The Battle for Azeroth’s Soul

Growing up did you ever have a friend that you got along with swimmingly and had some amazing times and then something changed.  You aren’t exactly sure what changed but there was a shift where they moved from being this loveable goofball that you cherished time with, to being something that just could not ever seem to get their shit together.  You would try and go hang out with them again, but you always felt worse about everything after spending a significant amount of time in their aura.  You would try and offer advice or attempt to help them get their shit together, but it always ended up backfiring somewhere along the way.  Eventually, you found yourself distancing from them just to keep your own hopes and dreams from coming crashing down around you as they pulled you into their void. I’ve had that friend, actually more than one of them over the years.  I’ve also had a very similar relationship with Blizzard and more specifically World of Warcraft.  When you are in this situation you want the world for this person that you love, but also know that it is actively harmful to have them in your life.  The thing is I have learned to cut myself off from those influences in the real world, or at least significantly distance myself from them to where they are no longer impacting me.  I’ve never really managed to do the same with World of Warcraft because even though I know it is bad for me…  I still care.
So as a result it hurts a bit when news comes out that they are flailing and are not so great condition right now.  In part, I am talking about the supposed leak that was circulating or the long-winded rant thread by Grummz the other day adding to it.  Side note…  that is not a leak friend.  That is not something that came from official company emails or documents that were then circulated without the permission of Blizzard.  That is someone having a rant and while I don’t know the circumstances of that rant, it was purposeful and very much not something that leaked out.  I am not sure if it is real and someone thought they were venting in a safe place…  and someone copypasta’d it onto Imgur or if it is corporate cosplay.  Whatever the case it is still a bad look at a bad time when World of Warcraft is seemingly already reeling. I’ve been following this drastic turn from the zeitgeist on their opinion and general sentiment about World of Warcraft.  The thing is it isn’t like we have not been collectively “mad” at the game before.  This always seems to be a cyclical happening and there is always something in every single expansion cycle that pisses someone off enough to start sharpening that axe.  However this time it feels a little different.  For years on the podcast, we have raised the question of what happens to Warcraft when they release two poorly received expansions in a row.  Blizzard had been on this cycle of a good expansion and a bad expansion and the goods are always high enough points to pull up the public sentiment creating a mindset of “just wait for the next expansion and everything will be alright again”. Battle for Azeroth was not well received and for me personally, it was the doubling and tripling down on the big dumb Red versus Blue narrative of factional conflict.  I enjoyed the storyline Horde side quite a bit but never could seem to get into the Alliance narrative in spite of on paper it seeming to have a bunch of elements I would care about.  Shadowlands had moments of brilliance like the Maldraxxus but zones I had to force my way through like Bastion…  which unfortunately was the very first zone of the expansion.  Normally I manage to level my main and an alt before bouncing from World of Warcraft but I only actually made it to the new level cap on a single character before tossing the game aside.
I am not a proponent of Classic World of Warcraft because it creates this revisionist narrative of the past.  Coming back and playing that game made me realize that so many of the elements that I deeply cared about and remembered fondly…  specifically involved the people that I remembered them fondly with.  There is no going back to a better time in World of Warcraft because you will never actually capture that lightning in a bottle that was gaming at that exact time in history.  However, I do look fondly upon the first trilogy of World of Warcraft like a magical time and I have been trying to understand why it felt so much better back then at least compared to the more modern incarnation that really started with Cataclysm. The thing is if you follow the arc from World of Warcraft to The Burning Crusade and into Wrath of the Lich King not only did you have a strong narrative path that connected directly to Warcraft 3, but also a game that was built on constant and iterative improvements to the existing formula.  Sure there were some wild changes here and there, but for the most part, each expansion added to the things that were available to the player base and offered not only quality of life improvements but also changes that enrich the existing systems rather than radically changed them.  An example of this is Gem Sockets, which is a system that layered on top of the existing gearing systems and enriched them adding another layer of customization to something that already seemed to be working. With Cataclysm we started what I will refer to as the “Wild Moodswing” era of World of Warcraft.  This is marshaled by what seemed to be a desire to erase the past and create something completely new.  They were not going to actually create a Warcraft 2.0, but with each expansion, it felt like they were making radical enough changes that they might as well have called it that.  Cataclysm started this off by quite literally nuking the world and replacing almost every single old-world zone with a slightly different version.  It was ambitious as hell, and while it didn’t work for me I think the concept was cool.  For me, it was oversteering while you are already hydroplaning and I think the game ended up in the ditch as a result.
