D3 is here and Azeroth is dead

Our GM was kind enough to canx Wednesday nights raid so we could play D3.  I don’t think anyone in guild has admitted to not playing it. It’s so very quite in the streets of Azeroth. It’s worse than when various people vacated for Star Wars or Rift.

We managed to start Thursday nights raid with 23 people, and eventually collected our 25 but everyone was on edge.  They wanted to play Diablo, not raid and it became as our gm said one of those raid nights ” we shall never speak of again” as people’s hearts and minds were certainly elsewhere.

My D3 adventures so far involve me rolling a Witch Doctor first  – I played around with a few classes in the beta and even though it does look a little messy I love the stuff they throw.  It’s like a mega perpetual hissy fit, throwing jars of spiders, flaming bats, and toads.

The Witch doctor is the new huntard.  It hasn’t seem to cause group issues yet, but my Zombie dogs agro radius seems to be outside my screen and one of the earlier areas this caused a little bit of grief when I was getting charged by these massive beasts, attacked by buffaloes, and strangled by trees all at the same time.

I have friends playing, but now some of them have shot past me leveling wise, ( darn you people with more time.. ) so grouping has proven hit and miss depending on who is where.   I know its not a MMO,  and I miss the feeling that your never alone in a MMO even if its the trade troll ( and general chat option on didn’t help) everyone is playing in their own little universes right now, and it’s a little disconnecting.  I find it a much more immersive story wise though,  my experience is better if I can hear the journals as I play.  It means however music/2nd screen other entertainment needs to be  a lower volume.

There were lots of people needing to readjust to not clicking to move once they got back to wow, and I had some difficulty adjusting to clicking to move in D3. Getting used to now holding down the shift button when I’m spamming attack and clicking things all over the place, and putting myself in the middle of the mobs because I clicked the ground in my clicking frenzy.

I also worry more about RSI in d3- we don’t talk much about how long periods of gaming can affect the body when we play, and once upon a time when it was end of financial year at work, and I was doing a lot of spreadsheets and numbers for long long hours without proper breaks and I got RSI in one of my wrists to the point it was clicking when I moved it, it was a horrible feeling, like it was going to fall off at any moment and one I never wanted to repeat .  So I am more conscious of the fact that if I am doing the same thing for long periods of time I need to have a real break, and I found that it is easy to do the same kind of movements over and over again in D3,

Aussies were lucky – US midnight launch was our 5pm  and by the time I got home from work around 7ish,  set up the install,  pottered around a little it was ready to play ( with no errors for me) in less than half an hour.

But Alas our Thursday night raid ended with the happy idea that we could all seek the embrace of the new  temporary method of excitement,  in the arms of D3 – only to find that there was a 2 hour maintenance ( was supposed to be 1 and finish by raid end. BUT Noooooo

and so you get a blog post, and I go to bed early.

Shhh, be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting DEMONS!

Bearwall! Ah, the smell of fresh bear droppings  on a nice clean blog page.

It smells like… oh, damn.

Smelly bear, smelly bear, what have they been feeding you?
Beer and bacon and BBQ beans, that’s what a big butted bear is made of.

Surprise, surprise, I have been playing a little Diablo 3 this week.

I don’t know that my experiences are going to be all that interesting, but my approach to the game has been to ignore it and all related discussions completely until release.

I wouldn’t say I’ve taken pleasure in ignoring the latest details MMO Champion would release during Beta, or in passing by the fevered, frenzied arguments about it’s features that popped up like shrooms all over the blogosphere.

Well, yeah, I guess I would.

I was playing World of Warcraft, and while it’s nice to see what is intended in a beta for a game I’m actively playing, like WoW, I really couldn’t get into following all the details of a game that was unplayable.

Basically, I ask this of a company – if you’re creating a game, give me a video pimping your art design and music to entice my imagination, then give me some gameplay videos showing me what it’s like to actually get embedded into it. That’s it, I’ll take it from there. The more detail you tell me, the less left to my imagination. Give me a good view of the gameplay, I’ll see all I need for a snap judgment.

