WoW: Boredom And Dungeon 1 Sets

Post soundtrack: “Maniac” by Michael Sembello

In my quest to make my characters look like my characters (as opposed to your average I-pug-for-badges tier-wearer), I discovered a new self-evident truth: when you’re feeling bored and are looking for something to farm, there’s always your class’s Dungeon 1 set.  (Ok, in this instance ‘your class’ doesn’t include death knights as they don’t have any item sets in vanilla or TBC content, but who plays a DK anyway?)

Now that I’ve a comfortable quantity of gold under my belt, the lull between dull, dreary old content and ZOMG exciting new content is subject to a little nagging temptation: “Hey, why don’t you spend some of that gold on your alts, with prices for mats and gear getting so low?”  Needless to say, it wouldn’t take long to turn that comfortable quantity into a very small pile, regardless of low prices.  (Plus with Cata coming Soon™, why spend gold on something soon to be replaced with questing greens?)

The character who’s been tempting me the most has been my warrior tank, Dinglemouse. This is fortunate as she’s not only capable of grinding through old Azeroth content (although pretty much any characters can manage it at level 80 with half-decent gear), but is also an engineer which offers some time-saving abilities when out in the field with Scrapbots to vendor trash (quite inexpensively as well, at a cost of only 2 saronite bars per bot) and Moll-E and Jeeves for extra ways to empty my bags of more valuable items if needed.

First, though, you need to work out where the set pieces drop.  Cue this handy table for the warrior items:

Item	Dropped By	Found In
Helm of Valor	Darkmaster Gandling	Scholomance
Spaulders of Valor	Warchief Rend Blackhand	Upper Blackrock Spire
Breastplate of Valor	General Drakkisath	Upper Blackrock Spire
Bracers of Valor (BoE)	Trash mobs, Quartermaster Zigris	Lower Blackrock Spire
Gauntlets of Valor (BoE)	Ramstein the Gorger	Stratholme
Legplates of Valor	Baron Rivendare	Stratholme
Belt of Valor (BoE)	Trash mobs	Stratholme, Lower Blackrock Spire
Boots of Valor	Kirtonos the Herald	Scholomance

Now, three of these pieces are BoE and can be picked up in the AH (usually for a song).  However, the gauntlets and belt are easy to pick up in Stratholme while farming Rivendare for the legplates, so purchasing them is likely unnecessary.  The bracers on the other hand are worth purchasing if you come across them, as they’re the only item (once you have the belt) that requires running LBRS.

For convenience I started at the north of the continent, running Stratholme until I had the belt and gauntlets – I’m currently waiting for Rivendare to cough up the legplates (although if his mount drops, it might convince me to forgive him).  Next will be Scholomance for the Helm and Boots.  If I haven’t found the bracers by this stage, LBRS will follow on.  And last (but not least) is UBRS for the spaulders and breastplate.

Once I’ve accumulated them all, maybe I’ll look at upgrading them to their Dungeon Set 2 equivalent.  We’ll see how it goes, though.

For now?  Stratholme awaits!

/wave

WoW: The Coming Add-on Cataclysm

Post soundtrack: “Cataclysm” by Blizzard.

There’s nothing like visiting the PTR to convince you it’s time to re-subscribe to WoW. Hence I’ve returned (albeit not especially triumphantly).

So I’ve started tidying up some loose ends on my old main characters on alliance side  and have been trying to get my solitary high-level horde alt (ding 64!) up in level enough to do the new troll quest chain (despite the likelihood that it’s probably going to be just as truncated and as underwhelming an experience as the Gnomes failure to recapture Gnomeregan was).

But my limited time on the PTR reminded me of one important little detail: when Cataclysm strikes and (insert rampant hyperbole here, describing how things changing ruins the game you know and love, while simultaneously bitching about the game you know and love because it’s all the same and nothing changes and… oh, wait), it’s also likely going to be losing a number of the addons we currently know and love.  (Ask yourself how long it’s been since some of the addons you may be using have been updated? My oldest was last updated Jul 2008…)

I transferred an 80 rogue and 80 priest onto the PTR, and while I can play a rogue with the default UI (well, I can solo; raiding would probably be kind of difficult) there’s no way in heck I could even heal a 5-man without Vuhdo. Looking at the collection of addons in my live install, it’s clear I’m going to have a lot of work ahead of me to get ready for Cata, not just in winnowing out those which are now unsupported, but also in searching for the new and improved.

