World of Warcraft

Good Morning Friends. This is a post that I have found myself avoiding for a month now, but I think it is probably time to make it. If my screenshot archive is correct, I have not logged into World of Warcraft since December 10th. That means I have had over a month to try and summon the desire to return to the game and it just hasn’t arrived. Shadowlands represents the expansion that I made the least amount of progress in before ultimately leaving. Generally speaking when a new MMO expansion launches I get two to three characters to the level cap and then ultimately bounce. This time I made it through one character and just could not bring myself to repeat the content again for a second character. I attempted to level a third character with Threads of Fate since that is a permanent choice and locks you out of the story content, but found it equally unenjoyable.

The Leveling Process

The disappointing thing is that I was greatly enjoying the leveling process prior to the launch of the expansion and managed to push up a full roster of horde characters to the new squished level cap of 50, along with six alliance characters as well. I am not exactly sure what is wrong, but I didn’t enjoy the overall leveling experience in Shadowlands. There were some zones like Bastion were just pure hell for me to make it through, and other zones like my favorite Maldraxxus were nowhere near as enjoyable to go through a second time once the story beats were known. On my second character I stalled out a little bit into Maldraxxus, and on my Threads of Fate character I didn’t complete a single zone worth of content. My favorite leveling experience was probably Legion, and I am not entirely certain what differs so much between the two expansions. It might simply be that I was in a different frame of mind this time around and as a result I had a vastly different experience.

Torghast

The feature that I was looking forward to the most in Shadowlands was Torghast, and the end result did not match up to my expectations. In Final Fantasy XIV there is a system called the Palace of the Dead which is this amazing endless dungeon leveling experience that has a chance of dropping some really cool items along the way, and also serves as a way to unlock once powerful and now at least cool looking weapons. Mentally I was expecting that sort of system to make its way to World of Warcraft and not a largely pointless mini game. Sure you get Artifact Power… I mean Soul Ash… but the end result is just a long grind for a benefit that feels like it does not match up to the amount of time that the activity just took. It feels sorta like you are being asked to solo a Heroic dungeon with no gear payout. Were I to fix it I would make it so that mythic+ dungeon loot could drop in there or something worth chasing.

Legendary Gear

I loved the Legendary armor from Legion, and as a result I was super excited to see a system like that returning. In Legion, knowing there was a chance of getting a Legendary drop pretty much elevated every single activity in the game for me. The problem was there was no way of chasing a specific legendary item, but past that the system was perfection as far as I was concerned. With shadowlands instead we got a system where you collect the patterns for Legendary items, grind Torghast to get soul ash and then combine that with exceptionally expensive crafting materials in order to craft a piece of gear that is going to fall behind the curve unless you pour a constant supply of money and materials into making it better. I essentially bankrupted myself crafting a single Legendary, and the piece that I liked about Legion was having multiple allowed me to rapidly swap up my play style to fit a specific encounter. Sure I got one that was useful immediately, but knowing it is likely the only one I will have kinda kills the Diablo 3 build creation joy of the earlier system. Then there are the Legendary patterns which were extremely poorly implemented. They drop from specific encounters, some of which are the first boss of a dungeon… or can be engineered in such a way as to force them to be the first boss of the dungeon. Players are going to take the path of least resistance every single time and what ended up happening as a result is that folks would queue for a dungeon, steamroll the first boss… not get the drop they wanted and then bail out accepting the deserter buff. Most of my runs of Mists of Tirna Scithe saw us loosing either a Tank or a Healer after the first boss… and in some cases the entire party. De Other Side is a great dungeon, but Tanks would join… make a beeline for a specific one of the three starting encounters and then bail immediately following. Sure in some cases people were chasing gear, but more often than not they were chasing whatever happened to be their best in slot Legendary pattern.