I played Diablo, Diablo II, and the expansions. I’ve got fond memories of them all, but the gameplay… they are, at their hearts, button mashing hack and slash dungeon crawlers, and there was nothing wrong with that at all. But the tastiest bits of those dungeon crawlers was exploring the world, the lore, and the specifics of the gameplay as it unfolded through the levels, so why would I want to spoil the mysterious bits with spoilers before I even crack the can?

Plus… one of the things I loved about my previous Diablo experiences was how rock-solid polished they were. Shit worked, no bugs. Why spoil by trying them when they’re all buggy?

I wanted to walk into the new game just like I did the old ones, to get immersed in a POLISHED game experience and enjoy my ignorance.

The best reason I could think of to follow the development would be to see if I felt enticed enough to buy it for $ 60, so as soon as they announced you got the game for free with an Annual Pass in WoW, well, I stopped following the news. Purchase was a done deal, I’ll play it when I get it, and see what it’s like then.

Fast forward to launch week, my friends. Ooh, new game, cool, time to see what all the hype was about. I hope it doesn’t suck!

I’ve been so successful at remaining spoiler free (that sounds better than ignorant, doesn’t it?) that I had to no shit look up how many classes there were and watch the “What the heck does this class do” videos on MMO Champion just to get some idea of which one I might try first.

I didn’t have even the most basic awareness of what was going to happen when I fired it up. Except, like, you know.

Demons and shit.

I watched the Barbarian video, the Demon Hunter and the Monk. I didn’t watch the Witch Doctor because the gameplay description was all “lol pets lol”, and I didn’t watch the Wizard because, well, squishy was my first impression, and squishy is for after you play around with it.

A heavy plate wearing class, a damage sponge, that is just the thing for a training wheels experience.

I didn’t think I’d start with a Barbarian though, because, well, it looked identical to a WoW Warrior, been there done that, I deal with rage issues enough as it is. If I want to deal with rage, I can just catch up on Twitter, plenty of rage to be found there.

I didn’t think I wanted to start with a Demon Hunter because, and this is the only real reason, I didn’t fancy micro-managing traps. Demon Hunter went on my mental “try when I’m bored with my first character, twin crossbows look sweet” list.

So I watched the Monk video, and I thought it looked pretty cool. It is about damn time someone decided that what the world lacked was Hungarian Ninjas, and I for one welcome our new Hungarian Ninja lightning-fisted overlords.

Awesome voice acting on the accents. I started off with a male one, booted through the startup intro and then thought, “Holy crap, this guy is so awesome, what does a female Hungarian Ninja sound like, OMIGOD RUN GO SEE GO SEEEEE”

I do not regret my decision. Sunshatter the female Hungarian Ninja is a lot of fun.

In getting started, the Monk certainly felt powerful, I kicked some skeleton ass. It was pretty cool. Nice effects, a melee class with lots of “get to the bad guy fast” abilities, very nice.

The more things change, though, the more they feel the same.

The first thing that really got into my head like Deja-Diablo-Vue was how like Diablo II the gear situation felt.

One of the things I carried forward from Diablo II was my irritation with their loot system.

Drops were always random, and it was difficult to know what stats you wanted, and if you did know exactly what was optimal, good luck ever finding it.

I only ever played Diablo II single player, and I remember feeling really irritated that they couldn’t have drops that were a little more… focused towards being useful, but in different ways.

I’m a warrior, what do I need Intellect on my plate helm for? Why does my two handed flamberge give me +Arcane Power? WTF?

At the time, I figured it was so that, when playing Diablo II in a group for years, the drop of an actually USEFUL piece of gear would be cause for celebration, acrimonious arguments, and furious dissention. All the stuff that helps bond a group.

So, yeah, when I saw the return of some of the silly stat combinations, it brought me right back.

