More Class Mounts

After my previous run of class mount acquisition I thought I’d slow down a bit. The next mount on the list was actually not a mount, but druid flight form. I like Thisalee Crow, so I was happy to help her when she asked. We’ve got to defend the shrine of Aviana from a demon invasion, and take back the idol they stole so we can restore the flight form for all the druids of the talon who depend on it. This quest was surprisingly action-packed, and even though I’m not quite sure yet whether I like the new flight form, I definitely liked the quest to get it.

More Class MountsNext up was my rogue. I have loved everything about the rogue class hall and story so far, and this one started off with my favorite buddy Lilian Voss so I was excited. Unfortunately this quest chain is somewhat pvp focused and it stressed me out a lot. You have to kill marked targets in each of the opposing faction’s capital cities. This means using a lot of your various rogue-y tricks to infiltrate and murder your target before you get caught by guards or players. After I finished this quest I kept seeing Alliance rogues hovering around outside the Horde cities and now I know why. I have so much sympathy for them. On the plus side, I think this might be my favorite mount of all the new class ones.

Warlock started off slow because you have to gather a bunch of items up front, and one item you need only drops from the end boss of legion invasions. It felt very parallel to the pally quest, which makes sense since both of those classes had previous mount questlines. However where they pally one made up for its annoying start with a nostalgic romp at the end, the warlock quest just felt annoying. It might be because I’m not great at playing a warlock, but I didn’t think their mount quest was very fun. I do really like their mounts though.

The demon hunter quest might have been the easiest of all of them. They just have a short scenario where you fly down to the planet of the felbats and have to punch the felbat brood mother until she decides to be your friend. Or something. You have to chase her around a little bit and there is a cool moment where you have to glide down to her and jump on her back in mid-air. There’s also a set-up where you can use your demon sight ability to try to track her down, but it wasn’t strictly necessary to complete the mission. I might have been cooler to set up something that made it more vital, but it is difficult to make that work and not just be annoying. I was fairly happy that it was easy anyway, since I still felt like I was recovering from the rogue quest even after several days’ break. The mount is kinda cool looking although I hate the weird blade-on-the-head thing.

The only character I have left at 110 that doesn’t have her mount yet is my hunter, and she’s still a few days’ worth of questing away from unlocking the start of that chain. My shaman is still level 100, and the highest level warrior I have is only in the 70s, so it will be a while. So far, aesthetically the rogue mount is my favorite. As far as the quests go, if the start of the paladin one hadn’t been so awful that one would probably be my favorite. But because of the hangup of having to get crafted items and Suramar stuff it got knocked down a peg. Instead I have to say that the priest quest has been my favorite overall.


More Class Mounts

E3 2017: EA and Microsoft

E3 2017: EA and Microsoft

First up, you might notice that I have an awesome new masthead featuring my traditional Final Fantasy XIV “Bunny Samurai Warrior” appearance.  I commissioned the always amazing @AmmosArt to get this ready for me in time for the Stormblood launch.  However instead of waiting and sitting on it…  and then revealing it this coming Friday when head start begins…  I simply could not hold off my excitement and spent a chunk of yesterday morning switching it out.  While the form factor does not exactly fit my blog I am posting the full version regardless.  The amount of work that she put into getting everything just right, and even accounting for the fact that I have a blue color scheme to get the reflections in there just fight, along with those coming off of my Palace of the Dead axe… is just phenomenal.  Over the years she has sort of become the official un-official artist of whatever the hell I happen to be doing.  While I still adore the Chibi work that Rae did all those years ago, Ammo’s art style really speaks to me and has thus-far been pretty malleable to make work with literally anything I want to have her create for me.  For example… the Tam commissioned Twitter Warrior Bel, or the extremely amazing Destiny themed Sunbreaker Bel.  Other than that… this weekend was largely about the beginning of E3 when they cram a whole slew of not officially part of E3 shows into the days before the doors open.  So far I have seen Electronics Arts, Microsoft, and I stayed up for the silly late Bethesda show.  It has been a truly mixed bag of experiences.

