The Return of Master Loot?

In an interview, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas said that the Dev Team is interested in bringing back Master Loot. He specifically called out the problems around clarity which items are actually tradable. 

I'll be honest, I have zero idea how trading Tier tokens actually works in this tier. I just look for the blue text on the item if I don't want it.

In any case, I've long held that the current iteration of Personal Loot is a corrupted system. It was created to reduce drama in automatic group content, and then adapted for premade group content. I've posted my ideal loot system suite before, but it might be a little complex.

What I think Blizzard should work towards is the following:

• Two systems: Personal Loot and Master Loot.
• Personal Loot cannot be traded at all.
• Master Loot has the standard "Tradable for 2 hours to people in the group"
  
• Automatic Group Content uses Personal Loot and it cannot be changed.
• Premade Groups can choose between Personal Loot and Master Loot.
• Switching the Loot System requires everyone in the group to agree to the change. You can do a Ready Check style thing, where everyone has to click Yes for the switch to happen. (Maybe change the look/feel of the popup so people don't mistake it for a Ready Check.)
• Master Loot is deactivated in new raids/dungeons for the first month. This is mostly to cut down the degeneracy of split runs in the World First race.

I think that would be good enough. Personal Loot is for no-drama Automatic Group Runs. Master Loot is for when you create the group from scratch and want control over how loot is handed out.

Ya Boy Kongming!

For some reason, Google is not letting me sign in and reply to comments. Not sure what's going on there.

In any case, there's a pretty good anime airing this season: Ya Boy Kongming! The ancient Chinese strategist Zhuge Liang (also called Kongming) reincarnates in modern Japan and decides to help a young singer achieve stardom.

I rather enjoy these shows that start with a wacky concept and and then commit to it. Additionally, Ya Boy Kongming is actually a decent show, and uses its conceit well.

Also, it has an amazing opening! The really weird part is that the opening is actually a good reflection of the show.

Dungeon Finder in Classic

Blizzard announced that there would be no Dungeon Finder in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. The Classic community promptly exploded into a state of civil war.

In the end, this is really vindication for J. Allen Brack when he said that "You think you do, but you don't". For better or worse, Dungeon Finder is the dividing line between Classic and Retail. Now basically we have the Retail audience plus a significant minority (maybe even a majority) of the Classic audience wanting to go down the same path that the Retail devs took a decade ago.

A reader reminded me of the posts I wrote when Dungeon Finder first came out. I've always been reasonably happy with Dungeon Finder. I like running dungeons, especially at low levels. And my groups have not been particularly toxic. Though these days I do lend more credence to the idea that healers are drama-prone, which I don't see since I heal.

I generally like the Dungeon Finder, but at the same time, I'm a Retail player, not really a Classic player. I pretty much only dabble in Soul of Iron in Classic Season of Mastery. I'm not really sure it would be fair to apply my preferences to the Classic audience who really want something different than Retail. After all, if you want to play WoW with Dungeon Finder, you can always play Retail. There's something to be said for the idea that two different games should offer two different experiences.

Still, it's possible that there are two ideas in play here, both true at the same time:

1. Dungeon Finder makes it easier for players to run dungeons.
2. Dungeon Finder destroys the server community.

I do believe that Dungeon Finder hurts the server community. I once defined social fabric as "the bonds created by repeated, positive interactions between the same set of people." Dungeon Finder cuts directly against this. You no longer do the most common repeatable action with the same set of people. You don't see the same people or the same guilds regularly.

But maybe being able to do content whenever you want is more important than server community. Maybe Classic is really about the content and class systems that was lost with Cataclysm than about nebulous notions like community.

The real irony here is that Retail sees far less use of the Dungeon Finder than Classic would. Mythic and Mythic Keystone dungeons don't use the Dungeon Finder and automatic group creation, they use the Premade Group Finder. So really, the only people using the Dungeon Finder are people levelling, people doing dungeons to finish quests, or people gearing up a little at the very start of an expansion. Otherwise everyone is doing dungeons the old-fashioned way, even having to travel to the instance entrance in the world.

So should Classic Wrath have the Dungeon Finder? I don't really know. I do think that it would worth experimenting with the Premade Group Finder first. See if being able to post and apply to groups in a nice format with requirements listed where you can see what roles are needed. Getting notified when someone applies to your group instead of having to post advertisements in an LFG channel every minute or so.