The problem with radical change is it ends up creating a vastly unpredictable user experience.  We all have a love for World of Warcraft and all of this nostalgia…  but end up having them try and apply those feelings to a game that no longer feels like we want it to feel.  The end result is you wind up with great vacillations between moments of unexpected brilliance like Legion and extreme low points like Warlords of Draenor.  So the thing with WoD is that on paper it seemed like everything going into that expansion was going to be awesome.  I actually greatly enjoyed the leveling process, but the huge gaps between content after the initial burst left a bad taste in so many mouths.  I will always remember it fondly because it gave me the one-player fantasy I have always wanted…  DPS Warrior with Sword and Shield. After years of gnashing my teeth about what makes an MMORPG great, and I think I have ended up with a basic template.  Here are the bullet points I have boiled it down to:
  • Small iterative changes over time that feel like they improve not only the quality of life for the player but enrich the existing systems and build upon them.
  • A predictable release cadence that allows your player base to know when then the next content drop is going to happen so that they can play their schedule around it.  Additionally, the content quality needs to be consistent and meet most of the player’s expectations.
  • Support multiple styles of play so that your raider, pvper, crafter, and your extreme cosplay aficionado all have a home and feel like they have equal footing in your game.  The content drop should give each of the groups of players something they feel is theirs and can be excited about.
  • Make additive content not subtractive content.  The world should feel like it is getting bigger and there should be systems that make the older content evergreen and still relevant in spite of times changing.  The alternative makes you feel like the world shrinks each time content drops as this new thing is the only part of the world that now matters.
  • Catchup mechanics that allow new players to easily slide into content if they have walked away for a while.  Games need to support the ability to fade in and out of a game as your life changes and not feel like the player has sacrificed too much in the process.
The thing is there are a number of games more or less following these bullet points.  You have games like Elder Scrolls Online and Final Fantasy XIV that have slowly been building momentum for years.  There is also Guild Wars 2 that is doing its own thing but should probably be mentioned even though the thing that it is doing is not really in my wheelhouse.  The problem is there are two games that I love that are absolutely NOT doing these things…  namely Destiny 2 and World of Warcraft.  I struggle in both cases because the world seems to shrink each time a content drop happens as the players are funneled towards this new thing that just got added in, with no real reason to keep doing the older things that were still enjoyable.  That is something that Final Fantasy XIV has excelled at is bribing players to keep doing the back catalog of content because it is good for the health of the game to make sure everything stays active.
I think another important note we should talk about is console support for games.  World of Warcraft does not have console support, nor does it appear like they are heading in that direction.  Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online both jumped early on the console bandwagon, and while at least in the case of FFXIV system design being initially limited because of the PlayStation 3 I think that flexibility has paid off in other ways.  Folks might have been PC gamers in their High School or College years but found as an adult that sequestering to a dedicated room of the house to play games no longer fits their way of life.  Having the flexibility of still playing the MMORPGs that you loved in your younger years, on the console that is more practical in your older years is a big boost in the total pool of players that you can draw on. So I have said a lot of words today and unburdened myself with a lot of concepts I have been thinking about.  I want to close things out, but I feel like I need to draw back a specific point that I feel is extremely important to underline.  I do not want World of Warcraft to fail.  I do love and want Final Fantasy XIV to be successful, but I do not want it to be entirely due to the failure of what was a long-time friend of mine.  World of Warcraft is that friend that cannot get their shit together, but even though you have been distancing yourself…  you still really want to see them succeed.  I would love for us to tell in a decade’s time the riveting tale of the revival of World of Warcraft and how it is the second greatest comeback tale of all time…  because let’s be honest no one is going to outdo the FFXIV 1.0 to FFXIV 2.0 story.  As much as I want this success for an old friend, I am just resigned to the fact that we are going to get more of the same with an added focus on mobile game mechanics and alternate streams of monetization.  I want World of Warcraft to be a better game than it is today, but I have lost my faith that it can be. The post The Battle for Azeroth’s Soul appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Blaugust 2021 On the Horizon

