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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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filled with people 100 this was before any talk of server consolidation became a reality and according to some statistical analyses contains the least played class smuggler in the game after hemming and hawing about it i picked up the game last week logged in to get access to the smuggler i started and found over 100 people in coruscant alone each planet i ve been to since taris and nar shaddaa has had a similar population level in the late evenings these aren t twinks but people leveling actual toons when was the last time that you saw 100 people in ashenvale northern barrens or loch modan wetlands that didn t involve a holiday event outside of the first month after 4 0 1 dropped i can t think of any the past 3 4 years hell the past month or two the population in stormwind in an evenly divided server ysera has been averaging 45 50 people a night that s right the big central home for an entire faction is averaging less population than a lowbie leveling zone in tor is it the end of an expac sure but do you expect more than 50 people in your home city on an average night even at this late date yes and the week after d3 dropped the population plunged to 20 25 people before recovering getting back to the low level zones perhaps the maturity of wow hurts it the most in these areas since the entire mmo is geared toward endgame look at it this way how many recent posts geared toward mists are talking about endgame already how many are saying well if your guild wants to raid you have to be at l90 by xxx date after launch so you d better get ready how many are plotting out all the class changes for mists so you ll be ready to get to l90 and raid as soon as you can to me this means that the focus of the two mmo populations is completely different design intent or not the tor population s values are different than wow s i could make a very successful argument that wow s population is big enough that you can t make any generalizations but at the same time the focus of wow s expansions and content are mostly on the endgame when they did attempt to rework the old world in cata the results were incomplete at best and blizzard took a pr beating from people who complained there wasn t enough to do once they got to l85 tor suffers from the there s nothing to do at l50 stigma so maybe the leveling activity is part of a desire of people to explore all of the class stories i tend to doubt this however due to one other item gen chat itself unlike the other mmos i ve played i ve noticed a lot more basic mmo questions in tor s gen chat yesterday i fielded a question about using the word drop in mmo parlance and i could tell by my conversation that the person on the other end was completely new to the game and mmos in general people were less inclined in gen chat to say l2p noob as well in an almost lotro level of tolerance that doesn t mean that tor is free of spammers in gen chat on taris there were enough chuck norris jokes i quipped that barrens chat has been reborn in taris does this mean that tor is better than wow no it doesn t it just means that tor is different than wow pronunciations by the suits and pundits aside tor caters to a different sort of player than wow does sure the mechanics are similar and most of the under the hood character development is similar but tor seems to have taken over the mantle of the first mmo you ll ever play from wow blizzard knows what it is good at endgame and an expansive world that somehow works if you ignore the story continuity issues and if it sticks to that for mists it will do well if it tries to somehow outdo tor to lure those new mmo players over it may be making a cataclysm sized mistake by trying to turn a game with a high intro cost into something it s not mists is set to drop probably by october at the latest and we ll see what blizz has in mind with their marketing campaign until then i guess it s safe to say that if you want peace and quiet in your leveling go hang out in azeroth for a while and lowbie zones of course when 4 0 1 dropped and all of the quests changed the lowbie zones were a hive of activity for a month and a half until cata dropped then they almost instantly dried up and running the numbers for the budget i got several lols from gen chat on that quip which made it worth my while although for my money i d suggest people try lotro first it s f2p after all so you re not out of money if you don t like the concept posted by redbeard at 10 37 pm 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels intro leveling swtor wow tuesday april 10 2012 lost in the basin sholazar basin has to be my least favorite zone to level in this in spite of the presence of the avatar of freya and the amusement surrounding the why is everyone looking at me like i crashed the ship banter and the frenzyheart vs oracles quest line i suppose i should be happy about a series of quests that are blatant in that they re the kill ten rats variety that s what you get with hemet and co really but all i feel is please please please just let me get through this quickly at one point i looked up and checked the number of quests i d finished in the basin saw it was around 15 and blanched i had about sixty more quests to go i needed a beer badly of all of the zones in northrend sholazar is the one that feels the most tacked on the scourge only start to take center stage once you get through all of hemet s quests and almost to the end of the oracle frenzyheart quests yes you could skip around and head straight to freya but in the end there s no avoiding the nesingwary and o f stuff when i made it to sholazar basin the first time on quintalan i d already finished up storm peaks and most of icecrown and i d paid the then 7k gold to get cold weather flying however that did me little good in sholazar because of the tree cover having returned to it twice now i ve found that it is harder and harder to navigate because you have to fly so low to the ground i m sure i m not alone in this but the more obstacles to fly through and constantly change directions with give me headaches in much the same way that first person shooters give me motion sickness flying through sholazar like un goro or feralas is a chore for me then when you add the numerous kill ten rats quests of nesingwary and co sholazar makes my head spin i thought about other forest zones that don t give me such problems such as ashenvale and felwood and two things do stand out the density of the foliage and the gaps in the forest ashenvale and felwood are temperate forests and the density of the trees at flying level isn t so bad or rather you ca n fly at a decent level above ground and see where you re going you also get breaks in the forest where you can get your bearings and not feel so closed in with sholazar and u g and feralas that feeling of claustrophobia can come on strong along with the disorientation of a forest that looks alike in every direction maybe with some dramamine sholazar basin wouldn t feel so bad at the same time however it is pretty much a dead end storywise i m not sure if that s what s intended but the impression i get is that sholazar is the odd man out of the northrend story blizz wanted to tell sure there s an avatar there fighting the encroachment of the scourge and you have a connection with un goro but as far as the focus on progressing