Perhaps that would end up balancing the ability to run dungeons with server community better than the Dungeon Finder did.

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Trailer

In 2004, Wizards of the Coast released the Kamigawa block, sets inspired by traditional Japanese mythology. By every measure, they were a failure.

The original Kamigawa was a "deep cut" into Japanese mythology and spirit lore. Too deep, it turns out. Most of the audience didn't get the references and concepts. It didn't help that it was much less powerful than the sets immediately before.

This year, WotC took another crack at Kamigawa. 

I do admire this about Wizards of the Coast, they are willing to revisit their failed mechanics and settings. They even brought back phasing in the last couple of years, which stunned old-timers. It's now something you can do temporarily to targets, to remove a threat, or save one of your creatures. "Target creature phases out." 

In the intervening years, manga and anime has become much more popular, especially in Magic's target demographic. So the new Kamigawa set, Neon Dynasty, jumped forward in time, and leaned heavily into a lot of recognizable anime/manga tropes.

And naturally enough, WotC made an anime trailer for the set, featuring two of their new planeswalkers, Kaito and the Wanderer:

Dracthyr Evoker

The one element of Dragonflight which going over very poorly is the new race-class combo Dracthyr Evoker.

It's a ranged DPS or healer class. Only Dracthyr can be Evokers, and only Evokers can be Dracythr. Perhaps a little bit like demon hunters only being elves.

The class part seems to be okay, but a lot of people don't really like the look. It's seen as very scrawny, more lizard than dragon. Apparently people really wanted more bulky D&D dragonborne types of dragons. Something which exudes power.

I kind of see Blizzard's thought process here, though. These are caster dragons. There are a lot of complaints about the human (and draenei) male mages being overly buff. Muscle wizards. If Dracthyr were bulky, I rather think that people would be complaining that they were a ranged class. There would be a huge volume of calls for Dracthyr Warriors and Paladins. Buff Dragon Paladins would be amazing, now that I think about it!

On the other hand, I still agree that the current Dracthyr aren't a particularly exciting or inspiring race.

Perhaps Blizzard should have swung for the fences here, and done something really outside the box. Imagine if the new race was basically a dragon whelp, or maybe a slightly bigger but still draconic form of a whelp (a dragonet?). They would still be casters, because whelps and dragonets are always casters in WoW. But it would be more like Bear form for druids.

Maybe that would be too much, not being able to see armor. But bears and cats are still moderately popular in WoW, and the current Dracthyr don't look like they wear all the armor. Then have the whelps get a humanoid form, either at the start or as part of the starting area. Alliance dragons could shift into human or gnome forms, Horde dragons into blood elves or tauren, with a few light draconic customizations.

I think the "must be able to see armor" directive is too restricting, and there's room for a little experimentation outside that.

Affectionate Memes

This whole topic of discussion is hilarious to me:

(From Reddit.)

Honestly, this is a good sign for Dragonflight. I think you see these affectionate, tongue-in-cheek memes when players are generally happy. When you have weird oddities like the Age of Mortals only lasting 10 years, but the players just roll with it.

Another example recently was from FFXIV. If you missed it, FFXIV royally screwed up the rollout of their housing lottery. YoshiP did an excellent job explaining and apologizing. (Long story short, it looks like results from one service never made it to another service. Ahh, microservices.) 

The fanbase, at least after the initial torches and pitchforks, went on to post memes like:

From Reddit. The crying elf is Francel, the NPC who was in charge of Ishgard restoration (where the the new housing is). The blue elephant is Ser Aymeric, leader of Ishgard. Not really sure why he's in a blue elephant costume, but apparently that's in-game too.

In any case, I see community memes in response to "mistakes" like these to be a good sign that the community is happy with things overall.

Dragonflight

WoW unveiled the next expansion today: Dragonflight.

The stone Titan Watcher was pretty cool. Hope he appears in the actual expansion.

Overall a much quieter trailer than the last few ones. Hopefully that means this expansion is more grounded. I would rather like to see another Mists of Pandaria.

Soul of Iron Failed!

There are two great dangers in the Soul of Iron challenge: murlocs; and other players.

Soul of Iron is the "hardcore" challenge in WoW Classic Season of Mastery. You can talk to an NPC in Ironforge to get a Soul of Iron buff. The buff doesn't actually do anything, it's mostly for display purposes. If you ever die, you get a debuff that says what level you died at.

