Archive for the 'MMORPG' Category

The Scorpion and the Frog fable – sabotaging our own WQ success

Fables were meant to be stories with moral lessons, and you’ve probably heard of the scorpion and frog one. If not, or you need a refresher – read here

Otherwise : Spoiler alert – the Scorpion stings the frog as the frog is carrying the Scorpion across the lake and they both end up drowning

I’m still playing in Warmode. A bounty was called upon my head as I was fishing and to see a flight of horde players on dragon back descend upon me was truly frightening. In Warmode, there are also several world quests that mark all players as hostile, Horde or Alliance alike. Like Blown Through Wind: Rhuzast

Most classes can’t solo the mob yet which is a rare elite so we need each other, we need to co-operate to achieve the goal, the kill. You can create a group, which is 5 max so you have some people who have your back, but it doesn’t matter because it’s the nature of players to try and kill each other anyway. Rhuzasts platform becomes a small collection of mini fights as players land, and see a hostile enemy and start to damage regardless of faction We are all foes in this battle.

Warmode servers has always been for me a weird mix of ‘we are just going to politely ignore that we could kill each other, and get along with our quest, or what ever it is we are doing’, or it becomes an opportunist slaughter fest. I will help a Horde, or be helped by a Horde kill a big Lunker ( getting them to shore can be hard and help makes it easier ) but the moment, a Horde player tries to access a resources chest in the middle of a crowd of Alliance it’s on. If a bounty is called on the map queries for players wanting to go hunting goes out in chat.

One person on my server called out their dismay at Alliances players willingness to kill our own in chat for these Pvp World quests .

One Rhuzast kill we had all managed to separate our selves around the Proto Dragon, and seemed to come to some kind of unspoken agreement and were dotting / dpsing it down, when it just devolved. Maybe someone accidentally dotted up some one, or there was a cleave and while the Dragon is stomping around trying to eat us, we were all trying to destroy each others health bars. When I do these quests, I think about the Scorpion and the Frog, and wonder if Blizzard, or the quest designers knew that they were creating some kind of social experiment to see how players would co-operate, or sabotage their own successes to complete a goal for the sake of PVP. We are acting like the Scorpion.

The PVP World Quest Wild Arcana gives you a choice to kill players or Unstable Arcana – at 5% a pop it takes 20 Arcana to do the quest, or according to the Wowhead page, only 7 players. I spent almost 10 minutes with 3 hostile players running around in circles, dotting up slow spawning Unstable Arcana just so we didn’t try and kill each other. No words were spoken aloud, no formal agreement was made, but we just didn’t kill each other. By the stage I was done, we had been collecting orbs like no tomorrow, and were completely overpowered. When a new player entered our circle and didn’t know that unspoken social pvp rule we had all agreed to and tried to attack us, he went down quickly, and we went back to running in circles looking for spawning Unstable Arcana.

Is that the answer?, we all just agree not to participate in PVP because we want to complete the quest without dying. Will our society then punish the rule breakers by making them targets until they comply, or it will just eventually be that only the strongest players could complete the quest because the weaker ones will always be fodder and easy HK kills.

New World – A New Grind

The lonely road ahead

I’m still playing New World, on a dead and dying server. I’m level 55 and have probably been cripping myself a little by continuing to do lower level quests to build more reputation for settlement bonuses – particularly increasing my storage in my home settlement. Traveling is extremely expensive – Azoth the currency we use to travel between places is capped at 1k, and for example to get from one end of the map to the middle of the map with a full load, it was going to cost me 466 Azoth for one teleport. Animals drop 10, I have a bonus on tools so trees and rocks give me 1 Azoth, doing corruptions, dungeons, raids, and quests etc gives Azoth.

It’s grindy, but its manageable. Running the long roads takes way too much of my time because free traveling around the map between and my home only get me two free hearths, but along the way if you farm everything you see, that’s how you get the mats for your crafting requirements. There’s been discussions around the punishing crafting requirements. To make Gold you need Silver, and a reagent. Each level of material requires some of the previous level material. It’s grindy but were we really expecting to cap out everything in the first couple of weeks?

