Diablo 3 and the problem of achievements on Beta…

I received my beta invite a few weeks ago, during the mad rush of people who (I assume) were meant to test the stability of the servers running the game. As of this writing, many gaming sites are giving out more codes and invites, which leaves me hoping that we are indeed coming up on a potential release day announcement. Blizzard’s official press/site thing begins in only a couple weeks, so we shall soon see.

I just want to see my CE before my birthday rolls around. Pretty pretty please?

Thankfully, the download wasn’t nearly as meaty as say the Cataclysm beta, but much of that is due to only having the first chapter available. I feel that it is just enough to give you a good taste, and after grinding public games to get up to max level (currently 13) you’ll probably be wishing there were more to do.

Of the five classes, I tended to like and enjoy the Monk and Warrior more from the start. For the ranged classes, it really depended on what spells and attacks I had at my disposal. The Witch Doctor seemed almost clunky to me at start, then degraded into spamming Fire Bats at everything until dead. That could just mean I don’t have the head for ranged casters, which very well could be. Besides, watching the Monk punch something in the chest and have it explodei is terribly satisfying.

It occurred to me after playing for a few hours that I had turned into some demented blood hound as I lurked through the dungeon hallways. Sure, there are plenty of things to bust up, but it’s usually the dead bodies that have what you’re looking for. After a long day, I imagine my adventurer’s gloves must smell terrible after flipping dead bodies every two feet. What were townsfolk doing in some of these hidden away back places anyway?

After playing WoW for so long, the stash system is wonderful. Playing on your Monk and find an awesome crossbow for your Demon Hunter? Put it in your stash and any of your toons can access it. Creating item is also fairly simple once you have the blacksmith leveled up a bit.

My only gripe is with the current achievement system. These achievements are pretty much available only on beta, so it’s fun to get them and show off banners while doing public games. However, some of them are bugged, which makes it hard to finish them off. The only one I have left is Co-op Elite Kills, which the bar says is 50/50 but will not complete. Somehow I doubt that this is on the fix list, since they get wiped every so often, but there are so many things tied to the Overachiever that I wish they could fix it.

After all, it is quite the achievement to resurrect every class when no one can die….XD

Excitement I miss while traveling…

I decided this last week that I wouldn’t be attending our regularly scheduled 10 man raid, I would either be on the road, or trying to nap off the drive before work. Either way, raiding was not at the too of my to-do list. As it were, I was home but too tired to think as I had figured I would be.

Upon rolling out of bed to get ready for work, my roommate is calling me into her room, which usually means I either missed loot or something spectacular happened. Seems as though while having difficulties with the second boss of the night, one of the healers was being disconnected for no apparent reason. Luckily he was on vent, because his account was being hacked. I believe this was the second time for him…

Of course, like a flash the hacker was alt hopping while our guild leaders were frantically attempting to demote characters to lock access to the guild bank. Luck is never with us, the bastards took off with our 9 stack of Essence of Destruction before everything could be locked down.

To add insults to injury, my roommate suddenly sees a level one in Org, trying to unload the Essence at bargen bottom prices. She whispers the character who immediately starts trying to get her into group, to come to the bank to meet him, so on and so forth. You’d think these idiots would keep track of what guild they steal shit from, he was reported in a heartbeat.

The player and the guild had everything returned within the hour, but it just felt like a big cluster of a night, and I wasn’t even there. So, what is the problem and what are the solutions?

Top of the list are those folks who would rather buy gold than make it themselves. It’s like an unemployment check, though they’re ponying up the bill instead of tax payers to a point. See, those people selling the gold, they don’t want to do the work either. This is where you start to see bots and hackers. Why work for gold when it’s easy enough to steal yours and sell it back to other idiots…Have you ever been hacked? See, you’ve become the ‘tax payer’ in that scenario, and all the people who buy gold are rolling around in your misfortune and misery.

Before everyone says that I’m making some socio-political statement, yeah, I guess I kinda am. I have a full time job, I pay my taxes, pay my bills and my rent. I like floating you through your life about as much as I like floating your lazy butt through dungeons and raids, which is to say I’d rather be mauled by a lion while having teeth pulled.

Want to stop the cycle? Encourage players to stop buying gold. That’s about all there is to it quite honestly. Even that won’t stop it I’m sure…

Alright well, Diablo 3 next time since I went on a rant. Sorry about that, tl;dr I know.

Of Pandaria and Legendaries…

Since October, sites have been rampant breeding zones for discontent the likes of which are rarely seen. Why are gamers so angry? Pandas. That’s right, pandas. Oh yes, because nothing could possibly endanger a game already cartoonish than by adding pandas, right?

