This present fascination with Guild Wars 2 continued last night. I have to admit that I am really enjoying this whole Necromancer thing. The class as a whole is an odd blend of the Warlock from World of Warcraft and the Necromancer from Diablo 2/3. You can see my delightful family of horrible children pictured here. Right now I am running a build that is using three pets… two of which that I can use as walking bombs if I so choose to. My gameplay tends to be running around and picking up a bunch of things and then letting my children and a series of curses decimate the entire pack. There is something stupidly fun about this and I have to say… Guild Wars 2 is far more enjoyable as a ranged character than it is as a melee character.
Last night I went down a different sort of rabbit hole. The last time I was extremely active in Guild Wars 2 was back in 2017, and at that time I used an addon of sorts called TaCO… or Tactical Overlay. It offered a number of things in game that you would normally have to tab out to in order to check, like event timers as well as a large variety of map markers for things like jumping puzzles. I had one of those moments yesterday where I suddenly remembered it was a thing that existed, and set forth in an attempt to find it and install it. It turns out that in late 2020 there was an issue that caused a good chunk of the code base to be lost completely. Then in September of 2021 the project appears to have ceased development and is now largely in a defunct state.
That is fine however because apparently someone has decided to pick up the torch and carry it forward. There is a replacement for TaCo called Blish HUD and honestly… after only a little bit with it I would say it is a sizeable improvement. There are two huge benefits to this over TaCo, the first being that it runs as an icon in your system tray so you don’t have to manually run Blish each time before you launch Guild Wars 2 like you did with TaCo. The next benefit is that it is more Framework than specific addon, and as a result there is an addon repository built into the application allowing you to install one or all of the addons from within game. It also appears to support all of the marker and trial packs from TaCo, but those need to be loaded in before launching the game it seems since they are external files that are being referenced.
The other thing that I suddenly remembered existing is GW2 Efficiency, which is a website that tracks all sorts of things about your account. In both cases Blish and Efficiency require you to set up an API key which can be done as part of the Arena Net Account management page. You can create more than one key, so I have taken the effort of making a new one for each website that I want to use. You can create very granular permissions and give a given site only access to the items that are specifically needed for that tool. As always you can check out a number of different resources in the Game Tools menu above on this website under Guild Wars 2. I vaguely remember using Efficiency to tell me what I was sitting on in the bank that I could sell for large amounts of gold… but I am uncertain what of the many sub tools I was using to do that.
As far as progress goes… I have officially made it further into the Heart of Thorns story than I ever have up until this point. Additionally I have collected enough Hero Points to be able to unlock access to the Greatsword… which is cool and all but without unlocking the rest of the skills there is not a whole lot I can do with it. I did play around for a bit with it and I do think that my future shenanigans involve this class and the power reaper spec. At some point I will need to cajole one of the more seasoned Greysky folks to knock me out a set of Berserker gear. I am also spending some time learning about how to upgrade my Reaper greatsword into the pink version through a long collection, so I might start chipping away at that.
I am finding a shocking amount of joy in this game, so we will see how long that lasts. At a bare minimum I needed something that I could play during the podcast on Saturday nights. I made some strategic keybind changes that seem to work better for me as well.
The post My Horrible Children appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Friends I have very clearly lost my damned mind. Originally I was planning on playing some Guild Wars 2 tonight because I would not have access to the downstairs television where the PlayStation 5 is connected. As a result all day I was planning on playing some more Horizon Forbidden West and moving forward with knocking some of the side quests out. Instead as it was fated I ended up having a late afternoon conversation with a friend about my struggles with Guild Wars 2. The problem for me is that “Warrior” has always meant tanky and the Guild Wars 2 warrior just does not feel tanky to me. So I went through this entire diatribe of explaining what I wanted out of a class and I got an answer I was not expecting.
