BullCopra

WoW is ruined: Three still ride on

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 08:30:00 +0000

Yes, it's a provocative title. However, that is how it feels right now, as the Three Dunces/Stooges are clearing one Cataclysm 5-man instace at a time, one shotting the bosses which we spent several sessions to overcome with our first team.

Blackrock: Cleared in two sessions, with several wipes due several issues. Explanations, explanations, but in the end it felt less of a challenge than with the first team.

Throne of Tides: cleared with couple of wipes in two sessions only because the final boss event bugged. Our general thoughts were along the lines that the game is broken or we are just that awesome, clearing the place with our trio at just adequate level. Well, tankadin and rogue were at the proper level, healer-shammy one below. In the first team it was a pain to go through the instance at the proper level.

Stonecore: Whereas we struggled with different parts of this dungeon with the first team, we just blasted through it with the second. Granted, the team was just on level 83, right after the MoP patch, but it just felt wrong in the sense that our gear is not up to date. My shammy still has stuff of level 78 on him, so every gear drop with int/spi is an upgrade. And I mean every!

So we are playing, enjoying the giggles and amazing the update on the game client. The new one really blew some new light into the cinders and seems to be working as intended. Also the changes to talents and shammy play are a source of constant wonder, so there is still a lot to do. WoW is definitely getting more simple by the patch. I'm waiting for the five button combat, which is bound to be just around the corner, right after MoP burnout fall of subscribers...

I'm just wondering am I going to go for the Mists with my brothers... But I'm just wondering.

The Three will ride on. With less deaths and gore than before, but still riding on!

Long, dark teatime of the soul

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 05:15:00 +0000

It has been a while since I blogged. Feels pretty awkward, to be honest. But in all honesty's sake, I have to write again.

For I have been bitten.

I thought it would not happen. In fact, I fought pretty hard to find all the negatives and did not let myself go easily. But some things just happen, they are bound to happen. No amount of planning, cunning or deviations can help it.

Even though I have next to sold my soul - again - I still have this nagging feeling, this fear. What if it fails, what if this is all but the rush which has taken me time and again and forced me to do silly things in hopes it would get better eventually. And it hasn't.

This time I took my time. I tried to bend it, break it, even abandon it. And boy, did it try it's best to do the same.

But in the end, after two almost failures, after three periods of improvement and expansion, I swallowed it all: hook, sinker and line.

The Secret World.

I still have gripes with the button mashing combat system. I still haven't got the grasp of the huge amount of abilities, and to be honest, the ability wheel makes my head spin. And do not start with the clunky animations: realistic modern day genre could use more fluid motion capture animations.

What really got me was the depth of intrigue in the storylines. The way you can find sidequests here and there just by exploring. The way you are ushered onwards by giving winks, nudges and hints which make you WANT to go where the story is taking you. It's not hand holding like in the 300lb behemoth we all know and relate to, it's a 'kind of' freedom of doing what you will and not worry about if it's right or not.

I can already tell you that the power gamer in you will cry each time you find a new side quest along the road, only to notice that you cannot take that one additional because your three side quests are running already. Which one to pause, which one to put on hold?

Like Ardua said in his review, The Secret World is not your regular WoW copy: it's a mature MMO for a thinking player. It will be hard to grasp to the hardened WoW/Rift veteran, because you cannot push through the encounters only by pushing buttons and getting better gear.

Well, that wasn't completely true. Gearing will be the achilles heel in the game, even though there are no levels.

In the last Beta Weekend all but the investigation quests were open, and there was plenty enough to do in the starter area of Kingsmouth. So much that I barely touched the adjacent area of Savage Coast, and I didn't get the chance to run the first group instance of Poseidon. But the amount of quests, side quests, lore (yeah, shinies!!!) and exploration in those small areas were enough to convince me that there is more beneath the surface of this game.

I won't be placing a pre-order, nor will I be in the launch, but I definitely want to have this game in my active games. It's kind of heavy in it's tone and stories, so I couldn't play more than 2-3 hours in a row (where WoW and Rift I could go on for 5-10 hours at a time).

I will play World of Tanks in the meanwhile. Until the Dark Days return.

C out

Free mount? Count me in!

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:00:00 +0000

Allods became 'mature' as a MMO. I mean, it came one year old and because of that they hand out free mounts to all 'established characters'. Which in short means characters who have reached the capital city and have access to the mail box.

Allods itself hasn't changed much. It's still pretty, eye candy, with nice features and very unique feel to the graphics and all. In a way, I could recommend it if you were on WoW but wanted to have something wee bit different to try.

The talent grids have changed and all characters not so up to date will find their skills and talents reset. Which is especially nice when you think of a returning player who had the version 1.04 on as the current version of the game is something liken 3.07...

To my slight frustration the starter area has been revamped to be very, very easy and unchallenging. The first group opponent has been removed and the hard end bosses are... well, meh. Giant meh, to be honest: even my healer type with his basic damage spells was able to kick their hairy behinds without a problem. Maybe they were the first challenge in the starter area, as everything else was so bland. No more monsters attacking you if you were not cautious.

It seems that 1st of May also added some bonuses, as you could get double the stuff from gathering quests compared to normal, which made the Survivors reputation gathering very, very fast and easy.

As I talked about the game with my sons - who played earlier with me - one of them said the main issue of Allods. It's just too similar with more of the same to play as WoW to make any distinction between the two.

We'll see how long I can endure that.

On Champions my daughter pointed out the biggest flaw of that game: all the quests are just beating people up in general. Repetition after repetition. Except for the Action Packs, cartoon story quest chains which can normally be acquired by purchasing them. Now they have obviously opened at least two of them to everyone as they revamped the game a bit, and I sincerely have to say that Whiteout has been the best I have experienced in the game so far. It took me about two hours - solo - to go through the story with it's investigations and interrogations, and I was ready for more as that was up!

I know the action packs have been there all the time, but I have never even wondered what they were about. It would be great to have a balanced team to take on one to see how it would fare then.

The alerts - the new random instances - are more or less dead to me. Go in, kill-kill-kill, loot.

Not fun really. Especially as most of them are populated with low level characters like myself, with too few skills to cover up the whole team. Being a support character without the support skills will eventually be the doom of the team, really.

Anyhow, fare safe!

Team Two to the victory - again

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Wed, 02 May 2012 06:20:00 +0000

Last weeks news, really. Three brothers took on Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning and - unsurprisingly - conquered them both.

It's getting pretty boring already to be able to go through two instance in one evening, even more so because we have to find ways to get wiped, consciously.

