared raid can do enough damage to make this viable.

The hard part, though, is having everyone in the raid avoid interrupting. Somewhat ironic, given all the trouble it takes to get people to interrupt when necessary.

Our guild decided to try this out after our alt raid. We only had about 10 guild members online, so we had to PuG 10 others through Party Finder. Our first couple of attempts went somewhat badly, as we had to learn Phase 1.

Then we got through to the second phase. But halfway through a PuG hunter accidently fired Countershot, interrupting Jaina's cast and putting us into the next phase where she promptly wiped us. Everyone was very unhappy. Our raid lead started insisting that people remove their interrupts from their bars, to eliminate even the possibility of interrupts.

The next attempts went pretty badly, wiping on the boat, and half the PuGs left. We replaced the PuGs and tried again. This time everything went cleanly and we got to Jaina. Everything was going smoothly, until one of the new people accidentally interrupted the cast!

After more insisting on removing the abilities on the bars, we tried again. This time was a great attempt, everyone got to Jaina alive, and we just grouped up and cleaved down people who got frozen. We beat the timer, defeating Jaina on that attempt!

Two of the PuGs got the mount.

Gaming Log - June 21

World of Warcraft

Been playing my Paladin mostly. Not doing anything special, just invasions and emissaries.

World of Warcraft Classic

I took my Rogue to Stranglethorn Vale and started working on the quests there. Mostly the Kurzen and early Nessingwary quests.

Control

I booted up Control for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm at the last boss of the Foundation DLC, but I'm a little stuck. The problem, of course, is that I'm out of practice now, so I die even quicker than normal. I lasted about four attempts before I gave up.

This boss is also a little different in that the boss fight is in an open room without a lot of hiding spots. Normally Control (or at least how I play) involves a lot of ducking behind walls to avoid attacks. This fight, I think is going be more about using Levitate and Shield to avoid damage.

Gaming Log - June 17

World of Warcraft Classic

I played a fair bit with the Shaman. I grouped with someone to do the troll quests on Echo Island, then finished a lot of the remaining Durotar quests.

I also did the Shaman Fire Totem quests. It took me forever to find the main NPC, because I was looking up and down the main road from Crossroads to Ashenvale. I really enjoy class quests, even simple ones like this one.

In the end the Shaman got to level 11.

World of Warcraft

I decided to play my Paladin today, doing the Pandaria invasion. I realised that I enjoy playing the Paladin much more than the Priest. Maybe it's long familiarity, but it just "flows" better than the priest. I think I don't really care for dropping in and out of Void Form. I'll probably leave the priest on the backburner for now.

As well, it turned out that the Holy Paladin Best-in-Slot Corruption, Ineffable Truth I, was up for sale. I picked up 2 of those. Unfortunately, I haven't been playing the Paladin very much since Echos were introduced, so I couldn't afford more.

Surprisingly, I'm still at negative corruption on the Paladin. I haven't had a lot of luck with corruption drops.

Gaming Log - June 16

World of Warcraft

I took the Priest to Heroic Nyalotha. We did the first 7 bosses like normal. For some reason, 4 healers showed up tonight when we normally 2-heal. So healing was fairly light and easy. I replaced both my blue trinkets and got to full epics. I think my averaged item level jumped a full 10 ilvls. I basically leeched loot from several regular cloth raiders.

I also did the Uldum invasion and World Boss on the Priest.

World of Warcraft Classic

Did a few more quests in Durotar on my Shaman, including the somewhat-hidden quest to get a bag. It's not really hidden, but it is out of the way on the tower above Razor Hill. The Shaman is now level 8.

Gaming Log - June 15

World of Warcraft Classic

I did the early quest to fight the Theramore marines in Durotar on my Shaman. I teamed up with a mage and hunter to do so. I find I'm using the Earthbind totem a lot. Of course, I'm only level 7.

World of Warcraft

I got a i445 off-hand with some corruption on my Priest. Unfortunately, it put me into the Thing from Beyond zone. I tried to do a Vision, going for the Dwarf District in Stormwind. It went well for a bit, then two Things From Beyond spawned in the middle of the fight and killed me.

