Nostalgia

Recently I was lucky enough to be one of those selected to play during the World of Warcraft Classic Stress test.  I was also one of the unfortunates that was unable to play during the test period, because I wasn’t able to get in.  This did not frustrate or upset me, in truth I laughed about it.  I understand the need for test like that to check the load of login and play servers to see exactly what they can handle and where changes need to be made.  I was happy that they left the servers up after the stress test.  I was able to login the next day and take a look around.

The first thing that hit me after recreating my main (Bulidar (bul-eh-dar), a Tauren Shaman) was the sense of nostalgia I felt for the old Tauren leveling area.  Now I was not one of those that played during vanilla, but those early zones were mainly unchanged from launch day up until Cataclysm.  It was fun running those old quests again, and its fun seeing some of my old frustrations back into play.  One of the interesting things about shaman from that time period is that we always had to reserve 4 bag slots for totems.  Those totems were necessary for us to cast our totems and you had to complete a quest to gain each one.  In this stress test we only got to the quest for  the earth totem, but it brought back those memories.

I will probably level a character in classic WoW, mainly because I want to see some of the old raids and content that I couldn’t see when I started in Wrath of the Lich King.

Look forward to seeing you in AQ and Naxx.

Short Post

Short post this week to apologize for not posting something longer.  My eldest daughter graduates this weekend with her Master’s so we have been in spin up to that which has kept me a little busy.  I should post something game related again either this weekend or next week.  Hope you all are having fun gaming.

Roadblocks

All of us run into things in games that stop us from progressing, whether its that impossible fight or something about the game that just doesn’t feel right to you.  I’m dealing with that right now in Dragon Age: Inquisition.  I’m really struggling with the way the game does combat, it seems so intuitive and clunky.   Part of this might be that it is different from the first two games and after playing through them it is a bit of struggle dealing with the change.  It might also be that I have never enjoyed non-shooting games that require me to continuously be clicked on the enemy to fight them.  It just doesn’t seem like it should be necessary.

I’ve run into blocks like this in other games and will be honest sometimes it stops me from playing the game at all.  Other times I’ve gotten stubborn and pushed through, but I’ll be honest when I continually run into things I don’t like in a game, there has to be something that drives me to keep playing, or I just leave it unfinished.

I’ll keep working on DA: I because I’ve set a goal for myself to finish it, but I’m hoping that I either adapt to the combat style or that there is more to the game that interests me.  As you may have gathered I have finished playing Dragon Age II.  I sided with the mages, Fenris turned on me, Anders lived and I ran off with Isabella in the end.  The only character story I didn’t finish was Merrill’s. I’ll try to get to that the next time I decide to play through.

That’s all for today. Questions and comments are always appreciated.

Clearing the Queue

There are times when I look at the number of games I have whether it’s on Steam, Origin, Twitch or Epic and wonder why I keep buying them and then not playing them.  In my case, I buy games that appear interesting to me or stockpile game giveaways.  Currently I have over 150 games between those four platforms.  The funny thing is I get these games thinking, I really want to play that and then end up saying I’ll get to it later.  Most of the time this is because of WoW, but sometimes it’s just because of how daunting that list is.

My current foray through the Dragon Age titles is part of me trying to rectify that.  While I’ve played all three, until the last week or so, I had never actually finished even one of them.  Not because they aren’t great games, but because I would buy them, start them and then get distracted with something else.  I finished Dragon Age: Origins last week, Alistar married and King, hero dead.  I am currently working my way through Dragon Age 2.  I initially started as a mage and then ended up starting over when I got to the Ashiok fight because I had put myself into an unwinnable situation.

I kind of feel that is what I’ve done with my game backlog as well, so what I’ve decided is that this year I’m going to make a concerted effort to go back and finish some of these games that I haven’t played or haven’t finished.  I started with Dragon Age and will play that until I’m through Inquisition, then I will start to work my way through the rest of my backlog.  I have Telltale games, Lego games, and bunch of random games that I’ve either never started or started, but didn’t finish

As I work through these games, I’ll write about them and my experiences playing them.  It will probably be slow going, after all I do still play WoW, Overwatch, Diablo and Destiny and tend to spend a bit of time in them, but I will continue to make time to play these other games and push my way through them.

Thanks again for reading my rambling.  Hope you have enjoyed it.

A Return to Old Friends

It’s been almost 4 years since I’ve posted anything.  I return now, not for any particular reason except for the fact that I feel the need to start writing again.  I’ve decided that if people read what I write good, if not that is there prerogative.  I’m strictly writing now as a way to challenge myself by starting back into something I let lapse due to life and frustrations. But enough about that, let’s get to what I’ve been up to with gaming lately. After all, this is a gaming blog.