Electronic Arts Show

Firstly on AggroChat I gave the analogy of Electronic Arts being the Dursleys from Harry Potter fame… and Bioware being the boy kept under the stairs.  Bioware is the only reason why I care about Electronic Arts in the least, and all we saw from the studio during the show was a 52 second teaser video for the new IP Anthem.  There was a follow up of course during the Microsoft event with more footage, but never have I felt like Bioware was more of a red headed stepchild.  It feels like EA is trying to them of their Biowareyness, but I will talk about that a little later when I talk about anthem.  As far as games…  we had plenty of sports..  now with a focus on roleplaying elements and campaign storyline.  This was so much the case that I literally thought for a second that they had dropped the madden name and instead decided to call this years football offering “Longshot”.  As far as games I was interested in…  Battlefront II seemed really cool and they talked about how they plan on having this cinematic campaign experience.  However when it came time to show a demo… they instead showed us more Star Wars Battlefield game play on and over the planet of Naboo…  which was cool but didn’t exactly show off any of the promised new features.

There was an extremely interesting prison break game called A Way Out by the folks that created Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.  The gotcha here is that the game must be played in multiplayer either couch co-op or networked.  I am not super keen on needing to complete a game with another person in tow, nor do I really have a ready “player two”.  They also showed off Need For Speed Payback, which is cool… but literally should have been branded a Fast and the Furious game because it feels like those movies feel.  Don’t get me wrong, Need For Speed is a really fun experience but they are also not pre-order or even day one games for me, but instead something I pick up when prices drop.  Battlefield 1 moves to the Russian front, which I would probably care about a lot were I actually playing Battlefield…  or if I even owned it.  The Russian front at least in World War II games is always the awesome front… so I imagine that will probably be the case for Battlefield 1 as well.  All in all it was a pretty disappointed show filled with a few truly awkward moments as people not used to using a teleprompter had to suddenly use one.  At least one of these moments served as our reminder that YouTube content is highly scripted, and doesn’t exactly translate to extemporaneous speaking.  The highlight of the night was twitter errupting with a bunch of people asking how the hell this “iJustine” person was.

Microsoft Show

Leading into E3… Microsoft needed to come out swinging.  This has been an entire console generation where they have been lagging far behind Sony and it all started with a poor reveal of the Xbox that focused on its multimedia capabilities.  This years E3 started with the announcement of the Xbox One X… or XBoneX the Edgelord from now on.  Its a horrible name…  if they simply dropped the one part and went with Xbox X it would make a lot more sense.  I think part of this is cognitive dissonance from the fact that Xbox One is still a really stupid name for the third Xbox in the product cycle.  All of this aside however it does look like a good platform, and the $499 price point seems reasonable…  for folks who actually care about what it is offering.  My problem with this and the Playstation Pro (which is also a stupid name) is the fact that I don’t own anything 4k for this to take advantage of.  Honestly nor do I have any real plans in the near future to shell out the money to purchase something 4k, and if I did… it wouldn’t likely be in my office but instead in the living room where I wouldn’t hook up a console anyways.  Basically I am not the target demographic but of those who are… they seemed okay with the announcements.  The games however…  that was where the story was for me given that they announced something like 42 games…  albeit a lot of those were in a lengthy montage that always seems to say “we wanted to name drop but didn’t care enough to really show it”.

 

Metro Exodus

This game looked so damned amazing, but also seemed extremely scripted.  I am interested to see what the moment to moment gameplay is like.  Functionally it just proved that the new Metro cranks up the already pretty high quality bar.

Assassin’s Creed Origins

This game looks really interesting… but unfortunately as I have learned while attempting to play 2, 3 and 4…  I really don’t like Assassin’s Creed games.  The sneaking about is exactly the opposite way that I want to play.  If there were more stand up fights, and if I could simply go from one end of town to the other systematically exterminating the enemy faction… I would probably like the game a lot better.

