Biggs' Zone

A Geek's Cogitations, Conjectures and other Cortical Experiences

Category: World of Warcraft Page 10 of 13

WoW: Garrisons [Revisited]

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On January 12, 2015

In Gaming, World of Warcraft

pax_east_garrison_580I am way behind the curve as I haven’t been able to start playing the expansion upon its release. In fact I’ve probably only been at it for a few weeks with only brief moments to play in the evenings. I have finally hit 100 (on my main toon) just prior to Christmas and so far, I have to say, I’m Addicted to My Garrison! I have already brought two other alts up just far enough to unlock their garrison just so I can check out the different profession buildings. I have been researching guides on how to acquire additional followers or unlock other special easter eggs to make my garrison more unique.

I can’t help but think that Blizzard took a few notes from the companion system in SWTOR, which doesn’t really irritate me as the companions in SWTOR is one of my favorite mechanics of SWTOR. I’m still discovering new hidden treasures of garrisons but here are a few of my favorites:

Follower Missions

Sometimes I log in just to complete missions and send my followers back out on new missions. I have followers on one alt who are almost level 100 but my toon is only a level 93. I’m excited to be able to send my followers on Highmaul missions which has the chance to reward Highmaul gear. It is a little disconcerting that my followers are starting to have a higher iLevel then my main toon but the trade off will be that I can acquire gear without the repair bill. I really don’t like the fact that you can only have 20-25 active followers because I like all my followers. How can I be expected to play favorites and “deactivate” someone??!

Another item on my “follower wish list” is to see visible changes in my follower as I upgrade their gear. A follower with a gear score of 600 should not look exactly the same when their gear score has been boosted up to 645.

The Mine and Herb Garden

This particular mechanic is kind of a double edged sword for me. Every garrison will get a Mine and an Herb Garden, regardless of whether your toon has mining and herbalism. So that means all your toons will have access to their own person stash of herbs and ore; no need to worry about those annoying ninja’s that pilfer your node or herb while you are fighting the nearby mob. You do not need the mining or herbalism skill to harvest herbs from the herb garden and ore from the mine, however you will still need those skills to harvest them outside your garrison. Obviously this marginalizes the mining and herbalism skills; especially if you have sufficient cash to be able to purchase the needed materials to level a crafting skill that would require mining or herbalism.

Stables

This building allows you to “tame mounts” and as an avid mount collector you can imagine my excitement. Granted I have not yet constructed this building as my need for raid gear supersedes my desire for more mounts, however I am currently leveling an alt that will have this building (since mounts are account bound). Based on some of my research it looks like you are limited to specific species and a specific number of mounts but I think it might be a good start to getting some cool mounts.

I’ve been sitting on this post for a while because I keep thinking there is more I want to say about garrisons. I really do enjoy this feature of the game. I almost wish they had more to customize, like the homesteads in SWTOR. I also wonder if this swell of excitement will ebb as the expansion moves on and I level more and more alts to unlock their level 3 garrisons. In the meantime I will continue to bask in the glory of my garrison.

minion_keboard_smI could get so much more accomplished if I only had minions!

WoW: Fare-thee-well Pandaria

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On October 13, 2014

In Gaming, World of Warcraft

gate-of-the-setting-sunThis week the 6.0.2 patch is released, which contains pretty much all the expansion changes except the new zones. We will essentially be bidding farewell to Pandaria as everyone prepares for Warlords of Draenor by grinding the three new instances (and acclimating to the item squish and class changes). So as we bid adieu to Pandaria I want to reflect on my likes and dislikes of this expansion.

First, Mists of Pandaria was not my favorite expansion. Wrath of the Lich King is still the forerunner but a huge margin and I’d probably say that I liked Cataclysm more than Mists of Pandaria so it probably falls in about third place among the expansions. MoP had some highs and lows.

The Highs

– I loved the Asian theme. I think Blizzard’s art department did an amazing job integrating the storyline and new Pandarian race with a Chinese motif. Speaking of the Pandarian race, I really did enjoy them more than I thought I would in fact if Pandaren could be Paladin’s, I probably would have race changed my main.

– I did like the introduction of Flex raiding. We would struggle a lot to gather enough people for a full raid team, Flex helped us kill some raid content without having to constantly put enough butts-in-seats.

– I seriously loved Sunsong Ranch. I completely unlocked all 16 plots on all my max level toons. I was fairly diligent in planting things daily on all my toons as well. I think my enjoyment of the farm will transfer to my garrison.

The Lows

– I was never a fan of the name of the expansion (for starters) and I’m still not the biggest fan of it. It never seem to fit in with the inauspicious titles of all the previous expansions. It was definitely too … fluffy!

– This expansion was way too long. Blizzard released content too quickly and left all of us twiddling our thumbs for about 8 months.

– I couldn’t really get into the story. Blizzard definitely succeeded by making all of us despise Garrosh but his ultimate plan seemed anti-climatic.

