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description= Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;
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some wolves for the pelts and made it back up north just in time to become a member of the backcap crew and there i spent the vast majority of my time in game part or a 2 3 man crew defending the dun baldar bunkers and graveyard from horde who d outflanked the main force during this time the main force continued their unusally strong push and had a breakthrough by capturing the snowfall graveyard we were able to hold both graveyards and in the process kill off the horde wolfriders and their shamans when the horde lost their shamans their morale broke we were then able to capture the iceblood graveyard and our gains accelerated rather quickly until we finally downed drek i ve been waiting for what felt like forever for this as this is the typical result we see so a victory like this hard fought from beginning to end was something to savor two of them made it back which was unusual in itself posted by redbeard at 2 55 pm 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels battlegrounds wow classic sunday june 14 2020 let me expand on that not too long ago i mentioned that i d gotten into my first true raid ever that was a zul gurub run that looking back on it was a fairly wipe filled run that lasted almost 4 hours however i will say that the raid leader was a real saint he kept calm and never raised his voice as he patiently explained and reexplained how to handle each boss in that raid i learned three things for a raid to be effective you have to be in a voice app of some sort you may not have to talk i saw people reply in raid chat to requests but you must be able to respond to the raid leader s and others directions we had one person in the zg run who was not in chat and that person was simply not following instructions even the written ones as a sub point on that everybody not only has to be in a voice app but be able to understand the language spoken being in a voice app does you almost no good if you don t understand what s being asked of you and yes that 4 hour zg run had at least one person in the raid who didn t understand english and also didn t know the raid it made things difficult at times i like to perform interrupts and stuns on az as part of my work in regular 5 man instances and that part of being a rogue becomes important in zg in the zg run az was literally the only rogue and i got assigned the job of interrupting the healer in the raptor boss when he it splits into three people once that boss was burned down enough i and the off tank were the only ones on that boss for a large part of the fight with me eschewing anything resembling dps in favor of watching for the healing action and then delivering a solid kick to stop it while my job in zg overall wasn t very taxing mainly don t stand in the bad do what the raid leader says to do and just keep my dps slice and dice ability running at this one point i had the big job to make sure we don t make a boss fight that much more difficult and i was able to do the job because i enjoy those little things about being a rogue raids in classic take about as long as the longer instances in wow if you compare a classic level raid molten core zul gurub etc with the longer classic instances blackrock depths maraudon etc the classic instances are either as long or longer than the classic raids so the time commitment by me would be pretty much the same the only thing that the raids have over instances are the buffs and the consumables where mages alchemists and others who handle both items spend considerably more time in preparation than the people who don t have those classes and or professions but despite my initial concern about what to do in zg i found the explanations easy to follow and i learned very quickly that bat riders go boom as i put it in guild chat afterwards what oh that yeah i joined a guild it s a small one and not even close to being in the same orbit as some of the huge guilds on myzrael us such as sunrise or stance dance revolution both of which have over 400 members more on this another time anyhoo i went on another zg run a week later and that run was as smooth as butter it clocked in at just under two hours and we only had one wipe on the trash leading to hakkar we even handled the jin do fight without any problems so fast forward a couple of weeks and a friend who i d run quite a few instances with over the past months whispered me on friday one thing led to another and this was the result yep still running with that brd green drop for my chestpiece still card only died once the majordomo teleported her up front twice it was an alt run put on by two guilds and they pug the extra people the most amazing thing to me was that when i zoned in i discovered that i knew about 1 3 of the people there when i mentioned it to my friend he laughed and said that s the vanilla experience for you maybe i can do this raiding thing after all this zg run was on az for clarity s sake posted by redbeard at 8 59 pm 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels molten core raid wow classic zul gurub wednesday june 10 2020 well that was unexpected back in pre history when people still loved the live action version of game of thrones on hbo the question arose what would happen when the showrunners ran out of george r r martin s a song of fire and ice as source material after all george wasn t known as the speediest of authors and anybody could see that the series on television was going to finish long before the books were well it was revealed back in 2014 that the showrunners had met with george and already knew the broad strokes going forward including how the series would end and while season 7 had its moments including the hodor masterstroke that the showrunners confirmed was george s idea we all know how season 8 ended the series i was thinking about that debacle where there were only broad sketches of what came after the books ended when i read kamalia s post about the existential horror surrounding wow retail s upcoming shadowlands expac reflecting on battle for azeroth namely exactly how much of the warcraft wow story is planned out ahead of time and when i mean planned out i don t mean for an entire expac but rather years in the future as i commented on kamalia s post back when i was in college and even before the red beard itself i d read about how soap operas were plotted out i was curious about this because i developed an addiction to days of our lives my sophomore year in college yes it was really this cheesy and i wondered just how much of the plot was planned in advance and how much was just made up as they went along in spite of the bad acting that goes on in those shows and when you consider that they film record them day in and day out with very few outtakes due to the schedule it s actually pretty good the plots stories and scripts are written months in advance of actual filming add to that the shows frequently had months of filming already in the can as the saying goes the storylines were frequently plotted out about a year or more before airing while this isn t saying a lot for a regular prime time television show a soap is broadcast almost without fail five days a week 52 weeks a year at maximum that s 260 possible episodes but in reality due to holiday programming and other factors the number is somewhere between 200 and 260 for a 24 episode prime time