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.

Corruption and Raid Healing

Tonight we only had two healers in a 15-person Heroic N'Zoth raid. It took us a few tries, but we got it down in the end. But it was a good fight to reflect on how corruption affects healing.

The thing about corruption is that the healer doesn't really see it happening. All you see is someone's health suddenly dropping, with no relationship to mechanics. Honestly, it's a little weird. It makes healing rather unpredictable and more reactive than normal.

It's actually a really good fit for Glimmer paladins, because you can immediately Shock the person who just dropped.

Another odd thing is that it's suddenly your best players who need attention. Normally, in a raid, you have the usually suspects who are a bit slow to move out of the fire, and so you have to pay extra attention to them. But now, it's likely you have to pay more attention to the better players, because they're pushing the edge on corruption.

I can't decide how I feel about it. One the one hand, it's better than the heavy raid-wide damage auras that past tiers used to challenge healers. And it's not really that different from a mechanic where the boss blasts random raid members.

However, it might have contributed to the lower difficulty of Heroic raiding this tier. When we first went through Heroic, people had relatively low corruption. So our dps was lower, but people weren't taking random damage. Instead damage was very predictable and and not as severe. That made it easier to survive and learn the fights. Compare to something like Heroic Kil'jaeden where people would die left and right while learning.

In some ways, healing actually feels a little more difficult now than it was when we first did the fights. But damage has significantly increased, so the fights are over faster.

Warlock Finished, Current Roster

I finished leveling a Void Elf Warlock to 120 and went through the legendary cloak quest line. It was pretty enjoyable. I leveled mostly as Affliction, as I've always been fond of the DoTs and Drains playstyle.

My current max-level roster:

Alliance:

• Human Paladin
• Human Mage
• Night Elf Demon Hunter
• Draenei Shaman
• Void Elf Warlock

Horde:

• Blood Elf Warrior
• Blood Elf Paladin

I kind of regret the Horde Paladin. I played the Warror as a Sylvanas Loyalist, so I boosted the Paladin to see the Saurfang side of the Horde War Campaign in Battle for Azeroth. However, I haven't actually played through the campaign again.

The bigger problem, though, is that my main, the Human Paladin is on the Doomhamer server, and all the others are on Lightbringer. So really, I got them to 120, and pretty much let them languish. I kind of wish Blizzard would do a one-time sale and let you rearrange all your characters. I'd consolidate Alliance on Doomhammer and Horde on Lightbringer. (Which sounds backwards, now that I'm typing it out.)

I'm not sure if I should level another alt, or just leave it as is and wait for Shadowlands.

No Warforging in Shadowlands

Blizzard revealed today that there will be no Warforging, Titanforging, or Corruption for loot in Shadowlands. Essentially, we will be going back to the static items as in previous expansions before Legion.

I personally did not mind these mechanics. Blizzard gave out more loot, so that it was easier to hit the baseline, but harder to get Best-in-Slot. Now they will revert that, and we will go back to a more Classic feel where there is less loot overall, and upgrades are rarer, but if you get a piece, you're not going to replace it again until a new tier comes out.

That does mean that the variance will be higher. I remember some tiers where one time simply never dropped for us.

On the positive side, this means that class sets can come back. You won't have to choose between set bonuses and warforged items.

Overall, it's probably a positive change. I think that there was a significant faction of the audience who had troubles dealing with the fact that you could not "finish" a character in Legion/BfA. That you could not say, "this character has the best gear possible, I can put him aside and move on to a different character".

FFXIV: Save the Queen Relic Weapons

Final Fantasy XIV released it's latest patch, 5.25, yesterday. This isn't a full story patch, but contains the start of the current expansion's Relic weapon quest line.

Relic weapons are an interesting item. They're the second-best weapons in the game, but they will require a lot of steady grinding to get them to their highest form. A reward for pure dedication. I rather think they're a good fit for MMOs, which thrive on steady progress.

On the other hand, for games with alts, there will be a lot of unhappiness because the alts have to regrind their weapons. Surprisingly, though, FFXIV makes you grind each weapon separately, and no one complains about that. I wonder why.

In any case, the new story was pretty good. It featured a solo scenario that turned into the equivalent of a trial at the end. Indeed, an Extreme version of trial, for 8-man groups, was also released. The story hinted at a lot of future developments.

I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes. However, I've never actually finished any of the relic weapons from the previous expansions, so I'm not sure how this will go. At least the current version is enough to get my item level up so that I can finish a couple of pieces of content from the previous patch.

Shadowlands Class Update

Blizzard has released a Shadowlands Class Update, discussing changes coming to the classes in the next expansion. For the most part, they look to be drawing back on specializations, creating a more common base that all specializations share.

For paladins, we have:

Devoted servants of the Light, Paladins tap into its holy power to protect their friends and vanquish their enemies. In the original version of the game, Paladins had several categories of spells that transcended their specializations, such as Seals, Blessings, and Auras. While we feel that not all of these categories of spells make sense for the modern game, having those categories defined the Paladin class. We want to restore that feeling of shared spell categories with the unification of the Paladin resource system, and the restoration of several iconic abilities including Auras. While a few of these abilities are situational utility, they play well into the Paladin’s archetype as a holy avenger and bane of the undead.