Lately I’ve been on a bit of a WoW break, I’ve been wanting to play other things.  The two games that I’ve been spending the most time in lately are Apex Legends and Dragon Age: Origins.

Apex is interesting for me, I’m not usually a fan of the battleroyale games, but for some reason this little squad based gem that dropped suddenly has me hooked.  I think part of it is that it is entirely squad based with three man squads.  The other part is that it is entirely possible to play it without having to utilize voice chat at all.  The ping system utilized by the game is so easy to use and is capable of passing so much information that the reasons that other games need voice chat don’t exist here.  I’ve enjoyed playing a majority of the characters in the game (all except Gibralter, just something about him isn’t fun for me), and love the fact that there are no weapon limitations on them at all.  I won’t say that the toxicity that plagues other battleroyale games doesn’t exist here, because I’ve still run across it and the reporting system still leaves something to be desired.  Currently you can only report the person who kills you if for some reason you believe that they cheated.  I’m hoping to see improvements in that in future updates.  The one other thing I would like to see in the game at this point is a ranking system with matchmaking that uses that system to create the matches.  I think that would go a long way to combat the toxicity.

The other game I’ve been spending a lot of time on lately is Dragon Age: Origins.  I’ve finally beat it (Yes, I know) and have been trying out the other classes and races to see how things are different in the game.  It’s amazing to me how well the game continues to stand up.  I think I’m going to continue a play through of the Dragon Age series and see how things go.

Well that is enough rambling for today, I’m going to continue to try to post at least on a weekly basis so we’ll see how it goes.

Signing off for now,

Frazzld

Overwatch Thoughts

This weekend I was one of the lucky ones that was granted the privilege of participating in the Overwatch stress test.  While I didn’t get to play a lot, I played enough to tell that this is a game that I will be purchasing to play in the future.  I figured while my play from this weekend was fresh in my mind, I would post my initial impressions and thoughts on the game.

When Overwatch was first announced I very much thought it was going to be a Team Fortress 2 clone.  I am very happy to say that it is not.  While I do enjoy playing TF2, we don’t need another clone of it out there for play.  Overwatch is similar to TF2 in that it is an objective based FPS game, where it differs is in the diversity of the characters you can choose from to play.  Overwatch is definitely designed with team/esports game play in mind as you have the capability to swap characters throughout the game as a way to counter what the other team presents.

The characters are all fun and different to play and the ones I tried I didn’t have too much trouble figuring out at least the basics on how to play them.  Blizzard appears to be continuing the trend from Heroes of the Storm by trying to make this a game that even a beginner to the genre won’t have any issues picking up.  The characters I got to play during the stress test were Lucio, Mercy, Zenyatta, Macree, Winston and Torbjörn.  Lucio, Mercy and Zenyatta are all support characters designed to both heal and do damage, Macree is a pure damage dealer, meant to put high levels of damage on the enemy,  Winston is a tank, meant to soak as much damage as possible while allowing the other team members to take down the opponent, and Torbjörn is a builder, he uses devices like turrets to put damage on an opponent while staying safe himself.  The characters all have different play styles and each was fun in it’s own way.  I will admit, I spent the most time playing Lucio, partly because of how easy he was for me to pick up and partly because hardly anyone I played with chose support.  He is a blast to play and it was quite fun song dancing between speed and healing to make sure that the team had what they need when they needed it.

Overwatch has voice chat enabled in the game, and I can see why it might be necessary, though I will admit I didn’t use it myself yet.  Having it built in makes it easier to be used in solo queues and still have the same team direction as if you were going in with an entire team with team speak or mumble.

Overall the game is a blast to play and fairly easy to learn.  It was easy to tell it is still a beta product, but that did not take away from the enjoyment in the least.  I look forward to future testing (if given the opportunity) and playing once it has been released.

Return of the Legion – Initial Thoughts

Like many of you, my eyes were glued to my computer screen as the Blizzard expansion announcement from Gamescon happened.  I even blew up my twitter account a little bit with some quick impressions just based off what I saw.  I’ve now had a little bit of time to think about it and I wanted to give some quick thoughts that I’m sure will evolve over time as more and more comes to light about the expansion.

I will admit I’m excited for this upcoming expansion I see in it so much of what I’ve seen the community ask for over the past 6 years that I’ve been playing.  That same insight makes me a little wary.  Is this expansion meant just to appease the community.  I like that they are taking the lore back to more of the old races with the ancient night elf civilization and the Vyr’kul (human predecessors) as that seems to be keeping with the theme that was established in Warlords of Draenor (Orc and Draenai (and yes I know more orc than draenai)).  I’m also worried that they are trying to do too much in one expansion.  They are giving us the Emerald Dream, Demon Hunters, Class Halls (class garrison with a twist), and returning back to the expanded dungeon experience.  We are getting a new continent, new worlds and updates to the druid forms.

