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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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seems so prevalent posted by redbeard at 4 15 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels bots guild wars 2 friday september 20 2013 they keep dragging me back in part whatever in between running bgs on wow poking around makeb finally on swtor and some occasional forays into other mmos i felt a strange tug perhaps it was me passing by a bunch of in nomine rpg books when i was at one of our local game stores perhaps it was watching the doctor who episode the angels take manhattan with the kids perhaps it was me watching illidan s you are not prepared sequence on the bc trailer but whatever the reason why i had a sudden hankering to see this again nothing like a pair of wings to attract attention yeah i know you d think that after i said aion wasn t for me that would have been the end of it but like white castle hamburgers i got a sudden craving to login to the game again instead of using my elyos light side character i created a dark side asmodian just to see what that looked like to say that they appeared akin to darker reflections of elyos is pretty accurate plus they have a furry almost tail like growth on their backs oh great they re furry angels i muttered and left it at that the asian mmo nature of aion means that you get creatures with names like sparkie out there but that isn t different than the elyos side out there the major difference between factions is illustrated from the beginning questlines on the elyos side you re defending communities from raiders while on the asmodian side you are the raiders gold spammers were in full force in the chat areas which once again rendered them practically useless this makes me wonder whether ncsoft actually encourages gold spammers given how effective arenanet bioware and even blizzard have been at gold spam reduction i will freely admit that the best part of the game is the graphics but still the immersion is ruined by the nintendo factor the goofy enemy names the tendency of some players to use mushroom heads instead of realistic looking designs and the obvious jrpg nature of the female toons graphics part of the aion v4 0 dark betrayal promotion pics a long time ago i once had an apartment neighbor who wore leather outfits like the woman on the right she was not one to be trifled with in the illustration above the woman on the left makes me vaguely uncomfortable i don t know how such images are perceived in asia but over here she leaves the impression of a 12 13 year old dressed up in a sexualized outfit this creeped me out given that i have kids in that age range i simply don t see the need to go there as much as some people complain about the dragon aspects bikini looks at least they dress like adults and the aspects give you the sort of look that says if you piss us off you re breakfast you don t get that in aion aion is popular enough given the number of toons online but i wish it would take itself more seriously oh and i wish it would make the mouse selections the same as on almost all other mmos why decide to do things differently when all you did was kinda sorta reverse some of the mouse functions i suppose i should be happy that aion hasn t enraptured me because the last thing i need is another mmo to split my time but man aion just feels so close to something i d like it s a shame that it doesn t posted by redbeard at 12 21 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels aion thursday september 12 2013 a miss in the pattern i find it interesting that we re on the last raid patch of mists of pandaria but we still don t know about the next expac consider the following wrath was announced in august 2007 before the sunwell and zul aman raids dropped cataclysm was announced in august 2009 before the icecrown raid dropped mists was announced in october 2011 before the deathwing raid dropped and now we have the siege of orgrimmar dropping but no expac announcement as of this date i presume that blizz is waiting for blizzcon to make the announcement on the next expac but given that blizzard likes to follow patterns this isn t a good sign unless of course the siege of orgrimmar isn t the last patch in the mists saga if 5 4 is the last mists patch then blizzard might be setting themselves up for a big problem a huge length of time where nothing is going on in game last time blizzard softened the blow to subscriptions by creating the annual pass which included access to diablo iii what will blizzard do this time move up any release date to q1 or q2 of 2014 this is the most likely solution given that any expac blizz is working on has been done in secret however after the long lead in to mists including the massive beta any push to release so early will be seen by some pundits as a sign of desperation on blizzard s part introduce a bridge raid or two this is imho the second most likely solution the only thing that keeps this from being the most likely solution is the lukewarm reception the last bridge raid ruby sanctum received blizzard would need to devote a lot of time to these raids which would impact any release of the next expac take wow f2p an intriguing possibility but one that i have to question in its soundness blizzard makes a lot of money on wow subscriptions and taking wow f2p would mean that they d have to either eat that money or make up for it in other ways they d have to severely restrict access to endgame content if they wanted to keep subs up because wow s model is based upon the game starting at max level that would be at best a temporary fix but an intriguing one nonetheless announce titan this is possible but given the back to the drawing board announcement in august i suspect this is the least likely of all options anyway this is pure speculation until the announcement comes at blizzcon ha by the powers of murphy i summon the expac announcement posted by redbeard at 1 56 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels expansions wow wednesday september 11 2013 don t overthink this okay when you play an mmo you have to just accept certain things like when you kill an enemy and gear drops it ll actually fit your toon or that a kite will carry you great distances or that you can have almost nothing on and still be able to climb that frozen mountain peak yeah i know if you re playing a fantasy mmo or sf mmo in the case of the old republic it can be kind of silly drawing the line at whether armor fits your character when there are dragons in the sky but still i think it s a matter of risk reward more than immersion if you were playing a dwarf for example and you had to wait for dwarf sized armor to drop that could really suck if the drop rates were based upon the percentage of people playing a dwarf it was bad enough waiting for gear you could use to drop but having to add the extra problem of having it fit you back in the day the