Hecklers, do we really have to pick up the heroics to get any challenge here, huh? Then again, with heroics we know that three appropriate level characters can never dish enough damage to counter the rage. Thus this is vain to even mention.

On another note: the distribution of experience changes considerably after you hit 80. Really. Which is a nice surprise after the fast forward push forward of Northrend before hitting 80. I have only one faction I want to get my shaman to get revered with, and that's the walrus people. Kaluak.

Of course it would be nice to get that pretty Dragonshire mount, but I can't arse myself into doing the stupid flying daily anymore. Of course getting the tabard would be one solution, but I have still the main factions not done and then there is the Guild rep to gain.

Talking of which, it took this long for our miniature guild to hit level 2. Boy it felt good. It was an achievement, really, something to cherish.

That's all for now from the WoW front.

Dark days are coming: are you game already?

Superheroes away

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:00:00 +0000

How clever things new owners sometimes do.

I mean, I liked Champions Online when it turned F2P. But I ran out of steam as it is really, really boring to go through the quests which are a repetition of the same over and over.

Now the new owner, Perfect Worlds, introduced some nice revamping and features to suck me back. It was exactly 160 days since I had last logged in (how nice of them to state that in the login room... :P ) as I punched my Mystic, Mystico to the world again.

The first thing was that the skills were reset. And the whole crafting had been revamped. And there were new specializations.

And a new bar beside the minimap.

Alerts.

You can say whatever you like about random group finder WoW introduced way back when, but you cannot deny the fact that it created waves. Alerts are Champion's ripple of that wave: you volunteer to help in an alert posted by the Defender himself and you are pitted with four other superheroes against a supervillain and her/his henchmen.

Now here starts the fun. And not so fun.

The alerts are quite straightforward fights against various powers and groups of henchmen. Full on, blast away. The fun part is the fact that the low level superheroes (like my level 13, 14 and now 17) are elevated to fight at level 30. Just like in the PvP scenarios.

The not so fun part is the fact that you usually end up in a group where the utility type characters either do not know how to heal or do not possess any healing at all. So as a low level superhero you are out of luck if you get the beaten: you are really on your own. Remember to bring your own brews and heals is the only solution.

However, there is a twist which I like a lot. Some of the scenarios are timed, so that if the team doesn't perform properly, you get out without the final reward. So you really have to do your best or you do not get the reward in the end.

Of course this leads to a situation in which people start to choose 'easier' alerts, avoiding the Train Wreck alert completely. I have not been in a group which would have conquered that particular scenario, yet, but I can only hope that the reward from it is spectacular enough to warrant the time limit. Then again, I have already found my 'most hated one' which I avoid most of the time...

There are several tweaks and changes to this great game, and if you haven't logged in for a while you may be in for a treat or two.

Champions Online is far from dying out. So check it out.

PS. My handle is @copra (quite surprisingly) in case you're wondering...

Brothers united

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:43:00 +0000

As mentioned in earlier post, all the original Stooges are now under the same guild as the second team. In short, Three Stooges are now all in the same guild, which in turn is owned by... Three Stooges!

Due to the fact that we got a bit carried away and accustomed to the guild perks over our time in high level raiding guild, we came to the conclusion that the more the merrier. In short, The Order of the Fist opened it's doors and was added into the guild recruitment system.

We do not promise anything apart from our own Thursday threesomes. The guild is there to provide social playground and some peer support, nothing less, nothing more. And maybe a few laughs on our attempts to cheat fate in various forms.

Let it be heard once and for all: the way the Northrend has been treated since Cataclysm struck is preposterous. I have been deliberately trying to do grey quests in there not to level up too fast, but it's impossible. I think I'm getting full exp out of grey quests, which leads to the fact that Pölökky, my shaman healer, is almost lv80 already and I haven't even touched the Wrathgate quest chain! I have dabbled a bit in Borean Tundra, did the Kaluak quests to get the experience and have done the instances up to Gundrak, once each. And I'm at 79 (98%)!

That is just pure stupid in it's worst. But then again, I said the same about Outlands right after WotLK launched.

Now I wonder how much Outlands has gotten faster to pass through...

Cheap thrills.

Three still rule

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Three dunces took yet again a new feather into their bright, shiny and feather filleg high hat by tackling a new set of Northrend dungeons at about the right level range. Ok, Team Dos - or Two as we cleverly put it - has evolved a bit over the level range of the dungeons just now, but we're catching up with the glass roof soon enough.

The night's menu was Violet Hold, Zul'Drak and Gundrak, and despite the fact that we were undermanned, we were astonished how easy they felt. And how darn challenging they have always been for full random groups in the past. Granted, though, that our level range at the beginning of the show was 77-79 and the instances are only above 75, we were a bit over, but it's fair to say that we gave some by having only three dunces of us to meddle with them.

Whereas I was totally of the opinion that the game mechanics have been changed and the instances have been made much easier than they were when WotLK was in its prime, the rest of our threesome were of the opinion that we have just gotten so much better in the game. While the latter may be true, I still believe that our fumbling with our secondary group cannot be that much better than our performance with our prime team way back when we really tried to learn the classes and their quirks as well as possible.

Be it one or the other, these instances were simply not too challenging and as we earlier - in WotLK prime - spent one evening downing one instance, we now ran through three in same time. Without breaking sweat. Without complaining that it's impossible.

Not without wipes, though. That would have been unheard of, and by the instance rules of the Order of the Fist, unacceptable negligence of proper day's work.

This being said, both teams are now within the motherly confines of our own guild. As we had been neglecting our 'main' characters after running our of Cataclysm challenges (we three manned all five mans, you cannot arse us to try them on heroic, really), we weren't contributing to the other guild anymore. So it was only fair to find our mains without a guild tag after a long while. Thank you for having us among you, Highland Warriors, it was fun as long as it was. I sincerely hope that you down the big bad bosses in the Mists of Pandaria the way you have (mis)treated the bosses of the earlier expansions!

Now this blog is linked to Google+ and that part should be taken care of, too.

The only thing I kind of feel bad about is the fact that World of Tanks doesn't create great stories. Or the stories are mainly the same: joined a random battle, our team was a bunch of monkies, the other team was a finely tuned machine - we lost. Of course there are situations when random battles are something quite different any you find yourself as the last man standing, but they are so far and wide.

When there is no big story to tell about, then there is nothing to tell.

This blog will stick to the games with stories.

Weekend tanked away

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Oh. My. God.