My priest, Vespertine, fell in Uldaman at level 42.

I was healing, but we accidentally pulled the entire room with the Steward Keeper boss. The one with the whirlwinds that slow you down. Between the boss, two extra golems, and five or six Earthen, we quickly wiped.

In hindsight, the fact that the tank was in the guild <UWU> was probably a warning sign.

(That's probably a little unfair, the tank was generally good, just cut a few too many corners.)

I was even in a Soul of Iron guild--unimaginatively called <Souls of Iron>--and sadly had to leave it. Even worse, another guildie was in that run, so he lost SoI as well. Ah well, those were the rules, and guild chat was full of "F" to salute the fallen, as per the tradition.

I'm not really sure what to do now. I could keep going with this character, playing normally. But I'm not very interested in endgame in Season of Mastery. I could delete the priest and reuse the name to make a new character, probably with a different class, and rejoin the guild and try again. I suppose I could just make a second character and put off the decision.

I did enjoy the Soul of Iron experience, especially being in a guild of people all trying the same challenge. If you want to try Soul of Iron, I recommend <Souls of Iron> of Shadowstrike.

Would You Recommend a Work With a Disappointing Ending?

Over the weekend I read a childrens/young adult fantasy series by Ysabeau S. Wilce, Flora Segunda. I'm trying to decide if I would recommend the series to someone. On the plus side, the setting is really interesting and unique. It has:

• Set in roughly 1880s California, with that level of tech
  
• With interesting magic
• The USA appears to have never formed
• The Aztec Empire never fell, and is still full-on sacrificing people to its gods
• California is a rebellious client-state of the Aztec Empire

The first two books are quite good. The third book, however, is deeply unsatisfying. The main character doesn't really accomplish anything. In fact it feels like she ended the book in a worse place than when she started it. Perhaps the author was hoping write more novels in the series, but never got the chance, so just labeled the book as the ending of the trilogy.

It got me thinking about whether I would recommend this series to someone else. On the one hand, I think you could say to read the first two books only and pretend the third doesn't exist.

But I don't know how that would work for other series. The canonical example in gaming is Mass Effect. I don't think I'd recommend only playing ME1 and ME2. Maybe one could say that you should play the series, even though the ending is very disappointing.

Television-wise, I understand Game of Thrones had a similar issue. I did not watch it, but many fans disliked the last season. Would you still recommend the show?

Endings are pretty important. I am more likely to recommend a series with a rough start but decent finish than the other way around.

Side Quests in Endwalker

I finished the Tank Job (?) quest line for Endwalker. It was interesting how they paired you with one of the realm leaders, and it looks to be a complementary class. For tanks, it was Kan-E-Senna of Gridania, who is basically a White Mage, and it was a nice look into the workings of Gridania.

I also did some of the side quests in Zone 6. One thing about side-quests in Endwalker is that they are very optional this time around. I think the MSQ by itself gives enough XP, and the side-quests scale for the most part.

Personally, I like doing side-quests alongside the MSQ, as they give you a better picture about the zone, and fill out a lot of the small details. This time around, I did most of the quests as a Paladin, which is what I was doing the MSQ as, but I switched to Red Mage right before turning the quest in. I started doing this in about Zone 4, but I wish I had done it a bit earlier. I hit 90 on the Paladin relatively earlier, and probably could have gotten another couple of levels on my Red Mage. 

The accessory gear rewards also come in a box, so you can switch back to your main class before opening it.

So for those of you who haven't done Endwalker yet, that's my recommendation:

1. Do the side-quests alongside the MSQ, 
2. Turn in the side-quests as a secondary class. You'll get several levels on that second class.
3. Open the rewards as your main class to keep upgrading accessories.

In my opinion, that gives the best combination of story, gear and XP efficiency.

Gaming Log - January 1

Happy New Year, everyone!

In an effort to get back into the habit of writing posts, I'm resurrecting the gaming logs.

Final Fantasy XIV

Queues are still a thing, though significantly reduced on the holiday weekend. I logged in a couple times. I did a roulette on my White Mage, to start leveling towards max. I'm also just picking up all the quests that were left undone or unlock things.

One thing is that the queues are very hostile to my preferred style of play. I find I don't play long sessions anymore. Instead I'll log in, do something for 30 minutes to an hour, and log off. Then log back in a bit later. This basically does not work any more.

