July 2018 – Page 8

Plate Dress

July 6, 2018 by Belghast

You would think a work week with only two days in it would be a breeze to get through. You would be wrong, or at least I am struggling with it. There is something about being off work for five days in a row that really resets your mental clock. While I had not deviated terribly in my sleep patterns… I did deviate massively in my pants wearing patterns. What is making this experience weirder is the fact that I represent the only management team member for my side of the office, and as a result I have people I don’t normally manage coming up to me and asking advice on issues. However we push on because it is in fact Friday… the harbinger of another respite from work. That said I know that come Monday morning everyone will be expecting the entire office to be firing on all cylinders so I am trying to take advantage of this lull in people actually being around the office to catch up on things.

On the blog front… I am working on some details for Monday where I talk about the return of Blaugust. Yes that is right I am doing it again this year because I feel like the community needs something to rally around. I do intend to shift things up a bit however and make it less about posting every single day and more an amalgam of the various events that we used to do as a community but have let slip by the wayside. Expect a few elements of the Newbie Blogger Initiative to be thrown into the mix as well to broaden the sort of folks involved. I will have charts and graphs and all measure of adult looking representations of my thoughts for Monday morning (I am only slightly kidding) but it isn’t quite ready for primetime yet.

On the gaming front I am still very much engaged with Elder Scrolls Online and looking forward to Update 19 that comes with the Wolfhunter DLC. If I had to guess this will probably land sometime around Quake Con that is coming up August 9th through the 12th. The main reason why I am super interested in this update is that apparently we are finally getting single line respecs… only five years after asking for these in alpha. I’ve always been way more into being a Hunter than a Werewolf or Vampire… so the whole Van Helsing style outfit they are showing off is definitely in my wheelhouse. Speaking of outfits however… I keep playing with the wardrobe system and creating my very own “plate dress” ensemble. You can absolutely blame World of Warcraft and the Judgement set for hooking me on this appearance, but unfortunately at this moment the only skirt option I have available to me is one that is Daedric themed, so I am just sorta rolling with that appearance as a whole.

I’ve been playing with some different combinations of pieces for the Arms and Shoulders… the first image in this series is what I am currently wearing but I am thinking seriously of going back to this combination shown in the above image. I think it blended better together and I dig the uncovered hands better than the various gloved options. I also seem to have settled on running around with the adorable wolf cub as my companion as opposed to the wide variety of violent critters I also have access to. At this point I am a few quest chains deep into The Rift and still loving the whole encountering people I interacted with in the past. This time it was someone who dates back all the way to Bleakrock… which makes me wonder if I had chosen differently in Bal Foyen if I would have had a different interaction. I am guessing that would be the case, but I absolutely think I chose correctly this time around.

Anyways… time to get to work. Have a wonderful weekend and tune in Monday as I begin unrolling the nonsense that is to be this years Blaugust.

A Four Year Mission

July 5, 2018 by Belghast

I realize this is a lot of images to link at the beginning of a blog post… but there is a good reason. For the last four years playing Elder Scrolls Online I had a singular goal… to see something in the live game that I have not seen since one of the last days of alpha. I’ve talked about this before but I have been playing Elder Scrolls Online since February of 2013 when the first Friends and Family alphas began. How I got in is because my good friend Tamrielo was one of the creators of a not insignificant amount of the quest content. Every so often in Alpha we would be lead by him to go see something… that was a reference to one of us or one of our friends. One of the final things I remember is running all of the way across the Ebonheart Pact area to The Rift…. and Nimalten to be specific to see an arrangement of NPCs in that town. The date specifically was October 13th of 2013 as I have a stack of screenshots that I took at that time have have hoarded since.

Last night I managed to push my way through the Eastmarch storyline and upon zoning into the The Rift for the first time… I couldn’t wait any longer and made a jaunt across zone to Nimalten to find what I had been waiting to see all of this time. Granted every one of the NPCs made their way through a bit of a “Nordification” pass by the lore team, but enough survived that it is pretty obvious who they are if you know what you are looking at. First up is my namesake aka Belgrod Sternblade (technically one of two namesakes that I know of) who has a throwaway line about his Stalwart Band of Mercenaries which is a reference to House Stalwart the guild I started in World of Warcraft back in 2004. Next up is Waren the Wolf aka Warenwolf a long time friend of ours from the vanilla World of Warcraft days, phenomenal hunter and the target of my attempts to heal him with arrows in alpha. Then we have Ashvorn Bear-Walker which is the slantwise namesake of Ashgar our perennial bear tank and general friend of anything that transforms into animal form. Lastly we have Autrae Snow-Wing who is playing with her cat Dimi… that represent former AggroChat host Audrae and her then cat Dimitri.