First of all, noticed just now that I have fought in one thousand battles in World of Tanks. My son, who is a wizard in all things FPS and related - heck, what ever game you get your fingers on! - has 'only' 700 battles under his belt!

That said, I have fought so many only because I have mostly switched to another tank as soon as possible. I have ran most of the lower tier tanks to elite status (except US based ones...) and thus wasted games and experience in vain.

Lesson one (if you ever start in WoT): choose your tank tree by the feel and stick to one or two tanks till you reach your goal. Spread yourself thin only after that.

I was in a good winning streak before last weekend. My win ratio was 54% at 800 battles, but then the in game match maker (MM which is cursed in WoT forums in so many ways) started evening out the odds. I think I was in the winning team in one every ten battles over the long weekend. Which really sucked and hurt, made me cross allover. ~~Thankfully my wife was not at home, so I was able to joke my frustration away with the kids.~~ Thankfully I got over it all by going to see Sherlock Holmes with the kids.

Yea, I liked the movie. Guns, bigger guns and Little Hansel.

The weekend was crowned by the fact that I got into the Clan I applied for. It will take some time to get accustomed to the fact that I can join a group of ~~complete strangers~~ fellow clanners to frag enemies. In a way I'm a bit jealous for the fact that a)I'm so old, b)I have a family to support and c)thus I have not enough time to devote to the game and enter the Clan Wars. Then again, taking into account the fact that the Clan War combats occur every so seldom, I could make the time.

The only thing is actually the fact that I don't have high enough tanks.

I really should concentrate on something. But I like going from a heavy KV-series to agile scouting T-50 to sniping sharpshooter of T-34 to supporting artillery role of Grille and back, so it's kind of difficult to settle down for just one gaming style. I master artillery best, at least according to statistics, but I like the other roles as well.

You know, it can get lonely at the back, too.

Shoot sharp and aim straight!

Revisits and some more

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:13:00 +0000

It was in August, 2009, when we met with this enormous whirling monstrosity last time. Many corpses and their pieces have floated under the bridge since that fateful encounter, even the main characters of the Three Stooges have changed their appearance. Some even their gender altogether.

But there we were, Three Dunces, sons and daughter of the famed Three Stooges who are still waiting for the challenge to take at level cap, to go and blunder in a five man instance in trio.

We cleared the Auchindoun instances in one run at gentle level of 68 for the Paladin tank and the gender-bender Rogue, and 72 for the hyperactive dwarven Shaman. What a disappointment it was to see how time has raped this instance, how the grand designer gods had ravaged the game mechanics and - well - the whole experience to something we didn't even recognize at first. Considering the fact that our first visit to the instances were almost ten levels higher (!) and were still a bit challenged. Our tank was then lv76, healer as well, and the rogue 'only' 72, and I wrote earlier that the challenge seemed just right then.

Nothing has changed, really, except the difficulty level of the game. We are playing completely different characters, I'm messing more with my Shaman than Bishopgeorge with his priest, but still we're coping with relative ease with the stuff presented in the game. I fear that when this troupe hits Northrend, the instances there are going to be total pushovers.

I don't really fear that. I know it already. The few hours more to played with these unknown classes hones the excessive edges off of our game and everything becomes smooth as butter.

On the other hand, my tanking experiments in World of Tanks are progressing nicely. I'm in the stage of the game that I feel that I'm still learning and what I'm learning contributes to my playing. In fact, it contributes immensely, making my fights fun even if I'm losing. Mainly because I can feel how I am doing my best, pushing myself a bit further and finding a new way to use my tank's abilities. As I'm progressing four lines at the same time - and the tanks are completely different and fill different roles - I'm not succumbed to the grinding people are complaining about in the forums. Oh, yes, they are a loud bunch, they are.

Anyhow, I'm applying to a clan, offering the few hours a night to achieve higher goals with a group of people. I hope I can bring out the best of things into the team.

Wish me luck!

The beginning of 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 07:57:00 +0000

Happy New Year to everyone.

Not going to make any predictions nor any promises. That taken out of my chest, I have the following in mind for the next year (in games).

Three Stooges will be riding weekly, as often as life permits. That much has been said and decided so far, as it is the most fun in WoW anyhow to do things which are easy to others in a way that is hard for us. Might also pick Gnomore up and see if I can arse myself into the pacifist way of life again.

World of Tanks seems to be the 'non-pacifist' part of the day. The game sucks me into a new random battle after another, which makes it hard to just quit. Now sitting on a tier IV scout I'm starting to find all new ways of annoying those huge tier IX tanks which makes life very interesting (and usually ending fast in a BOOM!). On the other hand, my artillery unit is progressing through the harder random battles with blazing guns and mostly with one or two kills under it's belt, so I'm seeing both sides of the play, so to speak.

Skyrim has still some achievements worth unlocking and some strings not yet tied. In a way I'm already waiting for the first content pack to spice the world a bit up, even though I still haven't joined the civil war at all. I'll check all the other storylines before making the 'big' decision (which I think I have done already).

Otherwise I think the year will be pretty much the same: skipping from one F2P to another while trying to keep up with the news and craze of the new and upcoming things.

As life otherwise permits, of course.

Official Tanking post

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:45:00 +0000

I got lured to tanking again. This time with full plate, tower shield and a huge weapon spewing death and destruction beyond sight.

My sons got me into World of Tanks.

Luckily I was able to take some advantage of the Holiday bonus, so I kind of skipped the training sessions in the starter fights by gaining enough experience to research tier III tank in a blitz (pun intended), even though I went for the Soviet tanks with the famous T-34 in my mind. It's iconic tank in Finland, in a way The Tank for everyone who has ever gotten into WWII over here.

My initial notes about the game are covered with sugar crust, which is slowly starting to crack. It is very easy to get in, you just download the game, create an account and join a random battle with any of the three tier I tanks you are given. You will gain experience and money out of every battle, experience to research better modules for your tanks and opening new, improved tanks and money to pay for the repairs and ammunition.

Simple, eh? I dare you to try it, for WoT has cleverly induced an addictive element not too far from the kind you get from old coin-ops, Tetris or Bejeweled: I can do better in the next match. I. Can. Do. Better. Next time. Just can be done. I will.

The only gripes so far I have with the sudden increase in the price of the modules and module research. All is fine in the first three tiers, the research costs reasonably for the amount of experience you get from a battle, but then - as you try to go from tier III to tier IV - you hit this incredible increase which rises the cost from 1250 points to 5600 for one single module. And it gets worse in the IV to V, where the highest module research goes above 20k.