Take a step back and think about that, really. Death Knights and Worgen didn’t destroy the game, neither will this. And before you say they don’t fit, go talk to the space goats. The game is constantly shaping and changing, either you get on with it or you jump ship. There’s nothing I hate worse than people who hang on and continue to pay and play just to scream and tell and cry like children. Time to grow up.

I, for one, didn’t play the original Warcraft games until I had played WoW for a few years. Even then I played more for what story there was. In my first few days of playing, having reached The Barrens and not having died from the ongoing mind-numbing chat there, I had found a barrel. Granted, this barrel had more questions to it than answers. Who was Chen? What was a Brewmaster? Why was there nothing else about this lore?

Playing the RTS versions, with their Easter eggs and what have you brought some of those questions back, though by then I was in on the joke. Still, even then I was wondering if we would ever actually see them, interact with them. This year, we will, for better or worse.

Blizzard may still be catering to casuals, and they still have every right to. Am I excited for pet battles? Mildly, after all, I grew up right along everyone else in the pokemon generation. Maybe it’s just a little sweeter that I have over 150 of them to experiment with… Other than that, I reserve final opinions for when I can dig my fingers into it.

Legendaries, long is the path that must be traveled to achieve such dreams. Even worse is that when your main is not the destined class for said orange beauties. I am not a great rogue, but I’m passable. I’m not as geared as I should be, but that didn’t stop me from doing the pick pocket quest in Dragon Soul when we finally got to that point. Thankfully, we do have a rogue that regularly runs with us and is well on his way…

Me, I’m sleep deprived and half out of my mind at the best of times thanks to working graveyards. This is not a good way to attempt these quests. Granted, my limited time spent on it so far, I’m doing better than my buddy did at that point, but my timing is subtly…off to put it nicely. I’m starting to think that it’s more about chance and fast reflexes, and that I’m very much lacking at this point. I doubt that I will see past the first set of daggers, but those will be fun enough I think…

Maybe I shall chat on Diablo 3 next…yeah, I finally got into that beta as well. Here’s hoping that my Christmas present that was ordered the start of November might be here by my birthday…

I have discovered…

…it is much much easier to play a game than to write about it. Trying to pull coherent thoughts back together after a monstrous night of raid failures can be an epic battle all its own. For that, I have been so lack on waiting that I forgot this was even here for a while. Not that anyone reads it, but It is still here for my moments.

Yes, I just published a post from months ago that makes me feel a little better that there isn’t a full year between posts. My frustrations at that point I can now look back on and take in stride, which makes me feel a little better. Not that anyone will ask, but I have not set foot into Firelands since that terrible attempt. I still believe that it will require more mental prowess than my current raid group can command.

Patch 4.3 has been out for a couple months now, and depending on the week, our 10 man group seems to be making progress. It’s not leaps and bounds, and some weeks we take more steps back than we do forward, but we are going somewhere. In fact, two weeks ago, we got half way through before not catching a mechanic on Ultraxion. This week, we couldn’t bounce the ball again. I’m not quite sure what it is about that fight, not that I can see it from the outside looking in. As melee, you know what my view is of I’m sure.

Of my frustrations last post, I am now firmly a DPS in our raid group. Thanks to the new LFR, gear is more readily obtainable if your rolling luck is good. That being said, Mica has the worst luck at that as I have ever seen. It’s almost like he saves it all up for something, sometimes spectacular and sometimes not, so most of the time it is weeks between drops. He did luck out one run, and managed to win both one hand axes that dropped off of Madness one week. Of course that was before they fixed whatever was letting that happen, but it was a dream come true for a dual wielder.

Many are complaining that the content is too easy, and they may be right. However, what might be too easy for the top raiding groups might just be suitable for the rest of us who just aren’t lucky enough to run with that sort of guild.  People will harp on that until they are blue in the face, but the game doesn’t belong to them. The creators will do with it what they wish, and no one can do a damn thing about it.

That being said, I’m saving the panda debate for next time!

Thoughts, and Back to Square…

Edit: This was a draft from like last September that nice got posted. Posting it now, and will be moving on shortly…

I haven’t updated since March, and a lot of things have happened since then in game. Granted, a lot of things have happened outside of game that have tampered with my in-game experience, but that’s a general issue with life. Can’t really do much about that quite honestly.

