Ding! 90

Looks like I missed another Ding! somewhere. Maybe I'm only catching even numbered Dings now. (EDIT: Found the pic & posted it.)

So I sort of fell off the wagon again. Blizzard sent me another free seven day, won't you please come home, Bill Bailey emails, so I bit last week. I popped out in the wall tower with Shado-Master Chong, and he told me to go the the Townlong Steppes. I checked the map, noticed that the quickest way was to take a cat-fall down the wall, did that, mounted up, discovered the Upper Sumprushes, and...

Bam, I'm 90. That was exciting.

The worst part? There's not much else to do. Jal's 90, so the starting quest rewards from Warlords are probably going to be stronger than anything I'd quest my way to in Mists. So I guess Jal's done.

I'll post later about changes to the druid (I did play through a few more quests just to see what was up) and the game in general, but I was surprised how much stuff having an active "Mists"/warchest level account lets you do now in free-to-play. Two biggies:

1. You can play up to 20th level characters for free on any account now, so I could've been playing my low level alts on my main account all this time
2. You can play as a monk on free to play accounts

I think the only thing the free seven days really buys me is the ability to play as a death knight (or any other character over 20, obviously, but that's the only class that's blocked in free-to-play now). So, um, all right then.

Ding! 88 [sic]

Hrm. Strange. I don't have a ding for 87. I'll have to see if I can't turn that up.

I was going to wait until I dinged again to post and had something more useful to say about my return to Azeroth, but after bbr's timely comment on my last post, I figured a quick Ding! is better than no post at all. Note that I'm backdating to the time of the ding, as I normally do.

bbr asks, "How active are you of late?" Ha.  Not at all. In fact, I think it's time to admit that WoW has reached the same stage that my Ultima Online play reached, well, well over six years ago. I'm a tourist. That's it.

I'd read a bit about the new expansion that's coming soon, fondly remembered Lorewalker Cho, and figured I'd shell out for another month to ding 90. Not sure if I'll make it, though I'm spitting distance away from 89 now.

About all I've noticed is that there are lots more "store" buttons. Other than that, uninspired play. I mean, the sights are nice, and it's enjoyable, but still no real engagement. I still want the same stuff I always ask for -- weave back in older areas. Recognize things Jal did when he was younger. I mean, my achievements for the Old World are essentially at 0%. You'd think I played WotLK more than any other, and that's hardly the case. Give me credit for obsolete quests. He's an old timer, and should be recognized for it.

Give me quests for items that seem important. I want achievable, soloable epics. They can be as low-powered as you want, but I want to have something fun to work for, some story that doesn't require raiding.

I don't know. The game feels the same. The same buffalo-like creatures roam the wild. Vultures of a new color are flapping around. Highborne ghost equivalents are haunting some new temple, still screaming at me. Second verse, same as the first, just with better textures.

And good heavens the game is too easy to solo. I'm just putting in the time, doing the quests, dying when I pull too large a group out of extreme boredom.

So, again, still fun, but I'm a tourist. That's all at this point.

Ding! 86

Long time, no ding.  Nearly two years and five months since Jalindrine's gone up a level!  Wow.  I've been playing this game too long.  Heck, this blog is over six years old, and it started when Jal was already level 62 and over two years old himself.  I've been playing over eight years?  Sheesh.

Moving along...  ;^D

I fell into some after-work time this week and finally feel off of the wagon.  I received the collector's edition of Mists as a gift months ago, so I figured I'd finally put in my unlock code, slap down my $15, and play for a few hours rather than grift more under 20 free time.

It's been fun.  I'm starting to re-realize why I liked this game so much.  Even though it's still been pretty grindy, I've enjoyed soloing and running a few old Cat instances.  Justice points have appreciated quite a bit since last I played, so it's a no-brainer to run a Cat regular dungeon once a day, where my rust isn't a big hindrance.  When you're with some 84s who haven't gotten to Mists, even poorly managed DPS is insanely good.

There's still lots of folks dropping from LFG groups as soon as you hit the instance, however, much like there was shortly before I signed Jal off last time.  I don't get it.  If you want a specific instance, queue just for that instance.  If you want the daily bonus, what about the Lost City (the zone I hit today) isn't to like? It's fast, and you're quickly in the points.  Even so, we had our tank drop the second we got in.