WoW: Season of Mastery

I continued leveling my Priest. She's now level 16, and working on Westfall and Loch Modan quests. I have to do the running around for the Defias quests, but I've been avoiding that.

I've also been leveling professions and made a wand and some cloth armor which has been pretty helpful. One thing about Classic is that loot is pretty scarce, so you're often wandering around with pieces which are quite out of date. So professions like tailoring are pretty valuable while leveling. In contrast, the retail game takes great pains to make sure you get a full set of gear in each leveling zone, making it hard to professions to keep up.

To be fair, FFXIV does the same thing for your run through the Main Story Quest. You get a full set of quality gear every two levels (with accessories if you do sidequests). But FFXIV does nothing on subsequent classes, creating an opening for the crafting classes. (Well, you can purchase normal-quality leveling sets, but you really want the High-Quality stuff from crafters. And I suppose dungeon runs also gear you up.)

Updates

Well, it's been a long time since I last posted. Almost three months. I took on some new responsibilities at work that seem to have taken a lot of time and energy. Combine that with guild difficulties in WoW, and it's really discouraged me from posting.

World of Warcraft

We had about 16-18 people before the various scandals. We lost about 5 or so immediately, who were among the more hardcore of us. So we fell to about 12 people. Over time we gradually lost a couple more, putting us below the point where we could field a raid regularly. I do have to applaud our guild leader, who gamely pugged people for our raids. But realistically we weren't able to make progress, and were stuck at about 4/10 Heroic.

Eventually though, we partnered with another guild who was a bit ahead of us. With them we've been able to clear Sanctum of Domination and get Ahead of the Curve a couple weeks ago.

It's not all good, though. Raids start an hour later than before. Since I'm on the East Coast now, that means they start at 11pm for me. As well, our guild used to be a "clean" guild. No swearing. This new guild is definitely not that. They're all nice people, but I find the swearing grates a bit, after going so long without hearing it. I also think it causes people to push the edge a bit more in what they say to each other.

Maybe I just got used to the pleasant nature of "clean" guild and raid chat and it's jarring to return to "normal" culture.

Otherwise I'm basically raid-logging in retail WoW.

WoW Classic: Season of Mastery

I am playing a bit of Season of Mastery. I wanted to do the Soul of Iron thing, but my first character, a warlock, was killed by the murlocs in Elywnn Forest. I should have ran away faster.

I made a bunch of other characters, but ended up deleting them all and making a single Human Priest, who is up to level 15 or so. Currently in Loch Modan.

FFXIV: Endwalker

Thanks to work and queues, I've just finished the Endwalker Main Story Quest today. I will hopefully write more in a separate post.

New World

I haven't really played New World in a couple of months. I think that ultimately I never settled down on what type of character I wanted to play. I kept switching weapons and armor. I guess in the end I just prefer games with more defined classes.

Queue World

Like pretty much everyone else in the MMO-sphere, I picked up Amazon's New World and gave it a spin.

The queues are pretty crazy. My guild was initially going to play on Morrow, but that was almost immediately full. So we moved to Nune Chaha, and that filled up to the point where there are long queues in the evenings. I ended up making an alt on a random empty server to play around, but even that has small queues now.

Amusingly though, my work schedule actually matches well to the queues. I'm currently working 12-8, so I can play for a little bit in the mornings when there are no queues.

The queues are annoying, but once you get in game, everything is quite solid.

This time around I'm putting all my points into Constitution and just using whatever the best weapons I currently have. I'm only level 13, so I imagine that eventually I'll have to specialize and respec.

One thing Amazon got mostly right--which a lot of recent games haven't--is chat. It's really nice to see chat hopping. As well, since New World is a faction-based PvP game, there's faction chat, which is really enjoyable. There's people coordinating PvP assaults and defenses for various zones, random guild/personal drama, and lots of complaints about taxation.

Our server looks to be shaping up as a fight between Syndicate (Purple) and Marauders (Green). Covenant (Yellow) seems way behind, and unfortunately lost their only piece of territory last night. Hopefully they can recover.

I'm not really sure if New World does anything amazing, but it does a lot of small things right. As well, it feels like it is missing the "go, go, go" mentality of recently releases like WoW Classic. You can log in, maybe do some quests, go harvesting, do some actual PvP, do PvP quests to bolster your faction's standing for a territory takeover. At this point, there doesn't seem like a optimal path you have to follow or fall behind.

