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All posts for the month February, 2012

Bastion of Twilight, Rolls, and Giants

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 22, 2012
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We might be a few patches too late, but Mooglegem and I finally did Bastion of Twilight this weekend. There was a group doing a transmog run, and we joined mainly to finish Bastion of Twilight. As you can see, we proudly took over Cho’gall’s throne!

Surprisingly, Valiona and Theralion seemed to be the hardest fight in the raid. I guess this must be due to interesting mechanics since we all out-geared the entire raid. Cho’gall was significantly easier than the Twilight Ascendants also.

I also fulfilled a patch-long dream of flying off Deathwing after getting him to roll! In normal and heroic mode, you have to make Deathwing roll to succeed in the encounter. In LFR, you don’t need to make him roll, so by extension, you  should not make him roll. I always hope he’ll roll just to see it. It was kind of a let down. I expected the camera to stay fixed so I could actually watch him roll.

Oh my god! What’s that on the other island?! Giant Devee and Mooglegem!

New Mounts

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 20, 2012
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Three holidays at the same time might have been a lot of work, but at least I got a couple mounts out of it! First, we got out Darkmoon Dancing Bears. It makes me sad thinking about the painful way bears are treated in captivity (especially how they’re taught to “dance”). Still, I like collecting bears in WoW because bears are cute, okay?

We also snagged the odd Swift Lovebirds. In this picture, our Lovebirds are kissing! Or it’s possible they’re just being kind of ugly together.

(Horde) Love is in the Air

Posted by earthwormgem on February 14, 2012
Posted in: Devee, Holidays, Journal, Role-Playing. Tagged: , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Zug Zug

I actually made these totally sweet confections for my guild’s Secret Santa, but I never got around to posting them.

About a year ago, Harley sent me pictures of these beautiful Horde cookies from C is for Cupcakes with one sentence: “but how do we make them?!” They’re pretty fancy looking – with fondant maybe? …probably? I haven’t tried working with fondant yet. It sounds like a lot of work. Maybe I’ll make it a goal to try working with fondant by the end of this year. Hm…

I was pretty intrigued by the idea of making Horde cookies for months – I didn’t want to put a lot of time into planning them, but I really wanted to make them. Eventually, I got off my lazy butt and started researching custom cookie cutters. I severely mangled a few cookie cutters before I ended up with this thing:

Man, I need some RL blacksmithing skills. >__>

The hardest part was flopping these symbols onto the oval portion. The little arms would rip off, and I’d have to roll it out again. I’m sure if I had the patience to stick it in the fridge after every step (roll it out, stick it in the fridge, cut, stick it in the fridge, flop, stick it in the fridge, repeat), I could have avoided some real aggravation, but… *ahem* Thrall’s balls! The Horde doesn’t wait for anyone!

Anyway, I hope you have a great day!

Love is in the Air

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 14, 2012
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Happy Love is in the Air! And happy Valentine’s Day for those of you keeping track in the real world. Mooglegem decided to put down her Romantic Picnic Basket on the deck of the Skyfire before we chased Deathwing this week. Quite a few people decided to join!

I hope everyone’s spending the day with a loved one!

Grinding in LFR

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 13, 2012
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This weekend I did LFR as I always do. It was terrible. I enjoyed having the opportunity to see Dragon Soul at first, but I stopped having fun in LFR a while ago.

Why?

The trash is incredibly boring. The bosses are not challenging. We only wipe if a large portion of the group has no idea what they’re doing. There’s very little I need (two rings). The upgrades I do need aren’t even that helpful. (And of course, my computer can’t handle 25s very well.)

It seems to me that there’s two reasons to do anything in World of Warcraft. The biggest reason to do anything is that you enjoy it. The secondary reason is the reason on which Blizzard depends to keep us all paying; we do things we don’t enjoy because it will help us do the things we do enjoy. This is called “grinding.”