Good Morning Friends! It is that time again, time to begin talking about Blaugust and as is our way around here I am officially announcing the rules of the upcoming event. For those who might not know what Blaugust is, the idea is pretty simple. Several years ago I started challenging my blogging friends to post something new each day during the month of August. Over the years the concept has morphed and bent, but this time around we are returning to the original concept of limiting the posts and event just to the month of August.

Why We Do BlaugusT

The why is pretty simple. The blogging community is nowhere near as large as it once was. Many of us have aged out of blogging with real-world responsibilities or just moved on to other time-consuming hobbies. Blaugust gives us a chance to infuse the community with a fresh lease on life as we court new bloggers to join the fray. Those of us who have been carrying the torch of blogging for decades now, can sometimes lose hope as our blogroll loses a few voices each year. I’ve come to learn that getting out and mingling and mentoring a new crop of fresh bloggers can give us the perspective to stay engaged and hopefully make this community thrive. The thing is… it has over the last several years as we migrated from “just blogs” to a bustling Discord community that takes place year round instead of just during this one month.

The Schedule

In past years we have had the concept of “themed” weeks and we are continuing that forward for 2021. However I have pruned back things a bit because the entire “month” had started to spill out over the course of six weeks. These themes are not mandatory by any means and serve as a guide post to give you some ideas if you falter on trying to come up with a topic.
  • Welcome to Blaugust Week (August 1st-August 7th): The idea behind this week is to give folks time to spread their wings and get used to that daily blogging idea. For the Veteran bloggers, it is a great time to make a few posts related to helping New bloggers get started. These could be tips or tricks or just discussions about what helps you get started. Additionally it is a great time to get connected to the Blaugust Discord and meet the community as a whole.
  • Getting to Know You Week(August 8th-August 14th): The idea behind this week is to let t he community know who you are and what some of your interests are. This is a great time to dip into that well of stories and tell us something interesting that has either happened to you or something about your specific spin on blogging.
  • Developer Appreciation Week (August 15th-August 21st): The D.A.W. or Developer Appreciation Week is an event that used to happen in our blogging community but fell by the wayside. The idea behind it was it was a week to show our appreciation to the people that make all of those games that we love. The thing is over the years we have grown past just being a “gaming” thing, so for other communities it might be a time to reflect on your favorite Authors, Musicians or just Creatives in general.
  • Staying Motivated Week(August 22nd-August 28th): You are getting close to the final stretch. The idea here is to share some of your secrets on how you have stayed motivated while blogging on a regular basis. You might share some tips or ideas you have for making topics happen when you are feeling uninspired. If you are fresh to the initiative you could talk about some of the ways you have managed to keep yourself engaged this year.
  • Lessons Learned Week (August 29th-September 4th): This week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not necessarily to grind them so hard that they burn out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant for awhile, and others are going to want to talk about the experience. This is a space reserved to have that cooldown lap as you process your thoughts about what just took place. Please note this year any posts in July or September will not count towards the Blaugust Awards (some wiggle room granted for timezones of course).

The Awards

It has become a tradition to hand out awards at the end of this process. The truth is for me these have become far less important than the interaction that happens within the community. That said I do see them adorning the sidebars of many blogs out there, so I am going to keep the tradition alive and well this year. For this more “classic” edition Blaugust, we are going to be limiting the contest aspect to only posts made within the month of August 2021. I will of course be adjusting slightly to account for the wild variety of timezones we will have participating in the event. For me the fact that you have signed up and you are joining this initiative is enough, but some folks are going to want to push for higher recognition.
  • Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You created a new blog and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up.
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the Month of August 2021.
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You did it, you posted 31 or more posts during the month of August 2021.

