MMORPG

Wandering Aimlessly

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Wandering Aimlessly

Right now I find myself struggling a bit to gain purchase in most of my MMO options right now.  World of Warcraft I am back and active in because of the Wednesday night Mythical Nonsense thing we are doing.  I was logging in every night to try and eek out the last bits of experience needed to unlock the Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei but even then…  I have faltered considerably.  I really do not enjoy Argus, so logging in every night and grinding every single quest available just seems grossly unpalatable.  Final Fantasy XIV failed to catch my attention with Eureka, and I lost momentum catching up on the main story quest patched in with the latest expansion.  Destiny 2 is sitting there largely untouched because when I log in…  there is really nothing that I want to be doing which is ultimately where that game falls short of the original..  there are no long running breadcrumbs for me to follow when I spin out and lose purpose.  Monster Hunter World is always easy to get back into…  but there are nights that I just don’t want to spend my evening upstairs and the fact that my PS4 is there limits my play time.

In the end I keep coming back to Project Gorgon and its weirdly charming neostalgic experience.  On the podcast Tam talked about the game feeling like the way we remember playing Everquest.  While this might sound confusing at first… this is exactly what this game feels like.  We have incorrect rose tinted feelings about how Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot for that matter felt to play.  If you go back today you end up with a cludgy mess of a game that feels ancient and quite honestly not that enjoyable.  However our in our memories the Everquest experience is still vibrant because we have edited out the rough spots and filled in the way those actions made us feel in place of the hard facts of just how limited that game actually was.  Project Gorgon remembers those things that were lacking in Everquest and has supplied the spackle and paint needed to make those memories feel true and vibrant.

Wandering Aimlessly

Sure I am doing the same kill ten rats quests I have been doing my entire MMO gaming career, but the fact that I seem to have a relatively limitless quest log…  and the fact that I can complete the quests by killing ANY ten rats…  not just the ones five feet away from the quest giver makes the experience feel more open ended.  If I have a quest to kill wolves…  Sickly Wolves, Mangy Wolves, Supporting Wolves, just plain wolves…  specific named character wolves…  all count towards a quest that says “kill wolves”.  This means you can do the quests while roaming around the world and exploring… rather than feeling tethered to a specific location to be able to clear out your log.  There are quests I picked up on my first day that I just managed to finish two weeks later because I had not actually encountered the thing I was needing to find yet.  I dig the long tail that this cycle has and the fact that it feels like you are “questing” for something more than just completing a task list.

I am sure some of this is just my inherent lack of familiarity with the world or the fact that the maps don’t really have locations marked on them, or my habit of running the opposite direction I need to go.  Whatever the case the specific combination of broad objectives and happy accidents along the way lead to a very immersive experience in spite of the fact that you spend a good deal of time running along and encountering nothing at all.  The only real complaint I have so far is the fact that most of the gear that I use looks like complete nonsense…  like right now it feels like I am wearing thermal long-johns…  but they were unfortunately the best item I had and finally got rid of that horrible yellow bandage appearance.

Wandering Aimlessly

At this point I have managed to hook two more people on this game, in part because I knew it would be down their alley.  For the most part I am limiting myself to just Sword and Psychology…  but I am contemplating trying out a few other secondary skills.  I spent the 2000 councils aka gold to learn beast taming so it might be interesting to try a pet secondary for awhile.  Similarly I now have the ability to learn fire magic, so that might also be interesting to shim in over top of Psychology.  The one thing that I am finding weird… and cannot quite reconcile is that our hotbars have six abilities on them…  but right now I have seven in both psychology and swords.  I cannot however seem to be able to replace the spells from my bar…  so how exactly do we use that last one?  I might try dragging it to the optional bar and see if it becomes usable that way.  Among all of the other games that I have access to at this very moment…  this one feels the most comfortable and suited to whatever I am needing at this very moment.  I’ve not really streamed much because nothing I am doing right now seems interesting enough for someone to watch.  Grinding factions in WoW is boring as hell… and I am afraid me wandering around aimlessly in Gorgon will also be boring to watch.

AggroChat #198 – Mining Our Memories

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Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

aggrochat198_720

Tonight we are back recording an normal show after last week’s game of the year show.  This also marks the first show we are purposefully trying to time box at around 90 minutes worth of recording time…  which turns into roughly an hour of run time after editing.  The plan is to make this show a little easier to consume… and also easier to record for those of us who are in central and east coasts because some of our bigger shows lead to getting to bed occasionally around 1 am.  As a result we whittled down the list of topics a bit and wound up with essentially four solid topics to discuss.  As a result oddly enough the conversation seemed to flow much more easily so it may also be a good decision for our content in the long run as well.

Topics Discussed:

  • Bloodborne
    • Soulsian Games
  • Spring Blossom Event
    • Monster Hunter World
  • Neostalgia MMORPGs
    • Project Gorgon
    • Shroud of the Avatar
  • The Way Games Start

 

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Rocket-Swords and Pig-Bees

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Rocket-Swords and Pig-Bees

Last night I spent some time in Monster Hunter World because the Spring Blossom festival launched about halfway through my evening offering up a ton of things to do.  It is this weird blended festival that includes a ton of repeat chances to get items that were offered before as well as several new items including the Greatsword I am rocking in this image and the Megaman/Rockman Pallico Armor that I will ultimately have to get my hands on.  I will talk more about the Greatsword a little further down the list…  but first I want to talk about how generally happy I am with the pacing of events in this game.  It feels like every single week there is a reason for me to log in and do content,  and while I am largely stalled out at 49 behind Tempered Kirin there seems to still be a constant deluge of things to do.  Granted I have pulled back my playtime a bit given my recent infatuation with Project Gorgon and the return to doing stuff with people in World of Warcraft…  but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am completely disconnected.

