AggroChat #174 – Old School IPX/SPX

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Thalen

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Tonight we are a bit out of sorts since we are once again down two people… and for the most part have been playing games that will ultimately end up in a game club show.  This leads to one of the more meandering shows we have recorded in a really long time where we transition from topic to topic without really announcing the leaps.  This was also one of the harder shows to name so I picked one random snippet of obscure discussion from the middle of the show.  The show starts with me varying my normal announcing order… and it just sorta continues going awkwardly from there.  Enjoy!

Topics Discussed

  • Through The Ages
  • Fantasy Strike
  • Pokken Tournament
  • Tangle Deep
  • Old School DOS Gaming
  • Guild Wars 2 Content Messaging
  • Games Wasting Our Time
  • Dragonquest
  • Warriors Games
  • Toys R Us Bankruptcy

AggroChat #173 – Vampire Pirate Dinosaurs

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, and Kodra

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Tonight we are down both a Thalen and a Tam and get off on some meandering topics.  We start off with some discussion about the Final Fantasy XIV Rising event that just finished and the introduction of the cheap dungeon.  From there Belghast gets pretty deep in the woods talking about infusion mechanics and Destiny 2.  We branch off from there into a discussion that is really hard to describe.  Functionally we were having a chat about MMOs and whether or not the devs are obligated to provide a uniform experience for all players and all activities in a game.  This branches out into a bunch of directions from the PVP/PVE debate to how uneven some of the artifact weapon quests felt in World of Warcraft Legion.  Kodra talks a bit about his recent journey into the iOS port of one of his favorite Vlaada Chvatil games…  Though the Ages.  Ashgar gives us some updates on his experience playing through Monster Hunter Stories and we delve a bit into the new Magic the Gathering expansion Ixalan.

Topics Discussed

  • Final Fantasy XIV – The Rising Event
  • Destiny 2 Mechanics
  • Providing Uniform MMO Player Experiences
  • Through the Ages iOS
  • Monster Hunter Stories
  • Ixalan Pre-Pre-Release

Death Knight Mount Get

Death Knight Mount GetI finished the DK mount quest (that’s class mount number 11 for me, for those keeping score at home). Once again I really enjoyed it. As much as I don’t like melee characters, the story quests have made leveling DK a ton of fun for me. I especially liked how the mount quest seemed like a logical progression from the Broken Shore follower quest for this class.

Death Knight Mount GetOne thing I am sad / mad about is that they took out the “Unholy Determination” feat of strength before I got the chance to earn it. Yes, I know they retroactively took it away from everybody, but still. I decided to murder every single living thing in the ruby dragonshrine anyway. It felt perfectly in character for my DK. From a mechanics standpoint I can see why they took it out, since it is a non-repeatable quest. Otherwise I’m not really sure why people were complaining about the morality of it. Death Knights aren’t exactly full of rainbows and love, and if you’ve made it this far in the DK campaign you’ve already done a ton of other questionable things.

Anyway I raised the giant red dragon from the dead and now I have a fancy mount and a matching pet. I thought I was finished with DK stuff but I didn’t realize I have to do the broken shore quests for the other specs to unlock the other two pets. I have concordance with all the weapons, but it won’t let me buy them yet so I’m assuming that’s the holdup. I’ll wrap that up this week and then only warrior will be left.

Not all of the class mount quests have been winners, but this one was definitely one of my favorites. The class flavor was spot on, the quests were fun and not annoying, and the mount looks cool!


Death Knight Mount Get

Death Knight Leveled

As the Darkmoon Faire was winding down I managed to get my DK leveled up to 110. Leveling is so fast now, it’s easy to fall far behind on class hall quests. This is especially true when you have multiple rounds of follower missions to complete, and multiple dungeons to run. I have a special hatred for the class hall quests that require Maw of Souls and Vault of the Wardens. Almost nobody runs those dungeons on normal mode, since you have to be 110 to unlock them anyway. That means a 40+ minute DPS queue, or waiting until you hit ilvl 825 to queue for heroic. I’m stalled out on unlocking the mount quest until I finish the standard class hall quest line, and I’m stalled on that until I can finish these dungeons. Luckily gearing up is fairly quick, and I should hit 825 soon.

Like a lot of things about Legion, getting up to speed when you hit 110 feels very uneven. Some systems are working really well. For example, I’ve already hit concordance after just 2 days or so of play at the level cap. The changes to artifact knowledge feel great, putting everyone on a level playing field. Most of the gearing process seems good too. Between nethershards and world quests I’ve upgraded most of my gear to at least 850 in no time. On the other hand, my highest level relic is 750-ish, and I still have an empty relic slot on my main spec weapon. Weapon level is hugely important to feeling powerful and being able to kill things and complete quests quickly, and there’s no reliable way to get relics in a hurry. I know there’s at least one from the Argus quests, but the thought of attempting those with a weapon that’s less than 800 ilvl does not appeal. There’s no good reason why we shouldn’t be able to buy 850 relics of our choice from the nethershard vendor at this point. Failing that, Kadghar should just hand you some ilvl 800 relics as soon as you ding 110. Praying for a world quest with a useful relic reward feels miserable, and getting carried through dungeons hoping for a drop when you can’t contribute much feels rude.

On the plus side, concordance goes a long way towards making up for my crappy item level. Unholy DK has some really silly survivability and I’ve been tearing through world quests even without a follower to help. I’m hoping to finish up the original class hall story tonight or tomorrow (depending on dungeon queues). The DK story is by far one of the best ones, or at least most interesting. So far it is second only to rogue for me in terms of class flavor and engaging story. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the morality of some of the things I’ve been doing, but it absolutely feels right for the class and is contributing to the overall game lore. I’ve already seen spoilers for this story, but I’m still excited to see how everything plays out firsthand.


Death Knight Leveled