I mean, I guess I do get it, but it's sad there are so many virtual-life flakes.  Maybe there are just a few instances you don't want, and you think you want to get in asap figuring one of those won't come up (though with the number of drops I see almost before your free round of buffs, that's probably not it).  Or you'd kinda like to instance, but you decide you've got something more important to do (watch TV, finish your quest, whatever) when your number's called.  But goodness, bad manners.  ;^)

So we sat around for a while.  I was tempted to get back to leveling and rejoin LFG.  It's great to have healz, as that's half the limiting reagents, and we all obviously didn't want to get in the back of the LFG line, but we sat around for probably a good five minutes before we figured we'd give Jal a shot off-tanking a four-person group.

Enjoyably, it worked!  If you bring up that image, above, original size, you can see another dps say, "if we can get past the general, you're hired."  And though I ended up going panzerkin mid-way through the General (wait, what?  The first panzerkin appearance since BC?!!), we did make it through that first sub-boss.  Luckily, a tank joined us at the end of or immediately after we took the General down, and we quickly finished the instance.  And yes, I did roar the loose mob in the picture back shortly after hitting PrtScn.  Ooops.

Now look, being able to tank a regular Cat instance is not impressive.  I'm a 85+ level, partially Mists-geared druid running a Cat regular, but with good healz, it was no problem.  Shoot, you could probably throw a well-equipped squishy in and do what I did.  But it was fun.  I even remembered how to swipe and roar mobs who lose threat back to me.

At some point, I need to learn another spec and become competent at it.  I keep thinking that should be resto, but it seemed like tanks were becoming pretty scarce too at the end of my last run.

Anyhow, there you go.  Pandaria's okay.  It helped to have taken a six-month break, I'm sure, as when I took my free ten days of Mist back in December, I really didn't play too much at all.  The typical expansion inflation has happened, and it's hard to think they aren't going to re-calibrate experience points at some point.  Really, 8.7 million for level 86?  Getting a little ludicrous.

I have noticed that the level took a while.  I played two good sessions before leveling, even though patch 5.3 apparently made each level 33% quicker to achieve (how do they do that?  Is 8.7 XPs only 2/3rds of what folks used to get, or are mobs, etc, worth 33% more?  Guessing the former -- wow, 13 million?!!  It's time to take off a few zeroes).  The expansion has given me a pretty good bit of soloing so far, and the level design is less stodgy and slapped together than, say, Vashj'ir felt.  Though, admittedly, Lorewalker Cho is probably the only really memorable character yet.  Well, him, Sully, Gizmo and Socks.

Poor Socks.  Oh, that might be a small spoiler.

I may try a monk later, and do want to get back to my Death Knight in Outland a little, but we'll see how long my latest Azeroth visit lasts.  I'll probably cancel now and ride out the month rather than "accidentally" let it renew, which has been known to happen.

Fun to be back, even if I'm ultimately just visiting.

Remember D&D modules? Which one reminds you of Mists' Plot?

Reading through the "Zones & Dungeons - Game Guide" for MoP today, I was strangely reminded of my days playing AD&D.  The progression seems very linear.  Levels 85-86, Jade Forest wilderness and, after enough wandering, the Temple of the Jade Serpent.  Finish this (or gain enough XP to continue), and you're over to the Valley of the Four Winds and Stormstout Brewery.  A few more levels and you find yourself pushed by your DM into the Krasarang Wilds...

I don't beta, so I could be completely off, but whenever we played AD&D, I always got the feeling that we were being pushed to the end by our Dungeon Master -- except when I was DM, in which case there certainly were times I was pushing folks closer to the fancy end-module showdowns.  If a party spends too long on the throw-away portions, they'll 1.) likely miss the end game because you've played all night and the sun's coming back up and 2.) they'll eventually be too powerful to have fun at the end by gaining too much XP.  I guess 2.) is why we have level caps.

There were a few times I'd really slow things down, like in In The Dungeons of the Slave Lords, where folks started with nothing, had to make slings from small strips from their loincloths, and I didn't want them to miss the magic sword in the cloudy pool (iirc) that turned them invisible (and made the balance of the escape much easier).  "Are you sure you've searched everywhere?"