I ended up going back to my previous off-hand (a blue i415 one), and this time I finished the district. Rank 6 cloak so far.

Gaming Log - June 14

World of Warcraft

Did some invasions with my Priest. Also did the Nazmir foothold. Otherwise I didn't really accomplish much. Our alt raid didn't fire, as only four people showed up.

I have a Horde Paladin which I boosted for the sole purpose of doing the rebel story in BFA. My main Horde character, a Warrior, is a Sylvanas loyalist. I never actually finished the story on my Horde paladin, so I finished up Voldun and continued on for a couple of chapters.

I think one of the biggest problems with the WoW writers is that they are just not consistent. For example, a major part of the early Horde BFA story is Thomas Zelling, a dying Kul Tiras Tidesage who becomes Forsaken in order to provide for his family. Only to be rejected by the family as a monster. Perfectly in-line with all the Forsaken themes thus far.

But then Derek Proudmoore becomes Forsaken, and he isn't rejected by his family. Maybe that's the difference between major and minor NPCs, but it feels like the different writers are just not on the same page.

World of Warcraft Classic

For some reason, I made a Orc Shaman on a different server. I got to level 5 and logged out in Razor Hill.

Gaming Log - June 11

World of Warcraft

Raid day again. We killed the last 5 bosses of Nyalotha. A pretty smooth raid, though both tanks brought alts. So we had a Demon Hunter and Warrior combo. I'm never sure which tank to Beacon when we have this combo. You want to avoid healing the Beacon tank, so it's always a guessing game about which tank will need less direct heals.

I also did Emissary Quests and N'Zoth invasions with my Priest. Ended up filling out Azerite Essences for both Holy and Shadow. Now I just need to replace my blue trinkets.

World of Warcraft Classic

Just ran around turning in quests from that Stockades run. It's a little amusing how just cleaning up can take a lot of time in Classic. I had to turn in quests in Stormwind, Lakeshire and Darkshire. I do like how quests can cross zones. In retail WoW, it often feels like zones are overly self-contained, except for the breadcrumb quest which takes you to the next zone.

Healing in WoW Classic and FFXIV

I healed a Stockades with my Priest. Another paladin tank, it looks like there are many people creating paladin tank alts. You can tell that they're alts, because they all go up the Holy tree for Consecration first.

I really like healing in Classic. It's pretty basic. The damage is moderate, but it's all about managing mana. In fact, you don't necessarily have to cast a lot of healing spells. I get by with Renew for a lot of it. The 5-second rule for mana regeneration means that you try to "batch" your healing together and then wand for a while.

It's interesting to compare to FFXIV, because you probably spend the same amount of GCDs on heals. But FFXIV doesn't really tax your mana, and their DPS spells are cheap. So you end up spending most of your GCDs on damage rather than healing.

Holy Priest Healing

I took my Priest to an "alt run" of Nyalotha Normal. We had to PuG a couple of people, but it was mostly a guild group. Thankfully the other healer was pretty geared to cover for me.

Holy Priest is a lot different from Holy Paladin. The first major change is that there are a lot more buttons. As well, most of the heals are targeted. Unlike my paladin, I found it was easier to heal by just targeting friendlies.

I find the "Word" mechanic hard to get used to. I need to get better at using those spells on cooldown. Instead of treating them as part of the rotation, I treated them as cooldowns, and didn't cast them nearly as much as I should have. WoWAnalyzer scolded me for this.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I find spells with cooldowns in the 30 to 90 second range harder to keep in mind. It's short enough that you should use them on cooldown, but long enough that they fall out of memory and are easy to forget about.

One thing, though. I thought Holy Priest was a mana-thirsty spec, but it didn't seem like it to me. I even cast a lot of Flash Heal, which is more than I should have. Maybe I'm not casting enough, or perhaps I'm supposed to be spamming the AoE heal. I did check WoWHead's Holy Priest guide beforehand, and I was trying to follow that.