There are three parts to the UI that my UI layout revolves around:

• Action Bars: The default bars are almost the only part of the UI that I leave untouched – not only are they perfectly functional (and guaranteed to work the day after a big patch), but I also like the art used when you’re controlling vehicles.
• Player/Target Frames: While sparse of information and truly awfully positioned (especially for classes with rapidly changing resources to manage, such as rogues, hunters and warriors) they do the job; in the past I’ve usually replaced them with XPerl, which is the best implementation I’ve come across so far of “It Just Works” in terms of unitframe addons. I find unitframes, once more sanely positioned, are best supported by a HUD in the centre of the screen, so important information is located where your attention is focused. (MetaHUD is my current HUD of choice, having dropped DHUD which hasn’t been updated for a while)
• Raid Frames: I rely upon these for my healing, and experience shows I perform best with spells bound to all four mouse buttons (left/right/forward/back) with shift/ctrl/alt modifiers. My addon of choice for this is Vuhdo, which handles both frames and mouse-over healing quite capably (but isn’t currently PTR-ready, although apparently there’s a version for the Beta).

After those, it starts to get cosmetic.  Unlike minimalists, I like having access to more information than the default UI usually reveals (although not necessarily displayed all the time).  A Data Broker bar addon (and assorted modules) is great for this, my current being ChocolateBar.  The minimap gets replaced and moved to the centre-top of the screen, cue Chinchilla. A more detailed buff/debuff display, Elkano’s BuffBars. Replace Blizz’s Floating Combat Text with MikScrollingBattleText.  Replace chat windows with Prat and WIM. Then there’s Auctioneer, of course. And who can forget DeadlyBossMods?

To that you can add convenience addons like Atlas/Atlasloot, Fishing Buddy, Mapster, Opie, Outfitter, Skada, and little things like No Gryphons. And that barely scratches the surface of the various bits and pieces I’ve accumulated – I have 235 folders in my Addons directory, probably representing near on a hundred addons installed.

Methinks ‘tis time to cut back. And hey, what a great opportunity for it!

/wave

The Other Kind of Rock and Roll

Post soundtrack: “I Feel the Earth Move” by Carole King

It’s been an…  interesting week down here.  We had a little 7.1 magnitude earthquake here in sunny Christchurch early last Saturday morning, and things are only just starting to settle down (finally).  Thanks to a combination of timing and a solid building code, there was only one death (a heart attack during the quake) and two serious injuries (a man injured by a collapsing chimney and another man badly cut by glass).

Fortunately the suburb that I live in didn’t suffer any serious damage (both the power and internet remained on for me, as did the water although it was necessary to boil it before use for a few days as a precautionary measure); unfortunately, other areas haven’t been as lucky.  A sizeable number of buildings have been left damaged, especially in the CBD and the east side of the city.  Still, barring a much larger aftershock than the 3-5 ones we’ve been enjoy since the quake, the drama is all over and we’re working on picking up the pieces and getting our lives back in order.  (And we don’t need charity; we’re pretty well supported already)

Personally, I’m still kind of on tenterhooks to some degree; I wasn’t particularly anxious during (and after) the quake itself, but the steady stream of aftershocks are starting to leave me feeling increasingly shaken (both literally and figuratively), especially when they’ve been going on for days as is the case here (apparently as I write this there’s been anywhere between 200 and 400 magnitude 3 or greater aftershocks since the quake a week ago, depending on which expert you ask).

Needless to say, my pc gaming has been pretty sporadic.  I’ve spent more time over the last few days playing tower defense games on my ipod than I have playing much else on the pc.  (And doesn’t the new ipod touch look appealing? I’m seriously considering saving for one, and maybe one of the new shuffles to free up space on my touch for more games if I pick up the cheaper 8gb model.)

Touching on WoW briefly, it was interesting to see the new Gnome and Troll quest chains have finally gone live.  I wonder if that means we’re getting even closer to the Cata launch – anyone care to put money on it being under 3 months away?  Needless to say, the news of something new to do in-game made me consider whether it’s time to re-sub to the game, but after reading of Gnomeageddon’s disappointment I’ve decided to give it another month.  (I’d have to finish levelling a horde-side character to do the troll chain as well)

I very briefly logged into LotRO for the f2p headstart, but haven’t bothered to go past the store after finding that the turbine points I was supposed to have earned haven’t shown up yet.  It turns out that a number of players are in the same situation, and leaves me wondering why they bothered going ahead with a headstart if they couldn’t give players their stipend to spend before the event ended. (The word “bone-headed” comes to mind…)

My time in EQ2E has also dwindled for some reason. I’ve joined a couple of guilds (each character in a different one), but for some reason I just haven’t been able to settle into the group, and my play sessions have been generally dissatisfying. It’s probably more my solitary nature coming to the fore, but it’s still left me irritated (albeit with myself).