The reality of Diablo III is better, much better, the new game does not bear any real resemblance to how bad Diablo II gear drop stats were, but the feel is there on each wtf drop.

See, the reason it’s all good is, all that crap gear has a point! You can destroy it for component parts without regret. Plus, and this is amazing, as far as I can see there is NO soulbinding, so you can equip a drop, use it as long as you’d like, and then trade it to someone else.

Oh yeah, did I mention my shock at that change before? There is an Auction House, and you don’t have to decide between equipping an awesome item to level with or selling it. You can do both!

Level with that awesome item, then when you get an upgrade, turn around and break it up into forging mats, or sell it on the AH to someone else. Or stick it in your shared stash for an alt to use someday.

That… that is pretty amazing to me. It seems almost TOO useful, too considerate to players, to be a Blizzard game design decision.

Then again, the Black Market Auction House is coming soon, as well as account-wide shared mounts, and those are a bit of a shocker too. I thought Blizzard wanted us to run things a bazillion times hoping for that rare drop, and then suffer the anguish of the “soulbound on the wrong character that ran it once to help a friend” tragedy.

Your tears nourish the black soul of Blizzard developers, who, or so I’ve heard, are all retired Special Forces E&E Trainer cadre who miss torturing willing participants in a myriad of perfectly legal ways.

My amazement of the transferrable loot system was overshadowed by my annoyance at how confused I feel at Blizzard’s itemization.

Understand, I could answer all of these questions with a 30 second web search. That’s not the point. The point is to have the joy of discovery all on my own, and that joy has to be balanced by my inevitable irritation when I’m ignorant, and can’t figure out a solution quickly.

As much else that I love, I continue to feel confused with armor and weapons.

For example… are there actual armor types?

I look at an item description, and it seems sometimes it says an item is cloth, other times leather, but many other times there is no actual ‘armor class’ or type listed, just an armor value.

Stats are fairly obvious in association, but can my Wizard wear the same types of armor as my Barbarian? There are class-specific items with a class name in some pieces, but in others, it seems pretty shaky.

It’s not quite as obvious as the system that I, as a WoW player, am used to. Such as “You are a Mage, you wear Cloth. Suck it up, silk-boy.” Or “You are a Druid, you can wear Cloth or Leather armor, you have a level 60 Skill that says if you wear all Leather you get stat bonuses so you are intended to wear leather whenever possible, if you don’t like it go stick a feather in your butt and pop flight form, bird-brain.”

Not a big issue, just… ah, the feel of Diablo II in the air. Refreshing!

When I’d played my Monk for a while, I decided I wanted to try a ranged class. I was having fun, but I was curious if a Wizard would feel noticeably squishier, and if so, would that be more challenging? The Monk was feeling a bit too easy mode.

I created a Wizard. A male Wizard. I refrained from making the obvious emo jokes when I saw his default pose, I just named him Unbearable, and really, when you look at his pose, why wouldn’t you? I look at him and I know *I* want to smack that smug know-it-all smirk off his face.

Here is the funny thing.

Because my monk was a melee combatant, I worked hard to get weapon upgrades. More powerful paired Vampiric daggers means more stabby-stab damage, right? Sorta?

But the Wizard is a spell-casting inferno of magical destruction. I am throwing lightning bolts and orbs of arcane might at the bad guys, all doing with the blowing up thing.

What does the DPS of a sword have to do with the damage my fireball does?

Well, it doesn’t, or so I reason out, and off I went through most of the first act ignoring my weapon unless a Wand dropped, since Wands might affect my Magic Missile.

I was having a pretty hard time towards the end, fighting the waves of bad guys in the Cathedral leading up to the Skeleton King. I was getting swamped, and as good as Arcane Orb is, it was taking every bit of skillful use of Frost Nova and that Arcane Explosion thingie AoE and running and gunning to stay alive.

Then, I decided to toss a 14.5 DPS flaming spear into my weapon slot. Just cause, you know. Flaming javelin mages are so the thing, right?