Maybe I'll see if I can take the Priest to the first three bosses of Nyalotha Heroic this week, and see how healing is in the harder environment.

A Failed Gnomeregan

I joined a Gnomeregan group on my Rogue in WoW Classic. The group was pretty good, but ultimately unsuccessful. Warrior tank, Priest healer, Rogue (me), Mage, and Warlock. We did quite well up until the final hallway before Mekkatorque. The one with the Dark Irons.

We accidentally pulled too many and wiped. We rushed back in and got past the respawns to the hallway. This time, in the middle of the fight, the mage accidentally blinked into a group of enemies and pulled them. Another wipe, but this time the priest had Soulstone on him. He ressed us, but he was low level and got too close to enemies and they came and wiped us for a third time. At this point we gave up because of all the respawns.

I did get a couple of quests done, but I still have five or so left. This is the point where finding a group becomes a lot harder, especially as the main wave of leveling characters finished so long ago. Part of me feels like it would be faster or better to just ignore dungeons and focus on solo quests.

Gaming Log - June 5

The Old Republic

I finished Onslaught with my Inquisitor. I did the Meridian Complex instance, and then the final conversations. I rejoined the Empire, killed Darth Anathiel and retook the Dark Council seat.

I really enjoyed how they referenced the original story here. Made a lot of sense for a Sith lord. It was really nice being called Darth Occulus again.

So that's Imperial Agent, Jedi Knight, and Sith Inquisitor all caught up. I'm not sure which class I will level next, though it will probably be a Republic class. However, maybe I'll take a break from The Old Republic for a bit.

Gaming Log - June 4

World of Warcraft

Raid night. We finished up Heroic Nyalotha. Nothing really unusual happened. We had a few less people than normal, only 13, so healing was pretty easy.

Now that I'm recalling the instance, I think I forgot to get Seals this week. I don't remember seeing a bonus loot roll pop up at any time.

The Old Republic

I finished up Mek-sha. This time around I sided with the rogue Mandalorians, since that was the Dark Side option.

I know that you can kill Vowrawn for playing Sith games instead of focusing on his mission, but he doesn't seem to be playing any games. His plan focuses on beating the Republic and it works well. If he solidifies control of Mek-sha as well, that's just a bonus. I wonder if there's a conversation path which makes it more obvious, or if it's just something that doesn't come across.

Oh well, on to the Meridian Complex.

Gaming Log - June 3

World of Warcraft

Not much here. Did the Stormsong dailies with my Priest as the Emissary reward was gear. Then did the Uldum invasion and initial quest.

World of Warcraft Classic

Did an elite quest for the Thandol Span bridge on my Rogue. I partnered with a gnome mage. At some point, the mage hopped up on the chain at the side of bridge. He then promptly fell off, all the way to the river below! In the end, we got the quest finished and I got the breadcrumb quest for Arathi Highlands. I reached level 32 in all that.

The Old Republic

About half-way through Mek-sha with the Sith Inquistor. It is quite amusing playing a more arrogant and cruel character.

Gaming Log - June 2

World of Warcraft

Raid night again. We did the first 7 bosses of Heroic Nyalotha again. A little bit off our usual game, as we wiped once on Xaneth, had several wipes on Vexiona, and a couple wipes on Ra-Den. We had a pretty unusual raid composition as well, with only 2 melee, but 4 Mages and 4 Hunters.

I did shift my cooldown usage on Vexiona. Normally I pop Avenging Wrath on cooldown, usually at the beginning of each dragon phase, and once in Phase 3. But since we've been going faster with higher DPS, AW usually doesn't come up again until after the second Heart of Darkness. On the kill, I saved Avenging Wrath so I could use it after the first Heart of Darkness. I think that helped stabilise Phase 3 a lot.

The Old Republic

My Inquistor finished Odessen, and is set for Mek-sha. Mostly Dark Side, though I left the king alive. Almost caught up to the current end of the story.