On my ipod, on the other hand…  Between Fieldrunners, The Creeps and TowerMadness, my TD itch is being well and truly scratched (and that’s not counting the other 6 TD games I have installed).  I’m kind of ambivalent about the Game Center functionality that Apple added with OS4.1 though; it just looks like an unwieldy version of what you can already get with OpenFeint and Plus+ (and probably a number of other social platforms offer).

Well, it’s getting late so I’m going to cut my post short around here.  I’ll just add that I’m now on twitter (like all the other cool kids), but don’t say much (in much the same way as I am IRL).

Two more links before I go: “Thirteen things I learnt from an earthquake.” and an alternate version of “I Feel The Earth Move” by Loretta Swit and the Muppets.

/wave

WoW: Making Old Gear Relevant

Post soundtrack: “Q baiano” by Zuco 103

One thing about the gear-grind in WoW that tended to irritate me, is that it’s almost impossible to make your character look like something other than one more tier-X-geared member of class Y.  This little proposal is one way Blizzard could give players back an additional degree of personalisation for their characters.

The idea, at its heart, is a very simple one: give us the means to upgrade the stats on old tier armour to something close to either the current or previous tier of raiding equipment.

Let’s see what we have to work with, using the rogue tier sets as an example.

Tier	Set Name	iLevel	Era
1	Nightslayer	66	Vanilla
2	Bloodfang	76	Vanilla
3	Bonescythe	86-92	Vanilla
4	Netherblade	120	BC
5	Deathmantle	133	BC
6	Slayer’s	146-154	BC
7	Heroes’ Bonescythe	200	LK Naxx
7	Valorous Bonescythe	213	LK Naxx
8	Valorous Terrorblade	219	LK Ulduar
8	Conqueror’s Terrorblade	226	LK Ulduar
9	Conqueror’s Blah	232	LK TotC
9	Triumphant Blah	245	LK TotC
9	Heroic Triumphant Blah	258	LK TotC
10	Shadowblade	251	LK ICC
10	Sanctified Shadowblade	264	LK ICC
10	Heroic Sanctified Shadowblade	277	LK ICC

That’s a total of 16 sets (10 if you exclude colour variations).  Yet in game at the moment you’re unlikely to see anything less than the top two tiers, especially when raiding.

There’s several approaches that could be taken to achieve this, but the simplest is to offer upgrade tokens purchased with emblems rewarded by dungeons and raids.

Let’s look at the rogue t1 chest, as an example.

Nightslayer Chestpiece, drops from Golemagg in Molten Core.  Look at those lovely stats:  10str, 29agi, 20stam, 10 fire resist, and 14 crit.

Now, imagine if you will, a ‘generic’ set of stats for each armour slot, not quite as good as the highest tier set you can buy with each set of emblems.  As there are two tiers of emblems being awarded from dungeons and raids, let’s see what they can buy:

Conquest: Garona’s/VanCleef’s Breastplate of Conquest (ilvl 232)
Frost: Shadowblade Breastplate (ilvl 251)

Now, apply 95% of the stats from each of those, and you have two upgraded items that wouldn’t be out of place in a (starting) raid today.

Upgraded Nightslayer Chestpiece (purchased with normal emblems):
Stats: 95agi, 114stam, 68 hit, 76 crit, 137ap
Heroic Nightslayer Chestpiece (purchased with heroic emblems):
Stats: 136agi, 136stam, 91 hit, 151ap, 76 armor pen

Working from that premise, let’s create our pair of tokens.  One that is purchased for standard emblems, and one which requires heroic emblems (that two-tier system being the standard for cataclysm, last time I checked).

The upgrade token, when used, replaces the tier item with a new piece that has the same model but with modern stats, which makes the item wearable for (non-progression) raiding.  For balance reasons, the upgraded tier sets would have a standard set of bonuses and sockets for each class, shared across all upgraded pieces that a player wears.

There would be limitations, of course.  Upgraded pieces would be bound to the person upgrading, and players could only upgrade useable tier pieces (which are limited to their specific class – no Pallies in cloth T1).  If desired by Blizz (who like to have things for players to spend their badges on), items could required a new upgrade token with each new raiding tier.  Perhaps allow players to sell unused upgrade tokens, which would offer another source of income for players who save their badges, and another gold-sink for players who want to spend their gold.