But for something like Ravenloft, perhaps the best (or more accurately, arguably, the most over-engineered) module created for the game, there was so much well-planned branching and random action that you eventually had to push your party to finish up or they'd play forever.  In fact, the module recognized that it had too much content, and was designed with instructions on how to slowly force them to do so. But its replayability was remarkable.

Mists sounds more Slave Lords than Ravenloft.  I'm not sure either is necessarily better, but I would bet, after Wrath's somewhat stiltedly painful double tracked level progressions, the first is much much easier to create.

Update[d video card for $20] and Pandaria Licensing with DreamWorks

Okay, I'm still not back-as-in-back to playing. Right now I'm waffling between, "Pandaria seems pretty cool, in spite of it being, um, pandas," and, "How the heck can they release this expansion without paying DreamWorks through the nose?!!"

I mean, really, "bouncy" and "inner peace" racial traits? You've got to be kidding me. Right? This is a giant prank, isn't it?

But then "Activision Blizzard" seems to have Kung-Fu Panda in their licensing bag already? Maybe they're crazy like a fox? Maybe the whole point is to take the standard Oriental Expansion Idea and up some Kung-Fu Panda sales while you're at it? It's so crazy, it just might work, right?

I'll admit that I can't keep up with who owns what company any more. I'd managed to forget about Activision and Blizzard. It's crazy. But let's face it, somebody owns rights to Kung-Fu Panda, and Blizzard (now Act-Bliz) obviously owns WoW. This is cross-promotion of Disney-ESPN proportions.

In any event, I've already seen Kung-Fu Panda 2 (not nearly as good as the first, but there is a bit of the "2 is just here to get us to 3" feeling -- hey, so what are the chances that Kung-Fu Panda 3 is coming out about the same time as this expansion? Imagine the coincidence of that!), and I'm sure I'll bag Mists release day. The attention to the single-player game, if it happens, will be neat, and I'm excited to check out the monk class and new zones, even if I have to do it as a panda. If done right, the zones could be pretty cool.


In other exciting news, I finally broke down and stopped using the GeForce 8500 with 256 megs of VRAM that's still listed on this page, and that I've had for years. People that read this blog too closely know that I've been considering spending as much as $170 for a new card over the last year, but a CyberMonday special at NewEgg had a GT430 with a gig of RAM for $20 shipped after rebate (here's the item, back up to $45 after rebate now). Too good to pass up.

GTA IV finally plays in a resolution over 800x600, which is awesome. I did this with GTA3:SA too... the late video card upgrade was like getting a new game.

I also played Sandraevia, the freeplay Blood-Elf Rogue I've got, for a few more minutes, which means, of course, that I bagged yet another level, though I was a little slow snapping the shot.



Just for kicks, I'll include two pictures, one with something approximating my old settings and another with the new. I'd always kept draw distance to Ultra, as that's the only setting that really affects gameplay (other than summing their performance into fps), but now I've got it all maxed out. Soloing in the starting area is no problem. I'd almost like to raid again just to see what happens.

Old Settings:

New Settings:

It looks better, no doubt, and looks even better in motion. For $20, it's an obvious win. Sure, the fan is a little loud, but my CPU fan doesn't really slow down either, so I can only barely hear the GPU. That said, the CPU fan is so loud, I really can't believe that I can just barely hear this GPU fan over the CPU, but I can. Wow. For $20, I'm not complaining.

I often wonder how a game reviewer should considering each game's "artistic" effects. In short, does pretty eye-candy make for a better game? I hate to say it helps. I still recall being wowed by Ironforge (no pun was intended there, sorry) the first time -- and Darn too, the first time I walked up on it before seeing IF. Blood Elf architecture is cool, and Lich King had some nice expanses too. Each of those impressed me and increased immersion -- not so much because it was realistic, as that the game was essentially imprinting me. These were unforgettable, tell your neighbor moments. I should also add Nagrand to the list. Beautiful. Eye candy is the difference between driving down a bland Interstate and hitting the PCH.

But which setting do you use to review a game when some of your readers are playing on laptops with integrated graphics and others have top of the line SLI? What experience is the "right", representative one that you should be using?

I don't know. But I will say that if it's been a while since you upgraded, keep an eye out. $20 is a no-brainer, and there've got to be similar deals coming up soon.