Patch 4.2 was released, 4.3 is quickly on it’s way. Cataclysm release raid content was nerfed as Heroic Ragnaros grew legs. Have I seen the Firelands? Yes, yes I have, and as an undergeared healer I won’t be seeing much more than trash. This past week, my guild made a rather laughable attempt to go after Beth’tilac, and I’m glad to report that I still hate spider bosses. That being said, trying to get Micathius through even the release raids has been a trial. It’s more about timing than anything at this point I think. I reluctantly geared up my healing set after being assured that I would never raid with the guild unless I went heals, no arguing. I grumbled greatly, had a few issues trying to get back into the healing mindset, but finally got invited to the maybe-somewhat-possibly-weekly raid. I had a head desk moment when, upon finally getting into BWD on the last boss, I was asked to go DPS because we had enough heals. What exactly was that whole conversation for, exactly, that told me I would never raid as DPS?? Beyond that, of that raid, I still have only seen the Nefarion fight. Though it took us a handful of attempts because of people still not listening, we downed it, much celebrating, I got my tier healing helm because again, I’m not allowed in a raid unless I’m healing. >.<

We went on to one shot Throne of the Four Winds that same night, with me flexing my healing prowess. I have to admit, I was a baddie and ate tornadoes the entire last fight, but we made it through alright in the end. That was quite a few weeks ago, and we haven’t raided again until this past week. After the Firelands mishap, and lord what a mishap that was, we headed for Bastion of Twilight. Because of time, we only got two bosses down, the first of which was a total pushover. Guess who was DPSing again? Yeah, I get the feeling I took a lot of crap just to be bullied into being a sometimes off healer, for when our full time healers don’t want to heal anymore. Don’t know if I should be honored or worried about that. Second fight was tooth and nail…horn and hoof? Which was enough to make me stop thinking that the raid was going to be a face roll.

Besides the lack of raid content, Mica powered through the Molten Front content like a mad man. The final show down was satisfying, which made the daily grind almost worth all the crap of missed sleep for work. The mount and title are nice as well, though now almost everyone has the mount. I still don’t see many with the title, which might just be my server. I’m still torn, Micathius the Exalted, or Micathius the Flamebreaker…I think it would be humorous to transmogrify my armor to my rather icy 10.5 tier set and use the Flamebreaker title. Yes, my humor is still intact. I think it will do when I finally get to see Ragnaros again, then crush him under my ruthless hoof…alright, moving on…

Trying to Bridge the Gap…

I might be the only person who has had this problem, however I strongly think not. Since Cataclysm release, I’ve been plugging away at my Worgen warrior. It’s the same toon that I played on beta, though I only made it to 40 there. Too many things to do with my 80s after all.

After another grind session last week, I got him to level 78, and somewhere missed the memo that Cataclysm content would not be available until level 80. Disappointed that he would have to grind Icecrown, he didn’t make it to 80 until this past weekend. Bravely strolling into Hyjal, I suddenly discovered that the gap between gear I had and the gear I should have had felt quite staggering.

My previous characters in the area were all decently geared. The lowest was at least in full 200 from heroics, the highest was in full tier 10. No issues with them, besides perhaps wonky new rotations (looking at you, ret pally from hell…), but I know it was not gear issues causing irritation.

Upon hitting 80 with the warrior, I was hit with an annoying issue. I was (still am mostly) getting slaughtered, having to break between each kill to pray for health. Above that, I did not meet gearscore requirements for even Wrath heroics. However, since it is assumed we should all have better gear by then, I was locked from random queues for regular dungeons. Yes, I could have manually queued for regulars, and sat for over an hour with no luck (which I indeed tried), but what does that help?

It again may just be me and my jaded thought that maybe with Wrath heroics being comparatively easy, maybe they shouldn’t have set a gear score on the lower tier. I don’t mind the later ones being that way, but damn!

Good news is that after an hour of being killed repeatedly, I got enough gear to get the gs up enough to get on with things. Sucks that its all tank itemized. Maybe it’s just my luck…

Edit: Fixed some errors because Android predictive text is a joke and half made up…

Digging an Early Grave?

It amuses me greatly when players use non-official boards, and now FaceBook posts from those sites, to rant as if the actual game makers are reading. Somehow, I’m fairly certain they are aware of this, but they would rather complain somewhere where they don’t have to buck up balls against the actual company. It could also just be generic trolling, but it is possibly best to not concern too much time with such people.

I have noticed that a big part of the complaints are now surfacing about patch 4.1 and with the reuse of yet more old content. I’m not saying people aren’t allowed to be angry, but really, repeated threats of quitting won’t be chaning the way Blizzard handles their products. It’s akin to telling the tobacco companies that you’re going to stop smoking unless they make their product better for you, and only you. The outcome is predictable, go nerdrage over something that you can actually do something about. 

This does go back to the Wrath-baby idea though, that perhaps the new players then, and certainly more now, maybe did not get to experience the areas in question. With the area redesign, anyone who started playing this expansion did miss out on the original Zul’Gurub, while some of us played it relentlessly trying for mounts and reputation. Likewise, being able to jump into the new content, many would be missing out on the second tier raiding of Burning Crusade, Zul’Aman.

