Belghast

I posted yesterday a bit about the backlog of posts that I have had that I wanted to make. Yesterday I was also called out by Tam about not responding to his Leibster post, but in truth I just had not gotten down to it. Since tomorrow will be another Blaugust Games of the Week post, I had planned on getting his Liebster post either out today or Saturday, but since he is getting antsy I guess I am going to make sure it happens today. For those who don’t know the Liebster is this well intentioned “award” that is essentially the blogosphere’s version of a chain letter. Normally it is supposed to float around with a cover page full of rules outlining how you are supposed to proceed, and explains things like that you are supposed to choose a candidate that has never been Liebstered. This seems to go around once a year, and based on some of the questions I have seen… I am guessing this is a continuation of last years “strain” because at least one of the questions I have seen floating around is one I came up with. All of this said I am absolutely not down on the concept of the Liebster. I think it is a pretty awesome way to introduce people to new folks, but at this point this will be the third time I have been Liebetered. I am going to ignore the “rules” of the award and not name any successors because by the strictest of rules I should not be getting this again.

Onwards to the Liebster Questions

1 — What is the best spell to cast?

Anything that buffs my melee ability or causes me to take less damage. In truth however… I have to say Resurrection would be the best spell to cast most of the time. Considering how much death I have had to deal with in my life, I have a feeling that is the one I would end up using the most.

2 — What food item(s) from a game do you want to eat above any other?

Nothing from any Fallout game ever… In truth I am not sure if I have ever salivated over any in game food, but I will say I have always wanted to eat a Tel’Abim Banana since they are supposedly sentient beings from another land. Wondering if they taste significantly different than a normal Banana.

3 — You’ve got an infinite supply of one consumable, and can never carry any others. Which consumable do you choose?

That one is simple… Health Potion. Seriously there is no reason for any other consumable if you have an infinite supply of health.

4 — You have to choose a race and class that you’ve never played seriously before. What do you pick?

Honestly this one is hard because I have played most roles seriously in the past. The one class that I always thought I would like but could never really get into was the World of Warcraft Warlock. At face value it seems like a very “Bel” class summoning demons and shit, but the whole damage over time aspect has always baffled me. After starting to get used to the Arcanist a bit, I am going to say that Warlock is something I have been interested in giving a more serious try. I have one somewhere in my 60s in WoW but I largely got there because the leveling curve in that game is laughable and I just made my demon beat things up for me. I would like to try playing it as a proper dot dropping madman.

5 — What game did you think you would hate but actually loved?

This one was a little tough, but I finally came up with an answer I am happy with: The Saints Row franchise. You are thinking… but Bel it is a crazy game where you get to beat everything up with dildo bats… that absolutely sounds like a game you would be interested in. Sure but you have to understand something key here… I really do not like Grand Theft Auto games. Well I take that back, I found one and two good mindless fun, but I could not stand GTA 3… and then each of the games afterwards that I played I also found frustrating. In all fairness I have never really given GTA 4 a fair shot, which I need to do at some point. I am getting off track here, but essentially I always thought of Saints Row as a GTA Clone, and I guess in truth that is precisely how the series started out. What it has morphed into is this insane “no rules” sandbox, and THAT aspect I absolutely love. Saints Row 3 and 4 are both amazing, and I really need to devote more time to playing them.

6 — What game did you think you would love but actually hated?

Citizens of Earth… which coincidentally ended up being our first AggroChat game club game. Everything about that game sounded awesome… until we actually started trying to play it. Hate is a strong word, but really… I never want to play that game again. It was just the worst of smarmy repetitiveness and laughing at itself jokes I have experienced in awhile. Additionally the combat really was not fun at all. I was so amped going into that game, and those hopes were dashed within the first hour.

7 — Pick a zone from any game to live in. Why?

Moonshade Highlands from Rift without a doubt. Gorgeous storms, awesome Dwarves, and big mountain highlands full of little pools and rivers. The crazy woods filled with murderous Fae I could deal without, but the rest of that zone… absolutely perfect for me. Again other than the whole nightmare demons thing I would absolutely love to live in Hammerknell.

8 — You can excise one class from every future game. Which? Why?

