Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in

 Yeah... Midnights. I'm back. Won't be posted here but did want to update it. They've f'd up all hunter spec, imho, so I'm a happy Paladin now. (of course I have alts, both factions, all classes)

The Lover You Can't Quit

That would be World of Warcraft. It's bad for you; it teases you with possibilities and often fails to deliver. It promises to change, and then it doesn't. And yet... you break up to make up. =sigh= Yeah I'm back. I came back at the last expansion; quit again, and now I'm back for the next one. Doing the pre-expansion gear grind events, even. However, a lot of Horde folks are troubled by the narrative driving the Horde story for this. Specifically, Sylvannas is doing some pretty straight up evil stuff. I think though that the devs have dropped a hint at some internal struggle between Saurfang and Sylvannas. That could be cool. But this will only play if there's a comparable rift on the Alliance side. OMG look at me all into this crap. Anyhow, here's a screen cap from the cut scene. Yeah, that's right, we just burned down the Teldrassil tree. This is going to be a Horde v Alliance expansion. They're coming for the Undercity.

Surprise! Left WoW. Subbing SWTOR.

For about a week I was able to play on a rogue Vanilla WoW server some folks put up. There were several thousand people playing. It was so cool. I'd forgotten what it was like before Blizz made everything a face roll. Anyhow, tl;dr, Blizzard shut it down by threatening legal action.

So I cancelled my sub to WoW. Fuck them.


I had been playing the free-to-play part of SWTOR for a few months and was digging it for the same reason we all dug Dragon Age. Interactive story. I decided to sub there. I'm raising one of each class, both Dark and Light Side.

Best story arcs are the Jedi Knight and the Imperial Agent. I have to say that agent story arc is amazing! I was actually rather hohum about the knight until this happened. This is my newest companion, picked up at level 45. Yup, that's right. He's a Sith (and obviously betraying his Emperor)!

I'm really enjoying the game play, and the art is lovely. (I leave you with a shot from the planet Ilum, below.

This is the planet Ilum (lvl50), where it is always dark, icy, and pointy.

Happy Festivus from Our Garrison to Yours

Okay. Yeah. Well. I Did That.

After bitching and moaning about Warlords of Draenor, I sat down and drank the Koolaide. I think I experience WoW much the same way I experience knitting. Fun. Relaxing. Sometimes challenging, in a good way. Somewhat social.

So I dug in. The thing about rep grinds for things like cool mounts is that it's not hard. It just requires a system and patience and perseverance. Pretty much how I experience exercising.  So I got zenny and just did it, to paraphrase Nike. I even did the three rep grinds to get flying in Draenor.

League of Legends and Contingency

Okay, so I'm not a hardcore League of Legends (LoL) player, mostly because I don't have a team, and I do have a life. But I really enjoy this game and it's for several important reasons which could all fit under the header contingency.  That is, this is a game of shifting, unpredictable, variations in most of the objects the player plays with, while holding constant the map, the goals, and the rules of play.

The actual play of a LoL game is quite straight forward and simple. The mechanics are not particularly difficult to master in the game itself, and the play of any particular champion is limited to basically four action key choices, six if you count the summoner spells. This means learning to play at the most rudimentary level isn't difficult. [What can make it difficult are the other players, some of whom are rude and overly critical. That's not the game's fault; that's the company's fault, and they've taken major steps to control it and it has worked IMHO.]

The game is a PVP team game, and this is one big part of what makes it intriguing, complex, and fun. Your characters ideally have a synergy that you can leverage against the other team. This requires some thoughtful choices of what character to play, good communication, and a little bit of studying on the player's part to understand how best to 'itemize' the character during the game (add gear with particular buffs that aid the character's effectiveness). If you like playing the game, this is fun to do. You actually enjoy figuring this all out. If you're feeling especially nerdy, you can study a decent amount of post game stats, generated by the game as an interactive report, after the game ends.

The champion pool was 123 as of December, and I know they've added a couple more (Gnar, Rek'Sai, Bard, for instance). Those champions vary in their orientation. Some are mighty damage dealers. Some are best in 'support' of damage dealers and/or the team as a whole (with shields, slows, stuns, etc.). Some are best 'in the jungle,' the area between the main roadways where you play in 'fog of war' (limited visibility) unless/until you drop wards (which light the immediate area). Jungles roam the map and can show up in any lane to tilt the lane in favor of one side in sheer numbers. What was a 2 v 2 in lane, suddenly become a 3 v 2. You can see why communication amongst the team is critical.