As well, the world does feel like a world that actually takes time to travel from one area to another. There are some people complaining about that, but I think it's probably important for strategic PvP.

On the MMO-Champion forums, someone posted:

when discussing the game with a friend last night it hit me... its fun, but I have no idea why. It just feels laid back and enjoyable and I think that is why but not sure. It was kinda cool last night watching PVP folks doing patrols and PVE folks relaying information/positions to the PVP crews. 

And:

Yeah theres something about NW that just hooks me in, cant pinpoint it 100% though. It may be the open world feel where everything you do contributes in one way or another and that you easily can get distracted without hurting your "progress". Like I may run for a quest area and get sidetracked by collecting stuff, pvp, killing some new mobs for skinning etc etc. So much going on. Then you have the pvp wars happening now and then.

I think it's a good summary of the game. Everything works well enough, and it's fun watching what's going on while doing your own thing. And eventually, maybe join in on the PvP war.

New World Open Beta Impressions

Amazon's New World had an open beta this past weekend, so I gave it a whirl. A couple of people in my guild are really excited about it, so we'll probably try to play on the same server when it comes out.

New World's best comparison is probably Elder Scrolls Online, though with worse questing, but better combat. It's a "classless" game. Characters can use every weapon and equip any type of armor. You do have stats which you can apply points to, and different weapons scale off different stats (or combinations of stats). For example, 2H Axes scale off Strength, Bows off Dexterity, Fire Staff off Intelligence, and Life Staff off Focus.

Respecs are free before level 20, so you can play around and experiment easily. Each weapon has two talent trees, and level up separately as you use them. Each weapon tree has 3 active abilities on medium-term (20-30s) cooldowns and you can have 2 weapons equipped and switch between them. Each weapon has a left-click quick attack, hold left-click heavy attack, and right-click block. Shift causes you to dodge.

So combat is basically weave quick and heavy attacks while dodging or blocking and occasionally using your active abilities. Combat overall is pretty decent. It's not as good as TERA, but it's better than most of these types of games.

The trinity roles do exist in this game, though perhaps muted compared to other games. Healing appears to be straightforward: use a Life Staff. Tanking seems more complicated. Certain weapons vastly increase threat if you use a certain type of gem. So I guess if you want to PvE tank, you use this gem on your weapons. Healing is actually somewhat decent as your abilities "lock on" to the player you are pointing at.

Harvesting and crafting also plays a big part in the game. You can harvest and craft everything on one character, but each type of harvesting and crafting levels up separately.

Character creation is okay. The characters aren't very good looking though. The armor is interesting, and different than the normal fantasy games. But mixing and matching armor types always ends up looking weird to me.

All in all, I'm not really sure what to think of New World. It's certainly not a bad game, and is probably worth checking out if you are interested. At the same time, nothing really grabbed me. I did not feel compelled to keep playing.

Though, truthfully, it might just be because it's a classless game. I always feel like I'm flailing around in these types of games, and don't really have a vision of what I want my character to be. I prefer games with a strong, inspiring class identity and clear separation from the other classes.

Sanctum of Domination, Second Half

With the various scandals, about four or so of our raid team decided to take a break from the game. So we're down to 12-14 raiders at the moment. Never the less, we have persisted and have finished Sanctum of Domination on Normal.

On the positive side, my healing parse issues have suddenly disappeared. This expansion I've been grey-parsing, with very occasionally going into green. But now suddenly I'm back to blue and purple parses. I think that we were running with slightly more healers than we needed. Two of the four who took a break were very good healers. I think I was just getting sniped a lot of the time. We were running 4 healers for 16-18, and now we're running 2 healers for 12-14. We'll probably bump that up to 3 healers for heroics though, maybe depending on the fight.

Painsmith was a pretty tough fight when learning. There's a lot of damage going out, especially to the chains. Once everyone gets the hang of targeting the correct ball quickly, it goes smoothly.

Guardian of the First Ones is the DPS check of the instance. A nice, straightforward fight.

Fatescribe Roh-Kalo is pretty weird. It feels fairly long, but once you get the hang of assigning ring teams, and the team knows whether or not to go counter-clockwise, the fight goes shortly after. We usually wipe a couple times because we forget that we sometimes get three rings and don't assign a third team. Overall, I think it's a good fight. I'm not a fan of the beams that go across the circle, but only one half is marked. The circle is just too big.