Probably anything with a stealth mechanic. It is probably going to surprise people that I did not say “Mage”, but in truth I find stealth mechanics to be among the most frustrating experience I have ever had in any game. The truth is I like the “rogue” archetype, I just don’t want them to be stealthy. I am all about the swashbuckler type character slashing away at things furiously with two swords. Probably the best stealth mechanic as far as I am concerned is that of the Nightblade in Rift because they just used it as a limited time opener, not something to stay in for long periods of time.

9 — What’s your favorite story?

Hmmm this question is so ambiguous. My favorite set up for a game has to be Hellgate London. In fact yesterday was lamenting how awesome the opening cinematic for that game and the subsequent story was. The problem is the game was not really worthy of it, and I would love to see it rebooted into a movie or a television show with its own new game. I have to say though of all of the game stories I have played, the one I most want to see made into a television series is Mass Effect. Imagine that story told over the course of five or six seasons of a high budget television show? Would be amazing.

10 — What hobby does no one (yet) know you have?

The problem with having a blog for as long as I have had… everyone pretty much knows everything about me at this point. In fact I did Factoid February a few years back where I spilled the beans on a lot of these details. I really don’t have any hobbies that would shock someone. The hobby that I need to get back into doing more of however is Photography. It has been a few years since we were regularly going out on photo shoots each weekend, and that needs to change.

11 — What is your favorite secret shame?

Again I can’t really think of something that I have not already talked at length about here on the blog. I am a sucker for John Hughes films, so that would probably be about the closest thing to a “guilty pleasure” that I have… that and I love 80s pop music. It just reminds me of my childhood, when everything seemed possible. As a kid I thought John Hughes films were about the underdog getting their way in the end, but as an Adult they have a much darker theme, namely you can have whatever you want so long as you change everything about yourself in the process. Think back to the Breakfast club… you have Ally Sheedy playing this girl that just wants to be loved by hear parents… and everything is set right in the world by a make over turning her into Molly Ringwald 2.0. Even with the darker interpretation… I still can’t help but love those movies.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I am breaking the chain here and not naming a victim. I still think the Liebster is a good idea and something pretty cool, but at this point I am getting tired of doing them myself. However Tam put a lot of thought and effort into his questions, so I felt obligated to answer them. In fact I think his questions would make a pretty great Blaugust prompt if anyone else wants to answer them. For now I am signing off because I spent way more time writing this out than I expected to, and am now late for work!

Second Time Just as Sweet

Every now and then things get left on the cutting room floor for one reason or another. For example I really wanted to make my post about the possibility of making our own convention… but I had lots of other things to talk about as well. In Final Fantasy I am presenting sitting in this interesting position being a part of two very different static raid groups. Last week in the Wednesday night group we managed to get Bismarck Extreme, and I was absolutely over the moon about it. This had been one of those challenges that we had struggled with over the course of a few weeks, namely in getting enough geared people online at the same time to take it down. That has been the biggest challenge for Wednesday nights honestly is getting people to commit to regular attendance. With my original raid group on Monday nights, attendance was never the issue. The struggle there was mostly gearing, or at least the fact that we did not have two geared tanks for awhile. However that changed as soon as Ashgar got his Paladin to 60, and geared it in record time. Over all the gearing levels of Monday still lag behind Wednesday, but we found out this week that it apparently doesn’t really matter all that much.

Last Monday we finished up turn 13 of the Final Coil of Bahamut and started the first turn of Alexander Normal. This week I figured the plan was to run all four phases of Alexander normal, mostly to help folks get some gear pieces. I did not realize that we had intended to do attempts on Bismarck at the end of the night. After struggling so much to get through that fight on the Wednesday group, I honestly expected us to walk away with a lot of experience but no kill under our belts. I was absolutely wrong, and I am shocked at just how amazing getting a first Bismarck kill felt with my second raid team. In the past in World of Warcraft, the first kill of a boss is special, but additional kills feel significantly less so. I remember getting my first 10 man Arthas kill several months ahead of us getting it as a 25 man raid and that blunted the excitement considerable. I have to say getting through Bismarck Extreme a second time is just as sweet as it was the first time. My hope is that both groups can start doing this on a semi regular basis which will give me access to so many expanse totems. Now I guess I really do have to get serious about the Ravana Extreme fight.