LoL plays more like a card game than a video game. You do not have a stable of characters you've raised, geared, and trained on. Each new game you and your teammates get a fresh, level 1 character of your choice and build that character up over the duration of the game. Like a card game, you may first begin by mastering your own character/team actions, but to win you have to understand the characters on the team you're playing against, how they synergize, and what threats they represent to your team composition.

As you can image, leveling up quickly and getting enough gold to gear up effectively become primary goals, but at the same time you have in-world map-related goals as a team. The game is, basically, a base defense game. Protect your base; burn down the enemy base. These are inter-related goals, but can sometimes be at odds. Do you attack that tower or "farm creeps" (kill minions for gold)?  Do you take a tower, or take a dragon (team buffs)?

To make this even more fun, the game changes because the devs. constantly screw with the skill sets and underlying statistics of the champions, as well as the items/gear for champions. They release patches that change what is referred to as "the game meta," base unbalancing, rebalancing, and introducing new aspects. They don't announce anything; the player base, especially the pros, figure it out and shift their play. A few patches back, everyone favored Braum as a support. Now he's rarely played. For at least a year, no one really played Hecarim. Suddenly he's the the go-to pick for top lane. Lulu was a great support in bottom lane, then a great 'poke' in midlane. Now it's common to see her in top lane. The changing meta, and a team's ability to suss it out and adapt to it affects their success. And...it keeps the game fresh, intriguing, and fun.

To get a sense of this wonderful moving feast, I recommend you watch a pro game, and it's an upset.

I Fell Off teh Wagon

Well.

It goes like this.

Couldn't get much further in GuildWars2, although I still think it has the best art and mechanics. Thought about sticking my toe in to see what WoW Draenor looks like. Why? I dunno. Curious, maybe nostalgic? I dunno.

I re-upped for three months 'cause I can't just sit and play a lot (although, hello Christmas break). Started to play. The kid joined me. First thoughts: yikes it's a face roll now. Actually, yes it's so easy now. Toons are OP and the thinking for spec'ing has basically been removed. OTOH, if you think about it as a different game, instead of changes to a game you loved, it can be less irritating and a lot more interesting. For instance, lore seems to be a lot more foregrounded, which is great if you're a legit. mmoRP player, which I like to think I am. (It probably also helps a tad that I'm playing on an RP server, though more for the quality of fellow players than to do much RP'ing).

There's also 'garrisons' now, i.e., build an in-world home for yourself and your crafting minions.

Now, let me quickly add that you need to be a level 90 to get these rolling and there's rumors that they may dump this in a future expansion, but ... kinda cool, eh? Worth the grind? mmmmmmmmm not sure.






Another aspect of this 'new' game is the art. Yeah it's still cartoony and after GW I don't really like it but... omg those mounts. Was getting hella excited til I realized that it's NOT ONLY your subscription they're soaking your for but they have a lot of items in the "store" now, and mounts are a big part of that.

Would I drop coin for an awesome mount? I dunno. Part of the mount thang, when I was into WoW, was to earn a hard-to-get mount then flaunt it in Orgrimmar or Stormwind. "Yeah, bro, I fished my brains out to get that turtle. Fuck you."  Where's the fuck you in buying an awesome mount? Like I said, it's a different game now.









And yet another new feature is the game within a game. It looks an awful lot like they've embedded Pokmon, but with WoW pets. (Of course, to highlight my smug knowledge I'm naming all my pets after Pokémon heh heh.)

Yes, when you encounter a wee beastie in game you can pause and engage it in a turn-driven battle using "attacks" specific to your "type" of creature, winning levels your pet. Well, he doesn't evolve like a Pokémon; he doesn't change how he looks.) You can also "catch" wild ones you beat. Yeah, gotta catch'm all!


So for at least the next three months, I'm going to see what's what in World of Warcraft. Will I see you there too?

I'm a Yasuo jungler, mofos

Okay, yeah, it's against bots but I'm learning.

Orianna, Wow!

Started playing Orianna today (League of Legends) 'cause she's getting picked so much in the new build by the pros. She was very hard to learn, but finally I'm starting to get it. Yikes is she fun. I thought she was delicate and easily killed but daaaaaang, she's got great offense and defense, some of which is support for the team too. Then I stumbled on this pro's page about her and was pleased to see that I was "doin' it right." So I think she's a new favorite.