I like raiding. I like the increasing challenge of pushing ahead, and I like experiencing new content for the design, story, and lore. Doing LFR was great because it was a way to see Dragon Soul. However, there’s no challenge in it. Yes, there are still wipes, but they’re never because of me. The only reason to do LFR is for equipment upgrades and Valor Points. But upgrades are only important because they help you to do better. Grinding for upgrades falls into the second category of why we play World of Warcraft. However, I’m not raiding normal Dragon Soul at all. I’m not in a raid group currently, and PuGs all seem to want the full achievement. I suppose I could try talking a PuG into taking me, but it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble. The most Dragon Soul I’m seeing is LFR, and I’m obviously able to complete that easily every week. If that’s the case, why try for upgrades? Upgrades aren’t going to help me in normal mode because I’m not doing normal mode, and they’re not going to help me in LFR because it’s already not a problem.

Why even do LFR then? Well, that’s exactly what I’m wondering. I’m going to try to stop doing things that I don’t enjoy. Some small grinds might be worth it. For example, I’ll continue doing the Love is in the Air holiday boss for the chance at the mount. However, I’m not going to make a big deal about working LFR and other heroics into my week. I don’t even need Valor Points anymore, so is it really worth stressing over LFR for two rings that I don’t even really need?

There’s a part of me that wants to be as best equipped as possible, but is being “BiS LFR” really worth saying?

The Success of LFR

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 10, 2012
Posted in: Game Mechanics. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I don’t have access to Blizzard’s data to know whether or not LFR is successful. I suspect it is, and I have some personal examples to back this claim.

First, my guild has stopped raiding. While it’s possible that this was partly due to people not caring about Dragon Soul as much after seeing it in LFR, this is also the reason why I can thank LFR. I’m unable to raid normal mode currently, but at least I’ve seen it in LFR. Of course, the same can be said about Mooglegem and our other raiders.

The better story, however, is a friend of mine in a 5-man guild. He plays every Friday night with his small guild of close friends. They don’t want to recruit people they don’t know, they don’t want to merge with another guild, but they don’t want to leave their guild. Many hardcore WoW players might find this odd, but I don’t think it’s such a rare scenario. He had never raided before, and I  told him about LFR.

Last weekend he ran LFR for the first time. While it can seem very easy for those who have done normal mode, it was exciting for him and he was focused the whole time on his role, not even having the time to look around and enjoy the scenery. I’m sure as he continues to run LFR, he’ll become accustomed to it and get the chance to look at the detail and enjoy the encounters.

And he even won Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth.

Dev Watercooler — The Role of Role – World of Warcraft

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 9, 2012
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Dev Watercooler — The Role of Role – World of Warcraft.

Yesterday Ghostcrawler discussed class roles in WoW regarding classes that have multiple DPS specs. He discussed each different model in detail. It’s worth noting here that he didn’t say which was best, and he didn’t give any indication of the direction Blizzard will be taking in Mists. However, it’s still an interesting read.

Here are the roles he mentioned for DPS. These are his exact words put into a numbered list.

  1. Everyone is equal all the time
  2. Everyone has specialties and you match the spec to the situation
  3. You swap specs to gain specific utility
  4. There is just a best spec for PvP and PvE
  5. Don’t have multiple DPS roles

What should you take away from the whole discussion? This quote:

But Which is the Best Model?

Hell if I know!…

Taking a Break

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 6, 2012
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It looks like Carpe Flux Capacitor is taking a break from raiding. The last few weeks we’ve been unable to raid due to lack of attendance. Our guild leader took a vote to see if we wanted officially to take a break. The idea is that if we don’t do this officially, we’ll continue to waste our time showing up, and then the people who have been showing up will get tired and quit. While I want to raid, I agree with her thinking; I voted in favor of the break as well.

There’s a lot of joking that The Old Republic killed us, but the people who are playing ToR all login for raids. We’ve just been dwindling, and not everyone makes it every week. I think LFR is contributing. There are three reasons to raid.