The module in question is the final of the research before you get to the next tier tank, which makes it extremely frustrating: you are not getting more experience from a battle, you just have to grind more. On the other hand, you will learn to use that particular tank better, but in most cases so far this has proven to be in vain as the next tier tank usually performs completely differently from the previous one, even though they might have similar function on the battlefield.

Now I'm progressing in two branches of the tech tree for the Soviet tanks: one to go for a fast and agile scout (T-50 at tier IV), another for the forementioned T-34 (nickname Sotka) for some fighting action. But as I'm sitting at tier III on both sides, it's frustrating as hell to have that one experience hurdle in front of me while I get about 250-300 exp for a fight. And experience is not transferable from one tank to another...

Anyhow, were I a bit better with my scouting and shooting, I might make more. Then again, the game is so addicting and so much fun when played with my sons in platoons that I may even forget that. Note on platoons: in free to play you can pair with your friend (form a platoon), but only with one. You have to purchase a premium account to be able to form bigger platoons, and the cheapster in me is not willing to do that. We will just switch our platoons as fit and have helluva time on the battlefield.

World of Tanks is fun, suitable for quick battle every now and then, but can you really restrict to that one or two randoms at a time?

I can't.

Playing, gaming...

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:11:00 +0000

We've had some nice discussions with my son over the Christmas. This is the oldest one of them, at the tender age of 16. He's pretty clever - I know, I'm his father - and a pretty avid player of games of all sorts. A bit too avid would his mother say, to which I can only add my last words in any such discussion. Being "Yes, dear".

Anyhow, we've been discussing about the current games and how people play them. In fact, he brought up how he's being sick and bored of the people complaining about how MMO's are this and that and how they dig and tweak their characters to a point where they can take on any boss they like. In his words "that's not playing the game, that's playing for winning the game!" To which I can only add that it's the way you play any game to see the 'Game Over' screen and take heed on the signs to continue life.

The most recent incident of the sorts I have encountered comes from the new favorite of the MMO world. Yup, guessed right, it's SW:TOR with it's shining...whatever (yes, haven't played it and most probably won't in a while). I was kind of shocked to learn that people are getting anxious about the end game already, as they have capped their characters already. Come again? The game has been out about two weeks, has eight archetype based advancement lines and accompanying stories to go through?

And people have already 'won the game', gotten all out of it there is to have?

This is the thing with all MMO's out there, thanks to the competitive nature of current day people. Instead of taking the time to enjoy the game/life/hedonistic pleas, we take for granted that we always have to win. In MMO's there is nothing to win except the enjoyment of playing the game. Not gaming the living daylights out of it!

In a way, I would say to the designers of MMO's only this: make the content during the levelling the best content in the game, with fluff and extra doing for the people who enjoy it. They will stick with your game no matter what as long as there is new crafting skills to cover, new discoveries to make, new anything to gain or experience. Let the players blasting through the levelling up to the cap be disappointed, because they are the ones who get bored first and leave your game at the first sign of not being 'challenging' anymore.

Hecklers! In any MMO (I wish I could add the RPG in there, too...) the character who gets to the top of the levelling curve should be a revered hero and ought to retire. Instead, s/he will be living in eternal middle age crisis, trying to prove her/his worth to anyone who wants to listen.

Which isn't many, except the lot of similar failures out there.

Like I've said, I love to play the games for their content: 'end game' content is artificial and there should be the GAME OVER sign above the end bosses lair. But when I want to play a game for winning, I choose something else than a MMO to do it.

I'm more in favor of playing than gaming anyhow. What's your choice?

Update on... well, games

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:10:00 +0000

Skyrim. Oh Tamriel, you harsh mistress. 100 hours played, many more to come even just by completing the quests and storylines. So much to do and quite honestly, no other game feels or looks the same anymore.

WoW. Yesterday I logged in to find my mailbox empty. Even on my banker/AH toon. Own fault, it had been over a month since I had logged in last time. Lost about 300k worth of stuff, some of which were recipes and schematics not found in the game anymore. The funniest part? I didn't even feel sorry. My guess is that Cataclysm was the final expansion for me. Now I'm trying to log in weekly for the Three Stooges/Dunces evenings on our second team, every time more astonished how much the game has been nerfed down since the last time we were going through Outlands (soon Northrend).

Otherwise. I haven't been playing anything except Skyrim for the last month or so. And I don't even feel any pull of any other game at all. If Skyrim killed my will to play anything else, so be it: it has been the best game I've ever laid my fingers on.

If only it wasn't so predictable... But then again, everyone is free to tweak the game they want!

Oh, shiny!

It's dead, Jim

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:24:00 +0000

First of all, I'm not dead. Nor is this blog. It's this.

Yes, I'm participating and I'm already couple of thousand words short of the aim I'm supposed to be at.

I think it's WoW that is dead for me. I got somewhat pepped up last week when we had the ongoing Three Stooges evening with our second team (paladin, shaman, rogue) and logged in with my - little played - Unholy Deathknight, tender at level 82. Ran some idle quests while queuing for a random and got into the Vortex Pinnacle.

I fully agree that I'm not up to the gear nor anything, but I also must state that I was the only one not stacked with heirlooms and top enchants. I am still running around with my lowbie quest gear, with one or two blues in the mix. And due to this, I was severely lacking in the dps I may have been supposed to deliver. Considering this, I wasn't the one standing in the fire. I was not the one disconnecting repeatedly. I was not the one constantly pulling unnecessary aggro and definitely not the one pulling stuff off from the pally-tank. I even mentioned this and got mentioned for being ok in these regards.

Still I was kicked before the wind dragon boss. The only thing I saw was a note from the warlock who was repeatedly disconnecting and stalling our progress stating "Just kick him" before I was ushered back to the world.

No mention of doing something differently. No mention of getting better or asking if I knew things.

Not. A. Thing.

Sure, where the others were stacking incredible 11k dps at that level (heck, Förgelös barely can make that on a good day on our lv85 trio!!!), I was doing 'merely' 3.5k. Maybe that was the reason, not the overall performance.

So WoW is dead for me except for the Brotherly Thursdays. The community and the players currently suck and are obnoxiously stupid.

I rather spend my time in Rift or Champions Online. At least I'm not judged by an arbitrary number in either, yet, but by my performance and behaviour.

Messing my brain in free to play

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:39:00 +0000

Human brain craves for novelty. It thrives on new things, learning new skills, seeing new things. This is why a new MMO is so interesting and this is also why there is a honeymoon after the launch before you can really say anything about the actual game.