And yes, I bought a skin for her. This is the "sewn chaos" Orianna skin. Reminds me of Sally in The Nightmare before Christmas. And yeah, it's totally sick.

They Exist

Sarah and I Ran into an ArenaNet Game Dev. (the red icon). They're allegedly running around collapsing the waypoints with the strangler vines as part of the living story. Don't know what I'm talking about? Here.

Rolled a New Alt.

Isn't he cute!

Pets 'n Whimsy

So they have pets...

But dude, this is the newest: Chickenado:

So You're Über Now, Eh?

"No you're not. Yeah you're level 80, but we designed the world to be hella hard in those zones cause you all think you're so über." - No one has actually said that in a blue post, but it's pretty clear that's the thinking. Beginning about level 70, the PVE zones get very difficult, by which I mean, harder to solo. No, it's not in the WoW way, which created group quests that forced you to PUG or beg your guildies. No, it's a combination of design elements in the landscape.

First of all, the zones are occupied by the ultimate bad guys and they're everywhere. To say the zone is densely packed with evil is an understatement. It's hard to avoid fighting as you work your way around...ALL the time. Secondly, the architecture is cleverly broken, interesting, and arrayed in such a way as to create some serious barriers, forcing you to engage rather than skulk about. Yes, skulking is sometimes possible, but often not.  Thirdly, the elites (not champions, just, lol just, elites) roaming about tend to be a PITA, in part because of adds and in part because they have very annoying spells or super hard hits.

The MegaServer Solution

In short, once you hit the last several zones, you fight. A lot. However, to balance the difficulty a tad, ARENANET has done something pretty interesting. It's fairly recent, but it's both good and bad. Or rather has an upside and a downside. As in most MMOs we had our own "home" server, though it was easy enough to party with friends on other servers by going through Lion's Arch city, which originally was so popular it required an "overflow" server. That is, you and your buddy from the other server would go to Lion's Arch and end up tossed onto a separate server referred to as overflow. At some point your home server's access to Lion's Arch would come available and you'd get asked if you wanted to travel back to your server. Anything you did on the overflow server still counted and you could be with friends without them having to transfer to your server. Pretty sweet, albeit limited.

A couple of months ago, ARENANET went whole hog with the megaserver solution. Now each zone within the world is a megaserver. The upside is, you're rarely alone in a zone. As noted above, having buddies, even PUG buddies, as you move through the difficult upper level zones is a real boon. The only downside is for people like me who deliberately chose an RP server, in my case an unofficial RP server, because it has nicer chat (none of that WoW Barrens middle school chat). RP servers have a sense of decorum, and you don't see people named (real player names here): Nips McChesty or Ulga SteelMellons. =sigh=

More Public Zerg'ing

I do love this. You're walking around doing your thing and a call goes out in the general chat: Champ Such'n'such is up at [place name].  People convene at the waypoint and on we go. Sometimes you run across a train, that is, a large roaming zerg group usually with a leader (marked with the commander icon) who follows a preset path through the zone, timed to hit each champ as it comes up. And, yes, it almost always takes a big crowd to burn down a champion. I *did* once two-man a champion with some random guy. I was on my ranger (like a WoW hunter) and he was on a guardian (like a WoW Paladin) and between us we kited, healed, and traded tanking (with my pet) till we burned it down but it took us about 20 minutes. 

Champs usually drop a big chest of goodies when they finally go down, and of course there's the standard kill drops from adds 'n such. It's an extremely efficient way to farm if you join a train.  The bottom picture comes from a train I was following for a while. The top one I actually logged in to based on the server timers. That is, I knew the champ was due to come up soon.

Mid-level zerg

High Level Zerg

Getting Into the RP

No, not really. But I am getting invested in the dying and altering of gear. The game devs have set up your account such that any gear style opened/unlocked on any toon is available to any of your toons on that account. Given that I have close to ten guys now, I have a lot of wardrobe choices.

I've just rerolled an engineer as it's been forever since I played my lvl 80 engineer, and I've always found it best to re-learn a toon from the bottom up, especially after build changes have happened. You get a better understanding of the synergy of the actions and specs if you work through them as you level.

Anyhow...I was really going to write about the gear twiddling. Here's my new low level engineer in what I deem to be appropriate gear look for engineers, kinda steam punky. What's especially cool in this snapshot is the guy next to me. He's wearing some of the same gear on his level 80 mesmer. His name is El Mustachio Grandé. How cool is that. And I love his goggles.