– In the end, I did not like how everything became a grind-fest. 20 of these bobbins for the legendary,  then 10 more of these others, etc. The Timeless Isle became the epitome of the old school rep-grind.

Despite the fact that I have more bullets that describe things I didn’t like, the points that I did like count as double. It was enough to keep me coming back most days to keep playing some of the content. I imagine its difficult for Blizzard to find that happy medium between releasing content too quickly and avoiding long content gaps.

During WotLK it was difficult keeping 25 people happy in a raid, I cannot even begin to imagine what its like to keep 7 million happy. Everyone plays at their own pace, how do you appease those that finish content much faster than the others. One thing is for sure, I’m glad that’s a conundrum that I don’t have to figure out.

/cheers

WoW: Legendary Cloak Quest

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On August 19, 2014

In Gaming, MMORPG, World of Warcraft

anth_cloakLast night I finally completed the legendary questline to receive my legendary cloak on Quentyn (formally known as Anthonius). It’s the first time I have ever completed a current legendary quest line (did someone say Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker??) It is a very long series of quests with a couple of obnoxious grinds (depending on your luck and the RNG).

The obvious grinds are all the sigils, secrets and runestones you have to collect. If you are not lucky when it comes to RNG drops, these will take you the longest. In fact I had to wait until the Gaze of the Black Prince buff before I finally received the rest of my Titan Runestones. The Sigils are probably the least awful of the raid boss grinds, they seem to drop pretty regularly. The only redeeming factor is that you can collect the items by running LFR, but you get a chance at the item dropping only once per week from each boss (in the applicable dungeon). Your chances do improve, I believe, if you run a normal raid (10/25). Honestly, the 12 Titan Runestones was the longest grind for me.

The other “grind” may not actually be a grind for some, depending on your luck (or faction). You have to win two PvP battleground matches: a Temple of Kotmogu match and a Silvershard Mines match. Your luck on this part of the quest is probably going to depend on your server and your faction. I play mostly Alliance so you can imagine that winning any PvP match is a grind. I was lucky with Silvershard Mines, I won on the third match; but I think I played about a dozen Temple of Kotmogu matches before I finally got the win I needed. I understand why PvP is part of the quests, Blizzard wants a legendary item to include all facets of the game, but for those of us that are not really into PvP (and play Alliance), its a pretty frustrating part.

I think if Blizzard hadn’t given us the Gaze of the Black Prince buff I probably never would have completed the quests and received my Qian-Ying, Fortitude of Niuzao during this expansion. I do kind of wish I had done it earlier instead of just 3 months prior to Warlords of Draenor but I guess its better than 3 weeks before it. Now I just have to finally finish Siege of Orgrimmar (I still haven’t seen the Garrosh fight).

(BTW, while I was originally thinking there is no way I am going to repeat this process on another toon … I do actually feel slightly inclined to try to do it one more time since the buff lasts 10 more days)

WoW: Thoughts On Garrisons

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On August 7, 2014

In Gaming, World of Warcraft

pax_east_garrison_580In my last MMO Times post I provided a link to an article that described the Garrisons feature of Warlords of Draenor to be “disappointing” (thus far). Assuming that Blizzard isn’t hindering folks from sharing their thoughts of the beta testing, and I’m currently in the beta, then I think its warranted for me to share my thoughts on Garrisons (as I have unlocked my garrison in the beta).

Blizzard did promise us the proverbial, yet elusive pony again with Garrisons. Originally they told players that your garrison can be placed in any zone of your choosing, however, thus far in the beta, that is not the case. Instead the garrison has been integrated into the main story line; granted I haven’t quested much beyond the first zone so I don’t know if your garrison can move or if, in the end, you can choose any place you want. You never know, that could be the case and Blizzard is using the main story line to familiarize the player with their garrison.

I have to admit, I am starting to like the garrisons more and more. The fact that you can recruit NPCs (some of which are familiar names) to be a follower and then send them on missions is very similar to the way you can utilize your companions in SWTOR. The biggest difference being that you cannot ask them to accompany you and fight at your side. You get a “garrison hearthstone” which is different then the normal hearthstone and does not have a cooldown (nor does it trigger the cooldown of the normal one). Granted this might be just a beta-only mechanic, I have no idea if that will change when the game goes live. This is especially handy when you need to return to your garrison immediately either to turn in a quest for more resources or to complete the quest your follower just returned from.

Also, during the time in which I was writing this post, a WoW Insider post had shown up with some additional details about garrisons. You may get the option to choose the style of your buildings as well as your guards depending on which of the vanilla reputations with whom you are exalted. I think this is really cool, though I don’t know if I trust my garrison to be properly protected by a bunch of gnomes in mechanical ostriches – my assailants may have too much fun punting my guards (j/k gnomes!!). Be that as it may, this is a great idea to finally utilize those vanilla reputations other than acquiring their mounts.