Gaming Log - June 1

World of Warcraft Classic

I did a Deadmines run with my Paladin. I healed it. It was actually a pretty good group: 2 Paladins, 2 Warriors, and a Warlock. Naturally, only cloth armor dropped, and the warlock made out like a bandit.

The group played well. They pulled back, dealt with patrols, and didn't rush ahead. It was a smooth, clean, and enjoyable run. About the only thing that could have gone better would have been better focus-fire, instead of splitting damage.

In some ways, these types of dungeon runs are a better experience than Retail dungeons. But even in Classic they are a bit rare, and inevitably get overtaken by boosting and other nonsense.

The Old Republic

My Inquisistor is continuing through Onslaught. She's my first Dark Side character I've taken through this, and it's amusing so far. As far as Dark Side goes, I enjoy being ruthless to my enemies. I can't, however, be ruthless to my allies. I always end up going Light Side with those choices.

Also, I got Khem Val back, which is great. There was a [Flirt] dialogue option in the conversation, which was rather concerning. I did not take that, but I'm sure it's on YouTube.

The Centralized Internet

A few days ago, I saw a discussion on Hacker News bemoaning the centralisation of the internet, and the loss of blogs and other independent sites. Most of the comments blamed Google and the other giant tech companies for this.

I don't really agree with this perspective. I'm not a big fan of the giant tech companies, but I don't think they were directly responsible for the centralisation of the internet.

In my view, the centralisation of the internet had too major causes: spam; and the fact that creators are drawn to audiences, and only rarely the other way around.

The hard truth is that there is no decentralised solution to spam. If you allow other people to post comments or content to your site, you will get inundated with spam. Only the large tech companies have managed to reduce the problem to manageable levels.

The other factor pushing centralisation is that creators are drawn to audiences, and not vice versa. 

One of the blogs I follow is Arnold Kling's Askblog. It's a nice blog on economics and politics with a lot of good commenters. Indeed, most of his posts get between 10 and 30 comments of high quality, which is quite excellent. In some ways, it's the "beau ideal" of blogs that the Hacker News people were mourning.

Yet last year, Mr. Kling started posting essays on Medium.com instead of his own site. His reasoning was basically that he wanted a larger audience.

The lesson here is that creators go where the audience is. If everyone watches videos on Youtube, then creators will make videos on Youtube.

I think that between spam and audiences, it was inevitable that the internet would centralise. A de facto carrot and the stick, one which the tech giants took advantage of.

Gaming Log - May 31

World of Warcraft

I finished the Legion Priest Order Hall story. It was enjoyable. I remember reading complaints that the Paladins stole all the glory, but I thought it was pretty sensible. The priest story was all about finding and unifying allies, and recruiting the paladins to their cause fit in with that.

I've started the Broken Isles campaign for the priest mount, and am in the middle of it. I've done it fairly recently on my warlock, though, so I'm not very enthusiastic about it.

World of Warcraft Classic

• Rogue - Did another run of Stockades to finish a quest from Dun Modr. This time with a paladin tank with Consecrate. He was a pretty good tank, though he did have to drink to recover mana a lot.
• Priest - Did a few quests to kill ghouls in Duskwood. Hit level 25.
  
• Paladin - Did a couple of the early quests in Lakeshire to kill gnolls. Hit level 20, where you get the Verigan's Fist quest. So I guess I'll be trying for that.

One thing about Classic is that leveling after the main rush is a little unappealing. So many people are selling dungeon carries, or asking to buy carries that it is a little off-putting. In some ways, I wish Blizzard would release a brand-new server with no transfers allowed.

The Old Republic

My Sith Inquistor finished Nathema. Despite being Dark Side, I couldn't bring myself to do anything bad to the traitor.

I then finished Ossus with the Inquistor as well. I actually hit max level right at the start, so it's been interesting getting max-level gear randomly while going through the story.

