Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Tonight we have the very first live show in three weeks. As a result a bunch of stuff happened in the meantime. We talk about some early experiences with Tunic, and then get into some discussion about Liars Day news turned true. League of Votann is a thing and represents the return of “Squats” or Space Dwarves to Warhammer 40,000. We also talk a bit about how the meta is currently collapsing because of the overpowered nature of Harlequins. From there we talk about the shocking return of Colossal Cave Adventure and Monkey Island. We talk a bit about the experiences with Kirby and the Forgotten Land, then dive into some discussion about Guild Wars 2 and the return of Super Adventure Box and Living World Season 1.
Good Morning Friends. I was not feeling it yesterday at all, and as a result I did not blog. I felt guilty but I have been trying to be better about taking a day off when my mind and/or body decides it needs one. This morning I am still not really feeling amazing either, but I do have a few things to talk about. I’ve been getting updates from Ammo as she works on my commission and I have to say it is coming along swimmingly. If you are so inclined she has been streaming her work and there are two different streams where she has worked on it so far. I think maybe my feather mantle has throw her a bit for a loop how best to approach that as yesterday when I tuned in briefly she was working on some techniques for the feathers. I am now really looking forward to reworking my masthead to work this awesome art into the mix.
Last night I missed the reset because I was in the middle of a rather long quest that I did not want to start over. Instead however I managed to catch the meta event for Jahai Bluffs or at least the final step of it. I did not realize that I would be fighting a new and improved version of the Shatterer, but I guess that makes sense as it showed up in the last quest chain that I completed leading me to Jahai in the first place. The fight was extremely fun and featured this cool section where what looked to be fel energy twisters shooting us up in the air so that we could glide to platforms and battle champions, before dropping back down and resuming the fight. Having no idea what to expect I think I did pretty good rolling with the punches and learning as I went.
What was even cooler however is that the same Squad Commander announced that we would be rolling over to do Dragon Storm next. This is an event that I have been wanting to do for weeks but honestly was a bit intimidated by. Instead of taking place in the middle of a standard zone, it is instead an instanced area and felt like it was the sort of thing that required a full group. So we entered and did the encounter and I loved every minute of it. Something you need to know about me is that I love Kaiju and Monster Battle movies. This entire fight felt like the battle of two Kaiju, and effectively I guess that is in fact what Elder Dragons are. There is a lot of this encounter that I do not fully understand because I have not arrived here organically through the Living World story, but it was a blast. This was easily the single coolest fight I have experienced in Guild Wars 2.
While on our way to the Dragon Storm event, we made a stop off and fought the Angry Pet Rock. This is apparently a bounty in Jahai and is just as nonsense as it sounds. I also noticed the adoption of some more clear markers akin to those of Final Fantasy XIV. Notice on the ring there are arrows pointing towards the boss which is an indication that we should get in for the attack, and later there were arrows facing the other way indicating that we should get out for the attack. The “In” was a little superfluous as i could also out range the attack by moving away, but still I am glad to see them adopting some significantly more clear advisement over time.
The other thing that I have been doing lately is piddling around on the Warrior a bit more. I want to unlock Bladesworn so I can play around at being a gun samurai. I am not sure what has happened but I think my understanding of the game and my play style has evolved to the point where the Warrior no longer feels as bad as it once did. Sure it feels squishier than my Necromancer, but not so squishy as to feel awful. I’ve been running around with a power build and Dual Axe paired with Rifle just to give me some sort of a reasonable ranged option. Dual Axe really is a freaking blender and it feels good to shred things with it. I’ve mostly been slowly working on soaking up some hero points in Path of Fire, but I might switch over to doing some WvW and get Maguma credit that way. I finished off unlocking Berzerker first as I was already extremely close, which opens up some other builds for me.
I don’t really want to talk about spoilers but hopefully those who have gotten this far will realize what this title card represents. That was an annoying sequence and I am glad it is over… and I am hoping that maybe just maybe that situation is finally resolved for good. There was a sequence that I hated so much, but I am just glad it is over. I really need to return to Horizon Forbidden West and wrap that game up, but I have just been so deeply engaged with Guild Wars 2 of late. It doesn’t help either that my wife has been commandeering the television and now that I moved my consoles downstairs… it makes it a challenge to play them when I want to play them. I might be moving my PlayStation 5 back upstairs, but I am not entirely certain yet. I need to deep clean my office and essentially tear everything apart and reassemble things to change how my setup works honestly.
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While I have not played World of Warcraft for well over a year at this point, it is still a game that I attempt to keep tabs on. We know for certain that we are going to get the reveal of the next expansion on April 19th thanks to a twitter post. For months however there have been a number of rumors about what this expansion might be called and what it actually entails flying around the internet. As is the case with most of them… it involved a lot of nonsense and wish fulfillment. However more recently a thread of what I believe to be truthful information has started to trickle up. Essentially there is a concurrence of information from WoWHead doing some data mining and a supposed leak from a print shop that point to the next expansion being called “Dragonflight”.
The above image is pulled from Reddit and represents what is supposedly a print shop where some marketing material is being printed. The thing is that is an exceptionally believable image to me, because I spent some time working in and around a few print shops and came through college at a very specific time where I trained on both offset printing and digital methods. When something leaks out of a print press… I generally believe it because in the chain of custody of art assets… that is always going to be the weakest link. Similarly back in the day the Warez kiddies used to get their hands on titles when they went to the disc duplication plants and the two problems share a similar root. Printing and disc manufacturing have very slim margins, and as a result they generally pay their employees really poorly.