I think there is still a lot of potential for garrisons and I’m a little excited to see where they take them. I’m sure there will be many out there who will whine that garrisons are not more then they are but you can’t expect Blizzard to get it exactly the way you want it if you don’t lend them your mad programming skills!

/cheers

Blizzard the WoW Killer

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On June 6, 2014

In Gaming, World of Warcraft

world_of_warcraft_yaicon_pack_by_alucryd-d4w9zy2Every time a new MMO title comes out that has any kind of hype people start to question if it will dethrone the MMO titan World of Warcraft. Nothing has succeeded. In fact I don’t think any title out there will achieve the following and player base that WoW has held over the past 10 years. The elusive “WoW-killer” doesn’t exist; but that doesn’t mean that something will bring the behemoth down. Blizzard Entertainment will be the reason for the toppling of World of Warcraft. I know there are literally thousands out there that will agree with me.

In fact I’ve begun to wonder if Blizzard has just stopped caring about keeping players in the game. In the current expansion the players were given the final content patch of the expansion close to 6 months ago (give or take). The next expansion, Warlords of Draenor, doesn’t seem to be releasing until this Fall (some say November). It’s going to be close to a full year between new content. I know patch 6.0 will bring some changes to the game in preparation for WoD but I doubt we will see enough content to bring players back.

A few months ago WoW subscriptions dropped another 400k+ and a couple of my friends were among those that let their subscriptions lapse. I honestly don’t blame them. Why continue to pay $15 a month to do nothing. Raids are difficult to find if you don’t want to use the dungeon/raid finder tools so that leaves you with just dailies and leveling alts; which might work for some folks (including myself, a great way to wind the day down), but for others its not enough. If Blizzard did care about maintaining the WoW player base I think there would be more proactive efforts to keep people around. If Blizzard thinks that the coming expansion will be so epic it will draw hundreds of thousands of players back, someone has some epic delusions of grandeur. If I’m wrong then Blizzard will hold another accolade of the largest subscription comeback in the history of MMOs.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t even pre-ordered the expansion yet. I think we will get it eventually but since things are just entering Alpha we are probably going to give it a few more weeks (or months) to make the purchase. It might actually depend on what all of our friends plan on doing. Honestly I do hope that everyone comes back and perhaps we can “get the band back together”.

/cheers

Blizzcon 2013 Opening Ceremonies

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On November 8, 2013

In Gaming, MMORPG, World of Warcraft

blizzconBlizzcon 2013 is this weekend (if you didn’t know). I didn’t get a virtual ticket this year, we have to save some money but the opening ceremonies are free to watch. If you watched it then you might not find anything in this post that you didn’t already know. It has been two years since the last BlizzCon so I know everyone is pretty excited about what they are announcing (even if you’re not playing WoW anymore).

Heroes of the Storm – The video introducing Dustin Browser was pretty cool. All the different heroes fighting each other. They showed some content of Heroes of the Storm. It pretty much looks like League of Legends with all the Blizzard heroes. Based on the glimpses of the videos you can play as Arthas (as the Lich King), Carrigan, Diablo, etc. I’m not much of a LoL fan but the game does look cool and I’m sure if you are a fan of both games then you’re going to really love this game.

**Big News** Beta sign-ups for Heroes of the Storm are live!

HearthStone – Rob Pardo. Originally a stealth/experimental project at Blizzard. Despite how “geeky” a battle card game seemed to be, when they were playing the game internally they logged so many hours they decided that they must have something pretty good, and thus HearthStone was born. This is Blizzards first tablet game and there will be iPhone and Android versions (haha, no Windows Phone!). Honestly, I can actually see myself playing HearthStone on my tablet more then on my computer.

**Big News** Going into beta next month.

If you went to the show or ordered a virtual ticket then you will get a special Blizzcon card called the Elite Tauren Chieftain and when you play the card, yea, its pretty awesome! Adding golden player cards, like the golden cards, which are fully animated. It looks kind of cool.

World of WarCraft – Of course the illustrious Chris Metzen talked to us about the WoW expansion. We all kind of knew it was called Warlods of Draenor – Metzen predicated the announcement by talking a lot of origins. He called the Alliance the “Captain America Faction” … love it! It sounds like we might be fighting some pretty old school villians which will be kind of cool to see (some names Metzen through out were Gul’dan, Hellscream, Blackmoore, etc. So it’ll be interesting. After building up the Alliance and giving some love to the Horde, the next expansion video debuts:

Warlods of Draenor – It will contain a new zone called Draenor (kind of obvious) The video said you will be able to build and upgrade garrisons so that might mean some kind of player housing. I’m sure the details of garrisons will come out in future panels, I will have to watch some of the other live blogs to learn more. Obviously the new level cap is 100. All the existing character models are getting new looks and upgrades and, of course, new items and loots. You can see the video below:

Please feel free to share anything you saw and your thoughts, positive and negative.

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