Elder Scrolls Online – Page 19

Wilderqueen

March 1, 2016 by Belghast

Contemplating Forge

Last night was another night that was all over the place. Firstly I decided to reinstall Forge.gg and give it another chance. I have so many mixed emotions about this service, I like the concept that I can grab short clips at the end of my gaming session. I dislike the fact that I can ONLY grab short clips, which are generally too short to show a boss fight for example. I like the always on nature, and that it can just run in the background without me feeling like I need to be entertaining. However I ran into some issues last night where apparently even though I had push to talk set… it was still actively picking up my microphone the entire time as you can see in the above clip. So you get a snippet of a conversation between my wife and I about something I don’t even remember. I like the idea of streaming but I don’t always want to be actively interacting, and forge is this great middle ground. Ultimately I wound up muting my microphone at a system level just to make sure that it was not picking up. I am hoping this is just a bug in the current client, and I will crawl the site to see if I can find out why this was happening.

The other gotcha it seems is that it did not pick up and start recording Elder Scrolls Online. I spent the first part of the evening doing garrison dailies and doing at least one Tanaan objective in World of Warcraft and it recorded all of that perfectly. However as soon as I swapped into ESO, it never came up with the forge icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen letting me know it is recording. I will say that the really really nice thing about the client is sometime in between my last attempt at using the service and this one… it seems to work nicer with Fraps because there is no way I am giving up that just to use the service. I am too used to having a common and centralized screenshot tool for all of the games I play. It is an absolute necessity that I have a fresh source of new screenshots for this blog, and I hate having to try and find the screenshot directory for each individual game. So instead I tend to unbind the screenshot key if it is allowed and just use Fraps for everything. It was awesome last night that I was able to use fraps just fine while still recording on forge…. at least when it came to World of Warcraft. I am going to be a sad panda if that ends up being the issue with it recording Elder Scrolls Online.

Return to Greenshade

The bulk of my time last night was spent wandering around Greenshade in the Elder Scrolls Online. Generally speaking I tend to play this game by wandering aimlessly from objective to objective, but last night I actually seemed to move through the zone with a purpose. That purpose being ingratiating myself to the Court of the Wilderking, a forest spirit that controls the Valenwood and that the local Bosmer worship as a God King. As part of trying to quell the rebellion and steal forces away from the Veiled Heritance, my mission was simple… get the support of the Wilderking to get the support of the local forces…. thus ending the rebellion. I of course did a bunch of other stuff along the way, and I am not entirely complete with the main story sequence… but I am having a blast. I got sidetracked in helping a friend level in World of Warcraft, and then again by the Love is in the Air event…. and finally I am settling back into Elder Scrolls Online for a bit. Granted currently I will probably continue to hop games like mad because there is just so damned much stuff that I want to be playing. In Elder Scrolls I have yet to see any of the Imperial City content, or Orsinium… and they are just about to release the Thieves Guild as well. So much catching up to do… but at the same time I feel like I have all the time in the world to do it because I am not playing the game at a serious end game focused level.

The other big happening of the night is that I finally dinged Veteran Rank 4, allowing me access to the next tier of crafted gear. I was doing awesome…. until I screwed up and rushed to get my shield made and forgot to go to the set crafting area. Originally I was planning on having 5 piece Alessia’s Bulwark, and 4 piece Ashen Grip… except I am now sitting at 3 pieces in that set because I got sidetracked and ended up making a non-set shield. Unfortunately I am completely out of the right kind of wood so I will need to do some more adventuring before I can finish things out. For the time being I have opted to abandon my costume and go with the actual armor look because I dig the Imperial armor look. I will probably always favor the Dunmer sword type, though recently I did enjoy using an axe for a bit. The game looks amazing on the laptop, and I am so damned happy with how well everything is performing to be honest. It does get a little hot but then again what gaming laptop doesn’t. My previous one had a SLI graphics card configuration so had insanely hot air venting out of both sides of the laptop. At least this setup isn’t continuously baking my mouse hand. I just need to sort out why exactly Forge was not recording the game.