State of Decay 2

My criticism here is the fact that nothing about the trailer that they showed…  revealed anything about the game or at least did not explain why State of Decay is not “just another zombie game”.  I loved the first game and purchased it when it first launched on Xbox Live Arcade…  and then again on PC…  and then again when the Year One Survivor bundle came out…   and again for a handful of people when it went on sale.  I am a huge supporter of Undead Labs and what they bring to the Zombie genre, but I am always disheartened when the take away on twitter is that we really don’t need any more zombie games.  We need good games regardless of genre, and if this is anything like the original… it is going to be an amazing game.  My hope is that this game will allow them to go beyond the scope limitations they had with the first.  My other hope is that we finally get multiplayer, because the first one would have been such an amazing experience if I could have drug a few friends into the world to scavenge with me.  While I am writing this I am getting the severe itch to fire back up State of Decay.

Anthem

E3 2017: EA and Microsoft

I am really not sure how I feel about this game.  On one hand every possible nerd nob was turned well past 11 in the demo, and if you had told me that this was Destiny with the storytelling that Bioware is traditionally famous for…  I would be throwing money at the screen.  However there isn’t a lot in the demo that covers what the story will even be like other than a brief mission that was given to you as you wandered through town.  The suits themselves… remind me of this amalgam between Pacific Rim and Fallout 4 Power Armor.  I love the Jet packs…  and I really hope you start out with those.  Jet Packs felt amazing in Mass Effect Andromeda, and more than anything I wanted to use them as a means to traverse the areas…  even though the Nomad was freaking amazing.  The first strike the game gets for me though is the fact that it is a third person shooter.  I really prefer first person, however when scoping it felt like maybe the perspective is going to be a reasonable one.  I have old eyes and I just found it hard sometimes to sight in head shots in Division when they were at the actual ranges you would want to use a sniper rifle for.  The other big strike against the demo is just how much it feels like the initial Division demo did.  The same sort of bullshit fake voice chat, and the same sort of “we can do anything” open world game-play showcasing a bunch of stuff without really zeroing in that deep on any of them.

E3 2017: EA and Microsoft

I was burnt by The Division, because what they showed at E3 never really seemed to materialize in the full version.  The final game was fun enough but was definitely the sort of game you needed to have a squad with you in order to progress at reasonable levels.  I still have yet to hit the level cap because there is this weird doldrum where my gear isn’t really good enough to make the harder content easier…  but I am also not getting enough cash to be able to fix that problem.  With Anthem I am cautiously optimistic, but also concerned  that this is a steep departure for Bioware.  Mass Effect was never really known for its combat prowess… and what made Destiny work and the Division not for me at least was the moment to moment feel of the gunplay.  For Anthem to ultimately be my game they are going to need to make it feel unique each time I pick up a different kind of weapon, and be more than just a mech suit fantasy.  There is a huge part of me though that wants to throw abandon to the wind and join this hype train.  However there is that other part that is just cautious before I give my heart away to another game.

At this point I am just running out of time… but if you have the couple hours at some point you just watch the full press conference.  I will talk about my general disappointment in the Bethesda conference at another time.

 

AggroChat #160 – Laundry Hampster

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

aggrochat160_720

This week ushers in the return of Tam who has been in world traveller mode.  We begin the show with talk about the madness that is the RoboSquid Armada… or our attempt to bring back the challenge to low level World of Warcraft by restricting ourselves to green gear and attempting dungeons at the minimum level.  From there we delve into a discussion of the Electronic Arts E3 press conference and how they are bringing roleplaying to sports games.  Also discuss the forced two player prison escape experience of A Way Out, and the huge tease that was the Anthem “reveal”.  Since Tam has been on the road he has been playing a lot of Fire Emblem so we delve into a length discussion about that franchise specifically.  Finally Ashgar and Kodra have been playing Hollow Knight so we do a bit of a dive into why they feel it is the best metroidvania out there.

Topics Discussed

  • RoboSquid Armada
  • Making Warcraft a Challenge
  • EA E3 Press Conference
    • Star Wars Battlefront II
    • A Way Out – from Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
    • Roleplaying in Sports Games
      • NBA Live 18 – The One
      • Madden NFL 18 – Longshot
      • FIFA 18 – The Journey
    • Need for Speed Payback
    • Anthem
  • Fire Emblem
  • Hollow Knight

 

E3 2017 Anticipation

Next week is e3 and as is usually the case the first glimmers of what is going to be talked about have started leaking their way onto YouTube.  There are several sites out there with pretty legitimate looking lists of what games have an have not been confirmed to be appearing.  Functionally the show tends to revolve around several large press events, with a smattering of other news trickling out around them.  The big shows tend to happen before the actual event starts, which means this weekend.  For those interested here is the schedule I have been able to scrape together…  most of which will be available through a stream of some sort.