My original guild was just starting on ZA when I started playing. I liked the pace of the raid, though we weren’t good enough to ever get the mount. There was plenty going on that It was worth paying attention. I’ll say that my main toon is still using the bag you can get from questing in there. That’s right, even two expansions later…a 20 slot bag back then was hot stuff.

I suppose with all that being said, I am excited to see the changes and new things coming to the 5 man versions. Yes, I’m excited about new mounts and pets, but I’m a collector of such things. That is another post all on its own though. New content coming out should just make people happy. Do they realize that Blizzard makes these updates in content just because they want to? They don’t actually have to do that, many companies don’t even bother.

For the raiders arguing about a patch without next tier content, I refer you to above once again. I’ve previously discussed the learning curve of this expansion, and it is no surprise that many guilds still have not seen most of the raid content already released. That people are already so eager-beaver about wanting it all right now just shows how selfish the player base is getting. Even if I was the group that just got Glory of the Cataclysm Raider, I still don’t think I would mind a little longer to bask in the glow before being shoved into the new insanity.

Either way, I suppose people will perch on whatever side or fence that they want. It just seems to me that there are more angry souls out there than there really should be. It’s a game after all. Remember what that meant to you as a kid?

Two Months…

Yes, I realize that I have been off of here for about two months, and a lot of that has just been taking restock and sorting out all of the patches and fixes that have come out. Also, setting up a beast of a machine just because I could, and various other things.

Blizzard has both eased some of my frustrations, and created even more with some of their decisions. No, I don’t blame them for making changes, but some things just seem really ham handed. Case in point, tremor totem is pretty worthless now. By the time you cast it, whatever you were trying to counter has worn off, and you can only use it about once a fight now. What is a Shaman without totems? It’s like making stances or presences or stealth redundant. Stop ruining classes by taking away their unique mechanics…seriously.

I did not mind the buff to the lfd pugs, I have finally been able to have some fun. Granted, I feel like I’m off tanking half the time anymore, but that’s still a problem with fake tanks wanting instant dungeons. I have finally got the gear to do raids, though I suddenly feel like I’m ahead of most of the guild again. I just can’t seem to find a balance. With that said, I also got my Hunter and Druid to 85, and managed to get Raven Lord mounts for all three. Currently working on my 83 Death Knight and 74 Worgen Warrior, but I have no idea when those will be done.

I have more to talk about of a non-Warcraft variety, so that will have to wait until the next post. Also, more information about patch 4.1 that may or may not excite anyone.

Not for lack of trying…

So I made it a point this past couple days to yet to get into some heroics to see if I could get over this current mental roadblock that I have. While I succeeded in getting into a few, the results were not worth the hassle in the first place.

The longest I managed to have a group stay together was ten minutes. That amounts to maybe two deaths on any given boss before someone would ragequit on the group, and the rest would follow suit. The best one was a Grim Batol run that had just happened to get past the first boss before a dps dropped and I got pulled in. On Forgemaster, both attempts, he pulled shield first. Mr. Bear stands in the flame and dies both times, aggro switching to me each time. I go down, other Druid gets the bear back up, who is by then swearing at me instead of doing his job. Lovely group that was…

I don’t blame Blizzard for making it hard, I blame the idiots who think that every fight is and should be tank and spank. My other new issue I have are groups that I pug into expecting me to clear trash that they snuck by. Had it happen in Lost City, and on a Dire Maul run on my Worgen. Are people just that lazy now?

Yeah, this pretty much just turned into a rant. Maybe next week I can get into a guild group instead of these lame ass pugs…

After a Long Holiday…

I took a rather long hiatus to deal with family and work, and everything else that comes up around this time of year. I hope everyone made out like bandits with whatever holidays were celebrated.

So, the new year has begin, and I have gone back to hunting mounts and pets in the game that have been trying to elude me for a couple years now. Raven Lord is still hiding from me, and I’m sure he will be the last of them to drop. Over 70 runs so far, my luck isn’t so great.

I did manage to get the Swift White Hawkstrider in 15 runs, and the phoenix hatchling on the 16th run over the past couple days. I never have to run the terrace again on Micathius, and that makes me happy in some strange way. Now, if I could find a way to make runs for Midnight, the fiery warhorse, we would be in good business.

Other than that, I am still rather lacking. I know I should be hearing my main up if I have any wish of keeping a potential raid spot in the guild, but I still haven’t been in a group who worked well enough to actually take down a boss in heroics. I think perhaps this week I will aproach some people in the guild and are if I can get back on track again.

I think I need an honest vacation…