Life After World of Warcraft

November 30, 2018

This isn't by any means a new turn of events. I've been playing World of Warcraft (WOW) off and on for over a decade. I started playing back in 2006. I never got to level 60 with my first character before the expansion, The Burning Crusade, came out. I played more than 8 hours a day from then all the way through Wrath of the Lich King. I was never really patient with WOW during the time that I was most active with the game. If I had been I think it would have been a lot more fun for me. I look at WOW as one of my biggest failures in my time gaming.

I've come back to the game for every expansion, and I've gotten to max level on several characters over the years. I keep thinking, "This time I'll make it work." and I never really do. Here's a little background on the kind of person I was back in the Burning Crusade and Lich King days. I was your typical WOW elitist. I've kicked people from my party many times if they didn't perform to my standards. To put it simply I was an asshole. Move forward a few years, and I've grown a bit, but it was too late I had contributed to the kind of player base that are outright assholes to play with. During Cataclysm I did a few dungeons, and the people I was grouped with got bent out of shape way too easily. I feel bad because I know I was the same way back when WOW was my life.

Things are a little better now but I've changed too much as a person to be part of the WOW community anymore. I manifested schizoaffective disorder and now I have extreme social anxiety. I simply get too anxious when I'm in a dungeon I don't know, which at this point is anything past Cataclysm. That's a lot of ground to cover form me. I just don't feel the connection I used to have. I'm still addicted to the game though. I enjoy doing old dungeons and making gold. I came back yet again this time for "Battle for Azeroth." about a week ago I unsubscribed and uninstalled WOW. I still catch myself thinking about the game. I had some great times with my fellow elitist assholes, but I feel my time with the game is over.

I'm not trying to persuade people to stop playing WOW. I'm simply admitting defeat for myself with the game. I burned myself out so many times, but for some reason kept coming back to the game. I have a mountain of games backlogged in my Steam and GOG libraries. I really want to find a new game to grind. I know it seems weird but I enjoy a good grind. It's one of the things that kept me going back to WOW. I love to work hard to see all the minor improvements add up. Before WOW I played a lot of turn based JRPG's and other role playing games like Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate and Diablo. I still have Diablo 3 installed.

At this point I'm trying to decide what to make my new grind. Tomorrow I'll be playing Total War Warhammer 2 with an old WOW buddy. I still don't know what I'm going to make my main game for a while. I am writing the blog entry to cement the fact in my mind that WOW is over. I'm tired of always feeling like I'm missing out on something for not playing it. Don't get me wrong as I'll say again I don't hate the game or anything I"m just tired of failing at it.

I think one thing I can do is get back to streaming. I started back to school this October. I'm currently taking English Composition 2. It's a lot of fun but the thing that strikes me is that I have a lot of free time on my hands despite having the class as a responsibility. I think I would love to start streaming again. I feel pretty comfortable with you English class that I think I can do it. I'll try to get it all together to stream next week. I had to restore windows on my PC so I have to redo all of the artwork for my channel.

I really want to stream on Caffeine.tv but my connection isn't really up to it. I'm hoping that my neighborhood gets gigabit internet soon. For now I'll be streaming on twitch. Eventually though I'd love to stream on Caffeine. I have all my financials in order for the site so it will be interesting for me to see if I can make it work on the site. That's further down the road though for now look for me on twitch.tv/greyed1 and on twitter for updates about when I start streaming twitter.com/greyed1. That's it for now. I hope to see you soon in my stream! I'm also going to be making this blog a bigger priority. I'll be talking about all the various games I'll be trying out to fill that void that WOW will be leaving.

Speed Run Time

Hello everyone! I'm officially back. I kinda forgot that this is one of the things I'm doing with my time. I wanted to say that I was happy to watch yet another Games Done Quick (GDQ) event. Summer games done quick was as fun as always. My sister and I got our shirts ordered, and we watched a good bit of it together. I guess I must just be getting old because I slept through a lot of it, but I still saw mostly everything I had intended to see.