the story toward the endgame sholazar stands apart it takes you nowhere normally i wouldn t mind given that it expands the overall feel of the game world but given that the three expansions after vanilla got away from the sandbox type of game sholazar just feels out of step from the rest of the design goals for azeroth i would include the ghostlands too but you can t fly there yet posted by redbeard at 2 08 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels leveling wrath thursday february 24 2011 habitually speaking back when i first started playing wow i developed a lot of bad habits while leveling my first 45 levels or so quintalan was holy spec but since i rarely went into instances at that time all i knew how to do was quest and kill things using my weak holy spec capabilities to compound the problem i looked at gear the way i would in my pencil and paper rpgs a little bit of intellect and a little bit of strength never hurt and look something with agility it never occurred to me that maybe i ought to concentrate on one stat and let the other gear fall by the wayside after i switched to ret at soul s suggestion i developed another set of bad habits for example i d use tanking abilities in my attacks which really don t go over well when you get into an instance and when leveling i didn t have a concept of a rotation sure you could argue that ret spec in wrath didn t have a rotation and i d not disagree with you either but the basic understanding behind a rotation escaped me oh yeah i was a noob i had my share of hey stoopid moments out there in wow it wasn t until i started pugging and got serious about understanding how a ret pally works that i finally broke out of these habits i tinkered with key bindings and how much you could load onto one button until i realized i needed more granularity than that such as saving avenging wrath for bosses you don t need it for trash therefore don t try to bind it on any of my attacks but leave it on a separate button even when 4 0 1 dropped i didn t have moments quite like those first few months of playing wow and for that i can thank tomakan he was mired somewhere in the 40s when 4 0 1 was released and so i had plenty of time to work out how the new ret rotations ought to work without all the clutter of higher level ret capabilities but now after having spent time leveling in the cata zones i ve kind of backslid a bit i slack off on my rotations because i can unless i m dealing with multiple enemies at once or an elite i ve got some nice new skills on both neve and the pallys but i haven t really adjusted my key bindings i know that the cata instances are harder than wrath but i haven t tested the limits of how quickly i can go through my rotation without pulling aggro wow is still a learning process maybe if you work at it hours a day for most days of the week yeah you can top out at a high level but most of us don t have that amount of spare time to get competent at your class you need to dedicate some time but nowhere near the levels seen by the elite raiding guilds unlike my noob experiences i know what i need to do to get back on track i need to get into more cata instances am i worried about getting into cata pugs not really i like to be prepared and if i can t be prepared at least be overpowered what s killing me is the time factor i don t have the time to set aside two hours to cover a pug right now i can run bgs more quickly than what i ve discovered via the cata pugs i ve been in so i end up queuing for them instead when alterac valley is looking to be quicker than a cata pug you know you ve got time issues so for the time being i m going to continue to quest and accumulate a punch sheet of things i need to do i ll get around to it someday maybe i instead lust after a naga razr thinking about adding buttons there rather than upset my current balance posted by redbeard at 12 52 am 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels instances leveling ponderings toons tuesday january 11 2011 what s that old line about patience again i noticed that i haven t been posting as much the past month or so but it s not like i haven t been doing anything i m still plugging away at getting tomakan and neve to the cata zones they re l76 and l77 thanks for asking and i m continuing to pug my way through instances and bgs my posts about foibles in instances have been few and far between because well the number of worthy failpugs has dropped dramatically my speculation is that people are working on all of their toons in the cata zones and given the commentary about failpugs in cata instances i might not be too far off the mark one thing i have noticed is that lfd isn t really random my instance selections while leveling in the wrath zones have been waves of a single instance at a time first utgarde keep then ahn kahet and now violet hold scattered in between have been occasional forays into azjol nerub the nexus and drak tharon i m not sure how lfd determines the criteria for an instance but i suspect that certain instances are ranked higher than others depending on your level your gear s ilevel and your role selection that role selection is subdivided if you re dps into ranged vs melee finally you re put into a pug based on need anyway i m still plugging away in mostly abandoned areas of azeroth last week when i had some off time i spent a morning and part of the afternoon on tom and between leveling mining and questing in zul drak i think i saw a grand total of a half dozen other toons the power levelers have long passed through with their new alt combinations and at least one guildie in neve s guild has already lapped her and is closing in with a third toon i m now starting to get antsy about making it to the cata zones and see all of those spoilerific things that i ve been avoiding on other people s blogs would it help if i got out and pushed it might convoy to l85 progress tomakan l76 nevelanthana l77 i m almost l78 how old are you 10 posted by redbeard at 1 46 pm 5 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels leveling the wow life sunday december 12 2010 time for a convoy i think it s time for an experiment of sorts quintalan is basically sitting around dal cooling his jets while i ve been leveling tomakan and neve i could send him straight into the cataclysm zones but i ve been reluctant to do so it has nothing to do with being put off by the great cataclysm race but a realization that if i push ahead with q i d shelve these other two for a long while there s also a bit of a daredevil mentality at work here just how hard is it to hop on an 18 wheeler and drive a toon straight up through l85 without stopping to farm heroics i ve read online a lot of you can go straight to l85 without stopping but it will be a bit harder but exactly how hard is harder the posters kind of left blank when you ding l80 you typically have a bunch of il187 and il200 gear with a mixture of lower level gear thrown in this is especially true if you ve been leveling through instances like i have and you don t get those questing gear drops to round out your equipment for example i only recently replaced tom s cloak he d been using something he picked up circa the last two scarlet monastery instances all the way through l66 simply because he didn t get a dps type cloak to drop that entire time well one that he won in a roll anyway what this means is that it s entirely possible neve or tom could ding 80 and still have a residual piece of b...