The Maw

The Maw is all stick and no carrot. The attempt was to create something Soulsbournian in World of Warcraft with this purposefully obtuse experience that you have to struggle with to slowly improve and unlock new things. The problem here however is that essentially The Maw, Torghast and Legendary Crafting are supposed to be this self perpetuating cycle. You run Torghast to get the material gate for crafting Legendary items and you run Maw to improve your experience running Torghast. The problem is that if any of that cycle is broken then the entire cycle of reward is broken. For me since I did not enjoy Torghast and ran out of money to craft Legendary items… The Maw quickly became something that I was doing each day to complete the daily quests but wondering why the fuck I was putting myself through the hassle. I logged in a few minutes ago to snag a screenshot… and apparently had just bailed in the middle of the maw the last time I played. This could have been really cool, but again the reward systems are the problem. Just like Torghast you need to have some sort of reward other than more systems in order to interest me in coming back. I am super loot motivated and without loot as the reward waiting on me at the end… I am not sure I want to go through your obstacle course. Even if they had put a rare chance of something interesting dropping from the boss encounters, I probably would have farmed them every single day dealing with the constantly escalating series of bullshit in the form of the eye of the jailer. Instead I knew that going to the maw was going to yield absolutely nothing useful and little things like the inability to use a mount just pissed me off to no end.

Covenant Faction Systems

Now this is the one that I probably understand the least. I loved the Class Order Hall in Legion. It grounded me in the expansion and played into the whole class fantasy narrative in a way that has never been in the game prior to that point. It was amazing and each of them was filled with so many neat easter eggs linking back to past content. On paper the Covenant system seems like it should be fairly similar but in practice it just did not feel good to experience. I realize that the gates are there to keep players from finishing the Covenant system in a single week, but the gates also served as a disincentive for me to keep playing given that I knew I could only do so much in a given weekly reset period. It felt like everything I wanted to do required something that I could not get until the next reset and there were no slow and grindy systems that allowed me to make up that difference. Additionally there were too many different systems going on at once and creating a dissonant experience. I’ve never loved the War Table style systems in World of Warcraft, but in the past you could always automate this experience with an addon. The Covenant table system looked like it might be different and more interactive, but in reality it is just complicated enough that you can’t easily automate it but requires no more interaction. As a result it sorta ends up being the worst possible version of the War Table because now you can’t even employ an addon (or couldn’t last I checked) to just sorta take care of it for you and it is still just a series of dice rolls. The soul bind system was kinda cool but the acquisition of these felt bad especially given that there were slightly better versions that you needed to somehow track down.

Loot Drought

The dungeons felt really good, and I give them credit for making a cycle of really enjoyable experiences. Unfortunately it also felt like I was not really making much in the way of progress. I ground my face against Heroic dungeons with a reckless abandon in an attempt to “gear up” and so often I walked away with nothing but an expenditure of time and a repair bill for my trouble. Blizzard shifted the way gear dropped in an attempt to make obtaining loot feel more important, which is probably a double edged sword. Sure when I finally got the thing I had been chasing it felt amazing… but similarly the thirty two times I attempted to get it before and got nothing felt soul crushingly awful. I have no clue how this applies to raiding but I feel like more than likely the loot distribution feels equally bad there. I didn’t survive long enough to actually attend a raid.

Healer Drought

I think the thing that probably contributed the most to my bouncing is the fact that I could not find a reliable source of healing to make groups happen. I have a lot of friends and almost all of them seem to be playing DPS these days. My usual partner in crime Grace, did not even make it through the leveling experience for some of the reasons outlined above. My guild seemed to have two active healers, both of which were available during times that were generally too late for me to commit to running anything. This ended up with me abandoning my goal of being a Paladin Tank, and instead spending most of my time pugging as a Retribution DPS. There are a lot of things I am willing to do… but tanking for pugs is not really one of them. I tried tanking a Mythic plus from the group finder and it went just as frustratingly as you might expect. I think I probably would have stuck around a little longer were I able to reliably run all of the Mythic plus dungeons each week, but the struggle to make a single one happen just didn’t make the possible rewards worth the effort. Had I been enjoying any of the above items… I could have shifted my play style up and just melted back into the background leveling alts. Unfortunately the only part of the game that I did enjoy was the Dungeon game… and that required a constant flow of healers that simply did not materialize in order to make it happen. I am not sure what is up with healing this expansion, but it seems like folks that have been constant healers previously have abandoned it for the way of the DPS.

