World of Warcraft – Page 84

Weekend Rusty

August 6, 2016 by Belghast

Demon-Huntering

I promise that I had every intention of getting up this morning and writing a blog post immediately following breakfast. However the world had other plans… or more truthfully my friends Grace and Sol had other plans. Last night was the beginning of the Diablo 3 Season 7, but unlike so many other season starts I had other plans. Firstly yesterday was the birthday of my amazing wife, and I ended up taking off a half day to go out to lunch and then to a movie. We saw Ghostbusters, and I have things to say about that movie but it is probably going to be a discussion for another day. After that we came home briefly where my folks came over and brought a cake, and then it was off to a semi-monthly dinner with some of my wife’s siblings. By the time we got home it was after nine and after sitting down to start working on a character I found that I was fading extremely fast. So I only managed to make it to around level 25 before crashing, and during all of this… I forgot to take any screenshots for the blog. As a result I popped in early this morning with the purpose of taking a few screenshots and logging right back out. However this is the one where Grace and Sol invited me to a group… and when I joined and explained that I was only online to take a screenshot or two… they both “noped” and proceeded to drag me up in levels a bit.

As a result I am getting a late start to this whole weekend posting thing, which is not terribly surprising given that I have always had trouble staying on focus during the weekends. Something about getting up and milling around the house causes the morning to lack a clear sense of purpose. I think the key to the week days functioning at all is the fact that I get up and take a shower the moment I crawl out of bed, which serves to wake me up completely. This whole leisurely getting up, having breakfast, and nestling into the couch with my laptop business is a recipe for slacking off. Regardless I am blogging now because Grace decided to go out for coffee giving me a nice break in the leveling process to knock out this post. Firstly I am not nearly as pumped about D3 this season as I was in previous seasons. Right now there is just too much stuff going on that I want to be participating in. Namely at the moment my seeming fresh re-addiction to World of Warcraft. Tuesday we can start rolling Demon Hunters, and I figure that will pretty much be the end of my Diablo 3 season experience. Additionally I still have my Warlock that I am enjoying leveling, and I want to continue pushing it to 100 as soon as possible. At the moment I am knee deep in Talador around level 94, but once again I am doing the method of leveling where I jump zones as soon as possible so as soon as I hit 96 I will be shifting to Spires of Arak.

This feels very much like a scattered post and I guess in a way it is. I am so very not used to doing this weekend blogging thing. This is the first weekend post I have made since breaking my streak of blogging every single day in May. These couple of months have been more than enough to push me out of the habit. In truth I think I enjoy not blogging on the weekend because there is nothing really hanging over me. That isn’t strictly true I guess because I still end up having to edit and get posted the AggroChat episode each Sunday morning, but that at least gives me Saturday to be relatively carefree. From a standpoint of our lifestyle it has been pretty huge as well because it means that my wife and I can get up and around and go out and do things, without having to wait for the inspiration to hit me… and a blog post to mysteriously appear on the page and get posted. So while I am doing this for Blaugust I absolutely expect to return to posting week days once the month of August is over. I am a prime example of trying to find a livable schedule to blog on, and this is a huge part of why I decided to do the more chill version of the initiative. Sure we can push ourselves to come up with thirty one blog posts, and it is an interesting exercise… but if the end result is resentment towards your blog or blaugust in general then I think the overall mission of promoting blogging on a schedule has failed. For the time being however I am returning to my games and calling this post to a close.

Petulence

August 4, 2016 by Belghast

World Go Boom

For the last several nights there has apparently been a shit storm happening on the Blizzard network, or more likely the networks they use as a backhaul. The frustrating thing about a DDoS attack is that at least on some level, if it is a large enough one there isn’t a whole lot you can do other than triage. Most successful attacks don’t actually target the servers of company, but instead the connections just upstream of the data center. If you can somehow manage to get that provider to start blocking the ip ranges that are attacking you… and most of the time they are not nice clean IP ranges, but instead random rootkit/malware infected bot machines… the attack often times moves upstream again making the effect inconvenience even more companies. The real problem in this whole situation is that bot networks are dirt cheap to use, because virus infections of all those folks who only use the internet for “the facebooks” are prevalent. The rumor has it that this particular bot attack is spawned by some of the players who were recently banned from Overwatch for hacks and cheats. Now as is shockingly commonly the way among spoiled internet brats, they are throwing a massive tantrum in the form of an attack directed at Blizzard and their customers.