The Division

Also looming on the near horizon is the launch of The Division. At this point it is absolutely certain that I will be playing it on the PC, at least at first. When the price comes down a little I will probably also pick it up for the PS4 so that I have access to it for any of the friends that happen to be playing there. For the last few days since the end of the beta I have trying to sort out how best to organize folks for the upcoming launch. The game itself does not really have guilds or clans or any structure like that…. at least that I saw in the two betas I have been part of. So as a result this is going to make getting stuff going a little more difficult than in other games. However my friend Sigtric, the man who coined the hashtag #BelEffect is firing up a Discord group and attempting to get it to be the official/unofficial chat server for the game. If you are going to be playing I highly suggest you pop by and join the “Gone Rogue” community. There is a shared general chat and breakout channels for PC, PS4, and Xbox One to make organizing things a little easier. I honestly wish I had something like this for Destiny. Discord is one of those things that is growing on me, and while I still find Slack easier to use… there is a point in the near future where I could see abandoning traditional voice servers and moving to Discord entirely.

Relearning to Fight

February 16, 2016 by Belghast

Nostalgia vs Reality

I feel like I grew up at exactly the right time to be a fan of fighting games. For the most part these were what consumed my High School game playing years, well apart from a healthy dose of pen and paper role-playing and miniatures. I remember when the local Circle K got in the original Street Fighter back in middle school, my friend and I were completely enamored with it. Sure we had played fighting games before, but there was just something different about this one. Then when Street Fighter II started showing up in Arcades during early 1991… it was quite literally all we could talk about. Electronic Gaming Monthly had become our bible, and when it released full move sheets for each character, my friend Wade and I practically memorized them. We were set on course for a wild ride over the next several years, as a new game would come along and dethrone the previous king. I spent so much money in the arcades playing Street Fighter II derivatives, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, Samurai Showdown, Mortal Kombat 1 and 2…. and finally culminating for me at least with Killer Instinct. I went off to college…. got poor… so I missed a whole generation of the early Tekken games, finally re-entering the fighting game world with Soul Edge in the basement of the university center. I stayed engaged for most of the original Playstation and for the first bit of the Playstation 2… and then thanks to my addiction to MMOs… checked out of the scene once more.

From that point onwards I have tried to poke my head in, every now and then… even purchasing the original release of Street Fighter IV on my fairly new Xbox 360. There is still very much a will in me to play these games… but I have had to realize that I am not nearly as good as my nostalgia believes me to be. Generally speaking I get my ass kicked and get it kicked extremely hard when I try and play anyone with much skill. I also have completely killed any of those key callouses that we used to need to keep from getting a nasty case of “raw thumb”. There is something about Street Fighter V however that has reinvigorated my desire to try and learn to play Fighting games once more. At almost 40… I simply don’t have the reflexes to ever really be “great”, not that I ever was in the first place. I could dominate an arcade cabinet for a few hours on a single quarter during my prime, but that part of me is just no longer around. Gone is most of that competitive spirit, and instead I just want to have some fun playing a fighting game. So much has been added to the genre since I last played, that it feels like I will be simply starting from scratch again. We will have to see how long the drive stays with me, but as of right now I have every intent of sitting at home tonight and trying to remember how to play a Street Fighter game. I ended up picking it up on PS4, so my PSN id is Belghast as is my Capcom fighter tag, though I don’t expect to play against anyone for a long while. I wish I had ordered that Hori Fight Commander in preparation of this…. because I am not sure if I can get used to hitting shoulder buttons for heavy attacks.

Goodbye Grahtwood

In other news… I have now finished the bulk of the quests in Grahtwood and am moving forward to Greenshade. There are I am certain a few points of interest that I did not take care of while I was in Grahtwood, but a lot of them are simply going to wait for another level… and a fresh infusion of gear. So many of the world bosses that I encountered were actually two separate boss mobs that interacted with each other. I can absolutely whittle down one world boss, by simply out surviving it and self healing…. but when it comes to two at the same time my damage output is lacking. So my hope is that when I hit Veteran 4 and can craft a whole new set of gear… that I will be able to return and kick their ass. Right now I am largely wearing a crafted set of Veteran 1 gear… and at this point it is starting to feel a bit dated. In other news I got this installed once again on my upstairs gaming rig, so my hope is to maybe start streaming some of my evening shenanigans. I am not sure what it is about playing Elder Scrolls Online, but it very much feels like returning home. Its like the world waited there quietly for me to return, and has thus far welcomed me back with open arms. If you ever played this game in the past… you might take the bit to patch up your client and give it a shot. I know a few people recently have restarted after not enjoying the beta testing at all… and are enjoying themselves. The game certainly feels more polished now than it was at launch.