The economy hasn’t found it’s equilibrium yet. Bots pushing out the real players from the market trying to sell resources for gold, and where buying a a crafted item ( for example a silver chain on my server to then make jewellery) was cheaper then buying either the ore, or the ingot required to make the chain )

People pushing for 60 the max level mean that there’s little need for lower level gear, and the only thing you can do with the gear you pick up, is sell the more desirable items cheaply, or ‘trash’ it for repair parts and a small amount of gold.

I propose that they make vendoring the trash / selling the gear and weapons you don’t need for a better price would improve the economy because people would have more gold, and then when you need a town recipe for cooking, and you need 12 onions you’re more likely to spend the gold to get it.

Can we talk about the taxes… you are taxed to craft, taxed to own a house, taxed to sell. WOW has an Auction house tax – but it does make sense from an economic perspective to charge people to use your forge, loom, kitchen or alchemy lab.

Even with a 28% reduction on my house taxes, I am still paying over $800 gold every 5 days just so that I can have a house. I can own up to 3 houses now, but I can’t afford to.

The house gives me extra storage and 1 hour hearth. One advantage of the house is you can pay Azoth to reduce your hearth cool down, and its way cheaper then paying for quick travel, but only if you want to go home.

This is the inside of the house, I crafted most of the things myself inside, and found or bought from the auction house some extra bits. I found one person who used all their spare cupboards to make themselves a taller fence outside their hour. I could have filled my house with all the bunk beds I have crafted. I really like the house. I think it serves it’s purpose well, while there is limited colour options, it feels cozy enough and does what I needs it to.

Home

Outside I looted the fancier stuff, arhhhhh for my pirate wheel and got the two dogs from a dungeon run.

Pirate style

I picked a single story open house, with a small backyard that really needs it’s lawn mowed. It is next to a small stream running through the settlement which is nice, and has an ok view.

Backyard with a view

Apparently they are going to start forcing server mergers and once I turn 60 I will want to join some of the rushes/ wars and I will need a bigger server population for that. There has been a few complaints about the lag though. The game is keeping me entertained, I am not playing wow, and I feel like I have plenty to do for now.

There is less Bots and coin sellers in Chat now. I was getting annoyed reporting them, but it was important to do. The faction and general chats sometimes get a little toxic but generally I don’t feel it was a bad as Wow was, and sometimes still is.

I’m going to keep playing – I am having fun, and a new grind, we love grinding! ( ok, not always chopping tree after tree after tree after tree, look another tree! )

New World

It’s a new world, but not a new player base.

I bought New World, and on launch night I tried to join the server that some ex wow guildies had designated to be our server. It turned out so did everyone else in Asia Pacific because the queue was 21.5k long. As I stared into the queue abyss I decided I really wanted a chance to play that night so was pleasantly surprised when all the other available oceanic servers were only 2k deep. So I picked one and about 40 min later I was in.

Anything new and shiny is always exciting, and I enthusiastically dived in. Since launch I had not played WOW. The server issues were fixed ( at least for us ) ques were smaller, but there’s still a lot of lag especially in the cities. I’ve only logged in briefly tonight to WOW because New World Servers were going down at 9pm for several hours upsetting all the people in general chat at having to log out.

I had been trying to rush my first dungeon for a couple of quests and we had to disband before killing all the required mobs, but I got at least one important quest done while we were in there. The bones to get my pet will have to wait.

I’ve been spoiled with wow, New world has less buttons to press, but targeting feels a little clunky and even though I’m playing a Tank Spec in heavy armor with a 2 hander. I have had to level up a range weapon so I can chase down those pesky Does, Elks, and Buffalo for settlement quests. As it is your often competing to get the skin because while your target has been leading you around the map, other players have whipped out their ranged weapons and are trying to kill it too.

I have done SO MUCH running. Even with hearth points and fast travel my legs have been churning up the roads. No mounts in the game, and the only speed boost I had was when I spec’d into a charge with one of my weapons so I could move forward on cooldown.

I’ve not tried PVP – feeling a little better about my gear and at Level 30 and there’s active wars between factions territory’s which will be fun as long as the servers can maintain their player bases and there isn’t a dominating faction..

I’ve been having a lot of fun, it’s great timing given the negative sentiment around WOW right now, it’s familiar enough of a game to be comfortable but different enough that it’s different to WOW, and the grind! We all love a good grind, Chopping, gathering, mining, crafting, cooking, milking cows, getting honey from bee hives, and killing a lot of zombies.