Now for the most part the last couple of nights have been chill for me personally. It seemed as though initially so long as you were not running raid content and as a result switching server clusters… you really didn’t encounter much issue. I for example happily leveled my way through Pandaria, and it was not until about 8pm last night that I started to encounter issues. I have to admit it was a little nostalgic seeing the “World Server is Down” message, because it had been so long since that was a regular occurrence on the Argent Dawn server. Because we were the first Role-playing server sorted alphabetically in the list, we became the target of a lot of protests and down right petulance from players simply wanting to wreck our fun time. More often than not it was spawned by a similar set of spoiled internet brats, namely in the form of players on the PVP server Blackrock. Any time their server would go down they would come over and flood our server with level 1 Gnomes “protesting” and as a result bringing our server down as well. Those same players would likely be the type that are currently DDoSing the network, but back then that sort of attack was not really possible. I am sure there were plenty of otherwise good people who got swept up in the madness, just like what happened during the “warrior protests” that also targeted our server. However the bulk were likely simply lashing out at the “lol arpee” server because we made an easy target.

Storming Draenor

The servers however eventually recovered and as a result I was able to say goodbye to Pandaria and move on towards Draenor. I spent a silly amount of gold last night upgrading all of the caster heirlooms I have to level 100, so that I could use them on my Warlock, Mage and Priest… all of which have yet to push through to level 100. It seemed like gold well spent given that I would likely be playing all of them shortly. In the grand scheme of things, percentage wise it was not that big of a hit to the total amount of cash that I had laying around. Additionally questing through the Draenor content is going to make back a good chunk of it given that I will be selling my gear instead of wearing it. If I find myself desperate for money there are lots of characters that I have not touched tons of quest content on. In any case I picked up Grimoire of Supremacy that lets me swap my Felguard for a permanent Infernal which seems pretty awesome. I think running around with an infernal is the ultimate player fantasy for a lot of folks that end up going Demonology, and I remember how much fun it was when I helped my friends complete that quest in Felwood to get their first. The only negative is… that it seems to have removed my ability to summon these various demons as their short term “fire totem” like variety that was a decent dps boost. I have a feeling that while fun for running around, that I might eventually swap back to using one of the other talents. I managed to stay awake long enough to get through the Tanaan Jungle intro quest, and am now in the process of setting up my garrison. I am hoping that tonight I can make a serious dent in the leveling process, and maybe move into Gorgrond. Mostly I am making the big push, because I know that Friday night will begin another Diablo 3 season, and I will begin switching time with that game.

Rubber Band Thief

August 3, 2016 by Belghast

A Game of Fetch

This is Kenzie and she is a mess. I am not sure how else to describe her, because she is unlike any other cat we have shared a home with. She can be the biggest butt ever, and a bit of a bully to the other cats… but she can also be the sweetest and most adorable animal you have ever seen. She sort of vacillates between being an angel and a devil sometimes within the same moment. She likes to help with the laundry… and as you can see here sometimes crawl under the upturned laundry basket. She also gets super obsessive about certain things… for example I really like Red Velvet Muffins from QuikTrip… and apparently so does she. I can wrap up one of the muffin wrappers in several layers and she will go spelunking through the trash can in search of it. When she finally gets it… it is not like she eats it but more certainly rips it to shreds. Another similar obsession is twist ties and rubber bands. We go to the cleaners fairly often and for whatever reason they like to rubber band together sets of wire hangers. I am not sure exactly when it happened but Kenzie started stealing these rubber bands from the closet and running off with them. In fact our living room and bedroom are filled with little caches of rubber bands that she mysteriously “loses” and can then summon up at pretty much any moment when she wants one. I have a feeling if we ever moved out the couch there would be a sea of rubber bands and twist ties laying back there waiting to be rediscovered.

