Why can MMOs leave you with the worst experience of any gaming genre? The "MM" part. Massively multiplayer games leave plenty of room for you to play with total douchebags. The guys that find it fun to ruin experience of folks new to the game. A game could be the funnest game ever created, but if a level 60 is running around the level 3 area, killing all the monsters before the level 3s can, what's the fun? At your level, killing those level 3 rats is all there is in the game for you. If they're all dead, you get frustrated and quit playing.
It's a good season for console gaming! Dynasty Warriors Gundam 2, Godfather 2, inFamous, Prototype, Assasin's Creed 2, another Ratchet and Clank game... Granted some of those aren't coming out for a while still.
Warning! WoW post!
3.1 drops today! I'm still debating my dual specs. I'm a pally tank, but have some really nice holy gear form 25 man content. I have no real experience healing though. So I'm debating... Two prot specs, or prot/holy? There are a few viable prot specs with different useages. After doing this research, I think I'll go with the main tank and solo specs. I'm working on old stuff, questing in BC and classic WoW content to boost my quest completion total. Once I get my quest acheievements, I'll likely change the solo spec to holy.
Prot (main tank)
If you're the main tank... You're getting big heals, taking a lot of damage, your damage output doesn't matter, and nothing can happen to make your drop aggro. This gives Spiritual Attunement as well as Guarded by the Light for super mana regen but no raid damage soaking. Pre-3.1, the damage soak went with my Divine Shield, which drops aggro, so with few exceptions, I wouldn't use, but with the split, it might be useful for the tank to soak raid damage. Also puts two points into Improved Judgements, which is generally frowned upon, but from practice, I don't have a spell rotation when tanking, I just hit whatever's up and always keep Holy Shield up.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sVZEhxA0uMGsIufdxb
Prot (solo)
For soloing... You're doing all the damage, taking all the damage, getting no heals. No Spiritual Attunement, no Divinity, no raid damage soaking. Picks up Reckoning and goes into ret a little more.
http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=sVZVhxA0ughsIufdxs
Prot (off tank)
If you're offtanking... Or maybe you're DPSing. Like in Thaddius in Naxx. You need to be able to tank the first two adds, but one else is taking Thadd. You'll be soaking raid damage and DPSing. Assumes you won't be using Righteous Fury. I always have to turn it off when I'm off tanking or I'll pull aggro. Gives you the raid damage soaking and drops Reckoning to go deeper in the ret tree.
5-man "raids". 5-man heroics you can finish in about a half hour. 10- and 25-man Naxxramas take hours. I want 5-man content that takes hours, that isn't just a million trash pulls. I have a 5-person group that I love to play with. But bring in another 5 people and you lose the intimate feeling and scheduling and personality conflicts arise. I know that having a larger number of people allows for more variety. Bosses can hit harder because you have more healers... They can do stacking debuffs on the tank because you won't just have the one... The raid can split into teams across the room to deal with different things... I'll take any level of difficulty, but a 5-man dungeon that took hours to clear would be a lot of fun.
I was surprised at how stable the Warcraft servers were this weekend. I sat in login queues of over 800 but once on, other than a few lag spikes, things were good. Quest competition wasn't as bad as I expected either. Tankisaurus, my pally tank, is 90% through level 74 and I've cleared 5 of the new dungeons.
I've been playing entirely too much World of Warcraft the last week. The 3.0.2 patch last week has just about unlocked the entire game for anyone. I'm seeing PUGs going everywhere. My pally tank has greens and some blues from Nagrand quests but last night he main tanked Karazhan. We cleared the place in 3 hours and it only took that long because the other tank was new to tanking and being in melee range in KZ too. I'm finding that while tanking is fun, it's annoying to just see the boss's crotch and have spell effects exploding all around you.
Years ago when I played The Realm, an in-game friend would talk about her characters in the third person and I called her crazy for it. But look at me now!
I seriously dislike a lot of the mechanics changes for hunters. Pets attacking when on defense and you shoot something. Not being able to misdirect distracting shot. Distracting shot now just gives me aggro for the duration, why would I want that? The core hound pet wandering farther and farther from the target until he eventually pulls another group.
The fun I'm having tanking - having leadership of the group and how easy it is to get a PUG - versus my annoyance in hunter class changes has me wondering if I want to make the pally tank my main.
And with Hallow's End going on, I've been trick or treating every time I'm on and I can, and have yet to get a single mask. I've been told this is because I don't give out candy on Halloween. Game karma is punishing me.
While not on a late night coding spree (lol@me), I've been trying to ready my hunter for the upcoming changes in 3.0.2. Namely by trying to get some more factions to exalted. I'm exalted with 13 factions and there's an achievement for 15, so close! I'm only friendly with Timbermaw Hold. If I grind them or Kurenai while watching LFG for a heroic, it shouldn't be too hard to get another 2.
Revered:
- Darnassus
- Exodar
- Gnomeregan Exiles
- Stormwind
- Honor Hold (need ~5500)
- Kurenai (need ~12000)
- The Consortium (need ~9500)
- Lower City (need ~1500)
- Hydraxian Waterlords
- Keepers of Time (need ~4700)
- Zandalar Tribe (need ~9000)
I have a level 47 pally with just over 1 day played. He's also dead broke. It's amazing to return to Gadgetzan, turn in 5 quests, and get a level and a half off them. But this means I've skipped huge sections of content. Lost reputation, quest rewards, and gold everywhere.
But what am I complaining about?! I'm actually able to raise a paladin as protection. It's a LOT of fun to run my horse through clumps of guys over my level, jumping off, and destroying them. If I map out my quest route well, I play for an hour and get two levels.
I don't see how two people new to the game can do this though. You have to make an alt to play with your friend, and use your main to support them. It's 9-12 gold to get all my spells every other level and I just get a fraction of that doing the quests. I gave my friend's druid 50g at level 30. He already had 30g, but now at level 46 he has 9 gold, and hasn't been paying to level any professions.
I haven't posted much lately... At work it's mostly reports and boring garbage. In WOW it's be a few drab KZ runs and maybe a heroic.
I'm in a 25 raiding guild that isn't raiding anymore. Stuff is being scheduled, but nothing is happening. People don't sign up or show up. So the guild officers are working on merging with another guild for a few months, one that's getting ready to enter Sunwell, far beyond my own experience. I was among those asked to move with the officers to the other guild, with the expectation that I'll come back after the expansion. This is my only chance to ever see the current end-game content. It's also the perfect opportunity to quit the game until the expansion. Quit, enjoy the rest of the summer and the fall. Get a lot of work done on web projects, get some big bill paid off, finish my deck, have some non-WoW related blog posts... The game is my stress relief, but it's a thin line with a quick drop into endless addiction. If I now join a truly hardcore raiding guild, I'll sink into utter addiction to the game and/or be burnt out for the expansion coming this fall. Or with the structured and regular raiding schedule, will I be able to do all those other wonderful things and still raid?
EDIT: I joined another 25 raiding guild, ran SSC with them once, rocked the DPS meters, gquit, went back to my old guild, and have been working on my pally tank.