Kel'thuzad for us was easier than the previous two bosses. Though if you get an early death it's often a wipe because the person gets raised under enemy control and then it's a hassle.

Sylvanas Windrunner is a good fight, but rather long and technical. It feels annoying when you get to the second or third phase to have to repeat the first couple of phases. But on the plus side people get a lot better at those phases. We'll see what it's like in Heroic. The Sylvanas fight is not as good as Jaina, though. I think it's because there's a lot of other stuff going on in the fight, so she doesn't get to shine.

It was an interesting experiment in trying to progress the story in the middle of a boss fight. I'm not sure it was entirely successful. It may have been better to just have two separate boss fights and progress the story between the two.

Then there's the cutscene after the boss fight. I think I'll save that for a future post on the story of this patch.

Sanctum of Domination, First Half

The new raid, Sanctum of Domination, came out last week. We only had one raid day last week, since a large number of people went on vacation. As is our tradition we went in on Normal.

First, it must be said that this is the most annoying raid entrance in a long while. It's surrounded by elites, and there doesn't seem to be an easy path. I switch to tank spec and ride through. DPS players have started using [Comfortable Rider's Barding].

The instance itself is pretty nice. It's a bit drab with the Maw and Torghast colour scheme and architecture, but Blizzard has made the layout interesting as you wander through the different sections.

We killed the first five bosses in Normal. The Tarragrue was interesting with anima powers before hand. We had two accidental pulls and wipes because people took the power that makes you jump far distances. Personally I think it's better if you just stick with straightforward defensive and offensive powers, and avoid the unusual ones.

The Eye of the Jailer was a pretty good fight, especially with the jump behind the eye. Not very difficult.

The Nine was an interesting fight. The first phase was pretty fun, but it didn't last very long. It seemed like the majority of the fight was fighting the last Valkyr alone. As long as you handle the Fragment mechanic decently, the fight is straightforward.

Soulrender Dormazain wasn't too bad easier. It was a little hard at first to see which slice of the platform was clear, but after a while you got used to it. I did like the mechanic where you want people with the debuff to overlap the adds to make killing them easier.

There was a cutscene with Garrosh afterwards which was pretty neat. It's kind of funny, but it was pretty popular online. Garrosh was totally unrepentant, and I think the playerbase found that attitude refreshing compared to whatever is going on the main story.

The final fight we did was Remanent of Ner'zhul. As long as you don't get knocked off the platform, this fight is straightforward. Stay in the center area, and time the knockback so it happens after the Orb of Torment has its armor broken by the boss.

There is a big cutscene after the Sylvanas fight at the end. I haven't actually watched it yet, but it was all over the WoW community. I've been trying to avoid spoilers, but I'm not really sure it's worth the effort.

First Impressions of Crowfall

Crowfall formally released today. It's been something like six years. I backed it on Kickstarter so long ago. I tried it out in early early alpha, but it was too early for me. So I haven't really looked at it for several years.

In any case, I installed it and gave it a whirl. So far, it's not too bad. The graphics are cartoony and pleasant. There's not a great deal of character customization, though there are quite a lot of races. Some of which are far more unusual than the standard human-type. There are centaurs!

I'm playing a Human Templar, a 2H paladin type, which working out pretty well. There seems to be a big emphasis on harvesting and crafting.

Combat is decent. I'm only in the very early tutorial stages so far. So far it's left-click for your main attack combo, right-click for dodge or a defensive (you can replace the default ability with class abilities) and hot bar abilities with cooldowns. There's also combos and context-specific abilities. For example, my Templar's Parry Defensive combos into a knockdown after the parry.

Classes have a decent size talent tree, and it looks like all your abilities come from that tree. So class customization might be very important. You also get points to improve your stats as you level. Since I have no idea what I'm doing, I'm just raising all 5 stats evenly. What's interesting is that some talents you take in the tree also adjust your stats significantly.

If I have any complaint, it's that I think they could have done one more round of simplification, especially in their UI. For example, if you kill a mob, you can loot it with the F key, or full loot with the G key. I'm constantly hitting the wrong button. I think they should have just gone with F key full loots, and maybe bring up the regular loot window if your bags are full. 

A lot of the UI feels like that, just a touch too complex, and one more pass of simplifying would smooth things out.