Magical Moose

February 14, 2016 by Belghast

Luck and Friendship

Over in World of Warcraft, there has been an item that has lovingly started to be referred to as the Friendship Moose…. and there are good reasons behind it. The mount itself is pretty damned majestic, and makes me feel like Santa Claus when I ride it. It comes from getting the Ahead of the Curve achievement for Heroic Archimonde…. well in truth Archi drops a quest but same basic difference. The reason why it has become known as the friendship moose is the fact that there have been an extremely large number of people in the WoW Community who are going out of their way to try and get people the mount. To the best of my knowledge it was originally @Thomicks that started the #FriendshipMoose hashtag, and then it kinda just went out of control from there. I know @Zelse007 for example has been really knocking these out and as of last night he has gotten 639 Folks their moose. I won’t lie that the thought of getting a spiffy mount is partially what drove me back into raiding in World of Warcraft recently, but more than anything it was to be able to hang out with Horde friends that I had never really raided with. Quite honestly I never expected to get the Reins of the Grove Warden.

The thing is… I have some really amazing friends. Earlier in the week I was pinged by Damai to see if I wanted to join in with his raid for a farm run. The plan was to clear a bunch of bosses on Thursday and then pop in really quickly early in the evening on Saturday and take down Archimonde. Generally speaking I cannot participate in this raid because it happens to coincide almost exactly with our podcast recording session. However this time they planned on being in and out of the raid roughly two hours before our podcast was set to go. I ultimately had to beg off on Thursday, because I kept going into uncontrollable coughing fits, but I was however able to attend yesterday…. which was good enough to get me a moose. I was carried extremely hard last night, the above image is of me being the only dead member of the raid…. from when I tried to run my fixate to the edge and happened to run right in between two folks firing their lasers. Not only did I walk away with a moose but I also picked up a couple of sweet upgrades, one of which is REALLY amazing for my special snowflake Gladiator spec [ Worldbreaker’s Resolve, World Ender’s Gorget]. I gotta say I am happy beyond reason… because I absolutely thought this was far beyond my reach. I want to give a special shout out to Damai, Errya, Pugnodeum, and the rest of the Praetorian Guard crew for dragging my but along.

No AggroChat

So now that the warm and fuzzy bits are out of the way… I have to tell you that right now I am feeling like a complete and total failure. Sure being the only person to die on Archimonde should have done that already, but this is something different. We’ve been recording AggroChat for a little over two years now I believe, and during that time we have missed two episodes. This week being the second episode, and for the most part…. this time is completely because of me. While raiding last night, I was on listen only mode because I quite honestly had no voice to talk with. Throughout the day yesterday, as it went on my voice kept getting weaker and weaker until the point where I simply became a squeaky whisper. On top of this… Tam is out of pocket this week, Grace is out of pocket this week… and yesterday was Kodra’s birthday… leaving it up to Thalen and Ashgar to hold up an entire show. As a result throughout the day we simply decided to call it, and I really hate the fact that it was my fault for doing just that. This crud that I have picked up is driving me insane… I am so ready to be “better” but as the weeks go by it keeps dragging on.

I know last week when I went ahead and recorded… it was probably a bit of a set back. Because prior to last weeks show I was feeling a bit better…. and then afterwards I was pretty much dead to the world for a few days. What is killing me the most is that when I am in this condition I just don’t want to do much of anything. As a result I have been focused heavily on Elder Scrolls Online, which is a game that I am largely playing by myself. Sure there are a handful of awesome people playing with me like Ammo and Sol, but even then my interaction is mostly that of answering the sort of questions that new players have…. and not so much active grouping. I can zone out and zone into the storyline… and as a result I am probably enjoying it more than I have since I first played alpha. Part of me wants to at least push through the rest of the Aldmeri Dominion content before resigning the game to the back burner again. Another big thing that I want to do at some point is pick up where I left off in SWTOR, and play through the Reven content that I never actually got around to doing. I have this feeling at least in the near future that I am going to be focused on story games, less than I am going to be on raiding and grouping activities. The Final Fantasy XIV 3.2 patch might change that, and in part I hope it does…. because I would love to feel the drive to play that game again. However in the meantime I am going to quietly be piddling over here without my voice.