My first dungeon was a little chaotic – we had at least 1 healer but I’m pretty sure there were at least 3 tank/dps and we were all doing our own smashing.

Player housing is going to be what I thought Shroud of the Avatar was going to be, but no real world money. You buy your house at the town of your choosing if you have the gold and the standing, and you then need to pay a property tax. You can outfit your house with crafting recipes, and drops. 2.5k Gold is the cheapest house, but I have my eye on a larger one with at least a front grass area. Your house ‘overlays’ other peoples, you always see your house, and if you invite someone in they will also see your house. Benefits of a house include another hearth cool down, and more storage. You do need to pay property taxes to make full use of it though, and for now- it’s a little steep to justify just yet.

Speaking of storage and grinding and crafting. You need a lot of space for all your bits , every settlement has independent storage volumes, you can transfer between banks for a fee if the settlement locations are controlled by the same faction.

I’m not too keen on the chat. It takes up too much of the screen, too many channels and way too much spam. I didn’t know what a discord kitty was. I knew, but I didn’t know the lingo ( age is showing ) I learned because of the chats and the requests for discord kitties, in game girlfriends, sugar daddies etc… people were already boasting about coming back from bans in game already, the usual name choices you see when people are pushing inappropriate naming conventions, but in the last few days it feels like it’s been cleaned up. For a new game, they have a lot of adverse media to read about from Blizzard and learn from.

The patch tonight is going to prevent whats being referred to as an AFK running into the wall hack – players run themselves into wall so they don’t get logged out. When queues are long for some people to get in trying to prevent logging. The patch will also bring in the groundwork for server transferring so the orphaned people on launch don’t need to re-roll and can pick a server and play with friends.

I’m having fun, turning into a hoarder, gathering all my crafting material and looking like a tanking bad ass. Server populations need to be kept high enough for all the aspects of the game to function – so once the initial frenzy is over the test for Amazon will be how to sustain peoples interest.

Almost level 31 at the moment which is a fair crack – fast travel and killing anything with a quest icon above it to keep completing the quest boards in the settlement which help the settlememt raise the tiers of their crafting stations. Kill 25 rabbits, bring water, craft a potion, fund some buckles. It’s been adding up.

The Cobblestones all look the same.

I moved again.
You can give up on me  and my fickle heart,  however I have a feeling that I’ll be sticking around this server for a while because I didn’t have to think too hard about moving  my 80 Mage Alt who was my herbalist/Alchemist over as well. I moved an alt. It’s like leaving a toothbrush.  I’ve committed.
I moved to Dreadmaul  – back to oceanic and it’s PVP. ( yes I am getting around) because my ICC raiding guild moved off Blackrock to there, and I am back under their comforting tag.  We are aiming for  25’s. Currently there are two 10 man teams, one of which is members of  another guild that were part of a merger from an existing guild on server with us. It might have been silly moving given I’m not guaranteed a spot – but I will get a fair shot, and that’s all I can ask for.
This means leveling my scrub mage ( who is now frost ) on a pvp server – who handed her first quest in, in Hjal, and  was attacked by an evil horde goblin mage,  and this put my pet on attack mode, and I got one shot by the NPC’s while the goblin stood there alive cackling. Another ‘bad’ experience was doing the big fire boss in a cave in Hyjal – I had him down to 30k health and a rogue started poking me. So I sheeped him, and blinked  and did my best evasive techniques while I tried to get the boss down with icy lance trying to run away from him and the mob.   I died. But I tried!
The first test of how safe is this realm was me farming on my main for my 30 Volitile fires for my dreamcloth. No one bothered me. Though doing my Tol Barrad dailies saw me ganked 3 times. I then put on my pvp gear.
Most of the World pvp seems to be  much like a mexican standoff.  You leave me alone,  I’ll leave you alone.  It’s kind of thrilling to be wriggling ( my mage is draeni) up to a quest mob, and there being several horde standing around, so deliciously dangerous.
I do not often make the first move as I always feel guilty interrupting someones game, but I am determined for every gank I shall pay back in kind,  and that means anyone killing Allies as they zone into Hyjal.  So they kill my alt.  My main kills all of them,  Npcs kill my main, and its alllllll  fun.
The server time, and my time are the same, and it feels busy at the right time. The Sun sets and rises the right time though – no more dark streets when it’s my daylight, and vice versa.
I’m gonna miss fight club.  What I called our secret pvp channel, had a lot of  fun in there, even when we got restricted to semi 5 man premade groups.