Essentially my friend said that while I would not like the class fantasy of it… that it really sounded like I wanted to play a Reaper Necromancer which is the Greatsword based elite specialization that came with Heart of Thorns. I already had a Necromancer, but he is a Char… and I have to admit I don’t love Char for the same reason that I don’t love Tauren. They feel slow and lumbering, which is ironic given that when I re-rolled the class I also went with a large race… my favorite of the GW2 races… the Norn. So instead of spending a night in Horizon Forbidden West, I created a brand new character and returned to Guild Wars 2… a game with which I have an exceptionally checkered past. The initial problem is that even starting down the Reaper path is going to require me to grind out a bunch of Hero points, so ultimately I needed to learn how to play Necromancer in default mode.
Where things go really off the rails however is that Thalen who happened to be online mentioned that the WVW daily quest was really easy today. One of the required components was something that could just be purchased cheaply in the Guild Hall. In truth I have only participated in WVW once or twice in the entirety of Guild Wars 2 and the last instance I specifically remember is when I joined Liore and a few others and all joined together around the time the game launched. Suffice to say I am a newbie in such things… and as a result I asked an innocent question. “How the heck do I get access to my mount in WvW?”. This friends is an answer that ultimately dominated t he rest of my evening.
It began simple enough, that I had to rank up once and then purchase the Warclaw Mastery track. Then I had to complete that track, along with completing a collection of items that can only be found in WvW. That sounded easy enough, but essentially I legitimately spent the rest of the evening in WvW. That is enough time to see one skirmish finish and another skirmish get to about the halfway point. The truth is… while I suck at PVP interaction… the entire experience was pretty great. There are enough things going on in the map that much like Alterac Valley you can hang back and do useful things even if you are not with the vanguard charging up against the major objectives. Before I knew it I was starting to knock out these collection bits. For anyone who comes along before me… this is what is needed to complete the Warclaw Mount Collection:
Emblem – You get this through unlocking the Warclaw Mastery track
Tail Armor – This comes from defeating and looking any Veteran guarding an objective. Seems to have a non-100% drop chance.
Horn Spikes – Participate in the capture anything flagged as an enemy camp.
Saddle – Participate in the capture of one of the enemy towers.
Gorget – Participate in the capture of one of the enemy keeps.
Leg Armor – Purchased for 250 Badges of Honor from the Warclaw Tender
Body Armor – Purchased for 50 WvW Skirmish Tickets from the Warclaw Tender
Helmet – Gained from completing the entire Warclaw Mastery Track.
Lastly after doing ALL of this you need to go back to the Warclaw Tender and purchase your license for 8 gold. After that you have a new mount that you can use to zip around the battlefield in WvW. I believe you can also ride it out in the wild, but any of the mastery upgrades only really apply to PVP.
At the end of the night I managed to gather up 5 of the 8 armor pieces needed for the Warclaw Companion collection. Of the few that I am missing, the one that really concerns me is the Gorget gained through capturing a Keep. All night I was not able to find a map that had a keep that someone was trying to capture for team blue, seeing as Yaks Bend is paired with another server group to represent that faction currently. The body armor should be gained pretty quickly, I think I am 3 WvW tickets shy of being able to pick that up. Lastly the mastery track is just going to take a lot more WvW in order to get. I need to go rifling through my bank because I am almost certain to have some WvW tokens that I can burn through.
So there you have it friends. I set out with the mission of trying out Reaper for the Necromancer… and made zero progress towards that goal. Instead I wound up down this rabbit trail of trying to get access to a mount in WvW in order to make the daily quests go quicker. I am not proud of myself and I am confused about who I even am… seeing as I am supposedly allergic to PVP. I am even more confused that I actually found myself enjoying my currently pure caster Necromancer. I like my army of disturbing looking pets that I can explode for extra damage. I might need an intervention because I am not even sure who I am at this point.