After spending several days watching all of the runners it got me (as it often does) thinking about what I would like to speed run. Well, I won't keep you in suspense. I've decided to run Oblivion (No OoB). I already went to Speedrun.com and found guides. I also got set up with the 1.0 version of the game. I'm having trouble finding splits for LiveSplit though. I'm just going to make my own. I started a game and tested out the item dupe glitch.

I'm also going to start playing Oblivion casually with my sister. I know it'll sound dumb but we're going to play the game side by side with me on my PC and her on her laptop. I think it'll be a lot of fun because the game has so many ways to develop. I love the Elder Scrolls series. Anyhow that's all for now. I'll be working on the other stuff I've promised here and on social media soon. See ya' around!

Dragons and Titans

Hello! I'm trying to be regular. I really need to work out when and how often I'll be doing this. Some days are better than others and I'm not talking about my schedule. I don't have a lot of money for games so I'll mostly be reviewing games I already own or free to play games. Some of these reviews will be, "timely." It just so happens I downloaded a free to play game a few days ago. I haven't played it for very long, but I do have some initial thoughts on it.

Dragons and Titans:

As the title suggests I've been playing Dragons and Titans. It's a game where you ride dragons into combat with your enemy with the ultimate goal of destroying your enemies' titan. The controls will feel familiar if you're already used to the DOTA/LOL control scheme. The game itself is actually very similar to other MOBAs.

There are multiplayer, coop, and single player modes. The game has a thorough tutorial so you wont be left scratching you head not knowing what to do. Playing through the game gives you currency to open loot packs that give you more dragons to use. It kinda reminds me of Puzzle and Dragons / Hearthstone in that way. There's a season pass that gives you access to all of the current content. If things stay the way they are or the game gets more popular it's definitely worth picking it up. It's also a short download so pick it up and try it out. I had a lot of fun in my short time playing it.

Well I know this one is short but that's all for now. I haven't really decided what I'm going to be writing about here on a regular basis, but there's more to come. Thanks for reading and see ya around!

Charity Marathons

Hello! It's been a long time since I've posted. I haven't done much more than play a little Diablo 3 here and there, and watch The Walking Dead on Netflix. I've also been talking to a friend of mine and tossing around a few ideas for games. I've been wanting to make a game for 2 years now. I'm just really lazy and haven't bothered learning what I need to be able to do it.

I don't know why for the life of me I never thought to come back to this blog. There's a lot I can talk about other than games, movies and TV. I'm getting really hyped for the next few months. There's two charity marathons on the way: RPG Limit Break and Summer Games Done Quick! You can find all the info about these charity events in the links below.

RPG Limit Break

Summer Games Done Quick

I got started watching these marathons on YouTube years ago. RPG Limit Break is rather new, and as I understand it's a replacement for Crystals for Life, another marathon from the past. These events are a lot of fun and have prizes for your donations, so take some time and check them out. RPGLB is benefiting NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and SGDQ is benefiting Doctors Without Borders.

That's it for now. I've just installed another free to play game that I'll be talking about soon. So, thanks for reading. See ya around!

Diablo 3 Season 10 Thoughts and Tips

Hello! It's been a few days since my last blog post. I've been well though. I had a few bad nights because I'm still missing Randy, and I don't quite know how to deal with it. It's hard to let go when your life revolved around another person for years.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about. I don't know what rock I had my head under for the past few years but I've totally been missing out on seasonal play in Diablo 3. I know I've already talked about how much I love this bad game. To be honest when I played it in 2012 I never used the auction house or the real money auction house, so I don't really get it when people say it ruined the game. I will admit though that it may have cheapened the fun for some people because they could just plug in whatever stats they wanted and gear out as long as they had enough gold

Anyhow on to seasonal play. I love this idea. It took me back to when I first started the game. I had to level everything all over again. It's slow going in the beginning. I never felt like I was out of stash room or anything though. Which is a good feeling. I like to have a lot of room for gems. I don't play hardcore yet so I'm not stashing tons of gear in case I die.