Oh hey, suddenly my Magic Missile is doing HOLY SHIT I BLEW UP THE WHOLE ROOM WITH MY ARCANE ORB OMGWTFBBQFORREALS.

It turns out, and this was a hell of a surprise, it turns out that the higher the DPS rating on my melee weapon, the more powerful my magical spells are.

So… my weapon is a stat stick that has no intuitive link with my magical power, but does anyway. Fair enough, lesson learned, time to toast some Horny Tauren… err, goatmens.

It’s been lots of fun, dungeon crawling has never been more interesting. Learning to hold down the shift button whenever I want to blow stuff up at range (it keeps me from moving when I click), learning that I can click on my Templar companion’s portrait and train his skills and GIVE HIM gear to make him more powerful, there are all sorts of fun little discoveries so far.

And I’ll be honest with you, the fact that I am trying, screwing it up, getting myself in stupid situations and then discovering my error later? That is actually a large part of the fun.

There is something inherently perverse in how I’m playing the game. The moments that stand out for me as the best are the ones where I go “Oh shit! THAT’S what I was supposed to do! Well, duh.”

And yet… it’s been good.

I’ve been thinking, I’m having so much fun and being delighted by wonder and getting surprised by my mistakes and working through them, that I’m thinking I ought to try working ignorance into the rest of my day to day activities.

I’m thinking, from now on, when I’m driving I might want to stop turning my head around to see what is behind me and to the sides before I make a lane change. I think going to that extra effort to actually SEE the blind spots and make sure they’re clear before I change lanes is keeping me from having a certain taste of mystery, of wonder in my life. I think I should cut back on being informed, no turn signals either (why should I prevent other drivers from enjoying their own moment of enjoyable surprise learning experiences) and just glance in the side mirror and pop over in the same movement.

What could possibly go wrong with this plan?

Don’t worry though, I know I’m not the first one to think of this as a way to add a certain flair and excitement to my day. Hell, from what I can see on the road, I’m apparently the last one to realize how fun it must be.

Here’s hoping that you and yours are having a great time in whatever game you may be playing, and I’ll leave you with this tagline:

“Ignorance – It’s not just a playstyle choice, it’s a LIFESTYLE choice.”

Troubles in UK

I tried to tank UK normal last night, but it did not go well.

I had 11.3k health, 493 defense, 13.4k armour.

Was I taking crits? What is the minimum defense level for UK on normal? Crit immunity for a level 70 player against a raid boss (which is level 73) is 490 defense. The bosses in UK are level 72 and the mobs level 70. From Wowwiki a level 72 mob attacking a level 71 player has 5% + 0.2% chance to crit = 5.2%. I must lower my chance to be crit by 5.2%. Every point of defense beyond the base (of 71 * 5 = 355) lowers the crit chance by 0.04%, thus I need 5.2/0.04 = 130 defense points extra, thus my sheet total needs to be 355 + 130 = 485 defense skill. Thus I am over that by enough to not get critted.

We failed on Dalronn and Skarvald, with the DPS and healer getting owned a lot. Reflecting I think it was because the combination of shadow bolts from Dalronn and charges from Skarvald killed off the squishies – we killed Dalronn first or tried to kill them both at the same time, but his ghost was killing people. Perhaps next time kill them both at the same time, BUT interrupt Dalronn’s shadow bolts otherwise he will kill people. Also I can tank Skarvald and only secondarily tank Dalronn as he doesn’t seem to have an aggro table anyway.

I could maybe do with more health, on the successful run we did the tank had 20k but he was SWP geared. Still some leatherworking armor kits on 5 slots will increase stamina by 90, which means 11.4 * 90 health (for blood tank spec) = 1026 health. Or some normal Borean Leather kits (10g vs 80g) which give 60 stamina = 684 health, ie 60% of the health but for 12% of the cost. Hmm. Also my cloak and rings are pretty bad and I could maybe investigate some quest chains to get better ones with more stamina.