(While a similar scheme could work for pvp gear, it would likely be considered too much work for Blizzard, and not just because it’s almost impossible to acquire some old sets (and would make it hard to judge a player’s skill by their gear), but the likelihood of complaints skyrocketing on the forums about rogues wiping the floor with season-8-geared players while wearing upgraded Field Marshal’s Vestments could get messy…)

This would also act as an incentive for players to revisit old content (to acquire the tier pieces to upgrade), and give us a new way to invest ourselves in our avatars (which has been lacking in this new age of identical players in tier gear from running heroics).

Now, I don’t really see this ever happening, to be honest – for whatever reason, Blizz is quite happy to let old content go to waste (both raids and gear – when was the last time you heard of a successful pug Naxx run?) while they implement the new shinies in the form of higher tiers of raid content and gear (and we’ve seen how well they put the raids together in Wrath…  sigh…).  But I for one would love to be able to step into the Cataclysm raids wearing an upgraded set of the awesome t5 on one of my priests.

/wave

EQ2: To Heck With It, I’m Having Fun

Post soundtrack: “Pulp Culture” by Thomas Dolby

I know I ranted, and raved, and complained when EverQuest II Extended was announced…  (I did draw the line at throwing excrement, however – something I’m relieved about in hindsight)  But I’ve since downloaded and installed the Extended client, and have started working on a new Ratonga after reading an enlightening post on Mystic Worlds.

The post, Logic of Subscribing on EQ2 Extended, reminded me of two things that had slipped my mind.  First, it’s possible to have fun despite external limitations.  And second, it’s silly to be put off something wonderful by something (or someone) disagreeable.

Oh, and third, it’s fine to change your mind.

(Also, with the pleasure I took in leveling Mingle, the phrase “Cutting off the nose to spite the face” comes to mind)

Reading back to my throw-my-toys-out-of-the-cot post about why I was leaving, I think my complaints still hold true.  I still expect to get lost.  The lore isn’t really well explaining.  And crafting is only going to be more difficult, with the chronic lack of bag space for non-subscribers.

But I’ve started to come to terms with the RMT nature of the game – I might not agree with the prices, but I’m not the target audience for most of what they’re offering.  As it is, all the game has cost me so far has been the data to download the client (which is still streaming in the background – 12GB takes a while, but you’re no longer stuck until the download has completed) and my time.

I had sufficient station cash on my account from special offers in the past (SC is the currency that Sony uses in their various in-game stores) to allow me to unlock Ratongas (along with another couple of races I’ll likely never play), so buying that pack was a no-brainer.  I’ll probably be making my initial purchase of SC this weekend, which will raise my membership level to silver and give me an extra bag slot to play with (and I’m thinking of buying some diamonds as well, the Runes of Magic currency).

Incidentally, I’d started playing before the news surfaced on the forums today that SOE are going to be allowing bronze and silver members to purchase classes in the near future, and are considering changing the bronze chat limitations (currently limited to /say, /tell, /group and /guild) and may be allowing bronze and silver some form of access to the broker.  So that’s my biggest complaint about the EQ2E tiered-membership system fixed, and another one that might be soon.

Anyway, it’s been a nice, low-pressure couple of weeks – I’ve been playing Spellforce (a nice RPG/RTS combo from 2003, which was on special on Gamersgate), started playing Runes of Magic (which is deserving of a post of its own at some stage), (re-)started EQ2E, and briefly played Alganon (very briefly; after I was able to stop turning my nose up at it, uninstalled it and deleted the installation files, something I’m rarely driven to do).

I’m also having something of a dalliance with the idea of learning German.  (Yes, I have a foolish reason why: Perry Rhodan)

And twitter…  Well, let’s just say, I’m exploring my options.  (On that note, can anyone recommend a good twitter client for windows?)

Well, Pringlerouse awaits my attention – she’s busy with her betrayal quests, working towards signing up with Qeynos.  (Having run through 14 levels of Neriak starting quests, I’m very glad to not be dealing with their so-bad-they’re-almost-parody brand of evil any longer – I’m amazed there wasn’t a baby-eating delivery quest in there somewhere)

Oh, and a prize* for the first person to identify the source of the lyrics attached to the screenshot above.