One of the things you can do, especially if you're obsessive or a hardcore RP'er, is work the colors to highlight the small details of the gear, e.g., buckles and buttons 'n stuff. So here's Kayleee Frye. Yes, she's named for Firefly's Kaylee, who was the engineer on Firefly. I had to add an extra 'e' cause, of course, the name is already taken.

Back to the Beginning: Elementalist Redux

KillerKitteh as D/F Elementalist

I went back to my very first character, the elementalist. Never did really like it. It always felt underpowered and overly complicated.

Apparently a new build went through in December, but since I wasn't playing it much I took no notice of the changes. When I went back to it today, I looked up what the new world order was for PVE spec'ing an elementalist. Well, now it's dagger/focus, not double daggers. The build I went with comes from this chick's video. It's 30/30/0/0/10, which is very different from what I was running with double daggers.

Got that memorized? Good.

It also turns out I need different slot skills, and while the toons I play the most are swimming in extra skill points, this poor toon doesn't have enough to buy ARCANE BRILLIANCE, which costs 25 points. So... I'm grinding over older regions I never finished. It both lets me practice the rotation and earns me skill points.

This is just possibly the most complicated shot rotation I've ever heard. I'm busy trying to learn it. I get the repeated switch to AIR. Every time you switch out your stance you gain 25% crit for the first couple of shots. Check this out. LOL.

Riot and Enlightment

Riot calmed, for the most part, the bitter snarky and often mean trash talk that happened in League of Legends by turning it over to the player base and allowing them to pass "ban" judgment on reported players. It was a brilliant stroke of genius that both empowered the players and removed Riot from the mess. It harkens back to the original 'let the player base rule the player base' call made in LambdaMOO back in the 80s when Pavel Curtis and company decided to step out of the middle of the disputes and institute a player driven 'government.'

Now Riot has done it again. Since the snark left the game, the remaining smack talk usually arises in the PUGs (pick up groups) that form to play a Coop-AI game. Everyone wants to play the same lane. It's not unusual to have to guys carry an argument about who gets to midlane into the game and both stand in the middle lane leaving a top or bottom lane solo. It's a chicken run. I'm not gonna bail; you gotta bail to the other lane first bro. Typically women yield. We're just stupid that way. We make the move that helps the PUG team even though it means giving up on an argument we thought we had already won in the pre-game.

So this showed up on my log in today. "Play the champ you want, where you want, every game." Fucking brilliant. They will build the composition around you. In some ways it's like a WoW random dungeon. You sign up to be tank or healer or dps and the system cobbles together a team. It's not that any one lane is the best. It's that the champ you like to play is best or at least better in one lane than another. This seems like it should work. I'll let you know.

But my main point is that Riot is very very very good at solving the  player base's problems. This means they hear them. They understand them. They know it's worth it trying to figure out a way to solve the issue rather than leave it to poison the experience. I'm very impressed. It's so... enlightened.

OMG Floating Eyeball Dude is New Champion

Sar. and I played some LoL with the new champion who reminds me of those machines in The Matrix

Zerg'ing Continues

I love the smell of napalm in the morning - Kilgore

There's a server event going on right now in Guild Wars 2. It's an attack on the national capital. I understand that, when it's over, the capital will be altered significantly.

Right now, for these two weeks, it's a mind boggling public zerg. And, because it's a game by those clever NCSoft/ArenaNet bastiges, ANYONE can join in. Yeah, if you're a lowly level 32 and you enter the fray, the game will scale you up to a lvl 80 equivalent. Obviously you won't be as über as a real lvl 80 but you'll be good enough to contribute in meaningful ways in the combat, and the gear drops will be well worth it.


This happened last night. There were so many players that the server periodically seized up. Not a big problem. Just log back in and go, but an indicator of the size of the insanity that is "The Battle of Lion's Arch."

Lion's Arch is a big city and it's been taken by the evil forces. There's only three ways in to the city now, and there's nasty poison gas about that limits how long you can last in there when fighting. If the zerg doesn't complete the several quests before the gas reaches toxic levels, we all get dumped out and the timer resets. Because there are three ways in, there are essentially three war parties undertaking the missions simultaneously. Chat is used to call for additional help or point out important changes in the mission status. It's awesome fun and I highly recommend you get into it if you haven't.