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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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uirements of course the fact that summoning stones actually you know summoned people without the need for a warlock being new to tbc was bit more of a dramatic change to the environment yep a lot like that from wow s facebook page or the questing additions to dustwallow marsh which effectively doubled the quests in the zone and completed the mystery questline as to who caused the fire at the shady rest inn oh and the change of tabetha from a mysterious character of somewhat unknown origin and purposes and age let s face it to just another mage with some apprentices hanging around was also significant to a non mage that might not be a big deal but to me yeah it s kind of a big deal the mage questline to make a wand in vanilla classic was hard to do at level because you were outnumbered and outleveled by everything nearby you either had to band together for mutual defense or you spent a lot of time and effort getting there and back to her farm not to mention actually doing the quests even finding the farm was an adventure because there was no path there and nothing to indicate you were nearby until you were practically on top of her shack yes it was quite a rite of passage for a mage if you tried to do it at level without an assist from a much higher level toon even horde mages sought out tabetha also note the name of tabetha s apprentice in the screenshot garion someone at blizz was likely a fan of david eddings the belgariad that s not to pretend that cataclysm wasn t a blowing up of the old world entirely it s just an acknowledgement that what i thought i knew wasn t the case there are times when i simply don t understand george lucas his historical reluctance to never release the original trilogy in their original form is totally at odds with his reverence for the movie serials of decades past i get it that he paid homage to those movie serials with raiders of the lost ark and the eventual indiana jones series of movies just as i understand his desire to see star wars as he originally envisioned it come to life on the screen i also understand that he wants his wishes as the creator of the work to be respected that being said the original star wars has significant historical importance from not only a fan s perspective but a filmmaker s as well it s not just that the special effects were ground breaking they were or that the cinematography and editing were all well done but the entire product is a film that can be studied by future students to appreciate the significance of a new hope and yes i d be fine with the a new hope scrubbed from the titles but i realize that is likely never gonna happen as much as george studied those movies and movie serials of the past future filmmakers should be allowed to study his movies as well from quickmeme com right now people will look at star wars a new hope decades from now and wonder just how much was modified over the years and how much was left alone admittedly video games and mmos in particular don t quite have the same problems if you ll recall when discussions surrounding blizz creating an official vanilla version of wow first began in earnest the biggest question was which release version of vanilla should classic be wilhelm arcturus weighed in on that more than a year before blizz officially announced wow classic and others did too trying to figure out what release version of an online game even if it were just an exercise among friends relaxing on a weekend remembering the good old days is bound to raise some passionate responses among any fan base this isn t going to devolve into a no changes versus some changes argument because i m not interested in that it s just that i wanted to point out that in wow at least there really never was a static old world that i thought existed once tbc and wrath released i m not even talking about class changes and whatnot because that s been tweaked from the beginning but i meant the world itself blizzard didn t have to blow up the old world to make things better in cataclysm because they already had tweaked it a bit in tbc and proven that some changes could be done without ruining everything i guess it says something about wrath classic that my very first impressions about the expac were what changed in the old world versus a return to northrend itself having seen firsthand how the class changes in the prepatch suddenly felt overpowered compared to tbc classic i can understand now how some people felt wrath wasn t what they were used to raiding and other things notwithstanding what i thought was an unchanging world definitely wasn t and other software development houses to be fair when that changed in the wrath pre patch my jaw dropped one that i might add i did not accomplish at level as much as 2001 a space odyssey broke new ground in special effects in 1968 the overall feel of those effects was to emphasize the cerebral nature of 2001 as a film lucas expanded on those designs and integrated them seamlessly into an action movie format in a way that still feels concrete today i look at the average marvel dc or star wars product today and think that i m watching a comic book rather than an actual film there s a certain amount of uncanny valley feel to them where in the back of your head you comprehend that it s all computerized special effects and there s nothing that people can actually reach out and touch if bioware wants to bring back classic swtor i d be on board with playing i remember how much harder things were back in the day and how convoluted certain things were commendations on a per planet basis anyone but i also remember going through just about every quest on every planet because you needed all of the xp and gear and whatnot you could get the people who blitzed to the end wow style then filled chat with i m bored moved on very quickly so these servers would most definitely not be for them posted by redbeard at 8 15 am 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels changes star wars swtor wrath classic monday july 11 2016 anyone for a friendly game of pick up mmo players tend to be a bit of an odd breed no i don t mean in the u suck noob manner and not in the obsess over a game manner either but in how a significant portion of the player base is constantly looking at new unreleased material and that this is considered completely normal imagine about 10 20 of the people who saw the force awakens got to see it about 2 months beforehand multiple times and a got to provide detailed write ups of the entire plot and the fights before the movie was even released and b used the viewings to organize friends into the optimal movie watching strategy for the midnight showing and consider that the really hardcore viewers were in a race to see who could finish watching the movie first and you ve got a bit of what it s like operating with the ptr servers for an mmo it may sound silly when converting the mmo concept of a ptr server into other forms of entertainment but to a decent sized portion of the player base a ptr server is absolutely vital to playing an mmo working out boss strategies figuring out optimal pathways to world firsts exploring every corner of a new expac major or minor and writing up a world guide and figuring out what the newest hot pvp class will be are all integral to the mmo experience for mmo developers the ptr provides free player feedback and bug reports so it is