But what comes of the brain which is succumbed to repetition and same mechanics for a prolonged period of time? Lazy and confined, like an animal in a zoo, which has been confined to a too small cage. If set free, it will continue the compulsive behavior without even understanding that the cage has been removed.

I've been going through MMOs which have turned from subscription based to free to play, and I can say that I'm pretty much full of the whole genre. I had confined my brain in WoW for too long to even recognize the lack of freedom the game is built with. The jump to EVE was obviously too big a paradigm change, because the freedom and solitude was too much to endure.

Now as I have grown both as gamer, MMO player and human being, I have viewed the games I have tried from quite a different perspective than earlier. Over the last few weeks I have meddled with Rift (ok, I have a sub in there), City of Heroes, Champions Online, Guild Wars and Fallen Earth, last of which came to me as a surprise that it had went F2P.

And boy are they different and strange learning experiences!

First of all, I have learned that I'm more into eye candy than I wanted to believe. City of Heroes, despite the upgrades to the starting story and all, is clunky and the graphics are appalling to me. It underlines the problem I have had with Lotro for example by having the character graphics at different depth or shade than the surrounding area. I would have expected that this 'graphic novel' style would have suited to a superhero game, but it just makes the character look like a sticky note on a report: an added feature. This is where WoW still excels the rest of the AAA games: the graphics are seamlessly in the same style and depth and belong together.

Champions was the next and change from CoH to Champions was like reinventing the superhero MMO! The graphics work like in a cartoon, the over exaggerated hues just bring out the graphic novel style stories and the starter zone flows like a cartoon: from one scene to another. But there is something lacking in the heart of the game, which comes apparent later on. Something I just cannot put my finger on, but it's not calling me to go any further.

Including GW, none of these have even tried to change the MMO in any particular way. Champions has been closest with some pretty nifty ways it handles the skill use and provides just enough choice in the character development to make the character feel own without overwhelming the player. A huge plus is also the fact that I have played Hero Games' pen and paper superhero game, so the basic concepts are very familiar to me... :D

Enter Fallen Earth.

I could rant, but the honeymoon has only begun. I can see some shortcomings in the system, but I regret that this game was not developed by a daring big studio. But then again, it would have never been this rough gem it is. The mere concept of shooter kind of MMO pushed me away when the game launched, where as it should have been the point to really go and try it. The basic "Aftermath"-type postapocalyptic MMO should have been one of the genres I should have tried right away (been a sucker for this genre since the first try of Gamma World way back when).

The game is in the right direction to be honest. Spinks just asked about how we are coping with the coming winter in MMOs and I responded that the MMOs have to evolve for the new spring to come. Fallen Earth has done that in a way I can see evolving the genre. It has a quest driven storyline in it. It has sandbox freedom which enables you to develop your character in a meaningful way even by crafting (guess who is progressing this way... ) and it has graphics which are not too clunky. And the economy, fully player driven, so almost everything above basic materials and guides have to be manufactured by someone.

What strikes me the most is the discussion and questions in the [Help] channel. It really shows how far we have gone from the adventure games of old where you really had to think and do and explore to even get along. These players wouldn't stand a chance playing any of the first four Ultima series' games! And still Fallen Earth is being gentle with players by showing resource nodes, merchants, enemies and all in the minimap and having the NPC telling you whatever you need to know to survive.

The best part of FE for me is the fact that I can pop in for a few minutes to start crafting, do some gathering or scavenging and log off, knowing that everything I just did progresses my character in a meaningful way. And while logging off in a town you can be sure that you have basic resources near by, you can get into the 'chores' right away.

Like I said, I'm still in the blissful honeymoon stage with the game, but my brain is really enjoying the novelty, the new thinking it has to come up with and the possibilities this game might hold in the future.

But today it's Three Dunces/Stooges again in WoW. I can live with that.

If not taking into account SWTOR and GW2, what game is satisfying your brain's craving for novelty?

Fool me around, dear

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 06:47:00 +0000

Level cap killed my fun in WoW. Several times over, especially the most recent 'grind rep till you really drop dead and quit' Firelands stunt.

Like I've said time and again, I like levelling up. I like the stories, sometimes even the feeling of being the hero of the day. But when I hit the cap, I really feel that this was it: the stories are told, there is nothing more to go for - especially storywise.

Raiding is no story. Raiding is a passtime for those who play the MMO to win. It's the cornerstone of competitive edge in the genre. Forget the RPG part of MMO's alltogether, as that has been forgotten way back when.

I had a lengthy post written in my head about all this, but the frustration got the better of it. I had clever statements in the lines of comparing the new MMO character's growth - or evolution - to the full blown hero and how that doesn't come anywhere near the concept of Universal Hero which Joseph Conrad coined and George Lucas (among others) later utilized succesfully. There is no such evolution of character in MMO's because everyone is as much a hero as the next player character!

I had also clever reasoning why raiding per se is outdated and faulty design, as it came to be from game mechanics present in Everquest. You had this huge, next-to-unbeatable monster for which you needed really huge amounts of people to beat. The mechanics stated that no single character could have ever fallen those monsters. It was part of the game. Then came the instanced dungeons and raids and it was taken as a norm that the 'final' monsters reside in instanced 'dungeons' with their ever breeding minions.

And the game was over for the heroic evolution on the player character.

Why? Because everything started to evolve around the gear required by game design to fell the beast. No amount of character development was needed, only hitting the cap and gearing up.

Take the quest system to it and you can easily see the current state of levelling: the speediest method wins by far. In Rift, which I currently play most, you get the 'veteran reward potion' which grants you 100% more experience for 2 hours. Clever way to give the players the choice either to level up fast or to take the scenic route. In WoW the 1-60 content has been watered down so much that when you earlier had trouble with world elites of your own level, you can now take down one 2-3 levels higher without breaking a sweat. And you level up the questing zones so fast that you cannot even complete the quest chains in one area without the quests in that chain going grey.

In short, the story of a young farmer's helper growing into a world saving hero is not there. It cannot be unless the structure of the games is either changed or... we just move back to the single player games.

Bring back the world bosses, which are not contained in the instanced containment fields. Different ways to gain recognition, prestige and power.

And please, please... stop calling 'reputation quests' content. I mean, if you can show me one heroic fiction story in which the hero must do simple, menial tasks time and again to gain favour or influence only to be able to purchase that one shiny piece of gear for his next challenge, then I may accept this. Otherwise it's really just the game developers deliberately wasting the players time because they just couldn't come up with any better.