Over time this obsession started to morph and I am not completely sure when it started. Instead of just playing with the rubber band she started returning back to wherever we were at and dropping it next to us. When she first did this I decided to go ahead and toss it away again and see what she would do, and from there… a new game was born. We have a cat that plays fetch, in the truest sense of the word. She will bring us something… and want us to toss it… and then she brings it back and we do this over and over until she gets tired of it. When that happens one of two things will happen… either she will “lose it” and by lose I mean know exactly where it is at all times but decide to stop returning it. Either that or she will just lay down beside me ON the object and want attention. This second cessation of fetch generally means that she just wants a break and will resume fetch in a little bit when she starts nudging the object again. So as a result the highlight of my evening was more or less spending an hour and some change playing fetch with Kenzie, quite possibly the longest running game yet. It was extremely important because my wife was in the bedroom with the doors shut off attempting to bond with Luna, someone I have not really introduced you to yet. As a result I am trying to be elsewhere so that both Kenzie and Allie have a stable and friendly source of attention, and as a result while I tired of the fetch thing about thirty minutes into it… and while my reaction time slowed significantly as I tried to level my Warlock… I kept at it because I knew Kenzie needed someone constantly paying attention to her.

Pandaria Is Maddening

As far as the gaming I was doing while playing fetch … I continued to push my Dwarf Warlock up through the levels. At this point I am sitting at 88 and somewhere in the Townlong Steppes quest chain. I said that Pandaria was maddening and that is mostly because we are in this awkward transitional period of time… where you cannot actually purchase the flight book off the black market auction house. That means you can level an alt and have it fly happily from level 60 until 85… then have this awkward block of 85-90 where you cannot fly, and pick up once again in the 90-100 content. This is a prime example of one of my complaints with World of Warcraft content, in that often times they seem not to take into account the ramifications of changes. Removing the Black Market Auction House until legion… also probably unintentionally blocked players from being able to purchase the level 85 book for flying. The easy fix would have been to simply change the level you can purchase Pandaria Flight from the trainer in the Shrine to 85, and do away with the book. However instead I am stuck in this limbo as I try to level a new army of alts to the current level cap of 100. I realize that I could always purchase boosts to 100 and be done with it… but even though I am taking every shortcut possible, I still enjoy the act of leveling and questing. The mob density in Pandaria just makes that whole process a bit of a slog.

The one thing I am super thankful of however is that while each individual zone is a fairly linear process… they have added quests that unlock zones rather than having to quest your way through one to get to the next. That way when you ding a level you can check the Adventure Guide to get the quest to move on to the next area. This admittedly really speeds up the leveling process, and while I once had this ideal path through Pandaria that mostly still works… it is sped up by no longer needing to clear to a specific quest to unlock the next area. My next big decision however is what to do when I ding 90, and if I want to spend the gold to upgrade my caster heirlooms from 90 to 100. I am highly considering it given that I have two more cloth wearers that have yet to hit 100, so it is not like they won’t see a lot of use in the coming months. Essentially where I am standing on the whole leveling game is that I have my Priest, Mage and Monk that will be sub 100 now that I am zeroing in on getting that Warlock up there. At some point once I get some gear at level 100 I will probably take a lengthy break to finish farming up the remaining cloth that I need to push my tailoring up to a reasonable place for Legion. As to why I am suddenly motivated to play all of these alts… I guess in theory it is because I am constantly seeing new appearance items and creating a stable of appearance farmers for the various armor types. Prior to the Warlock I did not really have a cloth wearer that I enjoyed playing… and as a result don’t have much in the way of cloth appearance gear. After all… the true end game is looking awesome.

AggroChat #117 – Death to Garrisons

May 21, 2019July 31, 2016 by AggroChat

Belghast, Grace, Neph, Tam and Thalen lack topic ideas… but then record a lengthy show on WoW, FFXIV, Pokemon and other stuff.

This week we are down both Ashgar and Kodra, and in part as a result… and part because we just adore her we talked our friend Neph into joining us. Before we start recording a podcast we generally try and scribble down a rough list of topics to use as an outline of where to leave the conversation next. After fifteen minutes of dead air… we finally start coming up with a few things and this weeks show is a result. We talk about the concept of “Peak Pokemon” and the glee that the media seems to have at heralding the downfall of the game. With Grace on my side we revisit the discussion about the Legion class changes, and our happiness to completely bury the concept of the Garrison and get out into the world and see it again. We do a deeper dive into the deepest dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV and Tam and Neph’s experiences leveling alts this week there. We talk a little bit about Dragon Age Inquisition, and my discovery of how Damage over Time classes work. So for a show where we didn’t think we had much to say… we certainly said a whole lot of it.