Team Akatosh

February 13, 2016 by Belghast

Psijic Order

Coming back to The Elder Scrolls Online has been this strange homecoming for me, in part because this is one of those games that I was part of something bigger than myself. Everyone has that one world that they would love to see done up as an MMO. It might be something from fiction like the setting of the Dune series, or something from a movie like Stargate…. but everyone I have ever known seems to have that one world that they would love to play in. For me that world was Tamriel, because since Daggerfall I have been a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls series of games. Granted I don’t date back nearly as far as some folks, but it is safe to say that I have spent multiple thousands of hours roaming aimlessly in the various Bethesda games. On February 26th of 2013 I got the email that I had been longing to see since I first began trying to imagine other worlds to make these sort of games from. I am not sure if I was in the literal first wave of invites, but I was there pretty early and that first four hour testing session went by so insanely fast. I was completely hooked, and bursting with so much to talk about…. knowing that I would have to swallow it down because I wanted to do my best to honor not only the NDA but also the testing process. This time I had one of my best friends reputation riding on the line, because not only did he get me in the testing process… but he was also responsible for building a lot of the quests I was experiencing.

During the early days they fired up beta testing servers, and assigned different people to different teams based on specific traits about them. I still for the life of me have no clue what Team Akatosh was, or what demographic we happened to represent. It was pretty early discovered that the Mara team were made up of largely female gamers, and then there was I believe Stendarr that was largely made up of ESO purists. Collectively we became known as the Psijic Order once the tests opened up further and started letting in new people. We were essentially the “first wave” or as some have referred to it the “The 0.016% ” but I don’t even have a clue if that figure is correct or where it even came from. I ground the hell out of this game, and never missed a single test that I can recall… and in every single case until the very end of the testing process… the tests were specific times. I gleefully bug noted every single thing that I saw, and at one point it got back to me that Ashgar and myself were apparently in the top 1% of bug reporters…. something I am admittedly a little proud of. The problem being that I got into testing in February of 2013… and the game launched in April of 2014… which means I feverishly played it as a second job looking for flaws to report for roughly a year before the game actually launched. When it launched… based on the videos on my YouTube channel I streamed at least 45 hours of it. I had simply burnt myself out on the game because I focused on it so seriously.

Brackenleaf’s Briars

The awesome thing about coming back is that I am remembering the way I loved the game roughly three years ago when I first got that beta invite. Things feel fresh and new, and the pace is perfect for me. I can meander around aimlessly but still feel like I accomplished something at the end of the night. What is cool is the fact that the Psijic Order still apparently exists, in both the private area on the official forums, and the guild that we formed on launch. Over the last few days I have caught up with a few of these folks and it has been pretty cool knowing that someone stayed. While at launch we had around 150 people… until the other day there were only one or two of those that still poked their head in every now and then. Since then I have gotten Ammo and Solaria into the game, and they seem to be enjoying it. I have another friend that says he purchased it, since apparently you can now find it for around $20 and I will be meeting up with him to get a guild invite as well. Last night I did a significant amount of house cleaning, namely that I demoted everyone to recruit and removed bank access, largely just as a safety precaution since 90% of the folks are not active. The idea is as folks show up again, I will fix their permissions, but that allows those of us who are there to feel more safe sharing items in the guild bank.

I realize the Aldmeri Dominion quests were the last to go into the game… and that when they were created it was a bit of an all hands on deck crunch time. That said they are some really amazing quests. There is a quest sequence that deals with Brackenleaf a giant living tree…. that looks suspiciously like the Great Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time. The quest sequence involves protecting the tree from an enemy known as “The Outsider” and has some interesting plot points. I have to say…. I have always loved the Bosmer and if I was going to be an elf I think that is absolutely who I would be. I could absolutely live by the Green Pact, and eat nothing by tasty tasty animals. Also really enjoying the interaction with the Bosmer leader of Elder Root and the haughty Altmer that he is forced to deal with. I think the overall quest arc of Grahtwood is going to be pretty great to experience, so looking forward to pushing that forward a bit more. As of last night I dinged Veteran Rank 3, and I have an unknown number of champion points. I decided to go ahead and subscribe, and with that came a 10% experience boost… that was honestly immediately noticeable. Namely it was noticeable on the Veteran Rank progression, and I doubt I would have hit Rank 3 last night were it not for the boost. Essentially I mulled over the whole sub thing for a bit… and decided that the same amount of money could either go to outright buying some expansions… or go to three months of subscription and at the same time give me 4500 in currency to spend elsewhere. For the time being I went with the sub option because it just made more sense.