Wolcen

I haven't played Wolcen in about a month, so I've uninstalled it. I really enjoyed the campaign, and I think the game is worth the money just for that. However, I think redoing the campaign for online play--especially with a build that wasn't my primary interest--had the effect of using up a lot of enthusiasm for the game, and I never really got into the endgame.

All in all, though, Wolcen was charming.

Gaming Log - May 28

World of Warcraft

Raid night again. We finished off the last five bosses in N'yalotha Heroic. It was a short night, as all were one-shots. We came close to wiping on N'Zoth, though. It was going perfectly fine when suddenly three quarters of the raid died near the end of phase 3. I'm still not sure what happened there. Luckily the last quarter of the raid was able to finish off the boss before they all died.

After that, I switched to the Priest. I remembered what I really wanted to do with this character, which was finish the Legion class order hall story. So back to Dalaran to continue onwards. The priest story is pretty interesting, sending you all over the place. To Northrend, to recruit a priest from the Scarlet Crusade. To Duskwood, to recruit a Shadow priest. Then it intertwines with the paladin story. I ended up stopping at a point where you get sent to the Paladin order hall. Sadly, you can't take the shortcut in Dalaran, and instead have to go all the way to Eastern Plaguelands.

World of Warcraft Classic

I did one quest on my Rogue to kill some cursed sailors in Wetlands. Still level 31. 

It is interesting how just doing a single quest in Classic is a satisfying use of time. Needing to be careful and pull one mob at a time makes questing take much more effort. Thankfully, the few times I pulled two at once, I had Blade Flurry available.

Gaming Log - May 27

World of Warcraft Classic

I play Classic in a weird (at least, weird to me) fashion. I play multiple characters, but do very little on each character.

• Priest - did one quest to collect Rot Blossoms from skeletons in Darkshire. Still level 24.
• Hunter - did one quest to investigate a Red Crystal in Darkshore. Had to fight through a lot of moonkins. Still level 14.
• Rogue - joined a group and did the Dun Modr elite quests in Wetlands. Hit level 31.

That's basically 15 minutes on each character (maybe 30 min on the Rogue) before I decide I'm finished with that character for the night.

World of Warcraft

I did the first Vision with my Priest. For some reason, I did it as Holy. It was a straight shot to Alleria just to get the first cloak upgrade.  I also did the N'Zoth invasion in Uldum. For some reason, the last boss seemed much more annoying when I do it on a melee character. I then went to Nazjatar for a bit. I have two unfilled Essence slots, so I need to at least pick up Rank 1 versions from somewhere.

I need to decide what I want to do with this Priest. Do I want to heal, to dps, to do group content, or just mess around with solo content? Her item level is now around 420, so it's starting to get into the group content range.

Gaming Log - May 26

I need to get back into the habit of writing posts. I'm going to try simple log or diary-style posts.

Final Fantasy XIV

I finished the level 80 Red Mage quest. 

Shadowbringers did something different with class quests than previous expansions. Instead of have a separate quest chain for each class, each of the five roles had a shared quest chain which tied into the expansion story. I've done the Tank, Healer, and Magic DPS chains.

However at level 80, there is a small class quest which is basically just checking back in with the main NPCs for the class. The Red Mage was pretty short, but enjoyable.

World of Warcraft Classic

I just logged in with my bank alt and put up some materials on the Auction House. I'm up to 17 gold, which isn't bad considering my highest-level character is only 30. I've mostly been levelling low-level alts, but I've been consistently sending all the white and green loot to the bank alt to sell.

The bank alt also got invited to a guild, Bankers of Azeroth! Pretty amusing, I guess the officer or GM just threw me an invite when he noticed the character name was 'Coribank'.

World of Warcraft

It was raid night. We've taken to doing the first seven bosses of Nyalotha on Tuesday (top 2 wings), and doing the last 5 bosses on Thursday. Basically raiding half the time of our normal raids, but keeping the 2-day a week schedule. We did attempt to finish the raid in one night, but it was inconsistent, and we usually ended up having to leave N'Zoth to Thursday. And then logging in for just one boss was unsatisfying.