A Quiet Night

I had every intent of coming home and working on getting my Alexander drops for the week, but that didn’t really pan out. I hit somewhat of an irrational low spot yesterday, and as a result I didn’t really feel like being around all that many people. As such I avoided logging into Final Fantasy XIV and instead played a few other games. Mylin started a discussion over twitter about the Everquest II Time Locked servers, which I guess was responding to some comments I had made earlier in the week. The problem being that I was spending the evening downstairs on my laptop, and I guess I had never actually installed Everquest II on it. There is a streaming client for these occasions, the problem is that the EQ2 streaming client is horrible. The performance halts every few minutes as the game downloads more assets, making the game experience nigh unplayable. I should have simply waited the thirty minutes to an hour that it would take to download the full thing… but I was being impatient. The end result was a frustrating stutter stop experience as I attempted to quest my way through Freeport. Honestly this is a dual problem for me, because no matter what I try the new Freeport always performs like shit. I really miss the old multi-zone Freeport because I never had these issues back then. Now I generally want to avoid going to that town like the plague. I noticed both the Neriak and Gorowyn ambassadors were offering me a switch in my allegiance, but I was uncertain if Gorowyn even existed in this version of the game.

Ultimately I need to do some reading because I will more than happily pop to the Darklight Woods starter experience if given an option. I consider it the absolute best starter zone in the game. I’ve burned through my stockpile of station cash and I feel made some awesome decisions. I ended up picking up a handful of the bags that are being offered since I did not really want to go tailor just to make bags, and I ended up picking up a set of shadowknighty looking cosmetic armor. I have long felt that if you look good you feel better about playing your character. Finally I spent the last of it picking up the tanky rhino mount, but I’ve never really cared for the way mounts look in this game… so I tend to have it permanently hidden. As a result I feel like a bard in that I am just running irrationally fast for no apparent reason. Mounts can make moving around cities awkward as you ultimately end up blocking some of your view as you try and get into buildings and such. I am still only level 11 because really… I had forgotten how slow progression used to go in this game before all of the assorted experience bonuses.

Saving Farmers

I could only handle the stutter and stop gameplay of the streaming client so long before I jettisoned Everquest II for favor of Wildstar. This is a game I want to devote more time to playing because I am really enjoying myself. It scratches the World of Warcraft style game itch pretty well, and playing the Exiles has this fun firefly vibe to it. Quite honestly I think had I started Exiles I probably would have stuck around longer than the initial month. I was not a huge fan of the Dominion, but the Chua made playing them tolerable for awhile. Personally I still think red versus blue faction divides are extremely dumb, and this game is just another reason. My friends wanted to play Dominion, so I joined them there and had a fairly miserable time being a cartoon bad guy. If I could have grouped with them on my Exile it would not have been a problem. Instead there was a faction wall, and I am pretty much universally against faction walls. The difference this time however is that no one I know actually plays Dominion on Entity. This is actually somewhat sad as I can log into my Chua and the Dominion capital city is an absolute ghost town. I roamed around for a good ten minutes one night before seeing a single other player, and when I finally did it was because there were a few people hanging out at the bank.

As of last night I dinged twenty two and finally can use a spiffy sword that I had been holding in my inventory for awhile. There is just something about a weapon upgrade that is special. I could be wearing ten levels lower of gear in every other slot, but if I have a current weapon… I feel good about my life. There were some oddities going on with the server, because it seems like the opening of the free to play beta made more people realized that the game still existed. I admit I am guilty of forgetting to log in. I get caught up in Final Fantasy XIV and doing Eorzean things, but I think I am going to make an effort to start logging in more. Since I have friends playing over there already it might be easier to remember. I am trying my best to push through the Galeras content as fast as I can because I am just ready to see new areas. I did move into the desert region of the zone so that was a bit of a welcome change, although as of last night I was back in rolling hills and farm lands. At some point I need to do the two dungeons I recently unlocked to see if I can get any spiffy upgrades. The highlight of the night however was getting to the next Shiphand mission, because so far those are my absolute favorite part of Wildstar.