If you find yourself playing GW2 however, I am over on Yaks Bend which does not really matter and you can friend me up with “belghast.5496”. I saw a lot of familiar faces like Ardua, Lvrfmsc, Rowan, and Sctrz at which point I remembered… oh yeah this is where they hang their hats these days. I was mostly quiet other than talking in guild chat to Thalen however, because I was apparently a man on a mission… just not the mission I had originally started on. It was a weird night, but a mostly enjoyable night.
The post Lost My Damned Mind appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good morning friends. We find ourselves in really difficult times, more specifically for those players who had a deep connection to World of Warcraft. One of the most interesting aspects surrounding the Warcraft universe is that there are so many players that were happily plugged into Azeroth without knowing much about the larger MMORPG scene. The game had a unique way of spreading from spouse to partner or to family members or maybe even to coworkers. The end result is that it created a large number of “Blizzard Gamers” that had never really played much prior to the game nor played much in addition to it. This morning’s post is specifically for the members of the Warcraft community that now find themselves in a troubling situation. For many playing Warcraft right now feels tainted, but at the same time the game became part of their self-care routine as a way to alleviate the stresses of the world.
Please note this is not a post telling people to abandon World of Warcraft. That isn’t something that I can tell anyone to do. Personally, I just can’t touch Blizzard products right now. Maybe if the systemic change goes into place and it seems like the company is on the right track again I can return, but for now, I am distancing myself. If you are feeling the same way, but also struggling to know what to do with your gaming time… this morning’s post is specifically targeted at you. As a long-time “WoW Tourist” I have played almost all of the MMORPGs that have come out throughout the years and I have great news for you. While Warcraft was consuming all of the discourse, there were a wide number of games that have quietly been gaining steam in the background. This morning I am going to talk about the games that I think specifically would be easy to move over to after coming from a World of Warcraft background.
The Lord of the Rings Online
This is one of the older games on this list and it is impossible to talk about without also talking about Lord of the Rings as a whole. This game was released on the heels of the extremely popular series of movies and had the challenge of creating a world that felt like said movies, but also had none of the licensing rights to the movie imagery. It is also very much a game of its era and if you were a huge fan of the way that Vanilla Warcraft and Burning Crusade felt, then you might possibly feel at home roaming this vast world. Enjoyment of the game however is greatly enhanced if you have a love of Tolkien because so many little details of the books are lovingly placed or recreated in this setting.
The story of Lord of the Rings Online is set as you being a contemporary of the Fellowship. This means throughout the course of its long tale you will be crossing paths with various members of the larger story. This gives the game leverage to let your character stray from the text, but still has a larger context of the events of the story we know so well. There are a number of extremely interesting character classes and rich crafting system and a functional but not phenomenal housing system. I think more than anything I fell in love with the world itself because it makes for an extremely interesting backdrop to your own character story. The game is showing its age, but especially if you were a classic player it might feel like home.
There is of course a free trial that lets you get in and start playing the game with an albeit limited set of character options and only the base content available. It has one of the more complicated pricing models in that each expansion is purchased separately, but there is a version of the game that includes the first six expansions for $59.99. If you choose to subscribe to unlock additional features it comes in at the standard $15 a month.
Did you ever want to play World of Warcraft circa Wrath of the Lich King but in a Science Fiction setting? Gratz then Star Wars the Old Republic is probably just the game for you. If you ever played through the much acclaimed Knights of the Old Republic RPG by Bioware, this game is set further down in that same timeline and as a result, references a lot of events from that KOTOR 1/2 setting. The only negative about Star Wars the Old Republic is that at this point in its lifespan it is largely a single-player MMORPG and has been retooled to support that playstyle. It features some of the deepest and most engaging storylines I have experienced in an MMO with each of the eight classes having its own completely unique character arcs that play out over the course of the base game.