Content should be something that entices you, lures you deeper into the story or game, makes you feel emotions and grants eventually the sense of accomplishment. The best quest chains do that time and again, even if you know them by heart already.

Senseless reputation grind doesn't. Except for the feeling of accomplishment, which is usually described as being a relief.

How many times you have to be fooled before you see the vanity of it all and say that it's enough?

(Discussion in my Google+ )

Many faces of content

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 06:25:00 +0000

I've been kind of catching a trend in discussion around the blogosphere and I know I'm a bit late on this. To be honest, I haven't even read my blog reader over the summer, so I really don't know what is going on.

Who cares?

In MMOs we so much love and love-to-hate there has to be some reason why we keep on coming back to this form of 'interactive entertainment'. Yes, let's be honest about it. MMOs are not games because there are no set winning conditions. No "Game Over" screen. No cake.

No. Wait. That was another game.

In the loveliest sense the MMO world would be a virtual life, virtual, boundless world to explore and exploit. However, that would mean also that the 'gameplay' of the sandbox would fall into the hands of the player alone, which in turn makes it too much like 'real life'.

Some say that the content in a MMO is that which is scripted in as quests: menial tasks leading to another and so on. If the quests are just those menial tasks to kill ten (insert a critter name here), then they are not content. They are a filler. A soap opera episode without any ties to the story arc of the season. The episode with big red reset button at the end. You know what I mean.

The best quests, however, are those which lead you to an evolving plot. In WoW there are some must see quest chains which do this, most prominently the Wrathgate-chain and the Mount Hyjal opening. Come to think of it, the whole Cataclysm expansion is one big evolving plot stuff, each area having their own storyline down there somewhere. Shattered by menial tasks, making it next to impossible to follow the actual story among the clutter of clues and sidetracks.

In WoW, there is no way of telling which quest leads to a bigger story.

As I've been playing Rift lately, there is this clever 'story quest' system in: the quests which carry a grand storyline are on a golden background. There are other stories which slowly lead you to these, but the general point is that you know immediately that these stories mean something. I would say that these are the grand story arcs of your favorite tv-series, and you know that you must see the next chapter. And fast.

But quests are not content alone. Nor is the totally open sandbox world. The content comes from the combination of the two, if and only when you add a bunch of players into the play.

You see, I think most of the content is what we create by ourselves while doing those menial tasks to find the story arc lines among other players of the play.

We players are the content. Without us the grand sandboxes and themeparks would be nothing.

PS. As of now, the comments and discussion can be continued in Google+.

Blog 3 years

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 09:13:00 +0000

I'm having pretty much going on in the home front, so I'll only mention that the blog is today 3 years old, this being 450th post in total. 150 posts a year, not too shabby amount of text to waste into the internet, eh?

Irrelevant post

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:40:00 +0000

This is actually a test.

You have been warned.
--- --- ---

The mist was thicker than usual: all the shades of brown, swirling and turning by unseen draft, drawing strange figures in the air. This fog had been there as long as anyone remembered, even though the elders said they remembered time with clear skies. But even they didn't remember time without the Tree. It had always been there, even before people came through the stars and set their foot on this land.

Shirrus snapped out of these thoughts. He hadn't been thinking anything about the legends of past since he was a wee boy, and he was a bit disturbed why they came to haunt him now, just when he should have concentrated on his job. Here he was, embracing the Tree with his climbing clamps, trying to find the next soft spot to pull himself up.

And he was concerned about the mist, how thick it seemed to be tonight.

Shirrus eased the clamp on his hand and gently lifted it up above his head. He could just barely see Brang above him, guiding their way to the forgotten platform he claimed he found on one solo climb earlier. Every climber knew you never went out alone, let alone on the softest areas where they were just now. The soft skin of the Tree wasn't safe and most of the climbers who had disappeared had told going on the soft.

Again Shirrus found himself in thoughts instead of the moment. His thoughts should have been on releasing clamp, finding a crease, securing the clamp and pulling himself up. He was getting angry on himself. And on the mist which was starting to bother his vision, sticking into his goggles and getting hard on his gown.

--- --- ---

The question remains, whether I should continue this?

This concludes the test. Have a nice day.

Autumn blues

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 09:38:00 +0000

Summer is over and the first rainy Autumn days are here.

Contrary to the belief, I am not dead. Nor the blog. In fact, over the summer I encountered several interesting and mindboggling things in WoW that I haven't been able to start writing again. Most probably it will result that I just forget what I experienced over the summer and focus on the current endeavours.

Which may be a reason for some to take this blog off of their reader, as it seems that the only thing I'm doing in WoW at the moment is playing once a week with my brothers, occasionally with my son. And with my brothers we are levelling up a second team in which we do not even have a warrior. Welcome the second team of the Three Dunces: Paladin (former Förgelös), Rogue (former Bishopgeorge) and Shaman (former Laiskajaakko aka me). Plus the occasional visitor, my son with his Warlock.

I tried to get interested in playing on a PvP server and working on a twink rogue. He's now twinked up to max without any Heirlooms, which is gimping him somewhat, but still he's pretty balanced to play, especially as I'm maxing myself as harasser and pain in the behind. My banker on that server has amassed over 12k gold in 2 days of played time, while providing the twink with appropriate enchants and all, so AH gamble doesn't hold any interest to me at all. Sufficient to say, there are enough players who have no idea of how valuable some things are and there are few enough of us who can pinpoint the profitable stuff.

Maybe the lack of guild and group in the PvP server serves as one reason why it doesn't feel good. Granted that a rogue is a lone wolf by nature, but as rogues have lost all their characterizing abilities over the years (or more specifically, the abilities are there but there is no reason in gameplay for disarm traps or lockpicking) they have become a commodity. Like all classes, really. It would be more honest towards all that the classes were reset to Tank, Ranged DPS, Melee DPS and Healer.

The other reason to sign me off of your reader is that I have decided to give Rift a new run. Started a new warrior-archetype on Estrael, US and will see how far I can play that game this time. The time difference will be the problem, as always when playing overseas, but I'm a loner anyhow and all contact with guildies will be a bonus. I think I gave up Rift too soon and in a way let Insult to Injury down by doing that. Sorry folks.

Blogging schedule may become more scarce, but I try to post twice a week from now on. The blog list will stay as it is, maybe a bit pruning is needed but otherwise it will stay. I'm reading only one or two blogs currently anyhow, but that is another story.