I will say I’m looking forward to all of these things, this already looks to me much like what I saw when I first started playing in Wrath, the awe of it all, the lore, the dungeons the raids, and hopefully many things to keep us busy once we hit max level.

Here’s hoping the part of me that is excited is right and that we are in for one hell of a ride.  For now don’t mind me, I’ll be sitting over here imagining what it will be like to wield Doomhammer.

Making Changes

I’ve decide partly in an attempt to get myself to write more that I’m going to shift this blog from being World of Warcraft specific to being a general gaming blog. I play so many games that having a place to write about all of them consolidated in one place just makes sense to me. There will probably still me more WoW than anything else, but this way I can write about more without violating the nature of my blog. Thanks for any that are actually still reading, hopefully I will be writing more for you to read soon.

What Comes Next?

With the recent news that 6.2 is the last major content patch for Warlords of Draenor, I have begun to wonder what will come next for World of Warcraft.  This expansion has been a polarizing expansion across the board, with every change having its own share of celebration and derision, and with WoW now being a venerable game, almost 11 years down the path, what more is there for us the heroes to due in Azeroth and beyond?  Think about it, in the last almost 11 years, we have repulsed the Burning Legion, subdued the Nerubians, taken down the legion a second time, this time on a distant world, dealt with a fallen prince and the undead menace he created, dealt with a rogue dragon, found a long last land and almost destroyed it, and finally gone back in time to stop the threat created by the former horde war chief.  What more must we heroes do?  What would keep us interested in this game?

Here is my opinion on this.  I think at this point there are a couple of different options for what they might do.  It’s entirely speculation, but I think my leading idea on the matter is that we will be dealing with Azshara and a return of the burning legion.  We’ve pissed them off by ruining their plans in Draenor and they are going to want payback.  I don’t believe that they ever quit speaking with Azshara and I also think that she has the power and the capability to provide them a way back to the world.  We may see a new underwater zone, but I have the feeling that this may entail more a revamp of some of the current old world, with a naga invasion.  I think what we will see is the destruction of Bilgewater Harbor as the naga return to Azshara with a vengence.  At the same time there will be an increase in naga activity in Ashenvale and Stranglethorn Vale.  Phasing of these zones will introduce new leveling content dealing with the naga in those regions.  The eradication of Bilgewater will force the Horde to fight on their doorstep while at the same time move to reclaim Kezan and Undermountain for the Goblins, while the alliance moving to help the Draenai and Night Elves will stumble upon long lost Kul Tiras.   Additionally, the Zandarlari seeing an opportunity will make their return in an attempt to rebuild their nation.  This will leave both factions fighting a two sided war as they work together to deal with the newly risen threat.  This will be the first true test for Vol’jin as Thrall fades into the background and Vol’jin must now deal with his old nemesis and friends the Zandalari.

The name of the expansion?  Rise of the Serpent Queen

Just my idea, what do all of you think?

An Acceptable Compromise

Rarely have I seen one issue cause so much discussion and venom in one community as the recent discussions about flying in World of Warcraft in Draenor and beyond.  So many of the people I’ve seen agree about other things in WoW were on opposite sides in this one and the discussion wasn’t always civil.  Personally, I am probably a rarity in the discussion, I didn’t care either way.  If flight was offered I might use it, if not then I’m ok with it not being there.  When I’m leveling whether it be main or alt, I do it without flight anyways.  I love the leveling experience and feel that I can only be totally immersed in the world if I’m in the world.  You don’t have the excitement of having to dodge that pack of Nagrand scavengers is you are flying above them.  I also realize that this is just my view on things and others don’t get the same enjoyment out of it that I do.  This is why I think that the way that Blizzard is introducing flying in this particular expansion is a good idea.

Gated flight is not a new concept in WoW, we have had it every expansion so far that I’ve played (I started in Wrath).  Up to this point, once you got your first character to max level you could purchase an unlock that would unlock for all you characters on that server.  This would normally mean that everyone would quickly push to max level then go back and experience what the rest of the content that they wanted to experience and avoid most of the danger, etc.. that came with it.  What they have decided to do now (incase you missed it, which I highly doubt) is actually gate the capability to fly behind content.  I like this idea.  The decision means that players will actually see the content that the developers have created (even if it’s forced upon them) and will hopefully get people out of their garrisons and actually doing stuff in the world.  I know this isn’t popular or acceptable for everyone (I wouldn’t mind seeing a PvP option for flight for those that don’t PvE), but I think it was the best way for the developers to give the community what it seems that most have been wanting while still staying to true to what they wanted from this expansion.

I look forward to 6.2 and all the new it brings and will see you all in the friendly skies when I’ve completed all the prerequisites.