I really love the flow of this game because it feels like I can log in any night and feel like I have interesting options to do.  There are also things on the horizon that I have to look forward to, like the Devil May Cry collaboration that brings a brand new Charge Blade into the mix.  This week however was all about the new fan designed Greatsword and helping me to fill in a weapon slot that I really had not put any effort into.  While I don’t think they necessarily have the intention of giving us an event weapon for every slot… so far I have gotten a really nice Bow and a really nice Greatsword with what felt like minimal effort when it comes to farming all of the missing bits I need to get from point a to point b in the crafting tree.  Sure the Greatsword and Bow both require a Wyvern Gem which is annoying to farm… but that is one part out of a whole list of parts that might be a pain to get.  I wound up using the Gold Wyverian print I had laying around to craft the Greatsword last night.

Rocket-Swords and Pig-Bees

Like I said before I was ultimately missing a decent Greatsword from my weapon lineup, and while it is an extremely cumbersome weapon…  it is one I want to learn how to use because it seems very much a “me” weapon.  In order to get this weapon you need to start running the low rank 5 star quest… Every Hunter’s Dream.  This involves taking down a Paolumu and a Rathalos…  which enter the fight staggered a bit so you can get a significant amount of damage in on the Lumu before having to deal with the poison and fire asshole.  I ran the first one of these solo and then grouped up with Thalen who also happened to be on to get the last few kills.  I think in total it took us four attempts to get the five Master Craftsman’s Blueprints needed to craft both steps of the weapon.  As far as the other items needed…  here is a list form breakout even though I crudely photo-shopped it all together above.

  • Master Craftsman’s Blueprint – 5 – Event Only Item
  • Dragonite Ore – 7 – I believe any zone after Low Rank Coral Highlands but not 100% sure
  • Paolumu Webbing – 2 – Low Rank Paolumu
  • Rathalos Marrow – 2 – Low Rank Rathalos – Green First Wyverian Print
  • Elder Dragon Blood – 2 – Kill an Elder Dragon – Nergigante, Vaal Hazak, Kushala Daora, Teostra, Xeno’jiiva
  • Firecell Stone – 2 – Found in Elder’s Recess
  • Wyvern Gem – 1 – Most High Rank Paolumu, Tobi-Kadachi, Lavasioth, Jyuratodus, Barroth, Radobaan, Diablos
  • 40,000 Zenny – yeah…. you are going to want to farm some cash

I have not really done anything serious with this weapon…  but in theory were I to use it regularly I would wear my fire longsword set of gear…  make sure I have some Handicraft and figure out a decent item to wear that gives me the hidden elemental damage.  510 is a lot of fire damage to leave sitting on the table with this weapon, so I need to sort out a decent item to slot to give me that back since I am no longer regularly wearing the Zorah Magdaros gloves.  I did a few minor quests last night with the weapon and really dig it…  even though it is just about the slowest thing in the world.  I had already started getting into the practice of sheathing my longsword anytime I was going to be moving for awhile just because the draw attack is really nice.  This training has served me pretty well for the greatsword given that you cannot move at more than a snails pace with it drawn.

If you are interested in the timing of everything going on you can check out the official Capcom PDF of events…  or better yet check out this site called 28 Games Later that has a really nice full breakout of everything.

Mythical Nonsense Tonight

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Mythical Nonsense Tonight

I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to talk about this morning, but in theory mythical nonsense begins tonight.  We’ve gathered up a group of players who are willing to join in this madness and set our sights on getting our first key through the easiest and coolest of the mythics…  Maw of the Damned.  From there we will shift around and try and determine what our next target is based on the keys that we get.  In theory we are going to run until 10 pm central or wherever there is a breaking off point somewhere close to that.  The idea being that we run for a few hours and see how many we can knock out…  and keep upgrading keys until we get to at least Mythic +15 so that we can walk away with shiny artifact appearances or something like that.  I have no clue how far we will get tonight, and I have no clue how long this journey is actually going to take…  however we have a list of adventurers ready to go.

In theory I need to try and get an Argus kill in tonight before go time since I failed miserably at playing WoW last night.  With the teacher strike going on the evenings have been weird for lack of a better term.  I didn’t want to get into anything serious until my wife got home… and yes while LFR is LFR…  the Argus section of that raid is a serious time commitment at the least.  Then after my wife got home we largely talked about the nonsense the State Legislators did during the day…  like shutting off the water to give themselves an excuse to go home early for the day and avoid the teachers.  My hope is tonight I can pop in for a bit, get an Argus kill so I can walk into Mythical Nonsense ™ with a second legendary and slightly higher item level.

I would totally stream this…  but a few of the folks I am running with have already objected to that notion when someone brought it up on twitter.  So I will just have to report in on our progress tomorrow.  It should be a lot of fun, especially since two of the people I will be running with… I have never run with before.  Byx and Grace however…  have gone through many iterations of my nonsense over the years so they are largely immune to it.  So I will ultimately have to break Maryalee and Nayakhuut into the fact that I have no clue what I am doing 99.9% of the time and that tanks make the most annoying DPS.  It should be hilarious… or at least entertaining for all.