old moldvay d d basic set had a rule of thumb that any armor found was human sized unless it said otherwise the reason was because there were level limitations on races other than humans because those races had additional abilities that humans didn t have this was back when you could select elf or dwarf as your class before ad d introduced multiclassing maybe i m showing my age but this was my first rpg courtesy of a christmas present if your dm were running a homebrewed campaign which back then formulated the majority of such campaigns they would often generate treasure and whatnot randomly but still they d be careful to make sure you d find gear your player character could actually use even so the published campaigns had gear and weapons that the enemies themselves would be wielding unlike say bronjahm when he drops robes of the cheating heart in the forge of souls you won t see him wearing those robes but a dm can be picky while an mmo has to handle a wide range of races and classes remember the good old days of vanilla wow where you d go on a 40 man raid of molten core as the horde and you d get pally gear as the drop mmos have gotten better at the sort of gear that drops tailoring it toward keeping the player going forward rather than wasting weeks at a time so some of the immersion in the game suffers but it is balanced out by enabling players to improve themselves in a matter of weeks rather than months and in an age when i can no longer devote a lot of time to playing video games i m grateful for that and could you imagine a female night elf trying to fit into armor made for a gnome on second thought forget i said that just the other day i was taking a flight point to the alliance s pvp vendors when my son stopped by to watch what i was up to a kite he asked how are you able to fly on a kite just accept it i said makes no sense but just accept it if it is big enough it could turn into a glider but that kite is far too small to be a glider courtesy of age of conan s social clothing unless bronjahm does a turn as the preacher in blues brothers goes wow yes the sex machine himself was the inspiration for bronjahm posted by redbeard at 12 33 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels musings thursday september 5 2013 waiting for godot wow cthulhu to say that i m disappointed the big bad at the end of another wow expac is related to the old gods is probably an understatement sure it s emo guy garrosh hellscream but come on it is yet another old god related ending to a game that simply can t move beyond the old gods as a plot device about the only expac that didn t have a heavy dose of old god material in some form was burning crusade and i ve often suspected that if kil jaeden wasn t around to provide a convenient villain in the sunwell we d have seen yet another old god pulling kael s strings by my count mists y shaarj influenced siege of orgrimmar will make three of the five releases including vanilla that was overshadowed with an old god esque ending vanilla cataclysm and mists you could also make an argument that the lich king while tracing a lineage back to the burning legion is also heavily influenced by yogg saron after all what exactly does arthas use as a metal for his devices and buildings but saronite the blood of yogg saron itself and don t forget the old god influenced quest chain in icecrown where the ghostly child teaches you about arthas and his heart there s a reason why we found arthas heart in that strange area in the first place what makes the y shaarj tie in so disappointing to me was that the entire concept of the sha was so new and interesting that it seems a shame that blizzard couldn t let it stand on it s own just like how the mogu had to have the help of the zandalari trolls the underlying cause of the sha just had to be the old gods i suppose you could say that blizzard has an addiction to conspiracies the popular uprising in westfall characterized by the defias simply couldn t stand on it s own it had to tie in to the twilight s hammer somehow the overeager and blind self righteousness of the scarlet crusade couldn t stand on its own as garithos racism and arrogance did in warcraft iii it had to be tied back into the dreadlords and the legion maybe that works for a while in a fantasy world but the problem is that in the real world a lot of stuff just happens there is no dark conspiracy behind a lot of criminal activity a lot of it is a crime of opportunity or passion if there is a plot involved it is very localized one spouse hiring a hitman to take out the other spouse for example sure there s organized crime but you can t blame everything on the mob if there s a drug turf war it tends to unfold organically not manipulated by some master puppeteer in the shadows fantasy lends itself well to that evil overlord the shadows in the dark controlling our lives but when you dip into that same well too often it starts to feel forced and loses its punch the most unique thing about mists was the sha but it turned out to be just more old god trickery lessening the impact that it could have had when all questlines lead to the same ending all that s left for variety is the kill ten rats perhaps that is why i ve seen a lot of griping lately that wow s high point was wrath wrath had one raid that was the culmination of a long questline that had absolutely nothing to do with the let s get arthas movement ulduar was it old god related yes was it a big tough raid yes did it advance the arthas story no not one bit ulduar was part of a giant three pronged fork in the entire northrend questline arthas and malygos being the other two and it demonstrated that a story didn t have to be part of the main part of the expac to be meaningful blizzard has gotten away from that with cataclysm and mists and to add insult to injury they end up reusing the same old same old gods as a crutch i guess that we re going to be treated to yet another dose of old gods fairly soon assuming that the dark below turns out to be the name of the next wow expac after all what tends to inhabit the dark places of the world but twilight hammer and their ilk certainly in hindsight people still talk about ulduar as the high point of wow raiding and i have to admit i liked storm peaks much more than icecrown posted by redbeard at 12 13 am 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels bc lore mists of pandaria vanilla wow wrath newer posts older posts home subscribe to comments atom pages home about parallel context about redbeard contact us azeroth after dark a parallel context companion site mmo podcasts blizzard watch diablo 4 lord of hatred waiting room 2 days ago podcasts massively overpowered massively op podcast episode 563 in the name of the windrose 5 days ago twisted nether blogcast moving to youtube episodes 346 348 3 months ago battle bards the final refrain 1 year ago ootinicast a star wars the old republic swtor 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