Mentorship

One of the benefits of having done this at least once before more or less in this same style… is that we have existing infrastructure! We already have a batch of mentors ready to help the process, but if you feel like you would be best served in that role we are always open to more. Ultimately mentors should have at least two years of blogging experience under their belt in order to gauge the ebbs and flow of content creation in front of a live studio audience. We aren’t expecting perfection, just a willingness to share the lessons you have learned along the way with fledgling participants. If this sounds like you, please reach out to me on Discord and we can talk about your desire to become a Mentor.

The Details

  • The Sign-Up form for Blaugust 2021 can be found here. Only those who have signed up will be given credit towards the awards or included on any of the blogger lists.
  • The invite link to the Blaugust Discord can be found here. Participation in the Discord is entirely optional but also a great way to bounce ideas off the existing community.
  • When you share your content please use the hashtag #Blaugust2021 for tracking purpose and to make it easier for those watching along to see the new content.
  • Mingle with the participants of Blaugust 2021. Get out and see the blogs, read the posts, and comment frequently! These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I deeply value the ties I have made with other bloggers and started this process as an attempt to cement those and build new ones.
  • If you are so inclined there is a “Gaming Together” channel on Discord for those impromptu grouping activities. I believe last year there were a few games of Among Us that sprunt out of that channel for example.
  • Welcome to Blaugust 2021. As always if you have any questions please feel free to ask.
  • If you want an archive of all of the various logos and such from this year and past years of Blaugust, please check out the Blaugust Media Kit page.
The post Blaugust 2021 On the Horizon appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Wagonload Of Sprouts

Good Morning Friends! My blog has been a bit of a dumpster fire this morning and as I am writing this I have no faith that what I am saying is actually going to publish. Last night I had my very first “rough dungeon run” since coming back to Final Fantasy XIV. It was not a situation where I had trouble with individual players being toxic or anything of the sort, but just that I was randomized into a tougher than average dungeon with a wagon full of sprouts. In truth we had a number of mistakes along the way, but nothing that couldn’t be adjusted around. That was until we reached the final boss: Annia quo Soranus and Julia quo Soranus. This fight in particular just has a large number of unforgiving mechanics, some of which that player has probably never actually encountered up until that point unless they were doing “raid” content. There are two particularly that were causing issues. The first was Commence Air Strike where Eight Ceruleum tanks drop from the sky, and the player needs to deftly move into a zone after an explosion to avoid more explosions. The other was an attack sequence called “The Order” where one sister performs a “Crosshatch” where thin shimmering gold lines are drawn on the ground, and the player needs to not be standing near one. When the attack executes the sister will charge back and forth along that golden path dealing damage to anyone that is along one of those trajectories. This is a hard concept to explain but after three attempts I managed to walk the group through it and we finished. All the while I was trying my best to keep the sprouts from getting their hope tarnished, because I was certain we could do it eventually.
I managed to get my Paladin to 79 and am roughly 1/3rd of a level from dinging 80. This evening I will be able to finish it off quickly and start hopefully running some “big kid” instances. There was a method to my madness and I have been focusing on Clan Nutzy Hunts in part because you can now purchase a full set of 460 item level gear with “sacks of nuts”. After I finish off the hunts for today I should be able to finish purchasing my set, which means in theory I should be able to walk straight into level 80 dungeons when I ding. The act of finishing hunts for the day may actually be the catalyst that dings me. After that I will probably actually start working on catching up the Main Story Quest or MSQ.
In other exciting news… I built an airship. Well actually I helped the Ixal build an airship and as a result I finished leveling up my faction with the first of the crafting beast tribes. I’ve also managed to push Carpenter up to almost level 50, which means I should be using it to pull the other crafting professions up to 50 through the daily Ixal quests as well. My goal is to gear out the one profession and then use it for turnins that I can farm out to the other professions. It is going to take forever but slowly bit by bit I will work up my trades to where they are all 50… then start the process all over again in getting them to 60 through the Moogle dailies.
Maxing out another Beast Tribe means that I also got a brand new mount. This has been my key source of expenditures for awhile is purchasing the new mount each time one unlocks. I am not sure WHY I am collecting mounts other than it is a thing to do. At some point I want to start back up pony farms so I can complete my set and unlock the double special pony that comes from owning them all. After that I guess I want to start collecting birds or doggos or whatever the next special mount in sequence is. For the short term however I am very much looking forward to starting bigger dungeons again and collecting bookrocks that I can turn in for cooler gear. Now let’s see if this effort that I just went through actually works and hit publish! The post Wagonload Of Sprouts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Roulettes A Plenty