Let the games begin!

Summertime schedule

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:09:00 +0000

Ah, summer.

It means two things. First, the schools are out and the Wold of Azeroth is constantly full of students on leave. Material prizes fluctuate more than over the rest of the year, you can score great deals both buying and selling and generally the population is more on the jerk side.

Secondly, the summer vacation of the blogger. As a working dad and all, the summer weather poses serious hazard to the game time, even though there are a few projects I've taken to keep myself occupied over the furious outdoors living.

I - the one who resents PvP in all forms and functions - have started new toons on a PvP server. And I've locked already a rogue to lv 19. My baby warlock is about to be locked at 14, just to accommodate a more casual bracket. So the big, big project will be to level up that DK who will provide materials and money to these two. I'm now contemplating over the professions for the DK to a) generate nice nest money, b) to help the twinks gearing and enchanting and c) create a nice income to accommodate more toons in different brackets.

The second project is to level up an enhancement shaman along with my son, who's warlock is going to join the Three Stooges on their scheme of world domination. As soon as that addition to our team is geared up, the Three Stooges and Son will take on heroics and Wrath raids (stay tuned for more spectacular failures!).

Of course there is always my pet, Gnomore. I've played him once or twice now, without an update, but rest assured, when I need to slow down my pace in killing things and ... bigger things, I will return to him.

As a recap, summertime causes some delays in the posting schedule. Despite of this, the toons are going strong and my banker is now sitting on 280k (again!!!) with over 250 stacks of Cataclysm herbs in his mailbox, waiting to be milled.

Wishing you a warm and relaxing summer.

C out
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A lost soul

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:48:00 +0000

I recently started a new toon, a dwarven shaman, who is now badly geared and seeking his way in the world. At level 25 he's Enhancement specced with high portion of gear of +Sta and +Int contrary to the current +Agi gearing.

The answer to the Why? part is that this toon is accompanying my son's dwarven warlock and helping him to level up to the group of Three Stooges. Then it will be Three Stooges (or Dunces) and son, for sure!

Now we levelled to the cap of trial, which is 20 (with 10g money cap which annoys my son immensely!) in less than two couple hours sessions. The starter area of dwarves at least till Wetlands is so streamlined that it's impossible to keep up with the exhilarating speed the story proceeds. As it happens, you overlevel the quests way too fast for the questing itself being meaningful except for the storylines present. Doubly so, if you do as we did, went for LFD right at level 15 when it all comes possible.

Only because my son kept dinging earlier than me - and got to 20 around the time I got to 18! - I had to try the warlock way of doing it. So I rolled a troll warlock on another server to see how it goes.

And it goes. Like wham-bang and so on.

Warlock is a killing machine.

But it didn't explain the difference in experience we saw, so the only explanation is professions. You see, my son had mining in his professions, while I had skinning/leathercrafting.

Note to self (and others): if you only want to level up a character in WoW, do pick Herbalism and Mining to go by. You increase the rate of gaining experience right away = shorten the time spent levelling.

By this experiment I learned two things about the game.

First of all, WoW has lost it's soul. The thing that made it special in the beginning. It has lost the questing and adventuring part which made it loved and special, as the quest content is overlevelled by design. This has resulted the fact that the LFD groups are worse and worse, as people are trying to level as fast as possible by killing the mobs in instances as fast as possible and not taking anything else into account. A simple boss with any other action than tank and spank is considered a poor boss, unless it can be downed in few seconds/minute.

The game actually forces the speed levelling on player. If you want to enjoy the quests and their 'challenge' at appropriate level, you have to freeze your experience. That is completely against the idea of level based RPG thinking and thus is out of the question for players. You cannot enjoy the easy mode way the Old World is crammed into your throat, even if you loved the story and quests. It's too darn easy and too darn fast to overlevel.

Secondly, I just like levelling more than doing the same old dailies in the level cap. Even though the quests get over levelled, even though the elites met along the way are too easy at equal levels, even though the greens just keep pouring in from each loot. The quests and the stories are worth it to me.

Beats reading a bad novel any - rainy - day.

But I'm not talking about sunny days anymore.

WoW has lost it's soul of questing in favor of speedy levelling to level cap.
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Innovation in a bottle

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:52:00 +0000

Just a couple of days ago I downloaded Ultima 4: Quest of the Avatar and DOSBox to run it. As it happens, this is one of the games which really did it for me on the computer games, even though my early experience of games had been more or less the same arcade games as for anyone else. To be honest, first RPG I played was Ultima III, in which we just were all oohs and aahs how a computer game could be so like our tabletop RPG's. (Tells a bit about our early gaming group, really.)

As I started the game, I realized that it is exactly like I have been saying time and again in this blog, in some commentary on other blogs and in Twitter: the more the games get eye candy, the less depth and meaning they convey. Take Ultima 4 for example. The quest to fulfill the eight virtues is the game. Still the virtues, being so basic human ones, are pretty hard to come by. In a way, pushing the player through the virtues in the virtual world Richard Garriot - who wrote and designed the game - pushes the player to think about the virtues themself. Even if the player doesn't think them actively, the mere ideals are planted in the player.

It's a bit like what they say in Inception.

In a way, Ultima 4 put the quest for good into the games for a short while. Before - and after - the quest has been to kill the bad to save the world. More or less, of course there are exceptions. And yes, you know who you are, to whom this is pointed at. And in many ways Ultima 4 was a sort of turning point in many ways in RPGs as whole.

What happened next in Ultima series is history, too, which culminates into the conception of Ultima Online. Now I got so interested in Ultima series that I read through the whole history of it (in Wikipedia, but anyhow) and what struck me seriously was the fact that they had all these neat things already prepared which they took off the game because the players broke them. Like the Artificial Life Engine:

Starr Long, the game's associate producer, explained in 1996:

Nearly everything in the world, from grass to goblins, has a purpose, and not just as cannon fodder either. The 'virtual ecology' affects nearly every aspect of the game world, from the very small to the very large. If the rabbit population suddenly drops (because some gung-ho adventurer was trying out his new mace) then wolves may have to find different food sources (e.g., deer). When the deer population drops as a result, the local dragon, unable to find the food he’s accustomed to, may head into a local village and attack. Since all of this happens automatically, it generates numerous adventure possibilities.

Which they had to take away, because the players ended up killing everything faster than they could spawn back, thus voiding the neat AI behind it all. So - in words of Garriot - they had to rip it out of the game.