I'm playing a Wizard this season. I'm not really out to top the charts. If I was I would have started a couple weeks ago. I'm not even using an optimal spec. I also have no idea what the optimal gear is. I can look it up later if it becomes an issue. At the time of this writing I'm paragon level 47. I'm still a baby when it comes to my paragon level. You can check out my character Parathunder here.

While I'm not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to Diablo 3 but I do have some advice when it comes to the Wizard. Make sure you keep your buffs up at all times. This should go without saying. Try to keep a high damage weapon in your hands when you're leveling. It can be easy to miss the increase to damage when you get a weapon that isn't a typical weapon for a Wizard. Just realize that everything scales based on your weapon's damage. While I was leveling I had usually a big two handed weapon. Try to focus more on your weapon while leveling. Gear is nice but when you get a good weapon upgrade while leveling you could be getting like 100% higher damage from a new weapon.

My next bit of advice is for battle. Pay attention to your position in battle. I try to focus on choke points as I'm a disintegrate Wizard. I know that makes me a pleb but like I said I don't really care about the charts right now. I tend to plant my hydras far ahead of me and fall back to a corner or a choke point and blast with disintegrate I use Storm Armor so that I get a little passive damage. So far I'm doing really well playing on Torment I. I may switch things up later so that it's more optimal.

Anyhow all this talking about Diablo 3 makes me want to play some Diablo 3. Thanks for taking the time to read this. My next entry will probably have links to guides and stuff as I'll probably be moving to a more optimal build. If you want really good guides / builds /specs for all things Blizzard check out icy-veins.com/. Thanks again for reading see ya around!

Jesse's MMO Romp Part 4: First Impressions

Hello! This is it. This is the end of my MMO Romp. If you've read my previous post you already know I reached the conclusion that I do not want to play MMO's any more. I still wanted to finish putting my thoughts on the games I've played to paper. I actually didn't play too much Runescape so I'm leaving it out of this article. Without further ado here's my thoughts on Firefall, Age of Conan, Order and Chaos 2, and D&D Online.

Firefall:

I really wanted to like this game. I'm more of a shooter oriented gamer so I thought for sure I'd fall in love with this one as it is an MMO shooter. I did fall in love with it in fact. I mean what's not to love. The game has fast paced shooter action. The environments were nice and you get rocket boots.

I experienced a game breaking bug though. I got to one part on a mission where I had to activate a terminal to continue. When I activate it I get a loading screen. After the loading screen either nothing happens or I get logged out. If I try to go about the mission after the loading screen I eventually get to a point where the quest tracker literally tells me to go up over a vertical wall and return to the console to begin the quest. So I like this game, and may come back to it. For right now though I just don't want to bother.

Age of Conan:

I like this game immensely. It's the Conan universe which I love. You start out playing as a slave whose ship has run aground resulting in your freedom. The Combat is fun. I still don't have it quite figured out, but it revolves around you chaining combos together for big damage.

I played as a Cimmerian Ranger. I thought it was going to be more like a hunter. To my surprise my skill set was mostly Melee starting out. I didn't like that I the only bow I could find required me to be level 10 before I could use it. They even gave me a ranged ability even though I can't use the starter bow from the first trade post. I don't want to sound like I didn't like the game though. It's fun! Give it a try. 

Order and Chaos 2:

First off I have to say that I have played this game before on my phone. Yep, that's right, this game lets you play a full fledged MMO on your phone or tablet. There's also a version of it on the Windows store that will let you play the game on Windows devices. I installed the desktop version and set off to romp around and see the world.

I like this game. I have an instant interest in any game that will let me play as an Orc. I just like Orcs there's something powerful and primal about them that I love even if they are big ugly brutes. Anyway I dove right in and started questing. They're really good about directing you where to go. You get blue dotted line to help you find your way.

This game is also controller enabled. I plugged in my Xbox controller and went at it. The controls weren't the best though. I think the controls would be a lot better if turning the camera angle also made the character turn, but you get used to it. You also will do a lot better if you use the mouse to interact with the various interfaces in the game because they're not very intuitive with the controller. Sometimes pressing “A” does one thing sometimes it seems to do another.