It adds a lot of interesting things to the genre, like a Starfox-style arcade space combat mode and a deep companion system allowing you to customize them and augment your play. For example, if you are a squishy DPS and struggle while questing, then bring a healing companion or a tank companion to come to make that questing go a little bit more smoothly. There is a fairly rich crafting system, but it feels like it was largely abandoned once you left the base game. The game veers sharply into a completely single-player narrative once you reach the expansion content, but is still very much worth experiencing for yourself. It featured some really interesting group content at release but has been tuned in a way that most people just solo it these days.
There is a free trial that unlocks a limited subset of content and character options. One of the interesting things about Star Wars the Old Republic is that if you pay for a single month at $15, it permanently unlocks all of the expansion content and a number of the missing character options. Even more interesting about this game is it supports a $60 two-month subscription that does not renew, which tells me that Bioware fully understands that this is the type of game that folks dip their toes back into every now and then for a month or two at a time. There are ways to buy the game outright for $30 featuring all of the expansions, but really the better option is to simply pay for a single month of subscription time.
Neverwinter is a bit of a mixed bag, but I feel like it is worth talking about nonetheless. The first two games in this sequence started their lives as a subscription model game and then were later converted over to free to play when the market proved that there could only be one “WoW”. Neverwinter on the other hand released as a purely free-to-play vehicle… and as a result, I would classify it as very “freemium”. You are going to be deluged with a bunch of nonsense that is associated with paid unlocks and priced-to-own features… including so many varied currencies that it is difficult to keep track of. if you can ignore all of this, the core gameplay loop is extremely enjoyable and it offers a more action roleplaying game take on what is the tried and true World of Warcraft formula.
The game releases content at pretty regular intervals and the moment-to-moment gameplay is enjoyable. Trying to sort out what it actually costs for anything from the store is completely incomprehensible. If you are looking for a fun game to get in and play for a while but don’t plan on it turning into anything more serious then Neverwinter might just be the ideal fit for you. It requires setting up an ArcGames account, which means that you are going to have to deal with Perfect World nonsense, but pending again that you can overlook that I’ve personally had a lot of fun with it. This is a game that I don’t see recommended as very awesome because you need to be willing to overlook a lot of those free-to-play flaws to find the diamond among the trash heap.
Guild Wars 2 is without a doubt the best deal in MMORPGs. I can say that statement without irony or subterfuge because the game legitimately is a “buy the box” and play the game type experience. The only caveats that I need to include with it, is that the game itself is vastly different from any other MMORPG on the market in the way it feels and the types of content that is available to the player. If you were a loremaster in World of Warcraft and got joy in ticking things off a list, then this might be the perfect game for you. If you loved World Quest content, then again this might be the ideal experience because pretty much the entire game is the equivalent of a World Quest. Guild Wars 2 presents you huge maps with lots of activities on them and reoccurring group events that you get credit for as you move your way towards “map completion”.
The game also does an excellent job of making sure there is always some objective that you could be working towards, presenting you with a menu of different achievements and collections to go out into the world and complete. It has an extremely rich crafting system and instanced nodes so you are never actually competing with players for resources. The gameplay itself however is a bit of an acquired taste with a character being made up of not only the class you choose but also the specific weapon combination you choose to go with it. I have to admit I have played a lot of Guild Wars 2 in spite of the fact that I still don’t really get the core draw of the experience. It has rich and acclaimed story content, that I have largely bounced off of, but those who love this game they are extremely devoted to it.
If you were a big PVP player in World of Warcraft this game is known for its rich Realm vs Realm vs Realm gameplay. Essentially think Alterac Valley, but something that people actually queue for and participate in as you have a big epic battle with other players over resources. Never really been my cup of tea but I know there are a good number of players that play Guild Wars 2 almost exclusively for this content.