As the years have gone by, MMO's have evolved in many ways. Still the main quest of the hero-to-be is to kill the big bad ugly meanie, who is trying to destroy the world. This is theme is repeated ad nauseatum in all major MMOs out there, fantasy especially and even doubly so.

It's time for a MMO with quest for good. With intelligent, living world, for intelligent players.

Rift, with it's dynamic world events, is still doing the same old in a bit different package. It's doing it well, though and with variation, but there is still raiding in the end of the levelling tunnel, it still has gear dependent advancement and there is still bad meanie to kill to save the world. But Rift has shown that the 800lb gorilla isn't the only solution anymore, and that there are other possibilities to go about. If its possible to come to the same turf and challenge the giant - not saying that they won or anything - then it's more than possible to come outside of the field and do something quite differently. And win.

Now to the title. This is all what if and what might be.

As it happens, all the MMOs are based on the fact that people play the games through the internet. You don't actually pay for the game box nor the game client as such anymore, but for the privilege to use the game content which is actually on the game publisher's servers. The content is what is valuable, not the game the player has on the hard drive.

This means simply that there is no actual need to purchase the game as such, but only the right to use the game content. Yes, many free to play games use this already, and as it happens, most of the big MMOs, too.

Lets start from small. Take Minecraft for example: no box sales, the game is in beta and it's still generating good revenue from the beta sales. What if this was a homebrew MMO with a good, solid idea which worked? Like Artificial Life Engine to take care of the environment, challenging the players to begin with? A game in which the character would challenge the world in search to become better, to fill the virtues, to champion for the good?

I wonder what are the reasons that the nasty people in fantasy very seldom go about and kill everyone, like they tend to do in MMO's with open PvP. Maybe they don't want to work for their bread, tend their gear by themself or dig for their precious alone? Why aren't the games already such that the way of a ganker is the lonely, shunned and depressive way, not the glorified and revered they currently are? This could be worked out that by fulfilling the quest for good you actually get to see the "Game Over - You Win!" for the character. Why not?

What if the game also spawned the players randomly into the cities and towns around the world, much like people are born, but with the tools to become a hero? This would greatly lessen the impact of thousands of people entering the game in waves. Thus the environment might survive to a point where the players started to take note of how the villager who was first offering money for wolf pelts would ask them to get rid of the rabbits pestering the fields, later to paying for deer meat as the village is suffering from famine due to rabbits which had eaten all the grain?

The big problem with the publishing - both print and online - is that everything has to be now. Even then the games are opened in 'beta' stage, which is in fact a powerful marketing tool instead of actual beta. So what if the opening of the gates to this game was a trickle of alpha, beta, open beta and ongoing beta stage with constant improvements as the economy permitted?

I'm sure there would be room for a game with good idea, innovation and drive, without the huge marketing machinery around. But only as long as the idea is good, the base game works and people like what they see.

Minecraft wouldn't be what it is if any of these parts were lacking. Why couldn't this be achieved by a MMO, too?

One you remember, the other you don't

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Tue, 31 May 2011 11:43:00 +0000

I've been lately playing on my banker/AH toon, that being resto/balance druid. On and off through the AH blast and all, I somehow got into the healing business and made it the chore of my choice. All in all, I blasted through Northrend by dailies, just a few quest chains to keep things interesting and PUGs.

Of the quest chains I have to say that I'm very, very disappointed by the fact how the Wrathgate episode ends. It's very much the same lackluster anti-climax which is so familiar from the Cataclysm areas final quests. The chains just... end. In Wrathgate the end comes by Alexastra whispering the character to come to her, but then there is nothing. Only a kind of separate text blurb without anything relevant and the worst part is the fact that this happens every time you come close enough to the Wrathgate area, where Alexastra and her consort stay, like keeping guard for the dead.

What a stupid conclusion.

No more raiding into Undercity, no more feeling epic with the faction leader, no more being belittled by the big bad Forsaken.

Also what is evident is the fact that the content has been nerfed otherwise, too. You see, I soloed at about appropriate level some group content which I had hard time to complete as my protection warrior in this druid's restoration spec... with no problem at all!

Anyhow, the title of the post claims that you remember one but not the other. By this I mean that as I was PUGging through the Northrend normal instances, I noticed that I would remember that bad tank from the first time I ran with him, but not the good ones with whom I ran even some instances in a row. And how do I rank a bad tank in levelling instances? How's this: imagine the Oculus start. The deathknight tank runs off to the mobs along the route, running to the farthest one in each group and just pulling this one and hoping that the D&D area would pull the rest. He reaches the final mob guarding the portal to the platform before the rest of the group has been able to finish the leftovers even from the first mob. Oh, yes, he also has this uncanny way of getting enormous amounts of damage in within very short time.

How about this: the same deathknight tank runs through Gundrak in the speedy manner, through mobs without checking even his chat window. There comes a quiet moment and as I have ran out of mana, I announce it in party and general. As I sit down to drink, the tank picks up his pace again and almost, just almost dies before I come to save the day.

As I mention to this tank that he should at least wait for the healer to be around when he starts, the response is mind numbing.

"Why do you slack then?"

At least four runs with this Griseflax (see, I remember the name even) and I still cannot understand the creep.

Sadly, there have been a couple of excellent deathknight tanks along the way, whose names totally elude me. Thank you, dear anonymous tanks, for saving my day and playing the game as it should be played.

As a concentrated group effort, by taking everyone into account and making the best of the group. Rather than being better than the rest.

Thank you good tanks. Sorry I don't remember your names.
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Failure is not an option

noreply@blogger.com (Copra Jor-El) — Mon, 30 May 2011 11:59:00 +0000

Ah. Here again.

The latest adventures of the three dunces/stooges are unreported. There will still be one report missing after this one is done, and more to come on Thursday. We'll see when that report gets written, though...

Anyhow. After success in the Halls of Origination, the three -stupid- Stooges took up on the old nemesis. The Lost City of Tol'Vir. Remember the visit, eh? (Sidenote: it seems that this has been hinted a couple of times, but never really reported. Sorry folks, I'm only sub-human.)

It started as a nice retaliation with a vengeance on those mobs.

And our earlier nemesis, that General Husaam, was our puppy this time. "Look mom, no deaths still!"

Then we got to Lockmaw, and with the dps we can muster, it started to feel like a job. But...

Sleep thee well, Lockmaw!

On and on, till we downed...

but Siamat left untouched. "Can't touch this" was so right. The storm is strong in that one...

Back to Stormwind with the three of us, singing...

"We shall overcome"
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