General Changes
Blessing of Sacrifice, Hammer of Wrath, Sense Undead, Shield of the Righteous, Turn Evil, and Word of Glory will be available to all Paladins, regardless of their specialization.

Holy Power returns as a resource for all Paladins to use to fight off attackers and defend their allies. Abilities such as Crusader Strike and Hammer of Wrath grant Holy Power on use, which can then be spent to call upon the most powerful forms of the Light—including Word of Glory and Shield of the Righteous—to vanquish foes and protect allies.

As champions of the Light, all Paladins can use powerful Auras to safeguard and enhance their allies. Concentration Aura returns to all Paladins, reducing the duration of interrupts and silences. A redesigned Retribution Aura allows Paladins to avenge fallen allies with a short burst of Avenging Wrath, giving these holy warriors the strength to vanquish evil or keep their remaining allies on their feet. Crusader and Devotion Auras are also available to all Paladins.

All Paladins will also have access to more Talents that allow them to manipulate and spend Holy Power. The Divine Purpose Talent will be available for all Paladins to select and standardized for all specializations, allowing their abilities that spend Holy Power to have a decent chance to make the next Holy Power-spending ability free and increase its damage or healing output. Holy Avenger allows the generation of huge bursts of Holy Power in a short window, while Seraphim allows the Paladin to spend their Holy Power to increase their secondary stats for a moderate amount of time.

Holy
The Azerite Trait Glimmer of Light moves to a space in the Level 50 Talent row, competing with powerful existing options such as Beacon of Faith. While Holy Paladins’ Aura Talent row has been replaced by the class-wide Aura bar, Aura Mastery continues to give Holy Paladins the unique ability to give any Aura a special empowerment.

Protection
To better uphold their oath to protect the innocent, Protection Paladins now exude Shining Light—a new passive that makes the next cast of Word of Glory free whenever Judgment critically strikes a target, enabling Protection Paladins to shield themselves and defend their allies from attackers.

Retribution
The darkest places within the Shadowlands inspire Retribution Paladins to perform valorous acts in the name of the Light. Wake of Ashes is available to all Retribution Paladins instead of needing to be picked as a Talent, allowing these holy warriors to vanquish evil with a blow so powerful it damages all foes close to its impact and reduces any survivors’ movement speed significantly. Demon and Undead enemies are further crippled with a substantial stun when struck with the ability.

Empyrean Power (previously an Azerite Trait) will be available as a Talent, giving Crusader Strike a moderate chance to make the next Divine Storm cost no Holy Power and increase the damage dealt by a significant amount.

The big change is Auras and Holy Power (and Hammer of Wrath!). While getting back Auras is very nice, I have a much more mixed reaction to Holy Power.

Holy Power does not quite work with healing. Last time around, all I really remember is blanketing the raid in 1-HP Eternal Flame HoTs. It was really weird, and ended up making the paladin feel more like a druid than anything else.

As well, Holy Paladin healing was excellent this expansion. Both builds (Glimmer and Judgment of Light) were fun to play and felt paladin-like. We are getting Glimmer as a talent in the expansion, which is good. However, significantly changing paladin healing at this point feels like fixing something which isn't broken.

Well, we'll see what the system feels like in the Alpha and Beta.

Control: Foundation - First Impressions

Control's first DLC, Foundation, was released last week. I picked it up and have been slowly working my way through it. I'm not very far in, though.

It looks like the difficulty has picked up a bit. Or possibly it's just that there is a new type of enemy, and I haven't figured out how to handle them well yet. Control was mostly a ranged game, but the new enemies are melee who rush you with pickaxes. If you try to pick them off from heights, they start throwing dynamite at you.

Control also continues its pattern of having the main story line be reasonably hard, but having the side mission bosses be a difficult challenge. It's a pretty good pattern, because you never get stuck entirely. Since the side missions are independent, you can go after them in any order. Or skill up through the main story line first.

The story appears to be filling out some of the history behind the Federal Bureau of Control, investigating the time period before the main cast of Control.

In any case, Control was an excellent game, and Foundation is a worthy continuation.

My First WoW Addon: Minimap Coordinates

A couple of months ago, I decided to try to learn how to make a World of Warcraft Addons. Here's my first addon: MinimapCoordinates. MinimapCoordinates is a very simple addon that only does one thing: puts your current location in the text above the Minimap.

It's so simple, it actually caused me problems when I first tried to submit it to Curseforge. They rejected it until I could say something about why someone would want to use this Addon. Apparently, "They want to see their location above the minimap" was not good enough. So I called it "minimalistic and light-weight", and that passed.

I made it primarily to learn a bit about Lua, the WoW Addon API, and to how set up the infrastructure around Addons. The code is hosted on Github. There's some neat integration where pushing a Git version tag automatically notifies Curseforge and packages up the Addon for download.

MinimapCoordinates is available for both Battle For Azeroth and WoW Classic.

I'm trying to decide what to tackle next. Ideally, it's more complex than this, but not too crazy.