Essentially as it stands right now there are two ways to buy into the experience. The first is an edition that includes the base game and the first two expansions for $29.99. If you are willing to spend a bit more you can buy a new multi-pack that includes the upcoming End of Dragons expansion releasing in February for $49.99. In addition to this, there is of course a cash shop with a large amount of account unlocks and cosmetics, that are in truth purely optional content. Some of the things like unbreakable harvesting tools are the awesome quality of life improvements but provide no real benefit over the base breakable tools in the game. Well worth giving a shot if you have never played before because it might just be the game you have been looking for.
Now we are getting into the games that I assume anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time knows I will be recommending. Something you need to understand about this game is that I love Elder Scrolls Online. I was a friend and family alpha tester, have two characters named after me, and have played it off and on since it was released. I am more than a little biased about this game, so you need to understand that going into this discussion. ESO was a critically panned game that managed to gain traction and absolutely mail a regular cadence of content releases. Essentially each year there is one large expansion and three smaller content drops, essentially meaning that every 3 months or so there is something new and exciting to engage within the game.
Classes in Elder Scrolls Online are more suggestions than actually locking you down to playing a specific role and if enough time is spent in the game you can earn more than enough points to buy your way into multiple functional specs. I personally main a Dragon Knight, and I can play that as DPS, Healer, or my role of choice Tank. The crafting system is probably my favorite from any MMORPG and the content is laid out in such a way that effectively all of it remains evergreen. Each zone drops specific gear sets and you can take a blue item and upgrade it all the way to the highest tier. This means players are always out in the world participating in content regardless of the zone, making the entire world feel vibrant and alive.
If you were a PVPer in World of Warcraft, this also might be a landing place for you given that it has an entire game mode centering around huge battles to seize control of Cyrodil. Three factions vie for control over Forts and Keeps, all while trying to earn the right to conquer the Imperial City in the center of the map. These campaigns come in seven days and thirty-day flavors and involve players needing to not only take territory but organize the holding of territory during off-hours. For those who are not into the big campaign, Cyrodil still serves as an interesting but dangerous land to explore and well worth doing so for all of the sky shards and little mini-dungeons found there.
Pricing for Elder Scrolls Online gets a little bit contorted. Essentially things are divided into two categories, Expansions which add large new areas to the world along with a new starter experience, and DLC which adds dungeons, raids, and smaller areas. There is an expansion every year and it comes with a standard new game price tag associated with it. DLC is purchased through the crown shop and is somewhere in the $15-$20 price tag depending on how elaborate it is. Alternately you can pay a $15 a month price tag which unlocks all DLC for the game along with your “ESO Plus” subscription. I keep this active if I am playing because it also gives you an unlimited crafting inventory allowing you to harvest until your heart is content without ever worrying about bag space. There is a multi-pack that includes Morrowind, Summerset, Elseweyr, Greymoor, and Blackwood for $59.99 which is the ideal way to buy-in.
We have reached the point in this post where we finally get to the game that you all expected me to talk about before you clicked on the link. Final Fantasy XIV is one of the best games on the market and also one of the most endearing comeback stories the games industry has ever had. I say this with no hyperbole intended, this is probably the best MMORPG on the market and it is for a lot of reasons. This game is still a passion project of the team responsible for turning this game around from abject failure to overwhelming success, and for the most part, all of the key players are still actively engaged in creating new content. This team also sets the bar for transparency in information and honesty with its player base about what is going to work and what is not going to work. Players don’t always get what they want, but we often get a better understanding of why exactly we are not getting it.
The challenge with Final Fantasy XIV however is that it feels very much like playing an alternate universe version of World of Warcraft. There is no denying the influence that Warcraft had on Yoshi P while working on this game, but also at the same time there are just a lot of things that work completely differently coming from the Everquest derived lineage of Final Fantasy XI. Additionally, this is a game that was designed with the limitations of the PlayStation 3 in mind, so a number of the systems just don’t work quite in the same ways that a PC-focused MMORPG gamer would expect them to. Then there is the story gating of content that I talked about yesterday, and even though the said story is phenomenal… you cannot progress through good chunks of the game without making your way up to a specific point in the Main Story Quest or MSQ.