This might seem silly but for me personally… being able to see these characters legitimately in the final release of the game means a lot to me. It also allows me to take stupid photos like the one above with the two Belghast-kin together. Of course the moment I finished doing this nonsense I ported back to the start of the zone because I want to experience it through the natural flow instead of just jumping ahead to this one town. I’ve been having a complete blast playing Elder Scrolls Online over the last couple of weeks and really the game has evolved to a state where it pretty much has all of the things that I think I once complained about it not having. It has a really excellent housing system that I have been collecting patterns for… and still what I would consider the single best crafting system in any MMORPG. While a little costly I am a fan of their cosmetic system implementation as well as the various costumes available through either crown crates or direct purchase on the store. The fact that subscribing to the game gets me access to all of the Expansion and DLC content, a stack of crowns each time it renews, and a magical crafting bag that lets me loot everything and not worry about bag space… is all a “plus” in my book. The full list of features for a subscription goes a little something like this…

Access to all DLC game packs in the in-game Crown Store
Free crowns for the in-game Crown Store
Access to the Craft Bag
Double bank space
Bonuses to progression
Extra furniture space
Costume dyeing
Double Transmutation Crystals

I am very much in my MMO happy place at the moment, and completely oblivious to pretty much anything else apart from the occasional game of Diablo 3. I am super excited that soon… in one zones time I will be starting the first of the DLC content for Elder Scrolls Online. I have purposefully delayed starting literally anything that came out past the original game… because I wanted to have beaten all 150 levels worth of content that the original game had to offer. For the uninitiated that starts with the 50 levels worth of content in your starting faction and works its way through Silver and Gold… the new game plus, and new game plus plus that sees you travelling via Cadwell to the other two factions. Sure it is a little weird to be helping the Ebonheart Pact fight off the Covenant while rocking the Covenant Hero title… but whatever I can hand wave that away.

The thing that makes me the happiest about Elder Scrolls Online is how indistinguishable it is for me personally from playing any other Elder Scrolls game at this point. I love the story arcs for each of the zones that evolve as you work your way around and help the other people… and the little payoffs when you meet up with a character you have already helped out once before. The amount of scripting work that went into making sure that each NPC recognizes you from every time you have interacted with that NPC before has to be staggering. The fact that the final main story quest usually involves weaving in a bunch of characters that you met in the zone and each of them commenting on how you helped them in the past, is just so damned great. The only thing that would push it over the top is if they introduced some Bioware style companions with romance story arcs… because seriously the core story itself is as good as anything I have seen in a Mass Effect or Dragon Age game.

I have an extreme amount of emotional investment in this game, not just for the fact that there are characters named after me roaming its world… but also for the fact that I feel like I helped shape it. I was a very active member of the alpha community and supposedly one of the more active bug reporters. I love that there is still a core of players out there in an alpha-only guild that I am part of that has been playing off and on since the days we first got into the servers and kept reporting bugged doors. I love the fact that there is still a hidden area on the official forums that only those first few testers have access to, and while it isn’t terribly active… feels like a little secret clubhouse that a handful of us have access to. Every time I step foot into Tamrielo in Elder Scrolls Online it feels like coming back home, and each time I forget why I left in the first place. The truth is… I am an easily distracted toddler and I am sure at some point some shiny object with cause me to shift my gaze elsewhere… but for the moment I am loving every moment of roaming this place that is both so familiar to me but still so fresh to explore.

Season 14 Guardian

July 3, 2018 by Grace

I wasn’t that excited about D3 season 14 until I heard about the double treasure goblin event. I’m a sucker for treasure goblins. The season got off to a slow start, but I still haven’t lost interest in it. One reason for that is the free demon hunter set for the season (Marauder’s), which has several fun variant builds that mesh nicely with my playstyle. I started off with a grenade build, then switched over to the multishot version once I started really pushing greater rifts.

Once I made that switch I was enjoying myself so much I decided to make an attempt at full completion of the season. Since several of the conquests and season requirements overlapped it went very quickly. I didn’t take a screenshot when I completed the Guardian chapter, so I took one when I did this GR80 instead. I went back and checked my non-seasonal characters, and 80 is the highest I’ve ever done. I feel pretty proud to have done it with seasonal gear, most of which isn’t ancient yet. I still have not even seen a single primal ancient drop.

Now that I’m done with the season journey I’m not sure how much longer D3 will keep my interest. I’m really happy I was able to do the full season so easily this time though. I believe this is only the second time I have ever completed all the way up through Guardian.

July 2018 Gaming Goals

July 1, 2018 by Grace

I can’t believe it is July already. That means it is time to find out how I did on my goals for last month and make some new ones!

June Goals:

WoW: Finish at least 2 more priest transmog sets. I think this is a yes? I actually didn’t make a note of exactly what I still needed when I wrote this goal. But now I’ve finished everything from MoP except for one pair of boots from SoO.

Level the new mage to 100. Done! She’s actually 110 and ready for BfA!

Heroes of Hammerwatch: “Beat the game”. Nope. I only ever made it as far as the last boss (before NG+). Then a new D3 season started and I got distracted…

July Goals:

WoW: Finish one priest transmog set from WoD and the last one I need from MoP. The WoD raids are harder to solo but I think I can do this.

Level one allied alt to 50. It will probably be my highmountain monk. Leveling these alts when I already have 110s of every class feels sorta pointless, but the completionist in me won’t let me stop.

Figure out who my main will be for BfA. In my heart my forsaken priest will always be my main, but I haven’t enjoyed the playstyle in ages. Lately I prefer monk, but they aren’t in the best place in terms of group utility and I don’t know if that is getting better in BfA. Druid is great and always useful, but I will have to level a new one as soon as zandalari become available because DINOSAURS. I also need to decide if I am going to rejoin my alliance friends, join a new horde guild (which means rerolling on a new server again), or just go solo and skip raiding this expansion. So many decisions!

Once again that’s not many goals for the month. The really big one is figuring out my main, because it relies on answering so many other questions about how I want to play in the new expansion.