I healed with my paladin. We've taken to two-healing most of the instance with about 16 to 18 people. It's not that bad, except that it is hard to recover if mistakes are made early. We do have a couple of other raiders who switch specs if we need a third healer. Usually N'Zoth and Drest'agath. N'Zoth because wiping in phase 3 and having to redo the entire fight is annoying. Drest'agath mostly to have a healer in the obscuring vision clouds just in case the melee needs heals.

Loot-wise, I got Leech corruption boots, but I already have gemmed corruption boots, so I gave them up. We use an addon called LootRaffle to distribute unwanted loot, and it is pretty nice.

I've also gotten my Priest to 120 over the last week, got the cloak and her item level up to i412 or so. I need to decide what I want to do with this character. She's currently Shadow for solo questing, but maybe it would be better to have another healer and do some group content.

Finally Past Iokath Sentinals!

In SWTOR, my Sith Inquisitor has been stuck on one mission for the last couple of months. It's one of those vehicle combat missions. Basically, you're in a Walker on Iokath, and you have to kill three giant Sentinels.

I don't know if Bioware changed the scaling, but it was much more difficult than when I did it on my Imperial Agent and Jedi Knight a year ago. I've been hoping to see a Patch Note fixing it but nothing was coming out.

I finally did a Google search and came across an alternate strategy that was said to work. Basically have the Walker stand in the middle and use the Heavy Stomp on cooldown.

I gave that a try, and it worked like a charm! A bit cheesy, but what can you do?

According to various commenters, the vehicle missions work correctly if you are at the expected level for the mission. But if you are a higher level and are scaled down, it is much harder. Which was pretty much the exact situation I was in.

But thankfully my Inquisitor is now past that, and into the Traitor arc. There's an option to forgive the traitor at the end of the arc, which I took on both my Agent and Knight. However, doing the chapters in rapid succession has made me far less likely to forgive. The traitor causes a lot of grief early on that was easy to discount or forget about when each chapter in the arc came out a month or two apart.

Eden's Verse

Recently, I finished the Normal version of the latest 8-man raid, Eden's Verse, in Final Fantasy XIV.

I think FFXIV is pushing the limits of reasonable complexity, even if the raids aren't super difficult. Take a look at this video guide to the 3rd boss:

I watched this video in a mild state of disbelief. It's actually a little better in-game, because you generally only have to move one square, so you can do with minimal movement if you stand on the borders.

The other thing that FFXIV does is that failing mechanics is usually not an instant kill. Instead, you get a debuff called "Vulnerability" which makes you take more damage, and lasts for a minute. So you can make a few mistakes and survive, but too many will cause you to die.

The actual raid story is quite good. The other three fights are a little more reasonable. All in all, Eden's Verse is a good raid. I am a little worried that SE is leaning too much on a somewhat "artificial" way of making the fights hard, rather than a more traditional "organic" difficulty. Though I suppose what's "artificial" is in the eye of the beholder.

Legion Warlock Mount

I took my Warlock through the Legion Class campaign and then through the Broken Shore questline to get my warlock mount:

A very dark screenshot, but it's a void elf in grey robes on a dark mount.

It was fun campaign. I enjoyed the warlock class campaign, and the mount quest had a lot of callbacks to the original mount quests.

I can see the Broken Shore questline becoming annoying if you try to do it too often, but since I haven't done it in a long while, it was pretty good. The only real blockers are the two points where you have to wait for a Legion invasion in order to proceed.

Also, the Sentinax step was a bit annoying. Since everyone outlevels the zone, the demons die very quickly. If you don't have spammable AoE, (preferrably instant cast), it can be hard to tag demons coming out of the portals. It's especially annoying when you are the person who actually summoned the portal.

In any case, with the Warlock done, I'm now working on a Priest. The truth, though, is that I'm not really enjoying any of the priest specs in solo play. Holy is fine in groups, but there is something I just don't like about the Shadow rotation. I think I find going into Voidform to be more of a chore than fun, but Shadow is balanced around Voidform.