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GW2, Thoughts, RL Updates, and stuff for Friends!

I’ve been making a conscious effort to reach out to my friends more than I used to.  And of course we end up talking about gaming.  :)  But when you try telling someone they need to go check something out we all know that they rarely do.

As I thought about it, I was like, “I have a wesbite…”  So I’m putting some of it up here to link to them, and also for you guys to see as well.

Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 Trailer

MMO Manifesto

These videos are both by Arena Net (the Devs), and I recommend you watch the MMO Manifesto.  The scenes you see in the videos of the actual game play look even better in game btw!

If you buy GW2 now (pre-purchase in full) you get guaranteed access to ALL of their Beta events (that doesn’t include their closed Alpha).  And there will be NO SUBSCRIPTION.  You buy it, you own it, you play it.  End of story.  So beyond that, what are some good reasons to purchase this game?

Overflow Servers

Can’t play because of the queue?  No worries, you get shuffled to an Overflow Server where you can play while you wait until there is room on your server.  And everything you do is real and counts.

Guesting

Sounds weird, but this is a feature that allows you to go play with your friends no matter what server you are on.  This doesn’t change your “Home Server”, but it does allow you to go temporarily (for free) to a different server to play with your friends.

Side Kicking

Unlike City of Heroes it only scales down, but if your buddy is level 20 and you are level 45, you can go to your buddy’s zone and you will be “scaled down” to the max level of that zone so you can both play together.

Skill vs Gear

The focus of GW2 is player skill, not gear.  So you can achieve the Best in Slot items through Crafting, PvE, or PvP.  Your choice.

Automatic Max Lvl PvP

You can take any character you have (of any level) directly to instanced 5v5 PvP matches and have a full set of PvP gear with all of your abilities, traits, etc unlocked at max level.  Leveling up to later discover you like another class better is no longer as much of an issue.

More reasons

More than I care to list here.  But if you respect my opinion, this game is a *must* buy.  I think what I like the most about GW2 over their amazing game play and features is that it’s the first MMO to make it possible to play with your friends no matter what server they are on.

Moving in Less Than 2 Weeks!

I’ll be off to Mobile in 1 to 2 weeks from today (date isn’t set yet) to go train for the new job.  The apartment is going to have whatever internet the company had set up though, which means standard slow internet speeds most likely.  :(

I’m also getting a new cell phone, the HTC EVO™ 4G LTE, so I’m pretty excited to see all of the nifty stuff that’s come out on cell phones these days.  Realistically however it’ll end up being a glorified MP3 player so I can listen to music while at work or working out, heh.

Twitch TV: /skeleton_jack
Twitter: @SkeletonJack_

Randomising the winner, not the loot

Skyrim Guide – Red Hot & Converting…

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GW2 Dynamic Events

I came across this video over at GW2J and thought I’d share it.  The guy’s accent is a little painful, but bear with it. This is an amazing demonstration of how the Dynamic Events can really play out.

One thing to keep in mind is that this is actually a Renown Event (also called Renown Hearts because of their Heart symbol on the map).  This is before level 10 and some of the higher level events are far more impressive.  

Twitch TV: /skeleton_jack
Twitter: @SkeletonJack_

Black Markets in Pandaria!

Just saw news of this. There’s a Black Market in the game.

They sell really expensive, random stuff. Apparently the Black Market has stuff like:

• Tier 3 gear
• Mounts like Ashes of Alar
• Pets
• Really rare, hard to find crafting recipes

In other Priest changes:

• Glyph of Lightspring
• Glyph of the Val’kyr
• Glyph of Confession

I will now use Glyph of Lightspring instead. Nice addition! No more having to forcibly remind people to click the damn Lightwell!

Glyph of Val’kyr is now going to be on my number one list of minor glyphs to add to my Priest. I am pleased!

Et toi? (And you?)

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”
- Wayne Gretzky

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