I’ve also been watching supernatural season 4 and Dean keeps talking about ganking, and sam said it once!

I get knocked down – and then I ghost out

I was queuing solo for WSG and most of the BG’s had a premade component to them.

There was 6 from one realm ( they qued  doing a ‘pop’   – all enter at once to bypass the 5 man restriction)  who demanded I go heals.  I have come a long way from the refusing to heal for people.  But Holy in BG’s in painful even when you know your team has your back.  Spurting out some flashes and renews only to be stampeded by the opposing team is not my idea of fun for a complete bunch of strangers.  1.3 resil in a Pvp dps spec, and all the wonderful trappings and stuns, silences and fears  I have,  I was better off staying in Shadow,  and healing if someone  needed –  and they did have hybrids on their own team.  After asking them – why they que’d as premades without heals,  I told them no.  ” I let them down” apparently.

There was a premade from Kilrogg that managed to get 7 in  and they all ghosted out when they found themselves getting farmed by a superior horde team- as per the above Screenshot.  Take my word for it that it wasn’t just a bad rez timer.  Yes stupid me went for the flag anyway – it was better than being a spirit ball ghosting out. I gave the premade some choice words  – eg ” You’re a premade – why aren’t you trying?”  To which most of them responded ”  It’s to0 hard..  or we are gonna lose anyway..   and the BEST response ever to my “See you in the bottom 5% of rated” was  “Your wrong – there will be people worse than we are”

I told them they had an opportunity to try different stats,   and not stand in the GY getting farmed.  If I could sneak over every time.  Down the ramp,  over the tunnel,  so could some of them if they had tried.

I’ve been a farmer.  It’s a strat that works.  Keep them in the GY.  This only works if the team is stupid enough to stay in the GY. So yes it works often – don’t be stupid.  Think outside the GY.

I was perusing a guilds recruitment website the other day, and one of the questions was a long the lines of picking a song that represents your attitude to progression, and wiping has always been the realm of PVE,  and Arena,  and now it will be BG’s as well.

The best song that comes to mind for me is the chorus to Tubthumping

I get knocked down
But I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down

Or because I remember the hours, and the deaths of Progression dying –  Stone Sours  Made of Scars

Yeah, cut right into me
Yeah because I am made of Scars
Yes I am made of scars

Getting knocked down, and collecting a few battle scars has always been the way progression goes. I’ve done it in Pve

and in Pvp

If you want to go places you need to die few times.  Get back up,  try again,  and do it differently.  They would have felt so much more better if they had worked as a team instead of Ghosting out.

Would you Character Transfer more if it were cheaper.

I  am going to be transferring some more of my toons over with my main. There may even be a race change to gnome on my second priest in there too. It will  mean I am committed to the realm at least.   I am still  not doing anything in guild, and effectively has only been a tag over my head, and that’s not what I really want, but there has been some roads into organising what we have in what I hope is organised pvp. We also seem to have way too many priests, but it will all depend on the race to 85 as to what they will really have to work with.

I’ve already spent about  $250 Aus  in the last 14 months or so on character transfers, and considering it works out that my yearly game subscription  is about 160$ a year  – it seems out of balance – Blizzard have made more profit from me, by cut and pasting pixels into a new server,  then they have in my share of ‘cost/membership fee’ for providing me the actual game.

If it were cheaper,  I would move all my toons together,  would even play some of them more as they would have more financial support for upgrades and professions, but considering that  Blizzard don’t necessarily want realms of ‘choice’ over populated  the price is also a deterrent or people would transfer more frequently, as given the speed that a transfer can be done they seem to have people dedicated to that task,  and when one transfer earns them almost two months of a single subscription it is quite a good little money earner for them.

Some of the transferring has even me being flakey. ( me flakey..  never.. )   Leaving a server and coming back,  or even escaping to another server, so now I have alts all over the place, and it would make it easier if they are all together because some of them have complimentary professions and one needs a sugar mummy of  a main to give them gold for Epic flying.