The reason why I love this game and keep coming back to it though is the community. There has been a careful focus by the team working on the game to lay the groundwork of shared struggle and kindness throughout the game. There is subtle social pressure to do good and be friendly, in the hopes that maybe just maybe at the end of a group activity you get a commendation from your players. Like it sounds silly, but in practice ends up curbing a lot of the animosity and toxicity that I have seen in other games. The content is also structured in a way so that doing older content is both enjoyable and rewarding and when you have a brand new player those rewards are increased. This has created an effect where running with a brand new player is actually sought after, rather than something you fear. Sure you need to spend a bit more time explaining mechanics, but you are going to get more of the end game currency you are chasing as a result to make it worth your while.
That is not to say that the game does not have its low points as well. Casual PVP is great and I find it very enjoyable, but I am not the traditional PVP player. From what I understand it is nowhere near as highly tuned as other games and as a result those who are more focused on that gameplay get frustrated by it. Housing in the game is one of the coolest systems, but because of the way that it is structure it is prohibitively expensive and just plain unavailable due to demand for most players. Apartments and Free Company rooms exist, but they feature a limited subset of the options that a traditional house would include. One of the huge benefits of the game is the ability to play every single job on a single character, but this is also somewhat of a double edged sword. Leveling your first job comes extremely quickly as you follow the MSQ, but alternative jobs are left hanging forcing players to significantly slower ways of leveling them.
All of that is pretty manageable, but without a doubt the most frustrating part about the game is the account system. Square created a system that would have felt needlessly arcane during the Web 1.0 days and now feels just painful to interact with. Those of us who have been around awhile understand the ins and outs of it… but account creation is the first real hurdle any new player might encounter. It also has a weird pricing model with subscriptions having a good number of asterisks out beside it. The game is $13 a month if you only one one character per server with a maximum of 8 characters in total. $15 a month gets you up to 8 characters per server (which honestly alting is a trap) and a maximum of 40 in total. Then you can pay an additional $2 per month to gain additional retainers or an addition fee to gain use of the mobile app that lets you play the market boards aka auction house remotely.
Right now the game is being deeply discounted due to a sale that is taking place. You can pick up the Complete edition that includes the base game, Heavensward, Stormblood and Shadowbringers expansions for $23.99 or the non-sale price of $59.99. Then come November if you are at that point in the game you will need to purchase the Endwalker expansion for $39.99. The Free Trial gives players access to the base game and the Heavensward expansion or the first 60 levels of the game, but comes with a bunch of restrictions limiting the player to 300,000 gil and cannot join Free Companies or send public messages like Shout, Yell or Tell. They are also now restricted with a longer queue time than paying customers. That said it is well worth trying the game for free in order to determine if it really is for you.
One of the things I realize upon making this post, is that I am going to have folks asking “What about X game”. The truth is there are literal hundreds of MMORPGs currently available, each with their positives and negatives. This is my personal take on the games that I think a World of Warcraft exclusive player would fit into most easily. If you have your own opinions for what you feel like are a better fit, as always feel free to leave a comment below. Once again this is not me trying to tell players that they need to leave World of Warcraft, but if you too are struggling with engaging with Blizzard right now… here are some alternative places you could find shelter in for the time being.
The post Alternatives to Azeroth appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
We assure you that we are in fact not a cat… but maybe some of us are cats. Tonight we start the show off with a discussion that probably should have happened last week but completely missed the list. Final Fantasy XIV announced its next expansion and in Endwalker we are going to the Moon. We talk about this. This sorta leads its way into a discussion about Guild Wars 2 and drop in drop out grouping. We also talk a bit about how Google seems to slowly be killing Stadia but shuttering the studio that was supposed to be making first party games. Last we talk about Eli and hitting his first 12 sads out of 10 RPG ending…. which is fitting given Kodra’s propensity for finding those games.