a win win for them as they can tweak the patches prior to formal release as an it person myself i completely get that it s the equivalent of a qa server where people can kick the tires prior to a formal release to production and i like that as it means that i have a better chance at a bug free release but this also highlights what mmos are to a certain amount of the player base an exercise in group mechanics and achievements where the theme is secondary or tertiary if you count the toon sex appeal on some games i m guilty as the next person for trying to do things such as figuring out a rotation or going to elitist jerks and try to min max my toons gear but i have to wonder whether the mmo community has lost something over the years go ahead and google legion is coming are you ready and scan the results i see forum and blog and youtube posts from as far back as august and september 2015 on how to maximize your output and prep your stable of toons to be ready for when legion drops remember these are posts from almost a year ago about what mechanically speaking you need to do to prepare yourself for the new wow expac that hasn t dropped yet to me as a long time boardgame player these articles remind me of discussions surrounding the hard core eurogames such as puerto rico or tigris and euphrates if you hang around boardgamegeek enough you ll find that there s an optimal strategy for puerto rico and if you play with some of the hard core you ll be berated if you deviate from that strategy yes the exact same l2p noob behavior exists in the board game community and like the mmos the theme is less important than the mechanics and the team requirements to win the game or finish the raid eurogames in particular were infamous for a tacked on theme hiding behind an optimization game and if you were out shopping for boardgames it made a lot of sense to read the entire description on the back very carefully so you d know whether the game is the sort that you d be interested in or not what might be a game that sounds like wheeling and dealing in istanbul s grand bazaar is really an economic simulation that requires you to figure out how many wheelbarrows you need to transport goods to market to exchange for rubies the theme itself is secondary to the mechanics behind the theme comparing a eurogame to an mmo isn t really fair since mmos are much bigger than any euro and because they are bigger they can appeal to far more than simply the min maxers and the others but at the same time those subgroups do take up a lot of the oxygen in the room i used to gripe at blizzard for shoving a lot of plot and background development off screen and into their books the game is right there i d say why not incorporate all of this into the game instead my belief was that blizz had decided that it was cheaper to pay an author to write a tie in novel rather than develop the story in wow itself and i m sure that s still part of the equation but what if blizzard did this because it wanted to get some of the story out of the game maybe blizzard recognized that enough players weren t interested in the story so to preserve the story as much as possible yet still accommodate those players that weren t interested they decided to push the story into novels the critical path storyline is still present in the game but all of the background material that a decent portion of the player base wouldn t be interested in was moved offline as it were if this is the case then blizz is performing one more balancing act that i d not have considered beyond the traditional pve vs pvp and the class balancing ones how much story to incorporate in game and how much reveal before release i ve picked on wow a bit in this meandering post because legion is due out soon but this argument that mmo players are focusing so much on mechanics to the extent that they spend time in playing the game in ptr to be ready for when the game is actually released could be applied to just about any other mmo out there it just seems somewhat unreal when you think about it that a player willingly sacrifices their sense of wonder at seeing something new just so that they ve got their practice in when the big day comes in that respect maybe mmos are a bit like sports after all there are those who play for purely social reasons and those who make a commitment to dedication to work hard and do well and then there are the pros and the wannabee pros who practice so that nothing is ever left to chance as for me i realize that i m never going to be hardcore and i know that my physical skills aren t as good as they were even 5 6 years ago so i m not worried about being the best i can be competence is enough and i know enough now to realize that while i ve got elements of a completionist and a perfectionist in me it s about the journey rather than the destination that s not going to keep me from griping at rules changes and nothing screams stay off my lawn more than grousing about how things were back in the day gamebynight com pretty much covered my opinion of tera particularly item 4 i m sure blizz could generate statistics based on how quickly players click through quest text or moba eta corrected a grammatical issue or two posted by redbeard at 1 07 am 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels boardgames changes mmos musings wow tuesday october 4 2011 we don t make the class you play we make the class you play better it s been said by quite a few internet pundits that the paladin is the easiest of the wow classes to play while i don t know whether that s the case i could make a good argument for arcane mages taking that slot ret paladins are certainly one of the least button heavy classes to play one of the big knocks about ret paladins in wrath was the lack of any real rotation the rotation a ret pally had was the equivalent of a giant game of whack a mole whatever ability was off cd was the button you used sure there were a few choices here and there but in this case perception was indeed reality cata actually introduced a rotation of sorts to ret which boiled down to crusader strike filler crusader strike filler crusader strike templars verdict with a few items such as inquisition zealotry and avenging wrath inserted as needed this is not very button heavy stop laughing arcane with ret once i took care of some basic keybindings and a few macros there wasn t much to do since i don t raid i m not too concerned about squeezing every last bit of dps that i can out of my rotation i know the spec so as long as i can work it well enough i m fine even a frost mage isn t that button heavy particularly once the keybindings and macros are settled into place in pvp it s all about cc and driving the other side batty but when i started leveling that warlock my laissez faire attitude hit a brick wall with adelwulf there were not only a lot of buttons but you get them all launched at you in quick leveling succession by l20 i knew my old button system was in trouble by l30 it was just about untenable my fingers ached and i knew that if i didn t overhaul my keys i d get a serious case of carpal tunnel syndrome not to mention being completely incompetent of course that meant that my old keybinding setup had to be thrown out the window which is why i balked at the task for so long muscle memory was going to be a bitch and a half while i settled into something reasonable my first attempts went poorly oh i knew what i wanted from a warlock angle so that was easy enough b...
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