Once you server transferred once,  it gets easier to do it again.  I wonder what my game would be like if I decided not to follow some of my guild over the first time I ever left my home server. I left a decent trail place in a raid guild that accepted me after our guild broke up.  I could have stayed, and other things would have been different.

I think I learned a lot about playing , and people  leaving the safe confines of a comfy realm,  I now just need to settle.

Queen of Nothing in Particular

I put my foot in when we were talking about Achievements in our premade BG the other day ( when we used to be able to queue with more than  five.   Fooey ><)  They were asking how close we were to Master of WSG, and I had two achievements left,    Frenzied Defender – get 5 flag returns and Quick Cap  the speed cap one.  Both were relatively easy to obtain if I asked other people in BG to make a small concession for me.

Eg 5 cap –  let me return 5 flags – so no one else clicks on it.

Speed cap – pick up both boots ( we communicate when they are both up, and make sure no one from our team picks one up) use a speed pot in a clear field, and your home free.

I made the statement that it didn’t matter, and that I don’t like achievements because I don’t feel like I have actually achieved anything when I am asking other people to make concessions.  Of course I was talking to a collection  of people who did care about achievements, and I felt like I had made a serious social gaffe and was going to need to server transfer again.

I don’t want to rehash the Achievement topic to great lengths,  but if anything my almost callous statement highlighted that we all play Wow for very different reasons and that my opinion of achievements seems to increasingly part of the minority.

I understood the need for achievements like hardmodes in Ulduar as being a real measurement of progression.  I understand the accomplishment of Achievements that show true skill and co-ordination, and I find those worthy of pursuit.

Yes there have been achievements which I have chased. My Journey to Justicar, and  I wanted an Icecrown drake as much as the rest of them. Even now my desire for  “Of the Alliance”  by getting 100k honor kills.  To say ” I have killed One hundred thousand players”   ( Beats standing on the river bank waiting for the bodies of your enemy to float by) .

I recently completed all the silly  loving the pests,  the explorations, and killing bugs achievements. I  just keep running into people who like this achievement point thing,  it’s important to the people I play with, and thus I feel I ought to think it’s somewhat important too.

I’m # 10 in my current guild for Achievement points,  with just over 7200 points – like Gah..  and that is without even trying – it says I have done things. Been places. 

I don’t know what my motivations for playing wow are. Maybe some of it is that chemical reaction that gaming is supposed to give much like a drug on our brain chemistry,  maybe it’s the sociableness, maybe it’s fodder for another love of mine writing or communicating.  Maybe it’s somewhere to go. Something to do, but  I don’t want to be a Queen of nothing in particular. If  I chase or accomplish something that matters. I want it to matter.

See here I am thinking that other people take Achievement points  too seriously – I watch them eat and devour them one after the other, with little regard or passion in the accomplishment,  but maybe I am the odd one because I want them all to mean something. I want to be passionate about everything I consider to be an accomplishment.

Maybe it’s not the people Achievement point chasing people that have the issue but it is I who has the issue,  by trying to  find meaning and justification  in every 10 points when I should not.

It’s a small battlegroup after all.

Guess who I ran into this weekend,  Gnomeaggedon from Armaggedon’s comming well actually his alt Squidly while doing some Bging.

I think my battlegroup is getting smaller.  In the premades  not only am I running into ex flatmates,  ( pre wow days ) and ex guildys,  but bloggers too!

Then someone recognized me while in a BG and said Hi.   so Hi back to Caffinated 🙂

Though speaking of Gnome,   he has a guest spot on a  Podcast up with Obscurecast because he is a fire Mage, and the UK was celebrating Guy Fawkes day where they get to make things catch fire, so Pewter from The Mental Shaman, and Gazimoff from Manaobscura interviewed Gnomeaggedon, so go have a listen.

and another  very important thing..   Gnome talks about betraying the Alliance if the opportunity was provided, and as a fellow Alliance player I have  to register my protest,  I mean I have fought besides him in a battlefield,  to then having to kill him,  I would no longer be able to pvp if I was forced to kill little gnomes! Following Thrall does have its appeal,  for an orc I think he is a little hunky, and charming, and seems to be a good leader,  and even though I have to fault him a little for his um thing with Jaina,  I’ve yet to change factions for a man  ( though for thrall I would consider it briefly..    but Gnome..  the Taurens would only use you to play gnomeball punting   don’t go…

My Diabolical plan to escape.