/wave

* – 1x unopened sense of satisfaction – single owner, never used.  (Offer void where prohibited by law)

GW: Fulfilling Prophecies

Post soundtrack: “I Don’t Care” by Shakespears Sister

I have to say, Guild Wars is probably the most single-player-friendly MMO I’ve come across.  When you’re the single human in a party with 6 computer-controlled NPCs, one player-controlled hero NPC, and an idiot pet, it’s actually surprisingly reminiscent of Dungeon Siege (the stupidly fun first one, not the beaten-with-the-idiot-stick sequel).

The change of focus from traditional MMO epic-loot-centric play to the much more skill-centric mechanics of GW is a curious one to work through.  My ranger/monk is sitting on level 15 at the moment, and is working on some of the side-quests around Kryta (around #3 on the primary quest chain list here – which puts my progression at around 10 of the 25 co-operative missions in the Prophecies campaign), and is getting pretty close to the level 20 cap.  At 20, further progression comes in the form of acquiring additional skills and working through the campaigns.  While there are some further armor and weapon upgrades (at least, as far as I can see in the GW wiki), they’re not exponentially stronger in the manner WoW endgame gear is.

While the items don’t approach the degree of aesthetic variation that WoW offers (you really have to admire the sheer volume of different armor designs that Blizzard’s art team has come up with over the years), they offer sufficient variation to allow you to personalise your character quite nicely – I don’t think I’ve seen many people identically dressed in the crowds I’ve seen in Kryta so far.  (I’m quite fond of the long-coat look of the Ranger Monument armor, although the Deldrimor armor has a certain charm as well)

I’ve also invested $10 into purchasing the Bonus Mission pack; after completing the missions it’s possible to turn in the verified quest item for some nice weapons - I chose a nice Charr shortbow for Ringle to replace the Nevermore Flatbow bonus that came (along with a handful of other weapons for other classes) with the Guild Wars Trilogy pack.

The mechanic of co-operative missions is also quite interesting to work with.  The entrance is essentially an outpost (where you have access to a merchant and the bank), and from there you can form a party (either with NPCs, Heroes that you’ve unlocked, or other players) and then attempt the mission for that outpost.  The biggest downside is if you fail the mission (you all die, or a key NPC is killed) you’re returned to the entrance zone, and have to restart the mission.  Needless to say, if it’s a long mission, it can get frustrating.  But with the ability to work through the missions single-handed (well, with henchmen) makes it a good fit for my anti-social nature.

The two styles of computer-controlled adventurers are also a nice touch.  The original variety are Henchmen: they’re essentially computer-controlled NPCs, which you have pretty much minimal control over (you can set a waypoint for them to move to and stay at, but that’s about it).  With the Nightfall expansion came Heroes: think of them as Henchmen v2.  Unlike henchmen, heroes can have their skills and equipment changed like those of your player character (although only at a town or outpost).

Heroes, along with Ranger pets, are also subject to slightly more player control than henchmen: they have a control panel that gives you about as much control over them as an old-school WoW hunter had of their pets, which can be summed up pretty much as “Attack, Defend, Passive”.  Needless to say, don’t expect to have any fine-grain control over your computerised party members.

All in all, I’m enjoying my time in GW – indeed, it’s quite possible I’d be subscribing if it had been a subscription MMO.  And having seen the GW2 Manifesto video, I’m very much looking forward to ArenaNet’s next move.

But I’m not sure they can top this:

 

/wave

GW: What A Diff’rence A Space Makes

Post soundtrack: “Space Oddity” by David Bowie

Well, NCSoft’s customer service has gotten back in touch, and it turns out I forgot that Guild Wars character names need to consist of (at least) two parts.  Turns out the character I created was called “Mingle Douse”.  …Sigh…

Needless to say, I’ve taken the precaution of taking a screenshot with character name showing.  It’s not of ex-Mingle though, who I’ve deleted as befits such a troublesome disposable character.  My new character is a Ranger/Monk called “Kay Pringlerouse”, who is level 5 and busy working through the initial Prophecies content.  (Sadly GW only has the option of humans as your character’s race – I miss the options of most other MMOs)

I’ve also decided to give City of Heroes a try – it was a toss-up between that and Champions Online, but I prefer the scope of CoH’s trial (no apparent content limitations – although there might be some, as I haven’t seen any small print yet – just a 14-day limit) to CO’s demo (limited content, but no time limit).

Unfortunately the downloader for CoH is irritatingly slow, it’s only managing between 50-90kbs, and has been running for about 13 hours so far – needless to say, no fun screenshots to speak of.

Ah well, patience is a virtue.  But then, so is preparation – and GW awaits my attention.

/wave