  • Electronic Arts – Saturday June 10th – 12 pm PDT
  • Microsoft – Sunday June 11th – 2 pm PDT
  • Bethesda – Sunday June 11th – 9 pm PDT
  • Devolver Digital – Sunday June 11th – 10 pm PDT
  • PC Gaming Show – Monday June 12th – 10 am PDT
  • Ubisoft – Monday June 12th – 1 pm PDT
  • Sony – Monday June 12th – 6 pm PDT
  • Nintendo – Tuesday June 13th – 9 am PDT

The last several years the PC Gaming show has been an awkward cringefest to watch…  but it sort of fit its late night time slot.  With them moving it to a morning slot, I am wondering if that is a ploy to get more folks to show up and peddle their pc gaming wares.  Whatever the case I can pretty much guarantee that I am going to be watching most if not all of this over the next few days…  or at least the ones that are not happening during work hours.  The show I am traditionally the most excited for is Bethesda, because in years past they have absolutely nailed giving gamers exactly the sort of things they wanted to be hearing about.  With the Fallout 4 story arc finished, and a new Elder Scrolls outing still supposedly years away… I am not terribly certain what we might be seeing.  It is almost certain that we will be seeing some Quake Champions news… but a twitchy competitive reflex shooter doesn’t exactly excite the 40 year old version of myself the same way it might have the 17 year old me.  I mean I can always hope beyond hope that they will drop the mic this year with the reveal of Elder Scrolls VI but I won’t exactly be holding my breath either.  Instead here are the few titles I am really looking forward to hearing more about.

State of Decay 2

E3 2017 Anticipation

State of Decay is one of those games that I loved… but never really played as much of it as I would have liked.  At the time of release it was an Xbox 360 title and I just didn’t spend that much time playing my 360.  When it released on PC I had a furious few weekends of playing it again… and have wound up purchasing it as a gift for several people.  However I never really gave the game as much time as I would have liked because it was missing one core feature…  multiplayer.  This was the sort of world that I really wanted to go out and explore with my friends, and the absence of that option tarnished the experience for me.  What I am wanting from E3 is just more of everything and a firm release date on when we can expect the game.

Destiny 2

E3 2017 Anticipation

I am just so damned ready for this game to release if we are being honest.  Right now I just want more.  I want more information, more game play footage…  and I am hoping their mic drop is that we can download and start playing the beta now.  I am not holding my breath, but that ultimately is what I want out of the experience.  I am already sold and have already pre-ordered the PS4 copy…  since the PC pre-orders are not open yet.  I want to know a firm date of when the PC is going to launch, because even if it is delayed I want to know how long of a wait.

Farcry 5

E3 2017 Anticipation

This is probably the first Farcry game since the first that I am really excited about.  America as a whole has a really hard time confronting our own lunatic fringe or religious extremists.  Everything about this game seems like we are going to be fighting back against the madness of a weird religious cult of sorts.  I am ready to roam around the backwoods of Montana and take out bad people doing bad things.

Super Mario Odyssey

E3 2017 Anticipation

They had me at “new mario game for switch” but what I am wanting is more details.  I want to know when exactly this is going to release because up until now we have only had some wild speculations as a “christmas season” launch.  I also want to know more about this real world/mario world fusion, and I am wondering if it is going to have tie ins to Super Mario Land in Universal Studios Japan.  Nintendo is generally the least forthcoming with the conferences as far as hard data goes…  but I really just want to know when this is going to launch.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

E3 2017 Anticipation

We have not heard much from “Not-Castlevania” in awhile and I am hoping they have something to show off at E3.  Once again there is the common theme of me knowing a game is coming out… and just wanting some hard data on it.  I am a backer and have already played through the Demo game they released as a proof of concept several times… and now I am just ready for the full meal.  Everything I experienced to date was spot on with exactly how I wanted this game to feel…  they just need to push it across the finish line and not end up botching it in the process.