season that s 10 years worth of episodes and for a bbc or cable type of series that s more like 20 years worth to keep everything straight therefore long term plotting is essential now let s translate this into video games an mmo such as lotro which is based on a completed series of fantasy novels has a great advantage over mmos that are on the game of thrones plan you know the plot you know the characters and you even know the geographic locations and the potential for in zone quests all you have to do is fill in some of the details and extrapolate based on the author s works and in tolkien s case both finished and unfinished while i m not saying it s easy mode for a developer it s far less stressful to fill in a portion of middle earth than it is say the star wars universe with swtor sure there s a lot of potential reference material out there for swtor but there s also a huge amount of freedom for a developer to change things around the old republic era of the star wars universe doesn t have to tiptoe around the old expanded universe novels outside of the revan ones obviously it doesn t have to worry about any of the movies in terms of settings and plot and it certainly doesn t have to worry about the vast majority of star wars fans upset with either the jettisoning of the eu or the direction the prequels and or sequels took but it is under constant scrutiny by everyone and their grandmother for whether swtor is star wars enough to be considered star wars between that and the constant pressure swtor s development staff is under courtesy of bioware executives and ea overall it s no wonder that the direction of swtor s story has swung wildly over the years warcraft and wow fans may not be as rabid as the star wars fanbase but they do have definite ideas on how their beloved franchise should progress however unlike swtor and lotro wow s fanbase dictates a bit of a different focus than what you d come to expect remember the maxim the game starts at max level for wow that means the focus is on endgame more than anything else however i personally don t think that endgame itself is blizz focus narratively speaking if you look at the expacs for wow at least the ones that i ve played up until i dropped by subscription it seems that blizz s focus is toward specific set pieces and plot narrative is driven in service of those specific set pieces from burning crusade with the dramatic conversion of lady liadrin prior to taking up the leadership the shattered sun offensive through wrath with the wrathgate event and even into mists with its multiple video cut setpieces and the siege of orgrimmar that seems to be what drives the wow expac but for me the question is whether there s an overall narrative plan stretching across multiple expacs or whether their service to the set piece means that the set piece is developed first and then the expac is developed around it the reason why kamalia s post is so important is because she lays bare that the upcoming shadowlands expac takes all of those dramatic death scenes or moments of sacrifice suicide missions and makes them horrifying because death isn t the release people thought it was and yes i agree with her completely on her point but i don t believe that was a primary objective of the expac it was merely a side effect of the wow expac development process i find it very hard to believe that all of those raids starting from wrath onward that have bosses who die and exclaim that insert end boss here controls me no longer would have led to this existential moment where death turned out to be a horrifying alternative instead i believe that blizz said okay let s do xxx set piece cool isn t it now how do we get to there that s the thing about these set pieces they only work if they are part of a cohesive whole that extends from expac to expac as part of a long term story that blizz wants to tell right now it certainly seems that blizz is creating these set pieces without any sort of long term plan why would i say that because if the set piece creates some jarring plot holes large enough to fly a zeppelin through then maybe the set piece is the one that needs to change speaking of set pieces that drive expacs or movies from wikipedia org for example in the lead up to mists there was the mana bomb destroying theramore set piece on the face of it a major alliance city so close to the horde capital city would naturally be a military target in an alliance vs horde war however if you played the horde post cataclysm questline in stonetalon mountains which made use of another mega sized bomb the total destruction of theramore makes absolutely no sense as garrosh in an earlier set piece executed the stonetalon horde leader for displaying a lack of honor in slaying non combatants and as everyone knows there are plenty of non combatants in a major alliance city with a sympathetic alliance leader that had in the past sided with orgrimmar over their own faction s potential interests because someone decided edgier is better hmm there s something about that statement that fits right in with the dc universe from metacritic of all places but when set pieces and to a lesser extent the endgame rules the decision making process plot holes happen just ask all those daenerys fans about season 8 of game of thrones from vanity fair or maybe not and that s coming from a guy who had no interest in reading or watching either version george takes maniacal delight in killing off characters so i took a wide pass on any of his writings i only overcame this addiction when i was watching an episode and blurted out loud after a supposed major reveal that was incredibly stupid it was then that i realized bad storylines couldn t keep me engaged forever i d imagine that blizz employees would beg to differ on this point posted by redbeard at 5 23 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels lotro musings soap opera star wars swtor wow saturday june 6 2020 saturday morning amusement i saw this on reddit and i was amused mommy where do druids come from i tried chasing down the original and this is actually a screenshot of a screenshot therefore i m not exactly sure who truly created this but as a pencil and paper rpger i found it the sort of d d legalese way of getting out of the price of a fey s pact now if you ll excuse me i have to go drive 6 hours each way to get the rest of my son s dorm stuff as the county in pennsylvania that his university is located opened up and the university is allowing us on campus to go get his gear posted by redbeard at 6 34 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels humor rpgs wednesday june 3 2020 the hidden nemesis i ve been pondering something a bit while i ve been working on my fiction and that is how mmos translate things such as death into a game an mmo is a strange beast in its own way by design it is a multiplayer sandbox where people get to experience all sorts of interactions such as quests in their own time sure you can group up but the multiplayer nature of the game means that death for both the baddies and you isn t permanent you die you respawn they die they eventually respawn items such as phasing as implemented in wow with the wrathgate event as well as other mmos version of such phasing is an attempt to alleviate this making it seem like you truly have an impact on the environment is the goal but what i ve been thinking of is something else entirely what is the psychological and physical impa...
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