Good Morning Friends! This morning I have promised a Blaugust preview to some folks that are anxiously awaiting information, but first, you have to wade through a Final Fantasy post. Last night I hit level 77 on my Paladin job and I have been focused on leveling it before really spending much time catching up on the MSQ. I could have easily ground this job to 80 by now, but I am trying my best not to actually mindlessly grind. Instead, I am zipping around the world doing a bunch of different activities, all of which slowly contribute to my leveling process. My working theory is if I can approach the game in a non-frenetic manner and focus more on community interaction, that it might just build the recipe for staying power in the game. The times I have been the happiest in Final Fantasy XIV are the times when I was not focused on a specific goal, but just sort of hanging out and letting the game pull me in this direction or that.
Whatever mental block I had about doing the roulette seems to have passed and pretty much every day I do at least three of them. The first that I get out of the way is the PVP Frontlines Roulette and while I have begun to grasp how each of the maps works… it is in truth just a rapid dose of experience that I am concerned about. From there I tend to do a leveling roulette, which often produces the least predictable results because there is such a wide range of leveling dungeons available. Lastly, I queue for the 50+ dungeon and one of the things that I am marveling at is just how many dungeons there are in this game that is still relevant. I am also shocked at just how fast I remember the specific boss mechanics of a given dungeon. I just start pulling and before long I am back in the flow of doing the dungeon and even remembering where most of the chests are. I do however think they might have removed a few chests at some point because I pulled back to a location that I am almost certain a chest used to be in Amdapor Keep.
The other thing that I have been doing a lot of is Hunt logs for Sacks of Nuts. I noticed the other day that there was some gear on the Hunt vendor that was ultimately a significant upgrade to my previous level 80 warrior tanking gear. So I am slowly acquiring pieces of that set through doing the daily hunts, which do not inconsequentially add up to a sizeable amount of free gil. The other focus that I am doing each day is my Beast Tribe dailies. I have wrapped up all of the ARR tribes other than the Ixal and have moved forward to finishing up the Vanu and starting the Vath. I am still doing at least three quests a day for Ixal, but I find the crafting dailies to be the most taxing and try my best to spend the rest of my allowances elsewhere. I will end up with a level 50 carpenter as a result of the Ixal quests, but that entire process of crafting is more than a bit draining. I realize there are easier ways to level but I honestly prefer to brute force craft than to drag it out forever.
Another thing that has happened is the release of the Endwalker Benchmark. You can download the Benchmark and it serves as a way to do a few different things. Firstly you can test out your gaming rig to determine how well it is going to run Endwalker when it releases. Secondly you can play with the character creator and save appearances that you can then load later in the full game, which allows you to really devote all the time you need to making sure you craft the perfect Bunny Boi. I crafted a Bun, and while I was surprised that I could have facial hair, it is still not really my jam. It is going to take an awful lot to pry me away from that Lala Life. I cranked all of the settings up to the maximum and ran the test at 4k and it came out as “Very High” with an average FPS of 98 which seems perfectly cromulent for Endwalking.
Over on the Blaugust discord there has been discussion about wanting details surrounding this years Blaugust. I am not quite ready to announce everything, but I thought I would at least give folks a preview of the calendar. This year is a reversion back to the more traditional pre-pandemic Blaugust as well as shortening the whole thing to largely take place within the month of August. Thursday July 15th I will be making the official “Announcement” post with all of the details contained within, but this calendar image should at least give you some idea of the plan. If you have ever participated in a Blaugust it is going to feel fairly familiar with no wild deviations this time around. The post Roulettes A Plenty appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.