In any case, I'm rather enjoying this simple part of Crowfall. We'll see what it's like when the PvP games come into play. If you're looking for a new MMO, maybe give it a whirl. It is Buy-2-Play, not Free-2-Play. You can use my account name, "rohanv", as a referral code for a discount or some-such if you want.

One thing to keep in mind, Crowfall uses your account name for all your characters. The actual characters are more like disposable tools, which fits with the game's story. However, this means you should take care with your account name, including capitalization, as I haven't found a way to change it. My account name is "rohanv", because I made it so long ago. I don't really mind using my name, but I would have preferred to have it capitalized in game.

Korthia and Maw Assaults

I've continued working on Korthia. I'm not really farming anything, just casually doing dailies and the Maw Assaults.

 The first Assault was Ardenweald. This was pretty good for the most part. The sneaking section was a little weird because other people were in there with you. There were a couple times where someone else redirected the searchlights right on to me.

The second Assault was Revendreth. This one was a bit unusual because it had a kill 30 mobs quest combined with a "feed corpses to a critter". But then there were two other "vehicle" quests where you couldn't activate the critter, but could still kill mobs. It wasn't too bad, but it kind of felt that the quests were fighting each other. Like you didn't want to kill too many mobs while in a vehicle, because you'd have to kill extra to feed the critter.

Also the last boss of the Assault must have been terribly annoying if you didn't have an SSD, as there were 8 loading screens!

I also took a couple of alts to Korthia. The skip is really nice, taking you right to the dailies.

The story is getting a bit more interesting too, with the introduction of the Nathrazeim. Be interesting to see where this goes. I hope it doesn't go too far into "The Jailer was responsible for all the the previous Evils in Warcraft!" It's already pushing into that territory with the Lich King and the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne.

The Old Republic: Legacy of the Sith Announced

SWTOR has announced it's latest expansion, Legacy of the Sith, coming at the end of the year. It also kicks off the 10th anniversary celebrations of the MMO, which seems to be mostly flying under the radar these days.

Legacy of the Sith has the standard SWTOR expansion features: a new planet, some new instances, 5 new levels, and a new raid or operation.

However, the big announcement is that Bioware has managed to separate mechanical classes from stories. Apparently starting from Legacy of the Sith, you will first pick a story, and then pick a class to use. The classes are separated into Force and Tech, but you can use any Force class for any Force story.

So for example, you could play the Jedi Knight story with the Inquisitor theming and mechanics. I imagine it will make more sense with the Tech classes. For example, a Sniper in the Republic Trooper story does seem reasonable.

Bioware has also been vague about this, but they're hinting that you can switch classes on one character. Maybe you can take your Sniper and switch to Commando. Shades of FFXIV's character and class situation. This isn't confirmed yet, but it's certainly possible. All the work that went into separating out class and story might have been enough to make switching classes easy from a technical perspective.

Finally, the other interesting possibility is that Bioware can now introduce new mechanical classes. Before, any new class would require a new 1-50 class story, with all the requisite cutscenes and voice acting. But now a new class could just attach to the existing stories.

In any case, it looks interesting, so we'll see what future reveals bring.

First Impressions of Patch 9.1

Patch 9.1 in World of Warcraft came out this week. I've been going to some lengths to avoid spoilers, so it was pretty much all new to me.

It looks like it is continuing the Shadowlands max level content strategy of having several areas of content with separate currencies, and the bulk of the rewards coming from weekly quests. I like this strategy a lot, and the resulting pacing, so I'm happy that 9.1 continues with it.

The new story line still isn't that good, but it's serviceable, I guess. We'll see if Blizz manages to improve in the next few chapters.

The new zone, Korthia, is interesting. It's not as bleak as the Maw, but still kind of drab. So far the quests seem okay. It feels a lot like Rustbolt from BfA. Though there seem to be a lot of unusual complaints on Reddit. Today everyone was complaining that doing one daily where you had to pick up some animal was impossible. I logged in and it seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

I did try level 9 of Torghast solo. I scored 2 out 5, but I died twice. If I hadn't died, it would have been 3/5. I guess I need to go faster to get the better scores. But then there's also this Deck of Many Things which boosts you as you fill it out. Probably end up like Horrible Visions where it gets significantly easier to score higher as you fill out the talent tree.

All in all, Patch 9.1 looks good so far. Nothing really stands out, but it continues the steady pace. I'm looking forward to the new raid and dungeon.