Grace

Content by Grace

The Shortest Season?

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Diablo 3 Season 8 is here! I did my usual routine of grouping with friends on Friday night to level. This is the first season in a long time that I just could not get leveled before I crashed for the night. I think I made it to about 54 on Friday, and you could tell the group was getting tired as conversation in voice chat dwindled. On Saturday I got up early and finished leveling, then started working my way through the season journey. I decided to go with a Demon Hunter again this season because it had been so easy the past 2 times. Unfortunately this season’s set, with its buffs to rain of vengeance, just doesn’t feel that great to me. I know it is hard to judge without the full set bonus and all the extra pieces that really make things shine, but I definitely felt like I was having a harder, or at least slower time compared with previous seasons.

It might all be moot at this point, since I finished everything I needed for the first 4 chapters of the season 8 journey by yesterday morning. I’m now the proud owner of a  nice looking portrait frame, and the most disturbing pair of “wings” the game has introduced so far. I think if I want to keep going with this season I will have to farm a different class set, because even with my 6 piece bonus I’m not in love with rain of vengeance. I doubt I will bother, at least for a while, since Karazhan releases in WoW this week and I am sure I’ll be busy with that for a long time.

This season might be the shortest one for me. I’m still glad I participated, I had fun with Diablo this weekend, but there’s not much new and exciting to keep me around when other games have shiny new content. I’ll still hold on to hope that the Diablo franchise gets some serious love this year at Blizzcon.


The Shortest Season?

The Shortest Season?

by

Diablo 3 Season 8 is here! I did my usual routine of grouping with friends on Friday night to level. This is the first season in a long time that I just could not get leveled before I crashed for the night. I think I made it to about 54 on Friday, and you could tell the group was getting tired as conversation in voice chat dwindled. On Saturday I got up early and finished leveling, then started working my way through the season journey. I decided to go with a Demon Hunter again this season because it had been so easy the past 2 times. Unfortunately this season’s set, with its buffs to rain of vengeance, just doesn’t feel that great to me. I know it is hard to judge without the full set bonus and all the extra pieces that really make things shine, but I definitely felt like I was having a harder, or at least slower time compared with previous seasons.

It might all be moot at this point, since I finished everything I needed for the first 4 chapters of the season 8 journey by yesterday morning. I’m now the proud owner of a  nice looking portrait frame, and the most disturbing pair of “wings” the game has introduced so far. I think if I want to keep going with this season I will have to farm a different class set, because even with my 6 piece bonus I’m not in love with rain of vengeance. I doubt I will bother, at least for a while, since Karazhan releases in WoW this week and I am sure I’ll be busy with that for a long time.

This season might be the shortest one for me. I’m still glad I participated, I had fun with Diablo this weekend, but there’s not much new and exciting to keep me around when other games have shiny new content. I’ll still hold on to hope that the Diablo franchise gets some serious love this year at Blizzcon.


The Shortest Season?

AggroChat #129 – Deckbuilding MMO Design

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Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Tam and Thalen Discuss Diablo rumors, Overwatch Co-Op, Master Catching Games, and Guild Wars Deckbuilding in MMOs

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Tonight we have another in a long line of shows where we go into it not really having a clue what we are going to talk about… then wind up discussing topics for a couple hours.  This week we start off talking about Diablo… the largely forgotten Blizzard game and the beginning of Season 8.  We then veer off into tinfoil hat territory as we talk about some of the popular rumors surrounding Diablo 4.  We talk about how much we are enjoying the new Co-Op PVE mode in Overwatch, and how we wish it was a permanent addition.  We also shift course into a discussion about how games seem to have an obligatory e-sports friendly design these days.  We also discuss our recent progress in the World of Warcraft Emerald Nightmare raid, and now much we are looking forward to Karazhan landing this coming week.  Finally we get into a lengthy discussion about the deckbuilding style of MMO design, namely with Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Secret World and to some extent Rift.

Topics Discussed – Diablo 3 Season 8 – Diablo 4 Tinfoil Hat Theories – David Brevik – Bill Roper – Co-Op Overwatch – Designing For E-Sports – Co-Op Gameplay – Pokemon Sun and Moon Demo – World of Final Fantasy Demo – WoW Emerald Nightmare Raid – Guild Wars 1 Ability System – Deck Building MMOs

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Last Second Success

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Surprise! I played something in the last week that wasn’t Legion! I realized that the Diablo 3 season was ending on Friday evening so I decided to hop in quickly on Friday afternoon to sort through my stash and prepare for merging my seasonal characters back into my non-seasonal stable. Usually I end up doing this after the season ends and I have a ton of items in my mail, and let me tell you, doing it ahead of time is way easier. While I was throwing away everything that wasn’t an ancient legendary, I realized that I was one conquest away from finishing the Destroyer tier of the season journey for season 7. I was pretty close to having 3 gems at level 65, so I decided to run a few rifts and try to go for it. In the process of farming rifts for keystones, I saw the season progress pop up for getting a speed run on a TXIII rift, which is one of the requirements for the stash tab. With just about 2 hours left in the season, I got my gems leveled and completed the Destroyer tier. Since I had gotten that speed run, the only thing I needed to finish Conqueror was a second conquest. About 45 minutes worth of running the Ruins of Corvus over and over again and I finally managed to get a 50 million gold streak and unlock my extra stash tab. It was pretty close to the wire but I did it.

Last Second Success

I think the most satisfying part of the whole thing is that this is the first season I can remember where I didn’t really get carried by anyone else. The friends who usually carry me didn’t play in season 7 or just barely played in the first week or 2 until the pre-Legion hype took hold. I managed to unlock the stash tab all on my own, and even got a personal best of greater rift level 71. Now I just can’t wait to see if there is finally some good news for Diablo fans from Blizzcon this year!


Last Second Success