Escape what you ask?

Deathwing the Destroyer is comming – how could you not know.   It’s all we have been talking about for months,  we even had a cataclysm trailer Seer’s Vision released yesterday showing us the future.  We know he is coming. We know he will destroy places.

Where are you going to be when the Catacysm hits? Think of your toons!

We can feel the earth shaking already beneath our feet. None of our Toons are safe.

This is where I reveal my plan.

Me @Rhiily aka Oh My Kurenai and  and @_Angelya aka Revive and Rejuvenate  have already thought about where we are going to be,  or not be.

My plan is to Borrow a Goblin Zepplin and hide out in Stormpeaks. 

WHO IS WITH ME

I’m not going to lie.  It may not be easy and I am going to need help.

 I am thinking a Duratar to Borean Tundra Zepplin might be an ideal target.  We can sneak up from Rachet and storm the Zepplin Platform.  Resistance should be minimal – while I prefer to keep the casualitys low, there may be some losses.  Fly it out, and once it hits Borean Tundra, divert the Zepplin  maybe just even cruise round the Tundra.  I  was going to head to Stormpeaks but I am expecting the colder air in Stormpeaks may cause issues with our hot air pump. Would like an engineer or two along just in case.

 I’m reserving space for  probably seven of my toons.  The rest will need to  find other safe spots.  The Zepplins can fit 150 people Maybe 200 with  standing room, and we can use the upper  and below decks without causing too much overload.   Mounts need to stay in bags sorry, and I reserve at least one of the Hammocks down below. 

So where are you going to be, and will you help me?

I’ll bring Cake,and maybe a Keg or two.

Do you look after Healers in BG’s?

Yes I have been Pvping a lot. 31900 odd HK’s to go to 100k kills.  It’s going to be a long time.

I was healing an Eye of the Storm this weekend and a little Pally healer  is yelling at people to protect them.  It took me a little while to get close enough to gear check them – and I think my snarky retort in Bg chat of  “It’s a little hard to protect you with 16k Health and no resilence’ probably got completely missed.

Protect the healers – Lol

I don’t expect to get protected at all while healing in a BG.  I have a trinket – I have fear, I have GS,  I have Shadow Meld.  ( Shadow Meld is very useful when getting smacked around by pets of any kind.   Works on  Army of the Dead, hunters pets ect. ) I can also heal myself.  I have to take some responsibility for my own  life – I mean I’m the healer damn it.

It’s not like I can ask a dps to heal me – hopefully they are either destroying the horde, or ccing them, and I am keeping them alive long enough to be more affective.

I have never asked people in a BG to protect the healer. Should a healer expect to be protected?

I work on the principle of  if you get heals in a bg your lucky. There is no target priority in any bg bar the flag carrier in WSG/EOS.  It’s keep up who you can, so if you are getting any heals be grateful. Mana gain in BG’s with that nerf, and  in Pvp gear can be pretty terrible – hence why I am in half pve gear while healing  – in Pvp healing gear it was heal untill your OOM – die then do it all over again, and I know some BG healers don’t even bother with Pvp gear at all. I like to be somewhat harder to kill.

As a dps I don’t do too much to protect healers,  I might fear any melee/pets away from them,  shield them , target their attackers – but not so much because I am protecting a healer, but more because it’s Pvp – and often thinking does not often move past.

OH!  RED  TAG  KILLLLLLL EEEETTT

Fear or death is usually the only thing to get a enemy off a healer anyway, sometimes they don’t notice the healer behind the dps healing their little heart out,  but when someone gets a little smart and ” Kill the healers First” command is issued – well then your healer is in trouble anyway.

I think a 16k health person – healer or not with no resilience is asking WAY too much for people to protect them.  Yes everyone needs to start somewhere – but it’s one of those times I would like to say ” Suck it up princess” because they can’t help you when you can’t even help yourself.

BGs take two…

I think we  also need to start a campaign for Disc Priests and the “Healing Done” on BG boards to include absorptions too.  While they are at it,  add dispels/decurses too.


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