All in all I had fun with this one though. It's free to play and you can take it with you on the go. So download it and have fun!

Dungeons and Dragons Online:

This one was a pleasant surprise as well just like Lord of the Rings Online. Once again if you can handle the HD textures by all means do it. It makes the game look much better than it would otherwise. I played as a human ranger. Unlike Conan I was able to use a bow from the get-go.

Leveling up in this game is more in line with actual D&D than it was in Neverwinter. I played about as much as I would have to get to level 10 in other games, but I'm still level 1. In this game you rank up before you level. At rank 10 you graduate to level two. You still get skill points for every rank so it doesn't make leveling up seem too daunting.

The game play wasn't too grindy there were all kinds of bonus zone objectives and quests. I had a lot of fun with this one. There are also puzzles that were semi-challenging. I think I might leave this game and Lord of the Rings online installed for whenever I feel the itch to play something MMO-like.

In any event thank you if you stuck around for my ramblings. Thank you to everyone that +1'd this blog at any point. I'll be back, but I don't know what I'll be writing about next.

I'MMOut: My Personal Conclusion on MMO Style Games

As the title suggests I've come to a conclusion concerning MMO style games. In short I think they're for the most part not worth it. Right now you have two models the free to play / no subscription model and the subscription based model. They both have their good points.

Free to play is free which is good. There are still things that you'll have to pay for eventually though. If you want vanity items, extra bag room, or character slots then you'll end up paying. There are some games that still require you to purchase expansion content which is actually true across both models. But, for the most part these games would have you pay to take shortcuts for achieving most of the goals of the game from crafting to pets and mounts.

Subscription based games are probably going to end up being a little bit better. This is because the people that make the game are for the most part obligated to keep adding quality content. They can also give you pets and mounts from various achievements. World of Warcraft I would say has a great balance of vanity items for real dollars and others that you can earn.

By the same token developers are also making content that requires you to spend a good bit of time to achieve certain things whether it's mounts, pets, achievements, or even just leveling up. It's a delicate balance though because too long or short of time invested can lead to people leaving the game to go play something else that will reward them at a better interval.

At the end of the day I see this (just my personal preference) as just a big mind game. There are a lot of other games that I find to be better because these games actually have an end to them. Still though, modern games come out with a lot of DLC which I find (again just my preference) to be a better method of delivering content. There is DLC out there that feels like a whole new game (Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry for example) too, which I find to be a serious plus as the developer is giving people more bang for their buck when it comes to buying a season pass for something.

Of course content is added to MMO games all the time. I'm simply saying that the motivation is to keep you grinding away for something that seems less personal than other types of games. I know I've said before on this blog that I don't mind the grind, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately and that's what these games eventually turn into for me. To me it's either a ploy to keep me paying a subscription, or to have me pay for quality of life be it from short cuts or extra features.

I just think it's not my thing. Moving forward I think my focus is going to be on more single player games. I will miss multiplayer, but there are a lot of single player narrative games that have a multiplayer aspect to them, so I don't think I'll be depriving myself of that kind of play either. I know some people might think I'll be paying more money for less content because new games are upwards of 60 dollars or more. I'm an older gamer though, and I'd like to think I'm more patient than most. I can wait for a game to go on sale, or catch it in a humble bundle.

I think I still might keep a couple of these games installed at the end of the day. You never know when I'll get the itch to just mindlessly grind mobs. MMO's are alright sometimes. I just don't see myself dedicating a lot of time to them the way I used to.

Well if I go too much further with this rambling it's going to turn in to a specific rant, and That's not really what I'm about. So, I'll be dropping the last of my first impressions on the rest of the games I've been playing soon. From here on out this blog will be more about my [semi] collected thoughts from playing single player games. I still didn't touch much on my social anxiety when it comes to multiplayer games. I think that's best saved for another time.