  • Gear for the next raid
  • Experience the fights and lore
  • The actual “game” of achieving progressive challenges

Being that Dragon Soul is the last raid of the expansion, there’s no reason to use it to gear up. We will not this gear to be able to do the next raid because Mists of Pandaria’s greens will be better than what we can get here. I don’t agree with this point because it seems to me that if we only raided to be able to do proceeding raids, then why raid at all? Still, I believe this is one of the reasons people raid, and one of the reasons why we don’t have the attendance now.

As for experiencing the fights and lore, LFR killed this. We’ve all experienced Dragon Soul already. Yeah, there are obviously mechanical differences (and I’d really love to see Deathwing roll), but the story is the same. We’ve seen it. There goes that incentive.

What’s left is pure game. Doing normal mode solely for the challenge of pushing ourselves. This is all that’s left. Even if we finished normal mode, this would push us to do heroic as well. It doesn’t look like this reason is enough.

In general, I like LFR, but I think it contributed to this. Regardless, it’s done it for me as well. I like the idea of raiding, but the break is nice too!

Breakfast Topic: What parts of gameplay do you consider a chore?

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 5, 2012
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What do you consider a chore in WoW? What are the not-that-fun-but-necessary parts of the game? What are things that you just won’t do because they’re too tiresome?

via Breakfast Topic: What parts of gameplay do you consider a chore?.

Saturday’s Breakfast Topic on WoW Insider was on parts of WoW that are chores or grinds. I don’t think the chores are separate than the parts I enjoy. That isn’t to say that I enjoy the chores. It’s just that WoW requires players to do the same things again and again until fun things become terrible.

I was going to write about this anyways, but it fits in well here:

LFR was fun. LFR is a chore.

Grinding normal mode has a reason. Usually, unless you’re heroically geared from the previous tier, you don’t clear normal mode right away. You work at it, and as you do, you get better gear. Eventually the gear (along with skill) allows you progress further in normal mode.

LFR allows any group to immediately succeed and finish. Why bother gearing then? I suppose for normal mode, but it’s just so, so, so boring at this point. I still do it because I want to get better gear. And luckily, I’m almost done. There’s a ring from LFR that’s an upgrade, and then I’ll be done with both Valor Points and LFR drops. However, it’s been boring for a while now.

How do we fix this chore?

I suppose we get rid of LFR loot. Valor Point I understand and like. Yeah, the three 5-mans seem like chores now too, but at least I get some choices. I can raid the current tier, I can do random heroics, I can do LFR, and I can do Baradin Hold. All of these things give Valor Points. However, if you need LFR loot, you have to do LFR. This should be fixed!

But what’s next? No more drops from raids at all? Stupid!

That’s not exactly what I mean. In normal or heroic raids, at least you’re making progress (in theory). It’s never ridiculously easy. If it was, you’d plow through until you got to the boss on which you were working.

LFR doesn’t help in LFR, because you’re able to plow right through LFR. I don’t think you should have to grind the same boring thing over and over for a single piece of loot. I’m happy to have normal and heroic raid bosses drop real loot, but things that are purely for grinding should award Valor Points, allowing people to choose from a variety of things to grind.

Here’s my solution: Leave tier tokens in LFR. Have more VP gear. Done!

As an aside, how about giving Valor Points for completing specific heroics, but not as much as a random? Just a thought.

Albino Drake

Posted by Peter (Devee) on February 4, 2012
Posted in: Achievements, Holidays. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

While doing Elders of Cataclysm (which I did finish), Moogle suggested we stop to buy camels. They were cheap, so I picked up both of them. Let’s be honest though; I don’t think I’m ever going to really want to use them. till, One Hump or Two? is nice.

As an added bonus, I got Leading the Cavalry for obtaining 50 mounts! That’s pretty cool. I just have one small issue with this.

I get 50 mounts. Blizzard must be able to guess that if I have 50 mounts, some of them must be pretty sweet, right? And then Blizzard goes “since you have so many sweet mounts, check this one out!” What is it? A boring Albino Drake. Thanks so much Blizzard.

But still, I’ll take it!