Unintended Path of Post

So here we are at the end of a post that I did not mean to turn out the way it ultimately has. I’ve said before that I often times have no clue what I am going to say until I sit down and the keyboard and start typing. Originally I meant this to be a post just stating that I was largely giving up on World of Warcraft Shadowlands after a month of not playing it and having no desire to return. What ended up happening instead is a long rant about the things that frustrated me. I guess maybe I needed to get it out of my system and since this is my blog and everything is me editorializing… rant happened. I have friends who are still enjoying the expansion and I am happy to see that. The last thing I want to do is burn down the building on the way out. I am just not sure if this specific combination of systems was what I wanted out of World of Warcraft. I was hoping for another expansion to rival Legion, which now sits atop the list of my favorite expansions. Instead I got something that is more down towards the Battle for Azeroth end of the list. Truth is I probably found more joy in BFA than I have so far in Shadowlands, but I feel like I am certain to give it another shot after a few patches to see if that impression changes. The post Done For Now appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Good morning friends. The last few days have been rough. Getting up has been exceptionally hard and when I do get up… it sorta feels like I have been hit by a train. I am not “sick”, just weary. I could not bring myself to make a post or upload anything to Catfriend Television. The day itself was packed full of meetings, which I dutifully attended but still found myself mostly struggling. I have no clue what is going on necessarily but I am not in a great place. It doesn’t help that Covid continues to strike close to home with my friend and mentor coming down with symptoms and one of my employees as well. I’ve not been in actual contact with anyone for awhile… apart from the fact that my wife is back in person with kids in spite that they had to come up with colors more critical than “Red” to denote the community spread.

We live in “Dark Red” and my wife teaches in “Dark Red”. For reference according to the county board of health, this denotes…

Dark Red – Stay Home. Dark Red signifies an extremely severe and uncontrolled level of COVID-19, meaning outbreaks are present and worsening and testing and contact tracing capacity is strained or exceeded. At this level, residents should take every possible action to minimize contact with anyone who does not reside in their household. Use curbside or delivery services for food and medical supplies. Work from home. Participate in religious services virtually.

Definition of Dark Red Status

I think the stress of all of this is getting to me in a way that maybe it hasn’t before now. About all I have in my control is to prepare for the eventuality that my wife feels like she needs to quit her teaching job to feel safe again. Of note… pretty much all of the districts are on distance learning right now because of the rate of community spread. The district my wife teaches in is one of the lone hold outs and quite frankly watching her go through all of this is a grind. It is taking a physical toll on her health. I realize this is nothing quite like the front line medical employees, but still wearing.

This weekend opened the first “Season” of World of Warcraft Shadowlands. Can I just state how much I hate that games are not grouped in seasons. What this means however is that Mythic+, Normal and Heroic modes of the raid, and all of the World Bosses start opening up. The above screenshot is when I rolled over to where the world boss world quest was spawned and the massive number of randoms fighting it. I got absolutely nothing of use at all from running it, apart from I think 250 anima. The whole “you will get less loot but better loot” statement before the launch of Shadowlands largely just seems to equate to getting less loot.

I am still in desperation mode for trying to find some horde healer friends for running Mythics. This desperation even lead me to PUG a Mythic Dungeon group. I was tempted by the fact that so often in the premade group finder tool there are groups sitting there just waiting on a tank. While in truth with randoms I would rather sit back and do some chill dps… I have reached the point where I am willing to tank because I feel like I am timezoned out of running with the single guild healer that seems to be around on the regular. My normal go to is twitter… but thusfar my calls for Horde healers has been met with a chorus of crickets. It does seem like there are just less healers around this expansion than there have been in others, and I wonder what that says about the state of healing currently.