While the management might try their best to keep a tight reign on the marketing material, there are going to be a bunch of folks who are effectively working for minimum wage that are in and around everything being printed. I have to be honest I remember doing something very similar to this regarding the Phantom Menace and sending out some marketing information to some friends. I thought it was largely harmless to give some friends a peek at what was effectively a single piece of artwork carved into four magazine covers. I am sure this leak probably started in a similar manner where someone was excited to be working on something so recognizable and once it is out on the internet… it spreads. I guess in thirteen days we will be able to tell for certain if this was in fact a real thing or not.
Then there are times when what is probably complete nonsense… happens to align with the artifacts that seem more legitimate. Back in February during the height of fake wow expansion news, a post was made over on MMO Champion outlining “World of Warcraft: Dragonflight”. I am significantly less certain about this information because it is entirely possible that the “fake leakers” slung enough word salad together to happen to guess the right name. There are a few pieces of this that I find interesting. Firstly the idea of having new “skins” for classes that change the appearance of the abilities without actually changing the mechanics. I think this is probably a good call because it lowers the new complexity of trying to balance another class but also gives everyone something new and shiny to strive for. Once a system like that had been tested and working, it is a possible source of future new content with a lower development barrier.
I do feel like whatever is coming next is going to feel a lot more like Legion because that is clearly the last point Blizzard released an expansion that was fairly universally loved. Both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands have been major disappointments, and I expect the new expansion to feel like taking a step back and reassessing the path that the game is on. While Covenants draw lineage back to the Class Order hall, the “fun” was lost along the way. Another thing I find really interesting about this leak is the mention of no new level cap. I have to be honest I feel like maybe it is time for World of Warcraft to start growing horizontally rather than vertically. Granted this might just be me talking because I am playing an excessive amount of Guild Wars 2, but I do have to admit I greatly prefer the games with evergreen content to those with a strict progression path.
So essentially I am left in a place where I absolutely believe that the next expansion for World of Warcraft is going to be called Dragonflight, but that the information “leaked” to the forum… is probably less than accurate. World of Warcraft for me is like a bad break up that no matter how much time I spend out of the game… I cannot stop paying attention to it. It has been sixteen months since the last time I played the game, which incidentally is the longest time that I have ever not played World of Warcraft since its release in 2004. That said I wish the team and the game luck and hope that they can find their footing and start to claw the game back into fighting shape. I know I will be trying to tune in for the reveal on April 19th to see how much of this information was truthful.
The post DragonFlight Rumors appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! This is going to be a bit of a meandering post as I don’t have anything terribly pressing to talk about, but also a handful of blurbs. So as is something that often happens when I get into a game… I have commissioned my good friend and unofficial blog/podcast artist AmmosArt to do a version of my Guild Wars 2 Necromancer. I got an update yesterday that she would probably kill me if I shared… because it is still very much in the rough sketch phase but the idea is coming along nicely. I am going to have to fiddle with the masthead at some point soon in the future to determine who stays and who goes. I also have a secondary project which is to add some more game critters to the bar similar to the Moogles… maybe a Choya or a Quaggan.
As far as game progress goes, I am now in the second zone of Living World Season 4, but immediately allowed myself to get distracted by the world boss train last night. I’ve been trying to farm Tequatl each night since it spawns as the game is resetting and is easy to track. I have singled out this boss more than any in part due to the convenience and in part because it has a chance of dropping Tequatl’s Hoard which is a chest granting you a choice of ascended weapons. Additionally there is the chance for Wings of the Sunless which is a back item that I would not mind having either. Often times I stay on the world boss train for a few kills before finally tucking into some daily achievement content. Last night I rode the train longer than normal and never quite got back to working on story content.
One of the things that I dig about games like Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online is that they allow you to be in multiple guilds at the same time. So I can for example stay in a smaller tight knit Greysky Armada or Kamikaze Runners and still have access to larger guilds. I’ve been in a few Gaiscioch guilds before and given that I kept bumping into members while doing the World Boss train I decided to investigate. Gaiscioch for those who do not know is a large multi-game guild with many “adventures” that span into different titles. I likely SHOULD have followed them into New World as from what I can tell that branch is still rather active. The Guild Wars 2 seems extremely active as well with around sixty or so people being online last night when I was playing. My theory is this should give me access to some larger events when I have the social and emotional energy to participate in them. A lot of activities tend to start around 7 pm my time which is something I can easily join in without becoming sleep deprived.
In another news we’ve done some recent renovations on the Super Dungeon Friends discord. This concept was envisioned during my fevered pitch of playing Final Fantasy XIV, as having a way to help more shy and social awkward folks get groups going. The problem with this concept is that since so many of us are on Aether… the busiest of all data centers, it became a challenge during the crush of new membership to really make cross realm groups happen on the regular. However what has evolved instead is just a place to hang out and chat about games. Recently I threw out a question about expanding this beyond the scope of Final Fantasy XIV and to a lesser extent our brief foray into New World. The end result is that I collected some games as suggestions and then spent a chunk of time reworking things over the weekend to condense the structure a bit.
Now the “Games You Play” selector has a wider swath of games available, and each role toggles on a little area with at a minimum a chat channel devoted to the game and a voice channel. So far the “Lion’s Arch” channel devoted to Guild Wars 2 seems to be among the busiest. Basically this is not me abandoning the FFXIV mission, but more expanding it out since we have a great group of people gathered here. Of these the only game that I am personally playing on the regular is in fact Guild Wars 2. However I think it is awesome that folks were interested in seeing who was playing the other games. If you’ve ever been active, swing on by and check it out again. If you stayed away because you simply did not play FFXIV, it might be worth checking out. You can find the discord invite link here.
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