In other news on a whim I decided to power level up leatherworking because the price of leather seemed to be pretty cheap. This gave me access to the 151 item level patterns, and I was able to drop some of this on my friend Grace to help with the gearing curve. Similarly when the Demon Hunter actually gets up to level it will make his transition from Normals to Heroics that much easier. My hope is that by seeding some gear it might kick the World Quest system in the ass and get it to start producing something useful faster. Right now it seems to be completely useless for picking up free upgrades.

Similarly useless is the new Adventures system… aka the commanders table gimmick that has been rebranded each expansion since Warlords. Nothing of use seems to be capable of dropping and the rewards in anima almost don’t make it work churning through these on the regular. I did finally manage to get a Soul Ash mission, and I stacked every single character I had on it… only to fail. The whole arranging pieces on the board mechanic mostly just feels for show as it is still a “wait and see” type system. I know someone spent a lot of time working on this, but quite frankly it is absolutely no different to me than the Garrison, Shipyard, Legion Hall, and War Campaign systems. You click some things and then RNG happens and maybe you get a reward.

In other other news… I started Cyberpunk 2077 last night and so far I am enjoying it quite a bit. I decided to go with the Corpo start, because really it seemed to be the one that I found the most interesting. I am not sure what ramifications each start is going to have on the game long term. It seems based on the little I have seen, you more or less end up in the same location regardless of which you choose. I will likely spend some more time tonight playing around in it. I think I am just about to exit the tutorial mission. So… Apologies for not having the oomph to push a post out yesterday. I am struggling a bit, but I will do okay as I always seem to. Occasionally there are going to be days where I just can’t conjure out a post demon and bind it to my will. Thanks for reading. If you have made it this far you are likely going to keep returning even if I miss a day here or there and I guess there is solace in that. The post Mythics and Desperation appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Hi Friends. I am struggling a bit this morning to cobble together something resembling a post. I did not run mythics last night quite the way I would have hoped. I contemplated joining a party in the group finder, but was uncertain that I could handle that level of frustration. Ultimately I struggled finding a healer and in the “Bel School of Group Building” the first rule of business is to lock down a tank and a healer. I had the tank since I was willing to do that… but at every turn I was missing a healer. Ultimately I need to make more hordefriends that are mythicable healbutts that are not Grace.

We ultimately ended up running a heroic with the purpose of trying to get Kelion and Merrymoo some gear, but I am not sure if any of that actually happened. I know Moo walked away with a few pieces but I don’t think Kel managed to get anything other than a frustrating evening. I pinged a few friends that were playing classes that could heal, but much like me they had wisely chosen other paths. Whenever Grace manages to get to dungeon level I am going to devote myself to grinding for gear until we can once again do really fun things together. However in the meantime I need to start adding up a list of hordefriend healbutts that I can build groups around.

Other than that I spent some more time on my Demon Hunter and pushed further into the Maldraxxus storyline. Originally I had planned on just having a chill evening but really I should be helping out more in the guild to help gear people. I pugged my face off until I got Retribution geared, but that is an unpleasant proposal for most folks. I know my friend Mor has also been pugging his face off so at some point we should join forces so at least we won’t be alone in our madness. I am looking forward to reset because it should mean some additional things unlock giving me more stuff to do. The gating has been pretty extreme, but it also has meant that I was not done with the expansion in a single week.

Unfortunately there are also a lot of things that are just downright frustrating. One of these mornings I am ultimately going to end up doing a giant “airing of grievances” post. I mean Festivus is just around the corner so I might save it for then. This is one of if not “the” least polished World of Warcraft expansion, and in many ways it feels unfinished. However I will save all of that for another day. If you are hordefriend healbutts, especially if you are mythicable… let me know so we can be friends. Even if you are not mythicable I am also amicable to helping you get there. The post Mythicable Hordefriend Healbutts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.